A Million Nightingales

by Susan Straight

  I think of you every minute. I remember every lesson. I measure things in my head, so no one sees. I will find a way back.

  In the mornings, Pélagie stirred much later than anyone else, and the first words she spoke were always the same. “My hair,” she said without moving, and I put down the cup of coffee with no sugar or milk on the vanity. Every day the same. She sat in the chair before the mirror. The fourteen curls piled high on her head came down gently into my palm. Scars from the curling tongs of her past. Like silver wood lice on her neck and even two on her ear.

  After her hair was finished, and she had powdered her face and I had helped her into a dress, she drank another cup of coffee and went to meet Madame in the dining room.

  “How can you not have had a trained laundress?” she began one day, while they sewed for the Paris trip. “Did you see how Moinette has taken care to brighten your chemises?”

  Madame nodded. “They smell like rosemary.”

  “I brought it from Paris. When I heard about your sight.”

  Then they were silent, and we sewed.

  Léonide said, “I don't touch les blancs, me. Hair like spiderweb.” But mine is moss, I thought. Yours is wool. Touching her hair

  is my task.

  We moved about the pantry, in the cool brick-paved area

  under the house, counting the huge jars of olive oil from France. It was Sunday, and Amanthe had secreted away bits of the roasted chicken from dinner, the splinters of white meat she picked from the breastbone, and spongy pieces of dark meat from behind the back. Madame, Pélagie, and Msieu Antoine had eaten. Amanthe carried the meat wrapped in paper, in her apron pocket.

  When we walked to le quartier, I chanted to myself the receipt for cleaning white clothes, because Philippine and Firmin would be glad to see Amanthe, but no one would care whether I had come or not.

  Fronie and Fantine were elsewhere with their friends. And Sophia was asleep on her shelf. When I went inside, to touch the place where my coffee beans had been ground into the cracks of the floor, she heard me. Her back was curved like a turtleshell, and she turned her head, opened one eye at me, and then covered her face again with her tignon.

  “Opelousas?” Madame said at breakfast. “You and Monsieur Antoine need the carriage for Opelousas? But that is half a day's journey, and it's very rough in places.”

  “He says I must see the French dressmaker in Opelousas. For Mardi Gras. For the dinners and dances.”

  “But everything you have is new to the people in Washington and Arnaudville. And to Opelousas.”

  “A lovely dress from her would show I want to be part of here. This place.” Pélagie moved her curls carefully from her ear. “I want to see her display.”

  “Your clothes are from Paris.”

  “The women will know that soon enough.”

  “Clothes. Always clothes.”

  “I had only one dress when I was young. One dress. You will never know how it feels.”

  “No.”

  “One dress, and when it's being washed, you sit inside in your chemise, with the shutters closed. All day in winter. Like a foolish, helpless cat with no fur.”

  “Your eyes did look like a cat's. When you were small. Slanted like that.”

  “You can't know. And I'm sorry that you're going. But I will take good care of Etienne when he comes. My nephew, and he is only five years younger than me! So handsome now. I saw him twice in Paris.”

  “Yes.”

  “He doesn't want to return to Louisiana?”

  “I don't know. I will know when I see him in Paris. Oh—what if I cannot see him? What if the treatments are too late for my eyes?”

  “No. No. Paris has the best doctors in the world.” She turned to me. “Moinette, Monsieur Antoine's shoes need that bootblack you made. He says he's never seen them shine so.”

  I had my own bottles now. Every day, when I saw them lined up on the kitchen shelf, my heart turned like a small animal curled in sleep, hunching tighter.

  The bottles were marked with thread I had braided at night. Bootblack: Eight ounces of best ivory black, rubbed fine, with three ounces of molasses, one ounce each sugar candy and sweet oil. Gum arabic dissolved in sour beer. Shake well and cork four days.

  The threads were miniatures of my braids, tied around the bottlenecks. I rubbed the bootblack in small circles.

  Madame said, “I don't understand you, Pélagie.”

  “You don't have to. I told Laurent when I first saw you, when I was five and you were being married, that your eyes were like the ocean and I knew you would leave France.”

  “Now my eyes are gray and black.”

  “No, darling, they are still full of ocean. But the doctors in Paris will cure you. Paris has the best of everything in the world.”

  Behind the house, between two chinaberry trees, I had made my laundry. I washed out Pélagie's cloths, from her monthly blood. All the blood that left us, and how did we make new blood, exactly the same? When a leech gorged itself on the human liquid, how did the body make it anew? Was it always the same, the mix of mother and father?

  When the African was brought to Louisiana, how did his blood not change inside him?

  Msieu had bought four Africans. Two perhaps my age, and two older. Léonide said the Africans had gone straight to le quartier because it was night.

  The blood smell was coppery in the rinse. All I knew of Africa: the sentences Mamère told me and the sentence Céphaline had recited for her tutor: Africa is a vast continent of savagery and war, containing many of the great rivers of the world.

  My blood. Mamère had left with her own mother, to go on the ship where men and women died and leaped overboard to swim back up their rivers. Their faro guided them. Had her mother's sisters and brothers remained, to make the marks on the faces of their own children? And had those children been captured and sent down the river? To enter Barataria Bay?

  But when the new Africans came to the yard for their clothes, they did not have marks like my grandmother and like Hera. They had no marks at all.

  From the trunk in the pantry, I took out trousers and capes. Like my cape. The wool so heavy on my neck, that first week in the fields.

  Msieu had his ledger on the table. February 4, 1812—Esclaves: Augustin—Mina. Philomen—Mina. Célestin—Ki. Berquin—Ki.

  Not Senegalese or Congo. They fixed their eyes on the trees beyond the house and shivered. Three backs bore brands from the ship.

  Like Mamère's?

  That night, when the women had gone into the parlor to wait for Msieu, I stood before Pélagie's mirror.

  You belong to me.

  The scar around my ankle was smooth and dark, purple on cold days, brown on warm ones.

  You belong to me.

  I uncovered the blade of my shoulder and looked at the fleur-de-lis. Etched brown, flat, not shiny. The petal sharp as sword.

  I don't belong to you.

  The curling tongs were hot over the candle flame. On my forearm, not my wrist scarred with lavender rosettes from the boat nails, but higher, where I could see it anytime I pushed up my sleeve, I burned small images with the ends of the tongs. Sharp, like a pen nib. Three coffee beans, little circles of white pain. M— for Marie-Thérèse: four lines, with the tongs laid flat.

  Tears ruined my vision, blood raced to the burns, and I dropped the tongs.

  Her name was not Marie-Thérèse. That was given to her. What was her real name, from her own mother? How could I not know?

  I smelled wax and picked up the tongs, but not before a small black mark had seared into the wooden floor by the vanity's legs.

  When Madame Pélagie came up from dinner, she smelled burned wood. She could smell a single rose petal. “Why have you heated the curling tongs? Take that cloth from your hair. If you have touched them to—” She frowned at the braid that fell from my tignon. She had never seen my hair.

  My arm was covered by my sleeve. She couldn't smell the scorched flesh. I had rubbed ashe
s into the burns to make them darker.

  She bent to touch the mark on the floor. “Burned wood cannot be restored without sanding.”

  Burned skin—sanding would never help.

  “I will not beat you,” she said, cutting off each word in Paris French, not like Louisiana French. “I have never had a slave. Only a maid. I will not touch you. But if you begin to touch my things, I will recommend to my brother that you be sent back to the cane and ask him to purchase someone who will not be careless. Comprends?”

  I nodded. “Oui, madame.”

  Two of the new Africans were dead within a week. Baillo rode for the doctor in Washington, and Madame had me take her down to le quartier.

  The Africans were in a newly built house at the end of the street. Two wore leg chains attached to the wall. The youngest kept his back to us. His hair sat on his skull like a hundred black pebbles. Two were outside, their faces covered with blankets.

  “The disease of the gums,” the doctor said, his lip rising. “They tell you the men are healthy, and they shine them up with oil. But half the time, they've been in the barracoon for months waiting for the ship, and then eating rotten meal on the water.”

  Madame sighed. “They weren't baptized. There was no time.”

  Msieu said, “They must be buried at night, then, in the field.”

  “Laurent,” Madame said, but he lifted his hand, palm out.

  “The code.”

  They turned to the house, and we waited for the coffins.

  A carpenter brought them on his cart, pine boxes so newly made that they bled golden sap. The men carried the coffins into the woods and dug the holes amid the weeds near the bayou. The new graves filled with water. When the coffins were lowered, mirrors of black broke and then stilled again around the wood.

  The carpenter stopped me with one finger. “You have some water, mamselle?”

  He said his name—Hervé Richard. His forehead shone like syrup, even though the air was cold. His skin was a bit darker than mine; he had French blood. Was he free? Was I allowed to look at his face? I glanced up at his hair—black waves combed down from a part. His scalp was paler than his forehead.

  He said, “You don't mind I ask—you not free?”

  “Me?”

  He shrugged, leaning against the well. “So light, like some mulâtresse in New Orleans. When I bring furniture, sign the name and FWC. Tell me that is free woman of color.”

  “This is not New Orleans.” The knot in his throat rose and fell when he drank. “And you? Free?”

  His smile worked deep only on one side of his face, making a second grin in his cheek. “Msieu Lescelles buy me last year from New Orleans. Sign his name FMC. He run a carpenter shop near Opelousas.”

  His horse blew air through its nostrils. “Free to come and go with wood. Maybe your people buy armoire or chair. Maybe I come back.” He checked the axle on his cart. His sleeves were rolled up and his forearms light as gold, but marked with cuts and nicks. A splinter was lodged like an exclamation point in the webbing between his finger and thumb. “Come back when I don't make something so sad.”

  I walked alone toward the house. But ahead of me, Sophia slipped into the blacksmith shed. At the half-open door, I peered inside. Loud pounding, mixed with strangled noises coming from Gervaise, lunging sounds forced from his throat.

  He held a cane knife in the fire. It shimmered red and softened, and he pounded it with the iron mallet. He shouted, “Bring men here all that way and they die. Bury tout seul because nobody put water on the head. Nobody need water from les blancs. Water inside them.”

  “Gervaise,” Sophia said.

  “Alcindor.”

  “No. You leave that name. Not your name now.”

  “Hashim. Azor. Accara. Aguedo. They say names to me. Nothing else. They Mina and no comprend. Not the names on the paper.” He hammered the knife until it broke, sharp as a bird scream in the night.

  In Pélagie's room, clothes had arrived in a trunk. She would meet a husband, go to Paris to choose clothes and furniture for her new house. I would make my way off that boat, floating like a corn kernel atop the water. I took off my tignon. Did Gervaise believe what my mother did—that in my hot, damp hair were spirits named ni, traces of my other life? Our other lives?

  “Some women will look up, at the paintings and mirrors,” Péla-gie said. “Those must be dusted every day. And women will look down, at the floor and table legs. Those must be swept and oiled every day.”

  “You cannot have another woman for the house,” Msieu said impatiently. “We are planting cane. We cannot buy new furniture and clothes without sugar.”

  “I know women. If you want to marry your son next year to someone from Opelousas or New Iberia, you will let me begin work on the house now. The mothers of the girls will have eyes. And despite what you think, women have some power in the family. For marriage.”

  Amanthe and I worked into the night, and when once our palms slid cloth in the same circles over a table, I remembered Félonise's hand sealed to mine with the sheen of our work. Amanthe's hand was broad and dark, her arm quivering with extra fat above the elbow, but she fit her shoulder companion-ably to mine when we left a room. “I am glad you came,” she whispered once.

  I nodded. “I am glad you gave me your dress.”

  We worked dust and grit from the floorboards with small brushes.

  The women began to come, when Pélagie saw them at Mass in Opelousas and invited them for dinner. They looked at Madame—her hair in a chignon but with a golden fillet wrapped around the forehead—and Pélagie with a rosy satin ribbon worked around her forehead, anchoring the curls at her ears.

  “Your hair!” they said, and Pélagie slanted her head proudly. “My girl was trained in New Orleans.”

  I made them believe that. She would take me to New Orleans someday. The carpenter, Hervé Richard, had mentioned free women of color who lived there. They had somehow bought themselves. They could sign their own names. They could dress hair for money.

  The women studied the garden, where Pélagie had Manuel the groom planting white-flowered crepe myrtle trees in an allée from the road to the house, and five orange trees in a circle, not for their fruit but for the white blossoms, and in the pathways white roses.

  “When my sister-in-law returns from Paris next spring, her eyes will be clear, and she will see an angel garden. All white, in the moonlight.”

  ———

  Madame said she could see only what was inside a small circle directly in front of her. When she spoke to us, she turned her head and brought it forward toward our faces, like a turtle coming out of a shell, and powder fell from her cheeks.

  “Moinette. Bring us coffee. Léonide has made a fresh pot.”

  Msieu Antoine was writing a long document, and Pélagie was poised over the paper. “Why does Laurent want this notarized?”

  “Because we are leaving for Paris soon, and Laurent is worried about supervision and succession,” Madame said.

  “Etienne is the successor,” Pélagie said. “I have my own little money.”

  “Yes, sweet, but explain it to me now. Laurent won't ask you.”

  Pélagie pleated the muslin of her dressing gown over and over on her thigh, her fingers moving as if she played an instrument. “I was married at sixteen to Micael Vincent, as you know, and went to Bordeaux with my husband, but he died three years later. I remained with his family until last year, when I decided to go to Paris.”

  “And he left you community property?”

  Pélagie looked out the window, a tiny pulse moving in her cheek. “The Bordeaux property is owned by his father and brother. I signed it over to them after he died. I didn't want to stay in Bordeaux. I took some settlement money and went to Paris.”

  Madame de la Rosière nodded. She said softly, “Pélagie, I cannot see your clothes or jewels. Laurent said your mother gave you jewels and some cash for your dowry, when you married, and that your husband's family thought th
ere would be more.”

  “They did.” Her cheek pulsed again.

  “You are happier here, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Laurent wants to name you owner of a large portion of the new land along the bayou, the parcel he bought last year. Monsieur Antoine will make certain the transaction is legal, and then you will be able to bring something to your new arrangement, whomever you meet here.” Pélagie began to speak, but Madame said, “We have a long voyage to Paris, and crossings are always dangerous. You and Etienne are to take care, if something happens to us. My uncle Phanor will come from New Orleans to supervise this season. And Laurent says you are not to overspend while we are gone.”

  Pélagie was silent; how did Madame de la Rosière know she had agreed? I poured the coffee. Pélagie's fingers were pressed so hard on the small table that her nails were white.

  “Pélagie. What is your middle name?”

  “I won't say it.”

  “What! Won't say it? I'm sorry I never knew. After Laurent's mother died, when your father married again, Laurent was fifteen. He was sent to school and never saw you until you were already five.”

  “It means death. Three times.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “You don't have to.

  “Pélagie Ernestine. Three times my mother was pregnant, and three times my father hoped for a son, and three times she had a girl she named for him. Ernestine. And three times they died. Then when she had me, she died. In childbed. So he named me Pélagie, after her. Ernestine for the son he didn't have. And sent me to my aunt in Lyon.”

  There was a long silence, and then Pélagie raised her voice. “Moinette! Will you hurry? I have ink on my sleeve now.”

  Everything Pélagie said was prepared. She felt nothing. She had calculated ahead of time answers for any questions, responses for any admiration—and if someone said something unexpected, a quickness in her face let her reply.

  I watched her closely, to learn. Ever since the boat had left Azure, I had only listened. Slow in my mouth and quick in my brain. I needed to plan the right sentences, to say not what I really thought or felt—as Céphaline always had—but what people wanted me to say.