Child of the Storm

by R. B. Stewart

  Eaten up with guilt, she thought, and not for the first time. That’s what made him look old for his years. So much regret and guilt will eat you alive.

  “These heels don’t have any kick in them tonight,” she said. “I’ll celebrate being all grown up here with you. Try out whatever you’ve been baking. Maybe eat the whole thing and break out the wine under the sink. That’s the New Orleans way, isn’t it Papa.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What’s that you’re looking at?”

  He held up one of the papers for her to see. “You remember this?”

  The picture of a little bird, drawn by a young but gifted hand. “My first drawing,” she said. He’d dig it out from time to time.

  “The only one of those old home drawings I have. Good thing I took it with me off to war.” He laid it aside with something like reverence and picked up another. “And this one too. Done at Odette’s, once I got home.” It was of the old Climbing Oak in full leaf, and every color built from just the three offered by the Frenchman. A keen eye could spot the hint of something up that tree, hugging the branch. A little bear. Celeste took the painting from him and examined it.

  “Sure wish you’d get back to doing your artwork,” he said. “I got you a little present by way of encouragement.” He slid a small book to her.

  She opened it, and found blank pages. “A sketch book,” she said.

  “You’ve given up so much. Find some of it again. Promise?”

  “I’ll try.”

  They did polish off the birthday cake and she told him he hadn’t lost his touch, which was so. They dipped into the wine under the sink as well, but only enough to toast Celeste’s milestone, and then it was off to bed for her father. But Celeste had too many thoughts in her head for that just yet. After so many days and weeks on end, each about like the one before, this day stood apart. All the usual things were there, like sleep and work and meals and faces she saw all the time, but then, on top of all that, or squeezed in between, were older things returning. Good and bad things returning. Old drawing. Old ghost.

  Her head buzzed with noise like rumors and she slipped quietly out onto the front porch, folded her legs up under her in one of the rocking chairs and sat listening to the night noises until most of the buzzing in her head subsided.

  That stretch of street wasn’t as brightly lit as most. Old people lived across from her, directly across and one up and down as well. No lights burned late in those houses, so Celeste could let her eye grow familiar with the dark until it would show off things to her.

  Stars in abundance filled her nights on the porch. Sometimes a shooting star and a wish. Other times there would be the moon, building up its courage until it was simply full of itself and then the stars nearby would shy away. On this night there was no more than half a moon and the stars shone out in spite of it.

  She closed her eyes and searched the air for that hint of movement, turning her head just that littlest bit to catch the breath of air and moisture on her lips; like tasting the breeze. It was when she could just feel the touch of starlight on her closed eyelids and smelled something that might have been from her old home that she knew there was something meant for her to see. Meant by who or what, she didn’t know or much care, but it would be wrong or foolish to deny it.

  She opened her eyes and saw the familiar shape of the Big Dipper hanging in the sky. Such a familiar shape that she went for years not seeing it, even when it was sitting right there as it was tonight. But that was Mama’s favorite bunch of stars. And when Mama saw them she didn’t see a big pan, spilling starlight into the sky. She saw a great bear.

  “I’m supposed to see the bear,” Celeste said aloud, but softly. It was important to say it aloud so she could hear her own voice. Make the lesson that much more real.

  Her birthday was the beginning of fall, or that’s what they said, but it wasn’t so in New Orleans. September’s just another summer month, like all the rest. Could be hot and sticky and so much worse for being at the trailing end of a whole long line of hot and sticky weeks. Enough of them to wear anyone down. Still, Celeste kept her mother’s picture quilt on the bed year round, even if it was folded up lengthwise to hold down half the bed. After a bothersome day, or one like this one where the usualness of it all was rippled by unusual, she would rest a hand on the quilt and take comfort in its familiar texture and the pattern of its needlework.

  Her arm was stretched out across the folded quilt and her fingers gently rubbed a bounded square. Her mind eased toward sleep. Sinking. But instead of dream, or oblivion, she found a vision. She saw herself, a child at her Mama’s knees offering up a yellow patch of fabric.

  “This was from that dress you used to wear when I was only little,” her child self said.

  “You remember it?” Her mother asked as her sewing work went into her lap.

  “I remember you wearing it when you danced with Papa, right over there.” The child turned and pointed to the table set in the middle of the room. “Round and round the table. It’s like I can still see you two dancing.” And then, like a conjured thing, the vision of her parents dancing around that table appeared, playing out for Celeste. She knew it was a dream. Recognized it but held onto it for long enough to hear her parents laugh and see them stop going round and round from dizziness.

  Then Celeste let go of the dream and woke, stretching backward with her left hand to switch on the lamp by the bed. She looked then to her other hand, still touching the quilt. Still touching that yellow patch of fabric.

  The day had laid on one last message.

  Duty

  The chains whirred, the wheel spokes sang, and Celeste drove the pedals on her fire engine red bicycle hard and fast. Thin as she and her bicycle were, they cut through the air like a thrown blade, blurring past all the familiar porches of the streets between her home and the bakery. Almost no one was out to see her since the day was so young and weak that the darkness of the night held on and on. But the stars were gone from the brightening sky. Celeste knew her way and her eyes were keen. Three holes in the road waited for her at the last corner like a trap, but she threaded among them without slowing, whipping around to the rear of the building, only braking at the last. She spun the pedal back and stood on it. The rear tire danced on loose stones and snaked through the dust. She hopped off and dropped the bicycle against the back wall, catching the key as it swung about on the string that looped around her wrist. She was the first in. She was always first in and had been now for ten years. Maybe it was longer than that. She didn’t think about it much. There was too much else on her mind. Too much else on her plate.

  Soon, there was a thump against the back wall of the building and she barely tipped her head in recognition; George’s bicycle, next to her own. She had hired him almost a year ago now and he was a good choice. He entered quickly and mumbled his good morning to her as he always did.

  She didn’t look up. “Did you scratch my bike just now?” she asked him.

  “No, ma’am,” he replied.

  “Did you scratch your own?” She only asked because she’d bought it for him, and she knew how boys could be; careless with things.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Just sounded especially hasty this morning, you dropping your bike off and stumbling in. You weren’t trying to beat me here were you?” She looked around at him, but he was set to his routine already and wouldn’t look her in the eyes. Wouldn’t dare. She shook her head and smiled wickedly. “No need to answer. I can read it in the way your stand there. Course you could get up earlier or you could get those boney legs moving faster and maybe you could show up ahead of me. That’s fine if you do, only mind you don’t land in a ditch and break something we need you to have. You do that, and it would put me out of sorts with you because I’d be the one who had to take up the slack. All that extra work and all the things I have to do apart from this…” She looked at him squarely with her eyebrows hiked up.

  “Don’t you worry abou
t me,” he said, smiling back.

  “Oh, I don’t. I worry plenty about me.”

  Annie arrived next and set to work at once without a word. Some people managed better in the morning and some the evening. Annie was of the latter sort, so Celeste never pressed her to be sociable until the sun was good and up, and Annie had coffee in her. By the time customers arrived, Annie was a joy to behold, but this early it was best to leave her to the tasks she could likely do in her sleep. So there was no concern about including Annie in the conversation.

  “You know,” George began, speaking to Celeste, “I have aunts as old as you, but they don’t talk to me the way you do.”

  “Hmm,” Celeste said.

  “And I’ve got sisters older and younger than me and none of them talk that way either.”

  “No brothers.” She guessed she knew that, but George was short on sharing.

  “Not one, and no cousins either. Except more girls.

  “I’m sorry for you. That puts an extra load on your father.

  George shrugged. “What about you? Did you grow up with sisters or brothers or what?

  “I have a brother. But he went away up North and never came back.

  “He die?”

  She clicked her tongue. What a question. The sort a boy asks. “Didn’t say he died. Just said he never came back. Men and boys do that sometimes.” She paused, thinking about that.

  George glanced at her to see if he had asked something he shouldn’t have. “So how old would he be now?”

  “Thirty seven,” she said without having to think about it.

  “So he’s your older brother.” George had no idea how old Celeste was, only that she was a lot older than he was, and it was maybe a safe bet she wasn’t older than her brother. But Celeste was the kind of person who could look ancient one minute and young as spring the next.

  “Older brother,” she said, taking no offense.

  George fell silent and concentrated on the dough before him on the floured table. But Celeste was on another line of thought. She knew how to be a daughter, and with Augustin gone, she thought at times that she filled the role of son to Bernard in many ways. She knew what it was like to be a little sister, even if only for those few years. There was Odette, that now ancient aunt who had loomed over her early years like a queen of fable; part teacher, part prophet, part stern mystery. Like a legend, she had grown in some ways and diminished in others. Her circles were smaller now. She had set lives in motion and almost seemed content to watch them take their different courses. Almost. So maybe she was playing the part of big brother to George. It was a role she had never played before and maybe something he needed. But she would never share this thought with him. From what she knew of boys, he would never agree to such a thing, but a need can be filled without making fuss over the filling.

  By opening time the kitchen staff was dancing about each other under the eye and well chosen words of Bernard who had caught the streetcar in, having given up on the bicycle after a fall. The smell of bread drifted from the windows and down the street calling to the hungry and the faithful customers alike. Mrs. Darrow was always first outside the door, where a chair was set, just for her. The walk always did her good and the bread was her reward. Being a kind woman, she shared it with her husband who was less up-and-about than she. Celeste opened the door and greeted her, but left it to others to tend the counter.

  She thought about her father. He had gone to war and done his duty. She had her own duty; baking bread, sustaining the good reputation of the bakery. And that was important to her. She endured the ghost’s taunting and maybe that was duty too in some twisted way. But maybe there should be less of that and more of something else. Duty’s a hard thing to lay aside once you’ve picked it up and set it squarely on your shoulders. She wondered now as she had before, about whether she was so wedded to it that she was otherwise single.

  No husband. No regular boyfriend in her life. Few acquaintances apart from customers and neighbors. Reaching all the back to childhood she’d had her brother and Neighbor as confidants. Now she had friends, linked to her by work, and only one outside of family and her bakery people who she felt close to.

  She shook her head at all of this pointless thought. Set it aside so she could concentrate, but she’d come back to it in time. Always did.

  Delivery

  The bicycle was for business. If she absolutely had to get Uptown, she’d catch the streetcar but didn’t care for the seat assignments. If it was just a day-off wander, she’d go on foot to help sort her thoughts. Safer that way and easier to notice the simple things. Simple things like the staring dog.

  It was her opinion that nice dogs might gaze in a hopeful way, but never stare. Yet here was some sort of small black dog, blocking her way down North Claiborne. It stared at her till she was only feet away and then trotted a few doors down before turning to stare again. But at the next cross street the dog turned north, out of sight. So Celeste made a point of looking that way once she caught up and found that the dog was just standing there waiting. And still staring.

  She followed out of curiosity; since there was no place in particular she needed to go. It led her down a street, then turned, on again for another block or two and turned again, till it found where it meant to take her and trotted up onto someone’s porch and stretched out in the shade. Celeste joined it there, choosing one of the rocking chairs on the porch she knew well enough already.

  When the owner of the house came out to check who was sitting on the porch, she found Celeste and the dog still watching each other. Celeste spared the woman a glance by way of acknowledgement.

  “So he brought you here, did he?” the woman said. “He does that sometimes. Always finds someone who needs advice—or so he thinks.” She looked at the dog, but the dog only had eyes for Celeste.

  “So what advice does he have for me?” Celeste asked.

  The woman snorted. “That dog’s got no advice for anyone. He’s just a delivery dog.”

  “So I’ve been delivered here? Thought I was just out for a stroll.”

  “Maybe some mystère is riding him for a purpose.” The woman gave Celeste a sly look and waited for reaction.

  “Mystère, you say. So this is some Voodoo dog, or a dog under the influence. Is that what I’m hearing?”

  The woman laughed, full out. “We’re all under an influence of one sort or the other. Might be mystères. Might be the weather, or maybe the influence of our own cooked up notions.” She shooed the dog off the porch before taking a seat in the second rocking chair. Beads around her neck clicked softly. Her feet were bare. There were smudges of chalk on her expressive brown fingers. “Everything touches everything else,” she said.

  Celeste nodded because she knew it was so. Much the sort of thing her mother had taught her as a child.

  The other woman joined her in that nodding. “It’s been about twenty years we’ve known each other. Is that right?”

  “About that.”

  “Longer than I’ve known just about anyone else. Since we were girls and my mother was still around and a Voodoo Queen that scared the wits out of most children who would have been my friend, but not you. She figured you were about the most unusual child she’d ever met, but here we are, twenty years on and you’re still hovering around at the edges of Voodoo; interested, in your own way, but not buying in either.”

  “That’s all true, Aurore. But I hover around any number of shop windows for a curious look without buying. Was sad when your mama passed and proud to see you step up to fill her shoes, but as interesting as it all may be, with that great big family of mystères you serve, I’m just not one for joining. Like my mother, I guess, but no disrespect intended.”

  “And none taken. I’m unorthodox in my own way, so I sympathize.” Aurore rarely pushed her friend. Knew it wasn’t the way to get Celeste anywhere.

  “Still, there’s this matter of that dog delivering me here, as you say. Just what do you make of that?”
<
br />   The Voodoo Queen noticed the chalk on her hands and rubbed it off. “I might make any number of things about it, but why don’t we stick to laymen’s terms and steer clear of Voodoo? I’d say you have something on your mind and want advice. Since that’s what I do and I’ve offered it freely to my oldest friend, it might be a mystère riding that dog or it might just be your own intentions. About all I can offer for now.”

  “That’s fair,” Celeste agreed.

  “So what’s troubling you, friend?” Aurore pressed.

  “It’s complicated,” Celeste said. “But sticking to the basics, I’m not getting any younger.”

  “Nor am I.”

  “I’m not clear on what my path should be?”

  “You’re the best baker around, except for your father, maybe. Everyone says so.”

  “That’s what I do. There should be a difference between your job and life.”

  “True. Your father’s getting on in years and you have no husband or children. Is that where you’re headed?”

  “I wouldn’t say so. Not sure what I mean. Just a feeling that’s taking root.”

  “I see. Not much to work with. Not love or children or career. Most of those who look to me for help as their mambo expect help and healing from Voodoo, whether that’s what I draw from or not. More often than not it has to do with love and family, yet here I am, a single woman too. Guess they put more faith in Voodoo than in my personal life experience. But that’s everyone but you, unless you think its Voodoo that might apply.”

  Celeste considered this a good while before replying. “I’d say I’m haunted.”

  “Haunted? Wasn’t expecting that from you. You of all people.”

  Celeste shrugged. “Maybe not, and maybe it’s something else. You remember me telling you about my run in with that teacher, back when I was a child?”