by Rhodi Hawk
The nurse and doctor violated her with needles and sutures and the most uncomfortable shower of her life. None of it mattered, though; she fell asleep while they were still stitching her knees.
DADDY WAS GONE AGAIN. Somewhere around the time Madeleine had been pulling Anita’s body from the swamp, there’d been some kind of screw-up on the psych ward at Tulane, and they’d let him out. He disappeared. Considering his going to ground among the homeless, he likely didn’t even know what had happened to her.
The doctor had wanted Madeleine to stay overnight, but he’d released her when Ethan showed up to take her home. Sam had come along too, and bless her, she’d brought some fresh clothes. The police had collected Madeleine’s belongings right down to the skivvies. They’d needed to send them to the lab for testing since they’d neither found Zenon nor recovered Anita’s body by the time Madeleine had left the hospital.
Sheriff Cavanaugh had phoned her as a courtesy. “That storm moved through and they’s another one come up right behind it, and it’s flooding pretty good. We can’t get anyone out there to recover that body just yet.”
“I see,” Madeleine had said, trying not to acknowledge the twist in her stomach.
“We goin out first light tomorrow morning though. Skinny little thing like you can make it with no help, my boys damn sure better get their asses out there and find her, storm or no storm.”
On the drive back, Ethan wouldn’t let go of her hand.
“We were so worried,” he kept saying, and she felt like a fraud.
She’d told him only half of what happened. The same story she’d told the sheriff: a recount of surface events. No reference to the world beyond the veneer, where Severin had drawn her into the briar.
Madeleine would. She’d tell him. Just not now.
She checked the passenger’s side mirror. Her truck followed back there, but she couldn’t see Sam behind the wheel through the rain. Only the headlights. Couldn’t see Severin, either. At least not at the moment.
Madeleine unfolded the paper in her lap, a receipt listing her personal effects which were now in the custody of the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Department. Nothing special. Just an inventory of her clothing, garment by garment, and whatever items had been in her pockets:
One ball point pen (she’d used it to sign the listing agreement with Nida);
5.87 in cash;
One tube lip balm;
But her gaze settled on the last item on the list, the one thing she hadn’t been carrying when she’d first set off into the bayou:
One gold pocket watch.
THEY RECOVERED ANITA’S BODY the next day. But a week later, after a Thanksgiving spent with Ethan and his family, Daddy still hadn’t appeared. Nor had Severin. Madeleine had no idea what kept Severin away, but she guessed it helped to avoid stress or agitation. Easier said than done. Zenon was still at large, and reporters had been leaving lots of messages. Madeleine honored the sheriff’s request to keep quiet until the authorities could bring him into custody. Because Anita had disappeared in Texas and her body had been found in Louisiana, the FBI had gotten involved, and so Madeleine had to retell her story to their investigators and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Apparently, crossing state lines during a crime makes it a federal issue.
Madeleine had been grateful for the time off over Thanksgiving. The idea of working left her exhausted. She’d flatly refused to self-diagnose. Couldn’t connect her scientific mind to what she’d experienced.
She just wanted to talk to her father. She had to ask him about the briar. She wondered how long she could keep her secret before it swallowed her alive.
fifty-six
HAHNVILLE, 1922
TO KEEP THE NONGAMBLING patrons interested in buying drinks, Chloe had allowed some of the streetwalkers to come into the warehouse and mingle with the crowd. They danced the Charleston in their underclothes and entertained customers in the back room, and they paid a kickback based on the tips they earned.
With money springing from every corner of the warehouse on Magazine Street, worries over losing Terrefleurs had become little more than a lark. If the crop produced not a single sprig of cane next season it wouldn’t matter. Terrefleurs now provided a front for the New Orleans operations. If anyone were to ask, the function of the warehouse was to store and distribute cane; an odd explanation in that Terrefleurs was much closer to the sugar refineries than was Magazine Street, but an explanation nonetheless.
Chloe’s trips to Terrefleurs had become increasingly rare. Between the country heat and the needs of the children and plantation, Terrefleurs left Chloe feeling like a catfish gasping in the mud. She counted each moment before she could return to New Orleans.
As for Jacob’s part, he seemed to thrill at perusing New Orleans with Chloe. As if he relished the fact that he and Chloe were a spectacle in New Orleans, and people looked upon them with disdain. They did not like to see a white man and a black woman together, particularly among the gentler class, even if Jacob acted merely as a chaperone.
Jacob proclaimed to have had enough of the morality movement that had begun to seize the nation, nurturing laws such as the Volstead Act, and breeding activists such as the Ku Klux Klan who held public whippings for adulterers and gamblers. Ever since the day Rémi and Chloe wed, Jacob seemed to have undergone a transformation. He spent much of his time at Chloe’s warehouse and in other speakeasies throughout town, countering the morality movement, and preferring to champion the sinner’s cause—a much more exciting cause.
fifty-seven
BAYOU BLACK, 2009
MADELEINE LAY GAZING AT Severin. Ethan was sleeping, his breathing even, his body warm. His hand rested over Madeleine’s hip. When they’d made love she’d been able to forget. She’d thrown herself into the sensations of her body and had managed to escape the dread that had been closing in on her. But afterward, even though she’d exhausted her body, her mind had seemed to rebound, and it had turned back to that dread. Worries that Zenon would never be found. That he’d kill again. Sometime during the spin of those worries Severin had stolen back into her awareness.
Now, the little girl was standing in the doorway, staring. With her came a deepening of shadow. A stir beyond the corners.
Please go away, Madeleine thought.
Severin said, “You could not send me away so easily, verily. No more than you could send away your bones.”
But what are you?
“I am you and you are we.”
Madeleine squeezed her eyes shut. No use. She saw Severin even more clearly through closed eyes: the detail of her nakedness, gray and grimy, and the tunnels of thorns that waited.
Severin spoke again, but when she did she was muttering in Madeleine’s own voice. A perfect facsimile. “Even if they catch him and bring him in, what’ll they say when they find out we’re crazy?”
Madeleine opened her eyes.
Severin was stepping toward her. She switched back to her own child’s voice as if to argue back. “Not a shade of worry in that! He will not answer for it. Who would come to find him where he hides? He understands the ways of the bramble!”
And faster in Madeleine’s voice: “He’ll kill again, I just know it!”
Shooting back in her own voice: “So he will! He begins with us now, so surely! He plans our death even as we wallow!”
HUSH! The thought flew from Madeleine’s mind with near-tangible fabric.
Severin went quiet. But only for a moment.
Her eyes brightened and she renewed her argument, but this time she spoke with both voices simultaneously, louder and with mounting hysteria.
Madeleine stumbled from the bed.
Ethan sat up. “What’s wrong?”
But Severin was still shouting in two voices at once, and Madeleine could only look at him, blinking. His words seemed so lost behind Severin’s chaos. He had no idea what was happening and she felt sick and distant from him. And even as a sense of estrangement swept her, Severin added new thre
ads to her arguments.
—What will Ethan say when he finds out . . .
—Zenon thinks to come for us and send you through . . .
—There’s no way I can hang onto . . .
—He will leave not nary a trace, not nary . . .
—Certain to find the tastes to our liking if only . . .
Madeleine whispered to Ethan, though she could barely focus on him. He was a distant ghost in the bramble now. But she pretended he was right there in front of her.
“It’s fine, Ethan,” she said, and she couldn’t even hear her own voice. “I’m going to get some water. Go back to sleep.”
She pulled on her bathrobe. It still smelled like smoke after many washings. She walked carefully toward the door, half-blind from the bramble that now choked the bedroom, hoping that Ethan was going back to sleep. Severin crawled along above her head and maintained the vigil. Other creatures shifted in there too.
Madeleine groped her way out into the flat. She saw tunnels of twisting vines across the walls and ceiling. The television and the couch were there. She looked where the kitchenette ought to be but couldn’t see it. She reached instead for the front door and stepped outside.
Fresh air. She switched the automatic mechanism so that she could not lock herself out, and sat down on the landing. A distant sound of night birds. She pressed her mind toward those sounds, listening past Severin’s cacophony, stubborn. Severin raged on a little but then seemed to tire, and she quieted. The bramble settled too. It lay still against the neighboring buildings on Magazine.
“All right,” Madeleine said aloud to the little girl. “Is it true that Zenon wants to kill us? I mean me?”
“Yes, so surely. He knows the practice to send the living through to the other side. You must gain this skill too and learn—”
“Severin. Listen to me. Can you tell me where he is?”
“Ah! He lies in the briar!”
Madeleine shook her head. “No. In the real world. The physical world. Can you tell me where he’s hiding?”
Severin grinned. “A little trip we take, across the thorns a little some. We shall see his hiding hole.”
fifty-eight
HAHNVILLE, 1926
WHEN SHE HEARD TATIE Bernadette bustle out of the rear pantry, Marie-Rose pushed open the small door that concealed her within the cupboard. She peeped through the narrow crack and could see Tatie’s heavy form waddle out toward the steps to the cellar. She would now be busy bringing elderberries to the kitchen house for making jam, but Rose still had to be mindful of her brothers. If either of the twins learned of the secret niche, well, it would no longer be a secret.
Rose made herself into a little brown bunny, quick and silent, and hopped out. Today being Saturday, no boat would be coming to take them down the bayou to school. She didn’t even have to do pigeon exercises. Tatie thought them un-Christian and so she only made them do those when mother was around.
Rose scampered into her mother’s parlor and snuck the key from her dressing table, then hurried to the rolltop desk in the great room. She stopped and listened, standing poised and still like a rabbit, prepared to bolt if anyone were to approach.
The house was quiet. The boys were probably out catching frogs, and Maman was, as usual, in New Orleans.
Maman was secretive, more so than Papa. Rose delighted in following and spying on Papa, because he always did such strange things. He, too, loved to spy. He spied on the workers, and Rose spied on him. He also walked with spirits in the woods. Though Rose could not see the spirits, she knew that Papa could, and he spoke to them, too. Rose always wondered what the spirits told him. She sometimes did very wicked things—like tie the twins’ school shoes together even though they were always late for the morning boat—just to see if the spirits would tattle to Papa. So far they had not. Instead, Papa largely ignored her. She was a little brown bunny, blending in with her background, invisible to all but the most careful observers.
She closed her eyes and begged the spirits to watch over Papa, and to trust her with their secrets. She hoped they would tell her when there might be a pirate ship passing on the river, or perhaps buried treasure somewhere on Terrefleurs. She was very good at keeping secrets.
Tatie Bernadette would beat her good if she found out she tried to contact the other world. Tatie would think it was like praying, and she mustn’t pray to anyone but Lord Jesus. But Rose knew that Maman prayed to all kinds. Not that Rose spied on her, too. Maman didn’t come home much and when she did, Rose usually kept out of sight. She had spied on her only once, but had to stop because she was afraid that Maman would stew her in a pot and feed her to the whole plantation if she caught her.
Rose slipped the key into the oblong brass lock in the desk and turned it carefully until she felt, rather than heard, the latch release. She eased up the rounded wooden top to reveal the many drawers and pigeonholes inside, where Maman kept ledger books and personal letters bound with ribbon.
Rose moved the bundle out of the way, careful to remember its original placement. She pressed her hand to the center pigeonhole and pushed a wooden peg through the other side, and pulled out the molding that hid the secret compartment.
She peered into the dark niche and saw a tiny flask of hooch. Nothing else.
She heaved a sigh of disgust. Ever since she had witnessed her father placing the flask in the secret compartment years ago, Rose had been checking to see if someone might have hidden something else important in there. And yet, the result was always the same. Papa had stashed the flask when he heard Maman coming. And now, three years later, the flask still sat there, forgotten. Rose had held faith that one day she would peer inside and find a pirate’s map, or an emerald, or at least a sacred root.
Once, Rose had mentioned to Papa that she’d heard it was wise to keep a diary of all your secrets. “You’d have to hide it in a special place, of course,” Rose had said, trying to sound casual. “Although there probably isn’t one hiding place in all of Terrefleurs. I wish I knew of a hiding place to put a diary.”
She had hoped her father would start a journal of his visits with spirits and hide it in the desk. She could then sneak in and read it, and maybe learn about the strange world that captured both her parents’ attentions. She might even become a voodoo priestess, more powerful than her own mother.
But it seemed this was a world that would always be hidden. Papa never started the journal, and no one else would speak to her about the spirits. Tatie Bernadette had once whaled the tar out of her when she caught her trying to tie a gris-gris. She had made Rose get down on her knees and pray for forgiveness, and beseech the Lord’s protection from the false gods that surrounded her.
Rose scowled at the secret compartment. No hidden treasure. Only a dusty flask of hooch.
She unscrewed the cap and with heroic daring, took a sip.
Her throat seared shut, and her mouth threatened to spray the brew all over the bundled letters. She mashed her lips together with all her might, eyes watering, forcing it back down her throat. Finally, the liquid was in her stomach. She hoped it would stay there.
Why would Papa ever want to drink that? Another secret that ended in disappointment.
Rose slipped her own secret in the compartment, her own diary, and replaced the molding and the wooden peg. She had thus far only made one entry but had vowed to write in it once a week, recording whatever mysteries she could learn from her papa.
She placed the bundled letters in front of the molding and closed the rolltop, locking it with a click. Her face burned with pleasure.
As she ran back to her mother’s room, though, her belly began to ache. She fretted that she might be coming down with a stomach flu. She replaced the key in her mother’s dressing table and slipped out of the room.
“What are you doing!”
Rose spun around when she heard the sharp voice behind her. She was relieved to see her older sister Patrice standing in the hall, hands on hips.
Rose gav
e her a grin. “It’s all right. Maman’s in New Orleans.”
“Marie-Rose, Maman catches you, she’ll beat you nine ways from Sunday. You best be careful.” She turned and started back down the hall.
Rose was elated. Patrice was now her accomplice!
“Don’t worry, Patrice,” she whispered. “No one will see me cause I’m a little brown bunny.”
Patrice’s spine went rigid, and she whirled on her sister.
“You hush up!”
She seized Rose by the shoulders and shook her until her teeth gnashed. “Why you talk like that? You know what they do with a little brown bunny? They kill it and eat it! Is that what you want? Be somebody’s dinner?”
Rose’s jaw went slack and a sob escaped her.
“Patrice,” she wailed. “Patrice!”
Patrice released her sister’s shoulders, and the little girl sank to the ground in a heap, tears rolling down her face.
“All right, stop that now.” Patrice crouched down to put her arm over her sister’s shoulders. “Don’t you ever trust them, yanh? Don’t you listen to Maman when she works those evil games with the pigeons. It’s devil’s work. She’ll feed you to the devil for dinner.”
Still weeping, Rose felt Patrice’s cool hand smooth the hair from her face, and she allowed her older sister to lead her back to the pantry.
Patrice tensed her lips. “You got to stop that mess about being a bunny. Rabbits aren’t clever. They’re food. All that Compère Lapin shit is pure lies.”
Rose halted in mid-sob and stared, astonished by the expletive. She’d never before heard such a thing coming from her sister. True, the stories of Compère Lapin, or Brer Rabbit, had inspired her wish to be a little brown bunny. Compère Lapin could do whatever he wanted, running free and escaping the fox through his speed and wit.