What the River Washed Away

by Muriel Mharie Macleod

  ‘That’s wonderful, Monsieur Desnoyers, that sounds just what I want.’

  Once I’m there they’ll see what a good teacher I am and he has no doubt I’ll be given a class of my own. I hope he’s right about that. Sure is pleasing to hear.

  ‘Gosh, Arletta that gonna be fine. Ya goin’ home girl. Ya taking care of business and goin’ home,’ says Mambo. ‘And change is coming, coming soon. Y’all goin’ be right back here with us soon as it comes. All gonna die down and change comin’ on.’

  Though they are looking for proper teachers over there, someone must be talking well on me, because in the letter I receive a couple of weeks later, they say they are sometimes going to need me in the classroom anyway and will give me the first-aid training I need for it when I arrive.

  It seems things have started to go my way for the first time in my life. My new life is coming and I forget what I have to do before I get there. I’ve been sending my best wishes to little Eveline through Errol and I hear she’s doing well and gone home to her own folks. Her pa and Ortega Jackson want to come and talk again, but I know through Errol they still don’t know who Mr Seymour is.

  One Saturday, just as I’m leaving Mrs Archer-Laing’s parlour, the dogs start howling in the yard and I meet Errol shuffling to answer the bell-chain.

  ‘Good morning,’ he mumbles in his usual.

  ‘Good morning. I believe ya must be Errol. My name is Mrs Johnson and my daughter Arletta is boardin’ here. I’m wondering if ya might be kind enough to tell her I’m here.’

  She sees me and flashes Errol one of her smiles as she waltzes past him looking fine and elegant. That’s what a black suit and a string of pearls has done for her wiggle. Mr McIntyre must easily believe she really is running her own business. What sort of business? Well, he’s known her a long time and that must be giving him his own fancy ideas about it. That’s what we’re banking on ourselves. She holds a pretty bunch of flowers from outside our cabin.

  ‘Errol, Arletta tells me she’s got a real nice room here.’

  Mrs Archer-Laing opens her parlour door and finds Mambo at her best. Looking and behaving like she’s been walking in and out of houses just like this one all her life.

  ‘Ya must be Mrs Archer-Laing,’ she says, holding out her hand. She’s purchased a pair of white gloves and that looks like Grandma’s old handbag she’s carrying. She once called that handbag ‘stuffy old-lady shit’, but I see she kept it, polished it up and found a good use for it now.

  ‘I pick this bouquet for ya, Mrs Archer-Laing. I grow them blooms in my own yard. Blooms sure cheer a yard up.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Johnson, these are lovely. It’s such a pleasure to meet you at last, after all these years. I saw you at poor Safi’s funeral but we didn’t get the chance to speak. I did mean to, of course, but it was such a sad day, a time for the family. Errol, please bring a vase to the parlour – I’d like to arrange these myself. Would you have time to take tea while you visit your daughter, Mrs Johnson?’

  ‘Yes, of course. That’s mighty kind.’

  I guess she gets all that brimming-over confidence from being a mambo. She was born beautiful and that goes far with folks, anyways. She takes that seat in Mrs Archer-Laing’s front parlour like she’s been spending her whole life sitting in nice fine rooms just like it, instead of a leaking, fixed-up cabin stuck out in the fields with sharecroppers.

  She’s charming, telling Mrs Archer-Laing she’s right grateful for how kind she’s been to her daughter.

  ‘She’s been a wonderful boarder, Mrs Johnson. I’m glad that she stayed with us.’

  ‘And all the help ya giving her, gettin’ to Africa.’ She’s peeling her gloves off slowly; anybody would think she’d been doing that all her life, too. ‘Our Arletta is late in coming to the Lord, but I has y’all to thank for her coming now. I sure do.’

  What?

  ‘Her pa and me, we right pleased, so I just had to come personally.’

  Quince?

  Mrs Archer-Laing accepts the vase from Errol and asks Mambo what church she attends. Errol casts a glance my way and raises an eyebrow. We’re both waiting to hear how Mambo deals with that.

  ‘Exceptin’ Arletta here, she only just come to the Lord, but we’re all baptized in the mission out Brouillette way. My other daughter, she’s called Rochelle, is studying at school there. And she’s doin’ well too. We expectin’ her to go to college. Arletta’s always been teachin’ her, so she’s real good at learnin’.’

  ‘Well, I believe Arletta is just right for teaching and missionary work. She’ll be starting at the mission school over there, as you know, and teaching in no time, I believe, although she will be far from her family. It’s a sacrifice for all the family. A calling.’

  Mambo takes a white handkerchief out of Grandma’s old handbag and dabs her eyes. I’ve never seen anything like it.

  ‘It’s gonna be some pullin’ away from her folks, like ya says, Mrs Archer-Laing, but those that want to be doin’ missionary work, they’s called by the Lord. Sure are.’

  I glance at Errol.

  ‘When ya thinkin’ she gonna be leaving, Mrs Archer-Laing?’

  ‘Arletta has asked to go soon, as you know, so I think just a few weeks at the most. Lemon?’

  ‘Ice, please.’

  Errol shuffles off for ice. He’s got both eyebrows raised now. Of course, Mambo doesn’t know Mrs Archer-Laing is serving tea hot out of that pot. She’s never had hot English tea served up like that before and I don’t suppose Mrs Archer-Laing’s fine bone china ever rattled with ice neither.

  By the time we finish tea, and a slice of Errol’s English fruitcake, Mrs Archer-Laing is left firmly holding the idea that I’ve been the child of a God-fearing upbringing.

  As soon as we’re up in my room, Mambo says, ‘Arletta, we find Seymour.’

  ‘Oh Mambo! Where?’

  ‘St Francisville. Like ya said, turns out he ain’t that hard to find.’

  I collapse onto the bed. Finding him took Mambo no time at all.

  ‘You’ve seen him, Mambo?’

  Mambo expects the first time she sees him to be the last. I want to know where he is and how she found him.

  ‘Somebody I knows from Shenandoah. And she say he’s about as bad as bad can be. Ain’t never married; I ain’t tell her why that’s gonna be. She says he get left a plantation over St Francisville – them’s wealthy folk – but he’s a lazy coot, and always drunk. She says he been drinkin’ and all kinda problem for his ma and pa ever since he was a boy. But they ain’t got no more children, so he end up with it all after they’s gone. He go by Seymour Hamilton, that’s his proper name, and she knew his folks. They were good-living, hard-working folks, and good to all the workers they had too, she says, but he was always the wrong kind.’

  ‘Mambo, we really are sure now that he isn’t dead. I never killed him. I never killed him Mambo.’

  That’s like a ten-ton bale of cotton just got lifted off my shoulders. Mambo goes on speaking about how her friend was saying what a disappointment Mr Seymour was to his folks, how he never took any interest at all in the plantation and it’s in trouble since they’ve been gone. But I hardly hear it. All those years he was never dead. He was doing what he always did.

  ‘And I got us a plan. It’s crazy, but it gonna work.’

  She spins round right then, like someone just tapped her shoulder.

  ‘Somethin’ funny going on in here, Arletta, inside of this room. Somethin’ just got me shivering. Ya ain’t feeling it?’

  It’s Safi. I feel her like that sometimes, too.

  ‘This is going to settle Safi, Mambo. I’m sure about that.’

  Mambo doesn’t like the idea of me sleeping where Safi’s walking. That’s bad stuff and I know it, but as soon as we’ve done with Mr McIntyre and Mr Seymour, my friend Safi will be at rest.

  ‘Sure ain’t no down-home boarding house ya got here, honey, with washing hanging up all over, roaches and bony dogs. It’s
like ya’s even have a butler with that there Errol. It was a real nice place for ya. Real nice.’

  ‘Tell me the plan. What are we going to do about them?’

  ‘Well, I went to see Madame Bonnet. Y’know, I found out from my friend in Shenandoah that he was a regular of hers, and they sure do all hate him over there. But some girls say they gonna take him on ’cause of him bein’ so full of ready cash and ain’t caring nothing about it. And some of them girls got plenty mouths to be feedin’, too. But he ain’t ever nice to them girls and so …’

  ‘Madame Bonnet? He goes there?’

  ‘Uh huh. Used to, mind, some time ago.’

  Seems Madame sent him packing when one of her girls got treated so bad she ended up in big trouble. Her girls complained about him from the start that he wasn’t right and he wasn’t clean. Madame made sure he got bathed every time he walked through her door, like it was some kind of game before he saw a girl. She charged him extra for it, hot water and soap. And he was never happy with just one girl, never wanted to leave, then he started hurting them.

  My stomach turns over.

  ‘Ya all right honey? I ain’t gonna say if ya …’

  ‘Yeah. I’m fine, just glad we found him. I was always thinking nobody ever suffered like me, and all the time Madame Bonnet was dealing with him too. I wish …’

  ‘Ain’t no use wishin’, honey. I’m wishin’ too. Ain’t nobody wishin’ more than me, I’m telling ya that.’

  ‘You tell Madame about me?’

  She told her. Told her all about him and what he did to her little girl out at the cabin. Madame went crazy, like she was ready to go out there killing him herself. She was hollering about how her girls were one thing but to be going at a child was something else. Mambo says Madame went raging mad over that ‘stinking hulk of filth touching her Arletta’.

  ‘What did she do when he started hurting her girls?’

  ‘Got so they ain’t want see him no more, because seems he ain’t able to do nothin’ at all unless he’s hurtin’ somebody. That getta be his thing. But she sure is real shocked about Mr McIntyre.’

  ‘He goes there too?’

  ‘Hell, no. She knows him because of her banking plenty on account of her business. Course everybody keeps quiet ’bout what kinda business she’s in. ’Specially them banking folks, seeing as some of them’s her regulars. Talked her right into banking her earnings.’

  I want to know how Mambo knows Madame Bonnet.

  ‘Don’t ya go givin’ me that look. I ain’t never got no more than a good time and a slap on my behind for it. We’d be plenty rich if I did. I ain’t sayin’ Madame ain’t ask me to go workin’ for her, but …’

  ‘You never did though, Mambo?’

  ‘No, Arletta, I ain’t. That ain’t good stuff for a mambo, and bein’ Mambo is our bread and butter, that’s our blood, our way, and that takes what it takes to do.’ Mambo runs her fingers down her long neck. ‘She was always tellin’ me I was gonna make real good money if I changed my mind and be one of her girls.’

  ‘Thank goodness you never …’

  Mambo turns wild and points a finger right in my face.

  ‘Hey, Arletta, don’t y’all ever go gettin’ high and mighty. Folks just gotta do what they’s gotta do. Ain’t nothin’ else to it. Most of them girls are feedin’ li’l kids and old folks, and both most times too. This God Almighty bullshit is gettin’ to ya Arletta.’

  ‘I didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well, just be watching that, girl. Huh?’

  I apologize, and feel ashamed. Mambo knows most of the girls working for Madame Bonnet and they’re all good and fine folks. Some of them even godly too, she says.

  ‘So, how do you know one another then? You and Madame?’

  ‘Well, she was one of my people, is all.’

  ‘Madame?’

  ‘I fixed up what she was needin’ for some of her clients. Some got a little trouble and ain’t able to do for themselves. Some of her gentlemen be in need of a little help, is all. And that’s one of my specialities. I get that from my Mambo and her Mambo before her too. It’s just a little help. All they’s needing. Works fine.’

  ‘What?’ Mambo sure is full of surprises, always was.

  ‘Aphrodisiacs they’s called. That’s growin’ all over our front yard Arletta, and I know how to put things together right, and that’s what she’d be comin’ out our way for, and for teaching ya French like she did, of course. But that help I gave her and her business sure did help us out too.’

  ‘And you reckon she was maybe giving any of that to Mr Seymour?’

  ‘I guess that’s the way it was honey. She’s sure feelin’ as bad as I do about it now. She’s gonna fix it though Arletta, Madame’s gonna help us fix it.’

  I ain’t saying nothing. I just let her talk.

  Seymour took over his folks’ plantation after they passed away. Took over the big house and looking after business, but it’s running into the ground because he’s one useless good-for-nothing at that too, same as every place else, Mambo says. Drained the plantation of every cent it had. Madame Bonnet says he’s needing to sell up now, and it’s making him worse than he ever was. Nobody is letting him near their girls and she reckons that’s making him crazy.

  ‘That’s sure pushed him over the edge, Madame says. He’s gone.’

  ‘Nellie said that, all those years ago. The day I slashed him, that’s exactly what she said. She said, “He’s gone this time. He’s gone.” That’s the very word she used.’

  ‘That’s what folks are saying. Tout de suite hit him over the head with a bat one time ’cause of how he was treatin’ one of them girls so bad, and Madame reckons that ain’t do nothing to help neither. He was mad as a dog before that, but he was madder after it she reckons.’

  ‘Tout de suite? He knows about me too?’

  ‘Madame tell him. Ain’t something that made him happy at all, seeing as he know all ’bout Mr Seymour. He’s gonna help, Arletta. He always been right fond of ya and he’s gonna stand by us.’

  Fourteen

  My train ticket arrives. I will be travelling down to New Orleans and from there on to Atlanta, where I’m going to meet up with another two ladies taking up with the Church in other parts of Africa. One of them is travelling pretty close to where I’m going, she’ll be doing missionary work at Christ Church in Lagos, so I feel lucky I’m not heading out that way feeling lonesome. I don’t go in for any big talk, but I like knowing I’ve got folks about someplace. We’ll catch another train in Atlanta for New York and our sailing passage from there, on a ship called the Mauretania, has already been booked up and paid for. I’m not even thinking about what that must have cost. We sail from England for Lagos on another boat and then I’m going to be taken inland on my own. The Anglican mission has started up a centre in what they call ‘the interior’ for poor folks and that suits me fine. Looks like the whole trip is going to take the best part of a month.

  I get told at church on Sunday that the mission started working where I’m going about ten years ago with makeshift services and a bit of teaching. Then a doctor started visiting once a month and it seems the whole thing went down well over there, so they got funding to put up a permanent building. Now school spaces are so full up, and queues for the doctor that long when he comes, they’re short of folks to take care of it all. I think it may well be someplace nobody else wants to go, but that suits me fine, and I reckon that’s going to let me get lucky with my teaching too. I can hardly wait to see my new home.

  The old country.

  The hardest thing of all is saying goodbye to Rochelle.

  ‘Is okay for ya goin’, Arletta, and when ya come back ya gonna see how good I get at my lessons. When ya comin’ back Arletta?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. We’ll see.’

  ‘Next year maybe? That sure is a long time Arletta.’

  ‘Yes, maybe next year.’

  ‘Well, I’m gonna
need to get on a train to see ya ’fore then, ’cause I sure gonna be needin’ to ask ya somethin’.’

  I visit Mr Roy Herbert’s law firm in Baton Rouge and transfer the deeds into Rochelle’s name. I buy her a new tin because I’m taking the King of England to Africa. Mambo is going to keep Rochelle’s tin safe in Pappy’s locked closet till the time comes for telling her.

  Inside I leave a letter, right on top of the deeds for Pappy’s land, and I leave her Pappy’s letter too. I don’t go much on parting with it, but I reckon that’s something of his words I can leave her, since she never knew him. I just keep his handkerchief, because I have his memory and she’s never going to have that. Pappy is for ever in my heart, and he’s coming back to Africa with me.

  Dearest Rochelle

  I’m writing this before I leave for Africa because I will not be coming back soon. I’m leaving you the letter Pappy wrote to me when he gave me the land, because I have passed it on to you. You see that he says Mambo must stay on the land, so I will leave his wishes in your care and you must look after her. She has always wanted you to have the best and when I offered her the land she said no, that I should give it to you instead.

  So look after our Mambo, Rochelle. She did everything for me that she ever could do and she will do the same for you.

  I’ll always be thinking of you both with all my love.

  Arletta

  I give her my pamphlets on black history in America and all my stuff about civil rights. I leave her my journals and the few decrepit books I bought from the trestle table tied up with string on the sidewalk in Marksville, and the first book I ever got, The Mulatto. Quince says he’s going to make a bookcase for them because Bobby-Rob got a new wagon and his old cart still has a few good planks left in one piece. Quince says there’s enough for fixing up a set of shelves. He’s taken to fixing things these days, and Pappy’s old tools are down from the rafters now. The rust that gave them that nice color I always liked has been sanded off and the blades are sharpened up. He’s got himself a new set of nails, laid out neatly by size, and it’s all padlocked inside a box chained to his bed and nailed to the floor.