“After it happened your mother rushed you home. She didn’t want anybody talking to you to ask what happened. She told me about it, and we decided that day we would never bring you back there. We were afraid of what the Baxters would do if they knew you drowned Helene. Your mom and I tried to keep this from you. We didn’t want you to remember. For ten years we tried to beat the memory out of you.”
Could that really be why my father beat me so bad all of those years, I wondered. I barely remembered this story, but I couldn’t believe that I would have killed Helene. I remembered her fondly. I looked at him for more information. The story didn’t make sense, but he did not offer anything more.
I looked at him and asked, “But what does this have to do with the picture?”
He looked down at the table. “The Baxters hired a man to find out what happened to Helene. A witness claimed to have seen her drowning. They told him that they saw the daughter of the laundry woman holding Helene in the river. He set off in search of you and your mother. We kept you from him for so long, but due to Lisette’s carelessness he found you and came to our family home to seek you out. When he came, he threatened to have you brought back and brought to justice for the crimes you committed.”
“Brought to justice! That happened when I was a tiny girl. Please tell me you knew that, Rivet. I wouldn’t actually be in trouble for an accidental murder at the age of four?”
He didn’t answer.
“What did you do?” I screamed.
“We wouldn’t hear of that man seeking you out, Fanchon, and when the man said he was going to find you, I grew angry and protective. I was drunk, and I hit the man in the head with a shovel. But I never meant to kill him.”
My heart was pounding so hard it hurt. I had killed Helene, and my father killed the tweed man for me. I couldn’t handle the guilt. But something still didn’t sit right.
“Wait,” I said. “The girl in the water told me she wasn’t Helene.”
“What girl?” my dad asked.
I ignored him and continued. “Dad, why would a man the Baxters hired to find out who killed Helene try to buy an adult picture of me, and why would he want to know my name? He would already know it if mom worked for them.”
“He just wanted a picture to find you by is all,” my dad said, but he was stammering so I knew he was lying.
“That’s not true, Dad. That doesn’t make any sense,” then I remembered that my dad was mad when I said I remembered my history.
I closed my eyes and pictured the day with the girl in the water.
I saw her slide out into the water. She was puffy and her lips were blue. Her body was stiff as the lady in the blue dress lowered her into the water. I remembered her ears; they were low and strange. Then the dark haired lady in the blue dress held me to her legs and cried. She picked me up and told me we were going home.
“I am home,” I told her.
“No, I am your momma. You will live with me.”
I looked at Rivet and said, “I am Helene.”
He looked down, and then I heard the words of Madame Du’Ponde. “Be on guard.” I turned around to see my mother behind me with a shotgun aimed at my head.
“You were never as good as my little Fanchon. She was so sweet and loving. You were all sass and brass.”
My father said, “No, Paulina, please. I can’t lose her, too.”
I couldn’t believe it; Rivet was defending me.
“But you beat me all those years?” I cried at him.
“I beat you so she wouldn’t, my sweet, cher. I couldn’t lose another child. After she killed Fanchon, she brought you home so we could try again.”
“What did she do to Fanchon?” I asked angrily.
“She didn’t mean to hurt her. She held her in the water to keep her quiet and every time she pulled her out again she would just cry and cry. She raged against the child and held her in the water until she stopped moving. She couldn’t help herself. Something was off with Fanchon. She had tiny ears, and she was just different from the other children. I thought maybe with a normal child Paulina could control herself. But you were so sassy from day one. I didn’t know how else to keep you safe.”
All this time I thought my mother was a coward, but I could see from the look on my father’s face today that she was always the one in charge.
“She can’t stay, Rivet, or they will lock me up. She will never keep quiet. If the Baxters hired man could see the resemblance somebody else will notice it again.”
My father looked pained. It was clear he didn’t know who to side with. He was chewing his lips while he looked at her. Then she shouted, “She sides with the Yankees now. She ain’t even Cajun.”
My mom cocked her weapon, and I jumped to the floor. In that moment my dad made his decision. He jumped over me and knocked the gun out of her hand.
“Run,” he said, holding her back. And I stood up on my cast, putting weight on my leg for the first time in months. There was not enough strength in it to carry me, so I quit trying and started hopping. I got out the door and bounced over to the overgrown oaks draped in Spanish moss by the house. It was right by the trees where my dad used to have me pick my switch.
I heard a shot ring out from the house. I crouched down into the undergrowth and grabbed what I knew to be a damning switch, the thinner the better. I stayed down and kept quiet. Then I heard my mother emerge from the house.
“Where are you, Fanchon?” she shouted. She walked from one end of the porch to the other, and I could see the shine of metal in the moonlight. I stayed put, rubbing the switch with my hand. I did not know if I would get close enough to her to use it, but I remembered that enough of them had been laid on me to know where to let them fall.
“Fanchon!” she screamed wildly. “Come here to your momma. You are injured, and I am supposed to care for you. That’s what kin does.”
I didn’t make a peep, and she started pacing the deck. She was humming that terrible tune she used to hum when my daddy was beating me senseless. She was only six steps away from me and instead of taking in her surroundings was looking through the scope of her gun. She must have been looking just to the side of me, because I thought she had me in her crosshairs. She took a few steps forward and swept the gun in the other direction, when some of the hanging moss blew in the wind; she turned and shot simultaneously, sending a throng of birds out of the tree. She only had one shot at a time so she lowered her weapon to reload and when she did I switched her hard on the back.
She screamed and reached up her back, not realizing she had just been whipped. I pulled back and hit her again and again. She screamed after each agonizing blow and dropped her gun to the ground.
Something took me over, and I started screaming, “This is what it felt like, Momma. This is what all of the switching felt like.”
She fell to the ground, and I hit her over and over again hard across the back. The loud whips rang through the quiet of the night and brought back the memory of my many moonlight lashings.
She fell to her hands and knees, and I was so overtaken with rage I didn’t notice she was getting her gun. By the time I was paying attention she had it in hand and hit me in the chin with the butt of it. The hit knocked me to the ground and sent my switch out of my hand. She got up and stuck her knee in my chest while she tried to load the gun. My newly found strength surprised her, and I knocked the gun out of her hand at every attempt to load it. Finally she stood, and I took the chance to get up myself. I was up on my elbows when she took her tiny foot and kicked me in my bad leg. The pain was searing but not enough to stop me. She realized this and hurried to load her weapon. I was on my hands and knees, about to push up to stand, when I heard the gun cock. I looked forward, and was staring down the barrel of her gun.
“Mom,” I said pleading.
“I’m not your mom,” she replied, and I saw her finger touch the trigger. I closed my eyes and heard a gunshot, but felt no pain. I reached up to my head and noticed nothing changed
. I looked up at my mom and there was a hole right between her eyes. She was still standing and looking forward. Then suddenly she fell over. I heard the whiz of a fan boat in the distance and when I turned I saw Beau, Clem and Abolina riding towards me. Abolina had her rifle in her hands and the closer she got I could see that she was shaking and smoke was rolling off of her gun.
Last Respects
That night I found myself in the hospital again. My leg was not as bad off as last time, and I was sure I would be out quick. My head was the object of study this time. I was pretty optimistic about my current set of wounds. Since I had survived an open fracture leg wound and came out with an almost functional limb, a little concussion from Terry and a broken rib or two wasn’t going to ruin my day.
Abolina rode in the ambulance with me, and the men followed behind in the truck. The hospital staff let them all come into the room to say goodnight and told them to come back for me at noon the next day. The police, including Banyan, waited outside my room eager to find out what had happened. I told them where to find Jason and was keen for news of him.
Lt. Poortvliet followed Banyan and took my statement. I told them everything from the hot sauce to me finding out I wasn’t Fanchon Deveroux. They were shocked at all the right parts. Halfway through my questioning the little old ladies from the maternity ward stopped by and peeked into my room.
“Oh my,” said Hattie. “What doozies you get yourself into, Fanchon.”
“Such a doozie,” the other woman parroted.
I interrupted them. “I’m actually not Fanchon. I’m Helene Baxter.”
The women ignored me and Hattie continued. “When we heard that that man came and attacked you again we were just so stunned.”
“Stunned,” said her follower.
I repeated, “My name is Helene.”
Hattie patted my head and said, “We are going to leave you, sweetheart. You get some rest.”
I waved and shook my head as they walked away. I turned back to the detectives. “I think they are hard of hearing.”
Lt. Poortvliet said she was going to track down the Baxters. They left town after they thought their daughter drowned and nobody had heard from them since. I asked how it was that nobody noticed after all those years that the girl who drowned in the water wasn’t Helene. She had darker hair than me, and those ears.
Banyan said, “When a child dies, and especially if they are in a state of decay like Fanchon was, the parents are only shown a photograph to identify the body. I looked at the photograph, and it was taken straight on. You couldn’t see the ears because the face was bloated. In the photo her hair was wet and varying shades of brown all look dark when wet.”
“Is my father okay?” I asked then clarified. “I mean my father, Rivet.”
Banyan and Lt. Poortvliet shook their heads. After I knew what my father was trying to do all those years, while it was wrong, he was doing what he thought was best. I never thought I would say it, but I was sad that I no longer had Rivet. He tried in the end to finally do what was right.
“Fanchon died over 20 years ago, Rivet’s dead, Paulina is dead and an entire family is gone from one secret.”
“I am sorry,” Banyan said. “But there is another family out there for you. We just need to find them.”
I asked about Jason, and Banyan said he tried to drive away in what I now knew was an Alligator Sanctuary moving truck. He only had one eye left and it was badly damaged by hot sauce. He crashed the truck into a tree halfway down the driveway and went through the windshield. He was in intensive care, but Banyan said they didn’t expect him to live through the night. They found my money in the truck, too, and Banyan said they were collecting it to get it back to me.
“So, what happens to me now?” I asked.
“Start over,” Banyan said. “We will find your family. They must have really loved you to have a man looking into your death for so many years.”
“What I don’t understand is if the man found me and went to my family home to ask about me, he must have told somebody in the family. Why wouldn’t any of them have reported him missing?”
The two of them exchanged a look. I could tell that the look meant they had a theory.
“What?” I demanded.
Lt. Poortvliet said, “The Baxters were very wealthy. There is a chance that whomever he was working with to find you didn’t want you found alive. There is a chance he was not looking for you for an honorable purpose. Money is a great motivation for people to do very bad things.”
“Or,” Banyan added. “Maybe he never got a chance to report his findings.”
There was no way Banyan believed that, but I would choose to believe it for the time being. I wasn’t about to speculate about the family I hadn’t yet met. In my mind I would let them be perfect. I only had distorted distant memories of them but the feeling of those memories was overall good.
After taking notes on my story Lt. Poortvliet left and went to the station to file her report. I suspected she would be letting Jimmy out soon.
Banyan stayed and we sat in silence pretending to watch what was on the muted TV.
Finally I broke the silence and asked, “What’s going to happen with you now?”
He held my hand in his and kissed the back of it. “We will see,” he said and looked back up at the TV.
“Could you find a reason to stick around a while?” I asked.
He kept his gaze forward but a smile crossed his face.
“Don’t be so proud of yourself Banyan.”
Then he looked at me and held back a laugh, “We will see Fanchon. Get some rest.”
He hung in the room with me for a long while, until Clem, Beau and Abolina came. When they did he excused himself.
I was released the next day at noon, as promised. I was hardly any worse off than before, just a few scrapes, bruises and a broken rib. I had missed All Souls’ Day. Beau said it was cancelled by everybody from our parish after I came up missing anyway. I made Beau take me back to the cemetery so that I could pay my respects to Josephine, Lisette and the real Fanchon.
I asked Beau to give me a moment alone. He did and sat in his truck while I visited the Chabert tomb. It was still decorated with purple and yellow flowers. It smelled sweet and light. Their tomb was a light limestone watched over by a sweet guardian angel. When I was inside I thanked them for looking over me. I was sure now that Du’Ponde was telling the truth about them watching out for me, maybe through their mother. I kissed my fingers and laid them to each tomb, then sat cross-legged on the ground in front of Josephine’s name marker. I told her the story of all that had happened in the last few days, just like we did back in the olden days sitting on the bed in her room. I told her all about sort-of dating Beau and all that had happened with Banyan. I could only imagine her responses; she would have told me to go for it with Banyan and never would have believed all that happened with Beau. She would have called him and scolded him for his bonehead moments. Thinking of her possible replies made me smile. I missed her dearly. After spending too long in the crypt I got up dusted off my legs and kissed my hand to each of their tombs again. I walked out wiping a tear away from my eye before Beau saw me. I nodded my head to him giving him the go ahead to go visit their crypt.
I left and made my way up the hill, leaving Beau, to visit the Baxter catacombs. Theirs was one of the biggest in the cemetery. It stood above the rest with brighter stone and columns lining the front. Unlike the smaller tombs, which housed only a few people in a small space, the Baxter crypt was large. It had an entire wall that housed the many bodies of their dead. In the center were several raised concrete tombs topped with elaborate concrete angels and crucifixes. I found the one marked Helene and made sure to say a prayer for her using her proper name, Fanchon Deveroux. It occurred to me that nobody that had ever visited this grave before would have given her a proper reception.
“You were a sweet girl, Fanchon. I will meet you in the next life and hope to find you well,” I said.
“Your justice was delivered, sweet girl.”
Then I repeated a Creole saying that she would understand, “I don’t know if anybody told you, but the rope it did catch up with time.”
I wondered for a moment if she would be moved from her burial spot. It felt wrong in some ways for her to be in an incorrectly marked grave. Then I thought if she were moved to the Deveroux tomb she would share space with those who betrayed her. Better for her to stay here among people who never did her any harm, I thought. I decided I would pay for a new plaque on her current grave so that she would at least be remembered for who she was.
I placed my hand on top of her tomb and said my parting words to her, “Good bye dear sainted Fanchon.”
What’s next for Fanchon?
Book three of the Saint series will follow Fanchon on her journey to find her real family. She will be sure to have fun in the big easy during Mardi Gras. For special announcements or to read more by Nicole Loughan you can visit her Facebook Page or be added to Nicole Loughan’s mailing list by clicking on the link provided.
About the Author
Nicole was born and raised in Michigan. She currently resides in Bucks County Pennsylvania. She writes from her home about her adventures with parenting in a column called, “The Starter Mom.” She writes regular features for the Bucks County Courier and Intelligencer, both greater Philadelphia daily newspapers. She is an amateur pianist and an avid reader. She first learned about New Orleans from reading Anne Rice novels and experienced New Orleans first hand when her brother moved there nearly a decade ago.
All Saints' Secrets (Saints Mystery Series Book 2) Page 12