“If you must learn, doudou, learn to please your man. Learn to work and speak quietly. Learn to cook his favorite meals, to say phrases of appreciation for all you will receive. Learn your prayers, your rosaries, so when it comes time for babies and such you will know what saint to pray to through delivery pains,” Mama would say to Fleur’s narrowly concealed chagrin.
Once all of the fabrics were on the sales rack the pair turned their attentions to the wooden lip that served as the stand’s counter. From the bag Mama pulled her pot of Seneca tea, still hot from the morning of brewing in the fire, and Fleur ladled equal amounts into the thin glass bottles arranged in two neat rows. Seneca tea, that cure all Mama had learned to brew on the plantation, was what brought people to them each morning. For a cough, for a stomach ache, for just a general feeling of being under the weather the free people of color in their neighborhood and even farther sought Mama’s tea. Hers wasn’t just medicinal. That was its sa prétention à la gloire. Mama took the time each morning to meticulously make a saccharine mint syrup that she coated the bottom of each sold glass with. They’d been asked for the syrup recipe dozens of times, but Mama never divulged. Only Fleur knew the secret, a family tradition. Mama had learned it from her own mother, once a kitchen slave. Grandmere had been in the ground before Fleur was ever born, but her recipe lived on.
Before they were done with the ladling a customer stood before them. Fleur thought she recognized the older gentleman who lived a few streets over.
“Combien?” Mama asked like usual.
“Two please. My wife is sick at home. She’ll want one for this morning and one for tonight, I think,” the man said with a thick accent. He was of the right age and had the curved back that made Fleur presume he was a recently freed man who’d made his way to New Orleans for the anticipated opportunities for freemen. The language seemed new to him.
Therefore, Fleur took over, using her better English to tell him what Mama would have.
“Remember, sir, that too much tea isn’t good for the body either. Please make sure your wife has a meal or two between her doses of Seneca,” she said with a smile.
He nodded and watched as Mama poured her syrup into the two glass bottles where it fell thickly to the bottom. Mama handed him his order as he handed over two coins. Mama swiftly deposited them into her frayed reticule. Those two coins were a week’s worth of meat or enough leather to repair a shoe. Fleur knew that’s what Mama was thinking. Mama didn’t count in numbers. She counted in the trade value of each coin, what it could bring them. If nothing else, Fleur had inherited her mother’s rationality.
The two of them worked the stand all morning, as they did every morning but Sundays. They brought in enough money to feel comfortable for a bit, to know there was going to be enough to buy flour and milk for bread. Mama had sold a length of cloth for a good sum, and it wasn't every day the cloth went. It was their higher priced product, and its sales always bought them breathing room.
Fleur turned to look at her mother who was packing up to head home. She knew once there Mama would take all her earnings, deposit them in a box she kept under her mattress, put away the extra glass bottles and tea kettle, eat whatever cold lunch Fleur threw together, and then begin working at her loom. Mama’s life never got easier. The tasks were unending, and there was so much Mama used her for. Mama didn't count very high, spoke only French with a smattering of Spanish, and had no other children to look after her.
Fleur ventured, “Maman, after the contract is signed I could still help you. Come down every couple of days and work the stand or help in the garden.”
“You stop that right now, child. You are not coming here and working yourself into the ground because you're afraid for me. You'll have a man to take care of. You'll be shopping and cooking and taking care of babies someday. That'll be your priority,” Mama said.
“He won't be there every day. Eventually he'll have a white woman and heirs to provide for, too,” Fleur said, secretly filled with a hope that this occurred sooner rather than later. The less time she had to pretend she loved someone forced on her by her parents the better.
“Not at first and probably not for a while,” Mama warned, “he'll want that honeymoon time with you. And why shouldn't he? You're a beautiful young gal. You worry about your man, not your maman.”
At that, Fleur knew the conversation was over.
John looked out of the window in his bedroom, over the fields where dark heads popped up and then disappeared again as they worked between the rows of cotton. They were methodical, appearing and disappearing as though professional dancers in a rhythmic routine were completely syncopated. However, John knew in his very soul there was nothing professional or respected about those worker’s positions. They were slaves and that thought sickened him.
A gentle, almost imperceptible knock on his door announced Henry, arriving exactly on time for his morning shave. Henry had been doing this for him, shaving him clean from just beneath the nose to down his neck since he was fifteen. Pa, John’s guardian, had told him a year or so ago it was time to grow a mustache for some added self-possession. John, in one of his few acts of rebellion, chose to stay clean shaven.
“Entrez!” John called, and Henry opened the door.
Henry was older than John by two decades. He’d been captured from his homeland, sold in the Deep South, and was one of the few who didn’t die in the unbearable heat there. He came up on the slave market, covered in thick whip scars across his back and torso, and Pa bought him as “a steal of a deal.” Pa had Henry take over major domo duties, keeping his brutal scars covered under a respectable waistcoat and vest.
Pa had even paid someone, when John was around six years old, to come in and teach Henry the proper etiquette for a gentleman’s man. After a week of working with this instructor Henry spoke nearly perfect French, knew when to bow or stand at attention, and knew exactly the way to place a shaving towel or serving cloth over his arm while he worked. He was the perfectly trained slave and Pa’s mostly silent companion.
“Good morning, Mister Henry,” John said with a sweep of his hand, inviting the man into his room.
“Just Henry, sir, there’s no mister proceeding my name,” Henry said in a quiet voice.
“You’re the most upstanding man I know. I think you deserve the title,” John said simply, something he and Henry had discussed before.
“If your Pa hears you addressing me thus, you and I both know that I’ll be mightily punished,” Henry said as he set out the razor and lathering soap.
“And that is the only argument that persuades me to not use the distinction. You deserve it, Henry. I can’t imagine living what you’ve lived through,” John told him, his head tipped back.
“I imagine you can’t, Sir,” Henry said.
“Did you have a wife, Henry, in Africa?” John asked, for some reason venturing where he’d never gone before.
“You’ll have a woman of your own soon, right here in New Orleans. Are you sure you want me to shave your face clean?” Henry said, the most gentle of redirections.
“Yes, shave it. She’ll have to accept me as I am, boyishly handsome and all,” John smiled a smile more like a grimace as Henry adjusted the razor.
He saw Henry taking his measure, studying him, although the man never met John’s eyes.
“Were you here when she was? Did you ever see her, my placee?” John asked.
“Yes sir. I saw her little bundled up self the day she was born. Pretty as her mama at only a day old,” Henry answered.
“Is it true, Henry? Is she Pa’s daughter?” John asked, having heard the whisper of rumors for years.
“Why don’t you ask your Pa that?” Henry answered, still watching John more closely than usual.
“Because we both know that’s scandalous. A man has to keep up appearances,” John said in his best imitation of Pa’s tone.
“Let’s put it this way, Master John- the day she was born, with hair black as coal like her Mama
’s, she had the most striking green eyes, green as clear as the water under the summer sun,” Henry said, his voice pitched at barely a whisper.
“So she’s his, and I’m not, but I call him Pa and she doesn’t,” John said, having wrestled with these pieces for so long.
“That about covers it, yes,” Henry said, nearly done with the shave.
“Were you here the day I was brought in?” John asked.
“Yes sir, I was. It wasn’t many days after the little miss left, her Mama a freewoman. Your aunt, who you’d been staying with after the carriage accident took your parents, held your hand as you toddled up the drive. You were a sight, if I’m honest. All red eyed and sallow skinned, you obviously hadn’t been sleeping since you’d left home. Your Pa saw you from the house and came out, kneeled down, and opened his arms. You went right into them, stuck your thumb in your mouth, and fell asleep before he got you into the house,” Henry said, and John was certain he’d never talked so much.
“Had I met him before?” John asked.
“Yes sir. Your mother was your Pa’s departed wife’s sister. Though you share no blood, your Pa was your uncle by marriage for a time,” Henry explained, though John knew this. His aunt, who he visited in Boston once a year in her little two room apartment, had explained the family tree to him in detail. Like so many southern families, it was more of a knotted vine than a tree.
“I’m surprised that Pa knelt to cuddle a child. Doesn’t seem like him,” John reflected.
“Your Pa had the same look on his face as he did when his baby girl came into this world, like the light of fatherly love was overflowing in him. He couldn’t keep her. The best thing he could do for her was let her go. He felt the calling to keep you. The best thing he could do for you was follow your parents’ will and keep you here,” Henry said insightfully.
“I’ve always admired the man,” John admitted.
“Everyone admires you Pa. It’s only natural,” Henry said with conviction.
“Even you, Henry? Even you, who can’t leave this house without asking his permission? Even you who has had meals kept away from you in punishment for the slightest infractions, even after he took away all your bedlinens that once you didn’t polish his boots to the designated shine? I still remember your teeth chattering in the morning.” John asked, his ire rising again. He loved his Pa. He hated the system that kept him as master over human lives.
“It could be much, much worse,” Henry said, and without another word he packed up the shaving kit and left.
John went back to the window, where his discarded copy of Shakespeare waited. He felt no desire to pick it up, not a common occurrence for him. His inner struggle had become so great that even the classics couldn’t distract him.
The last lecture he’d attended in Boston, led by an inspirational Quaker, had moved John beyond the denial he’d allowed himself to live in for too long. Slavery was wrong. The owning of another body as chattel was immoral. The uprooting of man and woman from each other, from their children, from their countrymen was corrupt. As an adult, in his twenty first year, he couldn’t stomach it any longer. However, the only way to get the money his Pa had put away for his bequest was to participate, to take Pa’s daughter as his placee. It was his legal right to deny this, but the money in the trust would revert back to Pa. And what would he do with it? Buy more slaves? Buy more land for the slaves to work? John could do amazing things with that money. He could donate it to the abolitionist cause that was igniting this rebellious fire within him.
He didn’t have to fulfill his manly duties. The thought struck him hard, and for a moment he saw nothing of the rolling New Orleans plantation outside his window. No one could make him impregnate that girl. A placage arrangement without children was almost ridiculously easy to dissolve. He’d just found the loophole he needed.
All he had to do what keep his unmentionables to himself. Even if she was gorgeous, he imagined he would be just fine. He was an honorable fellow, after all.
Fleur was woken by her mother, and the Sunday morning hadn’t fully dawned yet.
“Bébé, it is time to wake up! We have got to get you ready,’’ Mama shook her with gentle, calloused hands.
Fleur groaned and then rolled over heavily. The fear that had been growing within her reached a new zenith. She stood for a moment, waivered, and then vomited on the bed clothes she’d just vacated.
‘’I’m sorry, Maman,’’ Fleur said unsteadily.
"It is okay. Nerves are normal. Be assured, dear, he'll be kind to you," Mama emptily tried to comfort Fleur.
"How can you know that? How can you be so certain this is the way? I could stay here with you, maybe take over the stand someday," Fleur spat out the ideas that had simmered under the surface for years.
"Are you questioning your maman?" asked Mama in a harshly quiet voice.
Yes. "No," Fleur said, defeated.
"My master made this arrangement, on the grounds of my freedom. I could leave if I promised he could choose the man you entered in the placage with. He wanted to make sure his daughter, claimed or not, would be taken care of, would be with an honorable man. He wanted to make sure his grandchildren could be educated, even if it has to be in France. As it turned out he's chosen his ward, a young man. You're not being given to some old man, too salacious to have much to do but stay home and assault a pretty young woman who wouldn't have him except for his wealth and titles. Your fate is freer than even white girls of your age. You're being given to a man that will sign a contract, a binding agreement, that he will recognize his children and pay to house and care for you. Do you not know what you're being given? Stability. Safety. Money. A person to care when you're sick. A man to give you children that can run up to him and call him 'Papa.' You have so much more than I," Mama said, the only indication she'd ever given that she questioned the way her life had gone.
"Will it make you happy, Maman?" Fleur asked as she battled a second bought of nausea.
"To know that you are safe, provided for? Yes," Mama, her silky dark hair piled artfully over her left shoulder and copper face lit by the nascent sunlight, said. Mama, thought Fleur absently, had never looked more like a member of the Creek native people than she did that morning. Fleur wondered if those features were showing in her own face. Colored, they labeled Mama and her. However, Mama's rich skin, the exact hue of a strong cup of tea, was less apparent in Fleur. Fleur had her mother's black hair, her straight and proud nose, but her skin was as light as an octoroon's. Her eyes were a deep, earthy green.
Fleur had no outward response. She hugged her middle tighter, knew that she'd never keep food down that morning.
Mama broke the tense silence with a half hearted, "I know just what you need, some Seneca tea. Then we'll make you all fancy for the signing."
Fleur rolled up the soiled bedding and wondered if she'd be repeating this same task later in the day, if a sheet stained with her virgin blood would need washing. She, still in her chemise, wound a tignon of the brightest blue over her long black hair and took the bedding outside for a pre-wash rinse. The smell would grow terrible without the rinse, and she wouldn't be present later to help Mama get the worst of her sick out.
She felt like a corpse as she wandered aimlessly inside and let Mama's still gentle hands maneuver her into a chair. Mama put a cup of steaming tea into her hands and, as Fleur shakily held it, squeezed a more than generous helping of mint syrup within. The tea was only half gone when Mama got her up out of the chair, still steering Fleur's body as though she, not Fleur, was the driver. Fleur felt a coldness settle over her despite the heat of the tea in her gut.
Mama presented Fleur, with a flourish, a beautiful scarlet gown. She could tell from the airily delicate weft and quality workmanship that Mama had produced this fabric and had painstakingly labored over it. It was gloriously soft against Fleur's icy, goosebump laden skin when Mama pulled it over Fleur's chemise. Under the empire bust Mama had sown on a vibrant blue ribbon, which helped to
tie the gown until the raised waist was like a second skin. The skirt wrapped her body naturally, showing the outline of the curve of her legs when she moved. This gown would've met with approval from the magazines shipped over from Paris. Mama pulled out exquisite jewelry from a box wrapped in brown paper. Fleur got the notion that Mama had intended for her to open the present that morning and exclaim, but instead she saw that Mama didn't trust her to open it and don the pieces. Only someone very close with a keen eye would have noticed that the gems in the jewelry were paste replicas. They had never owned anything so elaborate before.
Each of the pieces Mama carefully decorated her with were the same striking cerulean color as the ribbon on her gown. She had lovely jewelry on her neck, at her wrist, and on a finger. As she reached to adjust her tignon Mama stopped her by lightly grabbing her wrist.
"Today you won't need that. No need to hide your hair from the man who's signing for you," Mama instructed.
Like everything else, Fleur met that statement with her own silence.
She said nothing when the hackney came to pick them up, though she imagined that her father or Mr. John Goodsome had paid for and sent it to them. She said nothing when Mama wrapped her arm around Fleur's shoulders in the enclosed carriage. She said nothing, gave no hint of feeling, when the hackney pulled up in front of her father's grand, starkly white estate. She was determined to not feel at all.
John Goodsome, quaking like a day old filly and trying to hide it, saw the hackney arrive outside of the large front doors of the big house. Henry stationed himself beside it, so when the two women who stepped foot on the walkway were close enough he could swing it wide in welcome. Pa stood just a few steps away from John, and he smoked a pipe with deep inhalations. If he was anxious at all or any other emotion a man could dredge up upon seeing his daughter for the first time in eighteen years, he gave no outward sign. He neither smiled nor glowered. His stance was as straight and proud as always. The smell of his pipe was oddly comforting and familiar to John.
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