“They look scared,” I said. “What about Azure? I don’t even know who’s there, besides Aunt Almoinette.”
“Everybody got generator down there,” my father said. “On the boats. Not like the city. They used to a storm.”
“Where did Albert go?” I asked.
“Went to buy his mama a new fan and get them some can food. Case that storm hit the city. Say he stay there with them case the power go out.”
What could they have said to each other at the kitchen table? Albert wanted to know exactly what happened in the ditch all those years ago, but he’d already figured out how he felt about it. Tony’s grandmother said, “So who cares how I got the son? I got one.”
My mother used to dismiss it, when they talked at night on the gallery and I listened from the bougainvillea hedge. “Temp-passé,” she said, scrolling it into one word.
You could only consider the past, and leave it.
The highway turned toward the river again. We followed the water and left everything suburban behind. It came back to me—the liquid smell permeating the air, while Glorette and I were in the truck bed chewing sugarcane stalks we’d gotten in Sarrat. The river to our left, invisible behind the sloping grass-covered levee and the thick woods between orange groves. But you always knew it was right there. You could feel it, hear the tugboat horns or barges banging against chains above you somewhere. To the west, on the other side of the highway, were more woods and groves, and just beyond miles of marsh and bays and canals and swamps where the men fished, trapped, shrimped, and dredged oysters. We had been out there, on my father’s old boat.
Plaquemines Parish was the long narrow strip of land that descended south of Louisiana, like the heel of the boot in southern Italy. Every time I looked at a map with Rick or Tony, I always glanced at the birdfoot delta reaching blank and fringed into the Gulf. A place where towns were too small to show up on the maps—they’d been old plantations, some of the wealthiest places in the country. Deer Range, Myrtle Grove, Gloria, Naomi. The river had left hundreds of years of earth along its banks, where sugarcane grew.
The finger of land was never more than a few miles wide. A private place, amid the endless expanse of flat earth and water mixed like a mosaic. Not like California, where the hills and canyons and boulevards and beaches were all so visible and public and famous—the whole world owned LA.
We passed satsuma groves, cattle grazing near the levee bank, and a few houses, some boarded up, some with people in the yards gesturing to cars or windows or just standing and looking at the sky. It was a sunny, clear day, with only a few clouds like dirty old lace to the west.
We drove in silence for twenty more miles. Brick ruins in a tangle of vines, close to the highway. “Sugar mill,” my father said, squinting. Past the ruins was a plantation house, white, two-storied, with a red tin roof and railed gallery.
“Woodland,” he said. “Somebody buy it.”
The house and grounds looked vaguely familiar. I’d seen them somewhere.
“Back by the river, they had the jail. Lafitte put the people he steal in there. Tell them girl, don’t wash clothes at the river or bayou. Lafitte men steal you.”
The sign showed a horse trotting smartly past. The Southern Comfort label—that’s where this house was preserved forever. A bed-and-breakfast. I could tell Rick. A good story, for someone else.
What was the word for a slave jail?
Barracoon. Lots of points for that.
We passed cypress swamp and acres of citrus. After another five miles, a dense stand of woods, with an old dirt road that led inside. My father pointed. “Comtesse,” he said. “Back there. House fall in the river, 1902.”
The Picard place. The owner called it Comtesse because his wife was a countess in France. He bought Marie-Therese from the pirates—after she left Azure.
I remembered one night when I’d seen Glorette at the Riviera, she’d said, “Hey. You remember when we went to Azure? They had a street named for Picard, and one for Antoine. Bayou named for that little white girl’s eyes. A trip, huh?” Then she stood up and pirouetted, and said, “They can name the alley for Sisia. Not me.”
The car was stopped. He was staring at the woods. I said, “Papa. Today Alfonso told me he was in the alley when Glorette got killed. He said some prostitute scared her or choked her, or she had a heart attack. And he never saw the woman again.”
My father said, “He never tell nobody? Not Victor?”
I shook my head. “I guess he thought there wasn’t any point.” I felt a shuddering breath roll through me. “Just like the kid in Burbank. No point. Just—” Something I couldn’t even name. “You gonna tell Gustave?”
My father looked past me, at the citrus trees on my side. He said, “A stranger.”
I said, “Some woman from New York who drove a van. He didn’t even know her name.”
My father began to drive again. Finally, he said, “Tell Gustave when we get back. But don’t tell that boy.”
Because randomness only bred anger. The woods and the alley. He didn’t look at me. After about five more miles, the road bent slightly. On the west side was Bayou Azure, which was wider than I’d remembered, with two white shrimp boats and several small aluminum skiffs tied to pilings at a wooden dock. My father turned east, toward the river. “A stranger,” he said, and shook his head.
Bordelon Road. A narrow asphalt lane, patched with white oyster shells, led into a thick stand of woods. The car bumped down off the highway, onto the rough pale pavement through the trees. The road curved around like a horseshoe, and at the far end was a small wooden cabin. Aunt Almoinette’s house, with a red tin roof, and a big yard under three huge pecan trees.
Her house was closest to the levee. We’d walked every day up the path behind her yard, through the woods grown up around the front part of the plantation—the river and the Azure landing, where steamboats used to stop. The abandoned main house was partly hidden in the forest. No one ever went inside—people said there were spirits there. That everyone who lived there had died unhappy.
On the other side, two more asphalt lanes were lined with homes. Antoine Road and Picard Road—about ten ancient wooden houses with hipped roofs of tin and spindly front porches, with wide yards between and a few small boats and some bicycles. Five double-wide trailers with decks and wooden steps. An aboveground pool, and two aluminum sheds near wooden worktables. There were five cars, and people carrying bags and boxes. A battered pale-blue pickup truck had a load of plywood, and three men were sliding off the boards. Then I saw the sheriff’s patrol car in the yard.
The officer was about fifty, with a pillow stomach but also big hands and arms, and a black baseball cap. He walked over as we got out of the car. My heart was hammering up in my throat. He didn’t even look at me. He went straight to my father and said, “That ain’t Enrique Antoine? That you? I thought you lived in California. What the hell you comin south for today, hanh? You head the wrong way.”
My father didn’t look scared. He leaned against the front fender of the car and said, “That me. How your uncle?”
“Oh, he got the boats all tied down at Empire. He and some old-timers down there say they stayin. I can’t make em go.” He glanced at me, but then pointed to the old house. “But your aunt needs to go. I’m checkin every house, and she refuses to evacuate. All her animals.” He shook his head. “You showed up just in time. These guys say they movin the boats down the Azure Canal to deeper water, but everybody else is just about gone. You need to get Monie out by tomorrow morning.” He looked at his watch. “It’s past three now. If the storm stays on course, it’s comin after midnight tomorrow.” He nodded at the men unloading plywood. “Look, this one’s the real deal, Enrique.”
My father was cool. He said, “Me and my daughter here start packin her up.”
“Get out by tomorrow morning,” the deputy said. “Most people are headed to Lafayette or Lake Charles. Cause New Orleans looks bad, too.”
He wa
ved to the men at the truck and shouted, “Okay, Emile. Y’all get it together now.” He said nothing about Victor. He got into his car and headed back to the highway.
A large black dog with a fringy tail held like a flag ran at my father and me when we walked up the slight slope toward the pecan trees. Then three more dogs leapt from the porch of the small wooden house and barked furiously when I stopped. In a yard enclosed by a chain-link fence, red and gold and black chickens paraded around, and one peacock studied us balefully and then turned away. The dogs boiled around me, dancing and leaping, and I froze until a tiny woman came to the door. “Eh, Lord, no, they send you all the way from California? I ain’t go, me, so you turn back now. Pas aller, moi.”
The same wooden cistern beside the rain-gutter spout, the same sweet olive bushes on either side. And Aunt Almoinette was merely lower to the ground, one of those very small, very old women who were like children again—the entire world revolved around them, and their stories, and their wants. That was why Glorette and I had loved and feared her—she never cared whether we ate or washed or tied our shoes, as long as we listened to her stories.
How old was she? She turned around holding a polished stick. Not a cane. A thick walking stick. “You believe in God now?” she said, to me. “You was tite, temp passé. You say, I don’t know God. You say, The Bible just a book.”
I said, “I remember.”
The house was just one large room, with a small kitchen added to the back, and a tiny bathroom behind that. The front room had a double bed in the corner next to the antique wooden armoire, and an easy chair by the window. The wall was lined with transparent plastic bins of animal food and bowls. The same picture of Jesus from when I was ten: upturned face, soft beard, folded hands. On the fireplace mantel, a few pictures and two small decorative dishes. The wooden stand where you knelt to pray, with a rosary.
She said it again. “You believe in God now?”
“I do.”
She sat down and looked out the window, and we had to wait. I knew not to ask her questions, because they would only annoy her.
She used to speak in scripture, that summer, and I’d hated the words and singsong cadence. She said things like “Divided tongues as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.”
She stared at me now. Back then, I’d said, “How do you remember every word?” I had thought, Who talked like that? Who didn’t want to make up their own sentences?
And she said, “They beat me when I say it wrong. The nuns in New Orleans. Send me there when I tite, cause I’m so smart.”
“They beat you?”
I never forgot what she said. “Beat everybody. But some like to be beat. They cry and suffer when the cane comes down, but I see they do the same thing again so that nun get the cane. They like to stand in front and make a fuss, them girl. Agathe and Marie-Claude. Can’t memorize their own name. I memorize the whole book. They beat me cause I ask question. Like you.”
Now she reached down to her ankle and moved the string with seven knots. Red string. Like a tracing of blood along her skin. “Had one a these when I went up there, to New Orleans. My maman tie it on. Sister Agnes tell me take it off, and I say no. She cut it off. She make me memorize verses. When I say them, I leave out one word to see she listening. She hit me three times. With that cane.” She held out her forearm, and I remembered Glorette and me leaning forward to see the marks. So close I could smell the bleach washed into her sleeve. Her skin was unscarred. But she ran her fingers over the spot and said, “Like three snakes raise up under there. I want to cut them out. They stay three days. I memorize all of Ezekiel and Jeremiah in my room.”
My father moved into the room, and she turned to me. “Send you from California. Tu—l’intelligente. Ou est l’autre? Li soeur? La jolie?”
“Back in California,” I said. My sister. She meant Glorette. The beauty.
“You ask the question. She the one listen.” The dogs settled flat on the linoleum floor, their eyes fixed on her.
My father said in French, “We’re looking for her son. Glorette’s son. Victor.”
She shrugged and shook her head. She didn’t offer us coffee. She folded her arms as if we were just the last in a legion of people bothering her, and said, “Ecoutez, they ain’t take mesdames at no shelter. Pas aller, moi.”
Mesdames? The four dogs. Aunt Monie had always had chickens, rabbits, even a raccoon once, but only had one dog when we were here before.
“Is everyone else going?” I asked, looking at the men unloading plywood from the truck. Five kids were shooting at a portable basketball hoop. Two women had made a pile of food on a picnic table, and were packing coolers.
“Oui,” she said, nodding. “Go to Lafayette. Sheriff say I got to go. Mais he don’t remember—Betsy knock down some, Camille knock down them place at Woodland. But Azure la-bas—” She pointed toward the river. “Still there. And moi—icitte.” Her headscarf was the palest yellow—maybe white gotten old, or marigold gotten faded. Her skin was dark gold, like the oldest gilt frame in a museum, and her nose was strong, with a bump on the bridge. She wore black knit pants and a blouse with turquoise flowers. She pulled on the same short white rubber boots as the men outside. Shrimper boots.
The dog nearest to her, the one who seemed in charge, stood up and stared toward the door. “That Mama,” she said. “Les autres, c’est les filles. Coco, Lulu, Zizi.” She snapped her fingers and they all stood, electric with waiting. She snapped again and they shot out the door.
“Three thirty,” she said. “Mesdames tell time. Three thirty we walk. Toujours.”
My father touched her on the arm, and she shot him a look. “Tante,” he said. “The boy. Gustave grandson. Gustave fille—Glorette.”
“Sais pas, moi,” she said, brushing past him.
“La jolie.” He touched her arm again.
She stopped and squinted into the yard. “That boy? Mesdames smell his arm.”
The salt meat.
“He don’t say, Mo fam, he don’t say, Mo besoin l’argent. Like all them boy.”
He hadn’t asked her for food or money. “What did he say?” I asked.
“Say where the cimitaire? I say pourquoi, and he say bijou.”
Bijou? Sounded like a name for a little dog. Then I remembered. Bijoux. Jewelry. He thought the buried treasure was jewelry.
The blue truck came toward us. Emile, the one driving, looked vaguely familiar. He said, “We need to take care your house, Aunt Monie.”
She nodded, chin high, studying my father. “That Enrique. He the one live out there in California.” She shook her head and walked away. My father was not the elder here. He was not a griot. He was just a nephew. The one who left.
There were only two kinds of people. Those who stayed home, and those who left.
My father and I followed her. She walked quickly toward the levee, the dogs racing ahead on the dirt path, swerving into the trees to smell something.
I looked back at her house, the red tin roof and gray weathered wood, set apart now from the mobile homes and shotgun cottages. It had been an old slave cabin. Moinette and her mother, Marie-Therese, had been the plantation laundresses and seamstresses, so they were closer to the front. Aunt Monie had told us that the rest of the old slave quarters were on the other side of the highway, but those houses had all fallen apart over the years.
She called back to us, “I send him up here. See him walk there.” She pointed with her stick up the path, and we started up the slight rise.
If Victor was poking around the cemetery, would he still have the gun? Did my father have a gun, too, under his La Reina workshirt?
The main house was like Seven Oaks, and all the other plantation houses that died when their white people died. If a family had heirs, or a good location, they were bed-and-breakfasts or museums. But this was a darkened skeleton of wood, like a ghost ship marooned in the trees. Two stories, set on high brick piers for ventilation, and floods. The fron
t gallery had faced the river, where the boats had landed to bring supplies, and take away sugar. And Moinette.
The back door was a blind keyhole up on the second floor. The stairs that had led to it were gone. The dogs ran under the house. Aunt Monie pointed with her stick toward a tangle of weeds and palmettos a hundred yards away. A small city of white in the weeds.
Cemetery. My father and I walked toward the crypts. My father’s eyes moved constantly over the trees, and when we got to the overgrown wrought-iron fence, he picked up a stick and started slashing away at the vines and brush. Victor hadn’t been here. No one had been here.
Three crypts. The carved letters blank-eyed as Greek statues. No one came here for La Toussaint and cleaned the gravesite, or painted the names. Bordelon. Bordelon. Bordelon. The blue-eyed girl was inside one.
Aunt Monie hadn’t stopped. I ran toward the levee, where she was following the dogs onto the levee road, and caught up with her. “But Marie-Therese isn’t buried there.”
“C’est Bordelon, la. Up at Comtesse.”
“Did you tell Victor that?”
She looked at me like I was crazy.
I bent to catch my breath. The heat and humidity swarmed into my chest. How would Victor walk to Comtesse, even if he figured that out? The levee wasn’t a grassy maintained slope here. It was just a mountain of earth, covered with scrub trees and vines and palmettos. But the levee road was clear. You could drive, or walk, for a while.
My father came up the slope. This was definitely high ground. The batture, the wild border of trees and driftwood and trash that stood between the levee and the water, was thick and lush. And the water spread out so wide the other bank was invisible.
I had thought it was the ocean when she brought me here the first time.
The Mississippi. Not blue like the Aare, or black with oil and garbage like the Thames in south London, or green as old jade like the Limmat in Zurich. No bridges or picnics or mallards or ancient walls. The Mississippi was every color. Brown with mud at the edges, green when a chop lifted in the breeze and a tongue of water rose, blue when a flat circle spun for a moment into an eddy.
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