by Trinity Crow
“Burn 'em?” asked Sayre, taunting me with a single arched brow.
“Flush,” I answered, masking my annoyance.
She nodded “I’m a bury person, myself.”
That seemed time consuming, but people had the weirdest ideas. It had to be bad luck to be that superstitious.
“Okay,” I said, caving in to my need for more info. “Thursdays? When and where?”
Both girls smiled, but in alarmingly different ways, Aren with happiness and Sayre with wicked anticipation. What was I getting myself into now?
Chapter 15
I was bleary-eyed as I knocked on Mrs. Evers' door at 7 am the next morning. I really needed to get a handle on this sleep thing.
“Come on in here, Chile,” she called out from beyond my sight.
The kitchen smelled heavenly and the cup of coffee she served me was a life saver. I wondered wryly if it was the caffeine in the coffee or my belief in the caffeine that did the trick. Cathead biscuits turned out to be these thick, dense masses of mouth-melting goodness. I could forgive a lot of perky in someone who could cook like this.
“Big as a cat’s head.” Mrs. Evers explained as she ladled gravy on to her own plate.
I nodded, still chewing. They had this great tang from the buttermilk she had used. I forgot that I was a private person and involvement was the devil's own lure, and immediately insisted on an explanation on how to make them. I had thought the gravy would be that thick, white, cream stuff made with lard and milk, but this was red-brown and had tomatoes, green onions and all kinds of stuff in it. It wasn't what I expected at breakfast, but it tasted out of this world. I put away three biscuits, two with gravy and one slathered with butter and fig preserves. Mrs. Evers called it sweet butter. I hadn’t known there was another kind but was too busy eating to ask. She forked thick slices of fried ham on to my plate that turned breakfast into a near religious experience.
I expected after a meal like that I would have been useless for working, but as soon as we got outside, I was awake and ready to go. Mornings have never been a personal insult to me, the way they are to other people.
“Tell me what to do," I said, "I'll work while you talk."
Mrs. Evers laughed at my impatience. "Alright," she said, "but I do believe I can work and talk." She started us off clearing out a patch of what used to be carrots but were now weedy shoots with flowers. They were pretty in a feathery kind of way, but definitely past their prime. I started recklessly yanking on them, the massive roots stubbornly resisting, until she stopped me with a hand on my arm. Her old lady skin was papery and soft, but there was a surprisingly steely strength underneath it.
"We need to cut these seed heads first, Chile, so we have seed to plant next year.”
I stared, amazed. I had never in my life wondered where a carrot seed came from.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “You can pull carrots all spring and then let the rest go to seed. Do you know all flowers are working to make a seed? Sometimes now, the seed is tucked inside a fruit, but it’s seeds just the same. Carrots, well, they take a whole year to make a seed.”
I took the scissors she offered me and the paper bag.
“This one here is St. Valery. This seed was brought here by Nella when she came over from France. The family’s been growing and saving this seed close to two hundred and twenty years.”
Something in my throat felt thick when she said that.
How was it some families endured and others fell apart? Was it an inborn power or a belief that made it work? How could I miss so badly something I had never known?
I did my best to set my mind on don't care and began to snip my way down the row carefully. The dry flowers tops rattled as I dropped them carefully into the bag.
Mrs. Evers moved to the row next to me and began snipping seed heads from something tall and dried into stalks. There was no telling what plant that was or used to be. I felt something calming slip over me as she began Julia's story.
“I think Julia was fourteen, the year the boys brought their friend Aidan home. He was from a plantation to the north, Blackhawes. It stood right outside of where Stephenville is today. It's gone now, like so much of that time.
"Oh, they were thick as thieves, those boys, having met up at boarding school. They rode, fished and hunted together, played cards and tried whiskey for the first time. They could not have known,” Mrs. Evers said. She looked past me out to the yard, but not really seeing it. “No one would have known. It was too late from the moment they met. Those seeds were already planted, just waiting to grow. He seemed every inch a nice boy. Maybe he was…or would have been in different times or circumstances." She sighed and resumed her cutting.
“Of course, girls got married younger in those days, but fourteen was still too young to think of it. Why she hadn't even had her coming out cotillion. But you could see Julia was taken with him right away. She left off some of her tomboy ways. Back then, they called girls like that, hoydens." Mrs. Evers laughed, almost as if she was remembering her own childhood. “She began to take a care with her hair and clothes. And he was a handsome boy, no denying that, with a thick head of hair and nice straight teeth.”
I snorted at this description “Sounds like you are talking about a horse or something,” I said.
“Yes, that's true,” she chuckled, “but back then, with no dentists and barely doctors, health was the biggest attraction of good looks. You wanted a good strong man to provide for and protect you."
I turned my eye roll into a brain twitch. Different times.
"He was charming, too, had a way about him, and all the family just fell under his spell.”
The air between us changed when she said that. I could feel her gaze on me and I was careful to keep my face blank as I moved to the next plant. I wasn't about to give up my secrets first. After a pause, she continued.
“He and Julia were always walking and talking. He became a regular guest at Ruelliquen and partnered Julia at her cotillion just after her fifteenth birthday. And Julia, she grew into a beautiful young woman. Everyone was pleased as could be when he offered for Julia on her sixteenth birthday. And of course, she accepted.” Mrs. Evers sighed, shaking her head in distress. “The wedding that fall was the biggest event the parish had seen in many a year and the bride and groom rode off in a white carriage with Corky hanging over the side."
I had come to the end of the row and stood for a minute, stretching. Mrs. Evers took the bag from me and wrote the name of the carrot carefully in old lady scrawl on the brown paper. She pointed to a big fork looking thing leaning against a post. "You might need that garden fork to get those roots out, chile."
I walked over and picked it up. It was heavier than it looked. I took it to the first plant and jabbed awkwardly into the dirt. I could feel Mrs. Evers' amusement as she watched my efforts.
"Let me show you," she said, the laughter clear behind her words. She stabbed the heavy tool into the ground and using her foot, rocked it back and forth, then hefted it upwards like a shovel to pull the root out. Dirt pattered down from between the tines and the biggest, ugliest carrot I had ever seen was left sitting on the fork. With a grunt, she slung it to the side.
"Not good for much except livestock or compost," Mrs. Evers paused, panting slightly, then pointed towards a clump of bushes. "Was a time I'd toss them into the chickens. We had a coop and a little run right there. Now I get my eggs from Mr. Aucoin. It's a local farm, but it's just not the same as your own." She shook her head. "Well, those times are gone too. Maybe someone after me will keep the garden up and have chickens again." She shook off her mood and began pulling the dried stalky things out her row. I stabbed the giant fork under the next monster carrot as she began to talk.
"Well, as for Julia, she was in for quite a shock at her new home. She had been raised by kind and good mannered folks. Blackhawes, well, it wasn't the worst of plantations, but run of the mill in those days still meant hell. Her new family considered blacks to be le
ss than human. They treated them as livestock, worse than livestock. It was easy to see a dirty, beaten people as animals, easy to consider their souls as lost as their dignity."
"But they were wrong!" I burst out and then bit my lip, aggravated I had let myself get caught up again.
“Yes, they were,” Mrs. Evers nodded slowly, looking old. "You and I can see with the clearness of years gone past. But these people had grown up owning slaves. Told from the time they were born that this was their right as white men and that God himself had made it this way. It was a brutal time, but we neither one of us can say if we would have seen through the absolute belief of those times to a different, better way. We can only hope to be better people now because what we know. But if you look around, we do the same today. Homeless people, drug addicts. We treat them as less than ourselves. Dismiss them as unclean and worthless.” She tutted softly to herself.
I crouched down, gathering loose stalks and leaves out of my way, and thought about what she said. I knew she was right. I had seen the disgust in the faces of the tourists as they passed homeless people in the French Quarter. People weren't as civilized as they liked to believe.
“Our Julia had taken her maid, and really her best friend, Alcee, with her. But after a week, Julia sent her back home. She couldn't bear to see Alcee treated that way. Oh, she tried really hard, did Julia, to make conditions better. Remember, at that time, three or more generations would all be housed in the plantation house. She wasn’t just bucking her husband whom she adored, but her new mother and father-in-law and a whole passel of extended family. Julia started pressing for their own place no matter how small. But before that could happen, the war started and all the boys went off to fight. Fought the British they did, at the Battle of 'Orleans.
"For all that Julia was a plucky girl, she had all her life been cosseted and sheltered. People need adversity to build a backbone, I believe. And not too long after that that Julia discovered she was going to have a baby. I think she pinned all her hopes on that child. Whatever was amiss between her and Aidan, the child would put it to rights. She was alone in a house full of people she barely knew. The slaves who had always been her friends and companions treated her with contempt and anger for being ignorant as to how things stood between blacks and whites. Her attempts to make things better for them had just made it worse. She took walks with Corky but was not allowed the freedom she was so used to and her new maid was not a friend, but a spy.
"Then Aidan was wounded and sent home, a changed and bitter man. Used to health and admiration, he was now blind in one eye and missing a leg and him barely twenty-two years old. He wasn’t even a big war hero. He had made it to one battle and been promptly shot up and sent home. They made him a peg leg and he learned to walk."
I stiffened, my hands freezing on the handle of the garden fork, hearing in my head the step-thump, step-thump of that awful night.
"But come home he did and as the months passed and word came of his brothers dying one after another, Aidan came to think himself a bit luckier, and it helped his father, the master, became more and more fixed on Julia’s baby as the grandson to carry the family on. So Aidan took some comfort in the coming baby and Julia tried everything she could to make him happy. Oh, it would have turned anyone stomach to see our girl running herself ragged to do his fetching and bearing up under all his nasty comments, all the while getting bigger and more worn out. Nella had been to visit and was so distraught over the way things stood that Alcee volunteered to go back and stay with her. This was a big deal because Alcee wasn’t used to ill-treatment or bad conditions any more than Julia. She had been raised in decency and respect. But she was a brave girl and devoted to our Julia. So back she went and stayed right by Julia's side. She was forced to evade the attentions of the master himself and any manner of cousins and male guests to the house. She and Julia wept together at night. Julia begged Alcee to leave and go home, but she wouldn’t go.”
I had finished the last of the carrots as we worked our way back towards the house. Now I stood there, thinking about how it felt to be trapped in a house with people who didn't like you. I knew that feeling well.
The shrill of a telephone cut through the stillness created by Mrs. Evers words. She murmured an apology and hurried into the house. Alone, I gathered both our leftover stems and roots and trudged them over to the compost pile. A bluejay shrieked his annoyance when I disturbed his hunt for bugs.
Mrs. Evers came hurrying out, untieing her apron. "Oh chile, that was my cousin Everard. Seems his sister has fallen and broken her hip. I have to go. I'm so sorry."
I waved her on. "It's no problem," I said. "We'll catch up later”
"Thank you, Chile." She smiled at me, and then hurried back into the house.
I wandered home and called for Corky. We played for awhile and I was just glad for his company. He had a way of pushing all the darkness back. I was almost relieved Mrs. Evers had been called away. I knew that Julia's story was almost told and part of me didn't want to hear what had happened. I was too close to it. Knowing Corky made her real to me. And I couldn't bear to know what horrible things had been done to her. Somehow I knew it had been violent and brutal. I hugged Corky tighter, letting his strength be mine.
Chapter 16
Today was definitely curtain day. I had no sheets on the bed because they were all covering my windows. My bathroom had a LaPierre gym shirt tacked across the glass. I didn’t bother with the downstairs since I was never down there after dark anyway. I was getting the hang of this living by myself thing. It was nice actually. I could come home from work and take a shower, without having to wait for someone to get out or scrub the rings off the tub from one of the kids. I could eat when I liked and what I liked. Well, within budget anyway. Tonight, I was going to try something new.
There was so much stuff in the garden that I was clueless about, I wanted to try new stuff but greens were, well, green to start with and then just the thought was kind of ick. So last week, I had brought a bunch of one called Swiss chard to Mrs. D and asked her if she knew how to cook it. I had eaten enough of Mrs. D’s food to know she was a really good cook. She had disappeared during lunch break and come back out with three steaming plates of food. It was so amazingly good that I was almost mad that I had spent so many years eating stuff out of cans and boxes. So with Mrs. D’s recipe in hand, I was ready to try this myself. It seemed basic enough. Garlic and red pepper flakes sauteed in olive oil, add in pancetta, chopped Italian bacon. I made her repeat the name of it three times and then wrote it down phonetically. I figured I’d say it fast and it would be fine. Pan-chedda. Not pan-setta.
With my day planned, I grabbed my backpack and my bike and headed off to do my shopping. There was a crazy coolness in the air as I pedaled along. Maybe it would rain later. Whatever the cause, it made for a great ride, with brisk wind zipping me along as opposed to the usual brutal mugging by humidity. I was iffy about going to the thrift store, but it wasn't like that guy's opinion meant anything to me.
The place was busier than usual. The long shelves of books were pulling at me, but I marched myself firmly over to the fabric section. Sheets, a million pillowcases, I stepped back and let my eyes do the touching for me. I scanned the stacks of fabric waiting for color or pattern to stop me and say this was the one. Funny this was how I chose books from a bookshelf as well. The thought stopped me.
Did I do this so I wouldn’t touch things? Wouldn’t see or feel things? I stood still and thought about that. Did I want to touch things? That idea felt wrong all around. I studied the fabrics. A pattern of birds and twigs with berries stopped my eye. The material looked rough and loosely woven. I took a breath and reached out a finger and let myself feel more than just the nerves on the end of my finger. It felt like coffee and sunshine, someone’s hand brushing a child’s hair back from her temple. I swallowed against the rush of unfamiliar senses, and the unknown scent of a home I had never known. I looked around and there was only the bustle of the
thrift crowd around me. I moved my finger and the feeling faded away. Careful not to touch the rest, I pulled the piece of material from the stack. The feelings welled up again. Experimentally, I tried blocking them out and to my surprise, they stopped as if cut off by a steel wall. I smiled at the weirdness of this moment. Again, I concentrated and let my nerve endings sort of reach towards the fabric, warmth, singing, sunshine. I blocked again and decided these were perfect for the kitchen.
Okay then, experiment time. I let my eyes scan again. I wanted a piece that felt wrong but not like horrifically wrong, just no, not hell to the no. Big 80’s flowers, pinks, and greens with purple splashes. The ugly wasn’t just the pattern. I touched as lightly as I could, opening just the barest smidge of my senses. I pulled back in distaste. The yuck feelings seemed eager to latch on to me like some sort of psychic leech. I smelled cigarette smoke and bitterness. I thought of Earleen, a former foster mom who was mean to kids because petty meanness made her happy. And how she would hug you and call you hon in front of the caseworker. A neighbor, an old guy had reported her. A puppy kicker, he called her, and all of us were shuffled yet again. I blocked this one easily, before even moving my finger.
It came to me that somewhere deep inside I had always been aware of this. I had always known things carried a history - the sisters would call it an aura. And I didn't need to touch them to sense things. I could send out a kind of Spidey spirit sense. Like some things held nothing, and others like that butter yellow blanket which seemed cheerful were holding something truly horrific in its weave, I knew that, just knew it. Blocked or not, I wouldn't touch that thing for any amount of love or money.
I looked again and chose a blue and green piece for the bathroom. What was the term for something with no attachment? Psychically empty? Virgin? I smiled, maybe neutral. So good would be the bird fabric, not good the mean 80’s smoker, neutral was empty and then bad would cover the yellow blanket. That blanket. I shook my head and tried to lock out the lingering ugliness it carried. Could that kind of residue be released? Did it float away or reattach? I mentally flinched at the thought of it wrapped around some poor kid.
