by Rita Woods
“Abigail?”
The slave woman started and looked up. A few feet away, her mistress stood watching her. Ninette Rousse was smiling, her eyes wild in her pale face, red hair frizzed by the sea air, her infant son clutched to her bosom.
“You must come out of there, chére,” she said. “We will be in Cuba in a few hours, then just three more days and we will be safely with my cousin’s family in New Orleans.”
Abigail ground her teeth. The pain in her head was starting again, and for a moment she saw that other deck, hiding behind this one, empty of everyone, empty of her mistress and her mewling, maggot-colored child.
“Abigail, you come out of there this instant,” snapped Ninette Rousse when the slave didn’t respond. Her voice was loud, bordering on hysteria.
Abigail saw the other whites watching. Her mistress saw, too. She whimpered and pulled the baby tighter against her chest.
“Please,” she whispered. “It’s going to be fine. I promise. Please.”
Abigail stared at her mistress for a long moment, then turned away, curling back into her fetal position.
Behind her, she heard Ninette Rousse whispering, “Tout ira bien. Everything is going to be fine.”
* * *
They stood side by side in silence at the railing.
New Orleans.
The smells and sounds were overwhelming. Ships of every shape and size crowded the pier, dark coal smoke belching from the smokestacks of some, blackening the sails of the others, turning the rising sun an angry scarlet. Below and behind, teamsters swarmed crates the size of houses, and men of every shape and color pushed their way up and down gangways shouting curses in English and French and a half dozen other languages. And from somewhere, through the murky dawn, came the sound of church bells.
And then there was the water.
Gone was the aquamarine blue of the seas surrounding Saint-Domingue. The little French merchant ship now floated at anchor in water that reeked of kerosene and human waste and was the color of old potato skins. Mixed into the stench of the foul water was the smell of rotting fish, overripe fruit, burning cane.
When finally able to disembark, they were met by the husband of Madame’s cousin, a gaunt, narrow-faced man with hair the color of moldy straw. He reminded Abigail a bit of Monsieur Dreyfus, and she wondered if Madame’s cousin was un juif as well. She had no idea of the rules that governed the worshipping of the blanc gods.
The cousin turned and led them through the crowd to a small carriage, where two black men were loading her mistress’s trunks onto the platform behind the seats. An image of Hercule flashed in her mind, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. She stared at the ground as one of the teamsters helped Ninette Rousse and the baby into the carriage.
The slave woman gripped the iron railing to pull herself up beside the luggage, then froze. For a moment she had a rush of fear, the sensation of a sharp blade tip tracing her spine from neck to tailbone. She turned, scanning the crowd. It seemed a solid wall of noise and chaos, but gradually, she began to distinguish details. People pushing and shoving their way between the horses and carts. A wagon filled with pigs rumbling by. A woman standing near a makeshift shed, roasting peanuts.
Abigail felt eyes on her.
There.
A woman, the oldest woman Abigail had ever seen, stood at the mouth of an alley. Short and round, with skin the color of creamed coffee, her bright white hair was tied back with a kerchief. She was staring directly at her, and when she caught her looking, she stepped from the shadows and smiled. Abigail felt the hair on her arms stand up.
“Abigail?” Ninette Rousse had turned in her seat and was watching her with the same wide-eyed confusion she’d had on the ship. “What is it?”
Abigail pressed her lips together and shook her head. She pulled herself up onto the platform at the back of the carriage, balancing her weight against the trunk and valises piled there. She glanced back. The woman had vanished, absorbed back into the bedlam that was the New Orleans street. It was nothing. One old colored woman and these maddening streets. One old woman.
She could feel the mistress’s eyes on her.
“Nothing,” she said finally. “It is nothing, Metrés.”
As the carriage lurched into motion, she felt that knife blade down the center of her back, and shivered.
14
The strap of the basket dug deep into her shoulders, and she arched her back to shift its weight. It had been mid-August when they arrived in the city, in the very teeth of summer, but now, two days before Christmas, a glaze of ice coated the dark water that filled the muddy canals passing for streets in New Orleans.
Abigail had never known such brutal cold. The wool cloak she wore stank of another, and every inch of her body itched under its weight, but it kept out most of the chill. It would warm later, but now, just after sunrise, the temperature lingered just above freezing. She blew out a breath and watched it fog in the frigid air, both intrigued and horrified, as it hovered a moment in front of her lips, like some restless winter spirit.
The city reeked of kerosene—she could taste it on her tongue—the smell growing stronger the closer she got to the river. It burned her eyes. The city was preparing for the huge bonfires that were to be lit along the Mississippi as far as the eye could see, to light the way for Saint Nicholas. It was to be an incredible spectacle—or so her mistress had assured her, though she had never seen it, either.
Abigail shifted the basket again and rubbed her stinging eyes. New Orleans was an ugly place: cold and dirty and crowded, the foulness of so much humanity oozing from the very buildings. She was shocked at how much she missed Saint-Domingue. And not just her boys. She missed the warm air sweetened by hibiscus, the translucent blue of the sky. She missed the wild green of the mountainside and the singsong rhythm of the quarter.
She hunched her shoulders and forced her way through the throng. She was on her way to the market. Eva, the cook, had already slaughtered the goose for the Revillion supper—the celebration after Christmas Eve mass—and had sent Abigail for last-minute supplies: sugar and wine for the eggnog, oysters to smoke for the dressing.
Despite the cold, Abigail was glad to be out of the house and away from Eva. The cook rarely spoke to her except to spit orders or to sneer at Abigail’s fractured French.
The house where they stayed was a modest town home owned by Madame’s cousin. The cousin’s husband, the man who’d met them the day they arrived, was a tobacco agent. Aside from Eva, there was only one other young slave girl who looked after the children and the housekeeping, and a groom who tended the horses and did handiwork. With the arrival of Madame, the little house was filled to overflowing, and they’d had to cobble a space for Abigail just off the fruit cellar, where the sickening sweet smell of rotting apples seeped into her pores night after night.
Abigail picked up her pace. The town home was some distance from the market at the edge of the river, and if she didn’t hurry, it would be so crowded that it would take forever to make her few purchases.
The market was on the far side of Plaza de Armas and was already swarming with people despite the early hour: holiday shoppers, soldiers in bright uniforms whom Madame had told Abigail were from another blanc country called Spain, workmen engaged in the building of the great St. Louis Church. She had just stepped into Decatur Street when she felt that familiar sense of unease.
“Out of the way!” cried a teamster.
She jumped back, barely avoiding being run down by the wagon. She studied the crowd. Everyone was busily going about their tasks. No one seemed to notice her and yet … someone was watching her. She could feel it. She rooted around in her pocket until her fingers brushed against the small wooden disk she’d taken from Hercule’s shop, all she had left of him. She squeezed it and shivered. A wet wind was blowing off the Mississippi. The smells of the river mixed with the ordinary market smells and the kerosene of the bonfires, making her head ache.
She cros
sed the street and entered the market. Ignoring the steadily growing sense of being followed, she moved quickly, purchasing each item on Eva’s list before turning back toward home.
“Merde,” Abigail swore, nearly dropping her basket.
There!
Standing in the center of Plaza de Armas. The old mulatto woman and her companion.
On that first day, there’d been only the old woman, but nearly every day since, there’d been the two of them. The woman and the man. The man was much younger, tall and broad of shoulder, his skin as dark as ebony. And they were there. Always there. At the market, at the far end of the street when she emptied the ash pails, at dusk, in the shadows just beyond the carriage house as she lit the lamps for the evening.
At first, she’d thought she only imagined that they followed her. Perhaps they lived nearby, ran errands in the same way that she did, but nothing explained how they were always on the same streets, in the same shops, how they always seemed to be there at the end of the alley when she stepped out to empty the slop basin every morning.
And they watched her.
Abigail felt their attention on her, even when they seemed to be haggling for tobacco for the man’s pipe or peering into a barrel of freshly caught crabs.
They never came near, but they were always there.
She hurried across the street. She had tried to approach them before. But somehow they always managed to vanish down some side street, disappear into the crowd before she could reach them. But today she would know. Today they would tell her who they were, what they wanted from her. They watched her come, the man’s face impassive as he raised his pipe to his lips, the woman wearing a faint smile. This time Abigail was close enough to see that the woman had no teeth. A small group of Spanish soldiers cut in front of her, and she stopped to let them pass, swearing again under her breath. She was already late, and Eva would be unbearable for the rest of the day, cutting her with sharp words and dirty looks, but she had to speak to the old woman. She felt the need deep inside.
She fought the urge to push through the soldiers, but finally they were past.
And … they were gone.
Abigail dashed to where the man and woman had stood just moments before, turning wildly, scanning the crowd. It was impossible for them to have disappeared that quickly across the broad open space of the square. But everywhere she looked, there were only workmen and harried shoppers to be seen.
She let out a cry of frustration, ignoring the looks of passersby. She waited for them to reappear, scouring the crowd as she paced from one edge of the square then back again. But they were gone, and despite the warming sun, the sharp river wind had worked its way deep inside her cloak. With one last look around the square, Abigail turned and headed back to the house.
* * *
It was barely a week into March and already the city seemed to have completely forgotten the gray, wet winter. A sheen of sweat coated Abigail’s face as she knelt at the edge of the vegetable cellar digging for the last of the previous fall’s potatoes. A bolt of sky-blue satin suddenly appeared under her nose.
“You will need to deliver this to the dressmaker’s on your way to the market.” Abigail glanced up. Eva stood in the doorway, the fabric thrust out in front of her. Abigail frowned and thrust her trowel deep into the damp soil.
“M’entendez-vous, girl?”
Abigail gritted her teeth, ignoring the cook. She found two large, slightly shriveled potatoes and placed them in her apron pocket. Eva shook the satin and the bright cloth unfurled, dangling dangerously close to the dirt floor.
“Do you hear me, nègre?” snapped Eva.
The cook stumbled backward as Abigail shot to her feet.
“Ou bliye tét ou,” snarled Abigail. “You think yourself my mistress now?”
“Speak proper French,” commanded Eva, recovering herself. “You are no longer on that devil island. You are in civilization now.”
Abigail hissed and stepped toward her. Eva blinked and thrust the bolt of fabric up between them. The cook was perhaps not quite thirty, a year or two older than Abigail was. And though her clothes were fine—the hand-me-downs of her mistress—her hands were rough and swollen from long hours of kneading and chopping in the kitchen and the strong soap in the laundry.
“Ou twompe,” said Abigail in Creole before switching to French, rolling the words around in her mouth. “Pretty clothes and fancy words do not make you a master … or protect you from them, either.”
Eva flinched, hot patches of color blooming on her ginger-colored cheeks. “And yet it is you who sleep in the fruit cellar like a stray cat.”
Abigail laughed bitterly. “Fruit cellar. Feather bed. Are you any less a piece of property than me? Twompe,” she said again. “Fool.”
Eva made a noise in her throat and drew back her hand as if to strike. Abigail locked eyes with her as rage bloomed in her chest. For a second her vision blurred. She saw Eva standing before her, eyes wide with terror, and she saw beyond her, through the courtyard, to the bridal wreath in full bloom along the front of the house, the tulips pushing up from the earth, still damp from the previous day’s rain. She staggered as pain ricocheted from behind her eyes and down her spine. Blinking, she fought a wave of nausea, and then there was only Eva, standing there, staring at the trowel Abigail gripped in her hand.
“Toi…,” she snapped finally, breathing hard, as Abigail dropped the trowel. “You will go to the dressmaker. They are waiting for this fabric and I am too busy.”
She thrust the blue cloth against Abigail’s chest, forcing her to take it, then smoothed back her hair. Her face fixed itself back into its mask of disdain. “And do not soil it,” she said, before turning and crossing the courtyard back to the house.
* * *
The morning was warm and growing warmer. Abigail’s feet were soon soaked, as water from the mud-clogged streets seeped through the thin leather of her slippers. She hated wearing shoes. They were uncomfortable and protected her feet against nothing. But Madame Rousse insisted.
The air rang with sound as she pushed her way through the market: dirty-faced children hawking newspapers, the clang of a blacksmith’s iron, the lowing of cows in their pens. And the voices—French, Spanish, Creole, English—more languages than she had names for, as if the whole world had tipped over and people from every corner had spilled onto this spit of land that curved along the Mississippi.
Abigail forced her way through the mob, heading for the docks. Sidestepping a dray heavily loaded with cotton, she hurried along the streets, downriver toward the slips where ships loaded and unloaded night and day. When she passed a high brick wall topped with shards of glass, she ducked her head and pretended not to see. It was but one of the dozens of stockades in the commercial district where slaves were kept until auction.
The pier was chaos. Men and animals and wagons and ships stretched in every direction. It took her eye a moment to sort out individuals as they descended the gangplanks of the closest ships, house-sized bundles of cotton and massive wooden crates creaking dangerously over their heads on ropes.
Seven months.
It had been seven months since their escape from Saint-Domingue. Every Sunday, Madame sent Abigail to the docks. Every Sunday, no matter the season, no matter the weather, she was there to meet the ships as they arrived from every corner of the world. But there was only one part of the world that interested her mistress. That interested her.
Seven months and there’d been not a single word, not a single letter from Far Water. The news they did hear of Saint-Domingue was bleak. More and more whites were fleeing the island, arriving in the city pale and wild-eyed, whispering of a freed slave, one who spoke the language of the blancs, who led the maroons against their masters.
Yet every Sunday, Ninette Rousse sent Abigail to the docks, to wait for word of the fate of Far Water and of her husband. Abigail didn’t know why Sundays. A ship from the island could just as easily arrive on a Tuesday … or a Friday. And
if there was word, wouldn’t someone come to them, appear at the town house with a message? Or would not Monsieur Rousse himself appear at the gate, her babies in tow, Claude wiggling like a minnow. Abigail shook her head and tucked herself into the shadows next to a crate of turtles packed on ice and straw. From where she stood, she could easily watch the arrivals. So many ships. So many desperate men, women, and children. And not a one from Far Water.
Since New Year’s, Madame had barely left her room. In the mornings, when Abigail brought her coffee and biscuits, she barely acknowledged her. Her round cheeks had become deep hollows beneath her eyes, and her once-bright hair hung limply around her face. The only light Abigail ever saw in her mistress’s eyes was when she was with her son.
Abigail herself could barely tolerate being in the same house as the child. As the days and weeks and months grew with no word from Far Water, her nights were filled with longing for her children, and her days, increasingly, with visions of ways to kill the boy. She could mix something into his food. He was just learning to walk. It would be simple to leave the nursery door open so that he might tumble down the steep stairs.
As day after day passed with only silence from Saint-Domingue, her hatred for little Julian grew darker, deeper, his rosy cheeks and baby laughter a constant rebuke. Were her children any less precious than this one white boy? Wouldn’t he simply grow up one day to tear another black family apart? Just as Monsieur Quennelle had done. In the same way as his own father. The mistress seemed to sense this in her and rarely left the slave woman alone with her son.
