by Paula Morris
It was time to hear Lisette's side of the story -- about the curse, and all those generations of Bowman daughters. Rebecca knew that whatever Lisette told her, it would be the truth.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
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Aunt claudia seemed in no hurry at all to get to work on Saturday morning. "Aren't there lots of conventions in town?" Rebecca asked, trying not to sound too desperate. It was almost eleven, and her aunt seemed more interested in dusting the menagerie of weird carved animals in the front parlor than driving off to the Quarter to set up her card table. "Doesn't it get busy in the weeks before Mardi Gras? Isn't Saturday your really busy day?"
"There's no hurry," said Aunt Claudia breezily. She wafted the molting feather duster over the clutter on the mantel: a gilt clock that didn't work, some carved African statuettes, a slumped Pierrot doll with a broken china foot, and a pile of old green hymnbooks that smelled of must.
There was nothing to do but to try and speed the housekeeping process along. Rebecca vacuumed the hallway and the bedrooms, cajoling a reluctant Aurelia into scooping Marilyn out of the laundry basket and sorting out the no-longer-very-clean laundry. But by the time her aunt decided that
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the house was more or less tidy and drifted out to her car with her pack of cards and a new, tie-dyed tablecloth, it was almost closing time at the cemetery. Rebecca had never understood why it shut so early in the afternoon, or why it was closed on Sundays -- something to do with the city running it, she'd heard her aunt say. It was just another strange thing about this place, she decided, scampering along the street as soon as her aunt's car had disappeared around the corner.
The day was warm but overcast, and in the cemetery Rebecca felt that claustrophobic, short-of-breath feeling she'd come to associate with New Orleans. There was a dampness to the place that Aunt Claudia always referred to as "close" -- as in, "it's very close today," usually said while fanning herself with a section of the Times-Picayune newspaper. Sometimes Rebecca felt as though the sky was closing in on them, as gray and soggy as the city's other boundaries: the lake and the river and the swamps.
A few people were still wandering the cemetery, cleaning up family graves or taking pictures of the more ornate tombs. The Bowman grave was a favorite with tourists, Rebecca knew, so she wasn't surprised to see a Japanese couple wandering ahead of her down the sandy alley. There was no way Rebecca could talk to Lisette with other people around, unless she wanted to appear completely insane, so she dawdled under a tree, idly scratching her nails against its rough, chunky bark. She'd never seen the Sutton vault, she realized, wondering how close it was to the Bowman tomb. To her frustration, Rebecca noticed that the Japanese couple -- both of whom had cameras they were clearly eager to
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use as much as possible -- had been joined by another two tomb-gawkers. Were they trying to walk off the jazz brunch they'd just eaten at Commander's Palace? Didn't they know the cemetery was closing in twenty minutes?
Tired of waiting, Rebecca wandered off in the direction of the Grey family vault. It was so weird to think of Anton getting buried there one day. Or rather, getting entombed: You weren't really buried if your remains were stowed aboveground. She wondered if Anton ever thought about it, if it was comforting to know exactly where he'd be ending up or if it freaked him out. But then, so much of his life seemed circumscribed. Maybe it didn't bother him at all.
Out of the corner of her eye, Rebecca saw something: a flicker of dark skirt as someone darted behind a tomb.
"Lisette!" she called, squeezing down the narrow lane between two of the tombs. The ground underfoot was damp and nubby with moss, perhaps because it rarely saw the sun. And sure enough, there was Lisette, leaning her head against the chalky plaster of the vault, her face as gloomy as the shadowy back alley.
"Too many people here today," Lisette complained. Her eyes were red, as though she'd been crying. "All over the Bowman tomb like ants. I'm tired of getting stepped on."
"Does it hurt when they step on you?" Rebecca asked, and Lisette shook her head.
"Some days you just want some peace and quiet," she said. "Though maybe that's not such a good thing, either. I'm thinking about my mama a lot right now. It always seems to happen just before ..."
"Just before what?" Rebecca shivered, because it was cold
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and damp back here, shaded by the dense overhanging branches of a gnarled oak tree. Again Lisette shook her head.
"It's the worst part about being a ghost," she told Rebecca. "You have too much time to think."
"I wanted to ask you about your mother," Rebecca began, but she didn't know how to go on. Lisette looked so sad today, so drawn. How could she begin to ask Lisette about her mother putting a curse on the Bowmans? "My aunt ... my aunt said your mother went to the Bowman house once."
Lisette shifted her weight from one foot to the other, rubbing her head against the side of the tomb the way Marilyn sometimes rubbed against the table leg.
"Just once," she said softly, not meeting Rebecca's eye. "They let her in. I followed her into the parlor, hoping she could feel me, even if she couldn't see me. But I don't think she could. She never once saw me, the way you can see me."
Lisette looked as though she was about to start crying again.
"This was just after ... just after you were murdered?" Rebecca said quickly, torn between not wanting to upset Lisette and wanting answers about the so-called curse.
"After she got the message I'd died from the fever. I was surprised they even let her in the house. It must have been the first time a person of color was allowed to sit down on a piece of furniture in that parlor -- not that my mother waited for permission. She didn't think of them as her social superiors. Not Mrs. Bowman, not the lawyer man, Mr. Sutton. She was free, just like them."
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"What was she like, your mother?" Rebecca asked, and a slow smile crept onto Lisette's face.
"Strong, proud. She wouldn't bow her head to them. She wasn't tall, not as tall as you -- but she had a presence. She wore a tignon -- you know what that is? Once all free women of color had to wear them, because the law wouldn't let them wear hats or veils like the white Creole ladies. That was before I was born. My mother wore one because she said it let people know who she was, a free woman."
"A tignon?" Rebecca repeated, and Lisette spelled it for her.
"It was a long piece of material," she explained, "wrapped around her head."
"Like a scarf?"
Lisette considered this. "More like a turban. It was very high," she said, her hand curling up into the air to demonstrate. "And tied in front. It made her seem taller than she was. That day her tignon was red like a ruby."
Rebecca imagined the two women facing each other -- one pale, dressed in black, the other dark-skinned, wearing her vivid tignon. Both of them enraged, because they'd just lost a daughter, and the father of that daughter. One of the women a murderer, the other determined to learn the truth.
"I could see her, but I couldn't talk to her or touch her," Lisette was saying. "She couldn't see me the way you can."
At this, Lisette looked utterly dejected. Rebecca inhaled the dank smell of the mossy soil, the crumbling tombs, this dusky, quiet corner of the cemetery. Now was the time to talk about the curse, but it was hard to muster the courage to ask Lisette directly.
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"What ... what happened next?" she mumbled.
"The lawyer," said Lisette, her eyes bleary, "he told her the story again, the one she'd already heard. About how I'd come down with yellow fever, how I'd been buried already in the cemetery. How they were all sorry, but there was nothing that could be done. How she should respect the lady of the house, who'd just lost her own daughter and her husband, and just go on back home to her own part of the city. And that's when it happened."
"What?" Rebecca's chest felt tight with anticipation.
"Something on her
face -- Mrs. Bowman's face. Something gave her away. I was watching my mother, but she was watching Mrs. Bowman, and when I looked I saw it as well. There was something in that lady's face when the lawyer man talked about our part of town. Disgust, maybe. Like she was sneering. She didn't feel sorry for my mother -- she hated her. I could see it."
"So what did your mother do?"
"She rose up real slow," Lisette said, straightening herself. "And pointed right at Mrs. Bowman. I've never seen her look like that -- so furious, so righteous."
Lisette raised her arm, pointing right at Rebecca -- mimicking her mother's gesture, Rebecca thought.
"What did she say?" she asked Lisette.
"You've taken my daughter from me. God will punish you for what you've done."
Lisette stopped talking, her outstretched hand trembling. Rebecca was a little disappointed: That was it?
"And then," Lisette said, her voice so soft Rebecca had
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to strain to hear it, "she said that this was a place of terrible evil."
"The Bowman house?" Rebecca asked, and Lisette solemnly nodded.
"She said, this is a place of terrible evil, and evil could not go unpunished. That just as her daughter had been taken, before her seventeenth birthday, the daughters of this house would be taken, one after the other. She was talking, on and on, as though she was in some strange, angry trance. It was like a prayer, like she was calling up to God. She was saying, Lord, I pray that this house will be destroyed, burned to the ground."
"Ah!" Rebecca couldn't help exclaiming. So there was a curse on the house itself, not just on the family.
"But I couldn't hear everything clearly, because Mrs. Bowman was screaming at her, calling her bad names. And then the lawyer had grabbed my mother, and he was dragging her toward the door, shouting at her to be quiet. He was telling her that her sort needed to be careful these days, that they couldn't just move around the city acting like they were somebody."
"What did he mean?"
"Times were changing," Lisette sighed. "I didn't really understand then, but when I saw what followed, it started to make sense. Our people -- the free people of color --weren't welcome anymore in New Orleans. There were new laws, stopping them from meeting in public, even from playing music in public. People were getting arrested. A lot of them moved to other places."
"Did your mother move away?"
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Lisette shook her head.
"She died six months after me. Another ghost told me what he'd heard, that she'd dropped dead in the street on the way home from Mass. That day at the Bowman house -- that was the last time I saw her. When the lawyer pushed her out the door, I was trying to hang on to her, but my hands just slipped through her, as though she was made of water."
Lisette's body shook with sobs, and Rebecca took a step toward her, wanting to comfort her. But her friend backed away, refusing to be consoled.
"I wanted to say good-bye to her, but I couldn't." She wept, her fingers clawing at the dusty tomb wall. "They just pushed her out of the house, pushed her into the street."
"That's terrible." Rebecca was crying now, too, tears clogging her eyes; she rubbed at them with the back of her sleeve. The thought of Lisette's mother being treated that way by the Bowmans and the Suttons ... it was disgraceful. They were disgraceful. "Did you follow her home? Or couldn't you go back until ..."
"Who are you talking to?" a boy's voice demanded, startling Rebecca so badly she almost swallowed her own tongue. She swiveled her head to see who it was, though she could tell without looking.
It was Anton Grey, and he was standing right next to her.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
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What?" snapped rebecca, worried about how loud she'd been speaking, how red and tear-stained her face looked. "I mean, what are you doing, creeping around the cemetery?"
Anton must have squeezed through the narrow space between the adjoining graves; she was so focused on Lisette's story, Rebecca hadn't heard him approach. Lisette had disappeared into thin air -- why, Rebecca wasn't sure. Anton couldn't see Lisette, and he couldn't hear her. All he'd heard was Rebecca talking -- to herself, apparently, like an insane person.
"This is my family's grave," he said, his expression puzzled and a little suspicious. Anton looked scruffier than usual, his sweatshirt frayed and grubby, his sneakers scuffed with dirt, almost as though he'd been out all night, sleeping at the foot of one of the tombs. His handsome face was drawn, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
"I'm sorry," Rebecca said, because she couldn't think of anything else to say, and because she was sorry, in a way.
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Sorry that he'd come across her talking to Lisette. Sorry that she'd snapped at him, when he looked so weary and stressed. Sorry that this was the first time they'd spoken in weeks, and it was in this weird, uncomfortable situation.
"You still haven't answered my question." Anton folded his arms, his eyebrows a straight, dark line. "Who were you talking to just now?"
"Nobody," muttered Rebecca. She wasn't about to tell Anton she could see -- and talk to -- Lisette. Especially not when he was in such a foul mood.
"Don't lie to me," he said: He sounded contemptuous and angry. Anton had never spoken to her this way before, and Rebecca didn't like it one bit. Where was the Anton who'd draped his jacket over her shoulders, who'd kissed her at the party?
"Really," she said, shaking her head. "Just back off, OK? It's none of your business what I'm doing or who I'm talking to."
"I asked you a civil question."
"Actually, it wasn't civil at all."
"So you're just going to stand here and lie to my face?" he demanded. "That's how much consideration you have for someone who's supposed to be your friend?"
"Supposed to be," she said, irritated by his tone. "A pretty strange kind of friendship, when you can't even be bothered to keep in touch when I'm out of town. I haven't heard from you for weeks, and now you creep up behind me and start shouting at me."
"I'm not shouting," Anton said, in a more normal voice. "And I'm sorry I didn't call you back or anything while you
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were away, but it's been ... it's been ... look, you just don't understand."
"I don't understand what?"
"Anything. You don't understand anything."
Rebecca rolled her eyes. Ever since she'd arrived in New Orleans, everyone -- her aunt, the girls at school, and now Anton -- kept telling her the same thing. How could she be expected to understand anything when everyone was so secretive, when their rituals were so elaborate, when their history was so complex and loaded? How could she get the inside story when everyone did everything in their power to keep her out? The only person who'd ever been honest with her, the only person who'd answered her questions and revealed the secrets and stories of the past ... well, it certainly wasn't Anton. It was Lisette, and right now she seemed to have drifted away -- probably, Rebecca thought, because she wasn't in the mood to hear them argue.
"If I'm so stupid, I'm surprised you're even talking to me right now," she told Anton. She folded her arms, and leaned back against the tomb. "No wonder you can't be bothered to call me. I'm just a dumb outsider, right? Just like your friend Toby told me -- I'm a nobody."
A pained expression flickered across Anton's face.
"That's not what I meant, and you know it," he told her. "We're all just worried about Helena. She's in danger, like I was trying to tell you before Christmas. Didn't you believe what I said about seeing that ghost?"
"Of course I believed you!" Rebecca was trying not to feel jealous, but she couldn't help it. Was Anton needed to hold Helena's hand -- carry her umbrella, maybe -- every hour of
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the day? Anton never seemed to like Helena that much before: She was just one of his gang. Suddenly, he was so worried about her that he couldn't pick up his phone to call another girl?
&
nbsp; "Then you should understand why I've been busy," he said, in a way that sounded as though he was summing up his case in front of a jury.
"I understand that you're upset and concerned," she said. "But blowing me off completely and then blaming it on the whole situation with Helena -- that seems kind of convenient."
"Huh?"
"I mean, you talk about me not telling you the truth," Rebecca continued, warming to her argument, annoyed all over again by the indignant look on Anton's face. "But you're not telling me the whole truth, either, are you? Why don't you just admit that you didn't like everyone snubbing you at the Bowmans' party, so acting like I didn't exist anymore was the easy way out?"
