by Dahlia Adler
“It’s only a shadow, Friedrich.”
“Go, Eliza,” he said, and released me, shoving me lightly toward the door. “I need to be alone.”
So I left, and the key turned in the lock.
For two solid days, he rarely left that room. And when he did it was only for moments: to shower and for a fresh change of clothes. To eat a hastily made supper hunched over the table in the kitchen. Questions were answered with terse nods or grunts. And as soon as he was finished, he would dash off again, and the key would turn in the lock.
Until her car stalled at the end of our road.
It took three of our men to push it up the long paved drive with her sitting inside it, keeping the wheel straight. They stopped just outside the closed gate. When Friedrich appeared at the door, he seemed no different than he had been since learning the identity of the maid: his fine hair unkempt, his shirt half buttoned and baring his torso. But when his eyes set upon the car and the girl inside, he seemed to calm. He drew himself up and fixed his clothes as the men advised him of what they had found.
I heard the exchange from afar.
“She was stranded near the side of the road when we returned from town this afternoon,” one said. “Just standing there, leaning against her door with one hand in the air, signaling us.”
“Who is she?”
“None can say. And I didn’t ask. She has the look of society, but I’ve never seen her or her car before.”
“It is a fine car,” said Friedrich. “Most unusual.”
The car itself was most unusual, though I found it monstrous from the start; it was hulking and mean looking, with a razor-sharp grille cleaned to a high silver shine. And the color! The color was difficult to define. Not quite red and not quite orange, shifting yellow in the light.
“We thought,” one of the men said, “with your permission, sir, we thought we might push it into the garage? We could find the source of the trouble before nightfall, and call the young lady a cab to take her home?”
“No,” Friedrich replied, buttoning the cuffs of his sleeves. “I’ll take care of it.”
He ran down the drive and through the gate. The girl took to him immediately, leaning toward him and laughing. She was nearly as tall as he was and clearly very rich. She held a pair of driving gloves in one hand and had a pale gray scarf wrapped around her neck and covering her hair. Her eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, but there was something oddly familiar about her just the same.
I watched Friedrich run his hands over the hood. She popped it for him, and he looked inside. Whatever the trouble was, it couldn’t have been much, because a few moments later the engine roared to life, and he climbed into the passenger seat. Rocks pinged against the gate as the wheels spun and they sped off together.
After that, he and the girl became inseparable. Gone were the lavish parties that carried on late into the night. Gone were the halls full of guests. Dinners made and set out went cold and were tossed away untouched. His own beloved and coveted collection of automobiles gathered dust as he and the girl drove up and down the coasts, flying along the curving forest roads. They said the girl drove as if behind the wheel of a race car, that she drove faster and with more daring than seemed possible.
As weeks passed, former friends and acquaintances came round to inquire after the Baron heir. What had become of him? Would they never again be invited to the famous Baron Hall? Eventually even Isabelle Marbury, with whom Friedrich had had a whirlwind romance two summers ago before he dropped her in the autumn, deigned to knock on our door one cloudy afternoon.
“He is never here,” I finally told her after she had waited with the same cup of tea for nearly two hours. “He is almost never at home anymore.”
“Never?” she asked. “So it’s really true then, what they’re saying. Someone has finally come and won his heart.” She regarded me pitifully from beneath her sleek, styled bob, large eyes half vengeful and half wobbling near to tears. “They say he’s going to marry her. But no one knows a thing about who she is or where she came from. Do you know?”
I shook my head. She had been to the house and even stayed inside it, but rarely spoke in front of any of us. Except for laughter. Bubbling laughter, behind her hand.
Once, on one of their rare nights at Baron, I stole into the garage with a light and looked upon the car. How it shone, under the light, the unnatural color swimming in and out of shadow. A fine automobile. Everyone who saw it said so. But I couldn’t bring myself to touch it.
“Isn’t there anything stronger to drink besides tea?” Isabelle asked me, and I brought her some of Friedrich’s whiskey. I poured some for her, but she turned over another teacup and poured some more, then pushed it toward me.
“It’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it?” she asked. “He used me two summers ago. He used every girl in the county over the course of a few years. He probably used you, too. But even you had more of a claim to him than she does—at least you put in the time. And I was a catch, a fitting match. But he dumped me and now he’s going to marry a girl from nowhere. After a few weeks of knowing her.” She laughed. “It’s a real bitch.”
Isabelle left soon after that, and it was a relief. I hated it when girls of her ilk spoke to me like that, like we were friends or equals. When there are things that a girl like me could never say to a girl like her without losing everything. When girls like her are never to be trusted.
It was bad enough listening to the other servants gossip and wonder about what it would be like to have a young mistress at Baron Park. Would she be harsh or easy to please? Would she fire the lot of us and bring in new staff?
“He’s rushing into it, you ask me,” Cook said one evening over the soup pot. “Trying to run away from the rumors, and the fire, and the damned Berlifitzings.”
“I don’t know,” said another. “He seems happy enough when he’s here. Almost like he’s forgotten that the fire even happened. Besides, the Berlifitzings are covering all that up themselves. Even they want to forget that one of theirs died while posing as a maid.”
They laughed and they conjectured, speculating on the master’s life as servants do, as if their lives are so much more important than ours that they are all we can think of even in the hours that are our own. I avoided all of it, as I avoided Friedrich, though that was not hard, as when he was not with her he was locked in the small room of tapestries. I had not seen him at all in several days, until one night, when his voice woke me in the dark.
It was a sudden sound, and I was suddenly awake. I could feel his breath at my ear and, though I could not see him, I was able to glean a distinct impression of him in the dark. He was crouched beside my bed and seemed somehow gaunt. His lips pulled back from his teeth as he spoke and in the shadows they appeared elongated, as though his gums had receded, or they had grown.
“How did the lamp overturn in the straw?” he asked in a hissing whisper. “How did the lamp overturn in the straw?”
He asked it once more. Then twice. Then over and over until I clutched the blankets to my chin. I squeezed my eyes closed and felt the movement of air across my cheek, and when I opened them again, he was gone.
That was the last time I spoke to Friedrich. Two days later they found him before our front gate, his body crushed as though by a great weight and his bones snapped from a heavy impact. The tire marks suggested that he had been run down and pinned against the gate without braking. The authorities questioned us, but no one heard anything, not the car, nor his screams. They questioned the Berlifitzings, and even Isabelle Marbury. But we all knew who had done it. The girl in the hideous red-orange car had not been seen since.
In the aftermath of Friedrich’s passing, Baron Park and its staff carried on as if nothing had happened, chattering all the while about what would become of us and the grand old house. Friedrich, being young and seemingly immortal, had left no will and testament, no hint of his wishes. He was the last of the Baron line, and to the Berlifitzings’ great joy the hou
se and everything in it would likely be auctioned off piecemeal.
But I can’t abide that. Since Friedrich’s death I have been plagued by strange dreams, dreams of locked doors with laughter behind them. In the dreams I ascend the stone staircase with a lamp in my hand, drawn to the laughter and the closed wooden door. Except the door will never open, and the lamp is never brighter than the headlights that come racing up behind me.
Something has gone wrong in this house. Perhaps too much, over the years, but it has been my home, and after it is gone there will be nothing left for me. I have brought the lamp deep into the interior, to the small room full of tapestries that ensnared my poor Friedrich. It has not changed since the day he let me inside it: the walls are still hung with faded weavings and there is still the small bed pushed up against the wall. It still reeks of mold, even above the gasoline.
I face the east wall, and the tapestry of the duel that held Friedrich so rapt. The girl’s lover is still dead, his life bled out in faded red thread. I never noticed before that her eyes were the same shade of lavender as Friedrich’s girl’s eyes. How strange.
I throw the lamp against that part first—her face, watchful and oddly expressionless—and the flames burst across the tapestry. Fueled by the gasoline, they race around the room in seconds, and my skin starts to blister even as I stand near the door. I will not leave until every last thread is ablaze. Until every inch of her is consumed and shriveled, and the unnatural red of her horse is charred to black.
I wait, as the smoke stings my eyes and the edge of my uniform catches fire. I wait, as the blisters pop and run down my arms. I wait, and still that damned red horse leers back at me through the orange light, refusing to burn.
It’s Carnival!
Tiffany D. Jackson
inspired by “The Cask of Amontillado”
By J’ouvert morning, when the baby powder dust settled and the splashes of paint dried on arms beating steel calypso pans, I decided that I had suffered enough insults from Darrell Singleton to last a lifetime.
Ting ting ting ting ting ting ting
Sticks rapidly slapped on cowbells. Eastern Parkway was flooded with thousands of human birds, sparkling on floats carrying giant speakers in the hot sun. The yearly Brooklyn West Indian Day Carnival mixed Caribbean islands in a bowl of coconut juice. The sounds of Haiti, Barbados, Trinidad, and Jamaica clashed and bounced off streets lined with apartments. An endless field of costumes, men dancing on stilts, corn roasting on grills, chicken jerking in pots on the corner.
That was where I found him. On the corner of Bedford Avenue, his face still wet with streaks of black paint, bare chest, winding up on a gyal dressed in glittery gold and fire-red feathers. A flock of his friends surrounded him, passing around a small canteen, cackling over the music. Darrell stumbled, but his drunken wobbly legs did nothing to stop his revelry. He pulled a mini air horn from his pocket, clicking it at the sky.
He will be thirsty soon, I thought as I made my way through the crowd. The girl’s feathers grazed against my cheek as I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Cindy!” he shrieked, eyes bulging, pushing the young girl out of his way. “What are you doing here?”
His rum-soaked words made his accent thick like banana porridge.
I chuckled. “It’s carnival!”
“I know, but … you never hit the parkway. And never dressed like this.”
He stared down at my breasts snuggled up to my neck, cradled in a gold bikini top covered with gemstones and pink and orange feathers that tickled my ears. I felt damn near naked, but I had picked out the costume especially for him.
“Maybe you’ve never noticed. But I was just thinking of you.”
“Of me?” He smiled, and I had his full attention. “What for?”
“I was talking to DeMarco about my daddy’s sorrel. He says you love sorrel.”
Darrell squinted. “Your fadda makes sorrel?”
“Yes. He got the recipe from my grandmother. Been called the best.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Eh. What does your American fadda know about sorrel?”
Patience. My father taught me patience. As much as I wanted to crack a glass bottle on the curb and shove it in Darrell’s eye for the disrespectful ribbing … I had to be patient.
Something sweeter was coming.
I cleared my throat over the music. “Knows enough. DeMarco is stopping by to pick some up to mix in his rum punch for tonight’s bashment.”
“No! He using your fadda sorrel? Nah nah nah. DeMarco knows nothing about sorrel. What if it taste too sour and break up the party? I’m a connoisseur, I know what’s best.”
“Well … do you want to try some?”
The crowd thickened around us as one of the Trinidad floats approached the intersection. We blended into a sea of red and white feathers.
“What? Right now?”
“Why not? I live right here.” I jutted my lips at the apartment behind him. “It will only take a second. It’s nice and cool. Aren’t you thirsty? Dancing in all this heat.”
I flicked my tongue ever so slightly, and he licked his lips.
“Yes, but—”
“What? Are you scared?” I teased, rolling my shoulders back, my gold top twinkling in the sun.
“Me? Scared? No, mon!”
“Then come on.”
He stared at me for a moment, the decision churning in his head, before turning to his friends. “Fellas, I’ll be back! Cindy plans to show me a likkle something!”
His friends didn’t hear him over the roaring music, and it didn’t bother me that he had insinuated much more than an offer of a refreshing drink. He’d never see them again anyway.
Ting ting ting ting ting ting ting
We entered the lobby of the old prewar building, the place near empty with everyone partying outside, just as I’d suspected. Music bounced off the marble tiles through the hallways. The elevator door rattled closed behind us as I stuck in the key and pressed B for basement.
“Eh. Where are we going?” he asked with a frown. “Thought we were heading to your place?”
“Daddy keeps the sorrel in a fridge in the basement. He gave me the keys.”
Darrell took a swig out of his canteen. “Why your fadda has keys to the basement?”
“He’s the super.”
“Ha! I see. So, he cleans up after people’s shit?”
It took all my willpower not to slice his tongue out of his mouth with my keys. I imagined throwing it on the floor, stomping it into ground meat, making him sorry for every blasted word he had ever uttered about my family.
I bit my tongue. Patience. “He’s renovating the building.”
Darrell grinned and stepped closer to corner me in the cramped box, placing his arms on either side of me.
“So. What do you Americans know about sorrel?”
Americans sounded like a curse word in his mouth, and I wanted to rip his teeth out. Just the sound of his voice made my pulse sharpen as I imagined committing unspeakable violence. But violence is ugly and messy. I had something better in mind.
“He’s not American,” I said through clenched teeth, keeping my eyes soft. “He was just born here.”
He sniffed my neck. “So, he’s only partial Bajan. Like you. Not a true one.”
I stiffened, if only to keep myself from striking him. His stench was revolting. If I’d had any second thoughts, he erased them, making my next steps too easy.
“You’ll see it won’t matter when it comes to sorrel.”
The elevator jolted to a stop. I slipped under his arms and pushed open the door.
“This way.”
The chilly, damp tunnel provided relief from the late summer sun beating on our shoulders. Darrell stumbled in through the darkness, tripping over brick crumbles.
“Dah! Your fadda nah put light down here,” he slurred, rum sloshing out of his canteen.
The lies poured out of my mouth smooth as water. “They’re broken. Electrical
problems. Come on, over here.”
We reached the far end of the basement and entered a super’s old workshop, covered with a thick layer of gray dust. Tools, building materials, and cinder blocks were scattered throughout, the room lit by a small cellar window, covered in soot and cobwebs that dulled the sun. Shadows of carnival lovers outside danced on the floor.
“Hm. He ain’t so good at cleaning, is he?” Darrell said, his body swaying as he picked up a red-handled trowel off the workman’s bench.
My stomach clenched tight as I gulped, wondering if he noticed how fresh it was compared to everything else in the room, or the price tag I’d forgotten to peel off.
“He’s … been busy … with this,” I said, motioning to the giant gaping hole in the cement wall. To its left was an old white freezer, shaped like a perfect cube, that buzzed and shook with age. I lifted the top, revealing a bevy of reused rum bottles filled with dark purple sorrel.
He popped open a bottle and sniffed. “Hm.”
He took a quick swig, and his eyes lit up. “Whooooooa. This is good!” He tossed the trowel and poured some into his canteen, mixing the liquid together with another sip. “Mmm! Perfect! Let me take a seat, rest my feet for a few.”
“Of course. Go right ahead.”
He plopped down on the stack of dry concrete bags strategically placed at the mouth of the gaping recess, not noticing the wheelbarrow filled with premixed concrete in the corner behind him. I grabbed a bottle for myself, taking a sip to cool my nerves. It was sweet and tart, not perfect like Daddy makes it around Christmas, but close enough. Music slipped through the bars on the window, calling us outside.
Ting ting ting ting ting ting ting
“This is quite good,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why your fadda make so much?”
“He planned to sell them around the parade route, but he had an emergency.”
“Hm. How your fadda the super and can’t fix electrical? What does he know how to do?”
