Centuries of June

by Keith Donohue

  Written on the surface of her body were thousands of words in a small and spidery hand. I studied the sentence running along her collarbone before surrendering to my ignorance. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to read French.”

  “I do!” the old man shouted, rubbing his hands gleefully. He approached and stood in front of her, his nose inches from her forehead, already inspecting the beginning of the story stamped there. “I will translate for you,” he told me, and then he kissed the first phrase inked on her skin and exclaimed, “Avec plaisir!”

  He began in French. “Il était une fois … Are we to have a fairy tale?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “This is a true story. Every word.”

  From the breast pocket of his robe, the old man retrieved a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and perched them on his nose and, peering through the lenses, he leaned in closely, inches from her skin, and translated as he read.

  “Once upon a time there was a crocodile so hungry he could eat the world. Along the bank of the river, the crocodile would hide in the water and when the other animals came to quench their thirst, for it is very hot all the time in the old motherland, wham, he would catch them in his enormous jaws and chomp, chomp, eat them for his supper. First the zebra, but the crocodile did not like the taste of stripes. Then the giraffe, but he did not care for the spots. He even tried the poppo—”

  The naked woman said, “Hippopotamus.”

  “Ah, I see. But the poppo was too fat and the crocodile’s mouth was too tired after all that chewing. He would like to try the elephant, but no elephant ever came to this part of the motherland.

  “All of the animals came to fear the crocodile with the enormous appetite, and they hesitated to go to the river, even though the sun shone brightly in the summer sky and no rain would fall. A great thirst fell upon them. We cannot be free, said the animals, until the tyrant is vanquished. In desperation they approached the king of the jungle, the lion, but he could not be bothered to leave the shade or disturb his nap. Only a pair of lionesses, who had been listening nearby, were moved to pity, and they agreed to see what could be done about the terrible crocodile.

  “The two beautiful lionesses, who happened to be mother and cub, went down to the river to spy upon the monster as he dozed in the mud. A hundred daggers stood in his jagged mouth, and scaly bark, thicker than that of a monkeybread tree, covered him in armor. If those defenses were not dangerous enough, he had a tail most formidable that could knock a gnu off its feet. A dry throat overcame the daughter, and she dared take a sip. At once, the crocodile stirred from its slumber and like a flash was at her nose, the water white and churning with his fury. Just in time, she jumped away, roaring in surprise. Off they went back into the bush to discuss their strategy. He is too fast, said the mama. And too hungry, said the baby. Maman said then we shall fatten him until he becomes lazy and slow.

  “So they took a share of all they hunted down to the river. Wild pigs and antelope, and he grew bigger still. And then they had the monkeys gather mushmelons and yams by the score and cook them up with spices, and the crocodile loved their recipes and ate and ate. Now bloated like a thundercloud, he slept all but one hour of the day and then rose only to eat some more. He grew so big that his belly dragged on the bottom of the river and his petite legs and feet could not touch the ground, and still they fed him, those lionesses, more and more till he was just like a fat log idly floating on the surface. He no longer had the speed to catch so much as a turtle, and then they had him. The mama jumped on his back, but he could not even turn his head, he was so fat, and she sank her teeth into his snout and clamped shut his great jaws, and the daughter seized his formidable tail, which he could not so much as swish, he was so lazy, and stilled it with her great paws, and the old crocodile, he thought gallant thoughts, but he was no match, and so, phtt!, the end of him. When they heard the news, the animals danced in jubilee, for they were now free to come to the river whenever they pleased.”

  The tale, written across her face, disappeared into the hair at the base of her skull, and the old man had to search a moment to pick up the narrative at its proper place, circling the woman as the words wound around her neck.

  “This is the first story I can remember. My mother’s face appears before me when I tell it, for I heard it first at her knee, and my mother had learned the tale as a girl in Africa, before she had been stolen and transported to Senegal and sold into slavery and shipped to the new world. She was a girl herself, aboard a ship of 150 Africans, that landed first in Habana to unload half and then in Saint-Domingue to discharge the rest. So many stories my mother told, and the songs of the Bambara people were on her lips day and night whenever the Buckra folk were not around. She was a household servant …”

  He turned to the woman. “Do you wish me to say slave?”

  “This or that,” Marie answered. “In those days, we called ourselves servants, though in truth we were common property with no more rights than a barnyard hen and often not treated any better.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “Yes, slave is the bon mot.”

  “And the Buckra? Comment est-ce qu’on dit en français?”

  “The Frenchmen,” she said and turned her face so that I might feel the brunt of her stare. “The whites.”

  “She was a domestic slave on the plantation of Monsieur Delhomme in Saint-Domingue, and my papa was a slave in the sugarcane fields, and he fathered me and my younger sister Louisa, though for the youngest, Claire, who knows, perhaps my papa or perhaps Monsieur Delhomme, impossible to say, though even as a baby, Claire looked lighter than the rest. Makes no difference, I suppose. The master never claimed her as his own, and my papa never treated her as anything but his. Madame Delhomme may have suspected that her husband had something to do with the pickaninny, though truth be told, when you are young the attitude of adults is difficult to measure, being so subtle, especially for a girl like me whom every adult, black or white, mystified. Their moods changed as quickly as the late summer sky, bright to cloud-dark, in a trice, and best to be neither foul nor fair yourself, but on constant alert.

  “Madame had few opportunities to come in contact with Claire or Louisa, for they had no natural place in the household, while I was constantly there as the companion to the Delhommes’ baby child, a girl named Anna about my age, or a year or so on either side. In all the world, she was my only friend, and I hers. For eleven years, we grew up together, playing, sometimes eating the same meals, even bathing together, and sharing a bed on the nights when she could not bear to part with me and would beg her mother so. Under the netting, she read me fairy tales and Bible stories, and while we were alone the many years, she taught me how to read for myself, though servants were not supposed to know, but we had our school behind the privy or hidden among the canes as they grew, and it was in the dust of Saint-Domingue where I first wrote my own name and more. Anna loved me more than the little dog who followed us around everywhere, and she dressed me and held my hand and nursed me whenever I fell ill. She treated me like a poupée—”

  “Doll,” said Marie. “Though sometimes like a confidante, too, but as we grew older she came to realize that I was hers to do with what she pleased.”

  The baby in the magazine rack fussed in his sleep and then fell back into dreamland. Finding his place on Marie’s naked left shoulder, the old man resumed his translation.

  “She treated me like her doll, and I was blissfully unaware, as most children are, that things could or should be otherwise. This is the way of the world. All of that changed suddenly when Monsieur Delhomme fell ill to the fever and died in the sugarcane fields and was gone from this world without notice. He was a good man and treated us most kindly, and the slaves of the plantation mourned him not only out of duty but with some genuine affection. My mama cried all afternoon, and even my papa shed a tear, though perhaps, in hindsight, not only out of grief but with the knowledge of the change to come. Sure enough, the ranger—who is that?”

  “Like the
overseer,” she said, “but a slave. A slave above the slaves.”

  “The ranger came to our house not one month later with the news that Madame Delhomme, now the widow, was to sell the property and return to France, for she was dearly homesick and felt also that her little Anna had missed all proper society by living in the new world. I ran straight to the big house. Anna had heard that we, too, were to be sold. Can you not take me with you to France? I cried to her, and she cried that she could not, and it was like to break our hearts, and when we parted I sobbed myself to sleep and thought life would be best to end right there. I cannot forget my mother’s face that night at supper when she told us that we would be taken to auction in Port-au-Prince, to go to the man willing to pay the highest price, and that God willing we should not be parted, but parted we were. The auction took place in the town square. My papa went first, sold to another sugar farmer, and though I was shocked to see him go, I did not really know the man all that well for he was rarely at home. And then my mama and her three girls went on market. Louisa and Claire were still young enough that the man who purchased my mother took all three as a lot, but I was made to bare myself and be pinched and prodded by several Buckra men who kept shouting numbers, until at last a price of many sols was reached, and suddenly I was handed over to a fat man in a white suit with a waistcoat colored apricot. He asked, How old is this negress? Fifteen, the auctioneer said, perhaps seventeen years.

  “Fourteen, I said to the man, who seemed to be glowing in the bright sunshine. I am fourteen years old. Just as I spoke those words, I saw my mother and two sisters being led away by their new master, and I broke free, running to them, anxious not to be parted. My mother wailed when I embraced her and she hugged me to her breast. Please don’t beat her, she said to the auctioneer. Ma chérie, she cried, be a good girl. Do as you are told, and then the man pried me out of her arms, screaming in tears, and I did not ever see her again, though I can still picture the three of them walking away until all that remained were their bare footprints in the dust, and then I felt the hand of the master fall upon my shoulder.

  “M. LaChance was his name, which made me smile against my will, and he said he was sorry to have only enough money for one and asked if I had lived all my fourteen years in Saint-Domingue, and I answered, Oui. He asked if I had ever ridden on a boat, and I answered, Non. We climbed into a cabriolet and were whisked off to the docks, and when I began to weep once more, this strange round man patted me on the knee. He said, We shall have an adventure in that case, for we are bound for Orleans, and I asked if that meant we would be going to France, thinking that at least I should see Anna again, but he just laughed till his face turned red. No, M. LaChance said, New Orleans in Louisiana, and I burst into bitter tears at the cruel irony embedded in the very name of our destination.

  “The journey across the Gulf was a long one, and I traveled belowdecks with eight other blacks, slaves one and all. In the daytime, we were allowed to stand on the deck across the open waters, but once we neared the port at the mouth of the Mississippi, the mosquitos would like to assassinate a body with their bites and they showed no pity upon any breathing thing. Clouds of gnats, too, would swarm and some flew into my mouth and nose and lodged themselves in the corners of my eyes. I was relieved to be off the ship. Waylaid in the country of the Tchactas, we disembarked in an Indian village, and the chief there dressed just like a Frenchman and spoke the language of the traders, as do many other tribes along the river. In the chief’s cabin, a white man from faraway Canada looked stricken when he first joined eyes with mine. He could not stop from looking at me. He was the biggest and tallest man I ever did see, with a red beard that made his face look afire, and I heard him offer M. LaChance a good price if he could buy me and make me his bride. Had not the master thought the whole matter a mere peccadillo, I may have had a different history, but he just laughed at the Cajun, and we moved on in the morning and reached Nouvelle Orleans in a week’s time.”

  The old man stopped abruptly, for the last phrase had been written along the length of the little finger on her left hand and the chapter ended in midair. He had to locate the beginning of the next part of her story and so began to delicately search along her skin for the proper place. Perhaps by accident, he stepped too close and lost his balance, and reaching out to break his fall, his hand landed squarely upon her breast. “Pardonnez-moi,” he said, but she just chuckled softly and replied, “Je connais la chanson.” He withdrew his hand and resumed his investigation by sight.

  Outside the small window, something thumped and fluttered against the glass, and when I lifted back the curtain, I saw an enormous pale green moth struggling to reach the light inside the bathroom. A dozen little ones were pasted on the screen. Beyond them the late-night shadows revealed nothing. All of the houses in the neighborhood stood dark and silent as a mountain range, their occupants asleep in their comfy beds. I envied them their peace and dreams, and for the first time since my head had been struck and I had fallen, I wondered if I, too, were not merely sleeping in my bed next to my beloved and the whole night some hallucination brought on by a lunchtime burrito. The old man, Marie, Alice, Jane, Dolly, the baby at our feet, all mere players in some elaborate dream. Perhaps even the bicycles on the lawn, the entire June day stretching into this bizarre night. To check, I pinched my thigh, as one is always told to do, but the sharp pain was real enough.

  “Voilà!” the old man exclaimed. The story continued across her clavicle and next ran down the length of her right arm.

  “We arrived in the biggest city in all of Louisiana on the 8th of December, 1768. Some folk in the old part of town followed the Lyonese custom of celebrating la Fête de la Lumière, for on the windowsills of their houses burned candles in colored glass jars, a magical sight, like stars glowing red and yellow and blue. It was like walking in a rainbow at midnight. On the corner of a pretty little street stood the house, two storeys high, with an iron rail fence running the width of a mezzanine, and facing the street, a black walnut door opened to a front parlor. He lit a candle and placed it in my hand. The flame danced like a phantom in the darkness. No one greeted us, perhaps because of the lateness of the hour and our unpredictable arrival date, but the quiet inside unsettled me. M. LaChance had told me all about his family and the domestic situation during our long travels from the island, and I had hoped for some greeting other than this ghostly absence. Instead, the Master whispered a good night and pointed with his walking stick to a room beyond the kitchen. You will find Hachard down there, dead asleep, he said, but you rouse her and she will show you to your bed. We will get to work in the morning. With that, he toddled toward the staircase. With each step, the floorboards creaked and groaned beneath his prodigious corpulence.

  “Is that you, my angel? Hachard asked when I entered the tiny room and shook her from her slumber. No, it is me, Marie, the new girl the Master has brought back from Saint-Domingue. She stepped into the candlelight, close enough for me to see the gray in her hair and the dark circles around her eyes. Four of her front teeth had escaped from her mouth, and the wind whistled in her words. Confusion danced in her gaze, but at last she figured out just who I was. I have been waiting for you, she said, but you are just a young girl. Old enough to marry, I said, old enough to care for myself. Hachard laughed at my audacity, revealing more empty spaces at the back of her mouth. We shall see, but first some rest after your long journey. Taking the candle in her claws, she guided me to a cot at the foot of her bed, and I fell into the blankets without undressing. I was nearly asleep when I heard her disembodied voice rise in the darkness. Do you know how to cook? Oui, I answered. We shall see, we shall see.

  “In the morning, we rose and dressed before the dawn, and I met the rest of the family LaChance. The mistress of the house, Madame Dominique, proved the opposite of her husband in every respect. Where he was fat and jolly, she was thin and dour. Where he favored white linen and played the fop, she dressed in black. Revêche. But perhaps all the children
made her so, for though she could not have been but thirty, she had squeezed out six, the oldest a boy two years younger than me, and the youngest but a baby. One and all they were round like their father, little balls of dough.”

  Dolly laughed. “The Roly-polies.”

  “Your description,” said Jane, “reminds me of a Botero painting. The fat man and his six little dumplings.”

  Marie watched the old man, making sure that his wandering eye stayed fixed upon her right forearm. “Of course! I had not thought of Botero before, but the children and their father could have stepped right out of his canvas. Plump pullets, but good dears when they were young and had been fed.”

  This time the old man had kept a finger on the spot, and when their colloquy had ended, he was able to resume without further pause.

  “My job was to be a nanny to the children and to apprentice to Hachard in the housekeeping. She had been in service to the family from the childhood of M. LaChance and was now an old woman near fifty and could not move about as quickly for the pain in her joints and a stiffness in her hands and feet that left her fingers and toes twisted and gnarled. The Mistress insisted that Hachard continue to cook the meals, but every other household chore fell upon me—the cleaning, the slops, sweeping, washing, and serving the dishes, and besides all that, to help look after the little ones. That duty was my easiest burden. Lazy creatures on even the finest days, they barely moved when the rainy season arrived, and come July and August, in the oppressive heat, they lounged behind the heavy draperies, reading their books or quietly playing cards or other games of chance. The two little girls had their dollies, and the boys would sometimes chase each other with wooden swords, but mostly they ate and slept and did their lessons with an old white woman who came to the house. The babies napped in the shank of the afternoon up until they were five or six years. But the mere presence of the children was a blessing, for they reminded me of my own Anna and my sisters and thus relieved in small measure the anguish in my soul.