Centuries of June

by Keith Donohue

  “If the amount stunned her, Hachard betrayed no emotion, though of course I knew it well beyond her speculations. She simply bowed and removed more dishes from the table, wiping her nose on the shoulder of her dress. Curious and emboldened, I approached the Master and asked what price was upon me. You are but a kitten. He eyed me from head to toe. Shall we say 350 piastres? That’s less than I paid for you in Port-au-Prince. I could do little more than nod, but the sum might as well have been ten times as much, for I had never heard of anything to cost as much as freedom. Back in our room, Hachard and I cried together. Such a fine Christmas.

  “What else can you do when life sets such obstacles before you other than to persevere and rely upon God’s will and your own wits? Hachard at least had the reassurance of her man and the secret knowledge that he toiled on her behalf. I had no one in the world but my own self. I bent to my work. There was enough to do raising six children, running the household, and squeezing every recipe from Hachard.

  “Once he had shown the French and Creoles and Acadians the iron will of Spain, Governor O’Reilly departed the next February, and another Spaniard took his place. No matter. The codes had been reformed, and we were not to go back to the old ways. I had my contract for manumission tucked beneath my mattress, and on free days, took the wash of some less fortunate households to the laundry along with the LaChances’, and by the end of one year, I had five piastres to my name. Since she could hire herself to cook every night she managed, Hachard fared much better and made triple my wages. More and more she brought me into the kitchen as she had promised and showed me her techniques, those acquired over long years at a hot stove, but also a touch of Cuba in some dishes, for she picked up recipes from the Habanans who now resided in New Orleans. Very hot, with lots of cayenne and other peppers, and M. LaChance loved the new flavors. The hotter the better, and when the summer came and the sun bore down in July and August, he thrived on some smoke on his tongue. His favorite dish was écrevisse épicée …”

  Loudly clearing his throat, the old man paused. “Spicy, n’est pas? But I don’t know what is écrevisse.”

  Marie lifted her foot and stomped on the handle of the frying pan that had been lying facedown on the floor since falling from the ceiling. In one motion too quick for the eye, the skillet flipped over, and inside dozens of spiced crayfish sizzled and popped.

  “Crawdaddies!” Jane exclaimed. “I’m starving.” She reached into the pan and pulled out a crayfish, twisted and peeled back the shell with the nail of her thumb, and gobbled it down to the tail in two bites. “Oh, she is a good cook. Help yourself, girls.”

  Dolly dug in, and soon the two of them were hooting with joy over the delicious explosions in their mouths. Off to the side, Alice demurred. “I’m nursing, and I wouldn’t want to give the little boy a tummyache.” Her friends continued eating without care. “Oh, what the hell,” Alice said. “Maybe just one.” Taking two bright red crayfish, she gave one to me, and it tasted of sweetness and fire.

  Still on his knees, the old man ignored our gluttony. He read on.

  • • •

  “Every other day, I would cook for him and thus became so skilled that no one could tell the difference between my pot and Hachard’s. Just as well, for in seven years—about the time of the Americans’ revolt against the English king—Hachard had earned enough to execute her contract. Of course, I had known for a long time that her savings had grown, but the day came when she showed me the money, the last piastres earned for a midsummer banquet, and the finality seemed sudden. Tomorrow, she said, I will go to the Master. Listen to me, tomorrow he will no longer be Master, just M. Foiegras. We laughed a little, but the melancholy swept over me like a late summer storm. Hachard had been a mother to me ever since my own mother and sisters were so violently taken away, and my emotions mixed the two events till I was fourteen again and alone on the docks of Saint-Domingue. Yet I was happy for her as well, for she had endured a long servitude and could now rest her bones and find some ease from care. With her thumb, she wiped the tears from my face. Ma chérie, she said, do not cry. We shall always be friends, and I will visit as long as the Goose and his wife allow. We will not be far. The Big Fella has a place near Pointe Coupée, and you will go now to the dances in the square on Sundays and meet us there. Look at you, all grown into a woman. Time for a little love, shake your tail feathers, and let the good times roll. And you will have your freedom yet. Who knows, maybe the Big Fella and I will get rich, and then we can buy you from the old Goose.

  “Promises made in passion are the most difficult to keep. After she left, Hachard became a stranger, though I missed her as much as my own mother. We met maybe five times that first year, four the second, two the third, and then not at all. A bend in the river separated us but it may as well have been an ocean. We did not see each other for years. A few months after the Good Friday fire in ’88, when it seemed like all of New Orleans burned, I brought little Clothide with me to the Perseverance Benevolent and Mutual Aid Society, for all of my money had gone up in flames, and there was Hachard, old and gray and sunken into herself. Like a dying tree, but a few lonesome leaves. She wept when I kissed her.

  “Maman Hachard, I asked, what has happened to you? The spark had left her eyes. Even the child in my arms failed to interest her. I have nothing, she croaked, not a tooth in her mouth. Not one peso. All gone. Nothing to be done. Setting the baby on the bench next to her, I fetched a scupper of water. Drink, maman, your lips are cracked from thirst and it is hot enough to fry the Devil.”

  As he had reached the tip of her toes, the old man stood and circled around Marie, finding the continuation at her shoulder blades, the words running like stripes across her back. The other women had finished their crayfish, and in the sink, the shells sparkled like mother-of-pearl. In his basket, the baby quietly snored. Outside the window, the cypress trees dripped with Spanish moss, and from the swamps, the alligators bellowed.

  “Once she had managed to swallow a few mouthfuls of water, Hachard related the events since leaving the family LaChance. I knew, of course, that she had married the Big Fella and they had gone to live among the maroons in Pointe Coupée, but I had not heard of their troubles there. He had broken down early on, the victim of too many years toiling on the docks and too much rum and sugar. All my life, she said, I’ve been taking care of someone. First my own papa, and then thirty-odd years for the old Goose and his children, and then ten years nursing the Big Fella, watching him shrivel like a cornstalk and die. No one would have me, and I had so little left. I went to my friends in the Tremé, and cooked the once awhile for Mr. Puckett, she said. My anger got the better of me. The Tremé? You were back here in Orleans and you never came to see me once? I was ashamed, Hachard said. And then I took ill myself and bound for heaven, and my friends were burned out like everyone else, and here I am, seeking charity. Oh, what shall happen to me? She grabbed my hands. Do you think LaChance would have me back? I shook my head. There are three of us, now, and the baby. For the first time, she seemed aware of Clothide beside her. Whose is this child? I pointed to my heart. And who is the father, surely not the old Goose? I bowed my head, Non. Do you remember little Georges? Phtt, he is just a young lad. No, maman, he is all grown up and full of what every man is full of. He had a little dog that followed him everywhere, and one night I heard the barking outside my door and knew it was Georges and why he had come, and I tried to say no, but he insisted himself upon me. More than once. And I thought, okay, perhaps he will keep me in plaçage like some other black women are kept by the whites, but no. Came to it that I heard that yip-yap and I just wanted to die. Georges is as fat and white as buttermilk, and when the baby came, his mother chased him out of the house with a broom. He’s up in Baton Rouge, carrying on with some Cajun girl knows no better. But he left the little dog behind, and I’d like to kick it every time I pass by. Left his baby behind, too.

  “She slid her hand and petted the baby’s hair. What brings you to this place,
Marie? The fire, I told her, same as you. The whole house burned, even my room and my money hidden under the same mattress you slept on. Deep sadness skittered across her features. What has become of the household? We have moved till the place can be rebuilt, but nothing can be done about my three hundred Spanish dollars, enough almost to buy my contract. Without warning, Hachard closed her eyes and kept them shut so long that I worried she might have fallen asleep or the Good Lord come in like a thief and steal her soul. When I touched her hand, she like to jump out of her skin. Don’t do that to a body, she said. I was cogitating and you frightened me. Bending closely so that her words fit in my ear alone, she whispered, Do you ever go to la Conga in the square a Sunday evening? I laughed and nodded toward the sleeping baby. I go nowhere now, but there was a time when a young man fancied me and we danced the bamboula to hear the drums and the contredanse to show the whites how it is done, and oh, the eau-de-vie. You are not the only one who has a wild side, but alas, he was Cuban and back to Habana he did go, such a beautiful boy. Have you, Hachard asked, ever danced the Vaudoux? For years I had heard about the secret dance and the magic gained by all who dared the initiation, but I never risked go myself. Some scheme lay behind her question, her voice betrayed her, and though I knew not what she had in mind, I supposed my best course was to encourage her. No, I have not, but I should like to learn. That’s good, very good, she said, for there your prayers will be answered. You shall either have your money or your freedom; we will ask the King and Queen what to do. With her gnarled hands, Hachard stroked Clothide’s hair as she slept. And perhaps, you will say a prayer for me, too, not so?

  “On a hot night in June, I left the baby with a neighbor and found Hachard by the Place Conga and together we went to a darker part of town where an empty stables stood and no eyes could profane the holy ceremony. Two women bound me in strips of purple cloth and put sandals on my feet, and I entered the cell with twenty others, men and women both. At the end of the room stood the King and Queen at the altar of the snake. Do you believe, said the King, in the power of the Vaudoux? He tapped the cage with the end of a stick and the snake slithered to the other side. Will you keep secret its most sacred magic? At each question, the assembled shouted Yes to these and to many more tests of faith. The crowd was made to bow before the snake and a fire was lit, and the Queen, she walked right through the flames without burning, and other marvelous feats were performed in the name of the Vaudoux. Now, I was raised a good Christian by the nuns in Saint-Domingue, but even so, such wonders cannot be explained away. When the show ended, the petitioners separated and waited patiently in two lines to confer with the King and Queen, as children will queue to speak to their mama or papa. And their wants were as ordinary as children’s.

  “Ask the Vaudoux, one young woman said, if my man be stepping out on me, and if he be, may his own snake fall off between his legs. An old man asked for three more years of life so that he might outlive his younger brother. A third person wished to be made more beautiful in the eyes of her beloved, for he finds her too plain to marry. Others asked for to be cured of their ailments, and others still wished ailments upon their enemies. When my turn came to speak to the King, I was afraid. He was no Domingue man, but out of Africa, a Kongo man, back broad as a bull and a chest wide and deep, out of which boomed his voice, even when he spoke softly, asking, What can the snake do for you, daughter? I told him my tale of transport to Louisiana in service of the fat M. LaChance and his six chubby children. And the contract of manumission, the fire that ate my money, and my ill treatment by the son Georges. Even the story of the pet dog who is a constant reminder of my shame, and the King let out a yip-yap, just like Georges’s monster, and I was convinced the King knew already of my sorrows. You must take the oath, he said, are you ready? I was ready to hope in something more than what had seen me through so far, and I nodded. The King framed my face in his huge hands. Daughter, feed the master corn boiled with fat, and fry his meat and fish in mounds of butter. Sneak more andouille into the gumbo and backfat bacon for his breakfast. Make cakes and have him wash them down with ale and cider. At every meal, serve the lagniappe, the unexpected treat, but make sure it is rich or fat or clotted. Stuff the old goose and you will win your freedom. I will give you a sign of the power of Vaudoux this very night. Against my better sense, I said amen.

  “As soon as the last petitioner finished, the King and Queen became very agitated. He took the snake from the altar and set the cage on the ground, and the grand lady who is the Vaudoux Queen stepped up on top of the cage and made to act as if the snake itself had climbed into her, and she began to speak in a strange language I never heard here in Orleans or Saint-Domingue or anywhere on earth. She pointed her finger at me and bade me come to her.

  “The King, he drew a circle with a lump of charcoal and motioned for me to stand inside and wear around my neck a small gunnysack decorated with hair and horns. Upon my head, he struck a stick and chanted another singsong in words of the Kongo, and all the people there echoed back to them, and then I was told to dance, and thus I did, slowly at first, but then some mood or spirit came into me. I felt the weight of all my troubles drag me to the earth and I must push and pull myself out of it, and then I was moving all in a frenzy and everyone in that stables was dancing around me in that circle, urging me to stay inside. Not sure at all what possessed me, not aware in the least of how my body moved. Faster than the bamboula, driven by a drum only I could hear, I felt so completely free. Soaked in perspiration, my lungs heaving like a bellows, I collapsed in the euphoria. The Queen and one of her acolytes helped me to my knees. Dipping her thumb into the liquid at the bottom of a wooden bowl, she then laid her print across my lips. With this seal of blood, she said, you are sworn to keep the secrets of the Vaudoux. And then it was over, and everyone dispersed like taking leave from Sunday church, the King and Queen disappeared, and every dancer. I was alone with Hachard, who hung upon my arm, still panting from exertion. I feel better already, she said. Good to loosen the old bones.

  “Monday morning at the new house, the Mistress cried out for me first thing. On the foot of her bed, the yippy dog lay stiff and cold as February. Take this wretched creature from me, she said, quivering in her nightgown. Light raced through the window and the thin fabric of her clothes. I had not thought in some time what a scarecrow she was, and how she was becoming a bundle of twigs. Gathering the poor dog in my apron, I took it outside and dumped the body in the alley, reminding myself to ask some young boy to fetch the thing to the refuse heap or toss it over the levee into the Mississippi. No satisfaction filled my soul that morning, for I shook in dread over the power of the dark custom.

  “Into the breakfast skillet, I dropped another egg to make a half dozen and another spoon of butter for the Master, and he never noticed but ate every bite and complimented me afterward. Thus commenced the stuffing of the Old Goose. Gumbo ya-ya a-swim in fat, and more fat in the roux. Jambalaya thick with hock and sausages. Étouffé brightened with the extra yellow fat of the crayfish. Cassoulet, maque choux easy on the vegetables and heavy on the bacon, sweetbreads and tripe, potato dumplings taught to me by Frau Morgenschweis on the Rue Charles. Meatpies and fruitpies, beignets de carnaval any time of the year. At the market, I would lay in a supply of beer and ale, and just as the King ordered, with every meal the lagniappe, which M. LaChance came to favor and anticipate as a dog longs for the meatbone or the children their sweeties. Oh, I fed him those, too, the pralines and toffees till his teeth ached. I shoveled the food into that man, but he just got fatter and fatter as the years lurched by. Let me tell you, he popped the buttons off his breeches more than once after Marie’s dinners, ya, yet still I slaved. Not that I said nothing about the money. I begged him to show mercy if not for me then for my daughter, but he was steadfast as to the terms of our contract, though in truth, I think he kept me for his voracious appetite and would never let me go.

  “Seven years passed this way. Clothide grew into a girl, and the Master gre
w into a prize hog. He even got the gout, but on he ate, hollering about his foot as he stuffed his mouth with a mess of alligator tail seasoned and slick with butter sauce. And though I went to the Vaudoux and danced with the snake King and Queen, nothing ever changed. There were times of waiting when I felt I could not go on, yet I went on.

  “And then it happened, just like in a fairy tale. All of the children had long left the house, and the Master and Mistress dined alone, she living on red beans and rice, he facing a table crammed with bowls and dishes. Just an ordinary crust of bread caught between two fingers, his mouth open to receive the morsel, when the Vaudoux struck. The heel slipped from M. LaChance’s grasp. His other hand shot to his chest in panic over the vise pressing his heart. Like a big snake squeezing and squeezing. The pressure. His pale skin flushed claret, and his lips quivered as if to say something—adieu, perhaps, and then he died before his face hit the plate. He was too fat for the household slaves to lift, and we had to call in three more men just to lay him out in the parlor, a hearse with an extra pair of horses to pull him away, and God knows how heavy the stone to stop his corpse from sinking into the swampy ground of New Orleans.”