Sandra Hill - [Creole]

by Sweeter Savage Love

“Well, I know the way,” Ellen declared, fingertips pressed to her lips in pensive concentration. “Harriet and I will both go. We can travel by pirogue to Morgan City with one of the field hands. That’s one of the stops for the steamboat Etienne and Cain are taking from New Orleans. I know some back ways that will save time. That way, Harriet can warn them and I can meet with the church officials in Houston.” She beamed at everyone.

  “No, it’s too dangerous,” Abel said. “Besides, Etienne knows what he’s doing.”

  “It’s my choice,” Harriet asserted. “You can’t stop me.”

  “Well, at least it’s a plan,” Blossom said. “Of course, you gotta take Saralee with you.”

  “Absolutely not,” Harriet said. “She stays here.”

  “Nosirree. How’m I gonna protect her when these bad mens come searchin’ fer Etienne’s baby girl? Doan be tellin’ me they wouldn’t try to take her to use against ’im.”

  “She could go with Simone and Abel,” Harriet offered.

  “And live in a fancy house?” Simone asked, arching a brow cynically. “I may be a madam, but even I have standards.”

  “A fan-fancy house?” Ellen sputtered, realizing for the first time that Simone owned a brothel.

  “Well, send her to California to be with her grandparents,” Harriet advised.

  “No time,” Abel concluded.

  “Oh, blessed Lord, I’m surrounded by harlots and fornicators, and a woman book-writer who publishes works about harlotry and fornication,” Ellen continued, fixing on the most irrelevant parts of their conversation.

  “Well, that settles it,” Blossom said, whisking her hands together with satisfaction. “That’s the plan then. You all goin’ to Texas to bring that rogue back here, safe and sound.”

  “I’m not goin’ anywhere without my dawg,” Saralee said from the floor, where she was hugging the big lump of fur.

  “Now, Saralee,” Harriet began.

  “Uh-uh,” the little girl said, picking up the dog, which probably weighed as much as she did, its four legs hanging limply with resignation. She backed away from the table defensively.

  “I ain’t carin’ for no dawgs,” Blossom said. “No sirree.”

  “Besides,” Saralee added, “Lance will be a good guard dog for us on the trip.”

  Everyone looked at Lance, who had escaped Saralee’s grasp and now perked up one ear. It immediately fell back down.

  “Bet he could chase gators away. And bad men.”

  Lance rolled his big, sad eyes and let loose with a measly “Woof!” which probably was short for, “People! They must have kibbles for brains.”

  “First things first,” Harriet said. “I’m gonna need a gun.”

  Everybody, including Saralee, groaned, and Lance put his face between both front paws and tried to hide under the table.

  For just one second, Harriet wondered if Etienne would appreciate their help when she and Ellen and Saralee and Lance came charging down on him like the calvary to the rescue.

  He’ll probably be really thankful, she told herself.

  Yeah, right.

  Chapter Nineteen

  There was one important thing Harriet needed to do before she left Bayou Noir…perhaps never to return. Write a letter.

  She followed Blossom out onto the front gallery after dinner that evening and badgered the old woman into disclosing a few family secrets. During the informative chat, Harriet learned about Etienne’s relationship with his father, James Baptiste, a wealthy rancher in the Sacramento Valley in California.

  Finally, some crucial missing pieces fell into place in the puzzle that was Etienne Baptiste. Finally, Harriet understood the pain that consumed the man she loved. Yep, her beloved blockhead was a chip off the old blockhead. Apparently they both carried the same stubborn-to-the-point-of-stupidity chromosome.

  Etienne’s father had repudiated him almost ten years before when he’d left Oxford to fight in the Civil War. Due to the nature of his work, Etienne had been unable to divulge the fact that he was a double agent or explain away the Rebel uniform he’d worn at the time. Since then, the misunderstandings had snowballed.

  His father had eventually found out about his service to the Union and his horrible imprisonment. Stricken, he’d tried to make amends, but by then Etienne had dug in his heels and refused any contact with his father. Furthermore, Etienne had forbidden anyone to talk about his father with him…not Blossom, Cain or Abel. James, equally bullheaded, forbade anyone to talk to him about his son, as well…not Selene, Iris, Rufus, Reba, or Cain and Abel on their infrequent visits.

  And, of course, since Etienne himself had only acknowledged Saralee’s paternity recently, his father knew nothing of her existence. No one would have dared reveal the secret child’s existence until Etienne accepted her himself.

  “Yer gonna write a letter to Etienne’s papa?” Blossom asked with horror, jolting Harriet from her contemplation.

  “Either James or Selene.”

  “Oh, Lordy!” Blossom exclaimed, dropping down into her porch rocker with a whoosh. “Etienne’s gonna explode. He won’t even read all them letters up in his room what come from Mam’zelle Selene. He made me swear a Bible oath one time not to ever tell his papa about his miseries.”

  “Well, I didn’t make any promises.”

  Blossom slanted her a sidelong grin. “Thass true. But, honey, the boy hardened his heart agin’ his papa fer so long, I figger it’s gonna take a hammer ’n chisel to break ’im down now.”

  “How about a pen and paper?”

  “Mebbe so, mebbe so,” Blossom said. As she shuffled off to get those supplies, she added, “I’m gonna pray to God to help you. Um-hm, thass what I’ll do. Dear Lord, please doan let Etienne kill Mam’zelle Harriet fer meddlin’ in his affairs.”

  Blossom had a really comforting manner about her.

  Now Harriet sat tapping her fingers on the desk in the overseer’s cottage. Should she write to Selene or James?

  Finally, she began to write.

  Dear Selene:

  My name is Dr. Harriet Ginoza. We’ve never met, but perhaps you’ve heard of me. I know I’ve heard of you.

  You and I have something in common. Let’s just say that you will know what I mean when I mention Domino’s Pizza, Kevin Costner, Wonderbras, Bloomingdale’s, Brad Pitt, the O. J. Simpson trial, jogging, and dumb-men jokes.

  Actually, we have two things in common. We share a love for a stubborn, male chauvinist pig of an adorable rogue…Etienne Baptiste. (I’ll bet you were nervous there for minute, thinking I meant your husband ).

  Selene, I’m writing to you woman-to-woman, rather than to your husband, because sometimes men make such a muddle of things. It takes a woman to clean up the mess. If only men would let women run the country, do you think we’d have so many wars, or budget deficits, or football games…? Well, I’m getting off the track. They just need a little direction from us women.

  (By the way, do you know why it takes 400 million sperm to fertilize one egg? None of them wants to stop and ask for directions.) Forgive me for being flip. Chalk it up to nervousness.

  Back to the serious business at hand. Etienne needs his father. Oh, he hasn’t said so in so many words. But his body language…(Did you know I wrote a book on body language? Oops, I’m digressing again.)…his body language is one jumble of repressed rage engendered by years of self-recriminations. All his life he’s been trying to “earn” his father’s love. In his mind, he’s failed miserably. Over and over. Do you think his father has a perfection complex?

  Perhaps you won’t understand this, Selene. Having a perfect body and face in a society that treasures those assets, you’ve never felt inadequate. But believe me, as a psychologist, I see our whole nineties culture suffering from the perfection syndrome. I’m not sure where this idea came from. Perhaps the Christian idea of original sin. Teachers who emphasize pupils’ faults. Parents who want their children to fulfill their own unrealized dreams. Movies and ads that h
old up impossible expectations for the human form. Athletics that emphasize winning is everything.

  Etienne tells me that I lecture too much. As you can see, he’s probably right.

  The bottom line here is that Etienne loves his father and misses him terribly. He’s placed himself in a very dangerous situation in order to raise enough cash to restore Bayou Noir plantation. Even now, he’s off on a mission that might spell his death…as well as Cain’s, I might add. Tell that to his mother, Iris. It doesn’t hurt to get another woman involved here. Oh, and tell her that Abel got a cat-hauling from some group called the Swamp Angels, but he’s okay now. He went back to New Orleans with Simone, the woman he loves. You don’t need to tell her what Simone does for a living; suffice it to say, she’s in the same profession as Xaviera Hollander.

  There’s one more thing, Selene. Are you sitting down? Etienne has a daughter. Her name is Saralee (yeah, like the bakery). She’s the most adorable seven-year-old girl. A miniature blue-eyed version of Etienne.

  Don’t be mad at Etienne for not telling you about Saralee. He didn’t acknowledge her himself until a few days ago. Did I mention before how stubborn he is?

  I’m not sure what I hope to accomplish with this letter. A miracle, maybe. But then, I consider my trip to this time and place a miracle; so who knows?

  The one thing I am sure of is that there are no “do-overs” in real life. So we need to give ourselves permission to make mistakes…to be less than perfect…and move on from there. After all these years as a psychologist I’ve learned a simple truth: Love, whether between parent and child, or man and woman, is nothing without forgiveness. Real love is seeing faults and loving the person unconditionally.

  Unlike you, Selene, I will not be staying in the past. Once I “rescue” Etienne, God willing, I must go home. I’m hoping…no, I’m praying…that Etienne’s father will be here for him when I’m gone.

  With deepest regards,

  Harriet

  Harriet wept as she sealed the envelope and left it for Blossom to mail on the first mail packet headed west.

  It was over then. Another goal reached. Another door closed.

  Who would have thought that a dog could get seasick? In a rowboat? But poor Lance had been puking his guts out over the side of the bateau for two straight days.

  When he wasn’t hotdogging after every female hound in every homestead along the endless bayou streams, that was. It turned out that Lance was a lech, and that there were a few doggie testosterones still alive and kicking in his old body. Amazingly, the women dogs loved him.

  Now, they were finally approaching Morgan City, having made good time. And Harriet had to admit to a thrill of excitement. Despite all the dangers and inconveniences of her time-travel odyssey, she’d discovered that she was enjoying the adventure. That could be dangerous.

  She smoothed out the wrinkles in her pink gown and breathed deeply, in and out. She couldn’t control the butterflies that danced in her stomach in anticipation. She’d be seeing Etienne again soon. She hoped he would be as happy as she over their reunion.

  “There it is,” Ellen said now, pointing to the small, bustling town they were approaching. The schoolteacher sat stiff-backed in front of Harriet in the boat, wearing her usual white, long-sleeved, high-necked blouse with a dark blue, ankle-length skirt and sensible leather boots. Her ebony hair was pulled into a neat bun at her nape. She, like all of them, wore a wide-brimmed straw hat as protection against the sun’s rays. Ellen had been a godsend.

  As they came in on Bayou Chene, they found themselves surrounded by a number of pirogues carrying Cajun families to town for visits and shopping. Two flatboats piled high with hogsheads of sugar from nearby plantations followed them, steered by workers wielding long poles in the sluggish water.

  Saralee took great joy in waving shyly to the passing vessels. She looked precious in a green calico gown Blossom had miraculously whipped out for her just before their departure.

  “How’s Lance doing?” Harriet asked when the girl peeked under the lid of the large wicker carrying basket on the floor of their boat. Abel and Simone had told them, before leaving for New Orleans, that most steamboats wouldn’t allow a pet in regular passenger areas. Thus, the doggie hotel.

  “He’s sleeping,” Saralee whispered, replacing the cover.

  “What else is new?” Harriet murmured. Lance was obviously all pooped out. Not that he didn’t sleep 90 percent of the time anyhow. He led a real dog’s life.

  Daniel, the black field hand accompanying them, rowed their boat over to the shore and tied it to a mooring, along with dozens of other similar craft. Then, on Harriet’s instructions, he went off to make inquiries about the steamship. There were at least five sitting out in the waters of the three channels that ran southward from the flat waterfront town toward the Gulf. With any luck, one of them would be the Southern Star, the one Etienne and Cain presumably still traveled on.

  Some of the steamships that came in from the Gulf would continue west to Houma, or north to Baton Rouge and eventually connect with the Mississippi en route to Missouri. Still others, like the one they sought, would backtrack out into the Gulf and follow the coastline, hitting the harbor towns, including Port Fourchon and Cocodrie and Galveston, Texas.

  “There it is, there it is!” Saralee cried. “Ooooh!”

  Harriet sighed too when she saw that the largest of the steamboats was, indeed, the Southern Star.

  “It looks like a frosted cake,” Saralee exclaimed, jumping up and down with excitement. Lance growled his displeasure at being disturbed.

  Saralee was right. The majestic four-story steamboat was a confection of glittering white with gingerbread trim. Each level and its encircling deck were stacked atop the other like progressively smaller layers on a cake. The crowning glory was the all-glass pilothouse on the top deck with its two candlelike chimneys.

  There was a scrambling of people coming and going down the gangplank. Passengers already crowded the decks. They were too many and too far away for her to make out if Etienne and Cain were up there. Roustabouts called out, “Make way, make way,” as they carried barrels up into the hold.

  A loud whistle shrieked through the air.

  “That’s the last signal for boarding,” Ellen said worriedly.

  “I’ll go get our tickets,” Harriet said and rushed over to the shipping office where Daniel was just turning toward her with dejection.

  “Ain’t no more tickets left,” he informed her. “They’s a band and minstrel show on this trip, and most folks booked their passages weeks ago.” As if to punctuate his words, the Josiah Gilbert Ethiopian Brass Band came marching by, high-stepping and strutting as they played an exuberant version of “Dixie.” The guard near the gangplank allowed them to pass up onto the boat.

  “We’ll see about that,” Harriet said and stormed up to the ticket agent. A few minutes later, a dejected Harriet returned. “No luck. He says we can get the next boat tomorrow, but of course that will do us no good.”

  “Mebbe I kin find a way,” Daniel said. “I’ll go talk to that deckhand over there.” He pointed to a black man who was rolling up a long loop of rope, preparatory to lifting anchor.

  “I’ll go, too,” Ellen offered.

  Left alone, Harriet and Saralee exchanged a glance of sad resignation. How could they have come so far and then failed?

  A group of gaudily dressed women brushed past them, chattering loudly. The one in the lead, a heavyset, blowsy woman with dyed red hair and big breasts practically falling out of a chartreuse bombazine gown, was exclaiming, “Where’s that Maxine? She was supposed to be here an hour ago. I swear, I’ll never take on another girl sight unseen.”

  “Who is she?” Harriet whispered to a young black woman, dressed more sedately, who trailed behind the group, carrying several satchels.

  The girl rolled her eyes. “Madam Irene. She’s openin’ a new house in Corpus Christi.”

  Harriet didn’t need to
ask what kind of house she meant.

  “The Palace of Pleasure,” the girl added.

  Yep!

  The whistle blew a final warning and the hookers headed toward the gangplank in a swish of garish, jewel-toned satins and ruffles and flounces. The engine of the massive steamship revved up with a roar.

  In a panic, Harriet sought frantically for some solution to her problem. And came up with only one.

  “Madam Irene,” Harriet called out.

  The woman stopped midwaddle and turned waspishly, “What?”

  “I’m…I’m Maxine.”

  “Huh?” Saralee said at her side.

  Harriet nudged her with an elbow to remain quiet.

  Madam Irene gave Harriet’s horrid pink gown a quick once-over of disgust. “Well, what you waitin’ for, girl? Get yer ass over here. You got a lot of explainin’ to do, but it’ll have to wait till we’re on board.”

  “Uh…well, there’s a problem,” Harriet stammered, picking up her briefcase and grabbing Saralee by the upper arm, dragging her forward with her. “You see, the reason why I was late is that I had to bring my daughter with me.”

  “Daughter?” Saralee squeaked.

  “Oh, no! You ain’t bringin’ no snot-nosed guttersnipe with you. I don’t ’low no young’uns in my establishments.”

  “Oh, well, I’m sorry. I can’t go then.” Harriet sighed dramatically. “Hand me my feather collection, Saralee. I guess we’ll just have to head on down to New Orleans where they value the special talents of a hooker with creativity.”