The Witch of Bourbon Street

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “This ain’t quite the soiree we would have planned for you, Sippie girl,” said Old Jim, “but at least you get the chance to witness that it don’t matter how bad a thing gets here in the bayou, we always find the love.”

  “And the liquor,” Millie said on her way to the second-floor porch.

  “Shut your damn face,” yelled Claudette. Sippie thought she might be starting to like that blond wisp of a grandma.

  The sound of Danny yelling at some police officers outside carried right on through the windows, conveniently open so everyone inside could hear to the best of their ability.

  “Boys, you got to let Frances go. I’ll get Millie to drop those charges, you know I will. And Jack, well, Millie said he ran away. Ain’t nobody done any wrong here. Please let her go.”

  “Too late, Danny. We found his bike thrown into the woods by Trinity Bridge. And blood, too, on a ripped T-shirt Pete identified as Jack’s. Now, it don’t take much to put two and two together.

  “What about them Tivoli trash boys? You think of them? God. This goes from bad to worse.”

  “Look, Danny … Someone took him. We’re sure of it. Don’t you worry. We’ll find him.” They threw the police cruiser into drive and headed off.

  “I’m tellin’ you she didn’t do nothin’!” he yelled, running after the car as though he could catch it, change fate, turn back time. And then he stood there sadly, in the middle of that dirt road, in the dark.

  “Come with me, Sippie.” Old Jim tried pulling her away from the window. “Let me comfort you some. I’ve missed that kind of thing. You afraid of thunder?”

  But Sippie just watched until Danny came back inside. Then she watched as he sat at a table, alone, his head in his hands. Finally, Sippie went to him, Old Jim following. And she sat there between the two of them, the image of those police officers putting handcuffs on Frances on loop in her head. It was too much for her. She started to cry, leaning into Danny’s arms. “It’s all my fault, it’s all my fault,” she whispered over and over.

  “No, honey, it’s mine,” said Danny.

  “I’m sorry I tried to hurt you,” she said.

  “You don’t have to be. I’m proud of you.”

  “How come?”

  “You were protecting your mama. And I’ve been piss-poor at that. Sippie, talk to me some.”

  “Look here,” said Old Jim. “I’m gonna go check on Dida over there, and then I’m comin’ right back. I can’t wait to get to know you, Sippie, after this mess is cleared up. But what I seen? Well, even if I didn’t know you were my blood, I’d sit here wishin’ you were.” He kissed her head and walked off toward Dida, who was sitting at the bar, holding Claudette in her arms.

  Sippie couldn’t understand how fast she was taking to everyone. It was like she’d known them forever. Blood ties, Sorrow Soil. No matter. She’d found home and somehow ripped it apart. She sat there willing everything to go back the way it was, even if it meant she wasn’t a part of it.

  “That man, he’s got more class than anyone I ever met. I wish I could be that graceful.” Danny turned back to her. “So, here we are, Sippie. You and me. And I’m just gonna talk and hope some sense comes out of me.”

  Sippie thought that was a fine idea.

  “You know something, Sippie? At some point a man wakes up and suddenly his youth is gone. People is always going on about women and how they age: the unfairness of men getting distinguished and women getting ugly, blah blah blah. But no one talks about the terror a man faces when his eyes dull and his body won’t cooperate. I know I’m only thirty-five, but Sippie, I can feel the grassy smell of my youth fading and my memories playin’ tricks. Sad, scary, lonesome, is what it is.

  “And so much of what happened with Millie came from that fear. Frances didn’t seem to want me. And I don’t blame her. We kept making the same mistakes over and over. But now, look at this mess.”

  Sippie rested her head on his shoulder, not knowing what to say.

  “See, the second JuneBug told me about you this morning, everything I ever thought I knew about Frances just … changed. Because knowing about you makes everything else make sense. Which means I’m the worst husband there ever was.”

  “How do you mean, Danny?”

  “Okay, this one night, right before she left us for good, Jack screamed all the way through. But we didn’t even know because his bedroom door was closed and locked from the outside. Frances was so torn up, she threw up all day. She kept saying she didn’t deserve him. She was filled with grief. She said, ‘I left him. Alone. He must have been so scared.’ But it wasn’t her, Sippie. It was me. I closed the door. Locked it, too, because I wanted some privacy with her and he was always climbing in our bed. I forgot we couldn’t hear him with the door closed. But she blamed herself, and she left. I thought she was being weak. But she was facing her biggest fear with no support at all. So, see how that changes things?”

  “It doesn’t change anything,” said Millie, who came in from the back and was drying her hair with a towel behind the bar. Danny stood up quick. “Don’t get any ideas, I’ll throw your sorry ass in jail, too,” she said, smirking.

  “You still here? Thought the devil might have ate you up whole, Millie,” said Dida. The whole room went quiet.

  “What do you mean, Dida? I live here. I run this place. And the devil don’t eat his own.” She pretended to bite at Dida and laughed. She stopped laughing when Dida stood up and banged her beer against the bar, getting everyone quiet.

  “Listen here, all you wandering fools. Millie don’t run this place no more.” Then she turned to Millie. “You are no longer a member of this family. I don’t know what you did, or how you did it, but I know this whole thing, even Jack, is all about you.”

  “Did you take him?” asked Danny.

  “You can’t be serious!” Millie scoffed.

  “Dead serious,” he growled.

  “Would you step outside with me for a moment, Dan?” she asked coyly, a fake smile plastered on her face. Sippie knew Danny didn’t want to go, but he did anyway.

  “I tell you this is just like what happened to me. A hurricane, a missing child. So, if I’m fine,” said Dida, “then Jack will be fine.”

  Sippie listened to the voices around her, to the TV flicker in and out with news about the devastating storm pressing down on them. But what she heard above it all was something Simone had said years ago. If you don’t never love, Sippie, you don’t never cry.

  She felt a hand on her back. Claudette.

  “I know what you be thinkin’, Sippie. But you can’t listen to that voice in your head. Trust me, I know. It’s true, if we don’t love, we don’t cry. But the trouble is, we can’t seem to avoid love, and if we hide it away, make it a secret, all we do is cry harder. And without any of the joy. I know Frances thinks I’m a terrible mother. Truth is, I am. But we had laughter. And she’ll remember that. Maybe you’ll help her. Now, come on and give your Claudie a hug. I can be a mean bitch, but that runs in the family.”

  Sippie broke into a smile, hugging her grandmother tightly as Millie’s arm gestures grew more animated through the window.

  “Excuse me for a moment, Claudie,” she said, and headed out onto the back porch of the Voodoo.

  “But don’t you see? I lost both of you! You took that girl and made a mess of her,” Millie was yelling. “But that look, the one you give her … I want that look. I want that feeling, too. Why can’t I be that for you? Danny, we could be good together.”

  “Millie, I’m gonna ask you one more time. Did you take Jack?”

  “Danny, please…” Millie was trying to hold on to him, but he grabbed her wrists. Sippie knew he was on the verge of something everyone would regret.

  “Danny?” she interrupted hesitantly.

  He dropped Millie’s arms instantly.

  “You okay, Sip?”

  “Could you come inside?”

  “You bet, baby. I’m done out here. Done. And you’re gonna drop th
ose charges, Millie Bliss. Right now. Get on that crappy phone and call them police right now.”

  Millie pulled at Sippie roughly.

  “She took everything from him, just like she took everything from you, her own daughter … it seems to be the only way she knows how to love. It’s the only way any of us Sorrows know how to love. You ready for that?” Then she let go of Sippie and slammed back inside.

  “Thank you,” he said, leading her back inside.

  Millie was on the phone, and Sippie saw a big old scrapbook on the bar.

  “What’s this?” she asked Danny.

  “This is Jack’s, your brother’s, scrapbook of all things Sorrow.”

  “Can I look at it?”

  “Of course, sugar. Let’s look at it together.”

  The two of them paged through the book, Sippie marveling at the detailed notes and neat tape lines. There was so much information, so many interesting facts.

  “Danny, look at this,” she said, pointing to the newspaper clipping about SuzyNell returning to Serafina’s Bayou in 1910. It was a picture of her whole family, with names.

  “What am I looking for, honey?”

  “There!” She pointed at the little girl seated on SuzyNell’s lap. Her daughter, Elsie Mae. “When I was in the family cemetery with Dida, she got all kinds of quiet and said she wasn’t sure who Elsie Mae was. And just when you were outside, Dida was telling us Jack would be safe because she went missing during a hurricane and she was safe. Only she didn’t, did she?”

  “No, baby. We all like to believe the fairy tale of it, but always knew somethin’ wasn’t quite right. But none of us ever really put it all together before. You are some kind of wonderful, Sippie.…

  “Dida?” he asked, loud enough to quiet everyone down. Then, tentatively: “You said that this was just like what happened back when you were put to sleep, right? The hurricane … 1901?”

  “That’s right. It’s like a mirror image, Danny boy,” said Dida.

  “Well, then, why wouldn’t it be that someone might think they could put a sleeping spell on another Sorrow child in a similar situation?”

  “That is my point, cha. I’m telling you, Miss Millie over here is playin’ us all for fools. She knows where our boy is at. She put the same spell on him,” said Dida.

  “Well, that would just be stupid,” Danny said. “And Millie’s a lot of things, but you’re not stupid, are you, Millie?”

  “Why would it be stupid?” Millie frowned.

  “Because Dida’s not really Belinda Sorrow. We all just like to play that she is. Gives us hope in the miracle of things. Everyone needs something to hold on to.”

  Sippie just stared at him, shaking her head. Men never did know when to take the soft approach.

  “Dida?” asked Sippie.

  “Yes, cha?”

  “Because of the sleep, you would have still been a little girl when you came back to Sorrow Hall. Who raised you?”

  Sippie spoke low and calm. Everyone had to lean in close to hear.

  Dida sighed, a dazed smile spreading across her face.

  “Well, my mother, she was a wonderful woman with rich, deep black hair. I mean blond. Yes, blond. I wore this red bow, and she didn’t like it. My mother … died young. But I remember her love. My father, he remarried, but then he died, too. He was a king, I think. And my stepmother raised me. Her name was … her name … Jim? Where’s Jim. I need my Jim.”

  “I’m right here, sweet lady.”

  “Dida, you know you ain’t Belinda Sorrow,” said Danny.

  Dida let out a low moan and her eyes went in back of her head.

  Old Jim glared at him.

  “What? She’s a Sorrow, just not Belinda Sorrow.”

  “How do you know, Dan? I mean, we always wondered, but we didn’t know for sure,” said Old Jim.

  “We got it right here,” said Danny, holding up the newspaper clipping. “She’s SuzyNell’s granddaughter.”

  That’s when Dida started rambling. “I remember planting things and washing windows with vinegar. I remember being hungry at first, then cold … the damp, you know. But I found linens in the Sorrow Hall closets and washed them up in the creek and hung them to dry. It was quiet, back then. My name is Belinda B’lovely Sorrow. I had a family. A family who loved me. And I had a little brother who I worried over, and a mother who I could look at for hours. And my father. Oh, he was the finest-looking man I’d ever seen.” Her eyes glazed over in some kind of delirium.

  “So what really happened?” asked Pete.

  “There wasn’t a sleeping spell?” asked Millie too tentatively above the growing mumuring in the bar.

  “No, you stupid witch. That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” said Danny. “Jim, you want to take Dida outside?”

  “Yes, son, I think that’s best.”

  When Old Jim had Dida out on the porch, Danny continued.

  “Frances and I used to talk about this a lot, only we never had real proof and no real reason to upset Dida. We always thought it had something to do with that fever that hit fifty years ago, wiping out a lot of our families down here. But we didn’t know that Dida’s mother was Elsie Mae.”

  “So, Dida didn’t die, she just got all jumbled up with fever?” asked Pete.

  “Oh God!” said Claudette. “Now it makes sense. She must have been all alone out there at the house. Wandering and waiting … with just those Sorrow ghosts for company.”

  “So how come no one said anything?” JuneBug asked.

  “She probably needed to believe it. It helped her,” said Sippie. “It meant she was the one that got lost, the one everyone was looking for, instead of the other way around. No one wants to know there’s not a soul in the world to love them.”

  The room got quiet and Danny just put his arms around her and kissed her head.

  “You know something? Lies are so powerful,” said Claudette. “I never actually thought she was Belinda B’lovely. Because it was too fantastic, you know? But you live with something like that for so long, you come to believe it. No matter how unexplainable. Poor Mama. No wonder she’s always so listless near Elsie Mae’s grave.”

  “Anyone see Millie?” JuneBug asked suddenly, looking out the window.

  “No, why?”

  “Because she ain’t here, and my truck is missin’.”

  Danny about had a tantrum. “That damn woman. I got to go after her. She took my son!!”

  “But why would she do that? Steal Jack?” asked JuneBug.

  “Millie loves and hates Frances. Wants what she can’t have. Wants what Frances threw away,” said Danny. “Practically screamed it at her down on those docks.”

  Claudette sighed sadly.

  “You okay, Claudette?” asked Sippie.

  “She was alone. Mama was alone,” Claudette whispered.

  Everyone grew quiet, but they knew it was true. Dida made up a fairy tale about her life. A lie to tell herself when she was lonesome and frightened. And she told it so many times that it became her hiding place.

  “And Millie, she believed that story. It was her favorite one,” said Claudette. “No one ever thought to tell her we didn’t know if it was true. It’s our fault. All of us. We are all to blame.”

  “We’ll find him,” Danny said. “She wouldn’t hurt him, she couldn’t.”

  “We might have a problem,” said Claudette.

  “Which is?”

  “I know that girl too well. If she ran off while we were talking about Dida, it only makes sense that she tried a sleeping spell. Which means she’s hidden him somewhere, thinking he could be safe for a hundred years. It’s why she disappeared when she found out; she’s trying to cover her tracks. I swear, for people who can all see, you’re completely blind.”

  “She’s right,” said Sippie.

  “I know,” said Danny.

  Everything felt surreal after that. Dida was reassured that she was, in fact, Belinda Sorrow because she just didn’t need to believe anything d
ifferent. The police from Tivoli had given way to the police from New Orleans, and as no one could tell for sure where Jack had been for a day or so, the feds got called in, too. The night bayou was lit up like a fluorescent nightmare. Everyone was looking for Jack. Probably the whole goddamned country.

  Sippie watched Danny get restless. Then he stood up and made for the door.

  “Where you goin’, boy?” asked Old Jim.

  “To get my girl.”

  “’Bout damn time.” Old Jim nodded.

  18

  Betrayed by Bliss

  Frances

  I sat in that cold police station waiting for those fools to figure out what to do with me. Half of them were scared to look at me, the other half wanted to burn me at the stake, colonial style. Hate mixed with fear and scented with ignorance is a potion for disaster. So I just sat there, thinking on how I came to be where I was sitting.

  I’d tried to be a good wife. But I’d also tried to be someone I wasn’t, and when you do that, every little thing explodes. Before things got really bad between us, I’d wake up in our sweet yet suffocating bedroom, with my skin aching. It felt bruised from the inside out.…

  * * *

  Everything wild inside me was yearning to break free of the tame confines I’d agreed to in order to keep Danny’s love and raise Jack the way everyone felt he ought to be raised.

  By the time Danny and I had our second go-around, I had almost awakened again. The summer he came back too handsome for words, I was nineteen and living a life of nothing but freedom at the Voodoo. And when he walked into that bar and our eyes met, it was all over. For both of us. From May until August we ran the beaches again. Rode through all of southern Louisiana, got to know each other. More than once I tried to tell him about that baby. But I didn’t know how. Hell, I didn’t even know if it was his.

  When he left to go back to his senior year, I was fine. I felt like we’d stay together. And I cherished his letters, running to the mail boat all lighthearted. I’d almost decided to tell him about the baby I’d given away and daydreamed about me and Danny scooping her up and bringing her home together.