A Million Nightingales

by Susan Straight

  I took the crumbs outside to the kitchen, to Tretite's wooden bowl. The cane cutters were in the field just past our clearing. Mamère was not there. The cane knives flashed like whirling birds. The wagon waited for the stalks. Conveyance. Hera's girl needed a dress so she could live and a man could take her into a different house and join their tools and tables and have children who wanted dishes.

  I wanted to tell her I understood what was wanted for them, but I didn't understand at all what she wanted for me. Mamère.

  “Did you see the brain in his jar?” Céphaline asked me. “I heard you in there.”

  “Yes,” I said. I had gone into his study to put away papers he'd left in the dining room.

  “That brain belonged to a man who died of gunshot. They cut open the skull with a saw and took out the brain to examine it.”

  “He said that?” Doctor Tom told me when he first came that the brain was from a black baby found by the road. He'd said, “And your mother loves you, and didn't leave you by the road, so you should do everything she says, isn't that right?”

  She walked past her father's office, where the huge desk and ledger book faced the gallery doors and the river, and then into the guest room next door. “Céphaline,” I said. “We shouldn't—”

  “Look.” She whirled around, pointing to the big jar with the floating brain. “It is still perfect because he was shot in the heart. But something is making my head hurt. The curling tongs and all the combing. I can't swallow sometimes. The smell of your paste.”

  Her eyes were fierce on me. Could I contradict her? “It is Zer-line's paste,” I said softly. “The skull—the heat cannot enter bone, no? Just your scalp hurts.”

  “No. My brain.” She twisted the jar until the brain swam. “Inside the bones is marrow. Like a cow's bones. But the only thing wholly encased by bone is the brain.”

  What was I allowed to say? That I hated touching her? “I wish I didn't have to curl your hair.”

  “But that is your lesson. My lesson is to learn foolish things and forget important things.” She put her hands on her temples. “My eyes are not the same as anyone's. But whose brain did I receive? Not my parents’. And Grandmère Bordelon knows nothing but herself and the parts of her body. Her mouth and stomach and feet.”

  I never knew whether to answer or listen. Tell the truth or lie. I didn't know what Céphaline wanted. No one knew what she wanted.

  “I must have inherited a brain from someone in France. A man. Or maybe I am not from these people. Do you know where it is formed?” Her voice was faster.

  “The brain?” My cloth moved slowly over the low table with the curling legs.

  “The baby.”

  Should I say that in another jar, the womb was a white fist angry and clenched, and Doctor Tom had said behind me, “When the womb is alive, it is red with blood and stretched around an infant so tightly that it splits like a grapeskin when cut”?

  Besoin. What you need?

  Céphaline said, “You aren't required to know. Only to perform.”

  With her palms, she flattened her hair against her temples. Her eyes were not sky. They were not flowers. No cousin would say such.

  “You mustn't look offended,” she whispered. “I am required to perform as well. I am making no distinction between our tasks.”

  Her eyes were not azure.

  In the dish near her elbow, the child's teeth were gray as old chalk. Her hair smelled of metal and oil and perfume. The curls limp, her scalp red and flaking. A cap of pain—worse than the heat of my tignon each night when I tried to sleep and the sweat crawled on my own scalp? Madame saw me take it off the first night, and she said, “The law! You are to keep your head covered!”

  I used to tear off the cloth as soon as night came, the air on my head where Mamère said the skull was once soft—when I was a new baby.

  Céphaline could not take off her scalp. She lifted her eyes to mine. “Say it.”

  “What?”

  “What you are holding in your mouth.”

  I said carefully, “A new baby has a soft place on the head.”

  She stood up quickly. “But you don't know how it is formed.”

  I wouldn't talk to her of what my mother had said. The four lips. Their passage.

  “I am not meant to know,” she said. “Only to produce a mammal. A son. My mother couldn't. And you are meant to produce girl mammals. Monsieur Lemoyne always said girls like you are worth more than boys.”

  My shoulder blades were not angel wings. They were bones. Cold. What did she know about animals like me?

  She pulled my arm, took me to her father's desk. “I am making no distinction between us. I am supposed to meet the Lemoyne cousin, the Auzenne nephew, and mate with someone. You mate with someone else. I can read Latin and Spanish, and it won't change my task.”

  She opened the ledger and ran her finger down the words on a list. I tried to read quickly.

  Two armoires—twenty-five piastres. Silver dessert spoons— eleven piastres. Preserve dishes—five piastres.

  She turned the page. Another list, Msieu's writing, the letters slanted as if facing a strong wind.

  Esclaves. The list of us.

  Hera—Senegalese, 32. Aphrodite—Creole nègre, 15. Apollo— Creole nègre, 10. Janus—Creole nègre, 9. Romulus—Creole nègre, 7. (En famille—nine hundred fifty piastres.)

  The newest purchases, written last.

  Her finger moved past their names quickly. “An infant,” she said.

  Michel—Creole nègre, 30—one thousand piastres. Eveline— griffe, 26—seven hundred piastres. Bat—sacatra, 10—three hundred piastres. Alphonse—sacatra, 8—three hundred piastres. Séraphine—sacatra, infant—fifty piastres.

  “Look, there's a baby. Do you see? The moment your mammal breathes, it will be worth money.”

  I was tired of lessons, of all the words—sacatra, mammal, patella, dahlia. I said, “And our tasks do not differ?” Then my face flushed with fear at my angry voice. If she told her father—

  She closed the ledger before I could find my own name. Or my mother's.

  “My task is to make money by marrying,” she said, looking out onto the gallery. “The moment I agree, my father makes money. But then I must lie down and receive the formation of a boy. Or everything will be lost. That's what they whisper in the hallway.”

  She turned to face me. “When you put burning solutions on my face and head, I tell myself you are completing your tasks, and I am completing mine. I try not to hate you.”

  We heard a boat passing on the river. I couldn't hate her. When she went with the husband, she might take me. How much was I worth? I opened the ledger again to the same page. Marie-Claire—Senegalese, 60—five piastres.

  The woman who had stayed awake night after night with Grandmère Bordelon—until rats tasted her flesh.

  Céphaline closed the book.

  “I try not to hate you as well,” I said softly, then waited for her to strike me, but she was hardly listening. The words Tretite had told me measured the blood. Mulâtresse after my name. And a number. My lessons. I said, “Your father's list will say the name of my mammal. Your father's Bible will say the name of your mammal.”

  Céphaline looked past me. She said, “The cousin or nephew will say, Your eyes. Creoles don't have such eyes. That is what they all say. I want to say, They see. That is what I always say.”

  I couldn't tell my mother the words and numbers. Marie-Claire spinning in front of her house all day, fingers shiny as polished wood. Five piastres. Less than spoons.

  I couldn't see my mother at all. The house was full, with the Lemoynes from New Orleans, daughter and husband, three aunts and cousins, all worried about Petit Clair and the sugar mill.

  Félonise's eyes moved like gray wood lice, hurrying over each table setting, but her hands moved slow like a hunting cat when she arranged things. Squab—twenty of them, laid out on serving platters, and then their bones ringing on the plates like a game.


  Céphaline was silent, even when a Lemoyne aunt said sweetly, “I heard you are writing a book.”

  Madame said quickly, “No, she is painting. Birds and flowers.”

  But Céphaline said nothing, didn't eat her squab or ham. She touched the tail of the fish on the platter. Her hair was perfect, the blue ribbon around her forehead matched her eyes, and her skin, from a distance, was white. But the scabs made a map under the rice powder.

  “So far south of the city,” Msieu Lemoyne's daughter said, holding her fork delicately. Her wrist bones moved like peach pits under the skin. “No opera, no schools. I prefer to stay in our other house. And the lawyer wants to inquire quickly about possible buyers.”

  Her husband was fair and balding, the sweat at the back of his neck disappearing into folds when he lifted his head from the fish.

  Msieu was silent, moving his rice on the plate. He needed money. He wanted the sugar mill. I stared at one fish scale shining, curled, on the tablecloth like a fingernail pulled from an angel.

  I hated the coffee. What if someone moved the cup and I burned the hand? Their fingers moved too much. Tretite said the daughter's husband had sold Nonnie, Msieu Lemoyne's cook. It wasn't her fault he'd forgotten his cigar, but she was sold at auction in New Orleans.

  I held the preserve dishes, waiting for Félonise to bring the dessert.

  Where had the river trader got my peacock plate? Pink rosettes in Marie-Claire's cheeks, these dishes worth more than her bones. Là. There. I would be with you là-bas, Mamère had said. She was in her chair, praying I wouldn't drop this dish.

  “Dahlia,” Madame said, lifting the figs in their syrup. “My favorite dishes.”

  The next morning, I made certain to be downstairs when my mother came. And when I met her on the back gallery stairs, she didn't slide her fingers inside the laundry bundle for coffee beans. She said, “You ask why do we try if we are only animals? Because even a rat feed her babies and work hard to get my sugar and cornbread. Even a rat sit up at night and look at the dark. When the babies sleep.” She pointed to the side land and said, “Rat eat Marie-Claire cheeks and turn that blood into milk for her babies.”

  Madame was shouting upstairs. My mother turned and walked away.

  “We think the books cause the boutons!” Madame said angrily. I took them from the parlor shelf and stacked them in wooden crates.

  Céphaline took two volumes back from my hands. “I don't put my face into the pages.”

  “You don't sleep! You don't go outside! The Auzenne girls ride every day and make bouquets for the parlor. They have the flush of health. You are always reading and making yourself nervous.”

  Céphaline said evenly, “You are nervous. I am reading.”

  These were Grandmère Bordelon's husband's books, from France. I touched the spines.

  Madame sighed. “The Lemoynes will decide the sale of the land after the grinding. We will order dresses from New Orleans for winter. It is your task to think of pleasant conversation. Not from a book.”

  Nonc Pierre, the groom, his hair silver gray as fog rising from his forehead, took the books to the barn. Madame had me polish the mahogany bookcase with lemon oil, and on the shelves, she arranged vases and Spanish lace fans.

  Céphaline laughed. “I will continue to write my own books,” she said. Her fingers were purple, her sleeves stained with black.

  What if no one reads them but you? I wanted to ask her. Are they still books then?

  But I was silent.

  The next day, she had pages and pages hidden under her mattress. They whispered when she moved, calling out for water. When she took the glass, her face looked as if it floated in a dark, rain-heavy cloud on her pillow, and her breath rose sweet-hot as sugared brandy.

  But her book gave me back to my mother, if only for one morning.

  “Look at the ink,” Madame fretted. “Céphaline is too ill for lessons today. Take those dresses to your mother to treat the stains.”

  Céphaline slept, eyelids traced with lavender bayous like her maps. In the kitchen, Tretite was assembling a basket. “Your mother say white beet for ink. The leaf, too. Six eggs. She say bring salt.”

  I hurried to our clearing. The cane was still high here. The cutters would approach the rows closest to the Bordelon house last, near Christmas, presenting the final stalk tied with a red ribbon to Msieu.

  “Mamère.”

  She was drinking her coffee at dawn, sitting in the chair. I knelt before her and kissed her circle-bone knees through her dress.

  I couldn't tell her how much I missed all her words, even though they had frightened and angered me when she pressed them into my ears. With her hard thumbs on my forehead, but her eyes watching mine.

  And now, she waited.

  “The eyebrows,” I said. “That's how I know what they feel. To be careful.”

  She nodded.

  “Madame's and Céphaline's are the same. Tadpoles kissing and leaping apart.” I clasped her legs and sat. “Msieu's are wild like his hair on his head. He even has hair on his fingers. So angry. He wants to buy Petit Clair. He needs money.”

  Mamère loosened my tignon and pulled out the heavy plait. Her hands were warm and dry against my neck. Out the open door, the sun sent golden needles into the clearing. I had even missed the clothes flying empty and clean and silent. Sleeves flat under the iron and no faces springing from the collar to speak.

  “Céphaline not ready yet?”

  “No. Madame is waiting for medicine from Paris. But Céphaline is sick again today. Her head.”

  Mamère nodded. “Write, write. Oui?” She studied the stained dresses I'd brought, sprigged calico and pink muslin, blue-black ink stains along the cuffs and sleeves. “Get that out, make a cake. Like the one I show you, when the doctor first come. He bring that India ink. Bring you all them words.”

  She said nothing after that. She began grinding the beet leaf with her pestle, releasing the bitter juice. I wanted to lie down on my bed, but a dress lay on the blanket. Pinned together, not sewn. Skirt of stained tablecloth. Sleeves of pillowcase.

  “I have never seen Phrodite,” I said.

  “She been in the cane since the day she come. All day.” I sat next to the dress. Someone I had never met slept in my place. Strips of cottonade for trim were arranged at the waist and neckline.

  “She look like her mother. Bambara. But no scars,” Mamère said. “Same animal. But you are a different animal from me. No scars for you. But you are half mine. Your hair is not dead.”

  “Then how can I burn Céphaline's and she doesn't scream?”

  My mother shrugged as if giving up. “Doctor know. He and governess know. Céphaline know. I only know other words.”

  She began to unwrap something at the table. “A mother never governess because she always wrong. Toujours. But them scar? On Hera? My mother tell me four lips. Two on your mouth, two under your dress. Doctor don't tell you this.”

  I didn't want to hear about under my dress. She raised the tiny biscuit of indigo. A cake of twilight.

  “Old woman show me this. My mother already gone. Show me to shake the bucket, indigo settle on the bottom and you make enough for one cloth. Say in Africa, indigo grow wild and people make just enough for their own cloth. Say my mother cry and tell her, indigo was good luck in Africa. Someone from Africa bring it here and grow so much it kill them. Finish.”

  My mother didn't cry. Her voice was urgent, but careful, as if she spoke to Tretite about damaged lace. “You wear dress from Céphaline now. I make a dress for Phrodite, and her mother tell her about the hair. About Bambara. Maybe mark her someday.” She put a coffee bean in her mouth. “But maybe you don't believe Bambara words if I tell you. You believe medicine words. You tell me all your words. But I can't tell you anything.”

  She lifted her head. “Maybe I finish with lessons.”

  “I know what happens,” I began, but she wrapped the indigo cake again and sat in her chair. She pointed to the floor,
which meant I was to sit for my hair.

  She rubbed almond oil on my scalp and moved the skin against my skull. She said, “Li travaille—your work is besoin. What they need. Whoever come. The doctor. Maybe Céphaline husband. You have four lips. Three passages. You lie down and be still, they say. You move, they say. What they say.”

  I whispered back, angry. “No.”

  “Céphaline become beautiful again, like when she is a child. Then she marry. And you will go with her. But not far. Just to the river. Ecoute. Listen! Tretite tell me the place names. So if you go, I know where.” Her voice was calm. “Here Azure. The blue. Là-bas, on the river down, Bois Belle. Constance. Maison Blanche. La Pinière. And Auzenne place, Coeur Fort.”

  Land named for daughters or trees or wives or love.

  “North on the river up is Orange Grove. Les Palmiers.” She closed the shutter and whispered, “Besoin. What they need. You do your work, and they take you not far. Feet can get there.”

  I did know how it happened. The baby. It wasn't difficult to imagine as science. The passages of our body. The womb.

  But I refused to imagine it happening to me. Céphaline lay in her bed with my mother's clouds on the mosquito barre over her head. I lay on my narrow mattress, with my moss under me. My tignon was hot. I imagined my hair curling against the madras cloth and the moss curling against the mattress ticking and growing through the threads where the animal fat and wood ashes made soap to clean themselves from each other and my hair met the moss and curled together to make me sleep forever.

  Did Mamère still sleep in the chair? What did she wait for?

  No one would come for me there, in our room. No one would send a man here, where Céphaline breathed so hard and called for water, water.

  I stared at the picture on the wall. Céphaline painted as a baby. Her hand fat and pink as a starfish in her ocean book. Her face fat and rosy as a nectarine in her garden book.