A Million Nightingales

by Susan Straight

  “My aunt controlled the rest. You know that.”

  “You refused to speak to her.”

  “My aunt told me every single day that I killed my mother with my birth. How could my words force her to sign the Lyon property to me? And I was only sixteen when your brother married me.”

  “When he died, you were twenty. You had used his money, eaten his food, and provided him with no issue.”

  Pélagie didn't cry. She tightened her hands on the arms of her chair until her knuckles were white stars. “He provided for himself. He provided elsewhere and brought the disease to me.”

  He leaned forward and put his finger in the space between her collarbones. What was the hollow called, where his finger went deep? “And you gave it to me.”

  “You provided yourself as well,” she whispered harshly, pinned to her chair. “You forced yourself onto me. Do you hear that, Moinette? He came into my bedroom and—”

  “Why tell her? She is not present here.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “You. Go get coffee and cakes.”

  Pélagie breathed hard when he removed his finger, a red moon dug by his nail in her throat.

  I told Léonide that the man inside was frightening Madame Pélagie, and Léonide shrugged. “Blankitte business. Belong to the whites. Not yours.”

  From the kitchen door, I could see the road toward le quartier, where Jean-Paul sucked on his sugar-rag and stared at the ceiling or the sky, at the face that hovered over him now and then.

  If this man made Pélagie go back to France with him, I would be taken as well. Or more likely, he would sell Jean-Paul and me.

  I was so angry, I spilled some of the coffee on my hand, and the splashing heat somehow made the scar on my back sting. Fire traveling along my skin. The smell of the coffee. My three coffee beans washed from Sophia's floor to the earth outside.

  I wished I had poison for his cup. Slave women poisoned men, the whites always whispered. Maybe he would make me taste it first.

  I cut the sugar with the tongs. The pot of coffee and two cups, along with a seed cake, on the tray. Léonide was asleep now in her chair, her huge shoulders rising and falling with her breath.

  His mouth was so close to Pélagie's hair that his words moved the curls.

  “Your aunts saw me inside you, in your bed, and your legs open wide. There was no choice but to marry me. And you have been useless to me ever since, except that now you own something. Your brother's wife told me in Paris that you own land, and slaves. Both are mine as well, by the laws of community property, and you are depriving me of that income.”

  I put the tray on the table between their chairs. She met my eyes. Her pupils were huge and black as jet beads.

  “I have nothing to give you.”

  “I want the land. A fresh start, to move here and begin anew. I am tired of Paris.”

  “You are tired of owing money in Paris.” She glanced at the darkened window. She saw herself. “My brother says that I was legally right to leave you.”

  “But by French law, you were not permitted to leave the country without my permission. And I gave you none.”

  “You were living in Paris with a woman!”

  He shrugged and smiled. “Which is not illegal. I may leave, as long as I provide for you, which I did.”

  “You were starving me. There was no heat. You tied me to a chair.”

  He turned palms to the ceiling. “You do remember what the judge said in his ruling. There was no sufficient reason to justify your absence from the conjugal domicile.”

  “The judge did not live in that house. The judge was an old man.”

  “The judge said you would be subject to arrest if you left. You have been charged with criminal desertion, which allows me to take control of all your assets. Have you slept with this man you thought you would marry? A criminal liaison will add to your prison sentence.” He touched a shred of meat on his teeth with his tongue.

  “I will not return to France.”

  “You will return speaking or not speaking.”

  “What are you saying?”

  He pinched her lips closed, and she tore her face from his fingers. We were alone. Everyone else was in Grand Coteau.

  Msieu Vincent reached for my arm now, and I saw the gun. “Pour the coffee. Madame Vincent is going to kill herself in despair over her fraud. Her shame.” He put the gun into my dressfront. “If you scream, I will shoot you like a dog.”

  One of Msieu's pistols, with his initials engraved in the silver.

  “Madame Vincent, your slave is obedient. She is mine now. Everything you own is mine. When your brother returns, your brother whom you talk about as if he were a deity, I will show him the notarized marriage papers. No one in this parish will speak to you again.”

  Her eyes moved to the window again; I saw us both in the glass. She twisted her necklace around her finger. “I owe you nothing.”

  “Then your only choice is to remove yourself from this world.”

  Pélagie stood up, and he pointed the gun at her. “Madame Vincent, you are going to die in a few moments. One thing you may choose, as a woman, is how you die. Your slave belongs to me now, and I will kill her afterward if she does not cooperate.”

  I felt the space of the room around me, the room I swept and dusted and straightened, the brocade fabric and wooden table legs.

  “There are two stories. Your slave found this gun in the desk and shot you because I promised to bring her to Paris and you refused. She became angry.”

  “Moinette! You will not forget a word when you tell them!”

  The gun's mouth—a perfect circle of black.

  “Unfortunately, madame, you have not read the Code Noir. Your own slave code in Louisiana. I have read it. Article Twenty-four forbids slaves from giving testimony unless it praises whites and forbids their serving witness against their master.”

  “She may tell my brother!”

  He smiled. “She may tell him whatever she wishes, if she lives. But no one is required to listen. She is not a viable presence here. She is nothing. You are nothing.”

  Pélagie circled the room, the gun following her, and he said, “Sit down and think about this for a moment. Drink your last cup of coffee. If you try to take the gun, the wild shot will only prove that you knew I would reveal your fraud to your lover, and when you missed, I had no choice but to shoot you in defense.”

  She didn't back away until he raised the pistol to her face.

  “Drink your coffee. Eat your cake.”

  He sat in the chair again, his hand steady with the metal circle directly across from her forehead. The black iron was exactly the size of the seven curls on each side of her face, the curls I had formed that morning.

  She glanced up at me, near the coffee service on the small table. The cherrywood table, with grains inside the wood.

  “Moinette,” she said, and I poured more coffee. Her hand shook so hard she removed the saucer.

  She leaned forward and threw the hot coffee into his face. The gun went off so close to me I felt the air move. Pélagie's chest flew back into her chair, and blood filled her dressfront.

  But she stood, groping for something in the air. He wiped at his eyes, saying, “I will push this gun up your barren, diseased—”

  I swung the silver pot and hit him in the head, and he fired the gun into the ceiling. A cloud of plaster swirled down like a white veil, hanging in the air with smoke.

  The clawed foot of the pot caught him in the eye, and he screamed. Pélagie kicked him twice where he had fallen from the chair, and then she collapsed. The gun skittered along the floor.

  I was afraid to touch it. I ran down the hallway and out into the yard. Léonide? Testify. We could not testify.

  A horse's hooves clattered into the yard.

  Msieu Vincent would come outside and shoot me, or Msieu de la Rosière would have me hanged for striking a white man. I was dead.

  “Moinette!” Etienne shouted. “Yo
u are covered in blood!”

  He got down from the horse, carrying five dead birds on a brace in one hand and his hunting rifle in the other.

  “He is killing her inside,” I said.

  The coffee had stained the wall in brown flames. He was trying to fit the gun into her hand, on his knees, blood trickling from one eye. “Monsieur!” Etienne shouted. “Leave her!”

  “She has shot herself in despair,” he said thickly. “I was trying to revive her.”

  I whispered. Testify. He owned me now. You don't belong to anyone. You belong to God.

  “He shot her. I hit him to stop it.”

  Msieu Vincent's cuffs had rested in her blood. The red liquid crept up his wrists. He said, “She sold your son to me for a hundred dollars while you were in the kitchen. You would lie for her?”

  Her face was hidden. Her skull was a white line where I had parted her hair, over and over. “He shot her for no reason, Msieu Etienne, he came here to kill her. Please, msieu. Look.”

  Msieu Vincent pried the gun from her fingers and raised it toward me, and Etienne shot him with the hunting rifle.

  Her body. I bathed her. So much blood—the smell of it when my wet rag turned the ceramic clotting into liquid again. My maid dresses hair. Dress the body. The bullet hole like an insect's home in her chest.

  The midnight blue silk dress. Not black crepe. She was not in mourning. She would never display dresses and hats in the window. She died with no issue. Issue forth from the body.

  I dressed her hair. It was not dead. Her arms and legs were stiff now, her lips purple and slack, but her hair curled around my fingers. What did the French believe in? Where was her soul? If the French believed in heaven, and souls were with their god, then they had only one life. One chance. But if Bambara people were right, the soul slipped into the next infant and the dya had the chance to live again. To try again.

  Pélagie's mother died giving birth to her, and so her soul hadn't had far to travel. I went to le quartier to feed Jean-Paul. I smelled of blood, even though I washed. I touched his scant hair. Did I have my mother's mother's dya? The woman named Amina, from Senegal? Then why did I not love my son yet? I fed him, I cleaned him, but he was still a mysterious animal.

  Dress the baby. Dress the table. Dress the meat. Dress the body. Dress the table again. Again. Again.

  I did not dress Msieu Vincent's body. Manuel, the groom, washed off the blood inside the barn.

  In the front room, while Msieu Prudhomme wept, Etienne told him, “My father will not have his body in the house. He will be buried in the farthest section from my aunt.”

  “How could she not have told me?” Msieu Prudhomme said, his whiskers trembling on his loose cheeks. “And how could you not have saved her?”

  Etienne rubbed the skin beside his eyes again and again. “I came a few minutes too late. Her slave tried to save her.”

  “And you saved the slave.” Msieu Prudhomme shook his head. “I will bid my adieus now. I cannot return for the burial. I cannot.”

  I kept away from her bedroom, where he closed the door. He stayed only for a moment.

  Msieu de la Rosière said, “The coffins are here from Ope-lousas.”

  But Msieu Prudhomme said, “I cannot bear it.”

  The drive was full of carriages. The cousins from France who had arrived with Madame were leaving for New Orleans. They didn't wish to be associated with the deaths. Msieu Prudhomme's carriage waited as well, the black horses moving impatiently.

  Hervé Richard got down from his cart and untied the ropes. Then he and Manuel carried the first coffin into the parlor. Pélagie's initials were carved on the side. I opened the door for them, and the smell of gunpowder and blood breathed from the heavy curtains. I had cleaned and cleaned the floor, but it was as if blood flourished in the grooves of the wood.

  Manuel went outside to help Msieu Prudhomme into his carriage. Hervé Richard held my wrist at the parlor doorway and said quietly, “I will come tomorrow. Meet me before dawn in the woods near the road. Just past the Rosière gate, where lightning scarred the oak.”

  “How will I breathe?” I closed my eyes, imagined the darkness inside the armoire. I couldn't tell him about Jean-Paul. Not yet.

  “A wedge of paper in the door where your face would be. Let a crack of air in. Bring your coat to make it softer for you inside.”

  He went back out to the cart and lowered the other coffin with Manuel. When they returned from the barn, Manuel said, “Get him some water from the kitchen.”

  Hervé Richard followed me there. The fire was low, and Léonide had covered her dishes. Her breathing was loud next door, where she napped in her chair.

  When I gave him the cup of water, Hervé Richard set it on the table. He put his fingers on my temples and pulled my face to his. He said, “I would never stop you from breathing.”

  The table's edge was at my back. His eyes and mine, his mouth and mine, his chest and mine, his hips and mine. The width of paper between us. A wedge of paper for me to breathe. The paper with my name. He said, “I want to love you.”

  I pulled away to look at him. His hair was curlier than mine, brushed down in two wedges from a part, which shone nearly white. His eyebrows were thick and black. I wouldn't look into his eyes yet. His throat worked when he swallowed his own saliva. He hadn't touched the water. His collarbones were like branches through the damp fabric of his shirt. He wanted only to be kind to me.

  Léonide's breathing stopped, and her feet shifted on the floor.

  “Why?” I whispered.

  “You don't know what they say? You just see the one and you know? That's the one for you.”

  He leaned so that only his shoulders bent down to touch mine, and Léonide got up so heavily, her chair thumped against the other wall.

  Stand up and don't get a baby, Fantine had said. Another baby. He wanted to join himself to me and make another baby. He moved away. Air rushed between us.

  Outside, where he was untying the horse, I said softly, in case Manuel heard, “What if someone tries to rob you of your armoire, on the road?”

  Hervé Richard fixed his black eyes on me, and now I looked into the pupils. I could see myself, frozen. He said, “I won't let nobody stop me moving. I get what I want.”

  Etienne spoke to me in the empty house of Firmin and Philippine, where I slept now.

  “The burials are tomorrow.”

  I sat in the chair worn smooth by Philippine's movements. Carved wood. Jean-Paul barely fit in his box now.

  “My father wishes me to interview you.”

  “Oui, msieu.”

  “He has asked me to record exactly what happened before I arrived.”

  “Oui, msieu.”

  Jean-Paul murmured under his blanket, and my breath caught in my chest. Etienne did not look at the baby. He did not look at me. He looked at the paper before him, on Philippine's table, and I saw the webbing of red in his eyes. He had wept. His aunt, the only smile here, was gone; his mother was blind, and his father angry.

  “My father has asked, repeatedly, exactly when you struck Msieu Vincent.”

  Le Code Noir—the penalty for striking a master in the face was death. But he became my master only when she was dead.

  “When he shot Madame Pélagie, msieu.”

  “Did your action make the ball hit her?”

  “No, msieu.”

  “You cannot testify in court.”

  My hand was at the back of Jean-Paul's skull.

  “You are telling me, only me,” he said sharply.

  “Oui, msieu. I struck him with the coffeepot when he was going to shoot her again. She was standing. She was still alive.” I fixed my eyes on the door. “She was still my mistress.”

  No one came that night to visit with Msieu or eat with Madame. No one came that night to stay at Rosière for the burials in the morning. When Céphaline had died, Azure was full of guests. But the shame of Pélagie kept this house empty.

  The servant from Fr
ance slept on a pallet inside Madame's room. The doors down the hallway were all closed. The floor shone silver as when I had first arrived. I did not sleep outside Pélagie's door. Her body lay downstairs inside the wooden box. Her husband's body lay in the barn.

  I lay in Philippine and Firmin's old bed, with Jean-Paul beside me. He lay on his stomach with his arms and legs curled under him like a large beetle. But his mouth was open. His breaths dampened my arm.

  It is dangerous to be so rested. My mother's voice came to me. The window shutters were closed tight. I would have to leave before dawn. If Mirande or Baillo saw me on the road to the house, I would say Léonide needed help early for the funeral.

  I would have Jean-Paul tucked inside my cape.

  But Jean-Paul fussed when the before-dawn air hit his face, as the door closed, and I pushed him inside my dress, where he latched onto my breast. The houses of le quartier were all dark. Someone snored in Sophia's room. No one cried.

  He drank while I walked, and the feel of my feet moving while his mouth pulled at the milk made me dizzy. Sideways and forward. Slowing my steps. The stocks. The bell. He slept inside my dressfront. Milk leaked from his mouth and ran down my ribs.

  Just past the bell, I shifted without thinking to the narrow footpath beside the road. The road was marred with deep ruts from cart wheels, full of water. A small reddish bayou alongside the foot trail I walked every day and night. When I stopped to listen for a cart, deep in the woods, Jean-Paul stirred, and each time my movements stopped, he made the bird sounds that would escalate into cries if his lips hadn't found my breast.

  There was no sound. No animals. The sky was the deep black of no moon or sun or promise of anything. Not day and not night.

  This was an animal trail. My animal trail, from Pélagie's room to Léonide's kitchen to le quartier. Every day. If I stayed, my feet would wear down wood floors and brick walkway and earthen road until my shoulders were swallowed by banks along my way. I would walk the same circles until I died, until Jean-Paul walked taller than me.