“Fashioned a different way than how your father did,” Odette explained. “His was wrought and these are cast in iron. Maybe that’s what he’ll find himself doing when he comes home, though most of these are very old now. Different ways for different times.” She studied Celeste. “Does all of this frighten you, child?”
“Don’t know yet.”
Block after crowded block rolled by and they were still in the city. New Orleans just rolled on and on. When the wagon stopped out front of one of those tall houses with tall windows and stacked up porches, Odette climbed down and helped Celeste down too.
“This is your house?”
“It is.”
Lights were already burning inside and the curtained windows glowed. Maybe someone was inside, but Odette had not children. No husband. That’s what Mama had told her…
Odette seemed to sense the question. “Only me in this house now. Me, and a woman who helps me manage, and she goes home nights, so you can keep me company.” She turned the key and sent Celeste in first. “More house than I need, but can’t send part of it away. Maybe you can stir it up some while you’re here. Stir it up, but go gently. The place doesn’t know much about children.”
They were in a narrow room with a long staircase squeezed along one side, taking a wood railing up with it to the floor above—a railing like a fine picket fence capped with smooth wood. A woman, maybe her mother’s age or so, stood at the far end of the entry hall, framed by an open doorway and wiping her hands with a little towel.
Odette spoke to the woman. “Josephine, could you pull something together for us to eat before you head home? Something suitable for a child, if we have anything like that. You’d know better than I would.”
“I can do that ma’am.” Josephine disappeared after glancing at Celeste with kind eyes. Eyes full of sadness, so she must have known about Celeste.
“She’s prepared a room for you upstairs,” Odette explained. “I’ll be up there too. Just down the hall.”
Celeste eyed the stairs.
“You’re not accustomed to stairs. We can make a bed for you down here if you’d rather.”
“No, I’ll be up there with you.”
Odette nodded approval. “Now you just take a seat over in that chair and rest a bit until we eat. Or look around while I speak to Josephine.”
Celeste eyed the ornate cushioned chair with its feet like paws and patterned fabric like nothing she’d ever seen her mother use, even for paying work. She wanted to touch it more than she wanted to sit, but her eyes tracked on past to the colorful rug on the floor and the fine curtains on the window and the lamp on the wall, burning with its steady electric light. She sank down to sit on the rug as her eyes still traveled. Her hand stroked the soft weave of the rug like it was an animal’s fur coat. Footsteps passed the house outside, and the deeper tones of Odette’s voice carried forward from the rooms beyond Josephine’s door. Another sound made her tip her head about to locate it, but maybe it was all around; an even pulsing sound like a heartbeat. The heartbeat of the house. Maybe a house this grand needed a heartbeat all its own. Away from the city, you just had horses and wagons and roads that might be dust one day and mud the next, and graveyards only big enough to sit inside fences, and woods deep enough to hold bears. Simple houses with just one porch or none at all, and burning candles or rope wicks to read or draw pictures by. But a city needs fire eating trains, trucks and boats, and houses with beating hearts. And the streets are walked by folks, even boys, wearing uniforms, boys no older than her, or by great aunts who aren’t afraid of anything and can scoop you up out of sorrow and troubles.
She left the rug alone and thought about her mother. Thought about the bear with her mother’s eyes and mother’s voice. Papa was heading home and it was quiet enough in Odette’s house to hear its heartbeat.
“Celeste,” her aunt called from Josephine’s open door.
Celeste jumped to attention like someone in uniform.
There was a room of cool floors and walls, fitted with strangely shaped things, also cool and white that she knew were for bathing and the like, but only because Augustin had described them to her in letters.
“Don’t go wandering outside in search of an outhouse,” Odette told her. “Everything you’ll need is inside.”
Celeste stood on tip-toes, offering her hands to be washed in the lavatory where soap sat off to the side and hot water flowed. Odette dried off her clean hands with a little towel and they followed the smell of food out into the hall and in to yet another room. So many rooms, and she’d only seen part of the house. Rooms for everything. A room for coming inside and one for washing your hands, and one where you would eat and one where you sleep. Maybe one for drawing and one for sewing and one for thinking about what to do next—and you’d need to go to another room once you decided what it was you needed to do.
Floors creaked when you walked on them, just like at home, but there were rugs wherever you walked. She touched the plastered walls and couldn’t decide what they were made of, smooth and almost as cool as stone; painted or patterned. Her eyes darted like feeding fish over all the strangeness.
Josephine was standing at the fine, polished table with its feet like an animal’s. She was setting out plates and utensils, filling the room with soft clear sounds like drips of rain on the roof or a window pane, like when her mother would set the table at home, only the little sounds were higher and cleaner here in Odette’s house. She turned away from the thought. Josephine moved smoothly from one end of the table to the other as she set and served, while Odette showed Celeste to a chair with two square and buttoned pillows stacked on the seat to boost her up. Only two places were set. One for her and one for her aunt.
“You’ve eaten already?” Celeste asked Josephine as she approached with milk in a glass pitcher.
“Josephine is going home to eat,” Odette explained, and took the pitcher from Josephine. “I’ve kept her too long as it is. Thank you Josephine. I can manage from here.”
“Good night, Miss Odette.” Josephine took the opening to slip away.
Though the table was long, Odette sat close to Celeste on her right hand, ready to assist, but also watching how Celeste managed her knife and fork.
“You have large hands for one so small,’ she commented, noting Celeste’s dexterity. “Maybe that means you’ll be tall like your father.”
Celeste shrugged and kept eating since she hadn’t had much all day. She swallowed, knowing she shouldn’t talk with a mouth full of food.
“This isn’t ham,” Celeste noted.
“That’s roast beef.”
“From a cow.”
“Yes, from a cow. Don’t you like it?” Odette asked, but in a tone that suggested it didn’t much matter if Celeste did or didn’t. It was there to be eaten.
“I do,” Celeste said. She chewed thoroughly as she gazed out across the landscape of the set table; dishes, the pitcher of milk, a little shallow bowl with honey squeezed from the comb. It glistened under the light from thin, white candles sitting on the table, even though electric lights were burning overhead. She looked back to the candles and down to her own plate again. Her fork hovered over the last few green beans before spearing them all at one go.
“It’s been a long hard day,” Odette said.
Celeste set down her fork and leaned back against the chair, her eyes locked on the table’s centerpiece without taking it in. She had questions, somewhere in her head. Lots of questions that would have to wait.
Odette was watching her, maybe waiting to see if Celeste would say anything. “Sleep is what you need. Could you sleep if I tucked you into bed?”
Celeste managed a nod.
New Orleans streetlight came in through the tall windows of her room, and a breeze came in with it. A big room with tall ceilings. A bed that was soft. A breeze carrying the strange smells of a strange place, like breath, now flowing in, now still. She wondered where her mama was; wondered where she’d been taken.
The light in the room was different. The breeze that had breathed into the room was now flowing out through the tall window to the high porch—only not a porch. Odette had called it something else she couldn’t remember. A porch of some other name where someone was waiting for her. Someone dark, waiting for her. Dark, even with the even glow of city light shining.
Celeste walked to the window. Stepped out onto the porch of some other name and touched the bear’s ear, like a greeting.
“You remember me?” asked the bear.
Celeste nodded, somehow afraid to speak since it occurred to her that this was a dream and dreams could come undone so quickly, so easily. Dreams could be lost and never found again, even in memory, since dreams could be like a breeze. Impossible to hold. But she could feel a difference with this dream. It felt strong, like a branch of her old oak. She could look at it, wonder at it and not have it shy away.The bear said nothing to distract her, sideling up next to Celeste to give her something to lean against as she dreamed through the long night.
Gift
Crack of dawn light—that barest of light only seen by the earliest risers with eyes sensitive enough to feel it laying on their closed eyelids; that light found Celeste and woke her gently. The city could hold the darkness of night back a few paces from where it could reach in the countryside—except in those tight and secret filled alleys and passageways, but the morning light felt pretty much the same as it did back home, so at first, she was confused. Confused by the familiar light but the strange surroundings. Then it all came back, since Celeste was suited to the morning. She recognized the second floor bedroom in Aunt Odette’s house. She remembered how she had come to New Orleans. She knew that her mother was gone.
She sat up and looked out the window to the upper porch, hoping to see the bear but knowing she wouldn’t. Not in the day. Still, she slipped down from the high mattress—everything up high!—and walked across the thick rug to the window, pausing for a moment before stepping through so she could wiggle her toes, feeling the rug like it was fur, then crossing the low sill of the tall window to the boards of the porch, damp with dew.
The street was still and she heard, first a bird, and then the answering call of a ship on the river. A dog trotted silently down the sidewalk. A lone figure, two blocks away, slipped into view, only as long as it took to cross the street. So people did walk around in the city in the early morning. It would be less crowded and maybe less confusing to take a walk so early. There was no sound inside the house. No sound of Odette moving about.
She slipped back inside and changed from the nightgown she’d been given by Odette. She slipped back into her dress and put on her shoes. It wasn’t easy walking down the hall without noise, but she made the floors squeak less than Odette did. Odette was still in bed, snoring plenty loud enough to drown out any floor squeaking Celeste could do in passing by the open door and down the stairs. At the front door, she took time to touch this and that in the entry way, anything that looked interesting to touch, particularly the doorknob which was crystal and cool to her fingers. Cool but not cold like ice, which she’d rarely seen. Nice to touch, but useless for opening the door. It was locked, and she couldn’t figure how to change that. The morning wouldn’t last forever, so she gave up on the front door to see if she’d remembered right, that there was another door at the back of the house that opened to maybe a back yard.
Not a back yard, but a small courtyard you could reach through a door that was more cooperative. And the courtyard spoke to the street through a narrow passageway, closed off at the street end by a pretty iron gate, clear of the ground just enough that Celeste could wiggle under with only the hint of dirt to show for it. A space only she could have passed through, so she took it as an invitation.
The street stretched right and left, and she took the right way since that had been the way the dog had gone. She walked briskly but quietly so no one would wake up and come outside. Cross streets came up at neat intervals; a few houses and another street, and then to a corner where a woman stood waiting for something or someone. A special lady, Celeste thought, judging by her clothes that were dressier than most she’d seen. Strangers could be like bears in the woods—maybe a danger, even if they don’t look that way. But this lady was fancy and she turned as Celeste edged up closer. The lady smiled down at her.
“Out and your mama doesn’t know it. That so?” she asked in a friendly way.
Celeste nodded since it was so.
“Going somewhere?”
As she asked this, Celeste was distracted by the sound of distant bells. The white church back home had a bell it would ring on Sunday, but this was a bell voice of a richer tone, and Celeste pointed toward the sound, calling the lady’s attention to it; curious but without knowing what to ask. The lady took it differently.
“Oh, you need to go there?” The lady seemed to think that was funny. “Need to get something off your chest?”
Celeste wasn’t following, but the lady didn’t seem to want an answer. A streetcar was coming their way, like the ones she’d seen swarming along the wide street when she and Odette got off the train, only this one was by itself on a quiet street, maybe lost. The lady fished inside a small purse.
“This won’t get you to the front door, but close enough. You have money? No? Thought not. Well, this one’s on me. Maybe next time you can cover us both.” The woman laughed and again, Celeste couldn’t make sense of any of it but was interested enough that she stayed close. The lady’s friendly way of talking reminded Celeste of Sandrine, though little else about her was the same. The streetcar stopped and the lady boosted Celeste up the steps, handing the driver coins so they could claim a seat. Lots of seats to choose from so early. Only two other folk on the car and both of them looking at the lady as if she was something strange and maybe frightful. They looked at Celeste like she was something odd too.
The streetcar rumbled along its rails, rumbled up through every seat and Celeste thought how it wasn’t like that truck she’d ridden in, the truck with its callused wheels. Not like the wagon either, bumping along on the rutted roads.
“Tell you what,” said the lady. “I may just take a detour this morning and climb down at Orleans. Walk you up to St. Louis before I stroll through the park. See who’s there under the trees. A long night, but a girl’s got to stay on top of things.” She laughed, and Celeste smiled too, because it seemed the lady thought something was funny and it was best to be polite when someone was being helpful. Somehow, this brought Neighbor to mind. Helpful and quiet. A good listener and a good friend, who took off when the storm destroyed his garden. Maybe he landed here. Wishful thinking, but no harm in wishing so long as Aunt Odette didn’t get wind of it.
“So who you meeting?” the lady asked, as the streetcar stopped and she ushered Celeste off. “What’s he look like?” Celeste thought she sounded genuinely interested. So friendly.
“Tall, with a black hat,” Celeste said.
The lady stopped—recoiled a bit on hearing words come out of Celeste’s mouth, for the first time since their friendship began. “Tall with a black hat, you say. Sounds promising.”
It was a short walk up a narrow street with a channel down the middle, still damp from the last rain, and then the street drained out into an open space, looked down on by tall buildings as full of windows as Odette’s house was full of books. All those windows looked out to a space of trees, safe inside the tallest iron fence she could remember seeing. Big trees—almost as big as her own lost Climbing Oak.
“That a garden?” Celeste asked.
“Lots of flowers, grass and trees,” said the lady. “If that’s a garden to you, then, yes ma’am, that’s a garden. Never been to Jackson Square?” She eyed Celeste curiously.
Celeste thought it was just the sort of place Neighbor would settle if he’d blown this way and had his choice. She followed the lady through the gate into the square, empty at that still early hour except for them and for one other seated u
nder one of the tall trees and sporting a black hat.
“We’ll you weren’t kidding. Looks like your man with the hat, though he looks a bit on the old side.” She appeared to size up the seated man. “Maybe not too old.”
The man stopped what he was doing as they drew close. He touched the brim of his black hat. “Bonjour.”
“French,” the lady whispered to Celeste. “That’s good.”
“Bonjour to you,” the lady said. “You’re a painter.”
He held up his brush to acknowledge. He sat on a bench with his small easel, his palette and basket at his side. Celeste edged around where she could see what he was working on with such care, while he and the lady chatted. Where she drew with her lines, he was drawing with color; big patches of color like a quilt. She looked beyond him and saw the white building with its tall spires, just as his color drawing was, only in his drawing, the walls weren’t white, but a soft color of morning. She looked again at the building and saw that she’d been wrong. It was a color, and he’d seen it where others might not—as she hadn’t until she looked again.
“My little friend came to find someone with a black hat,” she heard the lady say in a softer voice. A smooth voice. Smooth like her skin and the fabric of her clothes. “Came to keep you company I guess. I can be good company too. Looks like you could use some company, not being from around here.”
“Thank you,” said the painter. “A tempting offer, but for another time perhaps.”
“I stay busy, but who knows,” she replied. “Another day.”
The painter touched his hat again and smiled. The lady left without a backward glance at him or Celeste. Another stranger, so Celeste tried some conversation to be polite and give herself time to figure out what to do next. “I draw,” she said. “But not in color.”
Child of the Storm Page 7
