“You live nearby?”
She pointed off the way she figured she’d come.
He offered her a small pad of paper. “Maybe you could draw while I finish my painting. Then I can offer you a ride back to your home.”
Celeste nodded and took the offered paper; took the offered pencil too, which felt different in her hand than the one back home. The one she’d lost like everything else. So they sat for a time as he painted the cathedral and she drew the same. She drew until the touch of the pencil to the paper felt different and the look of the graphite on the paper looked different, and she stopped drawing and looked up at the heavy clouds. He stopped too and cleaned his brush in a jar of water, changing the color of it once again.
“It could rain,” he said.
“Soon,” Celeste agreed. “Your colors could wash off.”
“They could,” he agreed. “And after all my hard work.” He began to put his things away.
Celeste offered him the pencil and the pad of paper.
“Shall I tear out the drawing for you?”
Celeste shook her head. “You have it.”
“A gift,” he said. “And since you cannot pay for a gift, I will give you one in return. A secret about the colors.” He offered her a view inside the little basket of brushes and tubes of paints he carried. “Such a mess, when all I would truly need are three. Three colors—yellow, blue and red. Just three to mix any other. Will you remember that?”
Celeste said that she would.
“And did you watch me paint enough to know how to start?”
She said that she had.
“You have keen eyes and a sensitive soul. This drawing tells me that.” He traced some of her pencil lines with an old paint tinted fingernail. “With such keenness and sensitivity, all the world belongs to you. Touch the world with your art.”
When she could see the spot where she had boarded the streetcar with the lady, Celeste said goodbye to the French watercolorist and retraced her steps back to the little iron gate, the back door, and up to her room without waking Odette.
After a breakfast made by Josephine, Odette sat Celeste down in the Library to discuss chores. Some, she would need to do because it was expected and good habit, but there would be others Celeste might choose to do for spending money. As Odette explained it, there were things in a city that were free, like a stroll down the street or the enjoyment of a cool breeze, but there were other needful things or things desired that required payment to someone, and she would either need to have enough to pay, or learn to want less.
Celeste reasoned that paint might not be free like a stroll or a cool breeze, and she did want paint.
Days passed. Days full of chores and lessons. Mornings and evenings spent on the high porch watching for her father to return. Nights spent with the bear in that other world where bears could have her mother’s eyes and her mother’s voice.
Touch
There was another before-the-crack-of-dawn morning when Celeste was awake and restless, the air outside was tempting, and Odette slept soundly under the soft weight of her clear conscience. Another morning that promised rain but not too soon, so Celeste slipped downstairs to the back door and the narrow passage where the gate waited with its hem hiked up just enough for her and no other to pass.
She had a few coins in a little purse, stuffed deep in a pocket, just in case a streetcar happened by, going her way, but she was more inclined to walk. Walk wherever, but not back to that square where the Frenchman had showed her how painting was done, and the lady had showed her a bit about politeness. That had been a special thing for that day and her mother had taught her that if a nice thing came along, she should just enjoy it but not expect a second visit. Don’t be looking for the last nice thing to show up, or you might miss the next one. Celeste was out for a morning walk, keeping an eye open for the next nice thing.
She found nuns. Not that she recognized them as nun, but she saw two women up ahead, neatly, if not as finely dressed as the lady from her previous morning wander. They stood with their backs to her as she approached so quietly, that even two nuns couldn’t hear. Identically dressed women with hats like flying gulls, stopping to talk about something on the other side of where they stood, blocking the sidewalk to Celeste’s view. She drew up close enough to hear, but not be heard.
“He was here yesterday as well,” said one.
“Poor soul,” said the other. “Poor lost soul. Lost without his family. His children were his life.”
“Influenza is hardest on the young and the very old. Not so easy for even the strong, but for the weak…” The first nun shook her gull winged head.
“And for his wife to just leave him, as if it was his fault. Still, I don’t know what was in her heart.”
“He drinks to forget, but the drink only deepens his sadness. Poor lost soul.”
The women swayed apart from each other and through that cleft, Celeste could glimpse the man lying on the sidewalk. For an instance, she thought it was her father. As quickly as the thought crossed her mind, she knew it wasn’t so. This was another man. A man lying on the sidewalk asleep, trying to hide from Sadness.
A feeling slipped up on her from behind. A sudden rush of a feeling. Something like anger but not quite the same either. She surged forward, parting the nuns like tall grass, pressing on to where the man lay. She tugged at his dirty shirtsleeve, firing a look back at the mystified sisters.
“He’s not lost!” she shouted at them. “He’s just sad and needs to rest!”
The man stirred but did not wake.
Celeste shot back the way she’d come, giving the nuns a wide berth.
It was autumn but still warm, and an evening breeze sighed through the house. In through the Library’s tall windows off the courtyard, past Odette in her chair, past Celeste seated at the desk and on through the house, up and up to the windows off the gallery. Celeste was applying paint to paper and careful not to lose any on the leather top. She’d been painting for weeks now and thought it was going well. Odette agreed. Agreed too, that Celeste was doing well with studies and chores, so Celeste felt emboldened to ask the question she tried not to ask too often.
“When’s Papa coming back?”
“When the war is over,” Odette said. She folded the newspaper into her lap and looked up at Celeste, who was watching her and wanting more than the answer she’d heard before. So Odette expanded that answer. “We are winning the war. At last. Maybe word will come any day that it is over.”
“How will word come?”
“By the sound of church bells and cheering in the streets.”
As it happened, that day was the next day. Celeste had gone to her room to find her shoes when the bells began ringing, the horns from passing cars, driving fast, blared between buildings and people came out into the streets as if fleeing fires. She went out onto the high porch and listened until she knew it was the day Odette described. Then she went downstairs to find Odette, and ask her question again.
Since Odette still could not say for sure and certain, Celeste dreamed of her father steering a boat like the one that had helped bring their train across the river. She could see it was hard going and things were in his way. So many boats crowding to get through. Every one captained by someone wanting to be home. She could see this, even though she was on the shore so, so far away—standing on the shore of the brown river, watching with her sharp eyes.
The bear watched too, standing close by at her right hand where Celeste could trace her ear and not worry so, since it was only a dream. “Be ready,” said the bear. “He will still be your Papa, but he will not be the same as you remember.”
“Why not?” Celeste asked the bear.
“Because you’ve both changed.”
Wall
“Will he know about Mama?” Celeste asked. She had wanted to ask before, but didn’t want to hear the answer.
“He knows,” Odette said. “I had to let him know.”
“Will Augu
stin know?”
Odette looked at the book in her lap. “If he knows, it will not be from me.”
It felt like any more questions wouldn’t be welcome, so Celeste let it be. But she’d remember where she left off. Remember till next time. She waited through chores and painting and drawing and sleeping—for days on end, and most days spent hovering as near the front of Odette’s house, up near the open windows where she could hear anyone coming up to the door to knock.
One extra early morning whispered to her from outside, so softly that at first, she mistook it for the faint sound of Odette snoring from her room down the hall. That morning whispered in a voice so soft she couldn’t place it exactly, though it sounded familiar. Whispered that she had more lessons to learn, out where she’d found other lessons on other wandering mornings. She slipped downstairs and under the iron gate, pausing on the sidewalk for only long enough to tell she’d need to turn left this time.
A streetcar waited for her on a nearby street corner like a polite lady, and Celeste had coins in her little purse stuffed deep in a pocket just in case she needed to ride somewhere for a lesson. The man driving the streetcar might have been sleeping or just waiting for anyone to show up. Hard to tell, but he took a coin and waited for her to sit before setting off. Block after block, rumbling along the rails until she got nervous she was leaving New Orleans and might not get back, so she spoke up and climbed off at a street corner by a high, blank wall.
When the streetcar was gone, she was alone on the street lined with houses more like her house back home than Odette’s with its stairs and high porches. These were houses with simple porches, just off the ground, and every one of those houses asleep. She stood alone, admiring those houses set all so close together, her back to the high blank wall, until a man came around the corner, his steps clumsy and wandering. He stopped when he caught sight of her; stopped and swayed a bit as he took a good hard look at her. Even from half a block away, she could feel the anger coming off him like heat coming of a mule fresh from a worked field. He spoke but his words didn’t carry—only the angry tone.
She had wandered into the woods and met a wild thing.
His voice rose to be heard. “Standin’ there lookin’ at me that way! Bitch of a kid! Don’t you look away when I’m talkin’ to you!”
Celeste had glanced back along the street the other way and saw the end of the wall but no door. No one was on their porch to see her.
He advanced. “Tellin’ her mama lies about me. Saying I was doing things. She don’t know! Just a kid. What the hell does she know? What the hell do you know about me, little bitch? What the hell you doin’ out this time of the morning anyway. Whoring at your age! Ought to be taught a lesson! Get over here you little bitch of a kid!”
It was worse than facing the storm up the tree. At least there, she hadn’t been alone. But she wouldn’t wait for this shuffling man to get any closer, and set off the other direction fast. She could hear his steps quicken, broken by a stumble that only made him angrier. At least he stopped yelling; too drunk to manage it and running. Ahead was nothing but more empty porches, so at the corner she turned sharp left and found another block of high wall at her side, but at least on this face, there looked to be an opening. So she made for that.
She was fast, and it sounded like the man had fallen on taking the turn, but when she reached the opening, it was closed off with a tall iron gate, too close to the ground for squeezing under and too high for climbing. She threw herself against the gate and the chain holding it rattled and held; locked tight. But the gap between was a hair wider than the space between the bars, which were spaced just too closer for her head to get through.
The man was closing. She’d have only one shot at getting through before she’d have to give up and run for it again. She wedged in hard, her back to one side of the gate and her belly to the other, and she grabbed the edge of the gate with both hands and pushed hard, feeling it flex just the tiniest bit to let her belly through, while her temples caught and smarted. In that little instant of pain, she somehow sensed that the gate was flexing out more at the bottom; pivoting at the chain. Not much. Not enough to see, but enough for her to know what to do.
The man reached the gate just as she slid down, buckling at the knees and dropping through the gap and away. The gate bounced back together onto his reaching arm, catching him at the elbow and making him swear. He fell backwards onto his tail and then onto his side, rolling clumsily back to sitting almost upright. He scooped up a handful of grit and slung it at Celeste, spraying the iron of the gate and Celeste’s retreating legs.
Inside the gate, inside the high wall, it was streets and houses again, but of a different scale and different sort. She recalled the train ride into New Orleans and the sight of a strange white walled town sprawling near the tracks. Remembered too how Odette had said it was a cemetery. She wasn’t in that town now, but one much like it. She pressed on and turned a corner, trying to get away from sight and sound of the angry man, who was still at the gate, cursing at her.
Walled in with the dead, and a nasty man guarding the gate.
Her fright had made her legs weak and she dropped down at the corner of one of the little house that looked like its owner might not care. A stone angel—wings neatly folded and eyes downcast in Celeste’s direction, stood above the door. There was a narrow ledge down at the bottom, just big enough to sit on, which suggested visitors were welcome. She would just rest a bit and give the man time to forget about her and move on again. She’d slip out then and head back to Odette’s. The stone was cold and dry, where she’d thought there might be morning damp. Cold enough to reach through her dress and skin to wash out the heat of her scare and settle her down. Numbing her thoughts, but not her feelings—or her old fears.
“Here to disturb the peace. That it?” asked the dry voice beside her; maybe coming from just around the corner where anyone might easily have slipped up to take a seat without notice. Anyone could do that and not be heard, if they walked on dead feet. Dead and quiet feet.
Celeste would not turn her head to look. She would not speak either.
“A girl that walks the street’s not a proper girl. You should know that, even at your age.” The tone of the ghost was not harsh, but there was that tone of disapproval that hinted at deeper and darker feelings. “But you’re just an ignorant child. Little know-nothing girl from the side of a dusty road who dug in the dirt as black as herself, just as she should, until she got notions of fancier things. Used to just tag along behind her papa or sit on her mama’s knee for dreamy talk. But then he ran off and she died. Crushed in her sleep when she should have been up tending to things. Isn’t that so?”
The cold lost its grip on Celeste and the heat flashed up in her head, all at once like a knot exploding in a slow burning log. “You go back to hell!” she screamed. She’d never used such language before, but she’d heard it and knew how. A skill like poker.
The ghost went. Celeste could hear her footsteps, only they weren’t leaving, they were coming closer. Too many feet for one ghost. Maybe other ghosts coming from the opposite side with louder feet. Shoed feet. Curious ghosts. Angry ghosts who’d been resting peacefully until Celeste screamed out Hell and brought down a nightmare on everyone—everyone but Miss Bolton.
She tried to open her eyes to see who it was but they fought it hard, maybe knowing what was best. Best not to see ghosts, or they get in your head and live there; maybe take up too much room and crowd out what you want to remember. Then she forced her unwilling eyes open only to find they wouldn’t see straight and everything was a blur. Best not to see them at all, but for sure don’t see them clear as day! Two shapes were standing there looking down at her, waiting for her to see them and be polite. Two dark shapes, so maybe cemeteries could have black folks in them too. One was tall and the other shorter.
A terrible thought came to mind. Her mama was dead and her papa wasn’t home. What if he’d been on the way and something had happened a
nd he’d died too. Died on his way home, so he kept on coming till he got here. Came back a ghost and found Mama’s ghost too, so now they’d found her in a cemetery where she shouldn’t be, and saying things she shouldn’t. Making them sad to see how she was now and they were gone and couldn’t help.
“Open up and let me see!” she fussed at her eyes. They listened but only some, shaping up the shapes a bit more, but only enough to see it wasn’t her mama and papa. Still, someone tall and someone short, and both dark.
“Did you come to take me on to the other side?” she asked Neighbor and the bear.
The two conferred in whispers. “Is she talking to Ghédé Nebo mother?” said the shorter shape.
“That’s hard to tell,” replied the taller.
The voices weren’t familiar, but she knew it was safe to look. No harm since they weren’t ghosts. Celeste looked up at the woman watching her, and the girl not much older than herself. Mother and daughter, clearly.
“I’ve heard a lot of conversations in the cemetery, and most of them one way, but none like yours, child. What are you doing in a locked up cemetery? Get locked in? No wonder you’re shouting at shadows.”
“Wasn’t locked in,” Celeste explained. There was a small pain between her eyes that she rubbed with her whole palm, round and round, trying to push it back out again since maybe it had come in through the back of her head from the white stone. “A man was chasing me and I squeezed in through the gate to get away. Might still be out there.”
“He’s not,” said the woman. “Took off when he saw me. Afraid of a Voodoo Queen I suppose.” She smiled down at her daughter. “This is Aurore, and you can call me Miss Yvette. Most do.”
“I’m Celeste.” She looked at the girl. “Who’d you think I was talking to?”
“Ghédé Nebo,” said the girl. “He leads souls to their afterlife.”
Child of the Storm Page 8
