Somewhere around midnight they hit another venue, the smaller downstairs of Rockhead’s Paradise, where the music is decidedly Bluesier, and later still, finally end up at a diner, where they order ham sandwiches, famished from all that dancing.
At last, they pull back up to the curb in front of the Aunties’ home. Jean-Louis turns off the motor and no one speaks for a minute.
“Little Sister,” says Estelle, “you need to save your money and come back next summer.” Rosalie thinks that is a marvelous idea. Maybe she and Loretta could come. Maybe even drive up with her beau. Charlie likes to drive and would do anything Loretta asked him to.
“What are you doing next weekend?” Jean-Louis says to Junior.
“No plans,” he says. He has never had fewer plans.
“Alright,” says Berdine. “We’ll take care of that, don’t you worry.”
* * *
Too soon it’s morning, time to get ready, time to go.
Rosalie opens her eyes after just a few hours of sleep. The colors of dawn steal in through the lace curtains. Turning over she sees the other bed empty, the blankets folded and the stripped sheets in a little bundle next to them.
She tiptoes past the parlor where Junior is still fast asleep and over to the kitchen where she hesitates on the threshold. Momma and Auntie Martine are there at the table, warming their hands around their coffee cups and speaking in low voices. For all Rosalie knows they have been up most of the night as well.
The two women smile up at her, and her mother waves her over to join them.
“Here’s my baby,” says Momma.
A framed photograph lies on the table, of a much younger Martine with her late husband and their two little boys. The older one must be Gus, thinks Rosalie, the one she lost. Auntie Martine stirs her coffee thoughtfully. Rosalie takes in the delicate way she holds her spoon, the fine lines etched around her eyes. If hardship is part of the necessary clay of life, grace is the hand that has shaped it. Rosalie swallows at the sudden lump in her throat.
Marc-Pierre and Pauline come to take them to the station. Pauline has a small gift for Rosalie wrapped in tissue paper. It’s a diary, bound in thin powder-blue leather, with the words mon journal embossed on the front cover in tiny gold script.
On the platform the tears are inevitable, and there isn’t a whole lot more to say. Take care, and Be good, and Write, and Don’t worry, and that most inadequate of phrases, Love you.
Rosalie and her mother board the train, take their seats and wave out the window. Marc-Pierre has an arm around Junior’s shoulders and Pauline stands at his other side, her hands occupied with her purse and handkerchief.
Momma takes Rosalie’s hand in hers as the train pulls away and gains speed, huffing and screeching, whipping through the city. They cross the St. Lawrence River, and head south toward home.
Sometime later Virginia gets out her knitting bag. Junior’s going to need another muffler. A spare. Rosalie takes out a ball point pen from her handbag, and her new powder-blue diary, which she opens to the first page. She watches out the window, at the trees, rivers and buildings speeding past. The train rumbles across a trestle over an arm of Lake Champlain, and then enters an area of dense forest. Rosalie is just imagining someday writing an article on rail travel when the train emerges from the trees and shoots out straight over the open water.
The arc of tracks follows a curving line of land scarcely wider than the train itself, with the blue expanse of water on both sides extending almost as far as the eye can see. In that second there seems to be hardly any motion at all, just an unbroken sky, and some distant mountains, and everything invisible on the other side.
4
Martine
Montreal, 1925
At twenty years old, Martine Rougeaux lived with her parents and her younger brother Maxwell on the Rue Normand, in the district of St. Antoine. Her sister Elodie, the oldest, lived several blocks away with her husband and three children, and her brother Albert-Ross was just married and living just a little further over in Saint-Henri. With the two oldest married, and Martine working steadily as a domestic, Papa and Momma laid their focus on Maxwell, seeing to it that he finish school and maybe even go on to college. Martine stayed out of the tussle. Maxwell didn’t exactly adhere to his parents’ ambitions, even when Momma enlisted Martine to help him with his studies. Her brother’s lack of interest baffled her. Martine had had to leave school five years earlier and missed it dearly.
Often enough she sat with Maxwell in the evening, his history or English book open on her lap, while he leaned back in his chair, tipping it back on two legs, and walking his own feet up the wall.
“The War of 1812,” she’d say.
“Barneymug that shit,” he’d say, smirking as Martine would hurriedly reach to close the bedroom door. Momma did not abide foul language.
“Have you heard that new song?” he’d say next. “That one that goes, Saint Louis woman with her diamond rings, pulls that man round by her apron strings.…”
He had a good voice, she had to admit, but she’d say instead, “What is wrong with you?”
And he’d say, “Aw, you sound just like Momma. Why don’t you come help me figure it out?” They both played the piano, Papa had left them no choice on that, and she would relent, leaving the War of 1812 for some other time.
Like the majority of the men in the community, Papa was for years a sleeping car porter with the Canadian National Railway, spending the better part of every month away on a train and working twenty-hour days for twenty-one days straight. When he was at home he slept most of the time. And he sat by the fire with his pipe and listened to his children play the piano. Momma was the one who kept the order, made sure the wheels of the household kept rolling, with chores and school work, and all manner of community commitments. The study of music was obligatory in the family, with lessons paid for with hard-won funds for the older children, who then had to turn around and instruct the younger siblings.
Papa’s grandmother, Hetty Rougeaux, had taught him to play as a child. When Martine was small he came across the remains of a spinet piano, half burned up in a saloon fire and ready to be carted away by the garbage man. He hauled it home in a wagon and set it up in the tiny family parlor, where he and his youngest brother, Martine’s Uncle Dax, worked on their days off to replace the damaged parts. Papa bartered with the piano tuner, when the time came, who left with a keg of Papa’s home-brewed beer. That was the beginning of all the music. The Rougeaux children were to have a skill that paid. If they enjoyed the music that was a bonus, but it was certainly not a requirement.
The Rougeaux boys might find work in the cabarets, hotels and nightclubs, and the girls might teach lessons, or accompany singers at private celebrations, since the nightclubs were no place for them. If the boys played the clubs they were not to take up with any dancers, as they were considered one step up from prostitutes, if that. The pillars of their community did not embrace the girls who went around in their drawers, such as did Martine’s childhood friend Lucille Travis.
All the children turned out to be fine players, if not legendary, and inevitably some enjoyed it more than others. Martine was one who found the music to be a living thing in and of itself. When she put her hands out to play it was as if the keys stretched up to meet her fingers. The music was eager to live, and the piano itself was there to do its part to let it be born. Saturday afternoons she taught lessons to a handful of children whose families could spare the ten cents she charged per lesson. And she sometimes warmed up playing with melodies her father made while working.
Papa didn’t play himself anymore. Years of unending labor had stiffened his fingers so, but time had refined his ear. “See if you can do something with this,” he’d say, and sing a few notes in his rough bass. If he liked the results she’d hear the tenderest words he would allow: “That’s nice.” And he might give her a little pat on the shoulder.
Papa didn’t work for the railroad now, since with
the help of his family he had expanded his beer brewing into a successful small business. He had painstakingly invested in bottles and equipment, during his years as a porter, that eventually filled the tiny basement of their row house from floor to ceiling. Albert-Ross, Martine’s older brother, drew out the lettering for the red and white label, including the beer’s slogan—Enjoy a Rougeaux Today—and many a customer did just that. Prohibition brought Americans in droves to Montreal’s saloons and nightclubs. When Papa turned forty he was able to retire from the railroad and run his business full-time. Martine was still a child and spent many evenings with her siblings cutting the sheets of labels with scissors as they came from the printers, and sticking them on the filled bottles with rollers and pots of glue. Later these bottles would be collected and boiled and refilled again.
Momma divided her time between her paid domestic work, helping Papa, and, as usual, commanding her household. She still managed to devote considerable energy to the betterment of the community through the church and the Colored Women’s Club, which among many other projects sponsored the lending library. With God’s grace the Rougeauxes now paid a mortgage, rather than rent, a source of great pride, and had their eyes on furthering the education of Maxwell, the youngest child.
* * *
Martine worked in service to a well-to-do family over in the Westmount district. The Braddocks had two children away at boarding school, a gardener who came twice a week and a full-time cook, the short, plump Caroline Tulane, from Martine’s own neighborhood, who played the organ at church on Sundays. Martine kept the house. It was her third position since leaving school, and she’d been there since March. It was June now.
The previous position, one she’d had for three years, was easier. She took care of Madame Lambert, a decrepit old thing who slept most of the time; she needed bathing and spoon-feeding, and sometimes reading to. Aside from these things her duties were light, which allowed her the time to sneak into the library, which was vast. If any of the other servants found her there she had the ready excuse of looking for a book for Madame.
Besides playing the piano Martine loved to read. Indeed, there was nothing she treasured so much as books, and these, for a girl in her station, were hard to come by. In school she read everything she could. Time and again she visited the school library to ask permission to borrow nearly every book they had. There was also a small lending library, housed at their church, Union Congregational, and in the years since finishing school, Martine read every publication there several times over, excepting the mechanics manuals and navigational texts. Martine herself owned no books, save for a small Bible given to her on her eighteenth birthday, that she knew pretty much by heart and used to press flowers. Books were alive as music was, if not more so, and what she loved most was poetry. She’d had one teacher in school, a Mrs. Ives, who made them learn and recite the English poets, with a special emphasis on Shakespeare, Keats, Byron and Blake.
Martine read Madame Lambert’s books with a desperate haste, well aware the job could come to an end at any moment. Her favorite titles she noted down on the endpapers of her Bible. If one day she could acquire them for herself she would do so. She dreamt of having her own library, however small.
* * *
The day dawned clear and gentle. Martine woke at Momma’s knock and her voice passing in the hall calling out, “Rouse yourself, Sister.” She washed her face at the basin on the table in the corner of her small bedroom, put up her hair with combs in the postcard-sized mirror and slipped on her uniform. Her friends often complimented Martine on her good hair, which was soft and pliable, and grew long enough so that her plaits reached her shoulders, not that she bothered to do anything special with it on a workday.
Down in the kitchen she got the coffee on for Momma, who was upstairs still and engaged in the daily struggle to get Maxwell out of bed. Martine served herself a bowl of porridge from the stovetop and checked the oven. Momma’s bread rolls were almost done baking.
When Martine stepped out onto the street, handbag hooked over her elbow and still buttoning her coat, the world smelled of green and flowery things. Spring had come late this year, but now every tree and courtyard bloomed. On her way to catch the streetcar she passed several neighbors. Mr. Anson, sweeping out in front of his grocery, waved and smiled.
“Lovely morning,” he said. It surely was.
* * *
Martine arrived at the Braddocks at eight o’clock, as usual, and let herself in the back door. The Braddocks were finishing their breakfast in the dining room and Caroline was cleaning up in the kitchen.
“Morning, Miss Caroline,” Martine said, hanging her coat by the door and taking an apron down off another peg.
“Honey, see to those dishes, would you?” Caroline said, clattering pot lids. “I’m about to overcook these greens.”
Martine tied the back of her apron standing at the sink, looking out the window at the wide back garden. It was a pity to have to be inside.
Caroline stepped over to the kitchen door and cocked her ear toward it, wiping her hands on a tea towel. “I think they’re done.” She nodded at Martine by way of asking her to go out to the dining room to finish clearing the table.
Mrs. Braddock was on her way upstairs for her bath, and Mr. Braddock was in the front hall putting on his hat. He caught sight of Martine in the dining room and touched the brim with two fingers. He was the kind of employer who was congenial with the help, more so than his wife, but Martine didn’t like how his lips looked, wet under the sandy moustache, and always felt much more comfortable at work when the Braddocks weren’t at home.
An hour or so later Mrs. Braddock was on her way out too, to the hairdresser or dressmaker no doubt. She left the house reminding Caroline that her Horticulture Club was coming at tea time, which set Caroline to muttering to herself as she peeled the onions for that night’s supper. No one tried Caroline’s patience so much as the ladies of the Horticulture Club.
Martine knew better than to interrupt, but when Caroline had finally vented, Martine asked her how her little niece was getting along. The child had been ill that winter with whooping cough.
“Oh she’s right as rain now,” said Caroline, pleased to be on the subject closest to her heart. “I made her the prettiest little dress. You should see it. The collar and trim are real velvet.” Martine smiled as Caroline went on about the dress; she wondered which Caroline liked more, her niece, or the fun of dressing her up.
Midmorning Martine was busy brushing the furniture in the parlor. Caroline went out to do the marketing. She left some chops for Martine to prepare for braising. “Mind you,” she said, just before stepping out the door, “I just sharpened that knife.”
A quarter of an hour or so later she heard the heavy click of the front door latch. Caroline must have forgotten her grocery list again. There was movement in the foyer and then Martine heard footsteps behind her. It wasn’t Caroline, it was Mr. Braddock.
“Hello Martine,” he said, “has Caroline gone out?” Martine didn’t have time to answer. “I have some briefs to pick up I suppose I left them in my study.”
“Yes sir,” she answered, turning back to her work.
A few moments later she heard his footsteps again, this time from the dining room, the light slap of something hitting the table and the scrape of chair legs on the floor.
“Oh, Martine,” Mr. Braddock called out, “why don’t you bring me a cup of tea, eh? I’m just going to look these over while I’m here.”
“Yes sir,” she said again, a little uneasy. She had never been alone with him in the house before. On numerous occasions she had served tea to Mrs. Braddock and her guests, but guessed now that Mr. Braddock would like something quicker and would not need all the usual accoutrements.
“Good girl,” Braddock said when she came in. He smiled at her again. “Why don’t you have a seat with me.” He pushed his papers to the side, clearing a space in front of the chair next to him. Not daring to disobey, Martine
lowered herself slowly down and perched on the edge of the chair. She stared at the silver tea service where she saw her reflection, bright and small in a strange fishbowled room.
“Ah, this is nice,” said Braddock. “A little break. The office can be monstrous busy, you know. Clients on my back all the time, the partners shouting, letters piling up….”
Martine hadn’t the least clue how to respond, and desperately hoped this little interlude would end quickly. She peeked up at him, just at his mustache, which was working from side to side. He pursed his wet lips and took a drink of the tea.
“Well,” he continued, “then I come home, and my wife–” he paused to plop a lump of sugar in his cup, stir it and tap off the spoon. “It’s just she doesn’t understand me.”
Martine looked back to the tea service.
“You seem like a sympathetic person, Martine,” he said next. “Are you? A sympathetic person?”
All at once he reached over and gripped her hand. His shadowed gray eyes seemed to bore into hers.
“A man needs a woman who understands him.”
A heavy thud was heard from the direction of the back stairs.
Martine shot up. “That must be Caroline,” she stammered, leaping at the door. She rushed to the kitchen window and spotted a pair of flour sacks on the back porch and the retreating figure of a delivery man. She thought of running after him, but then behind her, several rooms away, she heard the heavy slam of the front door. Mr. Braddock had left.
Nothing bad had happened, so why was she shaking? It might be hours before Caroline returned, and for all Martine knew Braddock could come back.
Get your things, she told herself. She found her coat, her handbag.
Now get out of here.
She let herself out the back door and came around to the street.
House of Rougeaux Page 11
