Feast of All Saints

by Anne Rice

  A strange thought came to her. She was holding the glass in her hand.

  It was a sensation at first, something she felt in the muscles of her face and in the roots of her hair. A strange relaxation very like the relaxation of getting drunk. She could feel the air on her face, and her mouth partially open as, concealed by the darkness, she was peering into it, at a possibility that had never occurred to her before. Was it like all the rest, would there come that little catch when she knew it was all make-believe? No. This was so easy, so simple, and so big, bigger than anything she’d ever imagined, she was struck dumb. Her mind tried to back off and say, no, you’d never do that, not you, Lisette. It wanted her head to fall to the side with the “no” on her lips as she looked away. But what if you did it! What if you do it! And who can stop you, you can do it, you can do it now!

  And suddenly it expanded in her vision; it blossomed from its first conception into something ripe and immense and evil, and splendid in its evil, splendid in all that it would do to all of them, that black shrew Cecile, that shrew Louisa, that shrew Colette, that knight in shining armor, that brother, who is not here! She let out her breath and drew it in deeply, it was magnificent, the like of which she had never never done.

  “…don’t believe in charms, please don’t talk of charms, Lisette, just let me sit here with you…” Marie was crying, poor, poor little rich, white, beautiful Marie!

  “Poor Missie,” Lisette’s eyes grew wide looking at the white ghost of the girl across from her. She ran her tongue along her lips. “But there are such charms. Just a little thing that can make them not want you anymore, they won’t even look at you when you pass in the street, makes no difference what your aunts say, they can talk themselves sick to those fine gentlemen…” her voice trailed off. And she slid her legs off the cot. She felt her feet find the slippers, and rose in the darkness, moving toward Marie, there was that splendid evil before her, the chance of a lifetime, there was no doubt any longer. As she lifted Marie by the arm, it was done.

  V

  MARIE STOPPED AT THE MOUTH of the passage, as for one second the silent glimmer of lightning showed the small peeling cottage in the slanting rain. She blinked in the darkness. Music pounded from within and behind the colored cloth that masked the windows, she could see figures dancing to the rhythm of the drums. “What is this place?” she whispered.

  “Come on, out of the rain.” Lisette put her arm around Marie’s shoulders and forced her forward into the alley. “We aren’t going in there!” she said with contempt. “We’re going to see Lola Dedé in the back.”

  “But I don’t believe it, how can it make men look away from me?” Marie stopped again.

  “You leave that to Lola Dedé,” Lisette said, “you leave everything to Lola Dedé and me!”

  Someone in the little cottage was shouting and figures leaped against the red cloth on the windows, as Lisette pulled her back through the crunching shells, under the wet branches of the fig trees toward the huge hulk of the house in back. Long galleries ran the length of the yard, two stories high with glowing windows against the falling rain, and a yellow door lay open from a townhouse whose façade opened on another street. A figure was standing in the door and it was to that figure now that Lisette and Marie ran.

  “Let this girl sit down, Ma’ame Lola,” Lisette said. They had come into a cluttered room. A brass bed stood against a row of lace curtains. A long altar there was crowded with statues of the saints. “Voodoo saints,” Marie whispered. She pushed back against Lisette toward the door.

  “You just rest yourself,” Lisette said. “You don’t have to stay here if you don’t like it, you just let me talk to Ma’ame Lola.”

  A man was laughing somewhere, and there were steps on those galleries in back, and the music thudding from the little cottage beyond. Marie had been offered a chair. Scarves hung over it, a fringed shawl, but a black woman snatched these away. And sitting, her hands smoothing the rain-spotted flounces of her skirts, she looked up to see some shadowy figure beyond a thin veil of beads at the door. It seemed a man with a top hat was talking to another man there, but then this brown-skinned woman in a brilliant red silk dress drew a tapestried curtain over that door. “Lisette, I want to go!” Marie said.

  “Now, bébé, why you want to go and leave us on a night like this when you only just came in?” said this brown-skinned woman, her long dark tendrils of hair winding down her back beneath her flowered tignon. Her voice was like a song.

  “This is my mistress, Ma’ame Lola, Marie Ste. Marie,” Lisette said.

  “Oh, I know who this girl is,” sang the brown-skinned woman. “Now Lisette, gal, get your mistress some tea. You talk to me, pretty girl!” The brown-skinned woman dropped onto a piano stool in front of Marie and clasped Marie’s hands in her own. “Child of grace,” she said, and reached out to touch Marie’s cheek. Marie drew back, and looked at the hands that were holding hers, the small serpent ring that wound about the woman’s finger so that she pulled away. This was a mistake, all of it, a dreadful mistake!

  “Now what this girl needs is a charm, Ma’ame Lola, you know what her Maman and her aunts want her to do, they want those white men to fix her up, they want those white men quarreling over her at the Salle d’Orléans, at the balls.”

  “Lisette, I want to go,” Marie said in a timid whisper. She tried to pull her hands loose, but the woman, Lola, held them fast. She was a pretty woman, she had perfect teeth. Again she lifted a hand to brush Marie’s cheek. She brushed Marie’s hair back from her face. “Don’t you like those fancy gentlemen, precious bébé?” she asked. But something had distracted Marie. It was a statue of the Virgin on that altar, complete with blue veil and white gown, and the hands outstretched lovingly and around it was wound the dead skin of a snake. Marie gasped, and Lola Dedé was taken by surprise when Marie jerked loose and stood up.

  “Now why you want to go and make a fool of me in front of my friends,” Lisette whispered. She had her arm around Marie’s waist. “It isn’t going to do any good for you to go home now. Your aunts are probably there by this time, and then it will be the three of them on you, you best stay with me. Now sit down, you just sit down and wait now while I talk to Ma’ame Lola, you hear me? Sit down!”

  Madame Lola had shut the door to the yard. “Cold wind,” she sang out, “cold wind, you and this girl like to caught your death.”

  And Marie turning saw the two women’s heads together as Lisette whispered in the woman’s ear. “Get that girl some hot brandy with her tea,” sang Ma’ame Lola’s voice and a black woman who had snatched the scarves from the chair set them down now and returned, the ivory white of her eye growing huge in her head. Madame Lola took the cup from the black girl as soon as it was poured and taking a brown bottle from the marble dresser by the bed tilted it into the tea. A piano began above. Marie looked at the ceiling, at the faded paper with its wreath of painted roses about the chain that held the candles in the brass chandelier.

  “Don’t you be rude now!” Lisette scowled with the cup in her hands. “You drink this now, you be polite to my friends!” Marie could smell the brandy wafting up with the steam and meant to turn her head when Lisette raised it to her lips.

  “You let me cool that for that girl,” said Madame Lola, “you let me put a little sweetness in it,” and taking the cup she poured a dark syrup into it and gave it back. It smelt strange but good. Marie let her eyes close just for an instant feeling the steam on her face. Her hands and feet were cold and she was wet all over from the rain which had soaked through the shoulders of her dress and run down her bodice and her back. She sighed, exasperated, weary, and took the smallest drink of the tea. “I want to go,” she whispered to Lisette. Lisette glowered at her. “You drink that first!” came the intimate whisper. “What you want to do, shame me in front of my friends! Drink it, I told you, then we can go!”

  “Drink it, pretty child,” said Ma’ame Lola, “drink it down.” And then with a smile, she lounged
back against the high brass footboard of the bed and drank her own tea from a broken cup.

  It was good, the taste, laced with peppermint perhaps, Marie was not sure. She stared at the murky substance in the bottle and saw the little spout of the teapot in front of her and the pouring liquid stirring the sediment again as the cup grew heavy in her hands. Her ears began to ring with the pain that had been in her head all the long afternoon. Lisette was talking in a low rapid voice about a charm, a charm to take away her charms. “And those charms,” Madame Lola said, “such charms as those charms, you can’t kill those charms without a powerful charm.” The cup had almost slipped from Marie’s hands! The black woman gave it to her again, and Madame Lola sang out, “Yes, drink that, chérie, precious chérie,” and this time the tea burnt her mouth but strangely enough this burning was outside of her and she almost liked the sensation of this in her chest. She rested back against the chair and stared forward at the flowers on the wall. The flowers danced-on the wall, thousands and thousands of tiny roses marched upward at long angles toward the ceiling and there it seemed a yellow smoke gathered, a smoke that she had not seen before. It wound itself about the candles in wreaths and was alive but dissipating rapidly into the shimmering air. And just below the candles as it vanished in an ever-thinning haze were the two women, Lisette and Madame Lola, with their heads together again, each tilted toward the other, Lisette’s breasts almost touching this woman’s breasts and their skirts descending in long flowing lines. Little paisley tails of gold wound in and out on the red silk of Madame Lola’s skirts, had Marie even seen these before? She wanted to remark that she had not even seen them, seen only the redness, but she had the most curious sensation of not being able to open her lips. And the two women had become perfectly flat.

  They were perfectly flat. They could have been cut from cardboard and placed there together, or no, rather cut from the same piece as nothing showed of the room behind them where they were joined, Madame Lola’s dark hair filling the gap between the flesh of their cheeks. And they had been standing there for the longest time perfectly, perfectly still. And Marie had been sitting here watching them. She had been sitting forever here, her back against the chair, her head thrown to one side, her hair trailing down on her breasts. Slowly, ever so slowly she shifted her gaze down and saw the teacup lying on the floor. Tea ran out over the cypress boards, tea ran in rivulets into the cracks between the boards and tea had stained her taffeta dress, tea had burned her hands. Lisette’s voice was a rumble, urgent, argumentative, then soft, and right before Marie’s eyes the cardboard cutout of the two women was broken and Ma’ame Lola bending now to the open drawer of her chest drew out dollar bills. One of these bills fell to the floor. That tapestry was drawn back, and the black woman had gone out. But then again it seemed the tapestry had not been drawn back because it was perfectly in place, and Madame Lola was facing her, leaning against the brass bars of her bed again, smiling at her, and Lisette was gone.

  Lisette, Marie thought, Lisette, and she brought her tongue up between her teeth. She could feel the first syllable forming and then it came out of her in a long, never-ending hiss.

  “You best drink some more tea, gal,” Madame Lola’s face was right in front of hers suddenly. And the most magical thing had happened. The tea was all back in the cup again, and the cup was in her hands. Marie wanted to say, I cannot do it, I cannot even move my lips, but the tea was in her mouth and Madame Lola’s hand did the most intimate and slightly repulsive thing of touching her on the throat.

  When she looked down, afraid of vomiting the tea, she had drunk it and Madame Lola’s hand was on her breast. This was quite out of the question, unbuttoning her dress for her, she did not wish to stay here, she did not wish to be lifted out of the chair like this, and suddenly she opened her mouth wide to scream but her mouth didn’t open. It was as if the scream rolled up and filled her mouth, pressing against the teeth, she saw her naked breasts when she looked down and the opened buttons of her white chemise. Her dress was on a chair across the room.

  Sometime during the long night Marie was awake and knew exactly what had happened.

  There were five white men, gentlemen all of them with their stinking breath and their stinking pomade, this big one with the black whiskers digging his knee against the inside of her thigh, his thumbs pressed down into the flesh under her raised arms so that she arched her body, that scream rising against to suffocate her, a stream of vomit rolling up with it that leapt out in silence to make peaks on the walls. They didn’t bother to take off their clothes.

  The young one with the blond hair wept in his wine until the tall one threw the wine in his face, and he sat there, long arms hung between his sprawling knees, the tears and the wine dripping from his swollen face, little whines coming out of him. The man beside her on his elbow said, “Now you’re not going to try to hit me now, no, you don’t want to do that,” and untied her hands. Darkness. Only to awaken to that room again. And again. And again.

  Until in darkness, she heard the morning sounds.

  Sun shone on the mud-streaked floor, and the rain teeming on the shell yard became a glare as it hit the puddles in the sun. Not one particle of this had been imagined, it was all true. And the blond-haired man, drunk, blubbering, listed still in the chair with his wine-soaked cravat, his opera cape with its white satin lining hanging down so far it was caught under the leg of the chair. He tilted his head to one side, crying, murmuring, crying. Everyone else was gone. Except that singsong voice that sang to him, “You go home now, Michie DeLande, you just go on home now, Michie, you got to get some sleep now, Michie, party’s over now, Michie,” while he sat there, head to one side, whining and murmuring, and sobbing with a sudden shift of his shoulders, the snot and the spit on his lips and his face.

  Marie watched that woman moving about the room. She watched her emptying the whiskey from the glasses into a brown bottle, she saw her pitch the butts of the cigars out the open door. She saw her nudge the drunken man again and to her surprise the drunken man did not get out of the chair. His gray red-rimmed eyes were still fixed on Marie, and his mouth shuddered, thick and the color of salmon, with his whimpering cries. “You go home now, Michie, you best get out of here, your brother’s going to come looking for you, Michie, party’s over.” So that was it, he was not a man, he was a boy.

  Ever so slowly Marie moved her left hand. She lay with her head twisted so that her neck ached, but she did not move her head, her eyes following the woman, she merely lifted, slowly, her left hand. She could feel the strap of her chemise and moved it up ever so slowly to her shoulder. She could feel the other strap and moved it ever so slowly up over her shoulder and let her hand drop then as the woman turned, “Michie, now you got to get out of here, Elsa get that boy to take this man out of here, Elsa?” Ever so slowly, Marie’s hand tugged at the white muslin until the button loop closed over the button, it would have been infinitely easier with her right hand, but her right hand was twisted upside down under the bar, and she could not move it without turning over, so she just kept on working with her left hand. One button. Two buttons, three buttons, four. She could see her naked knee against the wall, and the thigh black with bruises and the smears of blood. With her left hand, she slid the muslin down. There was blood over it, it was impossible to get out of here like this. She stared at the blond-haired man.

  But Madame Lola had seen her eyes. “You just lie back, girl,” she was saying in that singsong voice, and had snapped her fingers. Another woman had come into the room. There was the sound of a rag being squeezed through water, and beside Marie there was a bottle of green glass with a long narrow neck. If she reached out quick with her left hand…But now this woman had touched her right wrist and was turning her hand painfully under the brass bar and had it free. It was absolutely essential to act before they got rid of that man.

  Her head nearly pitched to the floor when she turned over but she had that bottle and it took two slams at the corner of the ma
rble to break it. She was sitting up with it, and staring at the voodooienne for the first time.

  “Now why you want to go and do that now, chérie,” said Madame Lola. “Now why you don’t want to lie still now?” She came forward motioning to that other woman who was wringing the rag in the water, “You put that down, chérie, you got to have a nice bath now, you got to rest.”

  “Don’t you hurt her!” The drunken man blurted out. But he could not stand. He had put his hand on the back of the chair and nearly fallen just as the woman with the rag had reached out and Marie scraped the broken bottle down the length of her arm. Both women stood still. “Don’t you hurt her!” he was roaring, trying to get up on his feet, his opera cape dragging on the muddy floor.

  “You get out of here, Michie!” Madame Lola growled at him over her shoulder. “You’re in bad trouble, Michie, now you want to make it worse, you just stay, this ain’t no nigger girl, this is a white girl…” Perfectly stupid, the man didn’t hear a word she was saying. But that other woman had run out of the room. It was absolutely essential to get up before that woman brought someone else back.

  And Marie sprang off the bed and rushing past Madame Lola with the bottle clenched in her right hand, got behind the white man, her left fingers digging right through his coat.

  “You leave her alone!” he said at once, and reached back behind himself to hold onto her. She pulled him toward the door, his big stumbling feet crushing down on her toes; no time to think about that, she felt herself back suddenly into the cold downpour of the rain.

  She grabbed the cloak off his neck nearly pulling him over and he helped to put it on her shoulders now, the hem of her chemise and the hem of the cape disappearing into the great sheet of water that was spreading out endlessly in the alleyway and in the yard.

  “Now, you come back here, girl.” Madame Lola put a hand up against the rain, eyes squinting, “Where you think you’re going, girl? You belong with us, girl, your Maman don’t want you now, you belong with us, now you come back in here, girl, you got to have a nice bath and lie down.”