by C. L. Bevill
Found a peanut, found a peanut, found a peanut last night.
Last night I found a peanut, found a peanut last night.
It was rotten, it was rotten, it was rotten last night.
Last night it was rotten, it was rotten last night.
- Children’s traditional song
Mignon parked her Explorer in the small empty lot of the Blessed Heart School. Putting it into park with a sigh, she glanced down at what she was wearing. Dressed in a more presentable outfit today, she made sure her neat khaki linen slacks were still unwrinkled. She also adjusted the neck of the creamy pale silk shirt she wore. She didn’t want to appear eccentric. She was merely a visitor here. There would be no demands for information. John Henry wouldn’t be hearing about this meeting in the form of a complaint.
A woman with a simple white shirt and a black skirt stepped out onto the back veranda of the courtyard. She craned her neck to see who had just pulled up. A simple nun’s headpiece covering her hair was clearly visible as she picked her way across the opening toward the visitor. Mignon had a moment to size her up, almost certain that it was Sister Helena. She was only a few inches shorter than Mignon and as slender as a reed, her arms as thin as a child’s. As Mignon climbed out of the Ford, she became positive because of the beatific look on the woman’s face. After all, how many nuns were at the school? There was only one.
Then she slowly looked around and became aware that the courtyard was deserted. For a solitary instant, there was only the sister and herself there, and the wind that blew forlornly above, gently shuffling pine tree branches. It was an odd moment, a sense of déjà vu spread over Mignon as if she had stood in this place before, alone and as a child. But she knew what she was feeling; the initial flashes of standing in the front doors of a dozen other foster homes. A sense of foreboding mixed with anxious fear threatened to choke her before she forced it away with the knowledge that she would never be put in that situation again.
“Hello,” Mignon said politely.
“Oh, Miss Thibeaux!” said the sister. She put both of her hands out as if she would embrace the other woman, and Mignon was reminded of how Robert had hugged her. However, the sister merely took her right hand in between both of hers and shook it. “I’m Sister Helena Curtis. I would be honored if you’d call me Helena. How wonderful it is to meet you.”
Mignon looked around pointedly and judiciously withdrew her hand from the other woman’s warm grip. “Where are the children?”
“There’s a field trip today. They went to Shreveport to a science museum. There’s a large one there that has an IMAX dome theater. Then they’ll go to a nature park, so they’ll be good and tired when they come back. I have two girls still here. One wasn’t feeling so good this morning, and the other one has a broken leg. Poor dear.” Sister Helena’s face was thin and pinched and her lips were the color of salt. Although she was in her middle thirties and there were the faint beginnings of lines around her eyes, from a distance she might have been mistaken for a child. That was, if she weren’t wearing her nun’s headpiece.
“A broken leg?”
“Yes,” Helena said, pointing toward the inner courtyard. “Her father decided that she had the devil in her and using a sledgehammer would be the way to beat it out of her.” Her face was grim as she related the incident. She looked half away as if she were shamed by the fact but then turned her face toward Mignon and added, “But then, you know about what it was like to be a child in need, don’t you?”
Mignon nodded, and her thoughts were bleak. “I do know.”
“Let me show you around.”
•
The complex was larger than Mignon had imagined. Beyond the initial walls of the courtyard were two buildings. One sat off to the back and was obviously a chapel. The other was the large building that had been hidden by the thick old trees that grew lushly on the moderate hill. There was a wing for offices, cafeteria, and school rooms. Another wing contained a big room, a sort of living area that included a television, games, and a library. The third wing was the dormitory. It was a large open room with bunk beds running down each side, much like the austerity of a military barracks. Each bunk had a dresser next to it and two night stands, one on each side, like neat little soldiers standing guard.
Close to one end, a thirteen-year-old girl with coffee-colored skin lay on her bunk bed with her leg in a huge cast, reading a book called The Witch of Blackbird Pond. She was barely eighty pounds and several inches shorter than five feet. The pink nightshirt she was wearing seemed to drown her. Her hair was in two neat braids at each side of her sweet face. Mignon smiled at her while she wondered how some animal could have hit her with a huge hammer.
“Hello, Sharla,” said Sister Helena peering down. “You’ve read another three pages.”
“Yes, sister,” Sharla said. “It’s a good book. My pa don’t like us to read about the house. He say it ain’t good for us. It means we ain’t doing something what needs doing.”
“He says that it isn’t good for us,” corrected Sister Helena calmly. “But reading is good for us. It gives us knowledge, and knowledge is power. Don’t you worry about what your father would say about your reading here.”
Sharla’s doe brown eyes turned to Mignon. “You got pretty hair,” she said.
Mignon smiled even larger. “Thank you. My name is Mignon.”
“Mignon,” repeated Sharla. “I like that name. My sister’s name is Ebonni. She lives with our auntie in New Orleans. They say I’ll be going to join her after my leg heals.”
“We’re going to go talk for a while, Sharla,” Sister Helena said with a smile. “Then I’ll come back, and we’ll find a game to play. Maybe you can tell me about what you’ve read.”
“Yes, sister,” Sharla said. She looked at Mignon. “You know, I get my very own bed. We get to et three times a day here.”
Mignon nodded and tried to swallow the lump in her throat. Sharla with the broken leg was merely happy to have a book to read peacefully, her own bed, and three meals a day. What must it be like for her at home?
When they stepped out of the dormitory, Sister Helena said, “I don’t know where Linda has gotten to. She might be in the bathroom. She didn’t really seem that sick this morning, but the girl doesn’t have occasion to lie, so when she said she wasn’t feeling well, we made sure she wasn’t running a temperature and let her stay.”
“Linda?” Mignon looked at the sister expectantly. “Linda Terrebonne?”
“Yes,” the sister agreed in surprise. “Do you know her?”
“I met her the last time I was here. She’s going to university next year.”
“Why yes.” Sister Helena smiled. “We’re all proud of her.”
They had returned to the wing with the living area, and Mignon glanced around as if expecting to see the young woman. Coincidently, she had been Dara Honore’s second cousin, a person who might know things about Dara. “I hope the students aren’t taking the recent death of their friend too badly,” Mignon said softly.
Sister Helena sighed. “God have mercy,” she said respectfully. “Although Linda is a distant relation, I don’t think she is taking it well. Some of the children have been having nightmares about it. They say evil walks the bayous. Ghosts, fifolets, and Half-Man wander about as if they will yank a child out of her oxfords in a moment.”
“Fifolets are the dancing balls of light, right?” Mignon mused. “But I don’t remember Half-Man.”
“The legends are about a man who gave up half of his soul to the devil,” Sister Helena said wryly. “Apparently, he got a raw deal. Because the devil took half of him, physically, and of course, he roams the bayous looking for the other half. Or someone else’s to use as his own. He would damn them to wander in the swamp instead of himself.”
“I’ll try to remember that when I’m out there looking for interesting scenery for paintings.” Mignon looked around the room and studied what she saw. Everything was well used. The tables were scrat
ched and then repainted with plain, common colors. Couches were covered with throws to conceal the wear and tear underneath. Even the library of books had the appearance of being well thumbed as if each had been read a thousand times.
There was a sudden distant peal that echoed down the hallway. Sister Helena’s head swiveled. “That’s the phone. Please excuse me for a moment.” She hurried down the hallway in the direction of the offices.
Mignon was left alone and she almost shivered. She didn’t like this place. She felt like the little abandoned child she had once been. It smelled like oatmeal and white glue and ammonia. Everything was unfailingly neat as a pin and so far, she couldn’t fault a thing. Just because the furniture wasn’t new or because there were scratches in the paint of the table didn’t mean the children weren’t well cared for. Sharla seemed happy, but what was her basis for comparison?
“Miss Thibeaux,” said a tentative voice. Mignon started and turned to see Linda Terrebonne standing at the door. Her lovely face was twisted with nameless emotion. Her normally creamy tan flesh was pale with strain. Her hands twittered at the neck of her plain white shirt, minutely adjusting it as she nervously waited. Previously solid and strong, she seemed anxious with tension.
“Linda,” Mignon said. “The sister said you weren’t feeling well. Should you be in bed?”
“I lied,” Linda said bluntly. She tossed her dark brown hair over one shoulder and looked at Mignon defiantly as if expecting reprimand from the adult. “I’ll have to confess it to father on Sunday,” she bit the words out as if they pained her.
Mignon who was a lapsed Catholic understood the dilemma. She had lied upon occasion, most recently to John Henry, and it wasn’t resting well with her. She merely nodded at the younger woman.
“I knew you were coming today.” Linda’s face was calmly obstinate. “Sister told us about what happened to your mother and all. I thought that since you found Dara, you would be interested in what had happened to her, too.”
Trying to gauge others’ sincerity was a skill that Mignon had honed over the years. Linda’s face was telling her something other than her words. She was hiding something. Her hazel eyes flittered back and forth as she looked at anything else but Mignon’s eyes. “I am interested,” Mignon said. “But if you know something, then you should tell the sheriff or the investigator. They want to find out who killed Dara just as badly as you do.”
Linda shook her head almost violently. “Cain’t do that. Le shérif isn’t a friend. He only takes folks to jail. And the other one,” her shoulders trembled minutely, “Caraby,” she muttered hoarsely. “They have a special name for him.”
“Caraby?” Mignon repeated. “A special name for him. Why? What is it about him?”
Linda stared at the floor. “Once he was a faithful member of the family. Then he joined with those outside our world. He mixed with them and became a po-liceman.”
“You mean, Caraby’s Creole, too?” Mignon tried to understand what Linda was saying.
“Yes, a Creole. Like us. Like Dara. Like you.” Linda glanced around the room again. She eyed the door as if she thought Sister Helena would walk through at any moment. “They say he is Le Père des Cocodries, the Father of Alligators.”
“I don’t understand what that means. Is that bad, then?”
“Whatever the alligator eats,” Linda explained impatiently, “does not come back.”
Mignon closed her mouth. Then she said quickly, “The Creoles think of him as someone who betrayed them, who turned his back on them?”
“On you, too,” Linda said sincerely. “You didn’t know before, I think. But you know now. That’s why you need to make sure that Dara finds her justice. The one, Le Père des Cocodries,” she said the words quickly as they were all one, “he looks only at Tomas Clovis, Dara’s boyfriend. He only asks questions about that one. But Tomas is just one of the Gullahs. They’re just like the other Creoles but darker.”
Mignon frowned. “A Gullah? I’ve never heard that before.”
“Sister taught us that most of them live on the coast, but there’s a group on the Cane River. They’re gens de couleur libre like we were once. Only they married into other blacks. Their skin got darker, they say. As black as night, as blue as indigo.” The last part was said so rapidly that Mignon knew it was a common phrase Linda had heard and was repeating.
There was that other phrase again. The one both Miner Poteet and Mary Catherine Brevelle had used. Gens de couleur libre; free people of color. A history lesson from a seventeen-year-old girl, Mignon mused. It was more than just history, it was legend. Linda went on, “They used to say if a Gullah bit you, you’d get infected bad, and swell up like a watermelon on account of their black gums. But Tomas was good to Dara. Gave her flowers he got from the bayous. Wrote her letters. Pretty letters. He never broke a promise to her. She didn’t appreciate him. She didn’t appreciate anyone.”
“So if Tomas didn’t kill her, then who did?” Mignon studied the girl’s face. Did Linda have a crush on Tomas Clovis herself? Were his romantic actions toward Dara the deeds of a gallant knight, albeit one who came in a pirogue instead of on a white horse?
Linda looked around again. “Dara liked to cross folks.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “She didn’t want to be here at Blessed Heart, so she was doing what she had to do to get out. The cost didn’t matter to her.”
Mignon looked around herself and then carefully sat on the edge of a lumpy couch. “Why don’t you sit down? Your knees are shaking.”
Linda glanced down at her legs and then back up at Mignon. “Ifin she finds me in here with you…”
“You mean Sister Helena?”
Linda didn’t move. Her eyes gazed at the floor again, neither confirming nor denying what Mignon had asked. Mignon thought of the sister again. Helena seemed so caring of the girls under her wing. She had gazed down at Sharla with such a loving expression on her face. But that didn’t necessarily mean she didn’t have a motive for murdering a sixteen-year-old girl. What Mignon found a bit of a stretch was that Sister Helena probably weighed close to ninety pounds. Strangling someone wasn’t going to be an easy task for someone that small. No, on the contrary, it was something a man would do. A large man like Father William, for example, wouldn’t have a problem with Dara Honore. He would simply overwhelm her with his bulk and muscles. The image made Mignon shudder with dread.
“Why tell me?” Mignon asked after a moment, managing to find a shaky voice.
“I told you,” Linda replied plaintively. “Your mama was a Dubeaux. She was one of us. Even though you weren’t raised here, you defended her. You came back and found out that one of those plantation folks murdered her and that St. Michel, too. Then he died, and they say you had a hand in that, as well.”
“But,” Mignon started and then stopped. She started again. “I didn’t kill him.”
Linda gazed at Mignon knowledgably.
“He died because of an accident,” Mignon stubbornly stated.
“They say you’re strong and willful but that you want to see wrongs righted,” Linda said.
Oh God, I’ve just been sainted, Mignon thought frantically. She tried to guide the subject back to where it would do most good. “Who do you think hurt Dara?”
“There was an argument.” Linda’s voice lowered again into that scared whisper. “I heard it. The sister caught Dara trying to sneak out. Then the next day…” her voice broke, “well, you know what happened the next day.”
“You’re saying that Dara and Sister Helena argued the night before I found her body?” Mignon said, wanting to be absolutely sure of her facts. When Linda nodded fearfully, Mignon added, “Did you tell Investigator Caraby?”
Linda shook her head this time. “You know why.”
“You don’t trust him.” Mignon thought of Caraby’s coldly striking features with his black-as-night hair slicked back and his pit-like eyes. I wouldn’t trust him either. “I need to tell the sheriff this.”
Lin
da kept her eyes on the floor. “If that’s what you have to do…”
“It doesn’t mean that the sister was responsible for Dara’s death,” Mignon said quietly. “Is there something else?”
Linda’s feet scuffed across the floor as she stepped from one foot to the other. “Dara had…things she took from people. Letters. Stuff they didn’t want other people to see. I think she had something that belonged to Sister Helena.”
Mignon tried to read the girl’s face. It was hard since she kept her gaze looking downward. “Linda,” she said sharply and the girl’s head shot up. Their eyes locked on each other’s, and Mignon was abruptly reminded of Dara’s empty hazel stare. “Why do you say that?”
“Dara said something about it.”
“Where did Dara keep these things? In her dresser? In her bed?”
“The po-liceman looked there already,” Linda said. Her hazel eyes stayed on Mignon’s face, silently willing her to believe. “She had another place. I think that Tomas would know. If Tomas will tell you.”
Ah. Mignon suddenly understood. Tomas was the key to all of this right now. He knew something, or he had access to something someone else wanted. Was there something in the hidden cache that belonged to Linda, as well? The younger woman’s face was oddly innocent, but there was also a certain gleam there that told Mignon there was more to come.
“You could ask Tomas,” Mignon suggested.
“Tomas don’t trust us,” Linda said firmly. “He doesn’t trust anyone. Especially now.”
Fancy that. A young Creole persecuted. And he doesn’t trust anyone. No big surprise there. “What makes you think he’ll say anything to me?” Mignon asked. She wondered if word of Mignon and Tomas’s brief conversation had made it back to Linda Terrebonne.
Linda shrugged, and her eyes dipped to the floor again. “Dara said there was a place out in the bayou where they would meet. A ruin. She said it was the place where the light bent.”
“Light bent? And that was the place where she hid all the things she took?”
There was another tiny nod. “Maybe. But I don’t know what she meant by that,” Linda said. Then she glanced over her shoulder. “I gotta go.”
