“It is Siana Grove, where the new-growth sugarcane gets planted and where the swamp meets the edge of the fields.”
I liked looking at the map, but at times it was hard to listen without growing sleepy to all of Papa’s words about how and when he’d acquired each parcel and how he’d used the word valley to name the estate because he liked the word. He didn’t care that it didn’t make sense because Louisiana’s as flat as the bottom of a cast-iron pot. I loved sitting with him. His clothing smelled of tobacco and his breath of the sugarcane he chewed. The map’s paper felt thick and satisfying between my thin fingers. I did wonder why Calista didn’t have the same learning, nor did it seem required of her.
This thought of my half sister made me wonder where she was. Madame, when I was a baby, used to keep us apart, or she’d tried her best to. With no other children in the house, Calista, four years old when I was born, was naturally drawn to me. Dorinda said she would find Calista rocking my crib if it took too long for someone to come see about me when I cried. I suspect our connection grew when I learned to talk and she realized we called the same man Papa. Once I was walking, she would help me climb out of the crib and go to her room, where we’d share her bed. Dorinda, knowing how Madame would rage if she discovered me in Calista’s bed, retrieved me early in the morning and tucked me back into my own bed.
As girls we escaped Madame’s scornful eye by playing outside. Our favorite game was to climb onto the thick branches of the oak that shaded our back lawn. Long, luxurious strands of Spanish moss curtained the whole tree, and we loved to drape the soft fronds over our heads like hair and pull it over our shoulders like shawls. We pretended to be old wisewomen, like Deborah in the book of Judges, who sat under a palm tree and provided counsel to the people who came asking for it. Only we sat in a tree, not under it, and no one came to me and Calista, so we made up the people and the stories of their requests.
There was the man who complained about a farmer having sold him a horse that was lame, and there were the brothers who couldn’t agree who would care for their old mother. There was the old mother who accused these same brothers of neglect. As we judged the fates of our people, it became clear that Calista was more merciful than I. She was always looking for a reason to explain why the person acted the way they did.
My argument was always the same: “But they should know better!” Because that was what Dorinda always said when she scolded me—I was a big girl and should know better. If I, at age six, seven, or eight, should know better, why shouldn’t big people older than that know the same?
One day Dorinda found us holding court in the tree and asked what we were doing.
“We are the old wisewomen of Catalpa Valley,” Calista said. “Do you need counsel?”
Dorinda laughed. “Older than me?”
I nodded. “And wiser too!”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Dorinda leaned against the tree’s fat trunk and looked up at us. “I can tell the future. Can you all do that?”
Calista looked at me, and we looked down at Dorinda. “All right,” Calista called down. “What’s our future?”
“Now that depends. Whatcha want most?”
“Want most?”
“Uh-huh. Most out of the entire world.”
The day was so hot that it seemed the moss could drink from the sweat on our skin. Calista smiled and took my hand.
“For me and Jeannette to stay here always.”
“How you gon’ do that, Miss Calista? You don’t think you ain’t gonna marry? You don’t think the men won’t come after you when you grown?”
She didn’t say this could happen to me.
“They won’t find us,” Calista said. “We will stay here, and this moss will grow over us, and no one will see us again.”
I draped more of the Spanish moss over her head. Her words made sense because I believed the moss could support and sustain us, though I didn’t know how. Everything about Catalpa Valley felt that way, full of life and growing—the water over our bare feet when Calista and I waded in the creeks; the air when it seemed to soak up all the water until it felt so thick we could grasp a breeze in our hands and squeeze it to our hearts; the ivory-breasted kites who built nests from this moss and lived in the branches over our heads; the low bellow of bullfrogs searching for mates in the swamps. Why wouldn’t we stay here, on Papa’s land, and grow season after hot season along with everything else?
“Girl,” said Dorinda, “you’ll leave this place when it’s time. Even the sugarcane does that.”
But now Calista was doing a different kind of leaving. Ever since Dorinda had started bleaching Calista’s sheets, she had grown distant, and I missed her. When Papa wasn’t home, we often became islands floating solo about the great house. Calista stayed in her room, sorting through her dresses and staring into her mirror, until her mother, who didn’t like to sit alone, called for her. She made Calista play piano while she sipped her sweet wine.
Madame never drank enough to get drunk, but she drank enough to make her bolder, enough to say or do things I don’t think she would have said or done otherwise.
That afternoon I felt bold too. I can only think the wrongness of being forgotten came over me, and I was hungry, annoyed, and tired of being afraid. So I left my room and went to the main staircase.
My luck was bad, for Madame was already on her way up the steps, most likely in search of her daughter. When she saw me, she started like she’d seen a rat scurrying across the floor. She grasped her skirts higher and flew up the last of the stairs to where I stood on the landing.
“What are you doing? Where are you going?”
She always sounded like I was about to steal something or set fire to the house. But burning things was her notion, not mine. Her eyes flew up and down, looking me over, and her blonde curls bounced against her cheeks. I wore a simple fern-colored dress with soft ivory petticoats underneath. Papa always made sure I had nice clothes, but they were not the bright silk dresses Calista wore. Still, I knew every aspect of me looked wrong in Madame’s eyes.
I meant to tell her I was going to the kitchen, but the craziness in her eyes provoked me and made me lie.
“To Papa’s study.”
The shock on her face satisfied me.
“I want a book we have been reading together.” I felt my tongue slow as it touched the roof of my mouth to form the word together.
She reached out for my shoulder, but I stepped away. She shook her empty fist at me.
“There’s nothing in there for you.”
“What is Papa’s is mine. He said so. Because he is my papa.”
“What about Calista? He’s her papa too.”
“But she has you, and she can have your things.”
Her lip curled upward, and half a toothy grin cut into her face. “Then by that reasoning, you should have what belongs to your mama—nothing but dirt.”
The mention of my mama made my chest swell. “Then Calista and I would be the same, because from what I see, you don’t own anything either. Everything is Papa’s.”
Madame’s face glowed pink. “Why, you ugly little . . .”