Papa’s body lay in a box polished so well that its sides gleamed in the candlelight. He didn’t look like he was sleeping, as I’d heard people say of the dead. He looked shrunken, more like a shell, like something left behind. His face held no expression other than that of a man who had dropped everything within himself and moved on. To see him that way confirmed what I had already felt in my heart. Papa wasn’t there. He had flown from his room that night, and I had been with him when he had done so. Our goodbye had happened then. But this body had held his spirit, and I was glad to see it well cared for and to know it would go in the ground of Catalpa. It was where he belonged.
I heard a low and bitter laugh behind me.
“Every promise he ever made to me was a lie.”
Madame stood at the parlor entrance. She wore a black silk gown and clutched a fine lace handkerchief, though I doubted she had cried as Calista or I had. Her eyes were not red. She moved past me and spoke close to Papa’s ear.
“Wasn’t it, Jean? You made damn sure of that.”
I thought she would spit in his face, and I wondered what I would do then, because I couldn’t let her disrespect Papa’s body. Instead she turned to me, and I saw what Calista had meant. I was used to Madame being a crouching thing, pinching me, hitting me, pouring words of bitterness all over me. It was like the weight of the world bore her down. Now she held herself up, her shoulders back, her head level.
“When Jean Bébinn courted me, he said I would be the jewel of his life. He took me from my father’s New Orleans mansion and said he would bring me to a place where I could shine and make his world bright. That place was Catalpa Valley Plantation.”
She touched the gilded frame of a painting on the wall and then ran her fingers over the fabric framing the windows. “We were happy early on, I think. I loved how the air smelled of flowers and green things growing. The city stank to high heaven even on the best of days. Soon I was with child. I gave birth to a boy. And Jean? A man couldn’t have been more thrilled. But my baby died of the fever before he was a year old. I had Calista, but I don’t think Jean got over losing that boy.”
She snatched me by the arm and pulled me into Papa’s office. Again, I noticed a difference. She was resolute in her actions, not frantic like she’d been when she’d pushed me down the stairs. “Next thing I knew, he was whistling again. Laughing again. And I thought things were gonna get better. But he wasn’t laughing or smiling because of me. He’d gotten himself enchanted by your nigger mama. Like she’d cast a spell on him.
“I had to put up with her in my house and then you! Now he’s up and died, and what do I have to show for it?” She grabbed some papers from Papa’s desk and shook them in my face.
“Nothing! He leaves everything to Calista! And leaves land to you! He thinks he’s had the last laugh. Well, I’m the one left standing. I don’t have to live on his lies. I can make my world the way it’s supposed to be, and that starts tonight.”
I smiled. “The land belongs to us. Papa always said so.”
“We’ll see about that. You may be fair enough, but at the end of the day you’re just a little nigger girl. You have to go where you can remember that.”
I heard a horse outside and the sounds that said the horse was pulling a carriage or a wagon. Madame went to the door and opened it herself, not waiting for Dorinda or one of the men.
The man at the door had something wrong with his left leg. When he stepped into the house, it was like the leg forgot to follow, and he had to drag it into the room. Wisps of thin gray hair hung from under his hat and framed his thin, sharp features—a strange chin that came down straight until the very last moment, when it turned slightly upward like a pig’s. I’d never seen him before. He removed his hat and bowed his head at Madame.
“Madame Bébinn,” he said. “Got your message. Came soon as I could.”
“Thank you, Mr. Amesbury. She’s in here.”
He followed Madame into Papa’s library, but he looked at me and stopped at the threshold. “She’s a light one.” He rubbed a scruffy chin. “How old is she?”
“On her way to twelve.”
“You sure you want to sell? A few more years you could get a lot more for her at one of the fine houses in New Orleans. They always lookin’ for new fancy girls.” He reached out to touch my face, but instinctively I stepped backward. I know he didn’t like that, because then he put his whole hand on the back of my head, above my neck, and pulled me toward him. He smelled of whiskey and rotted food.
“She can’t stay around here.” Madame said it like that notion was all too obvious. When Amesbury looked at her, she followed that with, “My husband favored her. I’d rather she go somewhere far from Louisiana, where Jean Bébinn isn’t known.”
Amesbury nodded, looked at me again, and seemed to understand the situation was different from his expectations. “What’s your name?”
“What does that matter?” Madame tried to cut me off, but I spoke over her.
“I am Jeannette Bébinn!” I thought he would hear the name and go away. I could see a question in his eyes, and that made me think he would not lay hands again on a daughter of Jean Bébinn. But it was not the question I expected.
“Can she read?”
“No, she cannot.” Madame walked toward Papa’s desk as she said this, like she thought the lie would work better if she kept in motion. But I cut in front of her and made it to the Bible that Papa always kept open on a table near the window. I placed my fingers on the lines of a psalm and read aloud.
“‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my . . .’”
“Stop it!” Madame shoved me to the floor. She went to Papa’s desk and spoke urgently while she wrote on paper.
“I understand your concerns, Mr. Amesbury. I am prepared to compensate you for your troubles.” She opened a drawer in the desk and removed money. She offered it to him along with the paper. “Take this for your travel expenses. Here is my permission for the sale. You may keep forty percent of whatever you get for her.”
His eyes widened.
“But you must take her tonight.”
Reading the paper and hearing her words made him grin, and he looked like a pig who had eaten his fill—satisfied.
“Madame, don’t you worry. You’ll never have to hear about this gal ever again.”
I got up from the floor. If she was never going to see me again, then she would have my words. I would tell her everything. “Madame, you are evil,” I said. “And all your evil will roost in your bad heart and torment you, because my papa will know what you’ve done. He may be dead to this earth, but Papa is still here and all around me. He will go with me now, and he will stay here and haunt you. I swear to you, Madame, you won’t have any peace on this land until I step foot on it again. Papa’s soul is bound to this land, and so is mine, and so is Calista’s. You will never be anything but a trespasser. I will go with this man because the sooner I go, the sooner your evil can turn in on you and poison you like the witch you are!”