Heiresses of Russ 2011 Read online

  Lulu was right; all sides had wrapped themselves in self-righteous hatreds for each other and for their own. She didn’t know if Lulu’s mission to bring enlightenment to those who straddled both worlds would work but it was no less powerful or effective than others she’d heard expressed.

  “I’m afraid that I wasn’t able to convince May to rid herself of the man….”

  “Rusty?”

  “Yes, he’s the one who caused the girls to run away. So we may expect some trouble.”

  “All the better that we’re here at the farmhouse for several days. I can show you what skills the girls have gained…even planting!”

  “If Rusty comes out here….”

  “We’ll plant a new idea in his head,” Lulu said almost with humour.

  “He’s not so easily persuaded.”

  “Can’t say as I’ve met a mortal yet who can resist our…our charms.”

  With that Gilda saw that Lulu had little experience in this type of confrontation. She finally understood that Bird had drawn her here not only to revisit her past but to also aid Lulu in preparing for her future.

  They rode the remainder of the way in silence and arrived shortly at the farmhouse which stood on high ground far enough outside of town that it felt like another place altogether. It was as brightly lit as Woodard’s had been dark. Lulu descended from the buckboard with an elegance that only she could pull off and waved Gilda back until she knocked on the door. Clearly a signal had been arranged to assure the girls’ safety.

  After the exchange at the door the light around the farmhouse softened. The protective circle had refracted the light from the lamps, causing them to glow more brightly. Gilda pulled back the rug and handed down the smaller child to Lulu and then took the bundle that was the older girl. As they moved to the farmhouse door so Lulu released them from the veil of sleep in which they’d been wrapped, tighter than the blankets. They woke with a start on a small settee, the same one Gilda remembered falling asleep on many times in years past.

  The young women of Woodard’s, varying in shade from deep cocoa to café au lait, stood alert and wary as Lulu and Gilda unwrapped their two packages. The young women tried not to hover and stare but they were as curious about the newcomers as any children would be. Each face was full of light and life, just as Gilda remembered the girls when she lived at Woodard’s. The oldest girl, Hilda, had her dark red hair swept up in a tight bun like a schoolmarm, and ordered the others around with the same practiced tone.

  Clementina’s and Jinny’s eyes widened as they observed silently. Hilda shooed all of the girls from the room as Lulu sat on a small stool in front of the settee. Gilda stood back by the window; rawness tightened her throat when she recognized Lulu’s posture as the same she’d faced when here with her Madam and Bird decades earlier. She broke from the memories and listened to the sounds seeping in from the night until Lulu’s voice drew her back into the room.

  “Now you gals are welcome to stay with us, but there’s one thing. You got to say you’re colored. You understand?”

  “I ain’t no nigrah!” Clementina almost shouted, echoing the outrage she’d heard in the voices of her elders.

  “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. You got two choices: if anybody asks you you’re both quadroon…you know what that is don’t you?”

  Jinny nodded quickly as she asked, “I like being a quadroon…. Rusty say they the best springs in the mattress.” The old term and the metaphor sounded both incongruous and vile in the child’s mouth.

  “We don’t talk about girls that way here, Jinny. But being a quadroon ain’t a bad thing, I assure you.

  “You say your grandmammy was black or you going back to May and Rusty and there ain’t nothing I can do about it.”

  Clementina, whose mouth was open in protest, stopped her next words and looked down at her little sister before speaking.

  “He made us do things we ain’t supposed to, that’s why we come to your house, Miss Lulu.”

  “I know, child,” was all Lulu said as she watched Clementina making up her mind. Gilda was pleased that Lulu didn’t try to corral the child’s thoughts and bend them to agreement. Their decision had to come from inside.

  Clementina examined Lulu’s face, then her gaze moved down, measuring all she was being asked to be. Her calculating assessment was chilling to Gilda as if the colored woman stood on the auction block in Congo Square being assessed for her value by a child.

  “I don’t know how to be a nigrah,” Clementina said finally with tears in her voice.

  “Why, you’ll just watch me and the other girls, Clementina. Haven’t you ever played pretend?”

  “No.”

  “I played pretend. I like it. I want to be colored, please. Please!”

  “Yes, it’ll be fine for you to play but Clementina has to play too or it won’t work.”

  “Please, let’s be colored and stay here!” The complexity of Jinny’s request was totally lost in the childlike sound of her voice and her sincerity.

  “We’d best make some decision soon, Lulu. We’re about to have some visitors.”

  “Clementina?”

  “Can I keep my name?”

  “Which?”

  “Clementina. I like that so much better than that other….”

  “Yes, of course, Clementina. No one should be able to take your name from you. No one can take away who you really are inside. And it’s inside that matters. Not outside. Remember that.”

  “All right, we’ll be…we’ll be colored.”

  With that Lulu yelled for Hilda, “Now, Hilda, now!”

  The sharp crack of her voice brought the girls back into the room with blankets in hand. Hilda was outside and had the storm door to the root cellar open in seconds. A cellar was an unlikely thing in the waterlogged parishes but long ago Woodard’s first Madam had constructed an underground room that appeared to be simple dirt but that resisted encroachment of the persistent underground waters. Gilda helped the girls descend into the dark which was lit only by one small lamp held in Hilda’s steady hand; as she did so she breathed in the scent of the soil, a sprinkle of which lined all of her clothes. In the breath was the memory of her own hiding here, her own rescue. She hoped this one would turn out as successfully as hers.

  “Candle out, Hilda,” Lulu said in a placid voice that Gilda recognized as the gateway to the somnambulism that would keep them still and quiet until she awakened them.

  “Sleep is all around…in your head and in the air. There is no walking or waking, only sleep. Until I bring the light.”

  Lulu blew out the candle, gently lowered and bolted the door, then turned back to the house. “I hear them now—five or seven, I cannot tell. The horses make it muddled.”

  “I am good with horses,” Gilda said.

  It was here that both understood how much older Gilda was than Lulu. Gilda had been on this path for several more decades than Lulu, and she’d traveled. Not yet as much as she planned to, but she’d seen the Pacific Ocean and the great forests and deserts in between New Orleans and Sorel’s salon. Lulu’s skills were confined to the intricacies of the New Orleans landscape. Not small but less than the world beyond and the future to come. Gilda’s return was not that of a child, but a teacher. In that turning of circumstance Gilda felt the first balm, warm against her injured heart.

  Lulu poured them each a shot of whisky and settled before the fire. In her life with Sorel and Anthony, Gilda had only learned to drink champagne, but she accepted the drink with curiosity. Sorel had confirmed that they had no need of nourishment, but desire of it was another matter. The finest champagne stayed chilled in his establishment at all times. Clearly Lulu’s taste ran more to the grain rather than the grape.

  Lulu threw her head back, swallowing the golden liquid in one gulp, then said, “I don’t think we’ll have time for sipping.”

  Gilda let the first burning of the drink slide down her throat and enjoyed the heat as it spread throughout her b
ody. Intrigued, she took another sip as the quiet was broken by the pounding on the door.

  Gilda remained by the window and pulled her hat from her jacket pocket. It was helpful to have something in her hands and it would confirm their impression that she was a boy. Lulu opened the door with a smile as if she always entertained late night visitors.

  “Mr. Rusty. And who are the gentlemen with you?”

  “Never mind about them. I think you got something or some things that belong to me.”

  “Far as I can tell, Mr. Rusty, folks don’t buy and sell folks no more. So if you mean Clementina and Jinny, they can’t actually ‘belong’ to you. Unless you they daddy.”

  “Them gals work for me. They owe me and May so don’t play words, Miss Lulu. I know you know how the business works, even if you like to pretend you retired.”

  “Let me say this again. They don’t belong to nobody. And they come to the school to get some learning, like all the other colored girls we got there.”

  “We went by the…. What you mean colored!?”

  “We only take colored girls at Woodard’s, you know that, Mr. Rusty.”

  “Them gals ain’t colored, you crazy!”

  “Look at me, Mr. Rusty, you saying I ain’t colored?” Lulu looked past Rusty into the pack of white men. “Why, ain’t that Mr. Daniel who bartends over at Gertie’s? And I’m seeing Sam who work out front that Bourbon Street crib. You all know me; you even worked for me once, Sam, didn’t ya? Now long as you known me ain’t I been colored?”

  “You simple heifer….” Rusty stepped across the threshold before the men in his gang could respond to Lulu. Gilda stepped forward away from the window so she was clearly visible. What he saw was a tall, dark, muscular young boy with a steely gaze, who seemed vaguely familiar. He tried to place the face but his memory had been blocked. He couldn’t remember that it wasn’t May who slugged him, but his hand went to his swollen jaw as if it had a memory of its own.

  “You takin’ in nigrah boys now. Or is this a personal project?” Rusty said salaciously.

  “This is my cousin.”

  Gilda held tight to her cap and cast her gaze down at the carpet as they expected and listened, not to Rusty, but to the men behind him. They were restless. Having been whipped into excitement with free drinks and the tale of stolen whores they were now unsure what they were meant to do with the colored madam/school teacher in what felt like an empty farm house.

  “Now Miss Lulu, where are them gals?” Sam called out almost solicitously.

  “I sent them over to my cousin in Assumption Parish, that’s why Gil…why Gil is here. He come back to work for me on the farm while they help out my aunt. And I think the new girls got some relatives over there.”

  “They ain’t got no relatives over there!” Rusty yelled, impatient with the details.

  One of the men lit a torch that flamed above their heads ominously.

  “I ain’t got time for this back and forth,” a voice from the back said angrily. “Rusty, what we doin’?”

  Gilda’s face did not reveal the terrifying image that flooded her mind: the girls in the farmhouse cellar—locked in sleep behind a bolted door. They could not risk fire.

  “Miss Lulu, you want me to catch the tea kettle?”

  “Yeah, Gil, would you,” Lulu answered, listening to Gilda’s fears. She kept her eyes on the restless men as Gilda moved across the room and to the kitchen. Once out the back door, she circled the house and stood far enough behind the man with the torch so he didn’t sense her there. She did not want the evening to end in blood but she could feel it rising in the five men. Liquor along with disdain for Lulu and the girls was swirling around in their guts. They needed some valve to release the heat and the prospect of torching the farmhouse was becoming more attractive with each moment.

  “Mr. Rusty, you killin’ their spirit, don’t you care about that?” Lulu began

  “Shut your mouth and give me my girls.”

  Lulu felt Gilda evening her breath and drawing each man into synchronization with her. She ignored Rusty and caught the thread of consciousness that Gilda flung out to her from behind the men. She held onto the thread, hoping Gilda knew what she was doing. Despite the seasoned nature of her mortal life Lulu was young in this new world; she’d never tried to control so many at once.

  Gilda wove her line of control back and forth and around the men, linking each time with Lulu until they were all like one living organism corralled by her. She held them so tightly the air thinned; the torch went out and their breathing became shallow. She reached out to the horses the men had tied together behind her. Her silent request to them was answered as the horses moved quietly in concert back down the road, ambling slowly enough so that Gilda and Lulu could follow, nudging the pack of men between them.

  It was an eerie procession; the horses moved as if they were in a military funeral, muffled and dignified. Gilda and Lulu walked in step with the men between them barely breathing and stiff legged like the zombies that many in New Orleans feared. A short time later they turned off the road, following the lead of the horses. At one point Gilda sensed someone else in the nearby dark but couldn’t risk breaking her concentration to explore. That trouble would be met when this work was done.

  The horses stopped abruptly in front of the still waters of a swamp, just as Gilda had requested of them.

  “Go,” Gilda said to Lulu.

  Lulu pulled back, letting Gilda hold the men as she plucked Rusty from the group. Her eyes swirled gray and orange as she spoke to Rusty in a sweet Louisiana voice, “Don’t you remember, Rusty, them gals…they colored?” She gave him one more chance to let go of his quest.

  Even in her thrall he could not back away from the certain danger that lay ahead of him. It was just like the city officials who couldn’t see the sin that lay outside the District, wouldn’t acknowledge the damage they themselves created by letting women be used and abused and not protecting them. The energy and music that lived in the District needed their nourishment; instead they sucked it dry.

  Lulu recognized the waste as clearly as Gilda.

  “Nigrah bitch, I should have killed you and those so-called….”

  Lulu sliced through the vein in his neck as it bulged with rage. The blood spurted onto her clothes and disappeared against the black of her dress. She encircled his shoulders gently in an embrace which would be the last he ever felt as she drank from him. Before the end she searched for a change of heart; finding none, she then went deeper looking for some good thing he might want or need she could exchange for and leave him with his life. But there was nothing, only his hatred and determination to bend the two children to his will, gutting them of their lives.

  She drank deeply, taking in his anger, his refusal to see what lay in front of him, his anger at her, his anger at May. It all drained from him with his blood. At the end Lulu looked into his empty eyes one last time to find some innocence in his soul that she would keep within her always, just as they’d been taught to do.

  When it was done she looked back at Gilda, who recognized she’d just witnessed Lulu’s first kill. Lulu lifted him easily, tossed him into the swampy water and watched it float in the darkness of the watery garden. The swamp water filled his blood-spattered white shirt, ballooning it out around him. Then his head bucked upward eerily as his body was snatched from below with a speed and force that meant one thing—alligator. When all traces finally disappeared Lulu laughed deep in her chest.

  “Devilish man!”

  She turned back to Gilda and stopped smiling, understanding that Gilda was not one to laugh at the death of anyone. Gilda watched and listened to Lulu closely to be assured all was done as it should be. Lulu closed her eyes to secure his face in the furthest reach of her mind knowing she would have to visit those images sometime to re-ground herself in the knowledge that all life ends in death. As she placed the image inside, she understood for the first time the depth of her power and that her responsibility lay with
the dead as well as with the living.

  “That was a terrible thing,” Gilda said out loud in a low even tone. Her words sparkled on the line of thought that wove its way around the men holding them tightly in an imagined incident they would report, embellishing the telling each year.

  “Rusty was always too smart for his breeches. We told him not to go wandering into the swamp. Drunk he was. We tried to catch up with him. He just had to show off. Then he was gone. You could never tell Rusty nothin.’ ”

  Gilda’s words embedded themselves in each man’s brain deeper than the real memories they’d carried for decades. One by one they climbed their mounts as they were directed by Gilda. They pointed their horses back toward town without noticing Gilda or Lulu. One of the men took a last look toward the black swamp, then said, “Damn, you could never tell Rusty nothin’!”

  “Come on, it’s too damned cold out here.”

  “Here, take a slug of this.”

  The words floated on the air as the men rode away, trailing Rusty’s horse to return to May.

  Gilda moved back onto the road and listened for the breath she knew was out there. The one who’d hung back and watched. He’d followed but remained hidden. Lulu took her cue from Gilda and remained quiet as Gilda scanned the dank brush on either side of the path that was barely a road.

  “Ah!” Gilda said and walked briskly toward a cypress shrouded by moss. “You should step out now.”

  A tall, thin, youngish man stepped away from the tree onto the dark path, barely suppressing his fear. He wore a somewhat nice formal jacket and his cuffs were white, but he was covered in leaves and twigs he’d picked up on his journey from town.

  “And who you be?” Lulu said roughly.

  “The piano player,” Gilda answered a little surprised. Then she laughed. “You’re the one playing in May’s salon, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He was puzzled to be known to this unknown black girl. Despite her cap and her manner he could see she was a girl and felt like he should know her.