Heiresses of Russ 2011 Page 6

  “What are you doing out here!”

  “I followed Rusty ’cause I knew he was following trouble. I don’t like to see May worried so.”

  “Well, you won’t see her worried much anymore.” Lulu said with a chuckle.

  “Are the girls all right?”

  Neither Gilda nor Lulu answered. They listened inside of him to see how genuine his concern might or might not be.

  Assured he was asking out of kindness they both simply nodded. Then Lulu said, “They come to live with me now, at the school.”

  “That’s good. May couldn’t figure out what to do about….”

  “The music is our legacy, you know that don’t you?” Gilda interrupted.

  “I been thinking that, not in those words but I’m trying to get it wrote down and teach some young folks, when you can get them to sit still!” he said, laughing nervously, not sure what had happened at the swamp’s edge shrouded by the trees.

  “Maybe you can come teach my girls to play?”

  “Girls?”

  “I can pay.”

  “If they’s able to learn, I’m the one can teach ’em.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Gilda said, once again using the soft tone that could find its way inside any mortal’s mind.

  “You better get back to work, you been out having a smoke too long. May will be worried and the salon will be too quiet without you at the piano. They love you playing.”

  “I got to get back, the salon….”

  “Yeah,” Lulu said pulling her skirts up around her ankles as she turned to head back to the farmhouse. “We’ll see you at Woodard’s. Afternoon is best. Ask for Hilda.”

  “You know that you should take good care of your hands,” Gilda continued in the hypnotic tone that threaded through his thoughts. “You can’t go around hitting things…or people…or your playing days are over.”

  “You sound just like my mama,” the piano player said with a smile as he backed away and went in search of his horse, already barely able to remember the encounter.

  Gilda and Lulu moved side by side in the moonlight which brightened as they got away from the cover of the trees and closer to the open road.

  “What are you going to do about Clementina and Jinny?”

  “It’ll be interesting to see what kind of colored girls they make!” Lulu laughed, then hesitated as if finding her words. She closed her eyes and still saw Rusty’s eyes open in surprise as she’d opened the vein in his neck.

  “It is never easy, nor should it be,” Gilda interrupted Lulu’s effort to frame her thoughts.

  Lulu didn’t present the many questions she had about what had happened. Those she’d deal with later. Now she turned back to more mundane topics giving herself time to become used to what she’d just done and who she’d become.

  “I think it’s important for the girls to learn music, don’t you?”

  “No life is ever fully realized without music. There is no peace, no progress, no invention, no legacy without music. According to Sorel.”

  “You think Yerba Buena would be a good place to make a new start?” Lulu was having an uncharacteristically difficult time expressing herself. “Maybe I want to go out to live near Anthony and Sorel. Maybe in another two or three years. It’ll be time for me to disappear from here and I’ll bring Clementina and Jinny with me. Hilda will be ready by then.”

  “Hilda?”

  “Yeah, that gal’s a born schoolmarm! And if I can do it, anybody can! She already got a gift…seeing things.”

  “Miss Lulu, you are a world of marvel.”

  Lulu sighed deeply, relieved that Bird’s and Anthony’s promise of Gilda’s help as a teacher had been fulfilled.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t get to see Bird.”

  “I will,” Gilda said softly.

  “I know she cares about you. I could tell she was thinking about you most of the time she was around. She wasn’t sad or anything like that, just had you on her mind…like she was touching you.”

  Gilda stared up at the moon, knowing that somewhere Bird did too. She was the one who’d given her the final blood, bringing her into this family, making them eternally connected. Seeing Lulu’s way with the girls made her better understand that connection. Lulu’s easy way of talking about Bird’s visit and feelings for Gilda made Bird’s need to move out into the world alone feel like less of a rejection, less of a mystery.

  Gilda would stay a while to help Lulu learn the things she needed to know just as Bird had helped her. Together they’d decide if Hilda really was the right one. Gilda was now comforted that she’d be able to learn New Orleans again from her new perspective, no longer a frightened child escaping her past. But then, as it did for them all, the moment would come for Gilda to find her own path; to create her own journey rather than chase some else’s.

  “I will,” Gilda repeated to herself as Lulu unlocked the cellar door.

  •

  Her Heart Would Surely Break in Two

  Michelle Labbé

  Much later, when she is a queen, she will remember it this way, and regret:

  It begins with a breeze lifting tendrils of her hair as Eleanor straightens in her saddle, but she does not brush them away from her eyes. She must be a statue, immobile and perfect, before Catriona, the new handmaid. Catriona, who is not really a handmaid at all but a trumped-up goose-girl, the only servant the castle can spare to go with the princess on her journey to the prince’s kingdom. This chit of a girl is to be Eleanor’s companion, and not Nurse, who has raised Eleanor, who still guards her fierce as a mother bear. The princess is given no choice in the matter. So Eleanor, from her height in the saddle, looks down and hates the handmaid, hates the wild-haired, sun-browned creature slumping in her saddle, hates her with the force of a flood, a gale, a wildfire.

  So Eleanor throws her shoulders back in the way her mother has taught her, but a tremble remains in her chin and she blinks suspiciously little. For courage she must snake one hand to her bodice, where she has nestled the handkerchief that is her mother’s parting-gift, white silk marked with three perfect circles of her mother’s blood. The ritual is only folk-magic, and the princess is not sure she trusts it. But when her soft fingertips brush the still-crimson stains, she rises taller in her saddle, astride her white mare. She imagines she hears the fabric rustling, whispering to her, as the horse’s hooves thud down the ill-paved path. Oh, if your mother only knew. Eleanor closes her eyes and imagines her nurse at her side.

  The roughness of Catriona’s voice after the princess issues her first command is enough to jar her from her reverie. She has never heard it before. Fetch the water yourself, if you’ve a thirst, Catriona says, and Eleanor, startled, does. She dismounts, bends forward, hair unbound, locks trailing in the stream, laps creek-water in a motion both graceful and awkward.

  As she straightens, water dripping down her chin, thinking of her mother—Oh, if your mother only knew—she meets the handmaid’s eyes and for a moment, she knows. It is finished, then. In Catriona’s eyes Eleanor can see her own story reflected, her own anger. This goose-girl asked to become a handmaid no more than Eleanor had asked it, and Eleanor is contrite. But there is something else, too, in the sharpness of Catriona’s features. Eleanor wonders why she thought the handmaid plain, when her eyes are that bold, brilliant blue. Bluer than the eyes she has imagined the prince might have.

  We’re the same, you and I, Catriona says in that same rough voice, and it is true, suddenly, Eleanor believes. With a swallow she remembers to breathe.

  Take off those clothes, you won’t be needing them, Catriona begins, but Eleanor’s hands are already fumbling at her stiff beaded sleeves, her eggshell-blue bodice. Catriona’s disrobing is easier. Underneath, Eleanor discovers, the handmaid is not freckled but marble-white, with glimpses of blue veins at her wrists, the tops of her thighs. Her hair falls around her like a bird’s nest strewn to the wind. She stands, and her blue-moon eyes do not look away.

  Eleanor�
��s hands tremble so that she can barely undo her laces. She shivers, though it is the height of summer, and then Catriona’s warm, callused hands are at her waist. Eleanor tenses at the unexpected contact, then wills herself to relax, release the taut muscles around her navel. The handmaid’s fingers are deft and practiced on the laces of Eleanor’s bodice, as if she has done this before. Eleanor does not notice when her mother’s handkerchief slips out from between her breasts as the bodice parts, for then Catriona’s hands are on Eleanor’s quick-flushing cheeks, drawing her gaze up, and she sees Catriona’s tongue dart over her chapped lips so they glisten. Eleanor can no longer tether herself, and she catches Catriona’s sunburnt lips with her own soft ones, still wet from her drink at the stream.

  Both girls now are gasping for air as if they have just escaped from drowning. Fabric rustles, hands tremble, as they shed their last garments, their trappings of rank. Both girls are the same now, as Catriona said, both smooth and milky with flashes of pink at their fingertips, their lips, their breasts, like ripening berries. Later on, when they have finished, they will don each other’s clothing, and they will not be able to distinguish princess from handmaid, but for now, they draw to each other, thrill to each other. Eleanor feels the sweat beading at the small of her back.

  A breeze passes by, but they do not notice, their limbs entwined. It catches up the forgotten handkerchief, the drops of blood still crimson-fresh. It rises in the air, begins a lazy descent into the stream where Eleanor knelt to drink. But Eleanor does not see it. Her eyes are closed. Her mouth is agape. She does not hear the handkerchief’s refrain as it sinks under the surface of the water, as the current bears it away.

  Oh, if your mother only knew….

  •

  Black Eyed Susan

  Esther Garber

  Black Eyed Susan first passed me in the corridor, just after the old woman had pushed me into it. Black Eyed Susan’s eyes were black as ink from outer space, and she stared a moment, coldly with them, at me. But the old woman was still there, poking the twigs of her fingers into my side.

  “What? What is it?” I mumbled to her. I had become confused, but already Black Eyed Susan had turned the corridor corner and was lost to view.

  “In there,” rasped the old woman.

  “Where? Why?”

  “There, there.”

  Across the corridor was a door, one of many. “There?”

  Like a mouse all in black, though not a black like Black Eyed Susan’s, the old woman continued to push me forward as if I were on wheels, towards the door.

  It was marked Private.

  “But—” I said.

  Sharply, leaning past me, she rapped on the door with her horn-rimmed knuckles. For a mouse, the old woman was quite large, but for a woman quite small, shriveled down nearly to a husk, but a hard one.

  From within the room a male voice said, “Enter. If you must.”

  The old woman turned the handle of the door, thrust me through, and slammed it at my back.

  A big, warm room, fire in its grate, armchairs strewn about. Behind a polished desk piled with ledgers and papers, a man of average age and some indications of wealth, eyed me over his spectacles.

  “Who are you?” he inquired, without interest.

  “My name is Esther Garber.”

  “And?”

  “I’ve come to work at the hotel.”

  “And so?”

  “Monsieur, I was pushed into this room by an old woman.”

  “Ah!” A bark of laughter burst, beneath his narrow mustache. “Granny at her old tricks.”

  “Oh, was it your grandmother then, Monsieur?”

  He drew himself up, removed his glasses, and scanned me intently. “I am the Patron. This hotel is mine. Normally you’d have no dealings with me. All that is seen to by Madame Ghoule, whom, I assume, you have already met when hired. However, the old lady you refer to, Madame Cora, will tend to drag to my notice any new girl on the staff I might, she supposes, fancy.”

  My face became blank. I met his eyes with all the hauteur of Black Eyed Susan’s. Knowing, nevertheless, that if he must have me, then he must, since it was generally the safest way. Besides. I needed the job here, lowly as it was. My money had run out; and beyond the clean windows of the Patron’s boudoir, light snow was already falling on the little French town.

  He said, smiling with disdain, “Well, what do you think?”

  “I’m surprised,” I said, manifesting I hoped a halfway ordinary feminine reaction.

  “Don’t be,” said the Patron. “My grandmother is mad, of course. Anyway, you’re not my type—” what he actually said was, not my bite of biscuit.

  I should now be modestly insulted, perhaps. I lowered my gaze, and thought of ink-black eyes, floating there between me and the patterned carpet.

  He said. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Esther.”

  “And your duties here?”

  “Bar work, and some kitchen work, so I was told.”

  “And why then are you up here at the top of my hotel—aside, of course, from Madame Cora, who will have waylaid you somewhere between here and the ground floor?”

  “I’m to sleep at the hotel, so Madame Ghoule informed me.”

  “Of course. Very well then. I wish you a pleasant stay,” incongruously he added.

  So I was dismissed, opened the door and came out, looking uneasily about for mad Madame Cora. But there was now no sign of her, no sign of anyone.

  The entire hotel, which called itself The Queen, had a forlorn winter appearance, and few guests. Madame Ghoule, for it had been she who interviewed me, was a formidable barrel of a woman. The interview had consisted of her terse remarks on my proposed duties, and the evidence that I looked too skinny to be able to do any of it; was I therefore strong enough? I lied that I was, which she at once accepted. “You will keep no tips for yourself for the first fortnight, that is our policy here. I hope that is understood.” I said it was. “After that you will receive your portion of tips from the communal dish.” I knew, having done such work previously, the “portion” would amount to only slightly more than the initial fortnight’s nil.

  Walking back along the corridor, I found myself, instead of taking the back stair downwards to my allotted room, turning the corner. But Black Eyed Susan had vanished entirely. She might be in any of the rooms, or none. I knocked quietly on each closed door I now passed. But stopped this after one was suddenly flung open, and an irate man in shirtsleeves cried, “Have you brought my beer? Where is my beer?” I apologized, and told him it would shortly arrive. “I have been waiting here half my life,” he ranted, “for one tankard of bloody beer!”

  Below, on the third floor, when I reached it, I located my room. The bed had been made up—then unmade and left open—and the sheets seemed to have been slept in only that morning. Some longish, dark brown hairs lay on the pillow, and bending over it, I inhaled a faint musk of violets.

  Hadn’t just such a scent wafted by me in the wake of Black Eyed Susan?

  I thought, with abrupt alarmed excitement, that maybe she and I were to share this room. The bed was easily wide enough. But there were no personal items put about (aside from the dark hairs). It was an awful room, in fact. Bare floorboards, on which somebody had thrown a single rough shabby towel to act as a rug, an overhead electric light without a shade. The windows had tawdry curtains, and outside the town was settling grimly into the icing of the snow.

  I made the bed again, and went along to the bathroom, which lay another floor down. Only the cold tap would run, though the hot made urgent chugging noises. I did the best I could with myself, then went back all the way downstairs.

  The bar, where I was to begin, was in the charge of a tall, thin woman. She sat in a sort of open kiosk to one side sewing things, which changed color over the days and nights, from white to red to grey, but which even so never revealed their intentions. To me they looked most like bags for octopuses. Nevertheless, despite
the octopus bags, she kept her scalpel of an eye on the room, calling out with no warning, in a shrill voice, either to me or the male waiter: “Window table wants serving. Make haste with the coffee.” Such things. The customers, who came and went from the street outside, or ambled in from the hotel itself, tipped her in preference to us, and I saw the loot always go directly into her pocket. Her name was Mademoiselle Coudeban.

  At intervals I was retrieved from the bar to wash up dishes or floors, scrape potatoes and peel onions, or pour boiling water on beetles below the sinks. After a day or two, I was also sent to lay tables, and next carry plates into the restaurant, under the large, chilly eyes of the Chief Waiter.

  At six, midday and seven in the evening, I ate in the kitchen, at one edge of a littered table. These meals were gratis, but consisted of soup, bread, and sometimes cheese. Three chambermaids also came down to feed in this way, but they were given pieces of pies or meats already prepared for the paying customers. I was obviously too new for this treat.

  The chambermaids questioned me eagerly. I was a fresh face, and apparently they longed to hear of other venues. But I didn’t make the grave error of saying I had come from anywhere fascinating. I made myself as dull as possible. Nor would I take sides in their instantaneously conjured arguments. Soon they were offended with me and left me alone, only murmuring the odd sulky slight behind their hands.

  Black Eyed Susan, however, did not appear in the kitchen, nor any other place. All that first day, evening and night, until I was cast out of the bar at two in the morning, part of me was alert as a pair of raised antennae. But there was no trace of her at all. Finally I asked Jean, the bar waiter, if anyone else worked in the hotel, aside from the people I had seen. He answered me that of course no one else was there, what did I expect, in winter?

  When at last I crawled upstairs that first night-morning, washed in the cold water, and went to my icy little room, no one was there either.

  I hadn’t put anything out in the room myself, partly for fear the few things I had might be stolen. The space looked miserly empty, and quite frozen in the snow-light from beyond the window. All that day the snow had descended, and been tramped for proof into the hotel. Now the town lay like a white desert. A scatter of lights burned on in distant white humps that might be houses, or only hills. Far above a scornful moon loitered in the clearing sky. Dogs barked to each other and fell silent. Cars had been banished from the roads.