Orleans (9 page)

I listen for a while just to have something to do that ain’t dwelling on what happened to Lydia, but it hard to pay attention when they just be preaching the same mess you hear in any church up and down the Delta. “Be kind to each other. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” With some mess about Job and Noah thrown in for good measure. It don’t go on as long as some of them Catholic masses the Ursulines hold, though, I’ll give them that.

Soon it’s over and Brother William announce the meal being prepared and we all welcome to stay. He and Sister Henrietta work they way down the aisle, shaking hands and talking to the handful of lost souls they got. I start to think of a story for when they get to me.

It come soon enough, especially since they both avoid the smuggler, who still be sweating up a storm in his half-worn suit. Sister Henrietta smile all big and tender when she see Baby Girl in my arms.

“Blessings, sister, and to your little one. Welcome to the House of the Rising Son,” she say, hands clasped in front of her like she be praying with every word. They drop down on the bench beside me and I feel trapped. But they just two little church people—nothing I can’t handle.

“Sister, you seem tired,” Brother William say. “You are welcome to rest in our House as long as you require. Indeed, if you are in need of a Home, you are welcome to join ours. Sister Henrietta here is quite smitten with young ones, and you would be most welcome, along with your babe.”

“Never let it be said there was no room at the inn,” Henrietta say with a chuckle that I don’t like, but seem harmless enough.

“Thanks, but we just stopping for the night. Got people to meet come morning.”

Brother William nod and rise from the pew. Henrietta be a bit slower to accept. “Are you a freesteader?” she ask me.

I raise an eyebrow. “Do I look it?” I sound sharper than I should. These people be feeding me and I don’t got to bite they heads off just for asking obvious questions. Then I see her eyes drop down to my arms. She ain’t looking at Baby Girl; she looking at my scars. I tilt my chin up and dare her to say something. She pull her eyes away and clear her throat.

“My apologies, Sister . . . ?” She wait for my name, but I don’t give it. What can I say? It hard to be nice sometimes.

“I only ask because we offer care for the little ones, as Brother William implied. I am the nursery attendant. Several of the freesteaders in the area rely on our services with their children. If you find that you are in need . . . Well, please think of us as your friends.”

I smile then, and it ain’t a nice smile. Anybody in the Delta say they your friend, you best be watching your back when they come ’round.

“How nice,” I say. “Thanks for your offer, but my chief wouldn’t be too happy with me if I be leaving my baby with strangers. That what the tribe be for.”

Henrietta sigh and stand up, her pillowcase dress swaying with the movement. “Certainly. Tribe is life,” she say like she heard it before. Probably lots of folks come in for a nap and got to put up with her pushy form of friendship. She ain’t never had a tribe of her own, or she’d know what it be about.

“Tribe is life,” I agree, and nod. She walk away, and I be left alone waiting for dinner. She got me thinking, though. In Orleans, you either a tribe, a religion, a hunter, or a freesteader. Better a tribe than a religion, but freesteader be as good as free-deader, so you choose second best sometimes. Leastways ’til you figure something else out. And I got to keep reminding myself that I ain’t tribe no more. Least not for the time being. That make me a freesteader ’til I get to Father John. Or maybe a member of the House of the Rising Son.

I look down at Baby Girl in my arms. She look peaceful. Probably because it so warm in here. “What do you think?” I ask her. Ain’t like she gonna answer, though. She wiggle at the sound of my voice, and I wonder what her mama’d think of me leaving her here. “These folks used to handling babies,” I tell her. Maybe I stay on a little while to make sure it all right, then I make my own way. Lydia want a better life for her daughter. I look around the dim little church. It ain’t paradise, but it be safe above the ground, protected as a church. No blood hunters burning her out of here in the middle of the night.

“Maybe,” I finally say. Not decided, but maybe.

The curtains open at the front of the room again and I sit up straight. The smell of food waft from the back room, and Brother William come out with a big old steaming pot of stew. Sister Henrietta follow, passing bowls around, and they singing some hymn or other about the Lord being a shepherd or something. My mouth be watering.

Everyone be tucking into they bowls, and I ain’t no different. Henrietta give me a large ladleful from the pot, and I pick that bowl right up and start eating. Bits of pheasant and salt meat, potatoes and yams, mixed up in thick brown gravy. It be just about the best thing I ever ate, seeing as how I been going all day on empty. When I be done, I’ll ask them to heat a bottle for Baby Girl. We doing all right for our first night on our own.

I scrape the bottom of the bowl, belly full and eyelids drooping. I shouldn’t have eaten so fast. I set the bowl aside and put my arms around the baby in her sling. But my arms don’t want to be holding her, they so heavy. I let her rest in my lap and my head jerk back trying to stay upright, I be so dead tired. Around the room, everybody else doing the same thing, nodding off over they empty bowls. I hear a clatter as some spoon hit the ground, and I realize something ain’t right.

Then I smell it. Incense. They been burning it in the cooking fire, and I ain’t noticed over the smell of food. But it ain’t just perfume like they be burning in some churches. This be something stronger, and it ain’t good.

Damn. I shake my head and pick up Baby Girl, but I ain’t got no strength left. I look at my empty stew bowl. They done drugged us all. But why?

Fighting the incense and the poison in the food, I force myself to keep my arms around Baby Girl. Around me, folks be swaying in the pews and I hear a drum being played.
Tat-ta-tat-tat-tat.

A jolt of fear go through me as I recognize the rhythm and the smell of them burning herbs. I know whose house this be, and it ain’t God or the Rising Son. This be one of Mama Gentille’s places.

Mama Gentille’s name means
kind,
but her name be the only place you’ll find it. Hers be the kindness of the gator to the rabbit, the snake to the bird. Before Lydia took me in, I been one of Mama’s girls. And I got the scars to prove it.

9

I ain’t crying. No, I ain’t crying. Nine be too old for that.

Daddy say run and I run. Day turn to night and my boots be crashing through the weeds and moss, splashing through the swamp. I hit concrete, sand, and gravel and keep running ’til I don’t hear the dogs no more, or my mama screaming, or Daddy crying. I run ’til I know I be lost. Daddy say run, but he also say where to get help, and I be a long way from it.

I be so tired. I find a place under a fallen tree to hide, shaking like a rabbit. “Fen, Fen, Fen, Fen.” I sing my name to myself nice and quiet, like Mama sometimes sing it. I got to find Mr. Go. I stay quiet. Maybe Mama and Daddy come find me, if I be still and good. They always do, they always do.

Then I remember them dogs and the hunters, with they chains and ropes and things, and I know Mama and Daddy ain’t coming for me. That’s when I start to cry.

• • • 

I wake up. A little boy, old as me, be peeking at me. It dark, but he holding up a burning torch that light him up. I don’t leave my spot beneath the tree, but I watch him.

He be wearing a man’s T-shirt that look almost like a dress on him, except he got pants on, too. He could be a ghost, except I don’t think ghosts got skin that black-brown, and they don’t giggle like he be giggling. The whites of his eyes flash in the torchlight as he look at me, and then he turn and disappear into the woods.

I don’t move. I close my eyes, but I still want to see, so I open them again, and he be back, giggling and holding hands with a girl, this one older, but dressed almost the same. She got a rope belt around her big shirt, though, and it look more proper somehow. She put a bowl on the ground and then they leave together, the boy looking over his shoulder at me. I don’t leave the bushes. I don’t touch that bowl.

Next morning, when the mist be steaming off the ground like will-o’-the-wisps, the girl come back, only now she got a man’s coat on. It hang off her like she a scarecrow. She sit down in front of the bowl and mix it, and I see there been a spoon in the bowl the whole time. After a minute, she shrug and eat it herself. By the look on her face, it just as good cold, and I’m wishing my daddy had said it be okay to eat from a stranger’s hand, so I don’t be left with nothing but growling to fill my belly.

The next night, she leave me another bowl. This time, the girl take a spoonful while I be watching, then she wipe the spoon off carefully and leave it behind, so I know it ain’t poisoned or nothing.

“Wait,” I say when she start to walk away. The girl turn around and scan the bushes for me.

I come out and ask, “Where’s the little boy?”

The girl shrug. “He got work to do.”

“What about you?” I ask, sidling up to her.

She smile. “You be my work tonight and every night ’til I get you to come out.”

“Well, I’m here,” I say, and try not to look so cold and small, but I know I be just that, and she know it, too.

“Yep,” she say. I sit down. She follow, crossing her legs Indian style.

“Eat,” I say, and she take another spoonful of food. Fish stew tonight. I see the shrimp in it, pink and white, and the tiny black veins in a piece of catfish. She wipe the spoon off and set the bowl down. I pick it up and, after sniffing it, I take a bite.

My stomach clench like it gonna turn on me. My mouth water, and for a second I don’t know if I gonna be sick or it just saliva. I glare at the girl, but she smile back.

“It ain’t poisoned,” she tell me. “You just hungry.”

“I know,” I lie. I been hungry before, but never so hungry that food make me sick. Mama and Daddy never let it get that bad. I swallow hard so I don’t start crying about them.

The girl take another bite and I follow suit. Together we finish the bowl, and I know I be keeping it all down.

“You alone out here?” the girl ask.

“No,” I lie again.

“Me neither,” she say. “I mean, before, yeah. But now, I never am.”

I give her a suspicious look.

“All because of Mama Gentille. She take care of all the little kids, and when we grown, we take care of her. It ain’t hard. And soon I’ma be grown enough to start paying back all the good she done me. That why Alfie be gone today. Alfie can only do little things, like pick berries. Tonight he snapping beans back at the house. But I get to come out here and talk to you. You want to come with me? You should be with us kids, and Mama Gentille.”

It sound nice—a house, other kids, snap beans and berries. “Are you a tribe?” I ask her.

The girl shake her head. “No, silly. Mama don’t believe in tribes. She say God made us all for something, and she take care of us all just alike.”

“And you ain’t get sick being together like that?”

The girl shrug. “Sometimes. But we tend to each other.”

I grunt, thinking about it. “You freesteaders?” I ask. I crouch on the ground and watch a beetle making his way across the dirt, a leaf on his back. What he doing with that leaf? I wonder. Daddy’d know. Mama, too. But I guess I never will.

“No, silly, we ain’t freesteaders, neither. We Mama’s kids. That’s all. We a family.”

Family. Something move sideways in my chest, and all of a sudden I start to cry. I can’t make it stop and don’t want to. Like, if I try to hold it in this time, I like to drown. I cry and cry so hard, I can’t see the little beetle no more or the stew bowl or the spoon or the forest. The girl don’t say a thing ’til I be done. And then she say, “My name be Alice. You want to come with me?”

And I go.

• • • 

Mama Gentille’s house be big—an old mansion that been a plantation long ago, according to Alice. I meet Alfie again and we share one of the old rooms on the ground floor. The top floors be too shaky to sleep in, ’cause they might fall down when you ain’t awake, and then where would you be? In the kitchen, Alice say, and I think that’s so funny, I actually laugh for the first time in a long time, and it feel all right.

Alice tell me that me and Alfie are still little kids, so we do little jobs. We snap beans and peel potatoes for the evening meal, and we pick berries when they ripe. No farming at the house, just finding what we can. Sometimes, Alfie and me even go to the bayou and catch crab.