Centuries of June (22 page)

“Into the breakfast skillet, I dropped another egg to make a half dozen and another spoon of butter for the Master, and he never noticed but ate every bite and complimented me afterward. Thus commenced the stuffing of the Old Goose. Gumbo ya-ya a-swim in fat, and more fat in the roux. Jambalaya thick with hock and sausages. Étouffé brightened with the extra yellow fat of the crayfish. Cassoulet, maque choux easy on the vegetables and heavy on the bacon, sweetbreads and tripe, potato dumplings taught to me by Frau Morgenschweis on the Rue Charles. Meatpies and fruitpies,
beignets de carnaval
any time of the year. At the market, I would lay in a supply of beer and ale, and just as the King ordered, with every meal the lagniappe, which M. LaChance came to favor and anticipate as a dog longs for the meatbone or the children their sweeties. Oh, I fed him those, too, the pralines and toffees till his teeth ached. I shoveled the food into that man, but he just got fatter and fatter as the years lurched by. Let me tell you, he popped the buttons off his breeches more than once after Marie’s dinners, ya, yet still I slaved. Not that I said nothing about the money. I begged him to show mercy if not for me then for my daughter, but he was steadfast as to the terms of our contract, though in truth, I think he kept me for his voracious appetite and would never let me go.

“Seven years passed this way. Clothide grew into a girl, and the Master grew into a prize hog. He even got the gout, but on he ate, hollering about his foot as he stuffed his mouth with a mess of alligator tail
seasoned and slick with butter sauce. And though I went to the
Vaudoux
and danced with the snake King and Queen, nothing ever changed. There were times of waiting when I felt I could not go on, yet I went on.

“And then it happened, just like in a fairy tale. All of the children had long left the house, and the Master and Mistress dined alone, she living on red beans and rice, he facing a table crammed with bowls and dishes. Just an ordinary crust of bread caught between two fingers, his mouth open to receive the morsel, when the
Vaudoux
struck. The heel slipped from M. LaChance’s grasp. His other hand shot to his chest in panic over the vise pressing his heart. Like a big snake squeezing and squeezing. The pressure. His pale skin flushed claret, and his lips quivered as if to say something—
adieu
, perhaps, and then he died before his face hit the plate. He was too fat for the household slaves to lift, and we had to call in three more men just to lay him out in the parlor, a hearse with an extra pair of horses to pull him away, and God knows how heavy the stone to stop his corpse from sinking into the swampy ground of New Orleans.”

A
soft belch forced its way between my lips. The girls chortled at my impropriety, and while there is never a good occasion for a burp other than in private as relief to gastric distress, it seemed particularly impolite at the moment. I could not help myself. My stomach felt bloated, my limbs gravid. Sneaking a look in the mirror, I noted the foreshadowing of jowls and a general puffiness about my face. Was I, too, getting fat? The old man, now below Marie’s knee, signaled that he was going to begin again.

“A
ll through that summer and into the fall, the prodigals returned to make their claims on their late father’s fortune. First, the four girls, all
of whom lived nearby, each with a dandy husband on her arm, and each one chagrined by the paltry remains of the estate. Their mother, the Mistress, had nothing but disdain for her girls and told each fancy man to go out and make his own money. Then the eldest, named after the father, arrived only to discover that there was little left in his name. We had to build a new house, his mother shouted at him. Did you expect me to live on the street? Her son left four days later, bound for the Argentine. Lastly came Georges driving in a carriage from Baton Rouge with his young bride. The poor woman, she had no idea what kind of man she had married. I kept my distance but could not avoid her when she came into my kitchen to find my daughter and me at the stove. Who is this enchanting girl? Hardly more than a child herself, she had never been told, it seems, about Georges’s black bastard. Clothide bowed with a grin at the compliment. Is she yours? the woman asked. Is your husband one of the men who works here as well? Gaston? I took hold of Clothide and covered her ears from behind. I am not married, I said. Her father is a Buckra man. She took my baby’s hands in hers for a moment, and then excused herself. As for Georges himself, he refused to even look at his daughter or speak one word to me. He was only here to court favor with his widowed mother, but she would have none of it. Over dinner that last night, Madame told her son and daughter-in-law, There is nothing left. I have barely enough to pay my own bills. From where I stood, facing Madame with a tureen of rice in hand, she spoke as if in a trance. Your father ate it all, she said. Like a pig, every scrap.

“Next day, after they had gone, Madame called me into the parlour. Marie, how long have you been in my employ? Near thirty years, Madame. And your girl, she is already eight, is she not? I nodded. Till this week, she said, I had not noticed how much Clothide resembles her father.

“I had no answer, for the admission of her son’s behavior toward me had never before been brooked, though I was certain she knew
at the time of my pregnancy and had held her tongue all along. To speak of the matter would have meant shame on her part and on mine. My husband, she said, treated you most grievously, Marie, as has my son. Both could not control their appetites.
Oui
, Madame. Had he lived, she said, the Master would have never given you the terms of your contract. Not while you kept his belly full. I made the sign of the cross as she mentioned his name and felt a brief swell of remorse over the use of the
Vaudoux
to get rid of him, but that quickly passed. How much money do you have? Nearly three hundred Spanish dollars, Madame, but I had that amount when the big fires came. Yes, I know, enough to buy your freedom and Clothide’s, too. She stood before me, but I could not bear to look in her eyes. Marie, she said, we shall go to the courts tomorrow, you and I. We shall sign the papers for you and your daughter, and when you are ready, you are free to go on your own, and you are to keep what you have earned and saved, and I will make amends of one hundred more. But Madame, I protested, you said you have nothing—She held up one finger to her lips. I cannot bear the sins of my husband and my children. Now, come give me a kiss, for I shall miss you.

“Clothide and I went to the Tremé and found a place with Hachard, an ancient crow now, but enlivened by our presence. Mr. Puckett gave me her old job cooking in a tavern for the Cajun people, and on Sundays, I went back to the old church, though Sunday nights I still danced the
Vaudoux
. When the yellow fever struck the following summer and so many died throughout Orleans, I worried mostly for my child and for old Hachard, but they escaped the plague. My misfortune was to contract the fever in June of ’96 and quickly wither. Do not worry,
ma chérie
, I told my daughter weeping at my bedside, Hachard will take care of you and besides, you are a free person. Don’t go, she cried as I left this world, don’t go, and the last thing I remember was the sight of my mother being led away as I shouted the very same words.”

M
arie dressed quickly, pinning the purple cloth at the shoulder, and then hid her face in the corner, her head bowed and her shoulders heaving as though sobbing at the memories. The homunculus who lived in my belly raced across the lining, grumbling and cursing as he ran. I loosened the belt to my robe, yet found no relief to my growling stomach. My feet and my hands ached and seemed waterlogged, and when I lifted my fingers to my face, the skin at my cheeks was taut and tender to the touch. The more Marie cried, the fatter I got, and when I looked in the mirror, a blimp stared back at me. I had doubled in weight, my features diminished by the beachball of my head. My belly escaped from the confines of the robe whose seams strained to stay together. My fingers and toes felt as thick as sausages, and my legs as stout as totem poles. “I am becoming well rounded at last,” I joked to the old man, but the words came out in a helium squeak.

“You are a zeppelin,” he said. “Entirely too rotund to contain yourself.”

“I feel as if I shall pop.”

In one swift motion, he stepped away from me and spun Marie by the shoulders. An enormous yellow balloon, imprinted with a cartoon version of my face, was at her lips, and her cheeks were puffed to deliver the next, perhaps fatal, blow.

“Don’t you dare,” he told her. She sucked in her breath and pinched the stem between her fingers. The pressure hurt my brain, and I could scarcely bear to watch for fear that she might wield a sharp fingernail or a straight pin and burst me with a casual gesture. Instead she let out the air in one long raspberry, the latex blubbering in an obscene manner, and at the same time, I deflated, the air hissing from every orifice in the most embarrassing way, though I was relieved in the end to be back to my normal self. Holding out an insistent palm, the old man demanded that she hand over the balloon. They argued for a moment in furious French, the words zipping by so quickly that I could not make out a single one. Marie surrendered reluctantly, and the old man held up the balloon for my inspection. In addition to the caricatured face, there were two stubby arms and two legs molded into the shape. He wadded it into a ball and stuffed the balloon into his breast pocket. Chagrined, Marie joined the other three women on the edge of the bathtub perched like spectators consigned to the cheap bleacher seats.

“A word,
monsieur, s’il vous plaît
?” I led him to the threshold and the illusion of privacy. “First of all, let me thank you for saving my life once again. Without you, I might have been clubbed or speared or blown into bits or who knows what.”

He tapped me twice on the meat of my arm. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you—”

“That’s awfully decent of you.”

“—before you finish the story of the performance of our friends in your parlor. I’d like to know how you got to where you are today.”

“You and me both, brother.”

Behind the glass of his spectacles, his bright eyes blinked back a film of moisture that could have been taken for the beginning of tears. His bottom lip quivered, but then he composed himself. I was growing quite fond of the old bugger. He winked at the girls. “What do you think of the most recent one?” He jerked his thumb in Marie’s direction. “Took every ounce of concentration to keep reading the words on her skin and not give in to distraction.”

“She is quite beautiful. Stunning, really. And that accent.”

“A Frenchwoman could make the shopping list sound sultry. Must be all that red wine and cigarettes.” In the bare light, he looked even more recognizable, tall and thin as a scarecrow, swept-back thatch of silver hair, the wire-rimmed glasses, and a face etched with wrinkles earned from ten thousand Gitanes and night after night of staring down a blank page. The famous French playwright.

“You remind me of someone.”

“Your father.”

“No, yes. Him, too, but someone else.”

“I am glad it is somebody else. I was getting concerned.”

“What was the name of the French fella who wrote that play?
Waiting for Godot
.”

He patted the pockets of his robe. Reaching in with two fingers, he pulled out the wrinkled balloon and considered it as though he had no memory of the object. A thought tickled his lips. “Do you have a cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Now would be an odd time to start then. Still.”

“It is a very famous play. About nothing.”

“Nothing? Everything is about something.”

“Even this?”

“Especially this. Even silence has meaning and countless interpretations.”

“Yes,” I said, agreeing simply to be sociable. “It’s about two tramps who are waiting for Godot to return.”

“A French play? Sounds like a film I saw once with the poker-faced actor Buster Keaton. He had gotten into a number of jams and was awaiting the return of his partner to straighten things out. Man’s name was Godot, but he never returns. Or perhaps it wasn’t Keaton at all, but Laurel and Hardy.”

“No,
Waiting for Godot
is a kind of existential comedy.”

“But Laurel and Hardy would make a good Vladimir and Estragon, don’t you think? Two tramps. Laurel and Hardy were always two tramps.”

“I am beginning to feel like we’re two tramps, waiting for some order out of this chaos.”

“No, I am sure it was Keaton. He was much admired by your playwright. He even used Keaton in a film without words. Not a silent film, mind, but nothing to be said.”

“You even sound like him,” I said.

“Your Frenchman? Perhaps he only wrote in French. Forced himself to think harder.”

“That’s it,” I said. “Beckett. An Irishman who wrote in French first and then translated his own words into English. God bless you, Mrs. Stottlemeyer.”