Paula Morris (12 page)

Lisette shrugged, and gazed down at her bare feet.

"I've been around," she said. She sounded listless,
Rebecca thought. It had to be quite boring, being a ghost. There was nothing to
do in the cemetery except maybe talk to other ghosts and hear the same tour
guides tell the same stories, day after day.

"Do you get sick of it?" Rebecca leaned against the side
of the tomb, arms folded, the wind licking her hair. "Sick of being a
ghost, I mean."

"Most of the time, not much happens," Lisette admitted.

"Are there other ghosts for you to talk to?"

"In the cemetery? Not as many as you'd think. Along by the
river -- now
there's
a place to see ghosts. Mean ones, mainly. Mad and
mean. A lot of them have been drunk for two hundred years. And the Quarter is
full of ghosts as well. Right along Claiborne Avenue. In Faubourg Tremé,
Faubourg Marigny -- ghosts everywhere."

"I wish I could see them," Rebecca sighed. Lisette moved
over, making room for her, and she sat down next to her on the stone steps.

"Just get someone to murder you and then cover up your
death." Lisette gave an arch smile. "You'll see other ghosts all the
time."

Rebecca smiled back, wanting to ask how Lisette died, but

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the question seemed so rude. And what if Lisette didn't like
talking about it? What if there was some kind of ghost etiquette Rebecca didn't
understand?

"Anyway," Lisette said, shrugging. "You can see me.
And when you hold my hand, like you did that night in here, you can see what I
can see."

"Really?" Rebecca couldn't believe this. "So why
didn't I see the other ghosts in the cemetery?"

Lisette held up one finger.

"Ghost. There's just one of them here, apart from me. He's a
gravedigger --
was
a gravedigger. He's over there, by the firemen's
tomb. We can go over and see him sometime, if you like. He never leaves that
corner of the cemetery. If I get really lonely, I go and talk to him, but all
he does is sing old songs and tell stories about the old days."

"When did he die?" This was a test: Rebecca wanted to see
if Lisette stumbled over the answer at all.

"Nineteen-ten. He was moving a body into one of the vaults,
and someone hit him on the back of the head with a shovel."

"A grave robber?"

"Maybe. Someone he owed money to, that's what
he
thinks.
It wasn't his time to die, anyway. That's why he's still haunting the
cemetery."

"Rather than some house, you mean?" Rebecca was trying
to work out ghost-world rules.

"You don't choose where you haunt." Lisette gave a tired
sigh, barely louder than a breath. "The place has to mean something. It
has to relate to your life and your death. That's what I think, anyway, judging
from the other ghosts I've met,

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and what I know of the places my feet lead me. The places I can't
get away from."

"When you saw me that first night in the cemetery, how did
you know
I
wasn't a ghost?"

Lisette laughed softly, shaking her head.

"Ghosts can't get lost," she said. "And they don't
say 'ouch' when they fall over!"

Lisette bent down over her knees, smoothing her thin, almost
threadbare skirt. One of her sleeves was ripped so badly it hung off her
shoulder, and there was something that looked sticky and dirty at the back of
her head, under her hair -- a dark wound, perhaps, the hair over it matted and
thick.

"Of course," Lisette continued, "I won't be a ghost
forever." She sat up and looked at Rebecca, her pretty face frowning.

"How does it end?"

"Once the curse is broken," Lisette told her. Her face
relaxed, its worried creases disappearing. "Then I'll be able to rest in
peace. You won't see me anymore."

"The curse?" Rebecca sat up straight. The stone was too
cold for nonghosts to sit on, she decided, scrambling to her feet. "I
heard about a curse on the Bowman family -- or on their house or something. Is
that what you're talking about?"

Lisette looked around, the way Amy and Jessica had glanced
nervously around the lunchroom the day Rebecca asked them the same question.

"It's such a
long
story," Lisette said. She
stared up and down the next line of tombs, starting the way Marilyn the

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cat did when she heard something in another room. "Someone's
coming."

Rebecca listened: Lisette was right. She could hear footsteps,
girls talking. She took a step down, hemmed close to the tomb by its miniature
iron fence.

"Do you think ..." Rebecca began, turning back to talk
to Lisette: But the ghost girl was gone. Just like that, she'd disappeared off
somewhere -- why, Rebecca didn't know. If only she'd taken Rebecca's hand,
they'd both be invisible right now. Instead, Lisette was nowhere to be found,
and Rebecca ... well, she was clearly, completely, totally visible.

And standing in the grassy alley, looking extremely startled, were
Helena Bowman and Marianne Sutton. They were both still in their school
uniforms, Helena clutching a perfect posy of waxy white flowers.

"What are
you
doing here?" Helena sounded
outraged. "How dare you climb all over my family's vault?"

"I'm not ... I'm just -- sorry." Rebecca lumbered over
the boundary fence, almost losing her balance and knocking her elbow against
the neighboring tomb. She'd never thought that Helena or anyone else might
visit this place during the day, but of course they did: Their family members
were buried here. Helena must be bringing fresh flowers to leave at the gate of
the tomb. "I was just looking around."

"Then take a tour." Marianne gripped Helena's arm as
though her friend needed propping up. Helena
was
looking wan, and a
little frail, with dark circles under her eyes. "This isn't a playground!
People are
buried
here, you know."

Rebecca hated being caught like this: There was nothing she could
say to explain why she was on the wrong side of the

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railing, and she'd already apologized. Something in the tone of
their voices made her reluctant to apologize again.

"I have to go," she said, and clambered onto the
pathway, weaving to avoid bumping into Helena. She walked away as quickly as
she could without running, before either of them could say another word.
Rebecca might be late to meet Anton, but she didn't want Marianne and Helena to
see her running. She didn't want them to think they'd scared her away.

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***

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

***

Anton was waiting for her: he seemed relieved rather than annoyed
when Rebecca ran up, burbling her vague excuses. How could she tell him the
truth -- that she'd spotted a ghost in the cemetery and darted in for a quick
chat, only to be turfed off the Bowman family grave by Anton's BFFs, Helena and
Marianne? It was easier to say she'd had to stay late at school.

"The last two streetcars have been full. Some car-dealer
convention," he told her. "Like they have anything to celebrate! Do
you want to just walk?" "Sure!"

"The only thing is, it's about three miles to the park, so I
don't think we'll make it all the way. I can't stay out too ... "

He didn't finish his sentence, and Rebecca didn't press him. They
weren't supposed to be out together, end of story. Today they were both in
disguise, in their civilian gear: Anton had traded his St. Simeon's blazer for
a brown MAKE LEVEES, NOT WAR T-shirt and an American Eagle hoodie, so

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he almost looked like a normal teenage boy rather than some
Patrician heir.

They strolled along the center of the broad avenue, walking down
the disused streetcar tracks -- a sandy lane rimmed with grass lush from all the
rain. Joggers thudded past them, some of them running in chattering pairs, some
pulling dogs on leashes. Anton pointed out the plastic beads dangling high in
the oak trees, relics of this year's carnival parades.

"The parades run along -- what is it, the south side of the
street?" Rebecca asked him, trying to get her bearings.

"The river side," he corrected her. "And over there
is the lake side, and what we're walking on right now is called the neutral
ground. North and south don't mean much here. Most of the West Bank isn't
really to the west of us at all, because of the way the river curves. And now,
though we're really following the river, we're walking into Uptown -- and it's
called that because it's upriver of the Quarter."

"Confusing," she told him, and he shrugged: He was used
to this, she guessed, having never lived anywhere else, but Rebecca had grown
up in a city where streets were on a grid. "Are you a member of Septimus?
Do you get to sit on a float?"

"Ride,"
he said, grinning at her. "I'm not a
member, but my father and grandfather are, and I usually ride on one of the
floats."

"Usually?"

"OK -- always." He leaned toward her and lowered his
voice. Rebecca's heart started thudding; she hoped Anton couldn't hear it.
"Don't tell any of your cool New York

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friends, but for years I was one of the pages, riding with the
king. I had to wear a blond wig and white satin pantaloons."
"Nice!"

Anton told her more about the Septimus parade, in between pointing
out some of the more grandiose mansions lining St. Charles Avenue; a number of
them were in the process of being decorated for Christmas. Outside one austere,
sprawling stone place, men wrapped skeins of fairy lights around the
wrought-iron fence, securing them in place with large red bows. Another house,
he told her, was famous for filling its entire front lawn every December with
hundreds of pots of white poinsettias.

Septimus, she discovered, was an all-male krewe, like the vast
majority of old-line organizations. The only women in the parade were the queen
-- always young, always a debutante -- and her maids, who wore elaborate beaded
costumes so heavy and tall the girls had to be roped into position on the
floats. Septimus differed here from some of the other krewes: The maids in
Septimus were usually younger girls, not other debutantes. So both Marianne and
Helena would be maids this year, riding on the same float. Rebecca made a mental
note to skip the parade. She had enough of being looked down on by those two at
school.

"And old-line means?" she asked.

"That it started just before or after the Civil War," he
said, scuffing at the soft ground with one shoe. "In the nineteenth
century, anyway. But when people talk about 'old-line' this and that, they
usually mean the families. Everything here is about family."

"So I understand." Rebecca sighed.

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"But it's all so ... the thing is," he said, his
expression earnest and intent, "it's kind of ridiculous. Everyone prides
themselves on being one of the 'old-line' families. But none of us are really
from here. When the Garden District was laid out, it attracted the newcomers to
the city, the people who weren't part of old New Orleans -- that is, the
French-speaking, Creole-Catholic part. My great-great-great-whatever
grandfather, the one who built the house we live in?"

"Yes?"

"He was a coffee trader who'd been living all over the
Caribbean. But he was born in London and grew up in New York. And the Bowmans
were originally the Baumanns from Boston -- they were German. Protestants, like
most of the people who moved into the neighborhood. The Suttons were Irish
immigrants originally. Everyone rich and successful, of course -- cotton
brokers, or bankers, or big-time merchants. But they were outsiders once as
well, and a lot of them were self-made millionaires. In other words, not
exactly old money."

"You know a lot about the history of the place," Rebecca
told him. The wind blew grit into her mouth, and strands of hair lashed her
face; she wished she'd tied it back. But she didn't want the walk to end or for
Anton to stop talking.

"It's who we are," he said, speaking so quietly she
almost missed it. He looked at her, his dark eyes serious. "If it's so
important to people, they should at least know the truth. Most of the black
people in this city have got longer lineages than we have. They're the
descendants of slaves."

"Or the free people of color," Rebecca reminded him,
glad she knew something of the city's history.

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"Absolutely." He smiled at her. "Or the people who
moved here from Haiti or other places in the Caribbean. They were all here
before us. If Katrina showed us anything, it was how easily what people have
built here can just disappear."

Rebecca thought of Lisette's house on the other side of town,
flooded and damaged by the wind.

"So what I'm saying is -- I'm a New Yorker, too!" Anton
nudged her with his elbow.

"An outsider," she said with mock solemnity. Maybe this
was why he seemed to like her, she thought: He didn't
want
to be part of
the in-crowd. He knew a lot about his family history, but something in the tone
of his voice suggested it oppressed him. He didn't sound proud or arrogant at
all.