Paula Morris (23 page)

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"What was she like, your mother?" Rebecca asked, and a
slow smile crept onto Lisette's face.

"Strong, proud. She wouldn't bow her head to them. She wasn't
tall, not as tall as you -- but she had a presence. She wore a
tignon
--
you know what that is? Once all free women of color had to wear them, because
the law wouldn't let them wear hats or veils like the white Creole ladies. That
was before I was born. My mother wore one because she said it let people know
who she was, a free woman."

"A
tignon?"
Rebecca repeated, and Lisette spelled
it for her.

"It was a long piece of material," she explained,
"wrapped around her head."

"Like a scarf?"

Lisette considered this. "More like a turban. It was very
high," she said, her hand curling up into the air to demonstrate.
"And tied in front. It made her seem taller than she was. That day her
tignon
was red like a ruby."

Rebecca imagined the two women facing each other -- one pale,
dressed in black, the other dark-skinned, wearing her vivid
tignon.
Both
of them enraged, because they'd just lost a daughter, and the father of that
daughter. One of the women a murderer, the other determined to learn the truth.

"I could see her, but I couldn't talk to her or touch
her," Lisette was saying. "She couldn't see me the way you can."

At this, Lisette looked utterly dejected. Rebecca inhaled the dank
smell of the mossy soil, the crumbling tombs, this dusky, quiet corner of the
cemetery. Now was the time to talk about the curse, but it was hard to muster
the courage to ask Lisette directly.

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"What ... what happened next?" she mumbled.

"The lawyer," said Lisette, her eyes bleary, "he
told her the story again, the one she'd already heard. About how I'd come down
with yellow fever, how I'd been buried already in the cemetery. How they were
all sorry, but there was nothing that could be done. How she should respect the
lady of the house, who'd just lost her own daughter and her husband, and just
go on back home to her own part of the city. And that's when it happened."

"What?" Rebecca's chest felt tight with anticipation.

"Something on her face -- Mrs. Bowman's face. Something gave
her away. I was watching my mother, but she was watching Mrs. Bowman, and when
I looked I saw it as well. There was something in that lady's face when the
lawyer man talked about our part of town. Disgust, maybe. Like she was
sneering. She didn't feel sorry for my mother -- she hated her. I could see
it."

"So what did your mother do?"

"She rose up real slow," Lisette said, straightening
herself. "And pointed right at Mrs. Bowman. I've never seen her look like
that -- so furious, so righteous."

Lisette raised her arm, pointing right at Rebecca -- mimicking her
mother's gesture, Rebecca thought.

"What did she say?" she asked Lisette.

"You've taken my daughter from me. God will punish you for
what you've done."

Lisette stopped talking, her outstretched hand trembling. Rebecca
was a little disappointed: That was it?

"And then," Lisette said, her voice so soft Rebecca had

199

to strain to hear it, "she said that this was a place of
terrible evil."

"The Bowman house?" Rebecca asked, and Lisette solemnly
nodded.

"She said, this is a place of terrible evil, and evil could
not go unpunished. That just as her daughter had been taken, before her
seventeenth birthday, the daughters of this house would be taken, one after the
other. She was talking, on and on, as though she was in some strange, angry
trance. It was like a prayer, like she was calling up to God. She was saying,
Lord,
I pray that this house will be destroyed, burned to the ground."

"Ah!" Rebecca couldn't help exclaiming. So there
was
a
curse on the house itself, not just on the family.

"But I couldn't hear everything clearly, because Mrs. Bowman
was screaming at her, calling her bad names. And then the lawyer had grabbed my
mother, and he was dragging her toward the door, shouting at her to be quiet.
He was telling her that her sort needed to be careful these days, that they
couldn't just move around the city acting like they were somebody."

"What did he mean?"

"Times were changing," Lisette sighed. "I didn't
really understand then, but when I saw what followed, it started to make sense.
Our people -- the free people of color --weren't welcome anymore in New
Orleans. There were new laws, stopping them from meeting in public, even from
playing music in public. People were getting arrested. A lot of them moved to
other places."

"Did your mother move away?"

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Lisette shook her head.

"She died six months after me. Another ghost told me what
he'd heard, that she'd dropped dead in the street on the way home from Mass.
That day at the Bowman house -- that was the last time I saw her. When the lawyer
pushed her out the door, I was trying to hang on to her, but my hands just
slipped through her, as though she was made of water."

Lisette's body shook with sobs, and Rebecca took a step toward
her, wanting to comfort her. But her friend backed away, refusing to be
consoled.

"I wanted to say good-bye to her, but I couldn't." She
wept, her fingers clawing at the dusty tomb wall. "They just pushed her
out of the house, pushed her into the street."

"That's terrible." Rebecca was crying now, too, tears
clogging her eyes; she rubbed at them with the back of her sleeve. The thought
of Lisette's mother being treated that way by the Bowmans and the Suttons ...
it was disgraceful.
They
were disgraceful. "Did you follow her
home? Or couldn't you go back until ..."

"Who are you talking to?" a boy's voice demanded,
startling Rebecca so badly she almost swallowed her own tongue. She swiveled
her head to see who it was, though she could tell without looking.

It was Anton Grey, and he was standing right next to her.

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***

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

***

What?" snapped rebecca, worried about how loud she'd been
speaking, how red and tear-stained her face looked. "I mean, what are you
doing, creeping around the cemetery?"

Anton must have squeezed through the narrow space between the
adjoining graves; she was so focused on Lisette's story, Rebecca hadn't heard
him approach. Lisette had disappeared into thin air -- why, Rebecca wasn't
sure. Anton couldn't see Lisette, and he couldn't hear her. All he'd heard was
Rebecca talking -- to herself, apparently, like an insane person.

"This is my family's grave," he said, his expression
puzzled and a little suspicious. Anton looked scruffier than usual, his
sweatshirt frayed and grubby, his sneakers scuffed with dirt, almost as though
he'd been out all night, sleeping at the foot of one of the tombs. His handsome
face was drawn, and there were dark circles under his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Rebecca said, because she couldn't think of
anything else to say, and because she
was
sorry, in a way.

202

Sorry that he'd come across her talking to Lisette. Sorry that
she'd snapped at him, when he looked so weary and stressed. Sorry that this was
the first time they'd spoken in weeks, and it was in this weird, uncomfortable
situation.

"You still haven't answered my question." Anton folded
his arms, his eyebrows a straight, dark line. "Who were you talking to
just now?"

"Nobody," muttered Rebecca. She wasn't about to tell
Anton she could see -- and talk to -- Lisette. Especially not when he was in
such a foul mood.

"Don't lie to me," he said: He sounded contemptuous and
angry. Anton had never spoken to her this way before, and Rebecca didn't like
it one bit. Where was the Anton who'd draped his jacket over her shoulders,
who'd kissed her at the party?

"Really," she said, shaking her head. "Just back
off, OK? It's none of your business what I'm doing or who I'm talking to."

"I asked you a civil question."

"Actually, it wasn't
civil
at all."

"So you're just going to stand here and lie to my face?"
he demanded. "That's how much consideration you have for someone who's
supposed to be your friend?"

"Supposed to be," she said, irritated by his tone.
"A pretty strange kind of friendship, when you can't even be bothered to
keep in touch when I'm out of town. I haven't heard from you for weeks, and now
you creep up behind me and start shouting at me."

"I'm not shouting," Anton said, in a more normal voice.
"And I'm sorry I didn't call you back or anything while you

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were away, but it's been ... it's been ... look, you just don't
understand."

"I don't understand what?"

"Anything. You don't understand anything."

Rebecca rolled her eyes. Ever since she'd arrived in New Orleans,
everyone -- her aunt, the girls at school, and now Anton -- kept telling her
the same thing. How could she be expected to understand anything when everyone
was so secretive, when their rituals were so elaborate, when their history was
so complex and loaded? How could she get the inside story when everyone did
everything in their power to keep her out? The only person who'd ever been
honest with her, the only person who'd answered her questions and revealed the
secrets and stories of the past ... well, it certainly wasn't Anton. It was
Lisette, and right now she seemed to have drifted away -- probably, Rebecca
thought, because she wasn't in the mood to hear them argue.

"If I'm so stupid, I'm surprised you're even talking to me
right now," she told Anton. She folded her arms, and leaned back against
the tomb. "No wonder you can't be bothered to call me. I'm just a dumb
outsider, right? Just like your friend Toby told me -- I'm a nobody."

A pained expression flickered across Anton's face.

"That's not what I meant, and you know it," he told her.
"We're all just worried about Helena. She's in danger, like I was trying
to tell you before Christmas. Didn't you believe what I said about seeing that
ghost?"

"Of course I believed you!" Rebecca was trying not to
feel jealous, but she couldn't help it. Was Anton needed to hold Helena's hand
-- carry her umbrella, maybe -- every hour of

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the day? Anton never seemed to like Helena that much before: She
was just one of his gang. Suddenly, he was so worried about her that he
couldn't pick up his phone to call another girl?

"Then you should understand why I've been busy," he
said, in a way that sounded as though he was summing up his case in front of a
jury.

"I understand that you're upset and concerned," she
said. "But blowing me off completely and then blaming it on the whole
situation with Helena -- that seems kind of convenient."

"Huh?"

"I mean, you talk about me not telling you the truth,"
Rebecca continued, warming to her argument, annoyed all over again by the
indignant look on Anton's face. "But you're not telling me the whole
truth, either, are you? Why don't you just admit that you didn't like everyone
snubbing you at the Bowmans' party, so acting like I didn't exist anymore was
the easy way out?"

"I wasn't acting like you don't exist! I've just been, you
know, kind of preoccupied."

"Preoccupied with what other people might think."

"Why won't you listen to me? I'm telling you that an old
friend of mine, an old friend of my family's, may be in real danger."

"And I'm not your friend? You can't talk to me about
it?"

Anton didn't reply. His silence told Rebecca everything she needed
to know. Whatever he'd said to her in the past, however much he seemed to like
her, Anton saw her the way everyone else around here did -- as an outsider.

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"I don't even know why we're having this conversation,"
she said softly. The sound of a bell was clanging through the cemetery, a
signal that the place was about to close. Good: Rebecca wanted to get out of
here. The humidity was making her feel short of breath. "You acted like
you were different, but you're not. You don't like me any more than the rest of
them."

"I
do
like you!" he insisted. "I think I
made that pretty clear at the party."

Rebecca felt her cheeks flushing. He'd kissed her, and it seemed
as though he'd meant it -- but then why had he basically dropped her right
after that?

"All you really care about is what your friends will think or
what their families will say," she said. This sounded much more cutting
and bitter than she intended, but it was too late: The words were out.

"You don't understand anything about our families,"
Anton said, his voice sharp. He glared at Rebecca, his eyes boring through her.
"You don't have our history, OK? You don't see things the way we do."