The Cottoncrest Curse (30 page)

“Listen. Here's what the Louisiana Supreme Court wrote a few months ago, upholding the Separate Car Law. First, the opinion quotes from a case handed down by the Massachusetts Supreme Court upholding segregated schools. There Massachusetts had noted that while this might stem from prejudice, ‘this prejudice, if it exists, is not created by law, and cannot be changed by law.' ”

Louis paused, shaking his head in dismay. “It gets worse. Then the Louisiana Supreme Court quotes from an opinion by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which wrote:

Whether there is such a difference between the white and the black races in this state, resulting from nature, law, and custom, as makes it a reasonable ground of separation.

To assert separateness is not to declare inferiority in either. It is simply to say that, following the order of Divine Providence, human authority ought not to compel these widely separated races to intermix. Law and custom having sanctioned a separation of races, it is not the province of the judiciary to legislate it away. We are compelled to declare that at the time of the alleged injury there was that natural, legal, and customary difference between the white and black races in this state which made their separation, as passengers in a public conveyance, the subject of a sound regulation to secure order, promote comfort, preserve the peace, and maintain the rights both of the carriers and passengers.

“Doesn't that language destroy your case, Louis? Doesn't it mean you can't ever win this?”

“Don't you see, Jenny? Listen, the Louisiana Supreme Court realizes that these cases were decided before the Fourteenth Amendment was passed. They realize that…”

Louis held the opinion up so he could see it better in the dim light. He read slowly and dramatically:

To hold that the requirement of separate, though equal, accommodations in public conveyances, violated the fourteenth amendment, would, on the same principles, necessarily entail the nullity of statutes establishing separate schools, and of others, existing in many states, prohibiting intermarriage between the races. All are regulations based upon difference of race; and, if such difference cannot furnish a basis for such legislation in one of these cases, it cannot in any.

“That's terrible,” Jenny said sadly. “There really is no hope.”

“No. It's what gives me hope. This reflects a perfect understanding of the issues. If the Fourteenth Amendment means what it says on its face and not what this court misconstrues it to mean, then not only can there be no separate railway cars for the races; there can be no separate schools. No laws against intermarriage. No distinction of any kind based on race. No more discrimination because you're 100 percent African or 50 percent or a quadroon or an octoroon or because you have one hundredth of a drop of African blood. No more need to ‘pass for white' if you're light enough. No more discrimination based on what you look like on the outside or what racial mixture of blood flows beneath your skin. This is truly the test case, and it is perfectly framed. And, most importantly, Homer wants to see it through to the end.”

“Homer may want to see it through, and you may want to see it through, but all I want to do is to stay long enough to get my business done with Jake and then get away from this city and this state. Get away and get as far north as possible.”

“Jenny, I'm going to help you. You know that. I still don't understand why you want to help this Jew so much that you risk your own safety by coming to New Orleans.”

Jenny said nothing in response. How could she explain it to Louis without endangering the others? Marcus and Sally knew, but they were on their way out of state, never to return. They would never say anything. That just left her and Jake. The two of them had to protect the secret. And she had already done so much. She couldn't fail them now. It was a matter of life or death. It always had been.

“And the Acadians brought you all the way here in a pirogue?”

“No, Zig. They got me to Des Allemands. I gave the bearskin to those two young people as compensation for their getting me that far, and there I met up with Otto Schexnayder. He and I have been doing trading a while, and he owes me three more installments on two knives and some goods. I forgave the balance in exchange for him ferrying me across the river here to New Orleans.”

Jake, wrapped in a blanket, sat on a velvet ottoman in front of the fireplace. He stroked the thick stubble on his cheeks and chin. He hadn't shaved in almost a week. At this rate, he thought, he would start looking like his father or Uncle Avram. They wore their beards long, never shaving.

Jake had finally stopped shivering from the cold. Still, he was not warm. He started to sip the cup of steaming coffee that Zig had now refilled for the third time.

“You can't stay here, you know. There have already been flyers distributed at the shul about you and three Negroes. The Rabbi says that a scrawny fellow from Cottoncrest with a big badge accompanied by an evil-looking man have been around twice to ask questions. It just isn't safe. I can't have you here with Leah and the children.”

“I'm not asking for that, Zig. There's someone I must meet here, however, before I can head north. There's something I have to know. What I need from you is just time.”

“Time? How can I give you time?”

“Time to repay you.”

“But you don't owe me anything. We're square from your last trip to town when you brought in all those fine furs.”

“We may be square until this minute, but I'm soon going to owe you a lot. I need cash, and I need it now. When I get to New York, I'll repay you. It may take a while, but I'll repay you. With double interest.”

Zig trusted Jake. For over two years Jake had always been as good as his word. Zig walked over to the wall and moved aside a huge portrait of Leah and the children that hung in its gilded frame from wires attached to a track in the molding near the ceiling. Behind the picture was a safe. Zig opened the safe and withdrew a wad of bills.

Zig reached in again and pulled out a Freimer knife with a six-inch blade and, turning to Jake, said “This I give you as a gift. I don't know why you are in trouble, and I don't want to know, but I'm sure you can use this.”

Jake reached behind his back and withdrew from his belt the ten-inch Freimer blade, the one Rossy had given back to him. “Thanks, Zig, but I'm prepared already for whatever might await me.
Hof oif nissim un farloz zich nit oif a nes,
” Jake said, meaning hope for miracles, but don't rely on one.

Zig smiled. Jake would be fine. “Since you'll need a place to stay while you're here where no one will dare bother you, doing whatever it is you need to do, go down to the Red Chair on Customhouse Street, next to Faubourg Tremé, and ask for Antonio. It's a two-dollar house. For seventy-five dollars he'll be happy to help. Just keep the rest of this money in your shoe and keep your shoes on, if you know what I mean. And be strong. Very strong. They will take advantage of you if you don't.
Az me est chazzer, zol rinnen fun bord.
”

Jake knew what Zig had said in Yiddish was right. If you're going to do something wrong, enjoy it.

Dr. Cailleteau ignored the woman who was still screaming. His attention was elsewhere. “Hold that lamp up higher,” he commanded.

The man—his shirt in tatters, his skin black as polished ebony, his face turned away from the woman—extended his arm holding the lantern as high as it would go.

Dr. Cailleteau, holding the baby upside down by the ankles, hit him again on the buttocks. The infant's lungs filled with air, and the gray-ish-blue tint disappeared from its face as its tiny yells filled the room.

The woman stopped screaming and started to weep. A big smile broke across the man's face, and he placed the lamp down on the table and hugged the woman lying on the bed.

“You got yourself one fine baby boy,” Dr. Cailleteau said, handing the still-wailing newborn to the woman, who gently moved the man aside so she could clutch her baby to her breast.

Dr. Cailleteau finished up with the afterbirth, wiped his hands on his apron, and packed his bag. These people could not pay him. Maybe one day, in the spring, he would find outside his back door a bushel of corn or a few loaves of bread or a dripping basket of still-flopping catfish or sacolet freshly caught from the bayou. That would be payment enough.

Dr. Cailleteau wished, however, that Sally hadn't left Cottoncrest. For years she had taken care of all the births for the blacks not only on the plantation and not only in Parteblanc but also at Little Jerusalem and wherever else in Petit Rouge Parish she was needed. Dr. Cailleteau had trained her well, but given what the Knights had done to Nimrod's cabin in Lamou and with the gossip about Sally and Marcus and Jenny's disappearance having already spread, no Negress would want to take her place, traveling alone across the parish in these dangerous times.

Dr. Cailleteau pulled his pocket watch out, flipped open the top, noted the time, and then wound it again before putting it back into his vest. It was long past midnight. He was getting too old for this.

Sighing as he left the tiny cabin, Dr. Cailleteau climbed back into his buggy for the fifteen-minute ride south to Parteblanc. It was a good thing that man had come to get him. His woman might not have made it. As the baby's head emerged, Dr. Cailleteau had seen that the umbilical cord was entangled around its neck, and it was only by the barest that Dr. Cailleteau had been able to save the child.

Dr. Cailleteau still liked to deliver babies. White babies, who emerged almost crimson. Black babies as dark as coal. Babies the color of mahogany or the color of brown Mississippi mud or with skin like darkened copper or yellow-brown like pine or light tan like a fine palo-mino or so pale and sallow they could pass for white.

Assisting with a birth was still the most satisfying thing he did. Unfortunately, too many woman died in childbirth, and too many babies did not make it to their first birthday. It was another mystery of life and death.

During the war Dr. Cailleteau had been able to make snap decisions on care. He could look at a dozen bloody soldiers lined up on the ground outside his tent, with limbs missing and organs protruding through holes in their abdomens, and tell at a glance which ones would not make it through the night, which ones would survive even without immediate care, and which ones' very existence depended upon his skill, if he acted in time.

But childbirth was not like that. It was one woman at a time. It was much better to bring a new life into the world, one full of promise, than to salvage a soldier so that he could savage another living being when he was able to fight again.

Often, despite his skill, however, Dr. Cailleteau couldn't predict beforehand which young woman would have a child who would live and which one would have a child born sickly. Then there were the women who seemed to be fine but would die during the birth or soon afterward. Some of these girls were barely women at all.

In one out of every ten to fifteen births, despite his best efforts, all was lost. Dr. Cailleteau would then give what consolation he could. As he would take his leave, the grieving husband and the wife's parents would stare in disbelief at the dead baby and dead mother. Some sobbed inconsolably. Some maintained a stunned silence. Others prayed to God for strength, while still others cursed God for permitting such tragedy to occur.

And then there were the stillbirths and the miscarriages. A dead baby but a live woman. Dr. Cailleteau had thought for a moment earlier this evening that he might have just such a situation here. As the woman pushed and the child emerged, he was not sure whether he would be able to save even one of the two.

Sometimes, even when he was able to save the mother although she lost the baby, something happened to her insides. Sometimes, in these cases, she could never have children again. It was like that with Maylene, Jimmy Joe's wife. But Dr. Cailleteau had honored her and Jimmy Joe's wishes. He hadn't told anyone about it.

Dr. Cailleteau knew how to keep secrets. After all, he had kept the Colonel Judge's problem a secret for the more than two decades since the war ended. How the Colonel Judge dealt with Rebecca when he had no manhood left was something Dr. Cailleteau knew was another secret he would never fathom.

By the time Jake had walked the few blocks from Zig's house to the Lafayette Cemetery, the gates had long since been locked. Zig had told him they were shut down at 11:30 p.m. every evening to keep the voodoo priestesses out and to prevent this uptown cemetery, several blocks from St. Charles Avenue, from becoming home to the kind of rites and rituals that occurred almost nightly at the St. Louis cemetery near the French Quarter.

Jake had tried the gates, just to be sure. The heavy chain was secured firmly with a large padlock. He would have to come again tomorrow night, at dusk, to see if Jenny would show up as he had asked. He had to talk with her. He had to know about their survival.

It was almost three in the morning before Jake reached Custom-house Street. He cut a strange figure in the long black coat and wide-brimmed black hat that Zig had given him but no stranger than many others whom he passed. Sailors from foreign ships so drunk they lay in the gutter, clutching bottles of whiskey. Soldiers stripped to their waist, carrying their shirts and coats in their hands, looking dazed. Men from the North with bowler hats and canes peering in the doorways and deciding which establishment to frequent. Black men counting out their pennies to see how much they had left, to see if they could afford another round of drinks. Or women. Or both. Men of all races and sizes.

A babel of languages surrounded Jake. It was like being back in New York. En glish. French. Spanish. Italian. German. Chinese. And languages he could not even identify.

While the rest of the city slept at this hour, Customhouse Street and the entire nearby neighborhood of Faubourg Tremé was alive. Gas lamps blazed away through open windows. Music came from every doorway, most of which were ajar to welcome anyone who passed by. Laughter drifted from second- and third-story balconies and galleries. Laughter from women, high and seductive. Laughter from men, deep and desirous.