The Devil in Canaan Parish (5 page)

I was shocked at myself when the words left my mouth.
 
I could feel the momentum of the anger caused by my bruised ego building.

“You. . .” Sally stammered.
 
“what money would you use?” I could hear the disbelief in her voice.

“Sally, I do make money in my job, you know.
 
I do earn a salary.
 
I do pay for some things around here, including your hair and nail appointments, your cigarettes, and that pretty little dress you’re wearing,” I said the last part eyeing her up and down and something about the way I was glaring at her made her blush. She lowered her chin slightly and smoothed the folds of her dress again. I took advantage of her moment of weakness and drove in a final nail.

“Besides, I’ve sat back for years and watched you and your parents make a mess of this situation. Obviously the three of you aren’t qualified to choose our domestic help, and I am going to try my hand at it this time.
 
I couldn’t do any worse than you have already.”

Sally had nothing to say in return.
 
I think the shock of my resistance was already getting to her.
 
She put a hand to her temple and began to massage it.

“Alright, dear,” she murmured, the years of social etiquette taking control.
 
She was going to do her best to be polite.
 
“But I’m not well.
 
I’m going to bed.”
 
I could tell she had one of her migraines coming on.
 
In the past this would have made me capitulate to her wishes, but this time it merely irritated me.

“Fine,” I said.
 
“You do that.
 
Tomorrow morning you can meet her and let her know what it is you’ll be expecting from her.”

Sally stood still frozen for a moment.
 
I watched as her eyes glanced from my face to the screen door behind me and back to my face again.
 
She was trying to get a read on why I was so adamant.
 
What was it about this particular girl that would make me act this way?
 
But I didn’t even know myself.
 
All I knew was that as I regained my strength, it began to get easier.
 
I was happy she was going to bed, yes.
 
I hoped that she would take a valium or two and go to sleep and not speak to me any more this evening.
I stood unmoving, my fists clenched at my sides, waiting for another volley from her, but she seemed to have given up, at least for the moment.
 

“Goodnight then,” she said, walking over to me and brushing her lips against my cheek.
 

I watched her go into our bedroom and shut the door, then I turned and opened the screen door for Melee to come inside.

“Well,” I said to no one in particular, “that went fairly well.”

Melee stepped just inside the door and began to peer around the kitchen.
 
My wife had had it painted yellow.
 
We had the latest appliances:
 
a dishwasher, icebox, and electric stove, all in buttercup yellow.
 
The Formica counter tops and the kitchen table were mint green.
 
I rubbed my hands together and went over to the icebox, suddenly liberated with the fact that I could decide what to have for supper.

“Is there anything I can get you, Melee?”
 
I asked, over my shoulder.

“Uh, yes sir,” she said quietly.
 
“A towel, please?”

I looked back at her.
 
She was still soaked through, I had forgotten, and was beginning to drip a bit on the floor.
 

“Oh, yes, sure, of course,” I sputtered.
 
I went to the linen closet and pulled out some towels and washcloths.

“Here,” I said, “let me show you where you’ll be staying.”
 

She grabbed her bag and followed me up the narrow staircase that led from the kitchen to the
garconniere
.
 
At the top of the stairs, I reached up and pulled the string of a light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
 
It was beginning to get dark outside, and the light swinging from the end of the string threw strange shadows on the walls.
 
The north end of the
garconniere
was really used as our attic, and so she had to wade with me through the piled up trunks, the unused and broken furniture, the boxes of old photo albums and childhood keepsakes; things my wife and I had brought with us to our marriage and many things we had accumulated over the course of the past ten years.
 
There was a central aisle that led through the general chaos to the door of a tiny room that had been walled in from the rest of the space.
 
This was where our maids slept.
 
As I opened the door, I felt for the first time that it was entirely inadequate. On one side of the room was an ancient bed with a tattered quilt and pillow.
 
Next to it, a bedside table and reading lamp.
 
Across from the bed, on the other side of the room was a rickety chest of drawers, and directly under the window a waist-high stand with a washbasin and pitcher.

“Well, this is it,” I announced, attempting to make as much room as possible for her to walk inside. “It can get pretty hot up here in the summer time, so you’ll want to leave the windows open up here, and you may want to leave your door open too so you can get the cross breeze.”

She stood next to the bed, clutching her bag and taking in the room.
 
She said nothing, and I filled the silence by walking over to her window and opening it up.
 
The rain had died down to a gentle patter and I could feel the heat of the July day beginning to subside.

“I’ll just go bring you some warm water so you can wash up a bit,” I muttered, grabbing the pitcher from the stand.
 

I immediately felt stupid for saying it.
 
The poor girl had been drowning in rainwater all day, probably the last thing she wanted was to get wet again, but she only nodded as I turned and left, crossing back through the attic.
 
I opened the other window at the top of the stairs and then made my way back down to the kitchen. Instinct drove me to switch off the light.
 
I had very little occasion to be up there, and it was automatic for me to turn off lights whenever I left an empty room.

At the kitchen sink, I stood trying to get the right temperature for the water and hoping it wasn’t too hot or too cold for her liking.
 
Again, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I wanted to please her; that I hoped that she would like it here and that she would stay.
 
All of the other hired girls had not mattered to me at all.
 
I didn’t know the names of most of them.
 
I only knew that they wouldn’t be there long,
 
that there would come a point when Sally would tire of them, either from an imagined failure in the kitchen or some other domestic duty or just from sheer boredom, and so I felt that it didn’t really matter whether I knew their names or not.
 
This time, however, I felt that somehow Melee needed to succeed.
 
That somehow I needed her to do what no other house girl had been able to: keep Sally happy.
 
Perhaps it was only because this time it had been my choice and I wanted to be right for a change.
 
I wanted to be right.

I took the pitcher of warm water and began trudging back up the narrow staircase.
 
By the time I got to the top I was winded, and so I stopped to catch my breath for a moment before I turned the light back on. The
garconniere
was dark now.
 
The sun had gone down and the crickets and bullfrogs were beginning to warm up for their nightly concert.
 
The only light came from the little lamp on Melee’s bedside table. I could see the foot of her bed, and the window in her room, cut out in the frame of her doorway.
 
At that moment, she walked into view, and turned to look out her bedroom window, rubbing a towel through her wet hair. She was naked.

Her skin was pearl white.
 
It had a pale pink hue to it and seemed to glisten in the light. Perhaps it was just the rain she was toweling off, but the effect was bewitching.
 
The muscles in her back rippled as she moved the towel through her hair and twisted her neck to get a good view of the sky.
 
I was surprised that someone so small and delicate could have such powerful musculature.
 
I imagined it was from the years of hard work in a cabin back in the woods where she would have carried water to wash and scrub the clothes in an old tub, chopped wood, cleaned fish, and lifted heavy cooking pots on and off the stove.
 
Her strong shoulders and back dipped into a tiny waist and she had two dimples in the place where her back met her buttocks, round and firm.
 

I suddenly became aware that I had been there past the point of an honest mistake and now was becoming a voyeur.
 
I sucked in a breath, hoping to reverse down the stairs and then walk back up, this time turning on the light and making enough noise so that she’d know I was coming, but she turned around before I could.
 
I cringed, waiting for the scream, the slamming of the door, and the mortified tears, which should be the usual result of surprising a woman in the nude.
 
Instead she moved the towel in front of her and stared at me with eyebrows arched in surprise.
 
She did not seem the least bit embarrassed or confused.
 
She just stood silent, expectant, waiting for me to speak.

“I, uh, brought you your water,” I said, feeling ridiculous.
 
Like a guilty child I held the pitcher up to show her.
 

She still did not move, and so I edged toward her, through the attic, holding out the pitcher in front of me, and trying not to meet her gaze.
 
She backed up against the wall near the window, still holding the towel and still not showing the least sign of fear or humiliation.
 
When I reached the little stand, I poured the water from the pitcher into the basin.
 
I could feel my hands shaking, and concentrated on controlling my vision, staring straight down and watching the water slosh into the bowl.

“I expect you’re hungry,” I said.
 
“You’re welcome to come down to the kitchen and have something to eat.
 
I believe we have some bread and some things for sandwiches.”

I could feel my voice wavering in embarrassment.
 
I felt idiotic, standing so close to her, feeling the warmth of her, and pretending that I didn’t.
 
I wondered why she was acting as if nothing were out of the ordinary. I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks, and quickly turned away so she wouldn’t see me blushing.
 
Then I walked out the door and closed it behind me.

When I reached the kitchen, I felt a madness coming over me.
 
I knew that at that moment she must be dressing and getting her things together to leave.
 
She had to be. I paced back and forth across the linoleum for a few minutes, wondering what I could say or do to excuse myself.
 
I decided that the least I could do would be to drive her home. I was sure she must have come a long way. She might have started walking this morning.
 
She had to live several miles south along the route of Bayou Teche, down past the town, past the Bottoms and out into the woods and swamplands.
 
I wasn’t even sure if my car could even take her as far as her house, some of the Cajun folk used pirogues to travel to their little shacks.
 

I crept to my bedroom door and cracked it open, hoping that my wife would be asleep.
 
She was.
 
The bottle of valium sat on her nightstand next to a glass of water.
 
From the sound of her snores and the drool on her pillow, I knew that she had taken at least two.
 
I would be safe to drive Melee as far as I needed to tonight and return without my wife ever knowing I’d gone.
 
I gently pulled the door closed again, and returned to the kitchen.
 
Not knowing what else to do, I poured myself a glass of milk and then sat at the table waiting for Melee to come down and then tell me that she wanted to leave.

I waited for what felt like a terribly long time.
 
The crickets in the yard and the frogs out in the bayou had now worked themselves up to a full-blown roar.
 
I watched a moth whirl and circle over my head, every now and then smacking into the kitchen light, flying back, whirling around and then smacking it again. He seemed to be trying to get inside it. I wondered what drove him to do it.
 
What was it about the light that compelled him to keep trying, despite the hopelessness?
   
Somehow to get inside and be encircled in the warmth and the light, to be a part of it, rather than just admire and appreciate it from afar, but the glass of the bulb repelled him, over and over.
 
The most he could hope for was the pain and the blindness that ensued. When I looked away, the light bulb was still burning in my eyes, and I closed them to try and take away the image.
 
When I opened them, Melee was standing there in front of me.

She was wearing an old nightshirt.
 
It seemed like it could have been her father’s, it was so long and bulky.
 
The sleeves were rolled up over her elbows and all the buttons were done up, except the top two.
 
I had a view of the hollow in the front of her neck where a silver chain and pendant dangled.
 
Her wet hair was combed and pulled back away from her face and her feet were bare. She did not at all act like she was expecting to leave.
 
Instead she glanced from me to the ice box and back again, and I realized that she was hungry and was expecting to eat the sandwiches I had promised her.