The Immortelles (3 page)

She paused a moment before the house, thinking of the two weeks that had passed since she had come to live there. One of her memories was of the argument between Alfredo Madariaga and his daughter on the day she had arrived. Damita had ordered Charissa to wait in the kitchen, but she could hear the master of the house, his voice rising in anger, and had felt certain she would be taken back to the auction and sold again.

As she stood remembering that day, she thought,
Well, this is better than it might have been at some other place. I just have to put up with that selfish, demanding girl.
She glanced up now at the facade of the house, three stories dominated by three tall galleries, and she admired the delicate ironwork that sketched a lacelike outline of leaves and flowers on the stucco. Waist-high railings and scrolled panels of filigree marked the balcony, and on the second level, dozens of containers held geraniums, wax flowers, ferns; on the first one, a big birdcage contained a brilliantly colored, screeching parrot.

With a sigh, Charissa, wearing a simple brown dress and her long hair pinned up in a coil, passed through a large patio with a gate big enough to admit the carriage that was kept in the rear. Charissa turned to enter the door, but someone grasped her from behind so suddenly that she dropped the basket and the parcel, hearing something crack in one. She fought fiercely, but the arms were strong, and she heard a rough voice saying, “Stop fightin'! You know you like it, girl.”

Charissa managed to free one of her arms, but even as the man she knew to be Garr Odom, the carriage driver, tried to grab it back, she pulled a long pin from her hair. Without a moment's hesitation, she stabbed the hairy arm that went around her breast and was rewarded by a loud screech. She was free. Turning quickly, she held up the pin like a dagger and glared at the big man, saying, “You keep your hands off me, Odom, or I'll put your eye out.”

“You she-devil!” Garr Odom was not tall, but he was broad and strong. His hazel eyes burned, and the battle had loosed his long hair from its tie. He held his hand over the wound, his mouth twisted in a murderous expression. “You stabbed me!” he gasped.

“Yes, I stabbed you, and I'll do worse if you don't keep your hands off of me!”

“Well, ain't you somethin' now! You've had a man's hands on you before.”

“I won't have yours. You heard what I said. If you ever touch me again, I'll make you regret it.” She leaned forward and swiped the pin in front of Odom's face.

“Hey, watch out!” he yelled—the pin had passed within a few inches of his eyes. He stumbled backward and then glared at Charissa, muttering, “You won't always have that hat pin.” He turned and stomped away, disappearing through the carriage gate.

Charissa took a deep breath, standing still until the fear dissipated. It was not the first time that Garr Odom had tried to attack her. He had come once to her bedroom, and only her threats to scream and raise the house had prevented his assault. Charissa replaced the hat pin, then reached down and picked up the basket, replacing the vegetables that had rolled out of it. She saw that liquid was dripping from the parcel. She picked it up as well as she could and stepped quickly through the door. She hurried through the corridor to the kitchen at the very back of the house. A heavyset woman with skin the color of ebony was standing over a stove, and she turned at once to ask, “Where you been so long? Miss Damita's havin' a fit.”

“It took me a long time to get all the things you wanted, Ernestine.” Charissa put the basket and paper bag on a counter and said, “I dropped this bag. I broke whatever's in it.”

“You busted it!” Ernestine, who had been with the Madariaga family for years, heaved her bulky body over to where Charissa stood. She was almost as broad as she was tall. She began pulling items out of the sack. “How'd you smash this?” she asked, holding up pieces of a broken bottle.

“Garr grabbed me from behind.”

“He botherin' you again? Why don't you tell the master about him?”

“It wouldn't do any good,” Charissa said coldly.

Ernestine stopped removing items from the sack and turned to Charissa. Her eyes were compassionate. “That man is no good. He may be a good carriage driver, but he ain't no good in no other ways. Did he hurt you?”

Charissa laughed. “No, but I hurt him.” She pulled the pin out of her hair. “I used this like a sword and ran it right into his arm. I'm surprised you didn't hear him holler.”

Ernestine Brown grinned broadly and chuckled deep in her chest. “That's good! You know how to take care of yourself. But you'd better get on up now. Miss Damita's plumb fit to be tied. I told her I had to send you to the market. She got mad and raved at me. She say you don't work for nobody but her.”

“She doesn't care a pin for anybody in this world.”

“Oh, she's spoiled and selfish, but I reckon she's got a good heart.”

Charissa glared at Ernestine. “A good heart? She hasn't done anything but mistreat me since I got here. She slapped me in the face just two days ago, when I couldn't find her hat quick enough to suit her.”

Ernestine put her big arm around the girl. “You could be lots worse off, honey. Out in the plantation I've seen Claude Napier, the manager, whip men and women both until their backs was cut all to pieces. You just be glad he ain't been turned loose on you yet.”

“I'd run away if he ever did that to me.”

“And then they'd catch you. Ain't nobody can get out of bein' what she is.”

Charissa stared at the big woman, who had proven to be her closest friend in the household. “Don't you ever wonder what it would be like to be free, Ernestine?”

“There ain't no sense thinkin' about what can't happen,” Ernestine said. “You just make the best of what you got. We got plenty to eat. We got warm clothes. We don't have to go out in the fields. The master and Miss Elena, they ain't cruel folks at all.”

“Damita is.”

“She's young. She'll outgrow that by the time she has a few knocks herself.”

“She has everything,” Charissa said bitterly. “Why is it some people in this world have everything, and some of us have nothing?”

“I don't know, but that's the way it's always been, and that's the way it's always gonna be. Now you go on up, and don't give Miss Damita any of your sass. No matter what she says, you just smile and say, ‘Yes, ma'am.'”

“I'll do what she says, but she can't make me like it. I'll come back and help you cook when she gets through with me.”

“She ain't likely to get through with you today. She's gettin' ready for that graduation of hers. Go on, and you be sweet like me.”

Charissa could never resist Ernestine. She hugged her and said, “All right. I'll be sweet like you—to you, but never to Damita.”

Juanita Mendez sat on the balcony, watching the passersby below her. She had seen Charissa come down the street and enter the gate, and now she commented, “That new slave you bought for Damita is a rebellious girl.”

“Yes, she is,” Elena Madariaga agreed, turning to her husband. She was a small woman, shapely, and at the age of forty-five, she still had traces of her youthful beauty. “You spoil Damita, Alfredo. You shouldn't have paid that much for another maid. We could have gotten by with Monica. She's already paid for, and she can wait on both of us.”

Alfredo was a trim man of fifty-one. As he sat with his chair tilted back, looking at his wife and his sister, he shrugged. “I promised her a maid, and the girl will probably be a good investment. Always a good market for beautiful young mulattoes.”

“Mulatto! What are you talking about?” Juanita exclaimed. “She's no more mulatto than I am.” A mulatto was a person half-black and half-white. “She's not even a quadroon. She looks like an octoroon to me.” These two terms were well known to refer to the mixture of black and white blood—quadroon being one-quarter black and an octoroon only one-eighth black.

“So much the better for a sale. You know how the young bucks like the Creole girls, with their lighter skin.”

“I know it very well, but Rissa will never be one of those,” Elena said.

“She may be, if we have to sell her. I expect her mother was mostly white. The town's full of octoroon Creole girls, and most of them wind up as mistresses to wealthy white men.”

Indeed, men in New Orleans often maintained two families. The white one society accepted, the dark one no one did. Many men divided their time between the two households, rearing two sets of children. The white wives had no choice but to accept the situation, and almost everyone attended the sumptuous quadroon balls, where tawny-skinned women displayed their charms in what amounted to a bazaar for prospective men of wealth. Among the well-to-do Creoles, the marriage of convenience was common, but often the couple had not even met, and when a young man did not get a beauty, he was quick to go to the quadroon balls and find himself a mistress.

“The
girl could pass for white easily enough,” Alfredo remarked. “We won't have any trouble selling her.”

The two women stared at Alfredo; the subject was usually taboo. But Elena was not finished and repeated harshly, “You spoil Damita terribly. Her husband's going to have an awful time with her.”

As a matter of fact, Alfredo Madariaga was himself still somewhat angry over Damita's buying the slave without his permission. “I'm going to whip that girl,” he said loudly.

Both women smiled at each other grimly. They were well aware that he had never struck Damita in his life and never would. “Well,” Juanita said, “I think you'd better sell the girl quickly. She's not a good maid.”

“No,” Elena agreed. “She's headstrong.”

“So is Damita,” Alfredo murmured. A gloomy look crossed his face, and he shook his head. “I may have to sell Charissa and some others from the plantation as well. I've got a payment coming due on the loan, and the crop was terrible this year. The drought nearly ruined us.”

Neither his wife nor his sister paid much attention to this statement. It was a common enough plaint from Alfredo. Most of the plantation owners lived on credit, and no one considered owing money a sin in any way.

Changing the subject, Juanita said, “I want you to let Damita go with me when I make my visit to Savannah.”

“I don't have any objection. Does she want to go?”

“I haven't asked her about it yet, but the trip isn't until November. I think she'd enjoy it. Besides, there may be some suitable young men there for her.”

“That's very important,” Elena said with a nod.

“Indeed it is.” For once, Alfredo agreed with his wife and sister. “She needs to marry someone with a bank full of money. Somebody who could help pay these debts off.”

“She's a beautiful girl, and she won't have any trouble marrying,” Juanita said. She had other nieces in Savannah, but she had made a pet out of Damita. “It's essential that she not only marry money but that she marry someone socially acceptable.”

“What do you expect her to do—marry a monkey?” Alfredo laughed. “Of course he'll be acceptable.”

“I don't know. Young girls are willful these days,” Elena said. “When Fannie Metlous married that awful American, it nearly killed her parents.”

“It certainly did,” Juanita agreed. “He was like all of the other Kaintocks: little more than a beast.”

The white men who came down to New Orleans from the west, mostly on the Mississippi, were known as
Kaintocks.
They had reputations for fighting and drinking and were coarse to the genteel members of New Orleans.

“Damita's got more sense than that,” her father said firmly.

“Yes, she has,” Juanita said quickly. “I'd better go see if she's dressed. We don't want to be late for the graduation.”

Damita stepped out of the brass tub and stood while Charissa dried her off with large, fluffy towels. This was an everyday ceremony and one that took up a great deal of Charissa's energy. She had to heat the water in the kitchen, then bring it up, two heavy pails at a time, to fill the tub. It was one of the tasks she hated, and now, as she dried Damita off and powdered her, she thought,
She's never paid me a single compliment. Not once has she said a simple thank-you.

“Hurry up, Rissa, I'm going to be late.”

Charissa had learned never to respond to such useless comments. She was working as quickly as she could, and it did no good to protest. All she would get was a sharp word or sometimes, even a slap. She helped Damita into her undergarments, then slipped the snow-white dress, the color all the girls were wearing for graduation, over her head. She buttoned it up, and Damita said sharply, “Go down and get me some wine. Make sure it's been cooled.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Charissa muttered, turned, and went downstairs. She found the wine, poured a glass, and carried it carefully back up the stairs. Entering the room, she walked over to where Damita was standing before the mirror. “Here's the—”

She had no time to finish the sentence. Damita suddenly turned, and her hand struck the glass that Charissa was holding out to her. The dark red liquid splashed onto Damita's bosom, and for one moment, she just stood with a shocked look on her face.

Charissa's heart sank when she saw the hideous red blot. She had no time to speak, however, because Damita screamed, “You've
ruined
my dress!”

“It wasn't my fault. You're the one who hit the glass!”

“Don't you talk back to me! It was your fault!”

Ordinarily, Charissa would have had sense enough to keep quiet and let Damita have her fit, but she could not always control her quick temper. She responded loudly, “You're the clumsy one, not me! You knocked the glass right out of my hand and spilled the wine all over yourself!”