Feast of All Saints (77 page)

Marcel stared for a moment, confused. And then quickly he moved forward closing the distance between them and felt Christophe’s arm enfold him just as it had done the night before. He felt it strong, simple against his back with a reassuring pressure that suddenly softened him all over and made him feel a curious relief.

“Now I am going to demand something of you,” Christophe said in a low voice, “with a lover’s prerogative and a teacher’s authority, and that is this. That you never, never mention any of this to me again.”

A
NNA
B
ELLA HAD BEEN CRYING
on and off for days. Zurlina said it was nothing but the usual after the birth of a child. Yet Zurlina had told her in glowing detail of Marcel’s long walk to
Bontemps
and that his father, Michie Philippe, had given him the flogging he deserved. Anna Bella did not have to ask each day whether or not Michie Philippe had come to town after Marcel, Zurlina let her know the goings on at the Ste. Marie cottage as always, replete with gossip of how that miserable Lisette was ruining herself again, sneaking off evenings to the house of
Lola Dedé, the voodooienne, who was nothing but a harlot selling colored girls to white men in her house for good money, just as she sold voodoo candles, and powders and charms. And of course the Ste. Marie family didn’t know any of this, didn’t have the slightest idea.

Meanwhile Anna Bella was tired, dreadfully tired. She had not seen Michie Vince since the week after their son was born, and Anna Bella knew that he was disappointed that this baby had not been a little girl. He had stayed several days, however, and once in a while had held the little baby in his arms. It had been foolish of her to want to name it Vincent, she realized, though he had been tender with her in explaining that he might someday have another son who would be called by this name, perhaps she should give the child her father’s name, Martin. This was done. He had filled the bedroom with flowers, and worked all day long in the parlor with his agricultural journals as usual, the aroma of fresh coffee wafting again and again through the small rooms. And though polite to her as always, there was a stiffness about him, and that old sense of foreboding came over her often when she looked into his pensive withdrawn face.

Then only hours after he had finally left, Zurlina came to tell her, it was Michie Vince’s wish that she put the child out to nurse. The tears had come at once. “I don’t believe that!” Anna Bella had said. “I won’t believe it.” She held little Martin tightly, her face averted, whispering, “You go away.”

“Listen, girl,” she had said. “You put that baby out to nurse now. When that man comes here, he wants to find that baby out to nurse.”

“He won’t even be back until after the harvest,” Anna Bella said, her lip trembling, “and I want to hear that from him when he comes back, why didn’t he say it to me?”

And so each day after that Zurlina warned her to find a wet nurse for the child. And each day Anna Bella rocked by the fire, attempting to affect her entire body with the love she felt for the baby so as to calm her body and not injure her milk.

Then there were the visitors, so many, day after day, Madame Elsie’s old friends, Gabriella Roget and her mother, Madame Suzette with the ladies from her Benevolent Society, and even Marie Ste. Marie with her aunts. And over and over, from the little crowd about the bassinet came those shrill and sprightly observations, “Why that child’s got his father’s nose and mouth, and
good
hair! Course Anna Bella’s got good hair, just look at that pretty child!” And what if it had gone another way, Anna Bella thought. It seemed it was all that concerned them, that mixture of the white and the black, could this child perhaps pass?

But alone at night after Zurlina was asleep, she lifted the baby from the bassinet beside her bed and laid it sleeping still against her
breast. “All right, then, Martin, since the world’s the way it is,” she thought, “you are certainly blessed. You won’t know the pain I’ve known,” and a glistening tear fell once on his tiny cheek as she brooded lovingly over him, “but when you grow up, son, what will you think when you look at me?” It seemed to her at such moments that it would have been better, actually better, if Anna Bella Monroe had never been born.

Her son’s large dark eyes opened to reflect a mere particle of light from the little crackle of a fire on the hearth, and unseeing, uncomprehending, he lolled in the warmth of her arms. “I don’t believe Michie Vince said such a thing,” she whispered aloud to no one, “I won’t give him up to a nurse, I won’t do it,” and at the faintest cry she put the nipple in his little mouth.

“You ought to be happy,” Zurlina would say as she yanked Anna Bella’s hair with the brush in the morning, “with all you’ve got! Don’t you know you’ve got to please that man! Didn’t you see the look on that man’s face when he saw you nursing that baby! Why, girl, you’ve got to pay attention to that man.”

Don’t you be a fool, came the old refrain, that man’s crazy for you but he won’t be for long, you just better put that baby out, out, out, till Anna Bella angrily snatched the brush from Zurlina’s hand.

“Why did you want to come here after Madame Elsie died?” she said bitterly. “Why didn’t you stay on at the boardinghouse, those old women would have paid well for you, they told me so themselves, no, you had to tell Michie Vince you wanted to stay here.”

“And you be damned glad I did,” Zurlina said, looking down her long narrow nose, her thin lips pressed together. “Now give me that brush back, look at your hair. And I’ve got to go to market besides.”

“You run this house, that’s why you wanted Michie Vince to buy you,” Anna Bella said. “Well, go on to market and leave me alone.”

“Don’t you be a fool,” Be a fool, be a fool, be a fool.

And then two weeks after Michie Vince had left there came this word that Marcel had gotten wildly drunk and wandered right through the gates at
Bontemps
.

She sucked in her breath shuddering, and finally after two days had written him a letter. But his reply had been protective of her. “Don’t worry, Anna Bella, I am going to the country for a few months, I have done myself no great injury, and not harmed anyone else besides.” He had recounted simply for her the story of his altered prospects. He would not be apprenticed to Monsieur Rudolphe in the undertaking trade. He did not know now what he would do. She put down the letter and stared at the grate. And when she had read it several times, committed it to memory, in fact, she burnt it quickly though why she could not say.

And now alone in her little parlor, the child rocked to sleep in his
draped cradle beside her, she watched the night shroud the open windows, the late September air at last touched with a real chill, and she felt her tears coming again. She had almost fallen asleep, her fire dead, her shawl tight over her shoulders and the trees black against the curtains, when she heard that familiar step on the walk. “Michie Vince,” she whispered aloud and turned, rising, just for a moment groggy and confused with sleep.

He had slammed the door behind him, and without removing his cape he came across the parlor toward her until she could just make out the sharp features of his face.

“Have you heard!” his voice came in a terse whisper. “Have you heard what your friend Marcel has done?” It was rage that was emanating from the familiar figure as if an alien force had inhabited the body that was looming over her, the dark heavy cape distorting it into a great menacing shape.

“Michie Vince,” she whispered softly in amazement.

“Don’t you ever, ever, ever in your life let that child come on my property!” he said throwing a long white finger out toward the bassinet, his voice rising to a roar in the silence.

She gasped.

“You teach him, teach him from the day he is old enough to understand anything, you see that he understands, that he is never, never to do such a thing!”

From the lace over the cradle the child moaned and let out a wail.

“You teach him from the beginning never to come near me or my family, do you understand! That child is never to come near Bontemps, he is never to mention the name
Bontemps
to anyone, you are never to mention that name to him yourself!”

The baby had begun to scream.

She stood staring at Michie Vince, her hands clasped against her face, and suddenly she went past him, hands digging down into the covers to scoop up the little boy. She wound the blankets around him, awkwardly turning, and walked fast to the back of the cottage, stopping short helplessly before the back door. Her head bent forward and her forehead smacked the frame of the door. An instinctive motion of her arms soothed little Martin, and as she stood there, her eyes shut, her head against the door frame, the baby became quiet.

It must have been an hour that she sat alone in the dark bedroom in a small chair, only the upper part of her body moving back and forth, back and forth, cradling the child. She heard nothing from the living room not even the faintest sound. Once she imagined that she had fallen to sleep and that Michie Vince had actually gone. Then finally came the creak of those boots on the boards and out of the corner of her eye, without turning, she saw his dark shape in the door.

“Anna Bella,” he started, the voice soft now, a little breathless, his
own. “Anna Bella, I…I…” he stopped, with a sigh. After a long pause he came toward her slowly and his hand reached out for her shoulder finding it and clasping it tenderly as she sat there staring forward, still rocking the baby in her arms. She rose. She walked to the back door and looked out into the night. The cicadas still sang in the trees, those long rasping drifts of song that rose to one terrible pitch after another and then died away. She had not even heard them until this moment, and now suddenly they scraped at her nerves.

She could hear and feel Michie Vince drawing close to her, and now she felt the weight of his forehead against her head. It seemed he was turning his head from side to side against her, his hands on her arms.

“Michie Vince,” she said her voice dry of tears now, “I realize this is your house even though you put it in my name. But if you were to ask me what I wanted most of all right now, Michie Vince, it would be that you go out of here and leave me alone. That’s what I would really want, that you would just go out of here and leave me alone. Somebody told me that a gentleman never stays where he’s not wanted, and I’ve always known you were a gentleman.” She stared straight into the darkness, distinguishing nothing of tree or sky or stars; and she could feel his hands relax on her arms, and suddenly he was not touching her at all.

Some inveterate courage in her caused her to turn, and quite used to the dark now she could see his face. He was staring at her, his chin lifted, his eyes hard.

“I would be just very grateful,” she said, “if you would be so kind as to just go out of here and leave me and my baby alone.”

He raised his eyebrows slightly, his eyes down toward the floor. And then turning without another word, he left.

It was near midnight when she heard him come in again.

He had left his cape, and when she had found it in the parlor, she had suspected he might return. She was sitting by the cradle in the bedroom and did not move. She could hear every step he took. She knew that he had taken the cape from the chair, she heard the scrape of the buttons, she knew by a dozen little soft sounds he had put the cape on. It seemed he moved toward the bedroom and then he stopped. Almost, almost she wanted to rise and to go to him and to speak some word, she did not know what. But she didn’t move. And suddenly, those steps turned and walked swiftly out of the little parlor and down the walk, and were gone.

In the morning, when Zurlina came in she was surprised to find Anna Bella dressed and seated at her small lap
secrétaire
in the parlor. She held out a folded paper.

“What’s this?” Zurlina stared at it.

“It’s the paper that says you belong to me,” Anna Bella answered. “Take it and get out of here, I don’t care where you go, I never want to see you around here again. You’ve got money, you’ve always got money, Michie Vince is always giving you money, so take it and go. Go to work for those old women up at the boardinghouse or anywhere else you want, I don’t care.”

Zurlina narrowed her eyes, the corners of her long lean mouth twisted down. “You can’t live here alone,” she said. “Why, you can’t even go out yet, you’re…”

“The hell I can’t. Now you get gone from here,” Anna Bella said.

“I’ll talk to Michie Vince first before I do,” Zurlina answered.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Anna Bella said. “’Cause you see, this paper says you belong to me, but if I tell Michie Vince the pins you’ve been sticking in me and the meanness you’ve done to me behind his back, he just might ask me to sign this paper over to him, and who knows, you might just wind up chopping cane in those fields. If I was you, I’d get out of here, I’d take this paper with me, and go.”

“You nigger bitch!” Zurlina rasped.

“You’re free, I’m setting you free,” Anna Bella said with a cold smile. “So get out.”

T
HE DOCKS WERE BUSTLING
as five o’clock approached, the gangplanks thronged, and the light of the shorter September day dimming to a red sunset over the scores of smokestacks that rose along the levee for as far as the eye could see. Marcel stood idly among the rushing passengers, his eyes on the high decks of the steamboat,
Arcadia Belle
, as Marie beside him, squeezed his arm gently and said,

“Marcel, you’re going to write to me, aren’t you, every day.”

“Of course I will,” Marcel said. “But no matter what I’ve done, Monsieur Philippe and Rudolphe have agreed to the marriage, and Jacquemine has already conveyed Rudolphe’s eagerness to set the date. It’s all clear. Monsieur Philippe won’t visit his anger on you.”

“I know that,” she sighed. “I only wish that you were here…and that there was no reason for you to go.”

“There’s Christophe,” he said. “Kiss me, and go on.” He touched her lips lightly and held her hand for an instant as if he didn’t want to let it go.