Chapter Thirteen

thirteen

ONCE THE FAMILY KNEW JEMMA was not bound to the property like they were, there was much debate about how else she was different.

"Maybe she's not even at risk of dying like the rest of us," Simone said to Honorine at dinner several nights later, talking about Jemma as if she weren't sitting across the table.

"She was here when the curse was set," Honorine replied, her eyes fixed on Jemma, her words directed elsewhere. "All of us who were in the house at the time can die next March."

Jemma didn't care that they talked about her instead of to her. After she'd returned from town, she'd immediately confronted her grandmother about the money.

"You are being paid every week," the woman had said. "The funds are being held in trust."

"But I can't go into the bank to get my money!"

Jemma's attention returned to the meal. "Is that what Celestina told you? That only the people who were here when my mother cursed us are liable to die?"

"Who?"

Jemma banged her fists on the table, knocking her salad fork to the floor. "Celestina! The conjure woman who came here before. You don't even remember her name!"

"Can you stop the goddamn histrionics?" Simone snapped.

"Lots of people came through here," Russell said, puffing on a Camel cigarette. "And none of them could help."

"Celestina told us that you could break the curse," Honorine said, her gaze on the table. "It had to be you."

"Look." Simone turned to her mother, waving a hand in Jemma's direction. "We don't even know why she came back here. Why should she have if she'll go right on living next March twelfth?"

Was it enough to believe what the mediums had said, or could Jemma take the chance that she wouldn't die on her next birthday? If she lived past that one, what about the one that followed in seven years? What must it be like to fear the same date every seven years the way her family did?

She met Laurence's eyes across the table. He was just like the rest of them, she thought, remembering his behavior toward Agnes in the library. And yet he was the strongest tie she had to their mother.

Haints can't hurt you, but maybe they can tell you some things you want to know.

She needed to know how to break the curse. That was the only way she'd get out of here and get the money owed to her. The only way she'd truly be free.

Once they'd exhausted the topic of how cursed Jemma might or might not be, they resumed conversation about mundane subjects, as if they were normal people leading normal lives.

"…integrating the Catholic schools was the biggest mistake," Russell said, his face partly obscured by smoke. "White families are running from St. Augustine's like their hair's on fire. What's going to be left?"

"You know what's going to be left," Simone said, pushing her empty plate out of the way, then lit a cigarette from the end of her brother's.

"You think Negroes being the majority in your church is a bad thing?" Jemma directed this question to her aunt.

"Colored people need religion, probably more than anybody else. But if and when we ever are able to set foot in St. Augustine's again, I'd rather not be surrounded by a bunch of darkies, if it's all the same to you."

"Must you always be so awful?" Fosette drawled.

"It's all right." Jemma turned to her cousin for a brief moment and found her face flushed pink. "I know how this entire family feels about Negroes. You just like to pretend you're not Black."

"Au contraire," Honorine said from her place at the head of the table. "We are a proud colored family."

"And it's not ‘colored' anymore. It's ‘Negro,' which you'd learn to say if you really were so proud—"

"Why this fascination with color?" Russell asked. "We've been fine all our lives with who we are. Maybe your experience has been different."

"Because I'm so dark, you mean. That's why you gave me away as a baby." Jemma then addressed Honorine. "You only looked for me because you needed something from me. For all you know, the curse won't affect me because Inès was my mother. I don't believe for a minute she meant to curse me like she did you. But we could hold a séance and call her up."

Quiet dropped on the room as all heads turned to her.

"I know you've done it before. Maybe the mediums couldn't help because…I don't know why. But I have to try."

"You plan to call up Inès?" Russell asked.

"Yes. You want to know how to break the curse. What better way than to ask the person who placed it?"

"It won't work," Fosette whispered, shaking her head.

As Jemma opened her mouth to ask why not, Simone snapped, "Shut up. Shut the hell up."

"What is it?" Jemma asked her aunt before turning back to her cousin. "Why won't it work?" But Fosette had placed her hands over her ears and shut her eyes.

"Yes, of course we've tried to figure out how to break the curse," Honorine said. "Inès won't answer."

"She might not answer you, for obvious reasons, but I don't see why she wouldn't answer me."

Agnes entered the room and began clearing the serving platters. All of the family tended to treat the woman as if she weren't there, but Russell wouldn't even look at her, even when she slipped his empty plate off the table.

Simone blew out a plume of smoke, her lips curving into an unpleasant smile. "And when are we having this little session to call on the dearly departed Inès?"

"I'll let you know." Jemma stood. "May I be excused?" she asked Honorine.

Without waiting for a reply, she tossed her napkin on her plate, still covered with jambalaya and bread.

She left the room and was nearly at the staircase when a cool hand gripped her wrist. She twisted around to see Simone and snatched herself free.

"What do you want?"

"The séance. You'll do this for Fosette. I don't give a damn about the others, not even myself at this point. I've lost everything but my remaining daughter. If she can be saved, if you can figure out how to save her…" The woman's mouth opened, then shut. Jemma was stunned to see her aunt blink back tears. "But forget about calling Inès."

"Why? And why do you all think it won't work?"

Simone's chin lifted, the hard lines of her face back in place. "She took everything from me—do you understand? Everything. My Lucie, my father, my brother. Even my husband. He was a suicide, but she caused it. She won't help you. You'll have to figure out another way." Her aunt glanced back at the parlor, her voice lowered when she spoke to Jemma again. "Fosette adores you and I know you adore her."

Jemma didn't respond, simply let the truth of what Simone said wash over her. She did adore Fosette, despite the strangeness, the initial disgust at her relationship with Laurence. Some of her affection was because of pity, for the life her cousin never got to live. But Simone was right. She did adore the woman.

"And there's your brother. I raised him like a son, even after what my sister did. You'd want to save them, wouldn't you?"

"Why would I believe anything you say? Maybe you're afraid of what my mother will tell me, of what horrible secrets she knows about this family. Is that it?"

Simone took a step back, her mouth widening in a grin. "You goddamn fool. You think you know this family." A harsh laugh escaped. "Go ahead, then. Have your little shindig. Call Inès from the rooftops! I'd love it if you conjured up something, anything! But I know you'll fail, again and again and again."

—

COMING OUT OF THE BATHROOM at one thirty in the morning, Jemma was startled by Russell walking up the stairs.

"Sorry," he said, the tip of his lit cigarette providing just enough light to make out his features. "I have trouble sleeping sometimes."

Jemma understood that quite well, although she wondered what would keep him up at night. She remembered the absent way he'd looked out the back doors when a ghost had interrupted her phone call with Betty, as if he'd seen it, too. Just as she opened her mouth to question him about it again, a low hum reached their ears. Fosette again, with the lullaby.

At this hour?

Russell didn't even turn his head as he passed his niece's door and shut himself in his bedroom. Jemma turned back to her room but stopped short. She found herself at Fosette's door, her fist raised. Without thinking, she knocked.

The song stopped, as if Jemma's fist had crushed it into silence.

"Fosette?" Jemma whispered.

Soft noises reached through the wood, something that sounded like rustling and then a light thump.

"Fosette? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Jemma! Go to sleep. It's late," her cousin called through the door.

Jemma didn't miss the tremble in her voice. But she obeyed, returning to her room and climbing into bed.

A few minutes later, the lullaby started anew.

—

THE NEXT MORNING, JEMMA ROOTED through the library, looking for a Bible. She needed it for the séance, but she was also sure Magdalene was right about the family keeping records of all their members. Her father's name might be written down there. If she had a name, she might be able to find that side of her family, who had to be more welcoming than the Duchons. But after scanning every book title, she'd found no Bible.

"Any luck?"

Jemma twirled around to find Laurence shutting the glass doors behind him. He hadn't been in here with her since his rude behavior with Agnes, the day the maid kissed her on the lips. Jemma turned back to the shelves.

"With what?" she asked, choosing a book at random without looking at the title.

"With whatever you're trying to find." His voice came from his usual armchair.

Almost against her will, Jemma glanced over at him. As she did, Agnes passed the glass doors on her way to the kitchen. It would have been easier for Jemma to leave, to not confront him, but a spark of anger held her there, as well as a bit of curiosity.

"Why are all of you so awful to Agnes? The last time we were in here, when you knocked the tray out of her hands, you treated her like it was her fault. It was bad enough that she had to clean up your mess. You didn't have to insult her on top of it."

Laurence's eyes met hers, his brows knitted. She fully expected him to make some excuse for his rudeness, perhaps remind her of her own place. What she didn't expect was the way his gaze dropped to his lap and how he crumpled back in the seat. He didn't look like the almost-thirty-year-old that he was. Instead, he reminded her of a young boy, one who'd been hurt many times.

"It's this house," he said in a low voice, looking at the closed doors before bringing his gaze back to Jemma's. "I don't mean to be…It's just…You didn't grow up here. You have no idea how horrible it's been."

Dennis's words came back to her: Think on how mad you'd be if you'd been trapped here all these years.

Laurence went on, his eyes going from one spot in the room to the next, as if Jemma weren't there. "We couldn't go to school, Fosette and me. We had tutors. She didn't get a debutante ball. We've never been anywhere, Jemma. Can you understand that? We've been nowhere besides these four walls and the four corners of this property. When we…came of age…I didn't want to with her any more than she wanted to with me. We thought we were brother and sister then, but we still couldn't stop ourselves. It was such a relief to find out we weren't siblings." His eyes flicked up at Jemma before dropping again. "I know you think it's not much better with us being cousins, first cousins at that, but when Fosette and I are together, it's one of the only times I'm not thinking about dying. For that brief time, I'm reminded that I'm alive. I feel alive and like I can live forever." He jumped up, the swift move startling Jemma. She shrank back into the shelves as he approached her, stopping close enough for her to feel his body heat. "If we're monsters, we weren't born this way. We were made this way, by our mother. Did you ever think how cruel she was to damn us this way? You and me, innocent children. Fosette and Lucie. We didn't deserve it, even if she thought her mother and father did. So if we're all terrible to Agnes, if we treat everyone else like shit, maybe it's not all our fault. You know?"

He backed off, flopping into his seat, one leg thrown over one of its arms. He hung his head back, staring up at the ceiling before shutting his eyes.

Jemma moved only when the hard edge of the bookshelf began to hurt her. Laurence's words rang and rang through her mind. He was angry, like the rest of the Duchons were angry. And they took their anger out on an easy target. It was wrong, and yet Jemma could begin to understand.

Thunk.

Jemma knew what the sound was before turning her head. The slim gray ledger rested next to her foot on the floor. A part of her imagined kicking it aside, but Lulu's voice sounded in her mind:

They try to get that person's attention any way they can.

She grabbed the book and flipped through it, finding it exactly the same as last time. Incomprehensible.

Jemma looked up to find Laurence staring at her. She waved the book in the air.

"I think this is written in French," she said. "Can you tell me if it is?"

He held out a hand and, after looking at several pages, nodded. "It is. But it's kind of old-fashioned. I can make out some words, but not whole sentences." He continued turning pages, a frown growing on his face.

"What is it?" Jemma asked.

It took a moment for him to answer. He gestured for her to sit on the footstool in front of him before pointing to a page full of names and numbers.

MARY, 13, Negro

PIERRE, 4, mulatto

ANNE, 29, quadroon

SALLIE, 11, octoroon

ADAM, 24, Negro

"This is a bill of sale. These are names and I'm pretty sure these are their ages. In that column are prices."

"For people."

"Yes. This book, whatever it is, belonged to Corentin Duchon, one of our ancestors."

"And he owned slaves."

Laurence's lips twisted. "It appears so."

No words passed for several moments, as they both reflected on this information. Laurence seemed as surprised as Jemma.

"Was he white?" she asked.

Laurence answered slowly. "No. But he looked white."

Like the rest of you hung in the air between them.

"So a Black man who looked white who owned slaves."

Jemma didn't know if it helped to say it out loud or not, but she thought it was better than ignoring the ironic reality of it. At least Laurence had the decency to look embarrassed. And he spoke up before the awkwardness could go on much longer.

"There's something else. There's a page missing, here."

Jemma noted the ragged edge as Laurence ran his finger down it.

"What do you want with this book anyway?" he asked suddenly, slapping it shut, as if the information they'd discovered in it made him angry. Or ashamed.

"I think…it might help me." Jemma didn't say why she thought it. She hadn't gone looking for the book as much as it had made its presence known to her. More than once. "There might be more information in there that could help me break the curse."

Laurence's eyebrows rose. He looked at the book more thoughtfully, turning it over in his hands.

"You can't read it, though." He glanced at her. "I can, at least a little. Maybe I could help you."

"You would?"

"Why wouldn't I want to? I want the curse broken just as much as any of us." He grabbed one of the legal pads Jemma had been using, as well as a pencil. "Let's get started, shall we?"

—

ONE SUNDAY A MONTH, FATHER Louis made the trek to the house and the family gathered in the old chapel. Jemma didn't participate. At Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago, the congregation took Communion only on the first Sunday of each month, and there was no wine, only grape juice, and no host, just flat crackers. If the Duchons hadn't been imprisoned on their property, they'd be at St. Augustine Church every week.

There had been a heated discussion about having Jemma attend Mass with the family. Honorine felt Jemma should go. Fosette and Laurence shared that opinion, while Russell didn't care one way or the other. Simone, of course, opposed Jemma's joining them since she hadn't been baptized Catholic.

"But you have been baptized, haven't you?" Honorine had asked her at the dinner during which the discussion took place.

"Yes, in a Baptist church."

"Grandmère," Laurence had said, "she's still family. She should go."

Jemma had glanced at him, wondering if he thought she should be touched by his seeming concern. What no one asked was if she wanted to attend.

She didn't.

So when Simone had gone on her tirade about keeping out those who didn't belong, Jemma didn't argue.

She left them to it and used the following Sunday, while the entire family, plus Agnes and Dennis, attended Mass, to look in Honorine's bedroom for a Bible. Once she saw all of them enter the chapel, knowing they'd be occupied for nearly an hour, she slipped into her grandmother's room, the first time she'd ever been inside it.

Large pink roses danced on pale blue wallpaper that stopped at the creamy wainscoting. A four-poster bed took up the bulk of the space, dark wooden posts contrasting against ivory silk covers. The woman's heavy perfume hung in the air. Several framed photographs decorated one wall, and Jemma found herself drawn to them. Faces of long-ago ancestors stared out at her, the women with their thick hair drawn up in large buns or hidden beneath straw bonnets, the men in stiff morning coats and spats. Jemma searched all of them, desperate for any hint of herself in them despite their uniformly fair skin. Maybe there was a bit of them in her nose, in her eyes. Finding none, she looked for any indication that her mother had been a real person, a part of this family until she'd cut ties with them completely and died. Again, it seemed no sign of Inès existed. There were no family portraits of the current Duchons anywhere.

Jemma moved to the ornate dresser decorated with neatly placed perfume bottles, a comb and hairbrush, powder tins, a couple of lipstick tubes and more framed photographs. One depicted what had to be Honorine's wedding day. A ghost of the woman Jemma knew was there in the impossibly young-looking bride in the picture, her slip of a body beside a handsome groom. Similarities existed in their smiles, the lightness of their eyes evident even in the sepia tones. A photo of the groom, Jemma's grandfather, which must have been taken years later, as maturity had set in but had stolen away none of the handsomeness.

She looked over both nightstands next, finding only a rosary in a shallow dish, an empty pitcher and glass and an old copy of Little Women . Jemma peeked out the window, sure that the family would be heading out of the chapel now, but there was only the bare back lawn. Opening the nightstand drawers, she found an aspirin tin, neatly folded handkerchiefs, more rosaries and scattered peppermints. She moved on to the wide dresser, being careful not to disrupt Honorine's brassieres and panties too much, as everything was folded in neat stacks that had to be of Agnes's doing. At the bottom of one drawer, Jemma found a sepia-toned photograph. It wasn't in a frame, its curled edges soft as tissue.

Jemma sat on the floor, the picture drawing her in.

Four children stood in a line, all gazing at the camera with eerily light eyes. Two girls stared back at the photographer, two boys between them, and they were lined up from tallest to shortest, so they must have been arranged by age. They had to be related, with their similar skin tones and eyes. Jemma turned the photograph over, but nothing was written on the back. She peered more closely at their clothes, decades out of fashion, wondering if she was looking at a picture of Laurence and Fosette as young children. The girls wore matching knee-length dresses in a pale color, with wide sashes across the hips. Long sleeves covered their arms, and wide collars finished off the style. The clothes were simple, but something about them whispered of money. Shiny black shoes adorned small feet, and big ribbons tied in bows secured the ends of long braids. The boys, who looked to be about three and five, wore roomy light-colored shirts bunched loosely below the waist with matching belts. Below them were pairs of short knickers and high socks.

Jemma looked back at the girls, the older of whom appeared to be six or seven. The little one was just a toddler, and she held one boy's hand, but her face was mostly hidden by a blur, as if she'd moved right as the shutter was clicked.

They had to be siblings. At the very least, cousins.

The older two looked very familiar, but she couldn't make out the youngest one's face.

Jemma scrabbled along the bottom of the drawer, but found nothing else. How strange that Honorine kept this photograph there while the others were on the walls and portraits graced the stairway.

Four young children in a photo that had to be at least thirty years old. No, closer to fifty.

Two boys and two girls.

Russell. André. Simone. Inès.

These had to be Honorine's children—Jemma's aunt, uncles…and mother.

If only there weren't that blur on the little girl's face! Only half of her face was visible, and Jemma stared at it as if she could will the blur to disappear, to get a clear picture of what her mother had looked like, even if she could see her only as a young child. As far as she could find, this was the only likeness of Inès in the house, and not a very good one at that.

With reluctance, Jemma slid the photograph back into its hiding place.

Unlike her room, Honorine's had a narrow closet. Jemma swung open the door and pulled the chain for the light. The smell of old mothballs greeted her, as well as the sight of stacked shoeboxes and a line of dresses hanging on one side, a few men's suits on the other. Jemma stood on tiptoe to see what she could on the high shelves on either side. On one there was a small lockbox, which was probably full of receipts and bills if her experience was any indication, and hatboxes were on Honorine's side.

Voices drifted up from downstairs.

Dammit.

Jemma peeked out the door before leaving. The family was coming in, the priest behind them. They were busy talking, so no one looked up, and Jemma took the opportunity to slip out of the room and quickly make it back to her own.