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Chapter Fifteen

fifteen

JEMMA STARED FOR A LONG time at the maid's name. It couldn't mean what she thought it meant. It wasn't possible.

They'd told her Inès was dead.

And maybe, in a way, she was. Dead to them, at least. They'd tried to obliterate her from the family by removing any traces of her. No portraits, no photographs except for the one Jemma had found buried in Honorine's drawer, with a child's face too blurry to make out.

But to make her their maid?

Why didn't she leave? Jemma had seen the horrible way they treated her.

The curse.

When Inès cursed the family, cursed the Duchons, she must also have cursed herself.

Jemma's first thought, upon seeing her mother's name blotted out, seeing "Agnes" written beside it, had been to run straight to Honorine and perhaps shake the woman until she got the truth about everything. But Jemma also wanted to run straight to Agnes—where did the woman even sleep?—and demand the truth. Are you my mother? She wanted to embrace her and sob into her neck because she knew it was true.

The Duchons were cursed, in more ways than they thought.

Instead of doing any of that, she put her head down on her desk and wept, heaving sobs that reverberated off the walls, but she didn't care. Let someone knock on the door and either ask if she was all right or tell her to shut up because she was disturbing their sleep. Jemma didn't care anymore.

How had she ever thought she'd want to be part of these people?

Not light enough, not fine featured enough—they'd never accept her. They wanted her only for a job, and then what? If Jemma was actually able to accomplish the monumental task of breaking the curse, what then? She knew, the knowledge a curled-up little knot in the pit of her stomach, trying to hide itself from her conscious mind, the part of her that still wanted to believe they'd love her, but she knew. They'd pay her and thank her and send her on her way, once again cutting ties with her.

The relationship with her adoptive parents sprang to mind. Another family in which she didn't belong.

Mabel Barker, the woman who'd raised her, the woman Jemma had believed was her real mother until the age of fourteen, had told her once that her father had wanted a boy.

And Jemma thought of Magdalene and Dennis carrying her away from the Duchons to save her, and placing her with the Barkers, who'd wanted a baby. How disappointed Carl must have been to discover they were getting a girl.

When the tears finally stopped, Jemma looked at the clock to find it was past three in the morning. The pages beneath her fingers were blurred by tears, and she swiped at them with her hand. Whether or not she confronted the Duchons— Your family, a voice whispered in her mind—she'd have to decide in the morning.

Although Jemma hadn't slept more than two hours, she was the first one awake and moving around later that morning. She snuck downstairs and placed the Bible on the round table in the parlor, wanting whoever it belonged to to find it, to not know what she'd discovered.

That would be her secret, for now. So little, compared with the vast number the Duchons had.

She didn't know how she'd be able to be around the family, to sit at the dinner table and talk to them, knowing what she knew about Agnes, and to pretend that she knew nothing. And why didn't Agnes talk? They said she was mute, but since she was a Duchon, she had to know how to read and write. They weren't illiterate people.

Jemma slipped out the back door, wishing to escape the frostiness from the family, who certainly blamed her for what had happened last night. The first light of day stretched across the back lawn. She had on the same dark dress as the night before, her frizzy hair rejecting any hint of the rag curls she'd been doing since coming down to this swamplike environment. The morning dew licked at the bottoms of her bare feet with soft, cool tongues as she made her way to Magdalene's. Once outside of the woman's home, Jemma hesitated. It was much too early to knock on someone's door, although something told her Magdalene was likely up and probably had been while the moon was still reigning above. She knocked timidly.

"Who's that?" Magdalene called from inside, sounding wide-awake.

"It's Jemma. Can I come in?"

"It's open."

Magdalene was at the table, leaning back in her chair, precariously balanced on its back two legs. She puffed a cheroot, and once she took in Jemma's face, she put the chair flat on the floor.

"What happened?" she asked.

A simple question but without a simple answer. Besides, Jemma was too tired to tell everything. So she asked, in a small voice, "Can I sleep here for a bit?" and before Magdalene had a chance to reply, Jemma slumped forward, just having time to register the speed with which her friend moved to catch her before everything went black.

If you're light, you're all right.

If you're brown, stick around.

If you're Black, stay back!

Jemma awoke with the childish chant leaving its prejudiced trail in her mind. She kept her eyes shut to the brightness outside, not wanting to know the time or even the day. She wished for just a moment that if she opened her eyes she'd see the busy streets of Chicago outside the window of her third-floor apartment, nothing but asphalt and concrete and bricks and stone. No more wide back lawns that spoke of genteelness and culture, or grand homes that upon closer inspection hid decay, not just in their moldy cracks but in the people who lived inside as well. She wanted to see people who looked like her, with the same skin color, who might dislike her because she talked too much or was too nosy but never because she was too dark.

Jemma inhaled, the earthy scents of dried sage, old cigar smoke and a rich stew embracing her, making her feel safe enough to open her eyes.

The cabin was empty.

She sat up, only now noticing the lumpiness of Magdalene's mattress, as different from the feather bed in her room at the Duchons' as it could get. Steam rose from a pot on the woodstove. Jemma lifted the lid to find carrots, potatoes, fresh herbs and some meat bubbling away. She filled a bowl with the stew, hoping that the meat was rabbit and not coon, or even possum, as Magdalene was known to eat. Jemma was so hungry that she ate without noticing the scalding of her tongue or the gaminess of the meat. As she scraped the bottom of the bowl, looking to see if any bread was around, Magdalene came in the back door.

"So you do like possum meat, huh?" she asked, a mischievous grin lighting up her face as she took the seat opposite Jemma.

"I guess I do now."

Magdalene waved a hand. "I'm just playing, girl. That was swamp rabbit. There's some bread in the cool larder."

Jemma served herself a second helping, asking if Magdalene wanted anything, but the older woman only lit a cigar and studied the younger woman across from her when she resumed eating.

"You going to tell me what happened to you, what made you come here before the chickens was up and looking like you seen a ghost?"

If Magdalene knew how accurate she was about that, Jemma thought, she might not be so flippant. Or maybe she would.

"That's exactly what happened," she said. She bit off a chunk of bread and sat back in the chair, looking outside at noontime shadows falling from the trees.

Her friend gazed at Jemma with interest.

"At the house. Two different ghosts showed themselves. They tried to speak, but I couldn't hear them clearly."

In fits and starts, she told the rest of the story. How the Duchons had choked. About the thick streams of smoke. How she'd asked the ghosts to stop, and everything had.

But Jemma found that she didn't want to tell Magdalene about Agnes/Inès. How would she react, when she'd believed the woman dead all these years? Not only was Inès alive, but in more ways than one she was a prisoner inside her home. Jemma had barely had time to digest the information herself and had no idea how she could say the words aloud. Besides, she had to talk to Agnes first to be sure.

"I think the spirits were slaves here a long time ago. I…I hate that I'm related to those people, the Duchons." Jemma put her hands out and turned them over, palms up. "Their blood is in me and I hate it. But I have a brother there and he's trapped here, like I am, and damn if I don't want to save him."

"That's natural. I guess."

"What do you mean, ‘I guess'?"

Magdalene shrugged. "I guess most folk would want to save their family even if they're horrible people. Maybe I'd do the same if I was you. Maybe."

"You think I'm wrong to want that?"

"It don't matter what I think. What matters now is you figuring out how to break that curse and save yourself. I don't care nothing about the rest of them, but I do care about you. Me and Dennis did what we could to save you, so I don't want to see you come to harm now that you're back."

"But I'm not bound."

"But you can die, can't you?"

Jemma set her piece of bread next to her empty bowl on the table.

"Part of the curse keeps that family there," Magdalene continued, pointing in the general direction of the Duchon property. "The other part kills them off, one by one, every seven years. Ain't that what you told me?"

Jemma nodded.

"I don't know why you ain't bound, but what makes you think you might not die on your next birthday, girl?"

"I thought…I thought I was free of all of it."

"You want to take that chance? Sure, leave that house, go into town. Hell, go to the next city over, the next state. But curses got long arms, Emmaline. Them people owe you a birthright, but part of that birthright is the curse your mama put on all of you."

Jemma shut her eyes, not wanting to think of Inès/Agnes.

Was what Magdalene said true? Could she still be under the curse and liable to die, just as any of the other Duchons were, including her brother?

"I know you don't understand, but I do care about Laurence and Fosette. And Honorine promised to give me my history, my place in the family."

"Ain't your brother and cousin just like the rest of them?"

Jemma thought back to the day in the library when he'd bumped Agnes and made her drop the tea tray. She remembered his horrible words to his own mother, his relations with Fosette, his apparent comfort in the family. How Fosette's soft voice gained hard edges when she talked to the maid.

But they were innocent pawns in all of this. None of this was their fault.

"No, they're not. Well, not really. That's my brother and my cousin, Magdalene."

"And that makes them holy."

"No, but I can't help but care about Laurence. We have the same mother. And Fosette has been nothing but kind to me."

Magdalene dropped the cigar on the floor and ground it out with her boot. "If you think they're going to accept you just because you all share blood, you're wrong."

"Is that what this is about? Them not accepting me?"

"Girl, when are you going to get it? None of them are going to accept you, ever."

"I know that—"

"Do you? You keep talking about them being your family. Do you really think they look at you that way? They look at you like the people who came before them looked at the slaves they owned. Imagine that, Emmaline. Owning your own people! Just because some of them was light enough to damn near pass and the other ones wasn't."

Magdalene's outburst stunned Jemma into silence.

"And now you're so worried about this brother of yours, this cousin. Would they claim you if the three of you walked down the street? Do you think that if you break this curse he's going to show you around, introduce you to people as his sister? What, you think they're going to throw one of their grand parties and trot you out like the long-lost cousin they missed all these years? They going to tell you they love you and accept you, even though you don't fit with them just 'cause you're dark? Or do you think the whole bunch of those crazy high yellow people are going to turn you out the minute you do what they need you to do?"

"I don't understand why you're so angry about—"

Magdalene rose and hit the table so hard that Jemma's empty bowl shook, the spoon clattering against the side. "Damn them! Stop trying so hard to get these people to love you when they ain't capable of loving anyone that don't look just like them."

Jemma rose, too, her hands shaking. "This doesn't affect you in any way, so I can't see why it's got you so upset."

"I hate to see people doing stupid shit just for the sake of family," Magdalene said, all the heat in her voice gone. "Sometimes your family ain't worth doing for."

"Maybe not everyone feels that way."

"Then go on and be stupid, girl."

That hurt, but Jemma tried to move past it as a question arose in her mind. "Didn't you tell me to break the curse? Weren't you telling me to figure out how to do it?"

"To save yourself, Emmaline, not them."

"But saving myself means saving them, too. If I break the curse, I free all of us."

"And that's too bad, I say. Your first thought needs to be you, and if they happen to benefit, so be it. But if you can get yourself out of there without being tied to them, that's what you should do. Forget them, forget your brother and worry about you."

"I can't believe you're saying this. I never took you for the vengeful sort."

Magdalene snorted. "Then I guess you don't really know me at all."

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