Chapter Twenty-Four

twenty-four

THE NEXT WEEK WAS A flurry of excitement, with the exception of one thing.

Russell was still unconscious.

Despite that, the rest of the family celebrated, as respectfully as they could. Only Honorine seemed cautious.

"Oh, Maman, he'll wake up any day now," Simone said at breakfast. Although the chilly winter air rested heavily on the house, there was a lightness about, an almost springlike feel. "And when he does, we'll all go to Paris together. It makes no sense to go right now anyway. We have so many clothes to buy, so much to catch up on! In September—that's when we'll go. In the meantime, we'll redo the house. How about it? We'll have the old wallpaper stripped and bring this place into this decade. And then, how about we throw a big party? We'll invite the old families who haven't been here in ages. They probably think we've all gone quite insane, but we'll show them." A hard gleam shone out of her eyes. "And Fosette, and Laurence. They'll finally get to meet young people their age—"

"Maman, I'm thirty-four," Fosette murmured. "You can forget about marrying me off."

"Nonsense!" Simone slammed a fist on the table. "You're still beautiful, still desirable. And if none of these common laggards can see that, we'll find you a husband in Paris. Yes, Paris! Oh, you'll be a Parisienne and travel across Europe. That's what we're going to do for at least the next year, travel everywhere. We won't come back to this house until 1964. Maybe later. All we have to do is wait for Russell to wake, and now that the curse is lifted, it has to happen."

"Have you forgotten that it's already been several weeks?" Honorine hissed.

"I don't know how these things work any more than you do, Maman, but I'm telling you, the heaviness has been lifted. I know you feel it just as we all do. Isn't that right, Fosette?"

Her daughter nodded. And indeed, Simone was right about the heaviness. It was as if when the invisible walls that held them inside had broken, so had the suffocating air. The tension the family had felt from being trapped for so long was released. There were more smiles, more laughter, more chatter.

And when Jemma caught a brief whiff of smokiness, she ignored it as a vestige of old things. In the spring, when they aired the house out, that would be gone, too.

It had been strange at first, the way the family had tested the borders. It was obvious they were frightened, unsure if the ties that had bound them had really been cut.

Laurence had been first, walking out of the gates and down the dirt lane, farther and farther, the rest of them crowded on the front porch, watching his diminishing form going far past any place he'd been since the age of two. And Fosette had run next, her arms raised in the air, her mouth open in a soundless scream, until she reached her cousin and he twirled her around and around, finally setting her down and kissing her in the middle of the wide-open space. Simone followed, her steps slow and unsteady at first, but quickening and growing in surety. She passed her daughter and nephew, continued on, her glee evident in the squareness of her shoulders, the upright tilt of her head. For Honorine, it seemed to be enough to see her family free. She didn't set foot off the property until the following morning, when she and the rest of the family, save Inès, Russell and Jemma, took a cab to St. Augustine Church to light candles and pray.

Only Inès hadn't moved off the porch, had simply seen that her curse was indeed broken and had given a smile before going back inside.

But now Jemma, amazed at Simone's utter selfishness, reminded her family that their celebrations were sure to be complicated. She folded her hands over her empty plate, clear of its croissant and scrambled eggs. "What about my mother? You told everyone she was dead. When you throw these big parties, Simone, don't you think there will be questions, especially if she ends up serving them hors d'oeuvres?"

The smile slid off Simone's face to bring back the scowl that was usual whenever Jemma was present. "Your mother chose to stay here. She also chose to continue in her role. I guess she's gotten used to it, so who am I to talk her out of it?"

And it was true. Although the rest of the Duchons had traveled outside of their old boundaries, had gone all the way into New Orleans proper, Inès hadn't changed at all. She was still acting as their maid. Ever since they'd been set free, Jemma had been trying to convince her to leave with her. Now that she'd done what the family had hired her to do, she knew they had no more use for her. They allowed her the time to decide what she would do next. She wasn't so sure she'd return to Chicago, but she had no other destination in mind. What she wanted was for her mother to choose a place. But even Dennis didn't seem motivated to leave. Jemma wasn't going to stay here, but she didn't want to leave her mother far behind, not now that they'd found each other.

Although she knew she shouldn't be hurt, it did sting that the Duchons didn't ask her about going to Paris with them.

Did you really think that would happen ? she asked herself sometimes when she lay in bed at night, eyes fixed on the ornate ceiling medallions just visible in the dimness. You knew nothing would change, not really.

Jemma had money now, quite a bit of it, with the promised earnings given to her in one lump sum. She and Honorine had taken a cab and visited First Citizens Bank. But no matter how much money her grandmother kept in its vaults, she and Jemma couldn't walk through the front doors. Apparently Honorine had called ahead, so when they knocked at a side entrance door, a young blond woman let them in and ushered them toward a plain office. Presently, the bank president himself arrived to greet them, remarking on the surprise of Honorine's appearance after so many years. If Jemma hadn't known any better, she never would've guessed that her grandmother hadn't set foot in the building in decades. The three of them sat in the small office (clearly not the man's actual office), he and Honorine exchanging pleasantries, which was what happened when someone had many tens of thousands of dollars in the institution.

"I'd like to give Miss Barker here full control of her account," Honorine had said.

"But I'm not staying—" Jemma had started before her grandmother interrupted.

"When you leave, you may do as you wish. Since it appears you'll be here for a little longer while you decide what to do next, this is best."

And Jemma had said no more, simply signed a few papers and accepted the check register the man slid across the desk. Although the four-figure sum was written there in plain black ink, she had trouble believing it was all hers.

Ever since the Duchons had gained their freedom, Simone had continued making grand plans. The pile of fashion magazines on the parlor table grew. Simone, Fosette and Honorine spent many days in town, coming home loaded down with bags and parcels. Still more arrived several times per week, dresses sheathed in clear plastic, small towers of shoeboxes secured with thick ribbons.

"Neither of you has a driver's license," Simone told her daughter and nephew. "We don't even have a car!" She laughed then, a shrill sound edged with unraveling sanity, and within a few days a black 1963 Lincoln Continental was delivered. Jemma came out onto the front lawn on an afternoon in early February to admire it, along with everyone else.

"Who's going to drive it? None of us knows how," Honorine said.

"Dennis will teach us," Simone said, sliding her hand along the driver's side of the sleek car.

"He hasn't driven in years. He always takes the wagon when he goes into town."

"Well, he won't need that old country wagon anymore, and we won't need to call a cab. He'll take us in the car. But we're all going to learn to drive it."

Honorine refused to learn, but Dennis taught Simone, Fosette and Laurence how to maneuver it. Crooked ruts marked the front lawn, and once the three of them passed the test for a driver's permit, they fought over who would use the car. Simone was gone the most often, visiting friends she had from years ago, friends who'd heard rumors about the family and now peppered her with questions. Every night at dinner and every morning at breakfast, she relayed stories about meetings with the Cheneverts, the Elliotts.

"Marcella—you know, Frances's youngest—she was married two years ago and just had the most beautiful little boy. He has a head full of copper curls, and the bluest eyes. Oh! And Edgar. He has four boys now, all with the creamiest skin and the straightest hair. And they asked how you were, Maman, of course, and they asked after Russell." That was when she'd grow quiet, before directing her next words to her sister as she served the meal. "What are we going to tell them about you when they come over?"

"We'll tell them Inès has just returned from Europe," Honorine said.

"More lies?" Jemma snapped.

"Are you still here? When are you going to decide where to go? You've got enough money to take yourself anywhere in the world, so why don't you just leave?" Simone asked.

"Auntie," Laurence said, "I don't see why Jemma has to go at all. We're her family, after all." He paused, only to resume in a soft voice. "Agnes isn't going anywhere."

"And what's your sister going to do here? We don't need her anymore."

"Right," Jemma agreed, her gaze on Simone. "I did my job. Now it's time to hide my dark ass away before your friends come over."

"That's not fair, Jemma," Fosette said.

"Oh, stop. You're no better than your mother, our grandmother. If you were, you never would've been involved with…Look, I know where I'm not wanted. I'll be out of your hair as soon as I know where I'm going."

"You could come to Paris with us," Laurence suggested, keeping his gaze forward and not looking in Simone's direction.

"Are you taking my mother, too?"

"Of course not. Inès wouldn't want to come anyway."

"Have you even bothered to ask?"

The silence was its own answer. Jemma wondered why she even tried at this point. Soon she'd be gone from here permanently. She doubted anyone would invite her back, that they'd exchange letters once she settled somewhere. Or maybe Laurence would try to keep in touch, since he seemed to be the only one concerned about where Jemma would go.

Jemma pushed her chair back, having finished breakfast nearly half an hour ago. As she left the dining room, she heard the four of them making plans for a party. She forced herself to ignore the knot in her chest.

Later, after spending the afternoon with Magdalene, who knew all about the Duchons' new freedom and had nothing nice to say about it, Jemma asked herself how she'd been so na?ve as to think that breaking the curse would solve all her problems, or even drive the spirits away. As she made her way back to the house, the day's light fading, she stopped short at the sight of Adam standing outside the slave cemetery.

Her heart seemed to stick in her throat. She didn't know why fright gripped her the way it did, a tight hand whose fingers rested at the base of her neck. She wasn't scared anymore, she told herself. She'd worked through all of that. Plus, the ghosts had helped her.

She slowed, then moved toward where he floated, completely still.

He must have a reason for being there, but what could it be? He's not at rest, a part of her whispered.

"Adam?" she said, stopping a few feet from him.

"Free them," he said. "You got to free them."

Jemma frowned. "But I did. My mother and I did. We forgave them. They're free to come and go now. We're all free."

"Free them," he repeated, his voice unchanged, and there was distress underneath the words, bristling there. "From under."

"I don't understand." Before she could ask what he meant, his form grew faint. Jemma looked around to see if any more ghosts were there. But there was no Jane, were no others.

An uncharacteristically warm air, which pulled moisture from her forehead, armpits and neck, seemed to disappear with Adam. Once in her bedroom she felt even cooler, the cotton nightgown not nearly enough to keep her warm as she whispered Adam's name in the lamplit room.

No one came.

No one answered.

—

ALTHOUGH HONORINE HADN'T WANTED TO have a big party, she acquiesced to Simone, who promised to have just one celebration on a smaller scale, no more than fifty people.

"Once Russell wakes up, and he will wake up, we'll have a huge celebration, invite half the city."

The party was a chance for Simone to show off her new clothes, as well as to parade Fosette and Laurence around in hopes that they'd find marriage partners.

As for Inès, she had made it clear that she had no intention of attending. Jemma was invited, and when she asked how she would be introduced, Honorine said she'd be presented as their family.

"As Inès's daughter."

"And your granddaughter? Really?" Jemma was taken aback, even more so when her grandmother nodded.

The week before the party, set for February twentieth, just before Mardi Gras, Jemma went into town with Fosette, Simone and Honorine. Her cousin had surprised her with the invitation, and after she and her mother had argued over who would use the car that day, it turned into a group trip, Jemma a nervous passenger in the front seat while Fosette drove. It was a strange experience being in the parish proper with the three of them, especially since they stuck to areas that catered to white clientele. As they entered one boutique, a salesclerk looked up.

"You can't bring your girl in here," the woman said to Honorine.

The three Duchons exchanged a glance before Simone continued on inside. When she realized her mother and daughter weren't trailing her, she turned back.

"Come on."

Jemma turned to the door, her face hot.

"Grandmère," Fosette whispered, "Jemma and I will meet you back here in an hour."

Her cousin grabbed Jemma's arm and steered her outside before anyone could protest. As the two of them strolled down the sidewalk, quiet hung awkwardly between them while the regular sounds of New Orleans swirled around their bubble. Jemma wondered if Fosette would say anything. She also wondered what she would have done if her cousin had joined her mother and grandmother back at the shop, leaving Jemma on the street, alone in an unfamiliar neighborhood.

"It's nice without the old guard hanging over us, isn't it?" Fosette finally asked, her arm looped through Jemma's.

"Is that why you left them back at the shop?"

Her cousin stopped. "I didn't want to leave you. My mother certainly would've done it, let them throw you out like you were the help. I'm not like them, Jemma. Can't you see that?"

They ended up at a boutique that catered to Black clientele, and they walked out with several bags. But not before her cousin absolutely embarrassed her by remarking on how nice the "colored" shop was. All the other women in the store stared at Fosette, and at Jemma to a lesser extent, as if trying to ascertain the nature of their relationship. Jemma was relieved to get out of there.

"You should wear the yellow one for the party. That one looked the best on you," Fosette chattered as she drove them home. She had a terrible habit of looking over at Jemma every time she spoke instead of keeping her eyes on the road.

"What are you going to wear?"

"Oh, I don't know. I have about a dozen to choose from. Maybe I'll start the party with one and then change midway through, and then change one more time before it ends." Fosette laughed, her eyes crinkled shut, Jemma grabbing the door handle as the car swerved slightly. "You can help me decide."

It was hard resisting the easy air that enveloped the home, although Honorine reminded everyone constantly that Russell was still comatose. She refused to move him, knowing a white hospital wouldn't accept him and believing a Black hospital couldn't cure him. And while Jemma had taken to helping her mother as much as she could, Inès still refused to give up her role as maid, refused to sleep in the bedroom that had been hers and that Jemma now used, refused to leave the property. Jemma had asked her numerous times to do all these things, but her mother simply shook her head.

Despite that, Jemma found herself looking forward to the party, to seeing new faces around the house. She'd decided to use the occasion to announce her departure, having settled on California as a destination. She didn't know a single person out there, but that was part of the allure. It was far from anything she'd ever known, but close to the ocean, something she'd always loved. She didn't know how, but she'd convince Inès to come with her. And maybe if her mother came, Dennis would follow.

Honorine hired men to come paint the exterior of the house and a team of maids to clean the inside. On the day of the party, a catering service arrived late in the morning.

Jemma went looking for her mother around lunchtime, and saw Inès leaving the washhouse and heading toward the woods as if she was going to visit Magdalene. Or hide out there, more likely. She was rushing after her when Fosette called her from upstairs, needing her help choosing a dress. Jemma looked outside again and saw no trace of her mother, so she went to help her cousin and, in the busyness that followed, forgot about Inès and Dennis and everything that had troubled her.

The party guests began arriving early, before the seven o'clock start time, which Honorine grumbled about. However, she shook off any irritation and played the gracious hostess, which was nothing less than Jemma expected. It was a whirlwind of people, certainly more than the fifty Simone was limited to invite. An hour in, Jemma figured there had to be at least one hundred guests milling in and out of the house, almost all of them similar in color to the Duchons.

When her grandmother introduced her to a couple who could have been cousins of hers, their eyebrows raised at the sight of Jemma, the woman's gaze sliding down Jemma's brown arms, which contrasted deliciously against the creamy yellow gown Fosette had convinced her to wear, a yellow that would have made the rest of them appear as washed-out as jellyfish on a beach.

"Why, I wasn't aware that you had another granddaughter, Honorine," the woman said. "What have you all been doing here, hiding out all these years?"

And with each introduction, it was the same. Surprise—some of it unpleasant, some comical—seemed to be the theme of the night. One guest, whom Jemma mistook for a white man, held Jemma's arm, peppering her with questions.

Where was she from? Why had she only recently come to New Orleans? If she was indeed Inès's child, why had she grown up in Chicago? Where was her father?

Jemma answered everything truthfully, with the small exception of why she'd been in Chicago.

"I had other family there who wanted me to live with them."

And the man's eyes moved over her face, her neck, her arms, taking in her color. He finally nodded, as if he understood. And she wondered if he knew the truth but was too polite to voice it.

The guests' naked curiosity didn't dampen Jemma's mood. Mostly, she watched from a corner (where she was never alone for long) as Fosette made the rounds. It was as if she hadn't been trapped here for almost twenty-eight years, denied new relationships and meeting new people. No, her cousin shone, the years seemingly fallen away as she flitted from one group to another, an agile butterfly. Laurence, too, drew eyes everywhere he went. But Jemma noticed after a while that the initial interest that their guests expressed eventually waned, to be replaced by a cautiousness, a wariness. Once the people had gotten their fill of the gossip, once they'd seen with their own eyes that the Duchons were in fact alive and well, the guests seemed to pull back and away, to whisper among themselves the moment Honorine or Simone excused herself from the group. Young men whose eyes followed Fosette frowned when she wasn't looking. Mothers pulled young women away from Laurence after brief moments of conversation, giving excuses of having an early morning or other obligations.

Pieces of conversation touched Jemma's ears as she passed through the crowd, everything from petty gossip to current events to insults.

"You think Schiro is going to sign that thing, so they'll stop boycotting down there?"

"I told her not to wear that cream dress. What does she think it is, high summer?"

"She's gotten so old. That must be why she hasn't gone anywhere in years."

A group of two men and two women huddled in a corner. Jemma had spoken to one of the men earlier. He gestured to her, and as she joined them, one of the women said, "Haunted. I can feel it. Let's finish these drinks and go."

The man wore an apology on his face as he shrugged, gulped down his martini and left with the others.

As Jemma glanced around, she found more small groups like this, wide and wary eyes taking in the proceedings.

"Maybe they're the ghosts and we're in a nightmare," a man said to his laughing companions, all putting on their coats before rushing out the door.

Snatches of conversation grew more troubling.

"You really think the Zulus are better than those niggers marching in the streets? It's embarrassing. They're both an embarrassment. Just wait 'til next week, when they're acting like fools in the parade."

A woman bumped into Jemma and squinted at her.

"Who are you?" she asked, her words slightly slurred.

"Jemma. Honorine's granddaughter."

"Oh yes, the dusky one."

Under the drunken guest's insulting appraisal, Jemma remained stiff.

"You're lucky, though. You escaped all this." The woman waved one arm expansively. "The rot. The decay. The disease."

Before Jemma could respond, the partygoer stumbled away, crashing into someone else and laughing hysterically. Jemma had only a few pockets here and there to wonder after her mother. She was able to spare some gratitude that Inès wasn't expected to work this increasingly rowdy affair. Half a dozen white-jacketed Black men worked the room instead, gliding through with trays of deliciously varied hors d'oeuvres and flutes of champagne.

It wasn't until someone asked after Russell that Jemma overheard Honorine offering her apologies for his absence, "but he's taken ill." This was followed by a series of probing questions, the inquirer completely oblivious to the rudeness. Not finding a moment of silence in which to make her announcement, Jemma decided to head to bed sometime after one in the morning. She'd just tell the family about her plans at breakfast.

When she'd reached the parlor entrance, lying to a guest that she was only going to the bathroom, she turned away from the man and stopped, the last bit of an apology dying on the air.

Russell stood in the doorway.

Her uncle was dressed in the gray silk pajamas Honorine had had him changed into weeks ago, his hair on one side smashed close to his head. His gaze moved around the room. Only the people nearest Russell stopped talking, as they recognized him. One man began to move toward him, a hand out, his mouth forming a greeting.

All of that was interrupted as Russell's face contorted. His clawed fingers rose to his hair and yanked and tore out clumps. As his screams grew louder, the chatter around the room ceased. Everyone turned to look, their mouths falling open at the sight of her uncle, red-faced and shrieking.

Dimly, Jemma was aware of Honorine and Simone pushing their way toward him as most of the guests began stampeding to the front doors. A few continued to stare, as if unable to look away, but eventually they, too, bolted toward the foyer. Sobs and fearful babbling accompanied Russell's ongoing wails.

In the chaos, Jemma didn't know if anyone else heard or understood his words.

"It's not over! They're coming! It's not over! Not over!"