Chapter Twenty-Six

twenty-six

"GET OUT! GET OUT! GET out of here, you cursed bitch!"

Jemma was sure Simone would have killed her if it hadn't been for Dennis. Everything after the car accident happened so suddenly and with such fierceness, she had trouble recalling the whole series of events. Flashes of images came to her over the following days and weeks, but in the immediate aftermath of Laurence's death, chaos colored everything.

The entire family rushed out of the gates onto the road in front of the house. The truck's driver, a white Creole, stood outside of his vehicle, too stunned to do more than gape at the ruined car that had rammed him from behind.

Laurence's blood spattered the driver's-side window of the car, obscuring the view.

Jemma was afraid that Fosette's screams would burst all their eardrums. She clapped her hands to the sides of her head while also wanting to shut out the gruesome scene in front of her, but for some reason she found that she couldn't close her eyes, could only stare at the sight. A part of her believed that if she stared long enough, it would change.

Jemma felt more united with the Duchons at that moment than she ever had.

"Call the hospital," Honorine said to no one in particular, her face a bloodless white.

Inès stepped closer to the car holding her firstborn inside.

"I…I don't know what happened," the truck driver stammered, kneading his battered hat between dirt-stained fingers. "He just…just came outta nowhere. Oh God…oh God…"

"Someone call the fucking hospital!" Honorine screamed.

"For what, Maman?" Simone yelled, grabbing at her mother's arm with one hand while pointing at Inès with the other. "He's dead! Just like Lucie and Papa and André and Lenore! All of them dead, because of this bitch!" She turned to Jemma. "And this one, still alive, still breathing! You and your mother are the curse! You're the curse! Get off this land! Get off this property! I don't ever want to see your faces again!"

Simone whirled around to Inès, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her. "This is your fault, your fault!"

Jemma broke out of her daze long enough to pull her aunt off her mother. "This isn't her fault! It's not my birthday. Do you hear me? It's not March twelfth!"

If Jemma thought that would break through Simone's violent fit, she was wrong. It seemed only to enrage her aunt more. As Fosette knelt on the dirt lane, her open mouth no longer emitting any sound, an expression of horror frozen on her face, her mother grabbed Jemma by the neck. Vaguely, Jemma was aware that her own mother had moved back to the car, had fallen across the windshield. Honorine stood as still as a statue, while the truck driver continued to babble to no one.

Dennis pulled Simone off Jemma, but it was clearly a struggle for him. Once he'd pried the woman's hands from around her niece's neck, Simone turned and backhanded him across the face.

"Don't you ever touch me again, nigger," she breathed.

Dennis's hand whipped up, but he somehow maintained enough control not to strike her back.

"I should do it," he said in a low voice, Simone eyeing his fist warily. "But I won't. 'Cause of her." He moved over to Inès.

"You disgusting cow," Jemma spit.

She thought her aunt would lunge at her again, but after moving her hair out of her face and licking the sweat from her upper lip, Simone ran back to the house, presumably to call the hospital.

Again Jemma was wrong.

After several moments, everyone's attention turned back to the open front doors of the house as Simone threw all Jemma's clothes and other belongings out onto the porch, before kicking various items down the stairs.

"Out! Out!" she screamed at random intervals.

Dennis put a hand on Jemma's arm, holding her in place. "Don't, Jemma. I'll get your things. I'll call the hospital. You just stay here."

—

JEMMA WAS GONE BY THE time the police came to talk to the truck driver and the family. She was gone by the time a doctor came out to the property, along with Father Louis and the coroner. By the time Laurence's crushed body was pulled out of the car and Fosette was heavily sedated in her bed, Jemma was in the back of a cab headed toward the bank that held her money.

It looked like she'd be leaving sooner than she planned.

Dennis had helped rush her away before Simone could get her hands on her again, before Honorine broke out of her frozen spell and decided to do her own damage, either to her or to Inès, or perhaps to both.

"Is my mother going to be all right?" Jemma had asked Dennis as he helped her into a waiting taxi down the street from the Duchon house. "How can I reach you to find out?"

"Just stay in town for a few days. Get a room in Tremé. I'll find you."

Jemma didn't even look out the back window of the cab, and she avoided meeting the driver's eyes in the rearview mirror.

"What happened back there?" the man asked, beginning to accelerate only when he could no longer clearly see the mess behind them.

"Car accident."

"Someone got killed?"

Jemma swallowed a lump in her throat. This was the first time she was able to remember that it was her brother who'd died. Now that Simone's hands weren't around her throat and Fosette's screeching wasn't in her ears, that thought came clear.

Had she thought that she'd be able to fit into that family? Yes, she had, with Inès finally acknowledging her, with the two of them no longer having to hide their relationship. And with Laurence putting forth an olive branch. Jemma wasn't na?ve enough to believe she'd be close to all of them (Simone was a lost cause), but she had believed that she could cobble together a small family unit, of her, her mother and her brother.

Oh, Laurence. Jemma put her face in her hands and wept.

In the middle of her crying jag, avoiding the cabbie's gaze, which pressed against her skin like a thick hand, she had the presence of mind to remember the date. Just as she'd told Simone, it wasn't her birthday. Laurence's death was not a result of the curse. So why were they blaming her and Inès?

And yet her brother's death didn't seem all that accidental. Jemma recalled the names of the family members she'd never met, the ones who'd died over the years, most of whose deaths occurred while she grew up in Chicago, blowing out candles on one birthday cake after another.

Laurence's death had the taste of the curse on it.

Once the cabbie stopped in front of First Citizens Bank, Jemma asked him to wait for her.

"I won't be long," she said, leaning in through the open passenger-side window.

"You going in there? How?" The driver nodded toward the bank building.

She didn't answer, simply walked around the side of the building to the same entrance she and Honorine had used not long ago. Jemma knocked several times, each time banging harder and louder. Finally, the same blond woman who'd let them in before opened the door, only enough to stick her head out and demand, "What?"

"I need to come inside and withdraw my money."

The woman's green gaze moved over Jemma, taking in the new dress and shoes, the carefully pressed hair. But even the fashionable clothes must not have been enough.

"You don't have an account here."

"I do. Honorine Duchon is my grandmother. We were here just a few weeks ago, when she gave me control of my account. My name is Jemma Barker."

"Hold on."

The door banged shut in Jemma's face. She stood outside, her hair drooping under the humidity, a line of nervous sweat tickling its slow way down her spine. After fifteen minutes, the blonde ushered her inside, to the same plain office she and Honorine had occupied before. Jemma took the single chair in the otherwise empty space.

The bank president didn't meet her this time, however. Jemma had no idea who the man hovering over her was, as he didn't introduce himself, but after he spoke, she didn't care who he was.

"I'm sorry, but your account has been closed."

"What are you talking about?" Jemma rummaged in her handbag, pulled out her checkbook and opened the register. "I have over seven thousand dollars here. I only pulled out a hundred dollars the one time I was here, and I haven't been back since that day."

"Yes, well, Honorine Duchon called right before you came in. The family, although colored, have long ties to our institution, and on her authority, we closed your account."

Jemma shot up. "Where's my money?"

"As I've already told you, your account—"

The man in front of her was taller and broader, but Jemma was quicker. She snatched open the door and was heading toward the teller counter before he grabbed her and pushed her back inside the room, where, for a few minutes, she heard only her heavy breathing.

She studied his face, looking for the lie, but it wasn't there. He was telling her the truth. Honorine had called while Jemma was sitting in the back of a cab, crying over her dead brother, and had closed her account. She'd withdrawn one hundred dollars the last time she'd been here, to buy a couple of new dresses and shoes, to get her hair done for the first time in six months. Jemma was down to her last ten dollars and there was a cabdriver waiting for her outside.

"What did she do with my money?"

The man didn't answer, simply stood there with his arms folded.

"Fine," she said. "You won't let her walk through the front door, but you'll keep her money here and let her get on the phone and take my money, money that I earned. Fine. Let me out of here."

"You go straight out the way you came in, girl."

Jemma had no intention of doing it, but when he gripped her arm so tightly that she cried out in pain, she had no choice but to be directed by him to the side door, where he shoved her outside.

She looked for the cab and was relieved to see it parked at the curb a block up instead of right by the door. Hoping that the driver wasn't looking in his rearview mirror, Jemma crept along the side of the building, away from the taxi and the fare she couldn't pay (not if she had to find a place to eat or sleep today), and began running once she turned the corner.

She had to stop and ask for directions a couple of times, but Jemma eventually made her way to Tremé. Dennis had gathered her belongings from the Duchons' lawn and stuffed everything he found inside her suitcase, but it was in the trunk of the taxi she'd run from. All Jemma had were the clothes and shoes she was wearing, and her purse.

She was in even worse shape than when she'd gotten off the train last September.

Dennis had told her to get a room somewhere and that he'd find her. After walking for nearly an hour, she found a two-story row house with a sign in the window inviting female boarders. It cost seven dollars a night. The woman who rented the rooms eyed Jemma suspiciously when she came out of her own ground-floor apartment.

"You ain't got no luggage?" she asked Jemma, and blew a thick stream of cigarette smoke out one side of her mouth. "I don't run no fancy place here, girl. Ain't no men allowed."

"My luggage was stolen. I just need to stay the one night. Here, I can pay you in advance."

When she handed over two fives, the woman snatched the bills and stuck them in the top of her bra, which peeked above the lapel of a threadbare robe. She pulled three damp singles out of the same place and pressed them into Jemma's hand.

"Second door on the left up them stairs. The washroom's at the end of the hall."

"You serve meals?"

The woman looked at Jemma like she was crazy. "Where you think you at, the Ritz? You can go right round the corner to Mama Belle's or Sisters. If you just staying the night, be outta here by eleven tomorrow morning." Giving Jemma one last look, she retreated into her apartment and shut the door.

Jemma found her room, which was a far cry from her space at the Duchons'. A twin bed with a metal headboard and footboard sat in front of a narrow window too covered in dust to see outside. The bedcovers not only looked dirty but also held a musty odor that made her gag. Instead of sitting on it, she took a seat in a rattan chair in the corner, kicking off her shoes. Through the closed door and what had to be paper-thin walls, the sounds of the other boarders began to stream in as the day wore on. Loud chatter from a group of women getting off their shifts at a nearby restaurant mixed with barks of laughter and the slamming of doors. For a while, the washroom door opened and closed with regularity, the noise of the flushing toilet and running water constant.

Jemma peeled off her dress and stockings, laying them over the back of the chair. She pulled back the bedcovers only to find the bedsheets in even worse shape, so she lay on top of the blanket, her hands crossed over her stomach, which heaved with sobs until it hurt. Hunger probably made it worse, but she had no appetite.

She'd spent the long day seeing Laurence's face from the previous night, his gentle smile as he told her he'd like for them to stay in touch.

But she couldn't keep that picture in her mind.

Instead, images of the crumpled car, the blood-splattered window and Inès prostrate across the hood all took their turns dancing behind her closed eyelids. Fosette keening on the ground, the pure hatred in Simone's eyes, and through it all, Honorine standing like a sentinel taking it all in.

It's not my birthday, Jemma had screamed at her family.

It's not over, Russell had cried.

Russell was right. This wasn't over. Whatever had tied the death curse to her birthday seemed to be unleashed. And if that was the case, any of the remaining Duchons—including herself—could die at any moment.

As Jemma wondered how Dennis would find her, someone knocked on her door.

"You Jemma in there? It's a man out front looking for you. Name's Dennis."

Jemma wiped her face. "I'm coming," she called, her voice thick and unsteady. She dressed quickly and rushed downstairs, her purse in hand. Dennis waited on the front porch, the single light bulb providing a harsh glare and drawing bugs at the same time.

"What you doing here? I thought you were gonna get a place at one of the hotels."

"Honorine closed my account at the bank and took all my money. This is all I could afford."

"Shit."

"How's my mother?"

"Just like you think she is. Blaming herself. I almost didn't come out 'cause I don't know what she might do, so I got to be quick. You need to come on now."

"You know I can't go back to that house. I can't even be on the grounds. They'll kill me."

Dennis shook his head, his mouth set. "Ain't no way you're going back there. Not if you're coming with us."

"What?"

"Your mama and me are going. I don't know where yet, but she's set on leaving. She wants you to come with us."

The words enveloped Jemma like a soothing balm. Her mother wanted her. She wanted Jemma with her. Although Laurence was gone, they could still be a family: Inès, Emmaline and Dennis. She began to imagine their new home. Would it be in the city or closer to the country?

I curse all the Duchon blood. From this day forth, I bind the family to this house. I bind them forever.

The future Jemma envisioned with her mother began to unravel, the curse working its hooked fingers right through the pretty picture, tearing it in two.

"I can't go, not now. The curse isn't broken, not all of it. I don't think it's tied to my birthday anymore, but I don't know. All I do know is that if I don't break the curse, someone else is going to die. It could be me next. It might even be my mother."

"You sure about that?"

Jemma nodded. "Just get me to Magdalene's. After that, I'll figure out something."

He looked up then, at the bugs battering themselves against the light bulb, the old cobwebs in the corners. "We're leaving tonight."

As difficult as it was to accept, Jemma understood. She didn't blame Inès for wanting to flee, to finally escape all of the abuse and the pain.

"Then let me say goodbye."