Madam (20 page)

Shaken, Mary weaved her way through the crowded marketplace in the French Quarter, gazing emptily as the vendors tried to sell her their wares. Their callouts, normally catchy and singsongy, seemed to accost her from every direction:

Bring out your pitcher,

Bring out your can.

Get nice fresh oysters from the Oyster Man! Oyster, Sally?

My horse is white, My face is black,

I sell my coal two bits a sack.

“I am
Signor Cornmeali
!” cried the cornmeal man. “
Buongiorno
, cornmeal?”

The bottle man pushed a handcart by. “Any bottles, any bones, any rags today?”

“Mop-n-broom!” called the blind broom man, stomping his cane with each syllable. “Mop-n-broom!”

“Pole-y. Pretty, pretty pole-y,” sang the pole seller.

Mary had never been bothered by the chicken seller before, but today she shivered as he swung his chickens, limp but still live, banded together like a bunch of turnips. “Get your big fat spring cheek-in!”

Even the silent Choctaw squaw who knelt at the curb selling powdered sassafras seemed to question Mary with her unblinking black eyes.

Mary continued onward, in her own hazy world, until something up ahead caught her eye: a crew of fancily dressed ladies, decked out in plumes and jewels. They confidently approached male passersby, looking them straight in the eye and handing them calling cards.

“The inaugural party is at Countess Lulu White’s mansion,” one of the girls recited to a dapper dan who’d veered over.

Mary spotted a wayward calling card on the ground, and she scurried to pick it up. She wiped a footprint from the card, which depicted a line drawing of a young woman’s profile, along with fancy script:

Miss Poodle
“She’ll pant and lick you all over!”
Countess Lulu White’s Mahogany Hall,
235 Basin Street

From among the girls, Mary picked out the pouffy-haired one who resembled the drawing.

“Well, aren’t you the tomcat’s kitten,” Poodle cooed to a suited man. “Will I see you this Saturday? It’s going to be a bigger celebration than Mardi Gras even. You will not be disappointed, I promise.”

“And I’m sure to see you there?” the man asked.

“Of course! I am privileged to live at the Countess’s house, you silly goose!”

Momentarily forgetting about her throbbing head, Mary watched in awe. The Countess’s girls looked fresh and gleeful, with round, pink cheeks—they all must eat three squares a day, Mary thought. She twisted a strand of her own brittle, dirty hair and felt herself shrink in comparison to these girls with their curled updos, their tufted bustles, their pale, unfreckled faces shielded from the sun by fancy, stylish hats.

Poodle playfully tugged at the dan’s coat. “Tell them at the door that Poodle sent you.” She then leaned in closer to him. “You’re my number one, but why don’t you bring some gentlemen friends too? This is a momentous event, after all.” She pointedly handed him a calling card, and in return he suavely kissed her hand.

“Until Saturday eve,” he said.

They were interrupted by a brown-haired girl, who butted herself in. “And it’s all legal!” she shouted. At that, all the girls rallied to the battle cry, whooping and cheering.

A blond pixie lifted her skirt to flash two very prim and proper ladies who happened to be walking by. “Legal!” she shouted, baring her bloomers. The ladies darted out of the way as if she were a rodent. “Heavens!” one trilled, her nose upturned. “I pray President McKinley will bring an injunction against this awful district of vice!”

Mary couldn’t help but giggle at the prim women, batting themselves as if they’d walked into a swarm of gnats. Just then, one of Lulu’s girls looked her way, and Mary instinctively cowered. She knew the reality: they were stunning, and she ought to be embarrassed by her dirty face and soiled clothes. She melted back into the crowd of the bustling market, where she’d be lost among the low class, the invisibles.

As she made her way through the marketplace, she was surprised that each snippet of conversation she caught was about the new district. A little boy asked, “Mama, what’s the tenderloin?”

“A cut of meat,” the mother snapped, “and don’t ask such things again.”

A suited man strolling aside a minister inquired how Saint James Methodist Church could coexist with such unholy practices occurring right next door? The minister sighed. “It’s a sad, sad day that our beloved church is caught in the boundaries of Satan’s new district.”

Mary even went by Café Du Monde to sit and rest a moment among the folks eating beignets and drinking chicory and coffee au laits from china teacups. “They’re calling it Storyville,” a suited man told another. “Bet that just tickles the Alderman.” They both laughed.

Mary’s head pounded, and talk of the new district only made it hurt more. She hastened her way toward Peter’s potato stand, feeling relief wash over her as she heard his call from down the aisle.

“One potato, two potato, three potato, four! Nice Irish potatoes!”

Catching sight of Mary, he gave a big smile, only his face went flat as he got a look at her swollen, blood-caked lip. “That a gift from Lobrano?”

She ignored the question. “Can I just set here a bit?” she asked as she slowly sank onto a crate.

Peter began to mindlessly fidget with his watch, clicking and snapping the cover. “Did Lobrano do that?” he persisted, but Mary just looked away, vacant. “Answer me, Mary!”

“Don’t duty me,” Mary snapped. “I put food on the table and a roof over your head. You ain’t got no right to ask for one thing more, Peter.”

She recoiled, instantly hating herself for lashing out. Her heart was racing, and although she’d thought it was a good idea to come here, that it might help to just sit with her brother, she decided she better leave before she blurted out something else she’d regret.

“I’ll see you back at home,” she said. “And I’m fine, don’t worry after me.”

She wandered off, but found her feet taking her to the only place that seemed to make sense. She passed women carrying baskets atop their heads, passed Clementine selling rice fritters, and walked straight into the cigar shop.

The front room was empty, and Mary made the rash decision to boldly step, uninvited, behind the velvet curtain. Moving cautiously down the hallway, she saw Eulalie’s door was open. She peeked in.

Her back to the door, Eulalie was meticulously stitching a taxidermy cat, poised as if hissing. Mary cowered at the sight of it.

“Too late to turn back now,” Eulalie murmured as if she had eyes in the back of her head of thick, wild hair. “So you returned to Eulalie at the waning moon after all? It’s a peculiar moon month. That milk moon will be up to her majestic tricks soon. Playin’ her little hiding game. Just you wait and see.”

Eulalie’s talk sounded like gibberish to Mary. She hadn’t come here because of the moon. With a deep breath, she took a step into the cramped room. It smelled strong of musk and grass. “Miss Echo, did you come to my bedside last night?”

Eulalie held a magnifying glass to inspect a stitch on the cat’s belly. “We must make a sacrifice in Congo Square,” she replied. “Tonight at dusk.” Still, she didn’t turn to face Mary.

“Miss Echo, I need to know,” Mary insisted. “I saw some wild sights in my dreams and I need to know if any are true.”

“See me there tonight, at the scarred oak. Bring three silver dimes to put in the tree’s hollow.”

“I didn’t come here looking to make a sacrifice—”

“Fine, then,” Eulalie said, dismissive. She returned to her stitching on the cat. Mary waited uncomfortably, and as the seconds of silence ticked away she couldn’t exactly figure out why she wasn’t turning to leave.

Finally, Eulalie piped up. “If your mind sees fit to change, remember to bring a little offerin’ to the queen Marie Laveau. She guides Eulalie from the spirit world.”

Feeling empty and drained, Mary turned to go but was startled by the screeching of a chair as Eulalie flipped around to face her. She held up a bony finger.

“The underworld is rising. The time o’ queens be comin’, and you, child, must be ready.”

Ready for what? Mary wondered. But she let Eulalie’s words resonate. Here she was, about to be stripped of her crib, her life savings, and her means of making a living, and if Eulalie thought an offering to her spirit guide would help, what more did Mary have to lose? She flinched at how to-the-letter the answer suddenly was: nothing. She was as low as anyone could be, so why should she fear anything anymore?

She mustered up a voice. “What do you think Miss Laveau might want for an offering?”

Eulalie gave her a tiny smile. “Oh, Marie? She like a tin pail o’ crayfish bisque . . . but not too red hot, too red give the queen some nasty bout of indigestion.”

Across Rampart Street was the notorious Congo Square, a clearing bordered by thick woods, and the place where, during slave times, Africans could gather legally. In the old days, it was every Sunday afternoon that black folks would congregate to sell or trade the handful of goods they were permitted to make on their own—or those they made in secret. But it was during the nighttime when Congo Square really came alive with chanting, drumming, stomping, and pulsating bodies and ritualistic ceremonies that made the place sacred.

Mary had heard Beulah talk of going to Congo Square, and how she and her kin would raise a ruckus there until all hours of the night. Beulah called the square holy ground, and Mary always reckoned she’d meant
holy
as in church. But now, after her dealings with Eulalie Echo, Mary suspected Beulah meant
holy
as in black magic.

With one leaded step after the other, carefully steadying the offering of a pail of soup, Mary wondered if the bump on her head had caused her good sense to get jumbled. She approached the clearing and sloughed off a chill as she scanned the square. Her eyes quickly found the unmistakable gnarled oak Eulalie had described.

Slowly, she walked toward the tree and set the pail at its twisted roots. From her pocket, she took three dimes. Three precious dimes. Even more precious now that her cigar box of savings was nearly empty. She envisioned the picture of the train on the box but instead of traveling to interesting, unknown places, she imagined it to have no steam, barely inching along until it could inch no farther and came to a whining standstill.

“Am I crazy, Saint Teresa?” Mary said aloud. Three dimes. That was a pound of butter. A steak, maybe two small steaks even. And here she was about to trade sustenance for what could likely be the work of the Devil? But Eulalie’s words echoed in her head:
The time o’ queens be comin’, and you, child, must be ready
.

Mary knew the truth, that a steak or a pound of butter wasn’t going to make a damn bit of difference in the long run if something big didn’t change. Angel or devil, if Mary couldn’t keep working, that baby would come into the world hopeless.

Ceremoniously, she placed a dime in the hollow and announced her wish. “Good fortune for Peter.” She wished upon the next dime. “Good health for Charlotte.” And then she studied the third, lingering over it, lingering over the wish for herself.

“Flames!”

Mary jumped. There was Eulalie, sitting just inches away, as if she’d been there the whole time.

“Flames, for you,” Eulalie said. “That fire in your belly. Ask it for yourself. Go on, ask Marie Laveau.”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“Come now, don’t want Miss Laveau’s supper goin’ cold.” Eulalie reached toward the bisque and dipped a finger in to taste. “Just the way she likes it.”

“I don’t know what to ask for,” Mary said timidly.

“Ask for what you want. Ask Marie, the high Voodoo priestess who guides Eulalie from the spirit world. Marie is power. When she did rituals on Saint John’s Eve, thousands of folks traversed for days just to take sight of her.”

“This ain’t temptin’ the underworld, is it?”

Eulalie let out a cackle. “The underworld? Child, you
are
the underworld.”

Mary realized her knees were trembling. “You’re scaring me some, Miss Eulalie.”

“Fear makes change. Isn’t it change you’re after?”

Mary desperately nodded. She screwed up her courage and wrapped her fist around the dime. “I gotta find my own way,” she said, her voice tiny, and she moved to throw the dime in the hollow, but Eulalie stopped her.

“You’re talkin’ to the queen! Ask big, ask for real.”

Mary bit her lip. Closing her eyes, she thought of the Countess’s girls at the market, pink-cheeked and clean and happy and making business with no shame. Making business by throwing a fancy-dress party, for Lord’s sake! From somewhere deep within her chest, Mary found her voice. She declared, “I want to work in a proper house, on a proper mattress, making a fair living.” She watched the dime disappear into the dark hollow.

“Queen Marie Laveau, please hear this child!” Eulalie called, pressing her palm to Mary’s forehead, forcing her to kneel. “
Danga moune de te! Canga do ki li!
Mother Haiti, Mother Congo, receive her!” Reaching both hands to the sky, Eulalie began to tremble as if a current were traveling through her. “Oh holy day! Rise up, child!”