When Venus Fell (34 page)

I stepped back, astonished at the long tendrils of human fellowship that reached to and from the heart of the Cameron heritage, where I had been conceived as surely as a ripe seed dropped in rich soil. I was beginning to have absurd flashes of
belonging
, as if I, too, could claim a place there, since it was Gib who had named
me
.

“I have to say something to you, flat out,” Ebb interjected.

A little dazed, I pivoted toward her and shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “Yes?”

She stopped kneading biscuit dough in a broad stoneware bowl to stare at my long, ropy, fake-blond braids. Her own hair was an enormous brown-teased poof above a shimmery gold-lamé headband, a true marvel of hair architecture. Yet Ebb gazed humbly at my cornrows and the pile of Medusa-like strands I’d bound up with a red silk scarf. “I ain’t worthy to hold your rat comb,” she said. Seriously.

After a stunned moment, I nodded to her just as seriously. “I consider it an
honor
to be admired by someone who has mastered the art of hair elevation beyond all known human limits.”

“But
you’re
the hair queen to look up to,” Ebb said in big round tones of reverent gratitude.

“We’ll share the title,” I insisted.

Her eyes glowed with pride. We shook hands.

“I couldn’t live over there in the woods like you’re doing,” Flo confessed one day as she was helping me bleach my roots. “It’s haunted. The whole danged valley is full of haints, but ’specially over yonder near the chapel.”

I laughed. Our childhood home in New Orleans was supposedly haunted, like everything else in the old sections of the city, where ghosts could easily whisper from every shady courtyard and every festoon of Spanish moss. It never worried me. Catholics talk to so many saints, invoke so many spirits anyway. Pop let me believe that Mom, Grandmother Akiko, and Grandpop Paulo were still with us, keeping us safe. He even ventured that every time I heard music they were watching over me, and every time I
made
music they were right beside me.

Like Ella, I grew up looking for portentous signs in fallen feathers; I tried to interpret them after Mom died. Our Grandmother Akiko was the one who started the whole feather angelic-communication idea in our family. She wrote dozens of poems on the subject. I had her books of haiku.

After we were grown and Ella became obsessed with the feather mythology, I backed away from it, disavowed the nonsense as nonsense. I felt I had to balance her whimsy with brutal pragmatism, or we’d never survive.

So I was well equipped to deal with dead Camerons, Cherokee and white. But when I was alone I crossed myself. It wasn’t the ghosts of the dead I had to worry about so much as the spirits of the living.

Particularly, as it turned out, FeeMolly.

“The rush of air in my ears is my favorite intoxicant, next to a good stiff drink!” Bea yelled as she wheeled the golf cart at
top speed between the hedgerows of the courtyard that fronted the Hall. Ella and I clung to the cart’s side roof supports. Cold wind buffeted us.

Bea had picked us up at the horse barn, where Ella was gamely admiring Carter while he assisted a pregnant mare in labor. It had taken me an hour to lure her away from the spectacle of Carter crooning gently while he inserted his arm up to the elbow inside the vagina of a large, grunting horse.

I needed Ella in the music room at the Hall, to rehearse a new duet arrangement I’d written. Guests at Cameron Hall paid an average of $250 per night for their lodging, food, and now, formal entertainment. I was determined that when the first guests arrived in January they’d marvel at the Hall’s live, first-class music every night. I tuned Ella’s violin for her. I used every opportunity to redirect her overheated newlywed attentions toward the music business.

“Pigs!” Ella shouted to Bea suddenly. “Pigs!”

I thought she was losing her mind until a dozen small, pink pigs—all squealing hysterically—emerged from newly planted beds of purple winter pansies. The miniature herd darted in front of us.

“Out of the byway, you wee devils!” Bea yelled, steering wildly. Isabel burst from a small door in the long column of white-trimmed windows in the Hall’s left wing. Waving her arms and looking like a large plaid butterfly in a wool jumper and sweater, she loped past us, chasing pigs.

“The piggies arrived an hour ago!” Bea shouted over her shoulder at us, still maneuvering the golf cart to dodge piglets. “They came by special courier! An English pig farmer shipped them to Minnie”—Bea swung the cart to the right up a stone walkway—“because dear Simon married the Englishman and his lady friend at the chapel here a few years back”—Bea jerked the golf cart to a halt—“and they promised him some midget English piglets when their first bairn was born.” As she wound the golf cart among another pair of pigs she blew out an exasperated breath that upended the
brim of the straw hat she wore with a brown jogging suit. “Leave it to a bloody Englishman,” she growled, “to no’ ask a by-your-leave to thrust his pork upon you without a bit of warning!”

A small pig leaped up on the wide stone entranceway directly in front of us, skittered across wet, newly washed stone, and tumbled off the opposite side, oinking as he went. Ella bit her lower lip. I burst out laughing. Then I glanced back and saw that Isabel was crying as she chased the other little porkers. She looked like the picture of overworked frustration.

“Oh, poor Izzy,” Bea said gruffly. “Venus, if you’ll be so kind, you and Ellie go help Izzy darlin’ with her arrogant bacon.”

“Carter says I’m good with animals,” Ella noted. “He says it’s because they sense I won’t hurt them. While we were visiting Hoover Bird, Carter taught me to handle a pet raccoon.”

At least he didn’t teach her to dance with a goat
, I thought. “Why don’t you go on inside and change into your white dress,” I told Ella. I crawled out of the golf cart and flexed my shoulders under my quilted jacket. I stuck my gloves in the back pockets of my jeans, then rubbed my bare hands. “Both of us shouldn’t be subjected to miniature frozen pig wrestling.”

I heard a disgruntled shriek. FeeMolly came waddling around the far corner of the mansion’s right wing, her red leather walking shoes crunching on the pebbled path between flowering shrubs and daisies, a meat cleaver hoisted in her right hand. I’d never really talked to her, because she ignored me and everyone else when it suited her. She came and went at odd hours, before sunlight and after dusk, and when she commanded the Hall’s kitchen no one but Ebb and Flo were allowed access without permission.

But now she was on a rampage. Her beady-eyed face was flushed and angry. She was built in fat, widening tiers of breast, belly, and butt. She sported thick gray hair dyed at the
temples with red skunk streaks the same color as her stretch pants and shirt—which were covered by a red chef’s apron.

“Hit don’ matter t’me ifn’ I has ta skin a
swamp rat
fer stew!” she yelled at Isabel, who jumped at her approach. Isabel had managed to herd most of the piglets onto the lawn, where a U-shaped row of low, clipped boxwoods hemmed them in.

“Shag and I are going to herd them to the cattle barn,” Isabel called. She pointed to the blue-eyed dog who was already hunkered in front of the agitated piglets. “Shag’s got them under control now. Just give me a chance.”

“Sun’s set on the
gimme!
Ain’t nobody out chere can pertect ’em!” FeeMolly bellowed. “They got in my winter cabbage patch, and by Jesus now the only cabbage they gonna git are the ones floatin’ in the stew wit ’em!”

I’d never heard a dialect like hers, not the most traditional coastal Gullah or backwater Cajun, not anything remotely like the drawling mountain gibberish she chattered ferociously.

“You’ll not be cleaving the piglets!” Bea bellowed with grand Scottish dignity. Ella ran over and stood defensively beside Isabel, in front of the pigs. Isabel cried, “No, no, FeeMolly!” and snatched up a small pink pig in her arms. “They’re pets!”

“They is
stew!
Out of my way, younguns!” FeeMolly brayed. The sight of a maniacal three-hundred-pound mountain chef advancing on my sister with a meat cleaver sent me running frantically into the action. “Stop it!”

“I’ll bring herself out here!” Bea called, and barreled up the walkway to the front doors.

There was no time to wait for Olivia to help. I planted myself in FeeMolly’s path. She halted, pointed the cleaver at me, and intoned, “Hain’t got no nevermind fer you, you funny-headed heathen! Be along wit ya!”

“You just leave the piglets alone,” I insisted patiently. I unfurled one hand in a finger-pronged power gesture, posed
before her face as if I were about to cast a spell. I remembered it from Mrs. Duvelle’s voodoo lessons, as a child. “You’re not going to threaten my sister, Isabel, or the pigs,” I said with hypnotic intent. “No.”

FeeMolly grabbed the end of one of my braids and sliced it off half-way up. I launched myself at her cleaver-wielding arm, latched both hands around her wrist, and hung on. She began slapping me in the head with her free hand. Tiny stars shot across my vision. I would end up with a concussion. But if I let go of her arm I might end up as human pâté.

Isabel screamed. Ella ran over and grabbed FeeMolly’s other arm. “Please, FeeMolly, please calm down!” Ella shouted.

“You git yo’ sis off me! She gonna git her head knocked clare inta next morn!”

“Please, don’t, please,” Ella panted.

It was like trying to hold down a blimp in a tornado. FeeMolly swayed while Ella and I staggered back and forth. Ella bounced against me and fell down. I levered one arm over FeeMolly’s cleaver arm. She whacked me in the back of the head with her free hand.

I sank my teeth into her forearm. She uttered a screech and drew back her fist. I was certain the next time she hit me I’d be out cold.

Gib was suddenly among us. “Stand down!” he ordered in a voice like a drill sergeant’s. FeeMolly had a death grip on my hair. He pried her hand away, barking out orders in a calm but steely tone, and wrenched the cleaver from her. Ella scrambled to her feet.

“Stay back,” Gib said. “She’ll hit you when she’s this upset. Nellie, pull in your fangs.
Nellie
.”

I ducked under FeeMolly’s arm. My mouth was filled with a taste like sweaty clams. My jaw throbbed. My head ached. Gib angled between FeeMolly and me. I straightened slowly, wobbling but still on-guard.

Ebb and Flo ran up to us. “Mama’s hormones are a little iffy right now,” Flo said. “The doctor just adjusted ’em.”

I shook my head. “
Freddy Krueger
has more excuses. She meant to cut me!”

“Aw, she was just foolin’ around,” Ebb said.

“From now on you come to me if you have a problem,” Gib told FeeMolly, “I’ll take care of it. No more chasing people with knives. It’s not polite. All right?”

She stared at him glumly. “Don’t gimme no more req’tion papers.”

“What? Is that what’s put you in a mood? Look, you don’t have to fill out any requisition forms. Just tell Ebb and Flo what kind of supplies you need and they’ll fill out the form I gave them.”

“Misser Si never keered over fixin’ no paper! You learn ’em up! Place’s goin’ straight to Beelzebubber if’n yer gumption wants on ya! Misser Si God bless Misser Si God bless I miss’m.”

Gib’s expression turned as unyielding as a rock wall. “A little formal organization isn’t too much to ask. I have schedules. I have checklists. This is the way I run things. I miss Simon, too. But I’m in charge now. You need to remember that.”

“I put diapers on ya,” FeeMolly barked. “Don’cha order me,
boy
.” She drew herself up, worked her mouth, then spat on the ground at his feet. I stared at the frothy white blob of spittle near the toe of Gib’s worn leather loafer. Embarrassed for him, I stole a glance at his face. He was still as stone.

Olivia arrived then, on Bea’s arm. Min ran outside with them. “I thought the pigs were still locked in the old chicken coop.”

Isabel sighed. “The door came open while I was feeding them.”

“Now I am ’bout ta be
eatin’
em!” FeeMolly announced. She snatched at the cleaver Gib held.

Olivia raised one fine-boned finger, commanding, chastising, regal. FeeMolly deflated, and began to look forlorn. “Misser Gib hain’t s’much’s gotta sharp stob to dig us outta mizry,” FeeMolly explained to her. “He puttin’ his law,
his
law
down on folks ’stead of goin’ along kind-like, after Misser Si.”

Olivia pointed firmly toward the Hall. FeeMolly clamped her mouth tight, then glared at my chopped-off braid on the ground, and at me. “Next time I be chip-chippin’ on you like you is tough hambone, mop head.” She glared at me and then at Gib, again, then waddled away.

Olivia, her face compressed in deep thought, picked her way up the mansion’s steps. Bea lumbered after her. “I’m sorry, Gib,” Isabel said tearfully. “FeeMolly’s just on edge like all the rest of us. Today feels so strange.”

Gib bent slowly, wearily, and retrieved the foot-long section of my hair. The remnant of neat, pencil-thin synthetic braid unraveled between his fingers. “You missing any pieces other than this?” he asked.

“No.” I gestured toward the shorn-off section still connected to my scalp. “But I think I’ll go inside now. I feel a little frazzled.”

“Would you like your end? Can you glue it back on?”

“No, just throw it away.”

He tucked it in his back pocket. “Contrary to local opinion, if you change your mind I won’t ask you to fill out an official req’tion paper.”

I arched a brow. “You plan to document even your smallest req’tions?”

Finally a little humor leavened the grimness FeeMolly had put in his face.
“None
of mine are small.”

I snared a pig and held it up. “They came from England. They came by air freight. Therefore they’re real, honest-to-goodness
flying pigs
. And flying pigs are good luck, in my opinion.”

His mouth worked. He squinted at me as if I’d sprouted pig wings myself. “I believe whatever you say,” he promised drolly.

I wished it were that easy.