Wild, Beautiful, and Free(2)

But he didn’t account for his wife, his frequent absences for business, and how much she had to drink on any given day and by what time. I’d learned to stay more than an arm’s length from Madame. If I got any closer, she was always pulling my hair or pinching my arms. I knew her hatred smoldered and all it took was a breath from me to make it blaze.

I’d spent the morning studying Papa’s map of the area of Louisiana known as LeBlanc. He wanted me to understand the breadth of the lands of Catalpa Valley, his plantation, and to know the fifty thousand acres as well as he did. By sight much of the fields were familiar to me, as I had viewed them from on high, on horseback, for most of my young life. Now he wanted me to know where the sugar mill, made of red brick, lay within our boundaries and how far out the largest field reached. Through Papa I learned what I know of the earth because our land had names. Sitting with the maps, I’d recite the names of the parcels as if they were the roots of my family tree: Belle Neuve

Baton Bleu

Siana Grove

Chance Voir

Belle Verde

Mont Devreau

I haven’t said these names out loud for years. Now they are marked on my heart.

“This earth belongs to you, Jeannette,” he would say.

Not all of it. That would be impossible. But one particular section I knew was in fact mine: five thousand acres, called Petite Bébinn. It was land Papa had set aside for me, on which he planned to build me a house so I could be free and safe. It was land that would give me a living.

I suspected he thought I would never marry. As bright as my skin was, my hair would always have the rough texture of a negress. That’s just a fact.

“Jeannette,” Papa would say in our lessons, “tell me about the southwest parcel.”

“It is Siana Grove, where the new-growth sugarcane gets planted and where the swamp meets the edge of the fields.”

I liked looking at the map, but at times it was hard to listen without growing sleepy to all of Papa’s words about how and when he’d acquired each parcel and how he’d used the word valley to name the estate because he liked the word. He didn’t care that it didn’t make sense because Louisiana’s as flat as the bottom of a cast-iron pot. I loved sitting with him. His clothing smelled of tobacco and his breath of the sugarcane he chewed. The map’s paper felt thick and satisfying between my thin fingers. I did wonder why Calista didn’t have the same learning, nor did it seem required of her.

This thought of my half sister made me wonder where she was. Madame, when I was a baby, used to keep us apart, or she’d tried her best to. With no other children in the house, Calista, four years old when I was born, was naturally drawn to me. Dorinda said she would find Calista rocking my crib if it took too long for someone to come see about me when I cried. I suspect our connection grew when I learned to talk and she realized we called the same man Papa. Once I was walking, she would help me climb out of the crib and go to her room, where we’d share her bed. Dorinda, knowing how Madame would rage if she discovered me in Calista’s bed, retrieved me early in the morning and tucked me back into my own bed.

As girls we escaped Madame’s scornful eye by playing outside. Our favorite game was to climb onto the thick branches of the oak that shaded our back lawn. Long, luxurious strands of Spanish moss curtained the whole tree, and we loved to drape the soft fronds over our heads like hair and pull it over our shoulders like shawls. We pretended to be old wisewomen, like Deborah in the book of Judges, who sat under a palm tree and provided counsel to the people who came asking for it. Only we sat in a tree, not under it, and no one came to me and Calista, so we made up the people and the stories of their requests.

There was the man who complained about a farmer having sold him a horse that was lame, and there were the brothers who couldn’t agree who would care for their old mother. There was the old mother who accused these same brothers of neglect. As we judged the fates of our people, it became clear that Calista was more merciful than I. She was always looking for a reason to explain why the person acted the way they did.

My argument was always the same: “But they should know better!” Because that was what Dorinda always said when she scolded me—I was a big girl and should know better. If I, at age six, seven, or eight, should know better, why shouldn’t big people older than that know the same?

One day Dorinda found us holding court in the tree and asked what we were doing.

“We are the old wisewomen of Catalpa Valley,” Calista said. “Do you need counsel?”

Dorinda laughed. “Older than me?”

I nodded. “And wiser too!”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Dorinda leaned against the tree’s fat trunk and looked up at us. “I can tell the future. Can you all do that?”

Calista looked at me, and we looked down at Dorinda. “All right,” Calista called down. “What’s our future?”

“Now that depends. Whatcha want most?”

“Want most?”

“Uh-huh. Most out of the entire world.”

The day was so hot that it seemed the moss could drink from the sweat on our skin. Calista smiled and took my hand.

“For me and Jeannette to stay here always.”

“How you gon’ do that, Miss Calista? You don’t think you ain’t gonna marry? You don’t think the men won’t come after you when you grown?”