House of Rougeaux(75)

She remembered Auntie Josephine’s words, said one night when Eleanor was a girl, some time after they had lost Mama. Eleanor and Melody were in the kitchen after supper washing dishes in basins of soapy water, when a plate slipped from Eleanor’s grasp and shattered on the floor. It was only a bit of crockery, but at that moment it seemed the most terrible thing in all the world. She crouched on the floor, weeping inconsolably, and Auntie came and put her arms around her.

“Lay it down,” Auntie said, of all the burden Eleanor carried in her heart. “Lay it down.”

She heard Auntie’s voice now, speaking to her of the weight of the past.

Lay it down.

A breeze played over her bare legs and she let her feet dig into the white sand.



* * *



When the sun had dropped lower in the sky, knots of children came along and fed themselves into the waves, splashing and laughing. A young man came down the beach wearing a peaked woven hat with a wide brim, a beat-up old guitar over his shoulder. It was Marbeille’s son Abel, the one who had caught her when she fainted earlier that day. It surely didn’t seem like the same day, but much longer ago. He nodded to her and smiled, took a seat on an overturned rowboat and began to play. Some of the splashing children gravitated toward the music and danced together on the sand. The sunset colors tinted Abel’s white shirt and black skin with touches of rose. His hands fluttered like moths over the strings of the guitar, the children danced, and the music floated between the waves.

One of the boys, bare-chested and in short trousers, squatted near Abel, watching him play. A boy perhaps the same age as Gerard. He looked over at her for a curious moment, a strange woman he’d not seen before. She saw his dark eyes briefly, then he turned his face back to the music.

The sun sank into the sea and the sky stretched overhead dark blue. A single star appeared and hung over the black sea. An old lullaby of her mother’s came to mind, and she sang to herself, as she had on a dark night years ago, though it was different now. The breeze a light hand on her cheek.



* * *



Eleanor woke before dawn and slipped on the linen gown. Her back was stiff from her first night ever sleeping in a hammock, but she felt lighter and refreshed.

Marbeille was up, lighting the stove and throwing out yesterday’s coffee grounds. They had arranged that Abel would accompany Eleanor to the village of the man with the pipe, and from there she would go with the man’s wife to see the quimboiseur, Old Silas, the last living apprentice of Mémé Abeje. Marbeille gave Eleanor a mesh bag to hang across her shoulders, in which she had placed a number of small round fruits and a tattered silk parasol. At Marbeille’s instruction Eleanor had gone to a shop near the café the afternoon before to purchase a sachet of tobacco and a bottle of rum, to bring as gifts. The shopkeeper accepted American silver, and used a scale to reckon the pricing. Eleanor placed the rum and the tobacco in the mesh bag, carefully so as not to crush the fruit, and set out with Abel on a narrow road that snaked up into the hills.

In less than an hour they reached a small village and the home of the man with the pipe. His wife looked to be a contemporary of Marbeille, but did not quite have her outgoing manner. The elder lady led a small brown donkey on a rope, laden with two large sacks, and they continued on a smaller road, farther into the mountains. The sun was up now, with a heavy heat rising from the thick greenery on either side of the path, while hidden insects whirred, and birds called. Eleanor was grateful for the parasol and the little fruits that she shared with her companion, who smiled at her now and again, but kept mostly silent.

After perhaps another hour they arrived at a cluster of huts with walls like woven baskets, and approached one that had a pigpen, several chickens strutting around, and a large mango tree with small green fruit that draped over the thatched roof. A woman that looked to be Eleanor’s age in a colorful dress and red headscarf stepped through the open doorway and the three women exchanged greetings. Eleanor’s companion explained her presence there, and then with a wave continued up the path with the donkey. She would be back later for their return journey.

The woman in the red headscarf introduced herself as Sidonie. “You have come to see Papa Okun?” she asked. Eleanor had learned that Old Silas was also called this way. Sidonie had such a lively, fresh face Eleanor did not think she could be the wife of an old man.

“Is he your father?” she asked.

“My great uncle,” said Sidonie. “He is just sleeping now, but we will have a talk with him later. It’s lucky you came now. We don’t know how much longer we will have him with us.” Sidonie told Eleanor that Papa was mostly blind now and had suffered a sudden paralysis in the last rainy season that left him unable to walk or speak clearly. She said Papa’s relatives took turns caring for him, and that it was an honor to do so, because in his long life he had cared for a great many people.

Sidonie asked Eleanor to wait a moment and went inside. She came out of the hut with a large basket of dried bean pods and led Eleanor around the back to a stand of shade trees, the smallest of which was covered in white and yellow flowers. Eleanor stepped closer to the tree, recognizing the distinct shape of the blossoms. There were five fleshy white petals, arranged just so, with deep yellow centers. A frangipani. She remembered from the drawings that decorated the publicity materials of the Orchestra. Sidonie knelt down beside her with the basket and commenced to shelling beans. Eleanor sat too, to help.