“The journey across the Gulf was a long one, and I traveled belowdecks with eight other blacks, slaves one and all. In the daytime, we were allowed to stand on the deck across the open waters, but once we neared the port at the mouth of the Mississippi, the mosquitos would like to assassinate a body with their bites and they showed no pity upon any breathing thing. Clouds of gnats, too, would swarm and some flew into my mouth and nose and lodged themselves in the corners of my eyes. I was relieved to be off the ship. Waylaid in the country of the Tchactas, we disembarked in an Indian village, and the chief there dressed just like a Frenchman and spoke the language of the traders, as do many other tribes along the river. In the chief’s cabin, a white man from faraway Canada looked stricken when he first joined eyes with mine. He could not stop from looking at me. He was the biggest and tallest man I ever did see, with a red beard that made his face look afire, and I heard him offer M. LaChance a good price if he could buy me and make me his bride. Had not the master thought the whole matter a mere peccadillo, I may have had a different history, but he just laughed at the Cajun, and we moved on in the morning and reached Nouvelle Orleans in a week’s time.”
The old man stopped abruptly, for the last phrase had been written along the length of the little finger on her left hand and the chapter ended in midair. He had to locate the beginning of the next part of her story and so began to delicately search along her skin for the proper place. Perhaps by accident, he stepped too close and lost his balance, and reaching out to break his fall, his hand landed squarely upon her breast. “Pardonnez-moi,” he said, but she just chuckled softly and replied, “Je connais la chanson.” He withdrew his hand and resumed his investigation by sight.
Outside the small window, something thumped and fluttered against the glass, and when I lifted back the curtain, I saw an enormous pale green moth struggling to reach the light inside the bathroom. A dozen little ones were pasted on the screen. Beyond them the late-night shadows revealed nothing. All of the houses in the neighborhood stood dark and silent as a mountain range, their occupants asleep in their comfy beds. I envied them their peace and dreams, and for the first time since my head had been struck and I had fallen, I wondered if I, too, were not merely sleeping in my bed next to my beloved and the whole night some hallucination brought on by a lunchtime burrito. The old man, Marie, Alice, Jane, Dolly, the baby at our feet, all mere players in some elaborate dream. Perhaps even the bicycles on the lawn, the entire June day stretching into this bizarre night. To check, I pinched my thigh, as one is always told to do, but the sharp pain was real enough.
“Voilà!” the old man exclaimed. The story continued across her clavicle and next ran down the length of her right arm.
“We arrived in the biggest city in all of Louisiana on the 8th of December, 1768. Some folk in the old part of town followed the Lyonese custom of celebrating la Fête de la Lumière, for on the windowsills of their houses burned candles in colored glass jars, a magical sight, like stars glowing red and yellow and blue. It was like walking in a rainbow at midnight. On the corner of a pretty little street stood the house, two storeys high, with an iron rail fence running the width of a mezzanine, and facing the street, a black walnut door opened to a front parlor. He lit a candle and placed it in my hand. The flame danced like a phantom in the darkness. No one greeted us, perhaps because of the lateness of the hour and our unpredictable arrival date, but the quiet inside unsettled me. M. LaChance had told me all about his family and the domestic situation during our long travels from the island, and I had hoped for some greeting other than this ghostly absence. Instead, the Master whispered a good night and pointed with his walking stick to a room beyond the kitchen. You will find Hachard down there, dead asleep, he said, but you rouse her and she will show you to your bed. We will get to work in the morning. With that, he toddled toward the staircase. With each step, the floorboards creaked and groaned beneath his prodigious corpulence.
“Is that you, my angel? Hachard asked when I entered the tiny room and shook her from her slumber. No, it is me, Marie, the new girl the Master has brought back from Saint-Domingue. She stepped into the candlelight, close enough for me to see the gray in her hair and the dark circles around her eyes. Four of her front teeth had escaped from her mouth, and the wind whistled in her words. Confusion danced in her gaze, but at last she figured out just who I was. I have been waiting for you, she said, but you are just a young girl. Old enough to marry, I said, old enough to care for myself. Hachard laughed at my audacity, revealing more empty spaces at the back of her mouth. We shall see, but first some rest after your long journey. Taking the candle in her claws, she guided me to a cot at the foot of her bed, and I fell into the blankets without undressing. I was nearly asleep when I heard her disembodied voice rise in the darkness. Do you know how to cook? Oui, I answered. We shall see, we shall see.
“In the morning, we rose and dressed before the dawn, and I met the rest of the family LaChance. The mistress of the house, Madame Dominique, proved the opposite of her husband in every respect. Where he was fat and jolly, she was thin and dour. Where he favored white linen and played the fop, she dressed in black. Revêche. But perhaps all the children made her so, for though she could not have been but thirty, she had squeezed out six, the oldest a boy two years younger than me, and the youngest but a baby. One and all they were round like their father, little balls of dough.”
Dolly laughed. “The Roly-polies.”