Eugenie stiffens, her hand flying to her tight, fuzzy curls, which have gone every which way in the sticky heat. She is light skinned and fine featured, but that hair is the bane of her existence.
Her brother, Charles, with his fine, straight hair and light eyes, could pass for white. Monsieur Reynard sent him to Paris years ago, and Eugenie and Madame Dalcour seldom hear from him. Eugenie says he married a white woman and doesn’t want his wife to know about his colored mother and sister.
I think it broke Eugenie’s heart a little.
I could cut out my careless tongue.
“Do you think you’re better than me?” she demands.
“Of course not! You could marry if you wanted.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “And then what? I’d have a carpenter for a husband. Or a liveryman.” She gives me a sideways look.
Anger simmers in my stomach — and guilt, because haven’t I thought the same thing? “There’s nothing wrong with good, honest work.”
“Not if you don’t mind your man coming home smelling of sweat and shit,” Eugenie says, and I gasp at her crude language. “No. I want more for myself than that. I want a fine gentleman like Antoine, a man who will provide for me and give me a beautiful life.”
She looks pointedly around the parlor, and my eyes follow hers to the pink roses in the crystal vase, the fine china on the tea table, the thick patterned rug on the floor. Our rug at home is worn thin from the twins playing on it and stained from food they’ve dropped and mud they’ve tracked in. We can’t have pretty knickknacks anywhere within reach lest the little ones break them. And last time Papa brought Maman flowers, we found Marie Therese chewing on a magnolia.
But our house is full of laughter too. Of the twins’ rambling, silly stories and Marie Therese’s babbling baby talk and Nanette humming songs. Of Papa reading stories from the Bible at night and Maman telling him the neighborhood gossip while she does her mending. The cottage around me now is silent as Saint Louis Cemetery. I remember my mother’s claim that Madame Dalcour is lonely. For all that I’ve envied her — well, it occurs to me for the first time that perhaps Eugenie is too.
I lay a hand on her forearm. “If a fine gentleman like Antoine is what you want, then that’s what you’ll have. Nothing ever stands in your way, Eugenie.”
“Because I know what I want,” Eugenie mutters. “And I chase after it.”
I shrink back against the settee. This all seemed so simple at the ball, when Antoine and I were dancing. Maybe I am just as spineless and easily swayed as Eugenie says.
Or maybe I just need one more opinion. A sign. From someone who has no stake in this.
I shoot to my feet. “I have an idea,” I announce.
The Widow Paris is known throughout the Quarter as a voodoo queen, a healer and conjurer. Women go to her for good-luck charms, husband-holding charms, money-making charms . . . and for darker purposes too. Maman says it’s all nonsense, but some of the girls at school swore by her.
I get as far as her front door and then my bout of confidence fails me.
“Are you going to knock or not?” Eugenie demands, tapping her boot impatiently.
The way she looks at me — as if she’s expecting me to run home like a scared little mouse — gives me new determination. I reach up and rap on the door of the small one-story cottage.
A tall dark woman in a simple pale-blue frock opens the door. “How can I help you?” she asks.
“We’re looking for the Widow Paris? Marie Laveau?” I ask.
The woman nods, her lips twitching in what might be a faint smile. “I am she.” She glances from me to Eugenie. “Are you here for a love charm?”
I shake my head. Eugenie has gone uncharacteristically silent, staring at the pomegranate and banana trees in the front yard. It’s up to me to speak. “No. But I — I do hope you might be able to help me,” I say. “I’m at a — crossroads of sorts, and I don’t know which way to turn. My family says one thing, my friend advises another.”
The young widow’s eyes fasten on mine. I assumed she was older, but she can’t be more than twenty-five. Her brown face is smooth, save for a few lines at the corners of her mouth.
“Her parents are trying to force her into marriage with a man she doesn’t love,” Eugenie spits. “Out of some misguided notion of propriety.”
“They wouldn’t force me,” I correct her. “They want what’s best for me.”
Eugenie rolls her eyes. “And I don’t?”
Marie looks sharply at Eugenie. The moment stretches out like a frayed hair ribbon. “I see,” she says finally. “Come inside.”