The Weight of Feathers

“And your father?” Lace asked. “How’d you convince him? He agreed to this?”


“This whole town called him a rapist. He thought if he raised le cygnon himself the name would brand him too. That the scandal would follow le cygnon his whole life.”

Le cygnon.

“You can’t even say his name, can you?” Lace asked.

Nicole Corbeau could not have known then that Cluck would turn out left-handed. That, as he grew, the black cygnet down would give way to red-streaked feathers. That he would look so much like Alain Corbeau, el gitano. She hated him for all these things, but most of all she hated him because she could not love him as she loved her own perfect bastardo, the son she wanted even if his father did not stay.

“Who told you?” Nicole asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Does he know?”

“No,” Lace said. “He doesn’t.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“Would you care if I did? If I tell him, he’ll hate you. He’ll leave. And then you’ll never have to see him again.”

A wince tightened Nicole’s face and stiffened her shoulders. For a second Lace felt sorry for the woman Nicole Corbeau had been back then. A young mother shamed for having a child but no husband. A woman not much older than Lace, who had no more power to fight the law of her family than las sirenas had to defy Abuela.

Like Tía Lora, Nicole Corbeau paid for having a son when she was not married. But while Tía Lora’s punishment was losing a son, Nicole Corbeau’s was being given one she did not want.

Lace sobbed into the air, her hands too wet to take it. She cried not just for Cluck and for Tía Lora, but for the young woman who had hardened into the Nicole Corbeau who now stood in this room. The salt of her tears seeped into her burn, dragging through like a safety razor slipping. “Did you ever want him?”

“I already had the son I wanted,” Nicole Corbeau said.

There was no sharpness in her face, no cruelty. She said it as plainly as whether the eggs this week were good or not.

“You could’ve gotten rid of him months ago,” Lace said. “He’s eighteen. You could’ve kicked him out on his last birthday. There wouldn’t even have been paperwork.”

“It’s not up to me to decide where he goes,” Nicole said. “It never has been. This family keeps him here to teach him, to help him be something better than he was born. He is our blood. It’s up to us to look after him.”

“Is that what you all think you’re doing?” Lace threw the door open.

“Where are you going?” Nicole Corbeau asked.

“If you won’t get him out, I will,” Lace said.

“Take him. Avec ma bénédiction.”

The words hooked into Lace, pulling her so she almost turned around. They almost got her to talk back, to say That’s what you want, isn’t it? So he won’t be your problem anymore? So you all won’t have to contain how evil he is?

But she did not stop. She did not stop when she reached the back door, or the dirt road, or the paved street. She did not stop until she reached the chemical plant’s fence line.

The few remaining protestors sent their chants through the chain link. She wove through, keeping her eyes off the mixing tanks, so the sight of them would not stab into her cheek.

She slipped her fingers into the fence. “Hey.” She rattled the chain link and yelled over the protestors’ chanting. “I want to see your lawyer. Your actuary. Whatever you call him. Whoever showed up at the cemetery this morning, I want to see him.”

A security guard approached the fence, his steps slow, one eye half-shut. He was a younger one, still getting the bearing of the job. He had the kind of extra weight that made him look soft, but that heft gave his arms power. Lace knew because of Justin. His body had that same look, and Lace had seen the blood and bruises he left.