Read Online Benjamin January 3 - Graveyard by Barbara Hambly - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Barbara Hambly
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stayed for a long time, praying for his sister's soul while the candle he had lighted flickered before the Queen of Heaven's feet.
FOUR
January's mother and the younger of his two sisters were in the parlor of his mother's pink stucco house on Rue Burgundy when he reached it again. The two women sat side by side on the sofa, a mountain of lettuce-green muslin cascading over their knees; the jalousies were closed against the full strength of the sunlight, which lay across them in jackstraws of blazing gold. Ten o'clock was just striking from the Cathedral, and the gutters outside steamed under the hammer of the morning heat. Entering through the back door, January shed his black wool coat--that agonizing badge of respectability-his gloves, and his high-crowned hat and bent to kiss first the slim straight elderly beauty, then the white man's daughter who had from her conception been the favored child.
“What do you know about Geneviève Jumon, Mama?” He brushed with the backs of his fingers the smooth green-and-pink cheek of her coffee cup where it sat on a table at her side. “May I warm this for you? Or yours, Minou?”
“Trashy cow,” said his mother, and bit off the end of her thread.
His sister Dominique gave him a brilliant smile. “If you would, thank you, p'tit.”
The coffee stood warming over a spirit lamp on the sideboard in the dining room. The French doors were open onto the yard, and he saw Bella, his mother's ser vant, just coming out of the garqonniere above the kitchen, where January had slept since his return from Paris. On plantations, the garçonnière that traditionally housed the masters' sons were separate buildings-the custom of a country, January remembered from his childhood at Bellefleur, that preferred to pretend that those young men weren't making their first sexual experiments with the kitchen maids. Among the plaçées in the city the motivation was reversed: few white men wished to sleep under the same roof as a growing young man of color, even if that young man was that protector's own flesh and blood. Since January's return a year and a half ago, Bella had resumed her habit of sweeping the garçonnière and making his bed, in spite of the fact that January conscientiously kept his own floor swept and daily made his own bed.
His efforts in that direction, he understood, could never meet Bella's standards. Presumably, should St. Martha, holy patroness of floor sweepers and bed makers, descend from Heaven and perform these tasks, Bella would still detect dust kittens and wrinkled corners.
“I hope you're not going to mix yourself up in that scandal of your sister's,” said his mother, when he returned with three cups of coffee balanced lightly in his enormous hand.
It was the first time in eighteen months that he'd heard his mother refer to the existence of any sister other than Dominique. The first time, in fact, since before Lou isiana had been a state. She raised plum-dark eyes to meet his, bleakly daring him to say, She's your daughter, too. Child, as I am a child, by that husband who was a slave on Bellefleur Plantation-the man whose name you've never spoken.
It was astonishing, the pain his mother could still inflict on him, if he let her.
Instead he said, casually, “Olympe has asked my help, Mama, yes. And I knew you'd never forgive me if I didn't at least go down to the Cabildo this morning to try to find out why Geneviève Jumon's daughter-in-law would hate her enough to put a gris-gris on her.”
His mother's eyes flared with avid curiosity, but she caught herself up stiffly and said, “Really, Benjamin, I'm surprised at you. Of all the vulgar trash. And Dominique, that isn't yarn you're sewing with, I can see that buttonhole across the room.”
Livia Levesque was a widow nearing sixty and still beautiful, slim and straight as a corset-stay in her gown of white-and-rose foulard. She had worn mourning for exactly the prescribed year for the sake of St.-Denis
FOUR
January's mother and the younger of his two sisters were in the parlor of his mother's pink stucco house on Rue Burgundy when he reached it again. The two women sat side by side on the sofa, a mountain of lettuce-green muslin cascading over their knees; the jalousies were closed against the full strength of the sunlight, which lay across them in jackstraws of blazing gold. Ten o'clock was just striking from the Cathedral, and the gutters outside steamed under the hammer of the morning heat. Entering through the back door, January shed his black wool coat--that agonizing badge of respectability-his gloves, and his high-crowned hat and bent to kiss first the slim straight elderly beauty, then the white man's daughter who had from her conception been the favored child.
“What do you know about Geneviève Jumon, Mama?” He brushed with the backs of his fingers the smooth green-and-pink cheek of her coffee cup where it sat on a table at her side. “May I warm this for you? Or yours, Minou?”
“Trashy cow,” said his mother, and bit off the end of her thread.
His sister Dominique gave him a brilliant smile. “If you would, thank you, p'tit.”
The coffee stood warming over a spirit lamp on the sideboard in the dining room. The French doors were open onto the yard, and he saw Bella, his mother's ser vant, just coming out of the garqonniere above the kitchen, where January had slept since his return from Paris. On plantations, the garçonnière that traditionally housed the masters' sons were separate buildings-the custom of a country, January remembered from his childhood at Bellefleur, that preferred to pretend that those young men weren't making their first sexual experiments with the kitchen maids. Among the plaçées in the city the motivation was reversed: few white men wished to sleep under the same roof as a growing young man of color, even if that young man was that protector's own flesh and blood. Since January's return a year and a half ago, Bella had resumed her habit of sweeping the garçonnière and making his bed, in spite of the fact that January conscientiously kept his own floor swept and daily made his own bed.
His efforts in that direction, he understood, could never meet Bella's standards. Presumably, should St. Martha, holy patroness of floor sweepers and bed makers, descend from Heaven and perform these tasks, Bella would still detect dust kittens and wrinkled corners.
“I hope you're not going to mix yourself up in that scandal of your sister's,” said his mother, when he returned with three cups of coffee balanced lightly in his enormous hand.
It was the first time in eighteen months that he'd heard his mother refer to the existence of any sister other than Dominique. The first time, in fact, since before Lou isiana had been a state. She raised plum-dark eyes to meet his, bleakly daring him to say, She's your daughter, too. Child, as I am a child, by that husband who was a slave on Bellefleur Plantation-the man whose name you've never spoken.
It was astonishing, the pain his mother could still inflict on him, if he let her.
Instead he said, casually, “Olympe has asked my help, Mama, yes. And I knew you'd never forgive me if I didn't at least go down to the Cabildo this morning to try to find out why Geneviève Jumon's daughter-in-law would hate her enough to put a gris-gris on her.”
His mother's eyes flared with avid curiosity, but she caught herself up stiffly and said, “Really, Benjamin, I'm surprised at you. Of all the vulgar trash. And Dominique, that isn't yarn you're sewing with, I can see that buttonhole across the room.”
Livia Levesque was a widow nearing sixty and still beautiful, slim and straight as a corset-stay in her gown of white-and-rose foulard. She had worn mourning for exactly the prescribed year for the sake of St.-Denis
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