Chapter Seven

Incarcerated in the glass-walled office with Miss Lilliane and released only for coffee and lunch, Laura learned the basics of operating a parish library on Monday and on Tuesday and on Wednesday until another weekend gradually crept into view. Miss Lilliane refused any suggestions for change from Laura, always citing her Bible of library practices, a thick volume issued by the State Library in 1945. The yellowed pages crumbled at the edges when the retiring librarian pounded on them to make a point.

“But we could save time in cataloging by using the CIP information on the reverse of the title page. The clerks could do it.”

“Then what do you have? Someone else’s cataloging—totally inappropriate to this library! Lazy person’s cataloging!” Miss Lilliane pounded more paper fragments to dust.

“I believe it would be a good investment to hire a part-time secretary to do the bookkeeping and payroll. We could have more time to develop new library programs and services.”

“I’ve been doing my own books for fifty years. You can, too.”

The office offered too confined an area for Laura to scream, not to mention all the second-hand smoke she’d inhale if she did. In this library, the books stayed in perfect order on the old wooden shelves and old men slept in the periodical area during the afternoon. Housewives came in for their weekly quota of romances, but no one under thirty entered except for the students forced into coming for homework assignments.

“I wondered if we could have some sort of Halloween party for the children and maybe for their parents, too.”

“We’ve never had anything before, and no one complained. You’ll just bring the Fundamentalists down on us for celebrating witchcraft.”

Laura grew more stubborn by Friday. She filed away most of her innovations for the time when Miss Lilliane finally relinquished her place behind the large desk and overflowing ashtrays, and she could remove herself from the straight-backed chair in the corner where she’d been put to learn her lessons. Feeling the need to do something—anything—Laura stuck to her point. “It’s time we had a program just for fun. I’ll handle the arrangements and the Fundamentalists. Maybe, we could have a bonfire on the green and call in some local storytellers. Father Ardoin told me about an old black woman with some fabulous tales only the other day. I’ll bet he would like to tell one himself. Catholics don’t have anything against Halloween, do they?”

She rushed on. “I know a few good stories, too, though I didn’t get to practice them at the university library.”

Admitting to herself her idea might be only an excuse to play hooky on a lovely Friday afternoon and escape Miss Lilliane’s smoky den, Laura left immediately after lunch to begin arrangements. Miss LeBlanc let her go with the encouraging comment, “No one will come!”

The volunteer fire department chief was amenable. He and his crew policed the annual homecoming bonfires for both the Catholic and public high schools. It meant a little overtime pay close to the holidays for Chief Fontenot, one of two paid members on the force. Father Ardoin lent his enthusiastic support. After being assured the storytelling activities would not conflict with the religious observances for All Saints Day, he volunteered himself and got halfway through the story of the Devil and the black preacher when Laura interrupted to get directions to the house of Tante Lu.

“Ah, Tante Lu! A good choice. Didn’t I tell you she lives in the old Segura cabin? Alma Segura’s land is still in the family after two centuries, but I imagine all that will end when Tante Lu passes on. That old woman must be nearing one hundred, and she’s still as sharp as they come. Two generations separate her and the last of the Seguras. One of them works at your library, Ruby Senegal, a Segura that was. And then, there’s Pearl, a maid out at the LeBlanc place, but that one never married. Might be another one, Opal, I believe, who lives in California, but I can’t see any of them staying on in a country cottage. Senegal has done very well in sanitation, has his own company, lots of garbage trucks, two sons in the business with him, but of course, the old Segura family name is gone. The place should be declared a landmark when the old lady dies. I’ll have to look into that.”

“The directions?”

“Yes, oh yes. Take Bridge Road out by the cemetery. You’ll pass through a little town called Nebo, an African-American Baptist church on the right and a country store on the left. About five miles beyond that, the old Segura place sits in a grove of oaks on the bank of Little Black Bayou. What a lovely day for a drive. Unfortunately, I must prepare for Mass. Tante Lu will probably be out on the porch in her rocker on such a nice day. Send her my blessing.”

Laura took the blessing to Tante Lu along Bridge Road. The Deep South autumn put on a display more suitable for spring. The drainage ditches, free at last of summer’s overflow, stood deep in goldenrod, purple with wild asters and blue with mistflower. She drove through Nebo, noting that all of the faces watching her pause at the single stop sign just past the Mount Zion Baptist Church possessed the color of coffee, black or light with varying amounts of cream.

Laura nearly missed the old raised cottage with its screen of live oaks grown so large and impressive they should have been guarding a palace instead of hiding the shabby Segura place. The low interlocking branches partially concealed a battered pickup truck, its tailgate showing a familiar pattern of rusty dents. Laura turned her car into the rutted dirt lane leading to the house and tried to place the ownership of the pickup truck, about as easy as trying to distinguish among the live oaks in Chapelle. Most nights, Main Street provided a parade route for an endless procession of such vehicles.

The deep porch of the cottage held a rocking chair and a swing on rusty chains, but no elderly woman sat on them. After Laura parked by the pickup and turned off the car’s engine, she located Tante Lu by the scratch of a broom on the weathered cypress planks over in the shaded corner where a flight of short and steeply angled stairs led to the garconniere. Laura’s eyes followed the stairs to the trap door and the loft where Alma Segura’s sons must have slept so long ago, then quickly returned to the wizened woman vigorously sweeping dust and the leaves of October from her porch.

The old lady, so tiny the broom seemed oversized in her knotty hands, gave it a few more forceful strokes. As age shrunk Tante Lu from the inside, the skin of her younger self settled over her frame in myriad yellow folds and wrinkles. Barely covering her ancient skull, a few puffs of hair like white fleece were gathered into a small knot on the top of her head. The bright bird-like eyes in their nest of wrinkles took in Laura as she climbed the two steps to the porch. In a voice much louder than such a small body should own, Tante Lu called out, “Pearl, we have a visitor! Bring some tea.”

Laura began her introduction. “I’m…”

“Yes, the new library lady. Pere Ardoin told me. Sit, sit.” Tante Lu took her place in the rocker and gestured to the swing.

Laura obeyed. The rusty chains rattled but held. “Father Ardoin told me you are quite a raconteur, Mrs. Segura.”

“Tante Lu. Even my own great-grandchildren call me Tante Lu. It’s true. I know all the stories, told and untold, far back in time. Me, I never was a slave. I’m too young for that, but the children ask me just the same, all the time. My great-grandmama, born into slavery, lived nearly as long as me. I have her stories, and those from before her, stories that belong to this house and this parish.”

An aluminum screen door, set like an anachronism in the walls of crossed timbers, mud and moss bousillage and flaking whitewash, slammed behind Pearl Segura as she maneuvered a tray of tall glasses and a sweating pitcher of iced tea across the porch. Pearl, out of uniform, was simply dressed in gray and white seersucker. As she set the tray on a small plastic table and poured the tea into three glasses filled with ice and crushed mint leaves, she glanced at Laura defiantly.

“I’m on my own time, and I have Mister Bob’s permission to use the truck. Ruby and me and my daughter, we keep an eye on the old woman.”

“Certainly,” said Laura, taken aback by the challenge. Except for suddenly remembering the truck as the one she had ridden in with Robert LeBlanc and being a bit surprised that the unmarried Pearl had a daughter, she did not intend to upbraid Miss Leblanc’s servant. A quick change of subject appeared wise.

“I came to ask Tante Lu to tell some of her stories at a bonfire we’re planning for Halloween Eve.”

“You don’t want her stories. None of the white folks do, especially the LeBlancs.”

“If you mean the one about the statue, I found it fascinating, if long, but I had something in the line of ghost stories in mind for the public.”

“Tante Lu doesn’t want—”

“Hush, Pearl,” the old woman interrupted, her rocker teetering with annoyance. “I know all those stories about the loup-garou and the feu-follet. I can go on all night, but there is much more to the story of the statue than I told Pere Ardoin.” Lowering her voice and pausing dramatically at the end of the sentence, Tante Lu revealed herself as a practiced teller of tales. She held Laura’s gaze with her bright eyes and took a small sip of tea.

“I’d love to hear it,” Laura encouraged. Even Pearl took a seat on the swing and silently drank her tea as Tante Lu began.

“No, I never was a slave, but great-grandmama, only a very young woman when the war ended, got freed with them that needed freeing. Those were good times and bad times ’cause no one knew where to go or what to do, black and white alike. My great-grandmama did fine because she had a special skill. She’d been apprenticed to an old midwife out on the LeBlanc place. Inez was that woman’s name, and they called my great-grandmama Celie. Being slaves, they didn’t have no last names before the war.” The old lady bobbed her head a few times after imparting this knowledge.

“Young Celie went to learn her trade and was supposed go back to her master, one of the DeVilles, to help bring more slaves into the world. Inez knew her trade the best, so good she even birthed the white LeBlanc babies, though none of them lived. Camille LeBlanc had something bad wrong with her. All her babies except the first and the last come cold and blue into the world. Pere Ardoin thinks maybe that Rh factor killed them infants. Don’t know about that. The first healthy child caught a fever at a year old and died. Still, Tante Inez got credit for seeing her mistress survived all those stillborns until at last in her old age, Miss Camille had a live son to hold. Some of that miracle rubbed off on Tante Inez. Even after the war, she had lots of clients, white and black, and my great-grandmama stayed on with her and inherited the trade when old Inez passed on. I’m coming to the good part now.” Tante Lu stopped to sip her tea and add a dramatic pause. Waiting for her next words, Laura bent forward on the swing.

“On her deathbed, Inez told great-grandmama this story, sort of a confession I guess, because Inez would not let Celie go for a priest. The midwife figured she had brought off as many babies for those who didn’t want them as she had birthed for those that did, and she said no priest would shrive her. She wanted to go to hell in peace.

“Well, it seemed it sort of hurt Tante Inez’s pride that she never could get a live child out of Camille LeBlanc, and her mistress was getting too old to try again. A pity, too, that just a few miles away, a young woman lay dying of birthing a LeBlanc baby. I bet you see where I’m going here.” Tante Lu pointed a finger at Laura who nodded.

“Old Inez claimed Marie Segura had a beauty like those high-yellow gals men kept in New Orleans, but she was so young and built like a china doll, a brittle toy for men to play with, but not like a real woman who had to give birth. Her baby turned out fine, a huge boy with more white blood in him than black. Inez did what she could, but with all the tearing and bleeding, the childbed fever took root in Marie Segura. Then, they called Inez home to attend another one of her own mistress’s tragedies.

“Inez, a wise woman, even canaille, sly, some said, saw a chance to set her reputation aright. At the big house, she sent away all the servants, saying the mistress needed quiet, and then she gave Miss Camille a sleeping potion and took the dead baby from her, wrapped it in linens from the Segura cradle and returned it to Marie’s bedside. Clearly, the girl would die, and if she didn’t, she could have other children while Miss Camille would not.” Again the dramatic pause or maybe the old woman simply needed to catch her breath. Laura drank her tea and waited for the rest of the story.

“Alma Segura was there tending her daughter, knowing she had helped to cause her death and fearing the wrath of the fiery Celestin, Marie’s brother, who had opposed the liaison—impractical dreamer that he was—with Aurelien LeBlanc. Inez said Alma did not even speak when the babies were switched, one cold and blue for one screaming with life. The midwife said she had to give Marie’s child a few drops of the sleeping potion just to get him into the big house, and there she had an awful surprise. The master sat by his wife, looking not at Camille with her hair going white and the wrinkles beginning to show, but at the empty cradle by the fire. He took his bastard son with the black blood, never saying a word, and laid the child on the silk sheets. Only three living persons knew of the switch, and none ever acknowledged it to the other.

“Old Tante Inez said she knew how her mistress prayed nightly to the Virgin for a living son, and she felt maybe the Holy Mother had put the whole idea into her head. Just maybe the Virgin Mary would see Inez went to purgatory instead of hell for her services.

“And so Marie Segura went to her grave with Camille’s stillborn child in her arms. Then comes the story of the statue and Celestin’s revenge, but you already heard that one from Pere Ardoin.” The old tale spinner settled back in her rocker and took a long drink of cold sweet tea.

Pearl, who had heard the story often but kept a respectful silence, now remarked wryly, “Only three knew of the exchange, but the whole town suspected it. To this day, the LeBlanc men marry out of the parish. No white mothers encourage their daughters to chase after the LeBlancs, rich and good looking as they are, because there just might be that little drop of black blood in the line. Adrien brought his bride from near New Orleans, and the next one, Charles, married a Yankee. When the World Wars came, both those LeBlancs found real French women to bring home, no matter who waited here. T-Bob married Vivien Montleon out of New Orleans to make a real disaster. You’d think a little black blood would have given him some common sense, but I suppose with Angelle on the way he had no choice but to marry her, even though they were relations way back.”

Laura was startled by this outburst from the usually taciturn Pearl, who on her own ground seemed to have forgotten the race of her guest and the distance she always maintained between white people and herself. Was she trying to make the liberal Yankee feel awkward, or merely spitting at the spiteful Miss Lilliane? How could the servant not resent taking orders from someone who shared the same blood? As Laura stared at her, Pearl’s mouth clamped shut into a line that make her lips look as if they were sealed forever. Laura pretended to overlook the outburst and turned again to Tante Lu.

“Yes, I know the story of the statue from Father Ardoin, but tell me, who kept it all those years?”

Tante Lu gave her the answer. “Ah, Celestin Segura watched the dedication of the shrine from the back of the church loft. He reclaimed his carving when they shut the statue out of the holy place and brought it to his mother. He set it in her bedroom and forbade her or any other Segura to remove it. The statue was their shrine to sin he said, and Alma must look on it every day until she died. She did. She honored Celestin’s last wish before he took his own life. Buried somewhere out here, he is. Sometimes, I think I see him wandering in these here trees, a poor lost soul who cannot rest in peace.

“The house and the statue passed to Celestin’s brother, Antoine, and then to his son and grandson, my man, my Joseph. I was not born a slave or a Segura. When the last man of the name, my own grandson, passed away, I took the statue and gave it back to the church. I asked Pere Ardoin to pray for the soul of Celestin Segura. I see his spirit less often now. These things must end somewhere. C’est finis.”

The end, yes. The afternoon faded and the shadows beneath the oaks deepened. A little unnerved by the talk of ghosts, Laura hurried to conclude her business. “Can we count on you then, to do two or three stories on Halloween Eve? I could come for you before seven. Father Ardoin and I will do a story apiece to warm up the audience, and then they are yours for as long as you wish.”

“I could talk all night.” Tante Lu raised herself out of the rocker.

“And I could listen to you all evening,” replied Laura as she moved toward her car, “But now, I must be going. Good evening, Tante Lu. This has been a pleasure. Pearl, good evening.”

Pearl barely nodded, but Tante Lu waved one arthritic hand in parting.