Chapter Thirty-Five

Angelle pulled her parents up the cracked walk to a little white frame house with a screen porch and a plaster Virgin Mary residing in the half shell of a buried porcelain bathtub painted blue on the inside decorating the yard. A cluster of bells chimed as the child pushed open the screen door to the porch and towed Laura behind her. Laura stumbled over the doorstep and her husband caught her.

“I’m getting so clumsy,” she said.

Robert ran his hands over her firm, bulging belly and kissed her cheek. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, Laura,” he whispered.

“No, no. It will be good for Angelle. She wants to know,” Laura replied.

Angelle stood at the front door, calling inside, “Madame Leleux, Madame Leleux, we’ve come to have our fortunes told.”

A small, aged woman looking like every Cajun granny Laura had ever met came from her kitchen wiping soapsuds from her hands. “Well, well, T-Angelle, a former client of mine. I heard you got good results with the powder I give you.”

“Yes, ma’am. And now I want to know what kind of baby we’re having and lots of other things.”

“T-Angelle, the doctor can tell you that.”

“They want to be surprised,” the child replied in disgust. “I want a baby sister.”

“Well, come into my special room, and we see.”

Madame Leleux led the way to what might have been a sewing room in another house. The space was small, cluttered with tiny bottles and virtually papered with holy pictures and cards. It had the scent of home-baked cookies rather than incense. Madame seated herself on one side of a square table with most of its varnish worn off where people had placed their hands over the years.

“You first, Mama.” She took Laura’s hand.

Laura felt a warm surge as the old woman searched her palm. “You know, telling the future is against my religion. Been Cat’lic all my life, and the priest says only God can know what’s to come, and it’s bad to take God’s place. But if God, he tells me the future, it’s not so wrong to pass it on, I think. I got the gift, the gift from le Bon Dieu, praise the Lord.”

“Amen,” Laura felt compelled to say.

“Well, T-Angelle, I got some news for you, and don’t you give me no bouderie lip. You have a baby brother on the way and more to come, all boys.” Angelle’s pouty lip came out for all to see. “But you will remain the only daughter, the favorite, best-loved only daughter.”

She took the little girl’s hand. “After the bad times, come the good. It’s all good ahead. I see you traveling and coming home. I see another man in your life, and he ain’t a brother.”

“But I don’t like boys!” Angelle whined.

“You’ll like this boy and your little brothers, yeah. Now go out in the kitchen and get a cold drink from the icebox.”

Madame Leleux took Robert’s hand. “You want to know if all is well. It is. The ones you miss are in a fine place where black and white don’t matter.”

The traiteur frowned. “One exists in the flames she started. I didn’t want the little one to hear that part. There is nothing you can do for the damned one. It is God’s will.”

Laura shivered. Robert placed both his hands over hers.

“And God’s will for you is to love what you have been given and not to regret what has been taken away,” concluded Madame Leleux. “Now, I never charge for my services, but you may leave whatever you see fit at the feet of the Virgin in the yard. There’s a rock off to one side you can use so it won’t blow away.”

The little wren of a woman went spryly back to her kitchen. As Laura and Robert passed out of the house, they heard Madame urging a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie on Angelle. “Take two, take three.”

The couple paused at the statue of the Virgin. “What do you think, twenty?” asked Robert.

“Let’s see, she has a fifty-fifty chance of getting the sex of the baby right. The odds are greater on the theoretical brothers. Chances are Angelle will go away to college and marry. Madame probably heard the gossip about Vivien setting her mattress at the asylum on fire after they caught her and locked her away and knows she died in the flames. We were given some traditional comfort and good advice. Make it forty.”

At that moment, Angelle joined them, clutching a paper napkin stuffed with warm chocolate chip cookies. “For the new family, Madame said.”