But in front of the porch, just off the side of the cottage, hung an old swing big enough for three people to sit on, swinging back and forth so that the rusted chain that hung from the oak above it squeaked and moaned in a sort of rhythm that made me smile. Bastie told me all her stories on that porch —how she’d worked with her mama in Atlanta, tending to some rich folk’s babies as her mama cleaned their fine house. She talked about those babies, a girl and a boy, Linda and Luke, who she thought of as her own until she caught the eye of my granddaddy Bastien who she swore was the most handsome fella she’d ever seen her whole life. He took her away when she was twenty and brought her here to Manchac, where his people had lived for years. He’d spent most of their marriage working on the cottage and planting everything he could for his bride, promising her this small farm would be something straight from the heart of a fairytale.
I sat on that swing this morning, worrying and fretting over Dempsey, looking out through the line of crepe myrtles Bastie had planted to keep the outline of Simoneaux’s fancy house distant; she’d wanted a place hidden from the world and with all those trees, dozens and dozens of them and the lush fit of gardenia bushes and climbing roses that ran up and along the fence line, my granny had managed that well enough. But I could still make out the pitch of their roof and the small cottages peppered away from the big house. Dempsey said his daddy used those for his friends when they came to fish the Manchac, but Bastie had said once they’d been used for slaves, folk who never did have even a single choice where they lived or how they did their living.
“Run this up to Mr. Foster’s place, Sookie. Aron will take you but you got to meet him down at the crossways. He’s at that loose-tail woman’s house.” The heavy basket was in my arms before Mama stopped speaking and pushed me off the swing and down the drive and I headed in the direction of Clarice Dubois’, a girl my Uncle Aron had been sweet on since he was ten and too stupid to understand that following after a girl too old and too rich for him was a fool’s errand. Mama didn’t like Clarice, said she wore too much rouge and swung her hips on purpose. But then, Mama didn’t much like when her brother got played a fool and Clarice Dubois was aces at that game.
Behind me, my mother cleared her throat, finishing off the annoyed sound with a low, long sigh that got my feet moving faster. She never asked me and Sylv to do a thing. I reckoned she didn’t have to, but the order she gave just then came at me in a bark, something she said through the tight grit of her teeth. I was used to it, didn’t bother complaining that the cross-ways was at least two miles down past most of the empty fields the Simoneaux’s let out to farmers. I hated walking past those fields and half wished I’d answered the knock that had come at my window the night before.
Dempsey wouldn’t trouble my granny and knew better to ask for me at the front door when Mama was at home. He’d knocked at my window a few times, whispering my name like he hoped no one would hear him. But I di:, far as I could tell I’d been the only one, and I still didn’t answer. Sylv’s warning had been clear and had me thinking things I didn’t like much. Things like telling Dempsey to stay well away from me. Things like he didn’t belong with us, but just thinking that made my stomach go all heavy.
Walking down the drive, gaze veering to the Simoneaux’s place and further down to their empty fields, made me wish I’d met Dempsey at the treehouse this morning, like was usual any time we were home for the weekend. But I hadn’t, still keeping my brother’s warning in mind.
“Don’t drag your feet, neither.” I swear Mama’s frown had only gotten worse the further away I walked from her and when I looked over my shoulder, caught the small snarl of her top lip, I figured I’d need to save myself from her anger if I didn’t move faster.
My mama didn’t hate me so much, I knew that, but I also knew I had the look of whoever my daddy had been, and that always had been a sore spot between us. Not like I could help it.
“Nothing for it.” Bastie had blown off my question, the same one I’d asked a dozen times before I’d made twelve. “You don’t need to worry over that.” But every kid needs a family and ones like me, who grew up not knowing much about their daddies, needed them the most. Maybe that was why I took to Dempsey. Maybe I saw something of that missing family in him because he knew his daddy and still didn’t much have one.
Bastie told me not to worry about who had made me. Mama wouldn’t ever pay any mind at all to me all the times I’d asked her. But hanging out in Manchac and working in the city, you hear a lot of gossip. Me and Sylv didn’t look a bit alike. He was the spit of his daddy, a man called Danté Lanoix who mama married when Sylv was two. Bastie said Mama and Dante’ had been sweethearts in school but that he’d gone off to the Army when she had Sylv swelling her belly and came back changed. We got his name and Mama got some money from the government when the scaffolding Danté’ climbed at work gave way and he fell forty feet off a building. Mama buried him next to her daddy and never spoke about him again.
But I was a Lanoix only by the name. Only because Danté didn’t much mind that Mama had already been pregnant with me five months when he came back after the war to call on her. He’d only wanted her and took what came with having her.
My daddy could have been anyone—some sweet stranger who flattered Mama until she got on her back, maybe told her how pretty she was on the rare times she laughed and smiled. Maybe he could have been one of the men who tipped their hats to her as she walked through the Square on Sundays, ready for Mass in her pretty yellow dropped waist dress and her hair finger waved all soft and close around her face. Likely though, if the gossip was true, my daddy was a white man Mama lost her mind over just a little. At least, that’s what Lulu had said to one of the new maids Ester brought in when she wondered why my skin was so much brighter than my brother’s.
I hadn’t had a good listen to all that Lulu said, but I know I heard her mention Dempsey’s uncle, his mama’s brother, Lionel Phillipe who had stayed with the Simoneaux’s years back before Dante’ stuck around for good. Back when Mama’s smile came easy and honest.
If Lulu wasn’t a liar, that might make Dempsey’s mama’s hateful looks at me, definitely at my mama, hold more sense. That would also mean that Dempsey wasn’t just my friend; he was my cousin. But I didn’t think about Dempsey the way I do Uncle Aron’s boy, Hank. I didn’t think of Dempsey any way except how his bottom lip curved up in the middle, making it seem like he’s always chewing his lip. I liked to think about his face and the small, faint freckle that stuck out from the others along his cheekbone. And his eyes, those big, bright eyes that looked gray and blue and shades that reminded me of the Gulf, way out in the deep when the dolphins and porpoise chase small boats, bobbing along the surf. I’d only seen it once, the Gulf, but you don’t forget something like that, not ever.
Whoever my daddy had been didn’t matter much now. Not to me and not to my mama. But sometimes, when I was nodding off in the middle of Mass or when Bastie’s low, sweet voice hummed a hymn all soft, like in a whisper, and my eyes got all heavy and I started to fade away, I’d catch my mama watching me. Like she wanted to see something on my face she wouldn’t look for when I was full awake. Most days, that hard stare of hers was followed by a curved lip and a look of outright sick. Most days, it was all I could do from asking what sin I’d committed and how she wanted me to repent. After all, it wasn’t me that asked to get born.