The Cottoncrest Curse: A Novel

Chapter 35

127 Chapter 35 The late-afternoon sun setting in the west did not give much illumination to Jenny’s tiny third-floor room, with its low ceiling and small window facing south. Jenny did not dare light a candle. Jenny’s little window on the topmost floor of Cottoncrest could be seen for miles, and a candle would draw attention. She didn’t need any attention. There would be enough attention tomorrow, when they found her and the others gone. Jenny was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, even though only she and Little Miss were in the house. The Sheriff had left a while ago, and Dr. Cailleteau had departed even earlier. Little Miss had been sleeping soundly, snoring, when Jenny had crept upstairs. Jenny wrapped up the few belongings she planned to take, looking sadly at all the rest she had to leave behind. Her good dress? There was no room for that. Her Sunday church hat? No room. A second pair of shoes that Miss Rebecca had given her? The worn kid gloves with only a tiny hole in the left thumb that Miss Rebecca was going to discard until Jenny asked politely for them? The French books from the downstairs library that Miss Rebecca and the Colonel Judge let her read? No room for any of these. Jenny pulled out her long, stiletto hairpins, the silver ones Rebecca had given her, and tied her hair back with a tignon. She looked one last time at the small quarters that had been her home for the past few years. Her high bed, its cypress frame holding a real moss-filled mattress , was the finest available. The cypress dresser with four deep drawers . The tiny mirror that Miss Rebecca had given her. The box with six spermaceti candles and the glass hurricane lantern into which they fit. These would be the things she would remember. 128 But these things had to be abandoned. Her life, Jenny realized, was one long road of abandonment, but then she never had expected anything else. Her father had abandoned her mother, but her mother had expected it and loved him nevertheless, even though he never again came to her New Orleans house on Rampart Street, even though he never came to see his daughter or even inquire about her. Jenny’s mother was not bitter about that, and her mother had told Jenny not to be bitter either. That’s just the way things were. Planters’ sons were like that. It had been like that since the days of the Quadroon Balls. Even during the war, a white boy could fall in love with a high yellow woman. And it was love, true love, Jenny’s mother had insisted, even though it could not last. Even though the planter’s son had worn a Confederate uniform. When New Orleans had been captured by Farragut and the planter’s son was unable to escape the city, Jenny’s mother had hidden her lover in the house on Rampart Street until the war was over. Yet, after all that Jenny’s mother had done for him, despite the fact that she loved him more than anything, when the war was over the planter’s son left the house on Rampart Street to return home to Opelousas to marry some blonde-haired white girl. Jenny’s mother had not complained. The planter’s son had left her the house, had signed it over to her. That was a sign, said Jenny’s mother, of true love, even though he had abandoned Jenny’s mother while she was pregnant. The planter’s son also had left her some money. It was enough money for Jenny’s mother to start a small business, a school for young Negro girls to teach them to read the French they spoke, to teach them to read English as well, to prepare them for the freedom that they now had. When Jenny’s mother abandoned her, leaving her for the blissful peace of death after being wracked by the fever and by consumption , Jenny had tried to continue the school, but it became harder and harder. When Reconstruction ended, when the northerners left, the whites in New Orleans made clear what they had long believed but which they couldn’t act on while the carpetbaggers were in control. The whites did not want the “coloreds” educated. The Vigilance Committee first warned her, and when she didn’t halt her school...