I Am Madame X Read online

  I ran out of the house and down the steps and the alley of oaks. I ran and ran—so hard that my lungs swallowed my sobs—along the banks of False River. It was a gray day, unusually cool for April, and the yellow anemones shivered along the river’s edge. Eventually I came upon two farm boys fishing. Their bright blue calico shirts were the same color as their eyes, and they were dangling their feet in the sluggish water. “My papa is dead!” I cried and dropped to my knees, sobbing.

  One of the boys laid down his fishing rod and rushed to my side. “There, there, little girl,” he said, patting my shoulder with a hand reeking of fish. “My father is dead, too.”

  I later learned that Papa had been shot in the left leg on the second day of the Battle at Shiloh, and was put on a train bound for New Orleans. En route, his condition worsened and he was taken off at Camp Moore in Amite, Louisiana, where his leg was amputated above the knee. An hour later, he died.

  That afternoon, Mama, Grandmère, Charles, Valentine, and I took the steamer for New Orleans. Julie stayed behind with Alzea. We arrived at Grandmère’s house on Burgundy Street in late evening. Papa’s coffin was in the high-ceilinged parlor, surrounded by dripping candles and white chrysanthemums. A prie-dieu stood before the casket. A line of mourners, some of them Papa’s clients from his Camp Street law practice, surrounded the casket. When Mama and I entered, everyone dropped back to make room. Papa looked like he was asleep, his freckled white hands crossed over his chest and a gray blanket covering him to the waist to conceal his empty pant leg. Mama and I had been dry-eyed on the steamer, but now we both wailed uncontrollably. Grandmère pulled a nail scissors from her purse and clipped a tuft of Papa’s hair, which she later had made into a bracelet for Mama.

  I’ve tried all these years not to remember Papa as a corpse, to recall him as he looked when I saw him last. He was dressed in the uniform of the Louisiana Zouaves—brilliant red cap, dark-blue serge jacket with gold braid on the sleeves, and baggy silk trousers. Tears spilled from his eyes as he bent to kiss me on the New Orleans wharf before he marched up a gangplank and disappeared into a large transport ship with a thousand other soldiers. As the vessel pulled out, hundreds of handkerchiefs waved from the shore, and the violent shriek of the steam whistle drowned the shouts and cries of the loved ones left behind.

  Mama and I held hands on the long carriage ride to St. Louis Cemetery, where Papa was interred in a large marble tomb next to his parents. For days afterward, Mama stayed up all night, pacing the galleries—I could hear her muffled sobs through the walls. In the morning, she had purple circles under her eyes and walked around like a ghost, clutching a torn linen handkerchief.

  The next month passed in a blur of humid, rainy days. Grandmère convinced Mama she’d feel better if she got busy, so Mama began tending to Valentine and even helping Alzea a bit with the housework—something I had never seen her do before. Charles spent much of his time walking through the house, looking out the windows and watching the sky for climatic changes. Julie and I read and reread every book in the library. Sometimes neighbors called, sitting in the parlor on chairs pushed against the walls. Alzea would distribute palmetto fans, and people would fan themselves and chat over red wine and cornmeal cake.

  Meanwhile, Grandmère worked nonstop. Though the war had caused land values to plummet, and the blockaded ports meant she couldn’t sell her sugar, she was determined to keep Parlange going. She was up every morning before dawn and pacing the back gallery and reciting her Rosary, her thick heels clomping on the cypress floors. Sometimes she’d stop and curse loudly at one of the slaves who had stayed on the plantation; then she’d clasp her beads and start pacing again. Afterward she’d pin her skirt up to her knees, don a pair of men’s cowhide boots, and tromp out to the fields to supervise the workers. In the evening, she balanced the ledgers by candlelight in her “office,” a corner of the back gallery where she had set up an old table as her desk. She hired laborers—poor bedraggled white men—to replace the slaves who had left, and every Saturday morning they came to collect their wages. Grandmère would arrange several whiskey bottles and glasses on the table, and as each man approached, she would pour him a drink and place a few coins in his outstretched hand.

  Doing a man’s job had coarsened Grandmère and exacerbated her bad temper. She was always yelling at somebody about something, and I knew to stay out of her way.

  Nothing infuriated her more than hearing a member of her household speak English. She had banned all use of “les mots Yanquis” at Parlange. In Grandmère’s view, English was “la langue des voleurs,” the language of thieves, because all the words were stolen from other languages, chiefly, of course, from French.

  She claimed that the few times she was forced to speak English she almost dislocated her jaw, which you’d understand if you heard her pronounce, say, “biscuit” or “potato.” In Grandmère’s mouth, they sounded like “bee-skeet” and “pah-taht.”

  Only Alzea, who had been raised on an American plantation before Grandmère bought her on a New Orleans auction block, was allowed to speak English. Papa had also known English, and, unbeknownst to Grandmère, he and Alzea had taught Charles and me some of the language. But we never dared breathe a word of it in front of Grandmère.

  On her birthday, Charles and I prepared a little French poem to recite to her after dinner, before the cutting of the cake. We stood in front of her chair in the parlor while Mama played softly on the dainty Pleyel piano. I was waiting for Charles to nod, our agreed-upon signal to start reciting “Oh, notre chère grandmère, oh, que nous sommes fiers.”

  I looked at Julie crumpled under an old shawl on the settee. She looked so sad it broke my heart. I wanted to cheer her up, so I blurted out a fragment of an English verse:

  Rats, they killed the dogs and chased the cats,

  And ate the cheese right out of the vats.

  Mama’s playing halted, and I heard Julie laugh softly behind her shawl. Grandmère stared at me with bright blue eyes. She rose slowly from her chair, walked up to me, and slapped me across the face. I ran to my room and stayed there for the rest of the evening.

  I dreaded facing Grandmère the next morning at breakfast, but when I entered the dining room, it was obvious she had more important matters on her mind. Julie’s former fiancé, Lucas Rochilieu, was sitting at the table, dressed in frayed, grubby grays. He had grown desperately thin in the eight months since I had seen him last, and his brown hair hung over his collar in scraggly grayish strands.

  He had fought at the Battle of Shiloh with Papa, I later learned, and then gone to Vera Cruz, Mexico, on orders from President Jefferson Davis, to buy guns. He was to rejoin his regiment in Richmond, but instead he deserted, bolting for Louisiana, traveling mostly by horseback through back roads and swamps. It took him two weeks to reach his plantation in Plaquemine, where he collected some money and valuables. Now he was on his way to the Gulf of Mexico. He hoped to flag down a foreign ship to take him to France. But he had heard that Yankee troops were in the area and decided to stop off at Parlange to warn us.

  “Friends, you will be attacked for sure if you stay,” he said heavily. “You don’t know the danger! The Yankees have been shooting women and children in their beds.” Rochilieu opened his square linen napkin and draped it dramatically across his lap. He tucked into the plate of beignets Alzea had placed in front of him. His mustache moved up and down as he chewed, and I considered the large mole on his nose. If Julie hadn’t thrown herself over the gallery, she’d probably have to kiss that mole every day, I thought with a shudder.

  From the opposite side of the table, Mama listened intently, with her long-fingered hands folded on the table. Her engagement ring, a diamond surrounded by six small rubies, sparkled in the sunlight streaming through the windows. I thought of Papa, and my chest tightened.

  “Well, I’m in favor of going with you,” Mama said.

  Grandmère dropped her coffee cup onto its saucer, and a spray of tan liquid splashed onto her
knobby hand. “You’re not leaving Parlange!” she hissed.

  “I’m not staying here and risking my daughters’ deaths. Or worse, having them grow up to be country bumpkins like the Cabanel girls,” Mama countered. Eulalie and Nanette Cabanel lived with their parents on a nearby plantation and were notorious for never wearing corsets, not even to pay calls or to attend church.

  Ever since Papa’s death, Mama had dreamed of Paris. She knew several women—Creole war widows like herself—who had moved to the City of Light and found, if not prosperity and happiness, at least a relative peace.

  The argument that day was never resolved. But the next evening, while Charles and I were playing backgammon on the gallery, a shell whirled past the house. We looked up and saw a group of Yankee soldiers and a cannon in the middle of the road. The adults were in the parlor talking, and they ran outside when they heard the shell’s high screech and, moments later, the explosion as it crashed in the garden, striking and killing one of the dogs. “My God, they’re at our front door!” Grandmère cried. Mama wanted to leave at once. Instead we spent the night on mattresses in the basement. Rochilieu and Grandmère snored, and the rest of us didn’t get much sleep.

  The lone shell was apparently just a warning. Still, the next morning, Rochilieu said it was no longer safe for him at Parlange. If caught by the Federals, he’d be taken prisoner; if caught by the Rebels, he’d be shot as a deserter. “I’m leaving tonight, whether you come with me or not,” he said.

  He spent the day reading in the parlor, biding his time until night fell. No one said anything about our going with him, and I went to bed as usual at nine.

  Grandmère awoke me at midnight. Holding a lighted candle, she led me through the darkened house, past the bedrooms where Charles and Julie were sleeping, and outside to the front gallery. Rochilieu and Mama, with Valentine swaddled against her chest, were inkblots on the lawn below. Beside them, the horses moved restlessly under a magnolia tree. “You’re going with your mama and Lieutenant Rochilieu,” Grandmère said. “Julie and Charles are staying with me.” I ran to the barn to say good-bye to my chickens, Papillon and Sanspareil. Outside, Charles’s bear, Rossignol, was tethered to his post, asleep. “Farewell, Rossignol,” I sighed, feeling terrible that I had not had a chance to say good-bye to Charles himself.

  Back at the house, Grandmère tied a gunnysack around my waist. It was heavy and pulled at my abdomen whenever I took a step. “Mimi, this is very important,” she said. “There are enough gold coins in here to provide for you and your mother and sister in Paris, and you must never let it out of your sight, ever. Tu comprends? If the soldiers stop you, they will not search a child.”

  She kissed me on the forehead, then embraced Mama. In all my days at Parlange, I had never seen them touch each other. In fact, if I didn’t know they were mother and daughter, I would have assumed they disliked each other, so chilly and formal were their relations. Yet now they gripped each other with a fierceness that frightened me.

  I started to cry. “What’s this? What’s this?” groused Rochilieu. “We can’t have crying. You’ll bring the armies down on us.” Mama and Grandmère broke apart. Their faces were wet.

  We mounted our horses and trotted along the path by the cane fields, away from the house. The moon looked like a pearl button above the roof, and the air was sweet with the perfume of magnolias and jasmine.

  Under Rochilieu’s plan, we would make our way to Port Hudson on the east side of the Mississippi, then follow the Old County Road to New Orleans. From there we would take the last leg of the river to the Gulf of Mexico and the open sea, where we would flag down a French or English ship.

  As we rode through the forest, Valentine stayed as still as death. But Mama, who hated horseback riding, complained constantly about her mount, her saddle, her aching back. “Shut up!” grunted Rochilieu. “For all we know, the Yanks or the Rebels are behind the next grove of trees.” He wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. Once, when a rabbit ran across the path, he clutched his chest and yelped. Mama was relying on God to see us through, and she mumbled prayers all night.

  At daybreak, we reached the Mississippi, where a rickety skiff was waiting on the bank. We piled into the leaky boat and pushed off. Rochilieu did the rowing. Mama held Valentine, and I lay against Mama’s legs with her shawl enfolding me. I fell asleep, and when I awoke, smoke from burning cotton on the levees rose against the pink sky. A pool of water from the boat’s leaky bottom had risen and soaked my shoes.

  After a while, the baby began to cry. “Will you hold her a moment?” Mama said. As I stood to take Valentine from her arms, a square of sunlight broke through the trees and blinded me momentarily. The boat rocked; I stumbled. The sack of gold slid from my waist, vanishing into the muddy water with a loud plop and narrowly missing the black, scaly head of an alligator lurking nearby.

  Two

  A half hour later, we came ashore at Port Hudson and plodded through the woods. I couldn’t shake from my head the image of an alligator with huge open jaws. Cold terror, mingled with wretchedness over losing our gold, brought on a convulsion of sobs. I wailed loudly as we stepped over branches and brambles, wending our way to the Old County Road. Honeysuckle lined the shoulders, and the road was strewn with blue-clad bodies—Union men who had succumbed to illness and exhaustion on their march to battle. We didn’t look at the corpses and sucked in our breath to avoid the stench.

  It was a bright day and already boiling hot. Itchy red bumps had broken out on my neck where the tight collar of my dress met my skin, and I scraped them furiously with my fingers. “Stop that scratching. You’re a girl, not a dog!” Mama cried. She was furious with me. As she walked with Rochilieu, a few yards behind me, I could hear her moaning refrain, “How will we live without our gold?”

  A distant cannon shook the air, then another. “Right now, money should be the least of your worries,” said Rochilieu.

  We walked on, mile after mile, under the burning sun. A fine gray dust covered our clothes, and our shoes were cracked and coming apart. After a couple of hours, a rickety wagon driven by an old farmer rattled up beside us. “Don’t tell him anything,” Rochilieu warned. The farmer had a sunburned face, and when he smiled, two ragged teeth appeared in his black mouth. “Y’all look like you need a ride,” he said. We clambered into the back of the wagon. I quickly fell asleep, and when I woke, we were in New Orleans, parked in front of a small, run-down hotel with laundry hung over the balcony. I jumped down to the pavement, and Rochilieu whispered to me, “Remember, if anyone asks, we’re French refugees, and I’m your papa.” Rochilieu gave the farmer a few coins, and the cart rolled away.

  The hotel lobby teemed with people—mostly mulattoes and shabbily dressed whites. We ate a dinner of gumbo and rice in the stuffy, candlelit dining room and went to our room. Rochilieu slept on the floor, and Mama, Valentine, and I took the bed. In the middle of the night, Rochilieu woke us. “Hurry, ladies. Our boat is waiting,” he said. We scrambled into our sour, dusty clothes, padded out of the hotel, and walked to the wharf. An oyster lugger bobbed against the dock.

  The young sailor on deck extended his muscular arms and hoisted us aboard. The boat smelled terrible, and we had to stay in blackness down below as it pulled into the Gulf. By midday we were several miles out at sea and could climb to the deck. The wind whipped through a gray sky, and water churned around the boat. Mama pointed into the distance. “Look, a ship.”

  A frigate with a dark oak hull and huge squares of white sail swayed toward us in the surging water. A French flag flew from the mast. Rochilieu waved Mama’s shawl and shouted, “Bonjour!”

  As the ship drew up to the oyster lugger’s side, a small man in a blue-and-red uniform threw Rochilieu a rope, and Rochilieu tied it to the lugger. He went aboard to talk to the captain and returned a few minutes later grinning broadly. “Ladies, we have a ride to France.”

  The ship, La Belle de Jour, had come from New York and was on its way home, carrying
cotton and a few civilian families. From our state-room, I could hear the whoops and shouts of children on board. But I never saw them. I was violently seasick and spent all of the crossing in bed. I didn’t start to feel better until we reached Calais and boarded a train for Paris.

  We arrived in the city on a drab, chilly Tuesday. Mama, Valentine, and I settled into three furnished rooms in a hotel on Avenue Montaigne, a wide, leafy street not far from the Champs-Elysées. A servant brought us our meals from the hotel kitchen and did some paltry cleaning. But the apartment remained filthy. The draperies were ripped and stained; the backs of the sofa and chairs held grease marks left by the pomaded hair of the apartment’s previous occupants. If the servant didn’t come, Mama didn’t bother to tidy up. Bureau drawers and armoire doors were left open. The bed was unmade. Corsets and stockings littered the floor.

  Those first few weeks in Paris, Mama often seemed as indifferent to me as she was to the housekeeping. She didn’t notice if I ate all the candy in the crystal jar on the sideboard, or if my stockings were dirty and my hair unbrushed. She had always been inattentive, but now she was worn down, I thought then, by mourning, though I see now she was tortured by guilt. Her grief over her ruined marriage was as raw as the day she learned of Papa’s death, and her pale face and red-rimmed eyes testified to her anguished nights.

  I spent most of my time playing with Valentine, who had grown from a quiet baby into a lively, chattering child. Each day, she looked more and more like Papa, with the same small mouth and round dark eyes. I loved reading to her and helping her assemble her blocks. Sometimes Mama left me in charge while she went out. I was alone with Valentine the day she took her first steps, toddling a few feet across the worn carpet and collapsing in my arms.