Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball Read online

  “There, there. I fear you are too weak to be Buster’s wife, Rosamond. He will probably kill you.”

  Chapter Ten

  As it had been before under the constant scrutiny of Genevieve Boylan, Buster barely touched his bride while under the parental roof. On the return trip to New Orleans, he was again swift and quiet in their private compartment. The couple would be staying with the St. Rochelles until a proper house could be found. Burke must be on his best behavior under Laurence St. Rochelle’s eye. Rosamond counted on that. She planned to extend their stay as long as possible and consult her Mama about her misery.

  The whole family awaited them with the touring car at the station. Arrangements were made with a porter to bring the trunks, but the St. Rochelles did not go directly home. Honking his horn to encourage a mule-drawn wagon to move aside, Laurence turned on to Prytania Street and parked before a narrow house in the middle of the block. Insisting that all the passengers get out, he cleared his throat.

  “Earlier this year, the Widow LaHaye passed on to a better world. Her only kin live in Texas of all places, and they were eager to convert her house into cash after the will passed through probate. They’ve taken what they wanted of the furnishings, and what remains belongs to Mr. and Mrs. Burke Boylan.” He flourished the house keys.

  “It’s small, of course, only three bedrooms, a fairly modern bath, an attached kitchen with a gas stove, a good-sized parlor and dining room, all a young couple really needs until those bedrooms fill with children. Here, take a look.”

  He passed the keys to his daughter who dropped them on the walkway, her fingers feeling suddenly numb and clumsy. Burke picked them up. “You are too good to us, Laurence.”

  “I couldn’t let a bargain like this get away while you were off enjoying your honeymoon. Wait until you see the interior. Emmaline has had the servants polishing for a week.”

  “I’ve arranged all the crystal and fine china you received in the sideboard. Widow LaHaye’s cousins left most of the kitchenware, and her houseboy and cook are willing to stay on. You might want to add a maid. The Texans took the fourposter bed and armoire that must have been made before the war, but we’ve moved your bedroom furnishings here until you can shop for something more suitable.” Madame St. Rochelle paused for breath.

  “Thank you, Mama,” her daughter said woodenly.

  “Now, let’s go in,” her mother urged, much more excited than Rosamond, who felt cold and ill despite the balmy October day.

  As they entered through the iron gate and walked to the raised porch, the front door opened. A light-skinned Negro man with gray in his wiry hair smiled broadly above a red bow tie and a white jacket.

  “This is Wilbert, your houseboy.”

  Wilbert stepped aside. People thronged from the dining room and parlor. “Surprise, Rosamond! Surprise, Buster!” Artie Delamare cranked up a borrowed Victrola to add to the commotion.

  “Wait until you see the spread Oralee has prepared.” Emmaline gestured down the hall to where a dark woman of bulk and presence filled the kitchen door. The cook wore a white uniform and an old-fashioned red calico tignon on her head. She nodded tersely over a pair of brawny folded arms and moved back into her domain.

  “She’s a gem really, Rosamond, but a bit temperamental. Try not to aggravate her.”

  “I’m overwhelmed, Mama. Truly overwhelmed.”

  ****

  After the company left, Rosamond finally got a chance to see her house. The mahogany and horsehair settees from another century had been covered with young women in bright dresses up until an hour ago. The dining table, so big it filled the room leaving space only for its carved matching sideboard and the massive chairs placed back along the walls, had not looked so forbidding covered in the Irish linen tablecloth that had been among her wedding gifts and anchored by the coconut and chocolate layer cakes, the platters of ham biscuits, dishes of olives and pickles, and a silver punch bowl with their wedding date engraved upon it.

  Dark wainscoting decorated the halls, the side of the staircase, the parlor, bedrooms, and dining area. Two windows faced the street downstairs. Upstairs, four more windows, two in the master bedroom, one each in the smaller rooms, pierced the walls. None of them seemed to let in a great deal of light. Crammed in mid-block as the residence was, Roz held no hope of trying to add any more glass to the house.

  The LaHaye relatives had stripped all the bedrooms bare, leaving only the furnishings below too massive or outdated to bother with. Every room except the kitchen bore walls covered in a large floral pattern, faded except for dark spots here and there where family portraits or works of art had been removed.

  Rosamond wandered into the kitchen while Buster went outside to help in loading the Victrola in Artie’s borrowed auto. Oralee, having cleared the leftovers and snatched the cloth from the table, prepared to leave.

  “Ham biscuits is in the ice box. Cake under the dome there. Rest of the punch is in this here pitcher. You want something else tonight tell Wilbert go get it for you. He live over the ole carriage house.” The cook jerked her head with its several chins toward a low range of windows over the sink. At the back of a small yard, Buster’s white Mercedes lurked like a stalking beast in the dark recess of what had once been a one horse stable. Rickety stairs on one side led up to a room for a servant.

  “In the mornin’, hot biscuits and coffee be on the sideboard. I makes eggs any way you likes ’em, ham and bacon, too. You call Wilbert if you wants breakfast in bed ’cause I don’t do no stairs. You let me know way head o’ time ’bout lunch and dinner. If I gots to go to the market in the heat, I likes to go early. This my kitchen, and I don’t care to let nobody else in it.” Oralee laid a fat, affectionate hand on a fancy gas stove that filled most of the space along a side wall.

  “Now, Miz LaHaye, she di’nt eat much. Jus’ wanted fancies for her ole lady friends when they come to call. That man o’ yours look like a big eater, so I’m gonna need a raise in pay. And you, Miz Boylan, you looks sickly. I ain’t no nurse.”

  “I’m fine. I suffered from motion sickness on the train and on the boat before that. It’s nothing. I can take care of myself.” Remembering her mother’s advice to never let servants get the upper hand, Roz pulled herself up straight and looked Oralee right in the eye.

  Oralee cocked her big head again, this time toward Roz. “How long you been married, honey?”

  “Just over a month. We’ve been traveling. I’m quite tired, so you may go for the evening.”

  Oralee nodded. “You breedin’.” It wasn’t a question, but a positive statement.

  “No, oh no! I’m ill from traveling, that’s all.”

  “Whatever you say, Miz Boylan.” Oralee picked up a large cloth purse bulging at the sides, probably with ham biscuits and cake. She looked over Rosamond’s shoulder. Roz felt Buster’s hands descend on her.

  “There’s my bride. Oralee, I expect coffee and breakfast by eight. I like three eggs scrambled, hot toast, and a side meat. Don’t ever give me grits. I won’t be home for luncheon, but will expect my dinner at seven. Do you understand me?”

  “Yassah.” Oralee turned away, making a small sign to ward off the evil eye. “I be goin’ now.”

  “Fine. My wife and I have had a long day and will be retiring early. Tell Wilbert that on your way out.”

  “Yassah.”

  Burke led his wife down the narrow, dark hallway and up the stairs. There hadn’t been enough hooch at the party to make Buster either belligerent or fall-down drunk. Tonight, she would have to tell her husband what a great lover he was over and over and over again.

  ****

  Strange how in her parents’ house, her double bed had always seemed roomy and luxurious with its gold duvet and curvaceous white headboard. Now, the bed appeared cramped and soiled with Buster taking up three-quarters of the mattress. As usual, Roz pretended to sleep when her husband rose and went down the hall to the bathroom. She lay still, holding back her rising nausea, while h
e dressed.

  Once Burke had gone down to breakfast, she tiptoed to the large closet that had been added when the bath was put in and vomited into an antique chamber pot with Yankee General Beast Butler’s likeness on the bottom, left behind in a dusty corner by the Texas relatives. Roz watched her husband from the rear window as he crossed the barren yard and backed his roadster into the alley. He was gone for the day. She exhaled and went to the bath to clean General Butler’s face.

  In a light wrapper and slippers, Roz made her way down the staircase. On the landing, she noticed the wallpaper with its monstrous pink flowers was peeling just above the wainscoting. Rosamond picked at it with her fingernail. A large strip tore off. She worked her fingers under another section, and the paper peeled off easily. Dusting her hands, Roz continued down the stairs where she handed a startled Wilbert the wad of paper.

  “Dispose of this, Wilbert. After I breakfast, we shall take down the rest.”

  The formidable cook appeared in the doorway to the kitchen.

  “Oralee, I’d like a pot of hot tea with mint to go with my toast.” Feeling much better, she went to sit alone at the dining room table. Out in the hallway, she overhead the servants talking.

  “She breedin’, Wilbert. It make some women crazy, don’t you know.”

  ****

  With Wilbert’s help and kettles of steaming hot water to treat the stubborn places, most of the wallpaper in the halls vanished by the time Buster returned home. He frowned as Wilbert took his hat. “Where is my wife?”

  “Nappin’, suh. She done wore herself out pulling down paper today.”

  “I see.” He pounded up the staircase. Rosie, in an unflattering housedress, slept on top of the duvet. Her long hair was undressed and held back by a thin black ribbon. Burke gave it a yank to wake her.

  “A man doesn’t want to come home to chaos, Rosie.”

  “I’m redecorating, Buster. I want light and room and air, the latest styles and colors.”

  “Your old man better be paying for it, Rosie. I can’t eat a decent meal with all this dust around. I’m going over to the Boston Club.”

  “Suit yourself. Tomorrow, Wilbert is bringing some boys to tear out the wainscoting.”

  Alone again, Rosamond came downstairs and happily surveyed the wreckage of the day. She poked her head into the kitchen and asked Oralee what she’d cooked for dinner.

  “A nice stewed chicken. It what you need.”

  “Wonderful.” Roz seated herself in the dining room. Tomorrow, she’d call an auctioneer and have this table and sideboard hauled out of here. She dined alone on the stewed chicken, vegetables in broth, a crusty French roll, and bowl of soothing rice pudding full of raisins for dessert. By the time Buster returned, she would be asleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  By the end of October, everything dark or overbearing that could be removed from the house on Prytania had been, including the crystal chandeliers in the two front rooms and the mahogany wainscoting. The legs were removed from the dining room table, and the parts carried to the auctioneer’s van where two dray horses waited patiently to take it away. Six large Negroes hauled the sideboard down the front steps and out the iron gate. Even the heavily carved banister to the second floor had been removed, causing the new maid to complain of the danger of falling while hauling fresh linens to the bedroom. Each item was to be sold, and the profits put into the remodeling.

  Buster dined out often and came home late smelling of liquor and other women. Back on the turf he knew, he seemed to be taking his brutal interests elsewhere. Rosamond managed to be always in an exhausted sleep when he returned. Unless he shook his wife awake, she barely noticed his comings and goings. When he did demand her attention, she stared up at the ceiling and waited for him to finish.

  On the second floor, she saw no reason to redecorate. Upstairs, nothing had changed. Two of the three bedrooms remained empty; no need to hurry there. Why order a new bed when she could lie in the one she’d made for herself?

  Ah, but downstairs where her friends and family visited, the floors had been stripped and stained a light oak, the walls replastered and painted a pale peach. A sleek steel railing in an interlocking diamond pattern was on order for the stairwell. The new dining table, glass-topped and metal-rimmed, sat only eight. Above it, a six-bulb lighting fixture with frosted globes shaped like giant lilies lit the surface. Her wedding silver and crystal glittered behind geometrically patterned glass panels in a breakfront of warm oak.

  In the parlor where horsehair had been ousted, the new divans and chairs were covered in peach silk and sunk in fluffy white area rugs. Mama St. Rochelle tutted over the impracticality of it all. Children, even well-behaved little girls, would make a ruin of it. Rosamond laughed as she directed two men in hanging a large mirror over the fireplace where a still life of a dead rabbit surrounded by the makings for its stew had previously been on display. Mama might have to wait for grandchildren.

  Occasionally, Rosamond caught a glimpse in that mirror of a thin, hollow-eyed young woman who hadn’t bothered to put up her hair in weeks. She wore old cotton frocks from the back of the closet with a slip and step-ins, breast bands and stockings abandoned. Though the dresses hung on her loosely, any pretense they had to style was ruined by the bumps of her sore and swollen breasts. She wanted to howl whenever Buster grabbed them, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Mostly, he left this haggard woman alone.

  While the builders tore the dining room apart, Roz had taken to eating breakfast in the kitchen, to the discomfort of the servants who offered to bring her breakfast in bed. She enjoyed sitting at the scarred wooden table sipping her second café au lait because black coffee made her stomach churn. All she wanted to eat was toast, no trouble for Oralee, so why should the cook be grumpy?

  Roz looked out the low windows over the sink at the two narrow strips of clipped yellowing lawn and the walk to the carriage house. She dreamed of planting banana trees, putting in clumps of bird-of-paradise, some hibiscus the same peach shade as the parlor walls, not red, and a small fountain or at least, a birdbath. Right now, the only flowers in the house were the yellow daises with the black, cone-shaped centers that some people called nigger-tits sitting on the kitchen table in an old brown jug and probably picked in the alley by Oralee on her way to work. She daydreamed of another courtyard ringed with banana trees until a large, dark shadow blocked her view.

  Oralee stood over her, a fragile porcelain egg cup clutched in one mighty fist. “Miz Boylan, you gonna eat this nice soft-boiled egg I done made for you this mawnin’.”

  “Oh, give it to Wilbert, or eat it yourself. I have no appetite.”

  “Honey, you expectin’, and you gotta eat for two now.”

  “Whatever gave you that idea? How dare you speak to me that way!” Roz drew herself up in her tatty dress and patted her snarled hair.

  “That new girl yo’ mama sent over, she say she ain’t washed no rags for you yet, and it bin a month.” Oralee jerked her head toward Lucille, the maid, and Wilbert who stood over by the stove in the hottest part of the kitchen.

  “You know, I could be dying. Aunt Harriet was tired all the time and had no appetite before she died.” Rosamond smiled, almost happy with the idea.

  “You ain’t dyin’. You gonna have a chile. Now you eat this nice egg.”

  “I’m mistress here, and you can’t tell me what to do!” Roz said with some fire.

  “No, ma’am, but I can walk out this door and go work for Miz Rochon like she been beggin’ me to do ’cause I don’t gots to work for no crazy woman.”

  “Am I crazy?” Before Roz could stop herself, her eyes filled with water.

  “It the baby makin’ you nuts, honey. It gonna get better.”

  The tears overflowed and rolled down Rosamond’s cheeks. She covered her face with her hands. Do not cry in front of the servants, another of Mama’s rules. The words came out regardless. “I don’t want Buster’s baby.”

  Oralee exchanged
a look with Lucille. Any black woman in the city could tell this sickly white girl how to bring off a baby, but it wasn’t their place. “Sometimes, the chile worth more than the man. You think ’bout that, okay?”

  “I gots a side chile, Miss Ros’mond, and he worth more than me fo’ sure,” Wilbert added since Oralee glared at him as the only man in the room. He saw he’d gotten a wobbly smile from Miss Roz, and that was good enough. As the one who had to wait up for Mister Boylan and sometimes help him to bed, Wilbert tended to agree about the low-down nature of men, himself included.

  “Maybe you should see a doctor?” Lucille suggested. She had been educated by the black nuns of New Orleans and still ended up as a maid for a crazy white lady her expression said.

  “No, let’s wait a few more weeks,” Roz said softly.

  She could hardly run to Pierre because she carried Buster’s baby. What did she expect him to do—perform an abortion? He was as Catholic as she was. Dump his medical career and run off with her, play father to another man’s child? Maybe the child was the answer. She could raise a son to be a better man than Burke Boylan or a daughter who would never have to be queen of Mardi Gras if she didn’t want to be.

  “I’ll eat that egg now,” she said.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lucille held up a navy blue dress with brass buttons down the front and an adorable sailor collar while she waited for her mistress to finish the breakfast on the bed tray. Miss Rosamond looked better now after two weeks of getting more rest and eating more food. Her hollow cheeks and the dark smudges under her eyes were gradually disappearing. She’d let the maid wash her hair with lemon-water and put it up for daytimes.

  “You have so many nice clothes, Miss Roz. Auntie Odette told me you liked to dress up. This one would be so nice for a walk in the park since the weather’s holding fine for November after all that rain we been having. You won’t be showing for maybe another month, and the way this one is made—oh, no, there’s white marks down the back. Must have gotten up against some of the painting going on around here. What a shame.”