The Black Rose (5 page)

Silently, Sarah nodded.

“Come on inside then. You came all this way your lone self?”

Again, Sarah nodded, stepping out of the rain and flinging droplets of water from her face. Her dress, which was clinging to her tightly, dripped on the straw mat. Sarah’s teeth clicked uncontrollably. “I g-gotta see M-Mama Na—”

“And you will, little one, soon’s I find you a blanket. Looks like that rain caught you unawares.
Un moment
.”

Mama Nadine’s house had three rooms, or maybe even more, Sarah guessed. This room in front had a small table and soft chairs for sitting, and a shelf full of books. Mama had only one book—an old Bible Ole Missus had given her a long time ago, even though Mama didn’t know how to read the words in it—but Sarah had never seen so many books in one place. There were big candles everywhere, most of them lit to give the room light. There was a strange scent around her; something sweet was burning in the air.

“Somebody out there at my door?” Mama Nadine’s voice called from the back.

The man, who draped a sour-smelling blanket over Sarah’s head, called something back to her in Cajun, then he began to gently push Sarah toward another brightly glowing room. Sarah was eager to see Mama Nadine, but her feet didn’t seem to work the way they should, dragging and half stumbling as she got closer to the other room.

He was taking her to the kitchen, Sarah realized. She and Papa had eaten in here when they came last time, and the thought of it made Sarah’s eyes grow misty. The small kitchen smelled smoky. It was an entire room with nothing in it except a cookstove, a washtub, shelves filled with jars, and a smoothly sanded wooden table with four chairs. There were strings of garlic, feathers, and some trinkets hanging on the wall from nails. And, of course, there were candles. Candlelight made overlapping shadows on the walls.

And here sat Mama Nadine. She was a honey-colored woman younger than Mama with thin, birdlike limbs. She wore her head wrapped in a colorful scarf that dangled to her breast. She was sitting in a chair, and a dark-skinned girl about Louvenia’s age sat cross-legged on the floor between her thighs. The girl’s hair was spread across her shoulders, and Mama Nadine was running a strange-looking comb with metal teeth through it. Inexplicably, when the comb touched the girl’s hair, it sizzled with smoke. Mama Nadine was performing some kind of magic on the girl, Sarah decided.

“Who down buried in that blanket, Bertrand?” Mama Nadine said. Her voice, too, sounded smoky and somehow far away. Her fingers worked gracefully with the comb, pulling the girl’s strands of hair, and the girl’s head fell back and she gritted her teeth as if it hurt. To Sarah, the girl’s hair looked like Papa said an Indian’s did, hanging straight and black.

“Owen Breedlove’s girl, one come here two weeks back,” the man answered.

“Sarah?” Mama Nadine said, pulling the name from memory.

Sarah nodded, sniffling this time.

“What drive you out in this storm to see Mama Nadine,
ma chérie
?”

Sarah knew it was time to tell, but her lips felt stuck together, and her tongue was swollen thick in her mouth. She’d planned out what she would say, down to promising Mama Nadine all the eggs in the henhouse if only she would come. But with the storm so fierce outside, Sarah suddenly felt certain the witch-lady would laugh at her. Or worse, she might put a curse on her, if there weren’t one already. After all, a curse was probably the reason all the bad things had happened so fast.

Papa got sick first, on Monday the week before. He came back from the fields complaining he had a fever and a backache, and he worked only a half day on Tuesday before he dragged himself home. Sarah and Louvenia gave him wet rags to keep on his forehead like Mama said to, but Sarah was shocked when she touched the skin on Daddy’s face and felt how raging hot it was. Hot as burning kindling, it seemed. It looked swollen, too. And even though Papa was sweating, he was shivering on his pallet as if it were the middle of wintertime.

Fever,
Sarah knew. And maybe, just maybe, whispered a voice far in the back of her head, Papa had Yellow Jack. She went to bed at night praying Missus Anna hadn’t brought Yellow Jack to Papa.

Then Mama got sick, too. One morning Mama just woke up retching on the floor. She said she wasn’t strong enough to go to the fields, but she was scared of losing wages, so she sent Louvenia with Alex instead. Louvenia complained about it so much, sticking out her lip, that Sarah wished she could hit her. Sarah would have gone her own self if she could, since she hated Mama and Papa to be worried about wages when they might have Yellow Jack, but she knew she was too weak for listing. So she stayed and nursed Mama and Papa.

Yellow Jack. The word played in her mind constantly, and two days, then three, went by without either of them getting better. In fact, truth be told, they seemed to be getting
worse
. Sarah gathered firewood and boiled water for oatmeal, but neither of them could keep any food in their stomachs without throwing up. They were always thirsty. And since they were both too weak to go to the outhouse, Sarah brought them a bucket to use for a toilet, and she cleaned up after them if they made a mess like she did some nights when she woke up with a full bladder and discovered she was spilling warm urine all over herself. Late at night, Mama would wake up calling out the names of people Sarah didn’t know.

But this morning had been the worst of all. This morning, when Mama threw up, the sickness that came out of her mouth was
black
. And after Alex and Louvenia had already gone out to the fields, Papa sat up for the first time in three days and told Sarah she’d better go get Mama Nadine. He said he knew this wasn’t an ordinary fever like the chills they got sometimes in the summer when they stood out in the rain too long. He said they had Yellow Jack for sure, and he’d had a dream Mama was about to die.

Go on, Li’l Bit. You know where Mama Nadine at. You follow that road,
then veer off by where that big tree done fell, an’ walk straight
’
long the creek
’
til
you see her house.

And Sarah had done just fine until the rain, but then she’d started running and nearly lost her way, and all she could think about was Mama at home dying because she was out lost in the woods. But she’d found the house, sure enough. She’d made it.

“Devil he took your tongue,
chérie
?” Mama Nadine said, still combing.

“M-my mama and papa sick,” Sarah said, finding her voice. “They gots Yellow Jack.”

Mama Nadine stopped combing, giving Sarah her full, wide eyes. Sarah felt the man behind her take a step away from her. He coughed gently into his hand as if he were embarrassed because she’d said a cussword.

“How you know this for a fact, little one?” Mama Nadine said at last.

And so Sarah told her everything, about the fevers and the sweating and the black sickness from Mama’s stomach. But, more important, she told Mama Nadine about Papa’s dream.

At this, the woman nodded and sighed. “That sound like the fever to me,” she said. “Where your brother?”

“Plowin’ them cotton fields,” Sarah said. “Him and my sister both.”

“Nobody with your
maman
and papa but you?”

“In the day,” Sarah said, sniffling again. “An’ sometime Missy Laura, my mama friend, she bring food by. But she gots to work, too.”

Mama Nadine made a clicking sound with her teeth and sighed again. Sarah’s heart thumped, because she was afraid Mama Nadine was about to tell her to go back home, that there was no help for her here. “You m-made a p-potion fo’ Missus Anna,” Sarah reminded her.

“Missus Anna ask me for potion, yes. But like I say to her at her big, grand house, it not that simple. Not that simple,
belle
. This fever has a demon’s ways. You want Mama Nadine to go to your
maman
and papa?”

Overjoyed, Sarah nodded her head vigorously. Water shook from her hair into her face. “Yes’m,” she said. “We g-got eggs what to pay with.”

Mama Nadine nodded, barely listening, as if she heard voices somewhere else in the room. “
Maman
and papa both
malade
. That very bad,
chérie
. Very bad. This a hungry fever, but we try to keep one parent for you, eh? Every girl need at least her
maman
.”

Keep one parent for you
. Mama Nadine’s words raked Sarah’s stomach. What did she mean by that? She needed her mama and papa both!

“I give you some red snakeroot I get this spring, full of sap. You take that home, you boil it, make tea. Both you parents drink tonight. They drink as much tea as you make. Tonight, I light my altar and pray. I come morning-time to you. I come.”

Sarah nodded, feeling a sharp twinge of disappointment. She was grateful for the tea-root, but she wished Mama Nadine’s remedies sounded more powerful. Sarah had been praying night after night herself, and praying hadn’t helped a bit. What if morning was too late?

“Bertrand, ride her home when the rain is finished,” Mama Nadine said. “But you don’t go in that house, no? You don’t go near that fever.”

“No worries,
maman
.”

The girl with the straight black hair was gazing at Sarah with her head to one side, the way someone looks at something that breaks her heart. The girl’s gaze made Sarah feel angry, then petrified. What if she would never have another chance to sit between her mama’s soft thighs and have her own hair combed and plaited again? Sarah’s scalp always burned and itched in the sun, and only her mama’s combing seemed to help. In that instant, Sarah hated the girl and everything about her, especially her Indian hair that hung down past her shoulders.

“My mama and papa ain’t gon’ die,” Sarah told the girl defiantly.

The girl’s pitying expression didn’t change.

“With the help of the gods, we see,
chérie
,” Mama Nadine said. “We see.”

Papa drank two cups of Mama Nadine’s root tea before he went to sleep for the night, but Mama took only two sips and then shook her head. “Cain’t,” she whispered.

“Mama Nadine tol’ you to,” Louvenia said.

“Please, Mama?” Sarah said, squeezing her hand. Mama’s hand felt damp, and her lip had split open so that it was peeking blood through the crack in her skin. In the lamplight, her mama was beginning to look like somebody else, like one of those old ladies who sat at the riverbank and tended babies while the younger women worked. Right before sunset, Missy Laura had brought some briers she’d strung together and hung around Mama’s neck, saying it was a remedy for fever she’d learned from her grandfather, but the briers didn’t seem to do anything except make Mama scratch weakly where they touched her skin.

“I’se gon’ drink it by an’ by,” Mama said in the same tiny voice.

Sarah was aching to tell Mama about Papa’s dream and how she would die for sure if she didn’t drink the tea, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. If she actually
said
it, she reasoned, that might make it come true. Sarah decided she would just wait until Mama started mumbling nonsense words like she had a few hours ago, and when her mind was asleep, she’d give her the tea. She’d drink it and wouldn’t even remember.

Suddenly Mama stared up at them with frightened eyes. She clung to Louvenia’s dress. “Lou? Sarah?” she said, as if she was afraid they would walk away. “That y’all? I thought y’all was both here befo’, but then the thunder came, an’ wasn’t nobody here ’cept me. An’ Owen, but he was ’sleep.” Speaking seemed to make her breathe harder, and Sarah heard a gurgling from Mama’s chest she’d never heard before. The harsh sound nearly stilled Sarah’s heart.

“We here now, Mama,” Louvenia said.

“Lord,” Mama said, amazed. “Lord, seem like I been gone. Seem like I don’ know where I’m at no mo’.”

“You at home,” Sarah told her cheerfully. “And Lou and Alex and Papa, too.”

“It’s day or night?” Mama asked.

“Night,” Louvenia said. “I made supper.”

At that, Sarah made a face; Louvenia had
tried
to make supper, but she’d overcooked the green beans, and she’d burned the biscuits besides. Sarah was still hungry. She’d felt a little hungry ever since Mama got sick, except when Missy Laura brought a basket of corn bread and fried chicken for them. She wished Missy Laura had brought them some food today when she brought the necklaces of scratchy briers, but she hadn’t.

“Oh, Lord, Lord.” Mama gasped. “Owen still sick, too? We losin’ wages.”

“No, we ain’t, Mama,” Louvenia said, although that was a lie. Mama always told them never to tell lies, but Sarah figured it was all right now. Lies would make Mama feel better, maybe. “An’ Papa gettin’ better. He ’sleep now, but he was sittin’ up today.”

That part, at least, was true. Papa had even felt well enough to argue with Missy Laura when she put the briers around his neck, telling her he thought it was an old wives’ tale.

“Lou,” Mama said, licking her dry lips, “you go run an’ find me that Bible-book Ole Missus give me.” This time she almost sounded like she wasn’t sick at all.

Louvenia must have forgotten Mama was sick, too, because she sucked on her teeth just like she did anytime she was asked to do something she didn’t feel like doing. Except usually Mama would cuff her if she did that, and now Mama didn’t do anything except lie shivering on her pallet. “I don’ know where that ol’ book at,” Louvenia complained.

“Chile, go find it. Quick, now, ’fore …” Mama paused for a long time, then she sighed. “… ’fore I forgit.”

“I’ll find it, Mama,” Sarah said.

Suddenly Mama’s hand was tight around Sarah’s arm. The grip was so strong it almost hurt, and Sarah was shocked Mama still had so much strength. Maybe Mama was putting all the strength she had into holding on to her, she thought, and that thought made Sarah feel better. “No, Sarah. You stay. Stay.”

The way Mama was looking at Sarah reminded her of the doleful gaze from the girl sitting between Mama Nadine’s legs, with her eyes full as if she were seeing something big, terrible, and sad, something she wished she didn’t have to see. Tears sprang to Mama’s eyes.