Madame Soulie stood down so the driver could open the carriage door. Rates descended heavily, turned and gave his hand to Julia. ‘It was such a long journey,’ she said breathlessly, stepping down.
‘Hellish, I’m sure.’ Madame Soulie aimed a kick at a wiry grey dog rooting in the trash that bloomed along the bottom of the fence, snarling and unleashing a stream of furious French at it before snapping back startlingly into her practised smile.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘this way. What a tiny little thing you are!’
They followed her through the yard to the house, while Michael came along behind with her luggage. Pink azaleas bloomed along the sides of the path. On either side of the cottage a shingle roof hung down low, and a pomegranate tree shaded the walkway to the back. Somewhere inside a piano plink-plonked lazily.
Madame Soulie jumped up the step with a girlish bob unsuited to her bulk and called, ‘Charlotte!’ She held her hand out behind her to Julia, who took it and stepped into a wide yellow-walled room with a door on either side and a gallery above. She got an impression of faded, leaf-patterned divans. ‘Charlotte,’ Madame Soulie called again. ‘Where are you? Oh there you are.’
A bony mulatto girl of about twelve appeared silently.
‘Charlotte, take Miss Julia across.’ Madame Soulie wore five or six very long strings of beads that she fiddled with constantly. ‘Are you hungry, dear?’
‘Not at all,’ said Julia, ‘only very thirsty.’
‘Rest a while,’ Rates said genially, flinging himself down in an extravagantly exhausted way on one of the divans as if he himself had just come all that way. His belly was a dome of worn white linen. ‘The girl will bring you hot chocolate. Time enough to meet the others.’
Michael shuffled in, dumped Julia’s grip and guitar in the middle of the floor and stood looking down at them, breathing heavily.
‘Well, don’t just leave them there,’ said Madame Soulie, ‘take them across.’ She clapped her hands, and as Michael picked up the grip and Charlotte the guitar, turned the clapping into a Spanish dance in their wake, urging Julia after them.
‘We are all one big happy family here, Madame!’ she called after them as they emerged into the back yard. It was large, with three two-room shacks opening onto it. Curtains hung over the windows. A table and benches were pushed against the side of a brick kitchen, and half a dozen chickens pecked between weed-grown stones in front of it. A swing had been fixed to the bough of a very old apple tree. She was aware of figures, one in a doorway, one peering out of a tiny criss-cross window, but she felt scared and didn’t look at them. Half way across the yard a little stooping goblin came running out from the kitchen, sudden and utterly impossible. She screamed.
‘It’s only Cato,’ Michael said.
He was all face and not enough head. What there was of his head was dark brown and exaggeratedly egg-shaped, bald and tapering to a point like a dunce’s cap.
Seizing her hand in his little stick fingers, he spoke urgently in a high voice that broke and stuck and skidded nasally, drowning any words.
‘So tiny,’ she said.
His fingers were hot and squirmy. His face pushed itself avidly at her with a massive width of smile. A fat black woman in a guinea-blue skirt and white blouse appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, a wooden spoon steaming in her hand. ‘Come on now, Cato,’ she said patiently, ‘you get back now.’
‘He likes people,’ Michael said, looking back over his shoulder. ‘You never saw a pinhead before?’
‘Never.’
She stared into the shiny crinkling eyes, wanting unaccountably to unveil.
‘He’s just a big baby,’ Michael said.
‘Cato!’ the cook called.
Mewing excitedly, Cato ran back to the kitchen. His breeches were cut off at the knee. His legs were thin, bent sticks and his feet were too big. He put his head very far back and smiled up at the cook as if he was trying to break his face.
‘Here we are.’ Michael was lugging her grip through an open door. Charlotte, a frail thin-faced girl, stood back and waved her on in, staring at the veil as if trying to see through.
‘Thank you,’ Julia said. Wouldn’t you just love to know what’s under here? She looked around. It was plain but comfortable. Someone had tried to make it nice with blue flowers in a jug and a clean yellow tablecloth. A game of patience was abandoned on a side table. Two narrow beds were neatly turned down, and a pink curtain was half drawn back on a rail of wide, brightly coloured skirts. Michael put her grip down. Charlotte drew back another curtain, heavy grey linen. ‘You in here,’ she said. ‘You sleep here and put your things in there. You want chocolate?’
‘I’d love some,’ said Julia.
‘Look,’ the girl said. ‘You got a window.’
It was open for the air but covered with a net. Another net was round her bed. Veil on veil on veil.
‘I’ll bring you some chocolate,’ said Charlotte, staring blatantly. ‘You’ll want hot water too, I guess.’
The boy didn’t look at her at all.
When they’d gone, she tore off the veil and tossed it onto the bed. She was dazed. Three weeks and she’d be on a real stage in a theatre. What have I done? She got under the net and lay down on the narrow bed with her hands over her face, moaning softly. I should have gone back to the mountains, she thought. When she was little she thought the mountains were full of people like her, that there was a place up there where all the women were hairy and had more teeth. And it had occurred to her to just set off, take that path she clearly remembered, along which her mother had walked away. The path rose first gently and then, in the distance where everything turned blue, very steeply.
Where was the girl with the chocolate and the hot water? She jumped up again and stood at the window listening to the sounds beyond the end of the street, a muffled hum, a whistle, a rumble and a call. The Mississippi, how far away she didn’t know, not far, she’d seen it from the train, the big steamboats paddling up and down with people on the upper decks with hats and parasols. I am a woman who’s been on a train, she told herself. I’m in a great city. I’m going to New York. I could go anywhere.
A baby cried somewhere, out along the back alley.
She’d met Rates the day of the wedding. She’d been called from the kitchen to sing and play her guitar. All the doors and shutters were thrown open to the patio. Everyone was there, all the bright sparkling crowd of them, the boys, the young men and their wives, Doña Inés, her mouth held in the tight way she had when she was pretending not to be drunk, all the young bucks and flowery girls, and the children, some of whom had not seen her before. This was a particular treat for them. But it was nothing. She’d been stared at since she’d come into the world. She wore her red dress, a red flower in her hair, stood before the bank of paper flowers and strummed on her guitar, the same old thing she’d learned on, red and scratched. She sang ‘Llorona’ and ‘La Chapparita’, then laid the guitar aside, took up her harmonica and played for Doña Inés, ‘A La Nanita Nana’, and everyone sang along. Afterwards Don Pedro came forward, kissed her hand and held it and stood smiling before the crowd. ‘My dear friends,
