My parents were simple people who ran a small store in rural Louisiana. Mama was a Creole and Papa was a Cajun, both spoke fluent French, which was the only language we spoke at home. The simplest way to explain it would be that Mama's family came here directly from France and Papa's came from France by way of Canada, but that is all ancient history.
I was an only child and about as pampered as the daughter of a small store owner could be. On my sixteenth birthday I was given a vanity set that was real silver! And my parents had even paid someone to engrave an elegant 'C' on the back of the mirror for me. It was the most exquisite thing that I had ever received and I knew that it had cost my parents a great deal of money.
That was also the day I met Pierre, the man I would later marry. He was tall and handsome and charming. Pierre owned a small but prosperous farm about a three hour drive and on the other side of the Mississippi River from our little store. He came back a few days later to speak to my Papa. We were married just a few short weeks after my seventeenth birthday and within a year were the proud parents of a healthy boy we named Pierre Beauregard, but called Beau.
My husband began to change after the birth of our son. He would leave most evenings after dinner and chores, some times stumbling into our house in the wee hours of the morning and at other times returning in time to do chores the next morning. One such occasion was the night our first daughter was born, a year after our son's birth. Pierre stumbled into the room, declared that our daughter's name was North and then passed out on the bed beside me.
Ten months after the birth of Lee, our second son, Pierre disappeared for several days. It was to be the first of many such disappearances. When he finally returned he brought with him a newborn babe, his daughter by another woman. He placed the baby in my arms and said we would be raising her as our own…no one was to know that I had not delivered her. As a trip into town with two toddlers and a lap baby was difficult, I didn't see how this would be a problem. One look at her tiny face and I knew that she was as innocent in this as I was and I couldn't hold it against her. This poor creature was now motherless and it was left up to me to care for her. Carolina Jessamine Wayne would always hold a special place in my heart.
Pierre's drinking got worse with the birth of each of our next three children. Georgia was small and sickly from birth and Johnny, a year younger, had almost passed her in size by the time he was one. Sweet little Louisiana was also born tiny, though not as sickly as her sister. Pierre, who had wanted strong sons to take over his farm, didn't handle to birth of his daughters very well. In fact, the only one he would even hold was his precious Carrie.
My older three were little soldiers and took on more work than children their ages should have, handling most of the farm chores while their father drank away what little profits we did make. Pierre also grew harsher on them when he disciplined them. Instead of his hand, he now used a switch on all three and sometimes even his belt on the two boys, though he never lifted a finger against Carrie. He had even begun to slap me on occasion when he thought I was getting too mouthy. I suppose I could be thankful that he never struck me in front of our children. By the time Beau turned twelve, his back was already scarred from the all too frequent trips to the barn with a father who could never be pleased.
The births of my last two children took a serious toll on my body and by the time baby Ginny was born, North could run the house as well as I could. I hated to turn such a task over to her, but my body seemed to take longer to recover with the birth of each child. Georgia's health was slipping too…faster than any of us liked. One night, with the poor darling struggling to breath, I risked Pierre's wrath to take her into town to the doctor. The doctor said that she needed to be in a dryer climate. I left her with the doctor the next night to discuss the matter with Pierre, only to return home to find that he had told the other children that Georgia was dead. When I told him what the doctor said, he told me that if I took her out West that he would tell them that I had died too…he also threatened to break my jaw if I told them that Georgia was indeed alive. He had broken it once before when I accused him of doing things to our daughters that no father should do.
I was faced with a tough decision. If I sold the few family heirlooms I had left I could afford the journey west for Georgia and myself, but there was no way I could afford to take all of my children. I could stay on the farm with the rest of my children and lose Georgia for sure or I could leave them behind and take a chance to try and save her. The decision to leave them behind is one of the hardest I had ever made. I knew that Beau could take care of the farm and would protect them from their father and keep them together, no matter what it took. North could handle the house and was already mothering the younger ones as much as I was. Johnny was my little fighter and his older brother's almost constant shadow…he would watch out for my little Ana. And the babies were too young for Pierre to bother with.
So I tucked a simple note into the hiding place I had once shown North, packed the heirlooms and went to town. But when it came time to sell them, I just couldn't part with the silver vanity set I had been given so many years before. My dear little North had been heart broken a few years before when I told her that the vase they had just broken was to have been hers one day. No, she deserved this special treasure one day…so I tucked it away with our meager belongings when I whisked Georgia out of town, hoping to one day be reunited with the rest of my children.