BK
Bonnie was six years old when the lady in blue came to her.
Deep in the fit of yellow fever, lying worn in her bed in her family's cottage on Saint Ann Street, with her mother and siblings at her bedside, she saw her.
The windows were open to air out the sick, and the bedroom was flooded with light, blinding Bonnie with a bleary apparition of her, this radiant woman in white robes veiled in blue, the woman's brown palms open and upward, receiving her.
A faint smile. Bonnie moved her achy fingers on the cotton bed sheet, reaching for her. Her lips cracked, and her mouth was dry as she recited the prayer, a mere whisper in a child's voice,, '…Je m'offre à toi… Je t'offre ce jour, mes yeux, mes oreilles, ma bouche, mon coeur …'
Bonnie's mother, Abigail Toussaint, called out to Josephine to bring her the brimstone. She stroked the mineral with a match, lighting a fire, burning it until it smoked, and held the Sulphur under her daughter's nose, yelling at Bonnie's older brother, Christophe, to run and fetch the Father.
Mumbling incoherently, Bonnie didn't feel her sister's small hands dabbing the cool rag at her contorted brow, the young girl crying.
Soaked through and through with sweat, she was chilled to the bone, ice in her veins that burned hot. She shivered uncontrollably, her chest rattling with each ragged breath as she droned on and on as she was taught by the Sisters. This is how you pray to the Holy Mother; she will hear you, and she will come.
The Blessed Mother, the Queen of Heaven, enveloped Bonnie in her arms and kissed her cheek.
Father Antoine and her brother returned to the lovely cottage, the priest and the teenage boy pounding up the stairs. Christophe, distraught that he had missed his goodbye to his sister, and the Father, heartbroken to read the rites to one so young, both overcome to find her sitting upright and taking a meal.
The Lady in Blue had saved her.
It was her first vision and how she came to believe her life did not belong to her, this life spared. Her very constitution was bolstered by what she felt as she lay dying on that sweltering summer afternoon. That all-encompassing and overwhelming love that wrapped around her heart, cradling her sickly fragile body, connecting her, and expanding her with the only word humans had come up with to explain the inexplicable—God.
Bonnie would not describe what happened as a miracle. Miracles by their nature were explained to her by the priests to be rare, and she did not believe love to be rare, not extraordinary, like the young women beatified by the Church for witnessing the Holy Mother manifest in the gardens and grottos of their villages.
Her family could not understand her change after the fever, the wisdom in her eyes, a wisdom always surpassing her age. Nor could her family comprehend her devotion, even though everyone who had lived in that home had been christened in the church, had took communion, and sat with her in the pews.
Her fervor was a special kind they did not possess, a sweetness to her soul. She did not judge them, although they judged themselves, silently in awe at her joy at Sunday service or her hours on her knees, staring at the Marian statuette, reciting the rosary. Their little nun, their hothouse flower.
They loved her, and they worried, how would someone like her flourish outside the expensive wall-paper of the house on St. Anne or the iron-wrought gates of the church.
How could their Bonnie contend with a world that survived on flesh and pain?
BK
Bonnie Bennett. Her and her sibling's last name so English, so like the Americans who came into the Quarter from Uptown, so unlike the surnames of their neighbors, their fellow parishioners and their mother. They had the name of their father, the white man from New York, the enterpriser with cold green eyes, who met their mother when she was very young and he was very old and was so taken with her, he put her up in grand style and agreed to take care of her and any children she bore in exchange for affection and easy company.
Her mother was the beautiful brown-skinned mistress to a married white man who paid for her delights by keeping the household bills and taxes paid, the children in the finest clothing and in the finest schools, complete with private tutors and piano lessons, and he doled out for the dinner table to be plated nightly with the likes of charbroiled oysters, succulent roasted duck, lobster bisque and French champagne, and gifted their mother with imported silks and jewels, her long and elegant neck adorned with clear diamonds that shone her cocoa skin brilliantly, catching the gaslight of the chandelier hung over the dining room.
Once a year, her father traveled to New Orleans to check on the investments he had acquired after the demise of Reconstruction, and during those dreadful weeks, he was an intruder in their lives. No visitors were allowed, her school friends were told to come back another time, and she and her brother and sister were paraded out to him before dinner, where she was ordered to speak English, the words clumsy on her tongue. Freshly bathed and dressed, with her curls oiled and her face shiny, she would stare at him from across the parlor, being as still as she possibly could so as not to upset him as their mother encouraged Christophe to play the piano and for Aimeé to sing, before turning to her, "Why don't you say your poem to him, Bonnie."
She would say her lines, and his wrinkled hand would cup her plump cheek and say, "How charming you are, child," in an accent foreign to her before he and her mother retreated to the master bedroom.
For most of his stay, the children made themselves scarce, warned by Josephine that while he was there, they were meant to be rarely seen and not heard unless at his discretion.
The children could hear their lovemaking throughout the house.
"I will provide for us," Christopher would start, his pale face red and angry. He didn't have to finish; the girls knew the promise. He would deliver the life where they would never have to sell themselves, never have to tip-toe in their own home.
Her father's last visit had been when she was fourteen, and he was not missed, but Christophe went off to Howard University that year, and he was sorely missed, by both his sisters and their mother.
Their lives continued, with their mother receiving a wire from New York each month until Bonnie turned seventeen, and instead of a wire, a letter arrived. Her father's attorney had written to inform them their father had passed in his sleep, bedridden for months after the loss of his fortune in the Panic. The lawyer sent his condolences, enclosed with a final check of what was left in the account set for Abigail Toussaint. There would be no more taxes paid, no more lavish meals, no more jewels for their maman, and no more Howard for Christophe.
Aimeé cried for the man they called father, but Bonnie did not, although she prayed for him, asking the Lady to keep him, while she imagined his funeral, a somber affair with his wife and children, strangers in New York with her same green eyes and crooked smile.
Christophe returned from University, shamed and upset. Even though he could have easily left the University and slipped into some northern society, acquiring a job with standing and a new life with endless opportunities, eventually being the one to send them a wire as his father once did. He was passé blanc, one of the three children who could trick white people into thinking he was one of them. But making that choice meant cutting himself off at the root, becoming malnourished and withered, an impostor among them.
A proud man, he returned home, seeking respectable work in New Orleans to support his family. But after two months of closed doors, the burden of depression and disillusionment overwhelmed him, and he was found dead of a stab wound outside a gambling house. Gossip said he had been belligerent and had pissed off the wrong man, whom the police never found.
His body was brought back to the house, where Bonnie and her sister helped their mother wash him and prepare him for the wake. The parlor was packed with familiar faces, and a cold buffet was laid out in the dining room. They held his mass at St. Martin's, where the Father read his eulogy. Christophe was born, he was cherished among them, and then he died. And Bonnie held her sister's hand as they walked in the procession to St. Louis Cemetery, where her mother spent the last of their savings to bury him.
BK
The girls had come into the back of the house hungry; they had been visiting their brother's grave. It was Bonnie's sixth visit that week, and even though Aimeé insisted she wouldn't find him there, she tagged along with Bonnie anyway. Aimee said she just wanted to make sure Bonnie was okay as she watched her younger sister light a candle on the crypt, pray to the Lady in Blue, and listen to her tell their brother she would return tomorrow.
Josephine had set out three bowls for them to eat the gumbo together when they heard their mother's voice call out to them from the dining room.
The three women gave each other a look, and Josephine silently shooed them away as the girls reluctantly left the kitchen.
The curtains were drawn. The dining room was faintly lit by a candelabra on the sideboard, and Abigail was perched at the head of the bare polished table, a silhouette waving them over. "Sit, sit, now with your maman." She urged them in French. Her usually perfectly pinned hair was loose, and there was a curl out of place, dangling in her sight. The buttons at her throat were undone, and her marble-like face was creased with emotion, her eyes puffy and red from crying in private.
Bonnie took the seat closest to her, Aimee the seat furthest.
There was an opened decanter of brandy sitting in front of her and a crystal tumbler with a drop left that she quickly finished and refilled.
The girls had never seen their mother in such a state. Not Abigail Toussaint.
Abigail licked her lips and began slowly, her voice calm and collected despite the rest of her, "Along with this house, we own twenty acres outside of Eunice and an empty lot on North Rampart; you will both inherit them upon my death to be split and done with however you please; all I ask is you do not sell this house, the house is to stay with you and your children and hopefully your children's children, do you hear me?"
"Yes, maman." The girls said in unison.
Their mother drank and continued, "It takes a lot of money to keep what we have, an incredible amount of money to fund our lives, and I have sold my earrings and necklaces to cover our living expenses for the time being, but eventually, that will run out. I have paid up the taxes for the land and for the lot for the next two years, and I have the tax money for this house for this year, but it is not enough to cover the protection," She pointed her gaze at both girls, "You have to know this, property this far into the Quarter is not to be owned by us, I pay a collector handsomely to check white each year, and this year I am going to be short."
"What do you need from us, maman?" Bonnie asked.
Abagail gave her youngest daughter a faint smile, "Everyone in this house will have to work."
Aimee softly probed, "What about Josephine?"
Abigail rose, briefly grabbing the edge of the table as not to stumble, before gliding over to the sideboard. She grabbed two more tumblers and poured each daughter a brandy, "She's staying with us, no one else is leaving us." Abigail said, her voice slightly cracking, "Tonight, go into your brother's room and take what you like; tomorrow, I will sell the rest of his things and clear the drawers to take a boarder."
Bonnie felt lightheaded, the thought of someone else in Christophe's things and in his room disorienting her. Her vision blurred momentarily, tears she willed not to fall. She thought it silly; he would not need a dresser or the shirts in his armoire. They were going broke, which was not news; she had read the attorney's letter herself, creeping down in the middle of the night to look at the last mention of her father in her mother's study. She memorized it so she could retell it to Christophe when he returned and to Aimeé, who had lamented the loss of their gilded life before their mother cashed the last check.
Abigail readied herself, and looked at Aimeé, "I have negotiated a position for you at the Tango Rose, you will be a hostess. The owner has seen you and will allow you to keep all of your tips." She said all in one huff, observing how her daughter's face fell into a question and then into one of horror.
"I will not work there, I will not," Aimeé protested, pressing her finger onto the table, "Everyone will think I am—"
Their mother scoffed, placing the drink in front of her, "Don't be silly, girl. You will not have to do anything with those men. You are only to greet them and serve their drinks. I was told it is an upright supper club with music, and it closes early so those men can carry on to do god-knows-what further into the district."
Wasn't this what they had vowed would never happen to them, what Christophe had told them over and over when they went softly knocking on each other's door, huddling together, the three of them promising each other a different life. Bonnie shot a pleading look at her mother and sister, "I can work at the Tango Rose too," she proposed, her voice shaky. "It's only fair, and it's just serving. We can do it together."
"No!" Abigail's response was swift and firm, her shoulders straightening. "You are seventeen and will tutor the Guidry and Dupont girls. The Sisters at Sacred Friends will allow you to use a classroom in the evenings after the girls finish the school day."
Aimee let out a short laugh, her green eyes as cold as their fathers, "I guess you're too old to find us a new daddy, huh?"
Their mother's dark brown eyes narrowed, that familiar menacing look they knew from childhood that warned of a harsher punishment if they persisted. "This is how it has to be for now," She added, "I tried to tell your brother to stay, just stay where he was and finish school. I would have made a way." Abigail implored, as if her words could change the outcome of her dead son.
"On what? Our backs? "Aimeé abruptly shot up, exiting the darkened room, but Abigail swiftly got up from her chair, her skirts rustling as she closed the space between her and her eldest daughter, "I won't lose any more children, not another one." She stressed turning to face both of her daughters.
Later that evening, Bonnie lay beside Aimeé, cramped in her twin bed. Bonnie held her sister as she cried. "You will not end up like maman, Aimeé. We will find a way. The lady will make a way."
Author's Note
In the next chapter, Bonnie and Klaus meet, which will be posted during Klonnie Week.