Page 60 of Frankly, My Dear

“No! Absolutely not!” Selene asserted firmly. Geez, these people treated her like some deity, a goddess who could dole out perfect body parts on a whim. Then, feeling bad at having snapped at poor Reba, she added, “Maybe.”

“Wait till I tell Lily,” Iris said with a whoop of joy. “She ain’t got no tits atall.”

Yup! James is not going to be a happy camper.

An hour later, Selene was sitting at the kitchen table with Blossom, sipping her second cup of strong Creole coffee. It was already past noon, and she had consumed a combination breakfast and lunch of corn cakes, hominy, bacon, eggs, greens, homemade bread, and freshly churned butter. Aerobics were number one on her menu for the next day.

She dipped a quill into the inkwell in front of her and began to scratch out words on the paper Iris had brought for her. “Okay, now give me the names of all the slaves and free workers on the plantation, those not engaged by James in the sugar fields or other hard labor.” After much deliberation, and consultation with records she’d found in the library, they came up with about thirty names, mostly women, and children over the age of seven.

“Now we can make a schedule of duties to assign to these servants so that at least the inside of the house, the yard, and kitchen gardens can be brought back to order.”

“’Bout time,” Blossom agreed. “Mam’zelle Baptiste always did this before, but she been…well, indisposed, of late. An’ my legs jist won’t allow me to climb those stairs no more. Nosirree. What this house needs is a new mistress. Yessirree, it does.” She eyed Selene speculatively at her last words.

“Not me,” Selene said with a laugh. “I’m just here for a brief…vacation.” Vacation, huh! Club Med of the Bayou, not!

Selene inhaled deeply of the delicious scents wafting about the cozy kitchen, so unlike her antiseptic white enamel one back home. Cooking was done in an open hearth and a brick oven but mostly on a unique potager, which was a tile counter with built-in “stew holes” over charcoal burners. Selene assumed this was a forerunner of the stovetop ranges to come.

Right now, the traditional jambalaya was simmering on the potager, redolent with smoked ham, shrimp, onions, tomatoes, rice, and red peppers.

“By the way, why do you call Mrs. Baptiste Mam’zelle?” Selene asked, calling herself back to the job at hand. Then she remembered that James’s father had never married his mother. “And it is Mrs. Baptiste, isn’t it?”

“All the white ladies are Mam’zelle,” Blossom said with a shrug. “And Mam’zelle always called herself Baptiste, as far as I knows. Don’t know if she gots a legal right. Don’t knows that it matters much here.”

Selene nodded. “When can I meet Mrs. Baptiste?”

James had gone out to the garçonnière, a separate building to the side of the house sometimes used as a bachelors’ quarters, to see his mother the night before. She’d refused to budge from her self-confinement.

Blossom hedged. “Mam’zelle don’t want no visitors till she be feelin’ better.”

Selene turned back to her list. “I just noticed something,” she said with a laugh. “Almost all the women slaves have flower names, and the male ones are from the Bible. Look here. We have Blossom, Hyacinth, Verbena, Lily, Iris, Rose Petal, Daisy, Gardenia, Azalia, Violet. And the men…Abraham, Jacob, Ezekiel, Cain and Abel…holy cow, Cain and Abel?”

“Those be Iris’ twin boys.”

Selene shook her head with amazement at a mother choosing those particular biblical names for her babies, and continued, “Isaiah, Moses, Noah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John—”

“Yessirree,” Blossom agreed with a smile. She had been kneading bread dough the entire time Selene was making her list and chatting with her. “Those be the slaves what come with the plantation when Master James bought it ten years ago. The old master just opened the Bible ever’ time a new boy was borned, and the mistress had a sketch book of flowers from France what she used to name the girl babies. Didn’t have to do much thinkin’ that way.”

Selene shook her head ruefully.

“Master James gave most of those slaves their freedom papers las’ year, includin’ me, but we’s stayed on, all of us,” Blossom declared proudly.

“Really?”

“Yessum, when he first come here ten years ago, Master James done tol’ us if we works hard for him and don’t cause no trouble, after five years he would give us a five-year indenture. Was ’bout twenty-seven of us las’ year. Should be ’bout ten more after this harvest season, and every year to come.”

“And do you get paid? I mean, I know James doesn’t have much money.”

“A bit,” Blossom said, “but the menfolks gets to clear a piece of land for their own sugar crops and sell ’em along with the master’s. It’s more’n most of us have ever had.”

“Well, that’s…remarkable,” Selene said. These policies didn’t make James’s being a slaveholder right, but he was redeemed somewhat in her eyes. Not that he needed or wanted her admiration. He’d made that clear when they’d parted this morning. Selene put that painful thought aside, not wanting to think about the powerful attraction that had almost resulted in their making love without thought for the consequences.

“And, believe you me, it don’t sit too well with the other planters in Terrebonne Parish, or down the bayou, for that matter.” Blossom patted the huge ball of dough with a final flourish and set it aside, wiping her floury hands on her long white apron. “Now, let’s see what you gots on that chart of yours.”

Within the hour, they had set up a daily schedule for inside the house. Taking one room at a time, the mansion would be given a thorough cleaning, from ceiling to floor. Wool carpets and heavy draperies would be taken outside, beaten clean, then wrapped in tobacco leaves until the winter as protection against moths. Clean rush mats would be laid over polished wood floors, and lighter lace curtains hung on the windows.

A thorough housecleaning would probably take at least a week, but Selene vowed the windows would sparkle, the furniture would gleam, and the interior of the house would be as clean as any human being could possibly make it. Then, using her mother’s organizational skills, Selene drew up a daily schedule of duties to be performed on a regular basis. She assigned Iris to be the head housekeeper, Blossom the cook, of course, and Verbena the head laundress.

She was just beginning to realize how much work was involved in cooking and doing laundry by hand for more than one hundred people every day. A daunting task, but one she looked forward to with an odd relish.