Page 61 of Frankly, My Dear

Selene felt a sense of satisfaction as she laid the papers aside, knowing she would have full days ahead. But first she had a more important responsibility.

All day a nagging image kept flitting through her mind. It seemed to her that, when she and James had been inopportunely interrupted in their lovemaking that morning, one of the spectators at the door had been a small, filthy boy with black hair and pale blue eyes…one who hadn’t obeyed his father’s command to take a bath.

“Blossom, can you tell Iris to fill the tub upstairs and provide a bunch of clean towels and lots of soap?”

The cook nodded. “I thought you already took a bath this mornin’.”

“I did. Now I’m going to bathe the brassiest brat on the bayou.”

“Not Etienne!” Blossom looked at her incredulously.

“Exactly.”

Blossom started laughing, a deep belly laugh, as Selene went off to find her victim.

Selene started her search on the fourth floor of the mansion in Etienne’s large dormered bedroom. Upon opening the door, she immediately amended her schedule for organizing the household, deciding she would need more than one week to give the house its first complete cleaning. Etienne’s room alone was going to require at least two days.

Abandoning her search for a moment, she began picking up his dirty clothing. She wished she were wearing gloves, unsure just what might crawl out of some of the pockets. Most of the threadbare apparel would have to be thrown out, or passed on to some of the slaves of smaller stature.

On the way back from her third trip to the laundry shed behind the house, carrying a pile of dirty clothing wrapped in an equally dirty sheet, Selene ran into Iris. The slave held a tray of coffee and cakes, along with a carafe of tafia, the locally brewed rum, toward the garçonnière. Obviously for Mrs. Baptiste. For the first time, Selene began to suspect that Mrs. Baptiste’s melancholia might be related to alcohol.

“Iris, why hasn’t Etienne’s clothing been washed for such a long time…or his room cleaned?”

“’Cause the li’l master won’t allow no one into his room.”

“Won’t allow? Won’t allow?” Selene sputtered. “Criminey, the kid’s only five years old.”

“Hah! You won’t be feelin’ so brave the first time you find a snake in your bed—”

“He wouldn’t dare!” I’d better start locking my door.

“—or that Dreadful dog of his sittin’ on your face when you wake in the mornin’—”

“He wouldn’t dare!” That mutt is going to be put on a leash.

“—or all your clothes gone when you step out of the bath…and a passin’ stranger standing there awatchin’, bug-eyed—”

“He wouldn’t dare!” Geez! And I’ve been leaving my clothes right next to the bathroom door…the unlocked bathroom door.

“—or, worst of all, he gits that voodoo chicken of his to put a curse on you. Onct he made Bob peck me on the leg an’ I broke out in the itchiest rash…jus” cause I tossed out a box of spiders he was savin’.”

Spiders! Oh, Lord, give me strength.

“And Noah got boils on his private parts for refusin’ to help the li’l master ride a bull.”

Enough was enough! Selene made a clucking sound of disgust. “Really, Iris! Did it ever occur to you that Noah got the boils on his genitals because he put it into something he shouldn’t have?”

Iris made a matching sound of disgust, casting her a scornful glance. “Noah is seven years old.”

“Oh. Well, regardless, I was brought here to help control Etienne, and that’s just what I’m going to do.”

Iris rolled her beautiful brown eyes skeptically. Before she went off with her carefully balanced tray, she reminded Selene, “Don’t be forgettin’ about my…what you call it?…tush. And did I tell you, I gots another two folks what wants to come to your arrow-backs?” Iris made a short bob of a curtsy and went off to perform her duties.

Selene laughed, but Iris’s warning took seed about the dirty tricks Etienne would undoubtedly employ. Snakes and spiders were not her cup of tea. Tapping her chin thoughtfully, Selene finally came up with an idea…an insurance policy, so to speak, against any forms of retaliation the little wretch might choose to throw her way. She went back to her room to obtain a few modern “good luck charms.”

Then, smiling with satisfaction, Selene began to search every room in the four-story mansion, starting at the top where, in addition to Etienne’s room, there was a nursery converted to a schoolroom. All the skins the brat had been drying there were removed, but the large room still smelled rank, so Selene opened the windows wider, leaning out to get some fresh air.

Sugarcane fields stretched for miles and miles in the distance, divided into neat rectangular plots of about forty acres each. A road, fifty feet wide, ran through the center of the fields, with deep irrigation ditches on each side. Other, narrower roads, also with the drainage trenches, ran parallel and perpendicular, every twenty-five feet or so, all of them crisscrossing the crops.