Like A Charm

Millie looks hungry with delight. She's come closer; her fingers are inches away from the dancing trinkets.

I tuck the bracelet back under my wrist ruffle. 'Tell me!'

She crosses her arms and leans in close to my ear. She smells a little ripe, but not too bad. 'Your cousine?'

'Yes.'

'Your oncle and tante killed her.'

I shove the girl away, the flat of my hand against her collarbone. 'How dare you?'

She gives a luxurious shrug. 'All I say is what I hear.'

'Hear from whom?' I demand. 'Your Pa Philippe, or your ma?' Millie's mother works the hoe-gang, she's strong as a man. 'What would they know of my family's affairs?'

Millie is grinning as she shakes her head. 'From your tante.'

'Tante Marcelite? She'd never say such a thing.'

'No no. From your Tante Fanny.'

I'm so staggered I have to sit down. 'Millie, you know it's the blackest of sins to lie,' I remind her. 'I think you must have made up this story. You're saying that my Tante Fanny told you – you – that she and Oncle Louis murdered Eliza?'

Millie's looking sullen now. 'I don't make up nothing. I go in and out of that dusty old room five times a day with trays, and sometimes your tante is praying or talking to herself, and I hear her.'

'But this is ridiculous.' My voice is shaking. 'Why would – what reason could they possibly have had for killing their own daughter?' I run through the plots I invented, up in the attic. Did Eliza have a French lover? Did she give herself to him and fall into ruin? Could my uncle and aunt have murdered her, to save the Famille from shame? 'I won't hear any more of such stuff.'

The nègre has the gall to put her hand out, cupped for her reward.

'You may go now,' I tell her, stepping into my shoes.

Next morning, I wake up in a foul temper. My head starts hammering as soon as I lift it off the pillow. Maman is expected back from New Orleans today. I reach for my bracelet on the little table beside my bed and it's gone.

'Millie?' But she's not there, on the pallet at the foot of my bed; she's up already. She's taken my bracelet. I never mentioned giving her more than one little trinket; she couldn't have misunderstood me. Damn her for a thieving little nègre.

I could track her down in the kitchen behind the house, or in the sewing room with Tante Marcelite working on the slave clothes, or wherever she may be, but no. For once, I'll see to it that the girl gets punished for her outrageous impudence.

I bide my time; I do my lessons with Tante Fanny all morning. My skin feels greasy, I've a bouton coming on my chin; I'm a martyr to pimples. This little drum keeps banging away in the back of my head. And a queasiness, too; a faraway aching. What could I have eaten, to put me in such a state?

When the boat arrives I don't rush down to the pier; my mother hates such displays. I sit in the shady gallery and wait. When Maman comes to find me, I kiss her on both cheeks. 'Perfectly well,' I reply. (She doesn't like to hear of symptoms, unless one is seriously ill.) 'But that dreadful brat Millie has stolen a bracelet from my room.' As I say it I feel a pang, but only a little one. Such an awful story for her to make up, calling my aunt and uncle murderers of their own flesh! The least the girl deserves is a whipping.

'Which bracelet?'

'A… a gold chain, with trinkets on it,' I say, with only a small hesitation. 'I found it.'

'Found it?' she repeats, her eyebrows soaring.

I'm sweating. 'It was stoppered up in a bottle,' I improvise; 'it washed up on the levee.'

'How peculiar.'

'But it's mine,' I repeat. 'And Millie took it off my table, while I was sleeping!'

Maman nods judiciously, and turns away. 'Do tidy yourself up before dinner, Aimée, won't you?'

We often have a guest to dinner; Creoles never refuse our hospitality to anyone who needs a meal or a bed for the night, unless he's a beggar. Today it's a slave trader who comes up and down the River Road several times a year; he has a long beard that gets things caught in it. Millie and two other house nègres carry in the dishes, lukewarm as always, since the kitchen is so far behind the house. Millie's face shows nothing; she can't have been punished yet. I avoid her eyes. I pick at the edges of my food; I've no appetite today, though I usually like poule d'eau – a duck that eats nothing but fish, so the Church allows it on Fridays. I listen to the trader and Maman discuss the cost of living, and sip my glass of claret. (Papa brings in ten thousand bottles a year from his estates at Château Bon-Air; our Famille is the greatest wine distributor in Louisiana.) The trader offers us our pick of the three males he has with him, fresh from the auction block at New Orleans, but Maman says with considerable pride that we breed all we need, and more.

After dinner I'm practising piano in the salon – stumbling repeatedly over a tricky phrase of Beethoven's – when my mother comes in. 'If you can't manage this piece, Aimée, perhaps you could try one of your Schuberts?' Very dry.

'Certainly, Maman.'

'Here's your bracelet. A charming thing, if eccentric. Don't make a habit of fishing things out of the river, will you?'

'No, Maman.' Gleeful, I fiddle with the catch, fitting it round my wrist.

'The girl claimed you'd given it to her as a present.'

Guilt, like a lump of gristle in my throat.

'They always claim that, strangely enough,' remarks my mother, walking away. 'One would think they might come up with something more plausible.'

The next day I'm in Tante Fanny's room, at my lessons. There was no sign of Millie this morning, and I had to dress myself; the girl must be sulking. I'm supposed to be improving my spelling of verbs in the subjunctive mode, but my stomach is a rat's nest, my dress is too tight, my head's fit to split. I gaze out the window to the yard, where the trader's saddling his mules. He has four nègres with him, their hands lashed to their saddles.

'Do sit down, child.'

'Just a minute, Tante-'

'Aimée, come back here!'

But I'm thudding along the gallery, down the stairs. I trip over my hem, and catch the railing. I'm in the yard, and the sun is piercing my eyes. 'Maman!'

She turns, frowning. 'Where is your sunhat, Aimée?'

I ignore that. 'But Millie – what's happening?'

'I suggest you use your powers of deduction.'

I throw a desperate look at the girl, bundled up on the last mule, her mute face striped with tears. 'Have you sold her? She didn't do anything so very bad. I have the bracelet back safe. Maybe she only meant to borrow it.'

My mother sighs. 'I won't stand for thieving or back-answers, and Millie has been guilty of both.'

'But Pa Philippe, and her mother – you can't part her from them-'

Maman draws me aside, her arm like a cage round my back. 'Aimée, I won't stoop to dispute my methods with an impudent and sentimental girl, especially in front of strangers. Go back to your lesson.'

I open my mouth to tell her that Millie didn't steal the bracelet, exactly; that she thought I had promised it to her. But that would call for too much explanation, and what if Maman found out that I've been interrogating the nègres about private family business? I shut my mouth again. I don't look at Millie; I can't bear it. The trader whistles to his mules to start walking. I go back into the house. My head's bursting from the sun; I have to keep my eyes squeezed shut.

'What is it, child?' asks Tante Fanny, when I open the door. Her anger has turned to concern; it must be my face.

'I feel… weak.'

'Sit down on this sofa, then. Shall I ring for a glass of wine?'

Next thing I know I'm flat on my back, choking. I feel so sick. I push Tante Fanny's hand away. She stoppers her smelling salts. 'My dear.'