Merrick - Anne Rice [11]
She took her time, then found what she wanted. Next picture.
“And you see here, this one?” She had laid down another old photograph, this time of an elderly gray-haired man of color in a stately wooden chair. “The Old Man is what they always called him. I don’t even know him by any other name. He went back to Haiti to study the magic, and he taught Oncle Vervain all he knew. Sometimes I feel Oncle Vervain is talking to me. Sometimes I feel he’s outside our house watching over Great Nananne. I saw the Old Man once in a dream.”
I had wanted so badly to ask questions, but this had not been the time.
“See here, this is Pretty Justine,” she had said, laying down perhaps the most impressive portrait of all—a studio picture on thick cardboard inside a sepia cardboard frame. “Pretty Justine had everybody afraid of her.” The young woman was indeed pretty, her breasts flat in the style of the 1920s, her hair in a bob, her dark skin quite beautiful, her eyes and mouth slightly expressionless, or perhaps evincing a certain pain.
Now came the modern snapshots, thin and curling, the work of common enough hand-held cameras of the present time.
“They were the worst—his sons,” she had said as she pointed to the curling black-and-white picture. “They were Pretty Justine’s grandchildren, all white and living in New York. They wanted to get their hands on anything that said they were colored and tear it up. Great Nananne knew what they wanted. She didn’t fall for their soft manners and the way they took me downtown and bought me pretty clothes. I still have those clothes. Little dresses nobody ever wore and little shoes with clean soles. They didn’t leave us an address when they left. See, look at them in the picture. Look how anxious they are. But I did bad things to them.”
Aaron had shaken his head, studying the strange tense faces. As the pictures had disquieted me, I had kept my eyes on the womanish child.
“What did you do, Merrick?” I had asked without biting my tongue wisely.
“Oh, you know, read their secrets in their palms and told them bad things they’d always tried to cover up. It wasn’t kind to do that, but I did it, just to make them go away. I told them our house was full of spirits. I made the spirits come. No, I didn’t make them come. I called them and they came as I asked. Great Nananne thought it was funny. They said, ‘Make her stop,’ and Great Nananne said, ‘What makes you think I can do that?’ as if I was some wild creature that she couldn’t control.”
Again there had come that little sigh.
“Great Nananne’s really dying,” she said looking up at me, her green eyes never wavering. “She says there is no one now, and I have to keep these things—her books, her clippings. See, look here, at these clippings. The old newspaper is so brittle it’s falling apart. Mr. Lightner’s going to help me save these things.” She glanced at Aaron. “Why are you so afraid for me, Mr. Talbot? Aren’t you strong enough? You don’t think it’s so bad to be colored, do you? You’re not from here, you’re from away.”
Afraid. Was I really feeling it so strongly? She’d spoken with authority, and I’d searched for the truth in it, but come quick to my own defense and perhaps to hers as well.
“Read my heart, child,” I said. “I think nothing of the sort about being colored, though maybe there were times when I’ve thought that it might have been bad luck in a particular case.” She’d raised her eyebrows slightly, thoughtfully. I’d continued, anxious, perhaps, but not afraid. “I’m sad because you say you have no one, and I’m glad because I know that you have us.”
“That’s what Great Nananne says, more or less,” she answered. And for the first time, her long full mouth made a true smile.
My mind had drifted, remembering the incomparable dark-skinned women I’d seen in India,