“You and Charlotte go ahead of me. I see Emile Bastion, and I need to talk to him,” said Grand-père. He walked toward one of the booths along the iron railing surrounding Place d’Armes. Most Sunday afternoons, vendors lined the park selling peanuts, ice cream, and fruit. As she watched him move through the collection of churchgoers, Lottie’s memory followed, remembering Sundays years before, when she was young enough for her dresses to be just below her knees, no one caring if her petticoats showed as she skipped alongside him. He introduced her to ginger cake, estomac mulatre, which she nibbled while he drank bière douce, ginger beer cooled in large tubs. Grand-mère would wait for them in the café at the corner of St. Ann and Chartres Streets where she and her friends gathered for coffee and gossip.
“Charlotte? Charlotte, come along.” The voice pulled the skipping little girl back into the one that stood before Grand-mère. “Open your parasol, dear. You must protect your skin from the sun.”
A familiar admonishment from her grandmother, who thought having skin the shade of a snake’s underbelly desirable. Lottie resisted the temptation to snap the royal-blue-and-beige parasol in two and, instead, complied with her request.
“Are we stopping at Rosette’s on the way home?” Lottie didn’t care about the café au lait. Having a chance to talk to Gabriel made Sunday afternoons more bearable since she didn’t even have Agnes to talk to when they arrived home. One concession most slave owners made was giving their slaves a day off on Sundays. Agnes and Abram always spent the day away from the LeClerc house. Lottie didn’t blame them. She wouldn’t be within shouting range of Grand-mère either, if she did not have to be.
“Not today. We need to begin making plans for your party. I have made an appointment with the dressmaker for you. We will meet her this week to discuss the evening gown for your debut party.” Grandmère measured Lottie with her eyes and sighed. “Surely Madame Olympe will know what to do.”
Lottie looked down, almost expecting something about her body to have changed since she’d dressed that morning. No, she still wore the patterned dress, each flounce edged in what Agnes told her was robin’s-egg blue. Not that Lottie had ever seen a robin’s egg, but she was not going to argue. Clearly, she did not have her grandmother’s ample proportions, above or below. But even without the dreaded corset, her waist measured twenty inches.
Lottie did not see the necessity in spending more time or more money on something of no interest to her. Two things, actually: the party and the dress. “But, Grand-mère, I already have a beautiful evening gown that I have worn only once. The gold silk dress with the long sleeves, remember?”
“No sensible young lady would think to wear a dress already worn to one of the most important social events in her life. Especially when the young lady is making her debut later than most,” said Grand-mère.
Charlotte heard the unspoken “tsk, tsk” in her tone and decided not to pursue the discussion. Evidently she was not a sensible young lady.
* * * * *
Two days later Lottie and Justine decided to take advantage of a ready chaperone in Agnes and accompany her as she shopped for the day’s meal. They strolled around the French Market within shouting distance of her. She had threatened them with eternal punishment if they wandered out of range. The two young women would not have been all that difficult to distinguish in the crowd. At that time in the morning, vendors and servants of the wealthy mingled, creating a swell of conversations. The soft ripples of Spanish and Italian, punctuated by the gravelly German voices and the melodic French, became a gumbo of languages. On the fringes of the market, Indians wrapped in coarsefibered blankets sold blowguns.
“Be careful,” Agnes said as she pointed to the wagons threading their way through the people—one carting bushels of plump tomatoes, another filled with mountains of cabbages and lettuce, and none of them paying much attention to the shoppers. “Stay out they way cuz they not going to stay out of yours.”
“We promise. I asked Grand-mère for money for calas and coffee. Did she remember?” Lottie asked.
Agnes reached into her apron pocket. “She sure did. I made sure to remind her that you two girls need to eat something for breakfast.”
“Thank you,” Lottie said as Agnes handed her the coins. She looked at the money in her hand. “You know, Justine, I think we can squeeze out enough to buy Agnes breakfast too.”
“Well, then, hurry on you two, so you come back soon. Don’t want no cold calas. Like trying to bite a rock.” Agnes smiled as she walked away.