The bell sounded so harshly we both leaped to our feet. I turned to the desk, wiping my mouth against my hand. Sarah hastily fastened her dress and went to the door, glancing back only to see that her baby was secure on its cushion. I heard the bolts pulled, the creaking of the shutter hinges, and then my aunt’s voice, coming toward me. “My poor darling,” she said, as I went to her and she embraced me. “What a frightful time you must have had. Look, you are as white as a sheet. I came the moment I received your message.”
IN A TOWN where half the population is dead and the other half in hourly terror of dying, it is no easy matter to arrange a decent funeral. Mercifully my aunt set herself to the task at once. She sent an announcement to the newspaper, ordered the casket and a private hearse, and notified the cemetery of the proposed ceremony. I would have preferred to bury Mother in St. Francisville with Father and my two baby brothers, but there was no time, nor place for her there, so she must be laid to rest in the Petrie crypt with her mother and grandparents on her mother’s side. My aunt and I made a list of Mother’s relations and friends. While she went out to engage the priest, I sent cards to these people. I added Joel Borden’s name, because he was so kind to Mother and she so fond of him. I doubted that he was in town, but I wanted him to be notified upon his return.
We had just finished dinner when a second letter arrived from my husband. It was in his formal style, as if he’d recently made my acquaintance, and referred to my mother as Mrs. Gray. I read, with relief, that he was unable to attend the funeral because of his recent injury and the pressing necessity of the repairs to the mill. How far away, how long ago, my life with him seemed as I read aloud his expressions of regret and sympathy to my aunt.
“It’s just as well,” she observed. “We don’t need anyone else being carried off by this pestilence. As soon as my poor sister is buried, we should all leave town until the weather turns.”
But I had no wish to leave.
Toward dusk my aunt and I went into Mother’s room to place her body in the shroud. My aunt pressed my arm and said solemnly, “Manon, I have seen how this disease disfigures its victims. I pray you will understand when I say I would rather not see my sister’s face.”
“I can’t wish anyone who cared for her to share the memory I have,” I said truthfully, and she touched my cheek in sympathy. We left the pillowcase covering Mother’s face, slipped the shroud over her body, and stitched it closed at her feet.
We sat in the parlor sewing until it was dark. I was so exhausted I continually spoiled my work, ripping out as many stitches as I put in. My aunt, observing my frustration, urged me to bed. As I passed through the dining room I heard Peek and Sarah talking softly in the court. Peek was still weeping; there was a tearful catch in her voice. Unless Mother made some other plan for her, I thought, she is mine now. Sarah was doubtless telling her how hard her life will be when she comes to the country. In truth I hate to bring her there because she won’t get on with Delphine, though they are much alike. We have no need for a contrary cook. “Another mouth to feed,” I said as I collapsed across the bed, straight into a dreamless sleep.
THE FOUL VAPORS of the sickroom were inadequate preparation for the pestilential stench of the cemetery, yet at the gates we were accosted by free negroes who had set up as purveyors of meat pies and orgeat water. My aunt and I exchanged incredulous looks, pressing our handkerchiefs to our noses beneath our veils, as our carriage followed the hearse into what seemed to me the very vestibule of hell. Everywhere we looked, rough pine coffins were scattered in groups, awaiting gravediggers. Some had broken open in the drop from the cart, exposing their contents to great swarms of flies. I saw one box, tipped on its side, from which a shock of long black hair poured out into the mud. At every crossing there were pyramids of bones, dug out and stacked to make room for the new arrivals. The gravediggers, crude Irishmen cursing the dead, plied their shovels in knee-deep water. With a gasp my aunt pointed to a mourning couple, the woman hiding her face in the man’s arms, while he looked on tearfully at two negroes who stood on either end of a floating coffin endeavoring to seesaw it into the watery grave. How grateful I was that Mother’s family owned a crypt. My grandfather had purchased it after a spring flood sent coffins floating down the streets of the Carré. In our city, as my uncle says, underground means underwater.
The scene at this edifice was hardly less grisly. There had been a general winnowing of the dead in the crypts and the bones had simply been tossed onto the path, so we were forced to alight from the carriage with care that our skirts not sweep some finger or thighbone along with us. To our relief, Père François had arrived, the crypt was open, and three negroes stood ready to move Mother’s coffin into place. My aunt, weakened by the sun and sickened by the atmosphere, clung to my arm as we approached. The priest came quickly to her aid, murmuring his condolences to me even as he signaled the men to unload the hearse. I could not speak. I thought of how little Mother had liked Père François, of Father’s skepticism about what he called “your mother’s superstition.” The negroes labored past us, shouldering the coffin, shoved it into the space with much groaning and sweating, and backed away, their foreman being careful to pass close enough to my aunt to receive the carefully folded bill she extracted from her sleeve. The priest droned some prayers in Latin, made the sign of the cross, which my aunt and I copied like monkeys, and we were done, all of us eager to get far away from the place as fast as we could, lest we inhale that which might keep us there forever. Once we were seated in the carriage, I closed my eyes and kept them closed until I felt the horses pick up their step at the gate.