Page 140 of Frankly, My Dear

She slanted him a scoffing look. “And declare Etienne illegitimate? I wouldn’t allow you to do that.”

“Don’t go,” he pleaded. He took her by the upper arms and pulled her closer.

“I can’t go. That’s the point. You’ve taken my ballgown, and I want it back. Now.”

His eyes widened with surprise, and pain stabbed at his heart. “You think I stole your gown? That I would force you to stay against your wishes?”

She glanced at him guiltily. It was exactly what she’d thought.

“Without trust we have nothing,” he lashed out angrily. Then he shoved away from her and moved toward the door. “I’m sick of all the turmoil, Selene. I need you at my side, not fighting me.” He lifted his hands in a hopeless gesture. “I’ll find the damned gown for you. And then you can go to your time, or go to hell. I don’t care. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

But he did care. Desperately.

How would he ever survive without Selene?

An hour later, Selene was in the sewing room helping Reba cut fabric for the slaves’ clothing. She looked up to see Mrs. Baptiste enter, carrying her ballgown.

“I took the gown,” James’s mother confessed, handing it to her. “I knew you were thinking of going away. I heard you and James talking in the library one day, and I thought…” She shrugged and dipped her chin guiltily. “Please forgive me, my dear.”

“You’re going away?” Reba asked in alarm. “You can’t leave us now.”

Selene patted her friend’s hand.

Reba jerked away from her. “You would desert us…abandon us to that madwoman?”

“Reba, she’s his wife…the mistress of this plantation,” Selene tried to explain. “I have no place here now.”

“You wormed your way into our lives…our hearts…and then you just strut away, like one of your modeling shoots,” Reba accused, throwing down her scissors and running for the door.

“That’s not fair,” Selene started to say, but Reba was already gone.

Mrs. Baptiste cast Selene an equally condemning look and left her alone.

By St. John’s Eve, no one was speaking to Selene. They all treated her like a rat about to jump ship. It was not the way Selene had wanted to leave.

No one knew how she planned to leave, except James and Mrs. Baptiste. The others didn’t ask, probably assuming she would hitch a ride on one of the grocery or mail boats that floated by on a regular basis.

That afternoon the drums began beating early, announcing one of the most important of all voodoo celebrations—St. John’s Eve. The festivals held throughout Louisiana on that feast day would worship both the snake god known as the gran Zombi and St. John the Baptist, called by the African name Agomme Tonnerree.

The day took on an even more bizarre note when Giselle came strolling down the staircase, laughing gaily, dressed to the nines in a green silk, off-the-shoulder gown with wide hoops. The listless look had left her eyes, and although she was thinner than when she had arrived, her body carried a bounce of unnatural vigor.

Everyone realized immediately that Giselle had somehow obtained more drugs. And they soon learned how when a shout from above alerted them that the slave who guarded her gallery door lay unconscious, having been struck on the head.

Giselle refused to answer any questions, even James’s angry interrogation. She just smiled secretively and acted as if it were another normal day at Bayou Noir.

Before he left again for the fields, Selene tried to talk to James, to say her last good-byes. He walked away from her, but not before Selene saw the hurt and despair in his pale blue eyes.

Bracing herself with determination, knowing she did the right thing, Selene tied up all the loose ends of her existence in the bayou house. She set out lesson plans for Etienne, whose idea of a good-bye was to kick her in the shin and run away. She instructed the brooding Iris, Hyacinth, and Verbena on the continued upkeep of the house and laundry. She hugged a stiff Blossom, who refused to return her embrace.

James stayed away all day. As the afternoon progressed, the servants avoided the house and Giselle’s hysterical laughter.

By nightfall, Selene had to take one of Blossom’s headache powders. Her head throbbed to the beat of the incessant drums and her aching heart, not to mention the claps of thunder.

Just then a loud bang shot through the air. The lightning was striking precariously close now. She would have to check on Etienne.

Selene had already moved her ballgown and the seed packets to her old bedroom on the third floor, not wanting to disturb James’s sleeping mother. With a heavy heart, she went there at about eleven o’clock, and with painstaking care she pressed exactly 151 black seeds into the voodoo doll, one for each year she wanted to travel forward. Then she donned the precious garment, which seemed somehow hateful to her now.

Or she tried to don the gown.