Page 7 of Fragile Wicked Things

Four

A thick plume of exhaust puffed up from the engine as the train steadily approached the station, and when it arrived with a great roar in all the tumult of the depot, it looked decidedly unglamorous, covered in filth and soot all along its length.

I stood on the concrete platform, operating in slow motion, checking my ticket countless times, verifying the date and time, while men, women and children sped past me, a blur of color and a babble of voices.

A couple, carrying a large bag between them, crossed my path, bumping me, and the man let out a muffled apology without looking at me.

When I boarded, I flagged down a middle-aged porter, his black beard streaked with grey, as he hurried past me down the narrow corridor.

He glanced at my ticket, adjusted his cap, sweat trickling downwards in a crooked path to his left cheek, then pointed to the next car and rushed off.

The tiny windows along the corridor were closed, the stifling heat suffocating me.

I stopped to lean against one of the windows, undid the top button of my blouse, and let out a breath.

Then, I walked unsteadily to the common area of the following car and sat near an open window.

A breeze cooled me, the sensation calming, and then I worried about what direction the train would travel.

What if going backwards made me sick? As I debated whether to move to the adjacent seat, a family sat beside me, making the decision for me.

There were four of them: a little boy, his parents and his grandmother.

The mother sat in front of me, picked up her child and placed him on her lap.

They smiled, and I acknowledged them with a polite nod, but the young boy stared at me and then spoke to his mother in a foreign language that sounded like German.

The train whistled and jerked, thrusting me forward as it accelerated out of the station.

The city stockyards flew by, then the Frye General Store, where I often went to buy items like mending kits, soap, toothpaste and gum for Lowood.

White houses with brown crooked fences whipped past: Lord of Mercy Church, where Pastor John presided; the lumber yard, where men were loading up their trucks.

Finally, there came unending farmland. We had left Kansas behind. I would never return.

The man near me tore at a bag of peanuts, cracked open the shells and handed the nuts one by one to his son, who ate them, making loud crunching sounds.

The boy leaned his head against his mother's chest and stared out the window, his image reflected on the glass, eyes blinking among the backdrop of trees. He, too, became mesmerized by the scenery of farmers’ fields in bucolic settings and red brick schoolhouses swarming with children.

We traveled past Brookhaven, Magnolia, Independence, and some small places that could barely be called towns.

Hours later, as the boy slept in his mother's arms, we crossed a river.

The water made its way to a lake; cars sped past on the overpass to the east, and finally, we came to Lake Pontchartrain along the Gulf Coast. A bridge crossed over it, leading to the city.

New Orleans. My excitement swelled. My heart pounded, and my knuckles whitened from clasping my sweaty hands together.

At first, the landscape was littered with a smattering of buildings, then transformed into a dense one of compacted neighborhoods—apartments with clotheslines that hung off balconies, people loitering outside storefronts, and cars that sped past them on the roads.

I had heard it described as nothing more than a fishbowl beneath the water level.

The train stopped with a long screech, and I reached for my carryall, the one I had taken to Lowood, my life packed away in a small, ordinary bag with my name and the words "Thornfield Hall" dangling on a card.

Strangers hustled and bustled through the station; some looked around as if searching for a loved one, but that loved one wasn't me, and soon they would be hugging lost family members.

Others were alone, but, unlike me, they moved with purpose.

I stood so perfectly still that I became almost invisible.

Where were they all going? Why did I travel so far, thinking I could create a new life for myself?

The thought overwhelmed me, my breath shortened, and I plopped down on a wooden bench.

Someone was to fetch me, but I could see no one approaching me.

I waited, staring at a mural with four panels, each depicting a different era in the history of New Orleans—men with top hats playing cards, slaves working the fields, a soldier with bayonet in hand, men before a firing squad.

On another wall, a poster advertised that a singer named Ella Fitzgerald would play a venue in the French Quarter.

Ella. What a beautiful name, not plain sounding at all but ladylike.

"Miss Jane E?" someone said.

I looked up to find a man staring at me, holding a crumpled sheet of paper. I nodded.

"Bin flashing this here sign for forty-five damn minutes. That all you bring with you?" He pointed to the carryall at my feet.

"Yes."

He scooped it up and walked away, turned back and said, "Well, come on then. I ain't got all day."

That was my abrupt welcome to New Orleans.

I followed him out onto a loud and busy street. Drivers honked at a vagrant sauntering on the roadway. Street trolleys squeaked past. Shoppers jostled along with bags—I devoured every bit of the chaos. The street was called Loyola, and I liked its name. New Orleans promised to be loyal.

My driver placed my bag in the trunk of a black convertible, seated himself behind the giant steering wheel and looked at me as I stood outside, waiting. "Aincha gettin' in?"

I got in, and off we went, driving so quickly past the street signs I barely made out "Canal Street" and "Storyville.

" Lincoln's Department Store advertised an "Amazing Sale" in big, red lettering.

The pungent smell of boiled crawfish smacked my senses, and I covered my nose as we steered past the market where city dwellers loitered about in their office clothes, picking up fresh fish and vegetables.

To my right stood Hotel Mackenzie. To my left, Le Grand Hotel.

New Orleans was a vibrant place where people came from all over America to make a home.

Its population swelled in numbers, a welcoming place for newcomers, except for me, who was being carried away.

"You have a nice car, Mr..." I shouted over the sound of wind and cars whizzing past us on the freeway.

"Ain't mine," he shouted back.

"What is it?"

"Caddy." The name didn't register, so he answered again. "Cadillac. It belongs to Rochester, but he's out of town, so I took it for a spin. The name's Buddy."

"I'm looking forward to meeting the Rochesters. Are they good people to work for?"

"You'll see," he said and turned on the radio, raising the volume in a gesture to silence me. Strands of hair lashed at my cheek. I pulled a clip from my purse and wound my hair into a bun to tame it, checking out my image in the sideview mirror. Behind me, New Orleans grew smaller in the distance.

The area was a farming community, flat and isolated, much like Lowood had been.

Ahead stood a stone wall, about three or four feet tall, with the plaque "Thornfield Hall," but I could see nothing beyond the trees lined up against the road.

Buddy swerved the car into the driveway, the back wheels spinning on the gravel, kicking up dust. I braced myself against the dashboard, and he grinned.

If he meant to frighten me, he succeeded, but I said nothing and stared ahead.

A canopy of giant oak trees covered the driveway, branches reaching over to barely touch one another like a crisscross of bayonets. Later, I would learn of the post-Civil War home's history but the planting of those oak trees predated the home by one hundred years.

Stone columns encircled the classic Greek-revival two-story home; black window shutters set off the house's white color; two verandas wrapped around the building on each level.

It was a grand home, but as we drove up, I noticed the cracked, flaking paint of the black shutters, the yellowing of the white brick and the uncultivated Japanese azaleas.

To one side of the house sat a barn, the hee-hawing of horses emanating from within.

"They have horses." I didn't mean this to come out as a statement, telling Buddy something he already knew.

"Rochester loves to ride."

For the second time, I noticed he had dropped the preface "Mr.," yet I couldn't tell if it was from a closeness he felt to his employer or as a sign of disrespect. I suspected the latter.

As we stopped before the house, the main door flung open, and a short, stout Black woman hurried to us. Her eyebrows raised as she looked at Buddy.

"Buddy, you gone and took this car when you know Mr. Rochester doesn't like anybody messing with it. You were supposed to drive the ole pickup."

Buddy ignored her at first and slammed the car door behind him while I quietly closed mine.

Standing on the drive next to her, I worried that I was in trouble too, but the woman didn't bother with me.

Instead, she followed Buddy to the back of the car as he grabbed my luggage from the trunk and handed it to me.

All the while she berated him. Finally, he had his fill.

"Rochester's outta town. A good wash and he won't know nothin'."

"Mr. Rochester left me in charge..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Buddy drove the car to the garage next to the barn.