Page 4 of The Killer Cupcake (Poison Cherry #3)
THE TREMé
T he Illinois Central train released a final, exhausted sighas it yielded to the platform beneath a suffocating blanket of magnolia-scented humidity.
Kathy stepped down first, her fingers instinctively lacing through Willa's trembling hand as they emerged into a world that announced its brutality before they'd taken three steps.
"Girl, you’re shaking like a leaf,”Kathy murmured, pressing close.
"I know, I'm sorry. Just... ain't never seen so much of the world all at once,"Willa whispered back, her Mississippi drawl thickening with awe.
Instead of the grand concourse with its marble floors and crystal chandeliers, Kathy had glimpsed through the train windows, they were herded into the "Colored Only" annex—a claustrophobic sweatbox reeking of coal tar, stale urine, and something sharper beneath: the metallic bite of humiliation.
A freshly stenciled sign glared above the doorway: "WAITING ROOM FOR NEGROES. "
To Kathy—Harlem-raised, then tempered by the long Greyhound ride into the French Quarter—this was expected.
The way white porters shoved their luggage at them was like handling contaminated goods.
The way "WHITE" and "COLORED" signs splintered the station like hatchet blows.
But behind her, Willa stood paralyzed. Her Sunday dress, painstakingly pressed for this journey, suddenly looked drab against the riot of Black elegance surrounding them: women crowned in emerald and ruby turbans, men in razor-creased suits, all carrying themselves with a defiance that turned segregation into a runway.
"Sweet Jesus, Kathy," Willa breathed as a white policeman strolled past, his billy club thock-thocking against his thigh like a countdown. "Look at these folks.”
Kathy surveyed the unapologetic splendor of colored people around them and grinned. This was the South's best-kept secret—a beauty that Willa's sharecropping life had never shown her.
"You think this is something?" Kathy squeezed her hand."Just wait till you meet Aunt Janey."
As if summoned, the crowd suddenly parted like the Red Sea.
A woman materialized from the sweat-shimmered air, dressed head to toe in blinding white.
Elbow-length silk gloves. A pillbox hat with French lace veiling her face, now etched in spiderweb shadows across cheekbones, sharp, lips, ruby red.
She moved through the "Colored" section with the serene dominion of a queen, ignoring a peasant revolt—utterly indifferent to the glares from white travelers and the hissed, indrawn breaths from the women of color.
"Janey Boanno," Kathy chuckled to herself now that she knew her aunt really was. “Look, Willa, that’s my aunt, my Ma’s baby sister. The baby of the family of girls.”
Janey swept forward with arms extended, and Kathy dropped Willa’s hand.
She rushed into her aunt’s warm embrace.
Janey pressed her lips to each of Kathy's cheeks in the Continental fashion of a cultured lady.
Her perfume —an intoxicating blend of jasmine and vanilla—completely obliterated the station's oppressive stench.
" Ma petite chérie ! You made it safely," Janey purred in that voice like aged wisdom, then turned her golden, cat-like gaze to Willa. "And here she is. The brave little one who helped us spread the lie?”
“Aunt Janey!” Kathy gasped.
Willa’s eyes stretched, like a scared cat.
Janey let out a peal of laughter that made the heads of both black and white men turn. “Oh, I’m just kiddin’ suga. Bienvenue à la Nouvelle-Orléans , my darling."
Willa's mouth fell open as her eyes scanned Janey’s bold confidence.
Kathy knew what Willa was thinking. Janey's skin was the color of milk with a touch of honey, her eyes flecked with gold were sharp with intelligence—a woman who could have easily passed for white in any Northern city if she hid from the sun, but who chose to stand here, magnificent and uncompromising, in this segregated area.
With a sharp snap of her gloved fingers, Janey summoned a tall Black chauffeur who materialized as if from thin air, efficiently loading their modest luggage onto a gleaming brass cart. "This way, mes beautés . Alphonse has the Caddy waiting."
The 1949 Cadillac Series 62 sat curbside like a pearl dropped from heaven—pristine white with chrome that gleamed under the Louisiana sun. A white man in a rumpled seersucker suit blocked the sidewalk as Janey ushered the girls toward the magnificent machine.
" Dégage, connard ," Janey muttered under her breath.
The man sneered, and Kathy could see Willa shrink next to her and lower her gaze.
Kathy looped her arm around Willa’s and pulled her close as they prepared to walk around him, but Janey, who led them, nearly bumped him over as she kept walking straight.
And he had to step aside. The girls mimicked Kathy’s aunt’s confidence.
And soon she felt Willa’s spine straighten and her walk with confidence as well.
For Willa, the car's interior was a revelation that bordered on the sacred. She ran her fingers over the upholstery, softer than anything she'd ever imagined, struck speechless as they glided past St. Charles Avenue's towering antebellum mansions—palatial homes.
For Kathy, New Orleans revealed itself as Harlem's more elegant, yet infinitely more dangerous, cousin.
Gas lamps flickered off over elaborate wrought-iron balconies as the night gave way to day; talented Black musicians played sultry jazz for clusters of white tourists on street corners, their music floating through the humid air like liquid soul.
But she couldn't ignore how eyes followed Janey's Cadillac—some filled with friendliness, others with naked hatred.
Janey lit a cigarette with a golden lighter that flashed like captured sunlight. She exhaled smoke through slightly parted lips. "Y'all can breathe now, darlings. In my car, you belong to me. Ain't no Jim Crow laws in this Caddy—just my rules, and my rules say you're royalty."
They turned into Tremé, and suddenly the world transformed into a symphony of visual and auditory delights: Creole cottages painted in sherbet colors lined tree-shaded streets, and the mouthwatering aroma of beans simmering with cayenne pepper. It filled the air.
Then Janey's house rose before them, regal and royal.
It was a three-story "shotgun mansion"—an impossibility that shouldn't exist but stood there nonetheless, painted a defiant periwinkle blue with intricate white gingerbread trim that looked like lace frozen in wood.
Wrought-iron galleries on each level dripped with emerald ferns and purple bougainvillea.
Through a gate adorned with gilded fleur-de-lis , they glimpsed a hidden courtyard where a fountain sprouted, cooling the air with its water.
Willa stopped dead on the sidewalk, her eyes wide as saucers. "This... this is a colored house? Sweet Jesus, it's bigger and prettier than anything in Butts!”
Inside, Kathy felt her breath catch and hold.
Chandeliers hung over mahogany floors that gleamed like dark mirrors.
Oil portraits of Creole elite who weren’t Janey's ancestors—proud men and women in satin and silk, their eyes blazing with the fire of rebellion—gazed down from gilded frames that probably cost more than most families earned in a year.
Where a cotton scale might have dominated the corner of a Mississippi parlor, a magnificent grand piano stood like a shrine to culture and refinement.
Janey tossed her gloves onto a Louis XVI settee with casual elegance, the gesture speaking volumes about a life where luxury was routine rather than aspiration.
"Welcome to Liberté, mes petites . My husband bought this from one of the wealthiest Octroons in all of Louisiana. Her great-grand-mère bought this land in 1829—paid in gold coins. That’s the story they tell. ”
A Black maid in a starched white apron trimmed with delicate lace appeared as if summoned by magic, offering sweet tea in cut-crystal glasses that caught the light like liquid amber.
Willa approached the piano and pressed one key with a finger.
The note sang pure and clear through the magnificent room, and tears glistened in her eyes.
"I never knew... I never dreamed our people could live like this. Like kings and queens. No one ever told me.”
"We don't just live, ma chère . We thrive. We take what the world says we can't have and make it ours through grit like Big Mama, through pain like my Mama, and sometimes a little bit of wickedness like me.”
Kathy frowned. She had heard an earful from her mother about the wickedness in Janey. Some of it she refused to believe. But looking at her life, and the unapologetic way she moved through it, she had to think the word ‘wicked’ should be replaced with ‘wonder’.
Kathy approached the wide picture window overlooking the courtyard's orange trees, their fruit glowing like lanterns in the gathering new day.
Suddenly, Carmelo's world—violent yet lavish, dangerous yet defiant—crystallized in her understanding.
She remembered visiting his house for the first time and being awestruck by the opulence.
This wasn't simply a house or even a home. This was a declaration of war won through wallpaper and chandeliers, a testament to the power of refusing to accept limitations imposed by others based on race.
Questions burned in her mind. How did Boanno find her aunt after he left Butts all those months ago? Why didn't he take her to Paris like he promised? Was she still in trouble with the law in California?
"Kathy?" Janey spoke.
"Yes'm," Kathy turned.
"Carmelo's here," Janey said.
Willa looked up from the piano bench.
Janey's sly smile was slick with mischief. "Not here in the house, but in the Quarter. He'll be arriving soon. You’ve traveled far, baby. Don't you want to change for the reunion?"
Kathy nodded eagerly.
Janey's gaze slipped to Willa. She was the darkest of the three of them, her beauty covered by her meager existence on the Jensen farm, never pampered, never nurtured. "You girls have to look and behave like royalty here. I have a reputation with these Creoles. Come with me, Willa."
Willa got up from the piano and walked over to Janey, who took her hand.
"I'll work on you myself." She then addressed Kathy.
"Your clothes are in the room to the right on the second floor.
You will know it when you see it. That is yours and Carmelo's room, and Pinkie will make sure she has everything you need. "
Willa looked at her with eyes stretched wide and pleading for help. Kathy smiled. "It's okay, Janey will be gentle."
Janey tossed out a playful laugh and walked away. Kathy glanced at the servant and then at the stairwell that led up to her new wardrobe. Thrilled, she hurried up each step.