Under the Willows

         Fairytales lie. There is no happily ever after, just an ever after. That white knight that is supposed to carry  you off into the sunset is just a mirage created by wishful thinking and innocent dreams. No matter how hard you try,  that wicked stepmother just stays wicked.  That castle off in the distance is really a prison with the doors locked tight. There is no escape, not even in death.

         My mama was a Quadroon, the black mistress of a wealthy plantation owner in Lousiana. Oh she was the belle of the Quadroon Ball the night she came out. Every man in the room wanted her, but only one had the right frame of mind to woo my grandmama to his side. Momma didn't really have a choice in the matter. The arangements were made so fast her head was spinning. Within days, she was set up in a small house on Rampart Street in New Orleans. She had everything she ever wanted, except for love. But that was a luxury in those days. And black folk, even light skinned, beautiful ones, didn't waste time on luxuries. Mama was 16 that year. Life on Rampart Street was just fine behind closed doors, but the outside world was something different. Mama was trash to the white women of New Orleans, even though they had to show her some respect. After all, she held the ear of a very eligible young man and it wouldn't do to upset him when it came time for him to take a wife. Within a year, the inevitable happened and I was born, Melissa La Croix. I wasn't the son Papa wanted, but I'd do. And I was lucky, I was born alabaster white.  Time passed and I grew, which children often do. I was 4 when Papa took a wife. I can remember Mama being terribly upset. She tried everything in her power to keep him, even visiting the local voodoo priestess. But no amount of gris-gris could hold Papa with us. He tossed Mama to the side and forgot her. But I was a different story. Mama hated me for it with almost as much passion as she hated Papa.  Her tongue was as sharp as the whip I often felt. Secrets where kept in those days, and it was years before Papa knew what Mama had become. The storm that had been brewing for years finally broke free and it left Mama lying dead on the parlor floor. By her hand or Papa's, I could never be sure. The next morning, I was sent as far away from New Orleans as could be arranged. I was 10
when I arrived in France, headed for an education at an exclusive school. France was more tolerant of my mixed heritage and it was soon forgotten. I grew up white.

         I was 16 when I met Andrew Boudreaux. He was a dashing young gentleman on a black horse. I fell in love the minute I saw him, forgetting the lessons I had learned at Mama's hand, that love was for fools and children. He, much to the dismay of his mother, fell in love with me and was determined that we were to marry.  Papa had set aside plenty of money for my care and upbringing, and that is what eventually swayed Madame Boudreaux. Money and heirs is all that concerned her. By the time I was 17, I was wed and about to be returned to the land of my birth. The scandal that was my Mama had long since died and I returned to Louisiana a married white woman.

         Now the Boudreaux estate wasn't in New Orleans itself, rather it was tucked back in the bayou. It was a dark, dreary place even then. There aren't enough flowers on this earth that can change that or cover the stench of the swamp. I shivered as I entered the house. I should have known then that something wasn't right, that something more poweful than love and money resided in that place. But I wasn't there to be anything but a brood mare, which often pointed out to me by my mother in law. I was alone, with no one except the whispering willows to call my friends.
         
         My once sweet Andrew began to change within the walls of the mansion. He grew cold and mean, a mockery of the man he had been in France. There were more mornings than I can count in which I woke up bleeding and bruised. The sweet lovemaking I had known was replaced with debaucheries I had only heard whispers of.  How I dreaded the night he came to my bedchamber, the beautifully decorated torture room that it had become. My pregnancy was welcomed, for 9 months I would be free of him. I relished that time, my belly swelling with child as each day went by. Even Madame Boudreaux softened towards me. I had at last fulfilled my duties.

         And then the babe was born, a beautiful little boy that looked every bit like his father.

         I had a few wonderful months with my son, my first son. And his father hated him for it. Andrew was jealous of his own son. Insanely jealous. Jealous enough to creep into the nursery one night. Mean enough to remove him from the crib.  Evil enough to throw the baby against the wall, killing him.

         Madame Boudreaux was the one that found him, standing over his son's body. She was as cold and as evil as he was. The nursemaid that walked in claimed that she heard them laughing as the child stuggled to take his last breath. I can believe it. It was the Madame that came to tell me that my son, my beautiful baby boy, was dead. There was no emotion in her voice, no explanation. He was simply..dead. Three days later, he was placed in a tiny casket and locked in the Boudreaux family crypt.

         One the fourth day, the whispers of rumors began. The neighbors declared that the baby had been born black...he was deformed... he was not Andrew's child. So many rumors...and in all of them, I was the one in the wrong. Many believed that I had killed my own child, completely ignoring Andrew's cruel nature. But I didn't... I couldn't.

         On the fifth day, Andrew began visiting me a night once more. He was even more cruel than before, more possessive. He would make me do things, things that even now, shame me. There was no part of me that he did not violate, did not subject to his ministrations.  I prayed for deliverence, and received shame in response.

         There was one ray of light during those times. I finally found a friend in one of the young slave girls that worked in the house. I arranged for her to become my ladies' maid, so I could keep her close. She was the one that would treat my wounds after Andrew's visits and the one that dried my tears as night approached.  But even though I tried, I could not keep her safe from Andrew. One evening, he dragged her from her chambers and brought her into mine. While I watched helpless, he took her violently over and over, spilling her virgin blood on my floor. He then forced us both into performing acts on each other than no woman should have to do. When the dawn came, he tossed her over the balcony onto the ground below, nothing more than rubbish to him..disposable. Her broken body was discovered by her brother and was carried back to the slave quarters.  A slave snuck out though the bayou, fetching the healer. There was nothing the healer could do, but ease her pain. Before she died, my friend whispered her story to her brothers. And the slave's hatred of Andrew began in earnest.

         Now, a body wouldn't think that it could get worse for me. But it did. I became pregnant again. This time, I was afraid of what would happen. I was right to be. Andrew's nightly visits continued and each night I was subjected to his horrid touch. The closer it got to the child's birth, the more hateful Andrew and his mother became. Oh yes, the Madame was now taking part in his night-time activities. It would always start the same, his evil mouth on my body as she watched. It always ended the same, her naked leathery body pressed under mine as he took me over and over again. I hated them both.

          I ran from them one night. I had no where to go. I just wanted away from them and their hands. But I didn't get far. He found me at the top of the stairs. Teh rage on his face was terrifiying. I stopped when I should have kept running and he pushed. My body flew backwards down the stairs, but I didn't die, although I wished I had. My second son was born that night, two months too early. Stillborn the doctor claimed. But I knew better, I had heard his faint mewling cry. Andrew had snuffed the life out of the baby before he'd even had the chance to truly breathe. Three days later, his tiny body was placed next to his brother's in the cold of the family crypt.

         I found solace underneath the weeping willows  in the garden. They became my only friends. I could hide here, away from the whispers of the slaves, away from the darkness that was growing ever stronger in the house. Away from Andrew and his hateful mother. Underneath the willows I could breathe, for it was the one place Andrew would not come. He was afraid of them.

         But each night, I would have to return to the house and face them.  The only nights that I could escape them was during my cycle. But they even found a way around that by using a voodoo concoction designed to stop the monthly flow. But it didn't stop pregnancy, and once more I watched as my infant son was placed in the crypt. Three sons lost and I was in despair. There was nothing left of my heart to break, nothing left of my spirit. I was a shell that Andrew used over and over. Only under the willows could I cry. But even there, the tears stopped coming.

         Then Emily was born and my heart soared. She was allowed to live, her beautiful dark eyes filling with life and laughter. But I knew.. I knew.. that one day the laughter would stop..but there was nothing, Andrew had seen to that, that I could do. Except teach her not to scream. She was a good girl and learned well.

         Several years earlier,  Andrew had commissioned a secret room to be built in the walls of the house. I didn't want to know why. But now I knew. He took Emily there,  putting her through the same terror he had subjected me to for years. The only difference was that she was a child, not much more than four when it started. I could hear her screams echoing from that room. They filled the house only to be silence by Madame's hateful laughter.

         Madame I could do something about and I did. I picked some oleander from the garden and ground it up. I switched out her herbal tea with the oleander and I made sure she drank it. Each night for a full week she drank that oleander tea, each day she grew weaker and more sick. The poison worked its way through her body until finally she succumbed. I remember the relief I felt as her body was placed in the crypt. The monster was dead, and I had killed her.

         But if I could have taken it back, I would have that night. Andrew was in such a state. The insanity, the evil, had finally fully taken over him. I knew it when he came to me that night. I knew it when he pulled the machete from under his dressing gown. I knew it when he plunged that knife into me, over and over until there was no way I could count the blows. But somehow, crawling and bleeding, I dragged myself down the stairs and out into the garden. I made it to my willow trees. This time, Andrew followed. Under my haven of weeping willows, he killed me. He lapped at my spilled blood like an animal, grunting like he was a man starved. I remember feeling light headed and pulling away from my body as he slit my throat. I was free, floating among the willow branches. I could have escaped then, I reckon..but there was Emily. She needed me. I went back.

         I shouldn't have. He went after Emily next, raping her once more and squeezing the life from her small body. I beat at him, screaming over and over at him to stop. But he couldn't hear me, couldn't feel me. I was nothing but the wind. Emily's broken spirit flew up to join mine, but neither one of us was strong enough to escape that place. We tried, oh how we tried.  We still try to this day...

         Andrew became lucid enough to know what he had done. He felt no shame, no regret, just the need to save his own skin and he fled to the bayou. But the slaves, the slaves that had waited for their chance, found him. Chained and beated, Andrew as skinned alive. But the slaves would not let him die, through voodoo and skill, they kept him alive though his pain. I could hear his screams across the night air as they rubbed salt over his body. This time it was my turn to laugh.

         With dawn came the discovery of my body.  The constable and his posse came, storming through the house in search of Andrew. It was then they discovered the secret room and the body of my poor daughter. They also discovered the alter Andrew had built from the bones of his dead sons. The removed Emily's body and nothing else before they sealed that room shut, using sealing wax. In time, it would be forgotten by most, except for in the journals of the men that had discovered it. Eventually, they found Andrew, stretched out under the sun, skinned but still alive. They buried him, still alive, underneath the willow that stood beside the family cemetary, as far from the place that they would lay myself and Emily to rest. The ground in which he lay was unconsecrated, a fitting  place to bury the demon of a man that Andrew had become. Within a few days, the willow tree above him was dead, a skeleton of its former strength.

         Emily and I were free, at least we thought we were. Until HE came back. Forever now, we are trapped with him, to live in death as we did in life. The living come and go from the mansion, never staying too long. Andrew makes sure of that. I've heard people say that the house is evil, and maybe it is. There is a power here that draws the dead and keeps them here. I am here, my babies are here..and the monsters are here. I just wish that someone could hear our screams....