Obscurity, The Twenty-Third Chapter
In which the widow is discovered in a rather unusual part of town.
e last read The Twenty-Second Chapter, in which we met the second of the Maries. If you have recently joined us, start with The Prologue.
In the northeast corner of town, tucked behind le Couvent des Ursulines, an old woman sat on her stoop, her skin darkened by her ancestors and hardened by her memories. She wore her hair in a turban, a richly colored dress hanging from her shoulders. Her fingers were callused from years of hard labor, her bare feet dusted with red clay. Dried tobacco leaves hung smoking from her lips, each exhalation potent with fragrant earth.
Without turning her head, her eyes watched as a white woman walked by—a ghost amidst the living. The woman was dressed in black, her dark veil obscuring her pale face.
Songs followed where the woman walked, drifting from one kitchen to another, sung like spells by those preparing their evening meals. Metal spoons clanked against cast iron pots, the fires infusing the warm summer air with a smoky bouquet. Somewhere there was the sound of a fiddle strumming the kind of tune that can only be found in the South. It was something lost from a past life but found in this new one. Passersby knew the words, singing the song beneath their breath as they walked by, greeting one another in the street as friends do.
They laughed with the easy mirth of a Sunday afternoon, freshly returned from Church and now attending to their afternoon leisure. Some sat smoking in rocking chairs, some shined their shoes. Men played cards on wooden stoops and women pinned freshly cleaned sheets to the clothing lines that were strung between houses. Children played games in the streets and emptied dirty bedpans in alleys.
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