Louisiana Coffee ... with Lots of Cream: A Creole Family Memoir

LOUISIANA COFFEE…

WITH LOTS OF CREAM

A CREOLE FAMILY MEMOIR

Betty J. Reynolds

Copyright © 2007 by Betty J. Reynolds

Revised 2008

editing by JoEllen Askloff

Title by Eric Askloff

Cover image by Lee Nelson

Inelson@inetours.com

Family tree Graphic artist: Jennie Starr

This book is a work of fiction. Characters, and situations described, are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All right reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form whatsoever. For information, contact Dr. Betty J. Reynolds, trgreynolds@cs.com or www.lcwithcream.com

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

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Orders@Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

F o r e w o r d

I n t r o d u c t i o n

I

C h a p t e r 1

C h a p t e r 2

C h a p t e r 3

C h a p t e r 4

II

C h a p t e r 5

C h a p t e r 6

C h a p t e r 7

C h a p t e r 8

III

C h a p t e r 9

C h a p t e r 10

C h a p t e r 11

C h a p t e r 12

IV

C h a p t e r 13

C h a p t e r 14

C h a p t e r 15

C h a p t e r 16

C h a p t e r 17

V

C h a p t e r 18

With deep respect and affection this book is dedicated to the Askloffs—JoEllen and Eric—my good friends who lent their editing and creative perspectives to achieve a more accurate and artful rendition of this work than I could ever have produced on my own.

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

As with any undertaking of this nature, this memoir has been a collaborative effort with many people providing support, assistance and the benefit of their knowledge of specific places and events. We thank the following, and apologize in advance for any errors of omission.

First, my eternal gratitude for the technical support provided by the Morala family who were always on call when I ran into technical snags in word processing.

Secondly, I certainly could never leave out my reviewers, and those who became my collective database upon which I relied for input from their particular areas of expertise. These include Grace Fields, Jerry Frankowski, Diana Jones, Terry Jones, Willis Lewis, Jon McGill, Tig Santos, Barbara Smith, Cylysce Vogelsang, D.J. Weaver, Bettye Williams; and last but not least, Merry Ruth and Waverly Williams.

Finally, my thanks to Jennie Starr and Brian Greene for the formatting and printing services I came to rely on throughout the entire production process.

Betty J. Reynolds

F o r e w o r d

The title, Louisiana Coffee with Lots of Cream, implicitly defines the kind of people written about in this memoir—Creoles with deep roots imbedded in Louisiana soil. Although consensus is lacking as to the true meaning of the cultural or ethnic designation of Creole, there is some agreement that this title conveys a person of mixed-blood heritage. This position is the one taken in writing this book.

The memoir is comprised of a series of connected stories about a fictional extended family whose matriarch settles in New Orleans in the earlier part of the twentieth century. The common theme that binds the stories together is the journey that each of her descendants takes to start a new life. Once they have left their homeland behind, the subsequent choices they make result in their eventual successes or failures.

The emerging storylines paint a sensitive picture of what it is like to be on the other side of the cultural divide. Although the book is admittedly fictional, every effort is made to incorporate the culture and lifestyles of each of the eras in which a story is imbedded. By so doing, a touch of realism is added as the plot of each memorable account unfolds.

Doreen Allison Malveaux is the name of the fictional author who connects the stories for the book she intends to write. She is twenty-four years old and beginning her career as an investigative reporter when she takes on the daunting task of applying these skills to matters closer to home.

The stories she eventually manages to weave together are presented from her point of view, as either a casual observer or participant, depending upon the extent of her personal involvement. Her motivation, as well as the obstacles she encounters, is best described in her own words in the introduction that follows.

I n t r o d u c t i o n

Setting the Stage

My mother’s side of the family had always considered New Orleans their ancestral home, although they hadn’t had a member in residence there for a number of years. Be that as it may, I never tired of walking through the Quarters and standing in front of the quaint little house with its wrought iron balcony where my maternal grandparents had lived out their lives. This cherished experience always called up all sorts of fantasies, but never memories of them, for they both died a year or so after I was born.

However, this one time I was in the city on assignment for my newspaper, I actually had an opportunity to go inside my grandparents’ home on that narrow little street. Then, I was able to see for myself their cozy nest where so much drama had taken place. That once-in-a-lifetime experience was a reminder of how difficult it had been for me to break the code of silence that had surrounded my grandmother’s early life for decades.

Another significant event of that year brought to mind my own search for genealogical data to include in the family memoir I was planning to write. That groundbreaking event was the premier showing of Alec Haley’s masterfully written drama, ‘Roots.’ Haley’s recounting of his ancestors’ experiences in Africa and in this country brought a new sense of awareness of black heritage to black Americans and white Americans as well.

To forego watching that saga of intense human torment and suffering, perpetrated on one race by another, was almost sacrilegious, and I was glued to the TV screen the same as almost everyone else was at the time. Beyond that, I could be even more than sympathetic to the plight of the people depicted in that tragic account, and easily identified with it for more personal reasons.

For one, my roots, or at least a part of them, had been imbedded in the Dark Continent at some point in bygone days. And two, I had wanted to know something about my own family history—even before the search-for-roots craze swept America. Admittedly, my search for linkages to the past was never quite as ambitious as Haley’s pilgrimage had been. I had no desire to ferret out my family’s roots in some remote village as far away as Africa, or even in this continent during that bleak period when slavery was an acceptable norm.

My search had been limited to one tiny dot on the historical landscape to the time my maternal grandmother, Bertha Mayberry Lewis, first came to New Orleans and settled there in the early part of the twentieth century. The primary motive in focusing attention on this one ancestor was to discover a possible connection between genetic inheritance and certain erratic traits that seemed endemic in later generations.

Even this miniscule piece of research proved to be quite a challenging task, despite my skills as an investigative reporter. The reason is that my grandmother’s life before she married Grandfather Lewis was a taboo subject that my mother never wanted to discuss. As children, my sister, Francine, and I were limited to looking at her picture in the old family album and making up fantasy-driven stories as to what her young life might have been like.

Eventually, Grandmother Bertha’s secrets were revealed to me. This belated insight provided the impetus to delve even further into the anatomy of our extended family whose members were so diverse in almost every way, despite their common heritage.

I

The Start Of It All

New Orleans Louisiana Backlands

The first four chapters of this family memoir mark the early beginnings of the Lewis family’s origin in the state of Louisiana. The state itself is the point of reference for the documentation of these introductory memorabilia, as all of the action takes place within its confines.

C h a p t e r 1

Home in Louisiana

Grandma Bertha was a beautiful Creole girl with skin the color of Louisiana cream. The silken hair piled atop her dainty head was as black as midnight. My mother always said that her hair was so long it came down to her waist, and her complexion was as flawless as a Georgia peach. That was about all she would say. When we pressed her, she would repeat the same litany over and over.

‘The woman was a saint,’ was my mother’s usual comment as she carefully weighed her words. ‘She was as devout a Catholic as you could ever find anywhere. She married a good man, William Preston Lewis, your Grandfather, and raised her five daughters in the Christian way. She was blessed to live long enough to see each of them reach young adulthood, marry, and have children before she passed on to her just rewards.’

This bit of trivia our mother shared with us may have satisfied my sister, but never me. My curiosity about my grandmother knew no bounds. I remember the one time I went too far in angling for more details. My mother—who was usually a gentle person—surprised me by raising her voice. She scolded me for my persistence and insisted it was better to leave the past buried in the past.

Naturally, her reluctance to share that part of our family history only fed the flames of my inquisitiveness. I was determined to unearth those terrible secrets my mother was keeping from me—one way or the other.

That day did not come until after I had settled into my career as a news reporter. With a great deal more confidence than I had as a child, I decided to put my investigative skills to the test. I knew better than to tackle my mother again, so that meant I had to find a more approachable source. Usually, I could count on my dad to be my ally in most things that mattered to me, but not this time! I decided to check out my next best source, Aunt Doreen, my mother’s oldest sister.

Doreen was not only my favorite aunt, but also the aunt I was named after. We always had been as tight as two thieves—as my mother would say—maybe because she might have been a little jealous of our close relationship. Fortunately, for my ambitions, Aunt Doreen had come to visit my parents in New Jersey about the time I was ready to start my more purposeful inquiry. During her visit, I looked for every opportunity to quiz her when we were outside the earshot of my mother.

Aunt Doreen didn’t disappoint me when I told her that I planned to write a history of our family back to the time her mother had first come to New Orleans to live. I said that the problem I was having was that I had so little to go on because of mother’s reluctance to share any of that information with me.

She didn’t say anything at first, and I was beginning to think I had run into another blind alley when she began to open up. She started by saying she never could understand my mother’s reluctance to tell her children the truth about our family’s origins. For that reason, she thought it was about time that I was told the truth about my grandmother’s past life before she married Grandfather Lewis.

She hastened to add that she, for one, was not ashamed of her heritage, although it was obvious that her sisters were. If it were left to them, the true story would never be revealed. For that reason, before she would tell it to me, I would have to promise to never disclose it in anything I wrote until such time as all of her generation were in their graves. That was quite a setback for my writing ambitions, but I made that promise and had every intention of keeping it.

It was quite a story my aunt told me that afternoon as we sat in our sunny kitchen over a pot of her delicious sassafras tea. She talked, and I mostly listened with only a few interruptions. I would have loved to have taken notes, but didn’t dare for fear of interfering with the flow of her sometimes painful recollections of the secrets her mother had revealed to her and her sisters when they became older.

I now tell my grandmother’s story in my own words, as faithfully as I can remember it being told to me.

Bertha Mayberry was born and raised in a rural village in southern Louisiana, although the exact location is not known. The date of her birth, recorded in an old family bible, was the fourth of January in the year eighteen ninety. Her daughters claim the date is correct, but it was never officially registered in the parish in which she was born.

All she would ever say about her life when growing up as a young girl was that it was very hard and she dreamed of the day when she could get far away from it. That day came when she was only sixteen. That was the year she made the decision to run away from home and leave the arduous life of a poor farm girl behind her.

No one knows how she managed to get to New Orleans—considering the inconveniences of transportation in that day and time. Nor does anyone know why she chose a place so far away from her small parish. It certainly could not have been the best choice for a simple country girl who could neither read nor write, or had never been more than a few miles away from her village at any one time.

The only attributes she had going for her were an abundance of good looks and innocence. The first was a commodity—avidly traded on the streets the same as any other marketable goods of great value—but the latter had no place in a land that doted on sin.

In very short order, Bertha found herself destitute without shelter or food, and was glad to be befriended by a kindly woman who approached her on the street. The woman, who was obviously of some importance, stopped her carriage and came over to speak to the shivering girl, huddled in a doorway for warmth.

After a few minutes of conversation, she told the desperate girl to accompany her to her home. There the woman promised her she would have a job, plenty of food to eat, and a warm place to stay. It was a tempting offer that Bertha was in no position to refuse.

The woman hustled her new find into the carriage and ordered the driver to take them to her home in the Quarters without undue delay. When they entered the house with its intricate iron lattices, Bertha could not believe her eyes. The interior was more magnificent than a simple country girl could ever have imagined.

The entry halls and adjoining salons boasted of multi-tiered crystal chandeliers, exquisite French provincial furniture and gold-brocaded portieres at each entrance. Bertha’s eyes were all agleam as she took in that wondrous setting, while her self-proclaimed benefactress was eyeing her new acquisition and congratulating herself on her resourcefulness.

This mistress of the house went by the more formal name of Madame Lebeau. In truth, she was the proprietress of an age-old business that in less splendiferous surroundings would have simply been referred to as a whorehouse. Wishing to avoid such an odious label, the Madame chose to call her establishment a salon de thé, although not a drop of that fragrant brew was ever intended to touch the lips of the well-to-do patrons who frequented the place.

One of the reasons why this madam was so much more successful than some of her competitors was the quality of the merchandise she offered to her well-heeled customers. Her motto—Only the Freshest and the Best—brought in many of the city’s most prominent city officials as well as others of the gentry class.

The streets were her marketplaces where she shopped with an eye toward picking up the foolish country girls that came to the city seeking their fortune. However, the madam would not pick up just any girl she found simply because she appeared to be homeless and friendless. Her prey had to have considerable potential to earn a high price for the use of her body, which would bring maximum profit to the house.

When the madam first spotted Bertha out on the street, her practiced eye immediately saw beneath the smudged face and tattered clothes. No doubt, she was a rare beauty and likely a virgin as well. The combination was sure to fetch a good price from some of her more discerning clients. She almost rubbed her hands in glee because she had easily snared a prize so obviously gullible.

It had only taken a few kind words to get the girl into her carriage and then on and away to the tarnished future she had in store for her. She was quite a contrast to some of the sly minxes she had come across in the same way who had started to barter almost as soon as she had approached them about coming to work for her. Fortunately, for the madam’s purse, Bertha was quite the opposite—which meant she would not be one to make unreasonable demands.

Once the sightseeing tour was over, designed to impress as it did, the madam took Bertha into the kitchen and instructed the cook to feed the near-starved girl. Another servant was told to bathe her and give her more suitable clothing to wear. After all of this catering to her physical needs, and having rested a bit, the bloom returned to the grateful girl’s cheeks, and the madam rightly calculated it was time to get down to business.

Before starting her well-rehearsed spiel, the madam poured for herself and for Bertha two fingers of fine old brandy. Bertha had never had an alcoholic drink in her life and the warmth from the liqueur went straight to her head. Madame expected those results and waited until she saw that her prey was perfectly relaxed.

She sat next to the girl on the loveseat and began to rub her brow and her temples gently with a slow and methodic rhythm. She was, after all, a master of erotic touch from her own days as a harlot in a comparable house of ill repute, and she knew exactly the sensitive spots to stimulate to arouse almost anyone—male or female.

Bertha was finding herself experiencing many different types of unfamiliar emotions. She felt warmth creep up her body from her toes to the tips of her fingers and a desire for something she could not identify. All she knew was that she could have stayed in that pleasurable state for all of eternity, but it stopped abruptly when she heard the madam call her name. She opened her eyes and for a reason she couldn’t quite understand, felt as if she had done something wrong.

Madame Lebeau didn’t give her time to ponder her feelings and began to pitch the delights that awaited her if she would only agree to enter her employ. The alternative she said was to be sent back out on the streets with the rags she had entered with and to have no one to care for her. Being a fair woman, she said, and wanting only the best for her, she felt it only proper to have a signed agreement between them.

Bertha had no idea what a signed agreement meant, but at that moment, she would have done whatever the kind lady asked of her. Seeing the girl’s acquiescence, the madam had a servant bring out the customary contract that all who worked in the house were required to sign.

The agreement was actually an indentured servant contract—a very common instrument of that day. Signing it made the status of the signatory only a notch above slavery, but Bertha couldn’t have known that, having never learned to read. She trusted the woman who had saved her from starvation and without hesitation made her X on the dotted line.

The terms of the contract called for one Bertha Mayberry to be beholden to Madame Antoinette Lebeau for a period of ten years until all debts owed to said holder were repaid. The contract did not specify the amount of the debts or how these were to be paid off. The particulars were all quite clear to the Madame. The girl would be sold as a virgin many times over to her customers who were willing to pay the price for that delicacy, until it was no longer possible to conceal the truth.

Upon signing, she would become a regular in the house of prostitution until the bloom of her youth had faded and she no longer appealed to the most discriminating of the madam’s clients. Only then would she be released from her contract.

The smart ones, who plied their trade in that house and realized their days of being prime flesh were numbered, would not waste their tip money on frivolity as some of the more foolish girls were apt to do. As the lucky ones, they were able to retire with a nice little pension. The rest would have to go back to the streets to earn their living the best way they could. That was the law of the land in that particular business—with few exceptions.

None of these things did Bertha know. Almost immediately, she was made to understand in no uncertain terms that the terms of her engagement were to please male customers in whatever fashion they so desired. She was told if she refused to fulfill her obligation or tried to run away, she would be severely beaten.

Now Bertha may have been an innocent of the first order, but as a country girl who had been around farm animals all her life, she understood full well the sex act, but not as it applied to people. The one thing that had never crossed her mind was that this was something she would ever willingly do.

When she finally grasped the implications of what the mistress of the house expected of her to repay her debt, she let out a loud wail and tried to make a break for the door. She was instantly stopped by one of the servants and brought before her mistress who was tempted to have her beaten. Instead, not wanting to scar her body, she settled for a few sharp slaps to the cowering girl’s face.

Bertha fell to the floor, whimpering and praying. Her actions had no effect on the madam, except to make her feel the contempt she usually reserved for those who were defenseless. She told her she would not be expected to start servicing the customers until after she had a few lessons in the fine art of pleasuring men. The teacher was to be no other than her own paramour who was as expert as any Casanova in the city.

Bertrand was that man! His reputation as a skillful master in the boudoir was well deserved, although he never advertised it as his stock-in-trade. He had been an out-of-work stevedore when he had come to madam’s house looking for an odd job or, at the very least, a handout. When the cook called Madam telling her a tradesman was at the door, she went down immediately, thinking of a few jobs that needed doing by a strong man. When she arrived, she was pleased by what she saw.

Bertrand was definitely a strong man. He had muscles everywhere, which after a few moments of conversation, she knew included his head—which suited her just fine. She didn’t need him to think, but to be able to do the heavy chores that were too much for the female servants. Looking at the huge bulge in the front of his tight woolen pants, she figured there was another chore he could perform equally as well.

The madam knew her stud stock very well, having been in the business so long, and Bertram, on his first tryout in her massive canopied bed, proved to be every bit the man she had imagined. When he finished with her after multiple tiers of sheer pleasure, she vowed to keep him around as long as his performance stayed at that same level. She needn’t have worried for he never seemed to run out of steam and even she couldn’t keep up with him.

Business was business, though, and there was no room for selfishness. When he wasn’t pleasuring her, he would act as a sort of tester for the new girls she brought into the fold. Although he was somewhat costly in his demands for money and drink, she concluded he was a bargain at any price.

All the women he bedded were the same to him—madam or the merchandise she had for sale. It pleased him immensely to have a whole whorehouse of women to satisfy his gargantuan animal appetite. He made the rounds of the house girls, sometimes as many as four or five a night when the madam didn’t require his services, or they weren’t busy entertaining their customers. They relished having their own personal pleasures taken care of by an expert. No doubt, he was good at what he did and made sure none within the household had reason to complain.

Each of the girls who worked in the house was given a small cubicle as a bedroom to call her own. As a neophyte, Bertha’s room was at the very top of the mansion in a sparsely-furnished bedroom, and there the madam banished her to await her tutor’s visit. The self-proclaimed whoremaster licked his lips in anticipation of having the first taste of the virgin the madam had promised him as a reward for his fine service to the other ladies of the house.

When the time came for him to discharge his duty, the man was more than invigorated by the thought of breaking in such a prize and assured the madam he would teach the new girl everything she needed to know to become one fine whore. Madam told him that although she appreciated his enthusiasm for his work, he should take special care not to harm the merchandise she expected to sell many times over to her clients.

The details of what actually happened in that room on that night have never been revealed. When Bertha came to that part of her story, she cried and would only say she had experienced the torment of hell, and afterwards resigned herself to spending the rest of her life in misery. Fortunately, before she could be fully initiated into her role as courtesan, she caught the eye of a very powerful man in the judicial system—a frequent visitor to the place. That was to be the beginning of a brave new world for Bertha, one that brought her much happiness and ultimately much pain as well.

Judge Emory Dubois was a prominent Frenchman considerably entrenched in the Warf and Woof of the city’s political and social life. At an early age, he had entered into an arranged marriage with a highborn French woman who had inherited a great fortune. It was rumored that he had built up his own sizable estate through a number of shady land deals—not that this was in any way unusual in a city in which graft and corruption were the accepted norm.

With all of the wealth at their disposal, the Dubois couple lived a resplendent life in a city known for its excesses. Their mansion was on the grandest scale possible with many servants to take care of it, and the Judge—a robust man in his sexual appetites—had tasted the sweet fruit of most of the youngest and comeliest females among them.

The Judge’s reputation as a philanderer extraordinaire was no secret among the influential patrons around town, many of whom followed the same path. If his wife, Madame Marie Dubois, caught wind of her husband’s many infidelities, she placed herself above it. She never let it dissuade her from fulfilling her duties as mistress of the chateau in the highborn manner in which she had been trained.

During the couple’s many lavish dinner parties and balls, she presided over these much sought-after soirees with grace and dignity and treated her husband with great respect. He, of course, accorded her the same courtesy and made quite a show of his affection for her in front of their guests.

The Judge’s numerous casual sexual encounters were just that—casual—for he was known for his roving eye, that is, until he set eyes on the beautiful Bertha Mayberry. When he stopped by the bordello that particular afternoon, as was his wont when he was not officiating his duties, he was feeling rather adventuresome. Instead of the usual saucy minx he liked to bed, he asked the Madam if there were someone new and fresh he might have a try at instead.

The madam was more than pleased to oblige, knowing that the Judge never quibbled over prices like some of her more tight-fisted customers. She told him she had just hired a fresh new girl whom she would certify as a virgin and he could have first chance at her. The Judge was not a ravager of children so he asked her age and the madam assured him the girl was at least eighteen. He decided to see for himself and paid the woman the exorbitant fee she asked.

His first sight of Bertha was a startling one for he had not expected to find one so beautiful in a house of ill repute. Usually, the girls the madam made available were attractive enough for the job they were paid to do; but, even more importantly for the business they were in, they were experienced in their art. This girl was obviously quite different and no doubt the virgin the madam had proclaimed her to be. He was certain the madam had lied about the girl’s age as she looked to be no more than fourteen or fifteen years of age—and that’s where he drew the line.

When he had walked into the room, she was sitting up in bed with her long dark hair cascading over the pillow and clutching the sheet around her as if to hide her nakedness. At first glance, he could sense the dark seed within her, which undoubtedly accounted for her ravishing beauty. There was nothing unusual about that in a city in which mixing of the races on certain levels was a common occurrence.

To his practiced eye, he guessed her mulatto, but he was off by one quarter for she was born a quadroon. That was of no consequence to him as she stirred conflicting desires in him of lust and protectiveness he never expected to feel, but he kept the one of wanting to bed her in check for the time being. He may have been lustful, but he also was a patient man.

She turned her tear-stained face toward him and words began to pour out of her mouth—incomprehensible words that sounded like the patois spoken in the bayou. He reached out to comfort her, but she shrank from his touch and he backed away from her. She looked so sweet and innocent and obviously half-frightened out of her wits that he did something quite foreign to his usual practice in such matters. He turned around and left the room.

As he walked down the hall away from her room, he could hear her sobs of anguish and quite rightly figured she feared being beaten by the madam for failing to please a customer. She needn’t have worried on his account. He’d already decided to rescue her before someone without his sense of gentlemanly conduct would gladly ravish her with no sense of shame. He knew a bit of bartering would be exactly what it would take to free the girl from her servitude, but he was willing to pay whatever it cost him to gain her freedom.

Going straight to the madam’s quarters and without mincing words, he offered to buy the girl’s paper from her for quite a tidy sum. The madam, seeing a chance for great profit on the transaction, began to plead poverty and doubled the selling price. The Judge was determined to have his way and without hesitation agreed. Little did the old retired prostitute realize that he would have paid more than double to consummate the deal if she had not let her greed consume her.

Once the transaction was complete, he went back to the girl’s room and found her still huddled in bed, but this time she had pasted a big smile on her face as if to welcome him. He sat down beside her and explained as gently as he could that he meant her no harm. He said he was going to take her away from there to a beautiful place to live where no one would ever force her to do anything she didn’t want to do.

He promised he would take good care of her and buy her many beautiful things to keep her happy, and she would be her own mistress with a servant to take care of her every need. The one question he needed her to answer was her age, and when she managed to stammer out six and ten, he was greatly relieved.

Bertha was mystified by the man’s strange behavior. He seemed so nice and had talked to her ever so gently. She had dreaded what was sure to follow, and her only consolation was that at least he was very handsome and smelled a lot better than the kitchen lout who had ravaged her. When he made no attempt to undress and crawl in bed with her, she began to relax and listen to the instructions he was giving—only half of which she understood.

He told her to lock her door after he left and let no one into her room until his manservant came for her the next morning. He wouldn’t leave until he was sure she understood every word he had said, and then he gave her a gentle kiss on her forehead before leaving the room.

Once she heard his footsteps descending the stairs, she twisted the bolt on the big old-fashioned lock before she began to pack the valise she had brought from home. There wasn’t much to pack—just one extra dress besides the one she had worn when she first came to town and a few other personal belongings. She was afraid to sleep, although no one from within the house came to bother her, and she waited patiently until the dawn of the next day.

She was not to be disappointed. The manservant came for her as had been promised, and the madam was all smiles as she sent her on her way with many curtsies and insincere wishes for a long and happy life—hoping, of course, for the opposite. That was the last they were to see of each other ever again.

The Judge wasted no time in preparing a suitable setting for the beautiful girl he had taken under his wing. He spared no expense in furnishing the chalet in the Quarters lavishly with every convenience available at that time. He also was quite considerate in other ways, such as not forcing his attentions on the poor bewildered girl who still seemed in a sort of daze. Life had taken quite a fortuitous turn in her favor, and the one she had to thank was the kindly gentleman who had made it all possible, although she didn’t quite understand why he was being so generous to her—while asking nothing in return.

In time, though, she came to love him a great deal, and when she consented to his lovemaking, returned his passion as fully as he bestowed it on her. Perhaps, it was a bit too much because only a few months after she had been ensconced in her lovely new home as its mistress and his, she found she was with child. By that time, Bertha was seventeen years old and the Judge was forty-five.

When Bertha hesitantly told her patron the blessed news, at first he was elated. After all, he and his French wife had no children, and he had given up all hope of ever having a son and heir. For a man in his position, however, fathering a bastard was not quite the same and simply out of the question. He swore at the poor girl and stormed out of the house on Bourbon Street. He vowed he would never return and left her crying and practically swooning at his feet, for she would never have intentionally done anything to displease him.

No matter how strong his intentions were to stay away, he wasn’t able to sustain his anger for very long. Although he sought to find comfort elsewhere, none of these escapades made him forget his love for the beautiful girl he knew would be pining away for him during his absence. Finally, he had to admit to himself how much he missed her and hurried to the house to beg her forgiveness. That’s where he was—pacing the floor outside the birthing room the day the most sought-after midwife in New Orleans delivered a beautiful sloe-eyed, almond-skinned baby boy.

The Judge could not have been more elated to father such a fine, handsome son. He was so enamored of him that he vowed to make the boy his heir. He insisted that the boy be given his own Christian name and bestowed upon him the Dubois family name. Filled with pride, he passed cigars out at his club and ordered the best cognac to be served to all the members dining there that day.

The news of the new arrival was rather delicately passed on between husband and wife, and then not so delicately passed around the established gossip circle among the ladies. If this much bandied about tidbit of gossip reached the ears of Madame Dubois, she never let it be known and, as always, maintained her dignity.

After the birth of his son, the Judge began to spend more and more time away from the mansion and instead spent his after-business hours at the house in the Quarters. He even began doing most of his business entertaining there and insisted that Bertha serve as hostess for these events. The main attraction, though, as far as the Judge was concerned, was the boy, Emory. He was the spitting image of the Judge, although of a slightly darker hue.

Dubois even came up with a ruse to legally adopt the boy so that there would be no obstacles in the way of his inheriting his father’s fortune. His plan was to take the boy home to his wife and tell her he was a foundling and have them raise the boy as their own. He saw no reason for his wife’s dissent, but he was surprised by Bertha’s adamant refusal to have the boy taken from her. He had the power—legal and otherwise—to force her hand, but decided to bide his time until he could convince her that what he was proposing was for the boy’s own good.

When Emory was only five years old, Bertha became pregnant again. The Judge was even more enraged than before and called his mistress an ungrateful whore who was nothing more than a breeding mare. He said she needed to devote her full attention to the care of the boy without being distracted by another child in the house. Bertha