The Witch of Bourbon Street Read online

  As the notes unfurled from her lips, she gazed out under the lights into the crowd and saw her little Sippie sitting with the bartender, Abe, at the back. Simone tried not to let the tears fall looking at her girl. No amount of singing, or drinking, or pills, could dull her pain when she thought about the sorry years she’d given that lost child.

  As she sang, she thought about her own mistakes. The first, marrying Eight Track. The second, letting him bring that baby to her in the middle of the night. And the third, letting herself love either of them. To Simone, love was the worst kind of mistake a woman could make. “The dream killer,” she called it.

  But tonight she was going to fix as many of those as she could. She’d brought Sippie along to give the girl back to the people who gave her away to begin with. Eight Track would be mad as all hell at her, but she didn’t care. She was going to fix that other mistake, too: Simone was leaving. She was going to finish her set to the thunderous applause she deserved, do that other nasty work she’d taken up to put food on the table since Eight Track started drinking hard, and buy a bus ticket straight to Hollywood.

  She was a star.

  Something magic filled her voice that night; it was stronger and freer than ever. Released from its mistake-gilded cage, it flew out of her with wings all its own. The crowd broke out clapping and whistling as she glided off the stage. Sippie ran to her, jumping into her arms.

  “No one sings prettier than you, Mama,” she said, hugging her tightly.

  “Hush, girl, you go sit back with Abe. I got to talk to the woman who runs the place.”

  “Who?”

  “That lady over there, the pretty one. You see her? She looks a bit like you. Got your bright eyes with all that gold and green, only yours are better. And got that untamed hair of yours. And Sippie … she knows some people who can do the most wonderful things.”

  “I see her.” Sippie watched her curiously.

  Simone buried her face in Sippie’s tangled curls, holding her close with an honesty she’d never fully let show.

  “Sippie, you listen here. No matter what happens from tonight on, you got to survive. You gonna do what you’re told. But at the same time, don’t trust nobody but yourself. You hear me, girl? And if anything bad ever happens to you, you remember … the first time, it’s not your fault. But the second? The third? When you keep letting the same thing happen over and over again … that’s on you. And only you can make it stop. Only you. Don’t let yourself get fooled by love, Sippie.”

  Simone put down the child, who looked confused but also sad, like she knew something bad was about to happen.

  “Now, git back there and let me finish my business.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sippie responded quietly, walking back toward Abe too slow and looking back over her shoulder with that pout face of hers. Them heart-shaped lips.

  “You sounded better than ever, Simone,” Millie said through smoke rings, looking awestruck.

  “Millie, I got to speak wit you.”

  “Of course … come in the office.” Millie walked through the crowd and beckoned her to follow.

  Simone closed the door carefully behind them, resting her head for a moment against the glass panel before turning and forcing the words out. “I know something I’m not supposed to know, Millie. And it’s time to share it. But I can’t just come right out and say it. So I’m hoping you can put two and two together. I’ve known you for a long time, Millie. You and Frances ran around here like wild, little heathens when you were just Sippie’s age. And I know Dida and Claudette. I know the family and the history. And when Frances came on down here, just a child herself, and tried to live like a grown-up … something changed her. We all know that. But, because she ain’t never been back, I got to give you this burden I’ve been carryin’. I can’t carry it no more.”

  “What are you talking about, Simone?”

  Millie was still smiling, but her knuckles had gone white from gripping the large wooden desk in front of her a little too tight.

  “You got to take her back, Miss Millie. Take her back to her own kind,” Simone pleaded, hating herself for begging anyone for anything.

  She figured she’d have to explain the whole situation. Only she didn’t have to, because it seemed Millie already knew everything. And that’s when that witch lost her temper. Her eyes flared with a dangerous sparkle, her cheeks flushing. Fear coursed up Simone’s spine. It was as though a power surge ran through the room, through the building, down the whole goddamned street.

  “You must be crazy.” Millie’s voice took on an edge. “I’m not doing any damn thing. You think I’m gonna bring that child back so she can break my best friend’s heart into smaller pieces? People got reasons for doing the things they do. You don’t have the right to change anyone’s future but your own, Simone. Now, I seem to remember, about a year ago you came here practically begging for a job. And when the singing didn’t pay enough, you had to beg me to look the other way when you started taking men into that room upstairs. In fact, I remember telling you I could get you other kinds of work, and you didn’t want it. You know what I think? I think you’re weak.”

  Her eyes wild with desperation, Simone tried another strategy—the truth.

  “Fine, Millie. You right. I’m weak. I’ve always taken the easy way out. But this time, this one time, I’m not. I swear it. I’m begging you, take her. I ain’t got nothing to offer her here. She’s like you. She’s got the shine. She needs her mother.”

  Millie laughed. But it was a callous sort of sound, with the roughness of sandpaper, not like the way Simone remembered Frances laughing. Frances sounded like wind chimes.

  “Let me tell you a little something about that child’s ‘mother,’” Millie scoffed. “Her mother got married, had another baby, and in the end, left that one too. And right now, she’s all shut up inside herself. And there’s no room for anyone else in there.”

  Millie calmly lit two cigarettes and gave one to Simone.

  “Can I at least ask if you can keep an eye on her till I’m finished tonight?” Simone asked, taking it.

  “Of course I will. Or Abe will. Someone will. We always do. Even though you never pay us for watching her. Think this whole world is free for you to cry all over. Think we enjoy your tears. We don’t.”

  “Here,” said Simone, finding a sliver of bravery and using it to unclasp her opal brooch and offered it to Millie. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s that nothin’ in this world is free. Maybe this will cover it. And if it don’t, or maybe someday if you find a heart in that empty soul of yours, you could give it to her.”

  Millie took it and tossed it on a desk cluttered with papers and receipts. “I can do that, I guess.”

  Simone had the oddest feeling that Millie was disappointed. As if she wanted a better fight, or to lose the fight, or to win a bigger prize. “Millie?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you know about Sippie?”

  “Now, Simone, I’m a witch, remember? There’s not much I don’t know just by looking at you. And you know what I see when I look at you?”

  Simone walked out the door before she could finish, only hearing the steely hush of Millie’s voice add, “Nothing.”

  That’s when Simone knew she was beat. But then she thought she’d probably known all along that this was the way it would end. And that maybe, just maybe, the reason her voice had soared out so easily that night was that something inside of her knew it was her last time singing. Maybe it was her soul flying out of her, and now she just had to make her body follow.

  Resigned, she went to the third floor. And she did her job. She let one man after another climb on top of her. Sweat on her. Use her. Then she rolled up the cash and put a note on it that said, “For Sippie.”

  Afterward, she pulled a bottle of pills from her purse. The pills she took to make those nights she worked late go by a little easier, the ones that freed her mind from her body. She opened the bottle and took them all.


  And somewhere, lingering between the life she was leaving and whatever was waiting for her on the other side, she heard a knocking on the door and the voice of a little girl crying, pleading, the little girl she’d tried so hard not to love but loved harder than she thought she could ever love anyone, “Don’t leave me, Mama! Please don’t leave me.…”

  The Waxing Moon

  The waxing moon casts more inner light than external.

  It is the moon of attraction, and will bring forth all the things you desire.

  But be warned, you must notice when they come your way.

  —Serafina’s Book of Sorrows

  4

  Jack’s Great Idea

  Tivoli Parish: Present

  Jack Amore Sorrow, twelve years old, woke up smiling to the sweet sound of silence. Today was the day.

  He loved being alone, far away from the noise of his fractured family. It wasn’t a big family, only his dad, Danny, and his great-uncle Pete on the Amore side, who lived in Tivoli Proper. The other side of his family, the Sorrow side, they lived in Serafina’s Bayou in what Jack considered the most interesting place in the world: Sorrow Hall. Still on the list of “the Grandest Estates in Louisiana,” it had fallen into disrepair—some might even say despair—over the years and was now a rambling, treasure-filled secret. Dida and Old Jim, his grandma Claudette, and his mama, Frances Green Sorrow, all lived there together. Well, his mama lived in a little shack out of sight on the property, pretending to live a world apart. But, small family or not, they could yell large. (Especially when they got over being all quiet and tense with one another all the darn time.) They yelled in voices and feelings and all the spaces between, and Jack didn’t like it one bit. He was determined to patch up everything that was broken, even if he had to do it all himself. He’d given the grown-ups more than enough time to figure it out on their own. And man, grown-ups liked to take forever to figure things out.

  “Today is the day,” he said to his quiet, sparse little room. His dad wasn’t much on decorating, and the whole little “ticky-tacky” house, as his mama put it, had no character at all. It always seemed exhausted, almost unhappy with itself, like it could have been more in life … kind of like his daddy, now that he thought about it. “Ha!” he cried out into the silence. Jack liked it when he woke up clever, and today was the perfect day to be on top of his game. He’d been planning his “Great Idea” for over six months, carefully going over all the details so he wouldn’t make any mistakes.

  The “Great Idea” started to grow at the beginning of seventh grade, when he read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He knew if he ran away, making it look like he’d been abducted, his family would be forced to come together to handle it. Jack liked to see the world like video game levels. Sometimes when you’re stuck at one score, you got to take risks in order to figure out the exact moves you need to win. Just thinking about how clever the whole thing was made his stomach ache from laughing so hard. He knew he’d be in trouble when he showed up unharmed, knew that the people he loved most would be worried and terrified. But he was willing to try anything to bring them together again, to be a real family.

  He wanted to keep his plan a secret but figured he needed at least one person he trusted to know the truth in case anything went wrong. Jack, born with Sorrow blood, was no fool. So he went to the one person he had some control over, Millie. The kind of control only a child can have.

  Millie was Jack’s aunt, sort of. His mother’s family was all sorts of strange. Old Jim said Millie and Frances grew up “attached at the hip.” And they continued to be “attached at the hip” until some kind of craziness made his mama run away to New Orleans, saying she wasn’t no witch and wasn’t gonna be no part of any of that nonsense NO MORE.”

  Of course, eventually his mama ran right back home again, only to pretend she wasn’t and hide out from the world in that little shack. And she still claimed to not be part of that nonsense.

  His mama sure was stubborn.

  Millie had stepped right in and filled her shoes in all their lives. And when he was smaller, he liked it. She almost even smelled like his mama and was around a lot more. And she believed in the magic. All the Sorrows and those who wandered in and out of Serafina’s Bayou looking for themselves, they had what Dida called “talents.” His mama did, too, even though she didn’t want to admit it. Anymore, that is.

  “Why doesn’t Mama believe, Maw Maw?” he’d ask Claudette. But he never got a full answer.

  “Your mama went away to take over the whole world. And when she came back? She was broken in too many places. That’s all I know, cha. And call me Claudie, I don’t know how many times I got to tell you. I’m too young to be anyone’s grandma.”

  Claudie sometimes let him touch the film that covered her eyes. While snuggling him on the porches of Sorrow Hall, she would tell him the story of when she was little and the lye blinded her. She was good at snuggling. He just couldn’t understand why all the people he loved so much couldn’t see their way to loving one another. When he was little, he couldn’t help asking about it.

  “Why don’t you and Mama get along, Claudie?” he’d ask.

  “Oh, Jackie boy, I get along fine with her, she just decided one day she wasn’t havin’ any part of this family. And I still don’t know why. Maybe you should ask her, honey cha. She don’t mind talkin’ to you.”

  Jack knew better than to do that. His mama’d get all cold and send him off to do chores. He hated when Frances shut down. Being with Frances was his favorite thing in the entire world. Almost thirteen or not, he wasn’t ashamed of how much he loved his parents. Jack was a confident, complicated boy who shone from the inside. And everyone saw it. The kids didn’t make fun of him, and the adults—the same ones who bullied his mama when she was growing up—wished their kids could be like “that Jack Sorrow.” No one even cared that his name was all turned around. His daddy’s last name was in the middle, Amore. And his mama’s last name was the one he was given—Sorrow. That’s just “the way of the Sorrows” and one of the only things Danny ever agreed to. Probably because he was afraid Dida would curse him but good if he didn’t agree. His daddy had a weakness when it came to unexplainable things.

  The reason Jack decided to tell Millie about his plan was that she was part of why he was running away to begin with. About two years ago, Danny and Millie had started seeing each other, which just plain old made Jack angry.

  “You’re gettin’ worked up over nothing and for no good reason,” Danny had told him, burning a minute steak in their dark little kitchen.

  “I’m just trying to tell you how I feel, Daddy. Mama says it’s important to always say how you feel.”

  “Mama says? Mama? Nice. Maybe she should take some of her own advice.”

  Later, when Jack got quiet and picked at his burned dinner, Danny grabbed Jack’s hand. “Look, do me a favor, son, don’t tell Mama about this,” he implored. “It might hurt her. And I don’t want to hurt her. ’Sides, I’m a grown man, Jack, and I’ll do what I want. It’s not like I’m going to marry Millie, so don’t you worry.”

  But Jack was worried. And when he told Millie what he was planning, he made it clear that if she spoke a word of it, he’d tell his mama that she’d been messing around with his daddy. He knew Millie wanted to keep that a secret, too. Everyone around him was scared of making Frances mad, sad, and everything in between, which made everything impossible. But it gave Jack a reason to trust Millie. “That’s what I call leverage,” he said aloud, looking at the clock on his night table. It was still early, six A.M. He pulled his notebook out of the bag he’d packed the night before and went over his list. Jack liked lists.

  The first list was titled:

  WHY AM I DOING THIS?

  His mama always said it was important to understand your motivation before you made a big decision. Frances was good at giving out life advice; she just couldn’t seem to follow it for herself. But he forgave her for it. Danny always said Jack was “blind
” when it came to his mama, but Jack didn’t care.

  He looked back down at his notes.

  MOTIVATION FOR RUNNING AWAY:

  1. Mama and Daddy get together.

  2. Everyone forgives each other.

  3. I get to use magic.

  4. Give those long-ago Sorrows a redo or something.

  Jack was obsessed with the history of the Sorrow family. He’d listened to stories and spent more than a healthy amount of time at the Tivoli Parish Historical Society poring over whatever they had. He especially liked reading about what happened to the Sorrows in 1901. “The Lost Generation,” was what Mr. Craven, the curator (and the only other person Jack knew who shared his passion for all things Sorrow), called it. Mr. Craven reminded Jack of a cross between Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe (which amused both of them) and was, as Craven said, “right on the money.”

  “Murdered by a crazed nun! Can you even believe it, boy?! The family was never the same again. Some say they’re cursed. It’s all just so … compelling,” Mr. Craven would say, fluttering about.

  Jack agreed.

  Mr. Craven had helped him put together a Sorrow scrapbook. Jack kept it in his bedside drawer. He reached over and took it out, then opened its wide, too-full, satisfying pages. It started with a copy of the original letter that Edmond and Helene Sorrow had their lawyer, Albert Monroe, send out. “It was the beginning of the end for all of them, Jack,” Mr. Craven had said.

  To the Sisters of The Bon Secure Ministry

  RE: Private Home Care

  I write to you on behalf of the Sorrow family of Tivoli Parish. I am their Solicitor, Albert Monroe of A. A. Monroe, LLP. The family is in need of a Sister-Nurse willing to live on their bayou estate and be the sole care provider for the household. There are seven children: six girls ranging in age from sixteen to eleven, SuzyNell, Mae, Edwina, Lavinia, Grace, and Belinda. There is one boy, Edmond Jr., who is six years of age and suffers from a chronic, debilitating illness. The chosen Sister-Nurse will also help take care of their mother, Helene Dupuis Sorrow, and their father, Edmond Senior. There is a small staff that works with the family on the grounds, but let it be duly noted that those who work there seek their religious and physical care elsewhere, be it Tivoli Proper, Sweet Meadow, or Saint Sabine Isle. None of the staff live on the estate. Your candidate will be the first to live among the Sorrows in many years. The family requests that the Sister you choose be fluent in English and French. She should be educated so as to help in the capacity of a Governess as well. She ought to have a stellar record when it comes to healing illnesses, a heart that belongs to God alone, and a peaceful temperament. The most important quality we are looking for, however, is a Sister who knows the value of privacy. The Sorrow family is one of the oldest and most influential in southern Louisiana, and they will not tolerate gossip of any sort, neither kind nor malignant.