She entertained herself with fantasies as she worked in the ornate silence of his house, dusting the antique chairs that were never sat in, placing cut flowers in a large silver bowl on a dining room table that was never used, listening for the little bell by Mrs. LaSalle's bedside, the only lifeline the old woman had to the world beyond her bedroom. The Negro boys who had courted Ladice only a week earlier seemed part of a distant memory now, one of parked cars behind juke joints and insects humming in the hot darkness or a hurried coupling on a stale- smelling mattress in a corncrib.
She sensed a new power in herself among all those who lived by the rules and strange parameters that governed life on Poinciana Island. On her first visit to the plantation store after moving up to the big house, the clerk called her 'Miss Ladice,' and Legion and another white man stepped aside when she crossed the gallery to the parking lot.
It was during her second week at the big house, just after sunset, when she was fresh from her bath and dressed in clean clothes, that she heard the weight of Mr. Julian's footsteps on the garage apartment stairs. Her hand moved to the switch for the outside light.
'There's no need to turn that on. It's only I,' he said through the screen door.
She stood still, her hands folded demurely in front of her, unsure whether she should act first by pushing open the door for him, wondering if even that small a courtesy would indicate a foreknowledge about his behavior that he would find insulting and presumptuous.
When she didn't speak, he said, 'Am I disturbing you, Ladice?'
'No, suh, you ain't. I mean, you aren't.' She held the door open. 'Would you like to come in, suh?'
'Yes, I couldn't sleep. I left Miz LaSalle's window open so I could listen for her bell. I understand you've graduated from high school.'
'Yes, suh. I went t'ree years at plantation school and one at St. Edward's.'
'Have you thought about college?'
'The closest for colored is Southern in Baton Rouge. I ain't got the money for that.'
'There're scholarships. I could help with one,' he said.
But he was not hearing his own words now. His eyes lingered on her mouth, the thickness of her hair, her skin that was as smooth as melted chocolate, the lovely heart shape of her face. She saw him swallow and an expression like both shame and lust suffuse his face. His hands cupped her shoulders, then he bent toward her and kissed her cheek and let his hands slip down her arms and over her waist and onto the small of her back.
'I'm a foolish old man who has little in the way of a married life, Ladice. If you wish, I'll leave,' he said.
'No, suh. You ain't got to go. I mean, you don't got to go,' she replied.
He kissed her neck and touched the points of her breasts with his fingers and unbuttoned her shirt and blue jeans. He helped her slip her shirt off her arms and held one of her hands while she stepped out of her jeans, then walked her to the narrow bed in the room off the kitchen and unhooked her bra and laid her down on the bed and removed her panties.
'Mr. Julian, ain't you gonna use somet'ing?' she asked.
'Yes,' he said, his voice hoarse, the folds of flesh in his throat red and bewhiskered in the moonglow through the window.
There was a sadness in his eyes she had never seen in a white person's before.
'You feel bad about somet'ing, Mr. Julian?'
'What I do is a sin. I've made you part of it, too.'
She took his hand and flattened it on her breast. 'Feel my heart beating? It ain't a sin when a woman's heart beats like that,' she said, and held him with her eyes.
He sat on the edge of the mattress and kissed her stomach and the insides of her thighs and put her nipples in his mouth, then he entered her and came within seconds, his back shaking while she stroked the curly locks of hair on the back of his neck.
'I'm sorry. I didn't give you satisfaction,' he said.
'It's all right, suh. Lie on your back. Let me show you somet'ing,' she said.
Then she mounted him and lifted his sex and placed it inside her and closed her knees and thighs tightly against him. She looked into his eyes in a way she had never dared look at a white man, probing his thoughts, controlling his sensations with the movements of her loins, leaning down to kiss him as she might a child. She came at the same time as he and she felt a surge of power and electricity in her thighs and genitalia and breasts that made her cry out involuntarily, not as much in pleasure as with a sense of triumph she never thought she could experience.
Through the window she heard the tiny bell ring in Mrs. LaSalle's bedroom.
'I always fix Mrs. LaSalle a sandwich and a glass of milk at this time of night,' he said.
'I can do it, suh.'
'No, your duties are in the downstairs of the house. That's where you work and remain, Ladice, unless I'm away and Mrs. LaSalle calls you.'
There was a sharpness in his voice that made her blink. She covered herself with the sheet and pulled her knees up in front of her. She had only to look into his eyes for a second to realize that a transformation had taken place in him since his moment of need had passed. He began dressing, his face composed now, his chin pointed upward while he buttoned his shirt. Ladice stared into the shadows and removed a strand of hair from her forehead, her lips slightly pursed, her eyes veiled.
Then she lay back on the pillow with one arm behind her head and watched him prepare to leave.
'Good night, Ladice,' he said.
She looked at him indifferently and did not answer.
You gonna be back. Won't be long, either. See who talks down to who next time, she said to herself.
The following week the tiny bell on Mrs. LaSalle's nightstand rang when Mr. Julian was in town. Ladice climbed the stairs and stood in Airs. LaSalle's doorway in her maid's black dress and frilled apron.
'Yes, ma'am?' she said.
Mrs. LaSalle had forced her husband to put iron grill-work over the windows, although there had never been a burglary on the island, and she never allowed the windows to be unlocked or opened. The air in the room was oppressive and smelled of camphor and urine. Mrs. LaSalle's skin looked like candle wax, her hair like a tangled red flame on the pillow of her tester bed. Her eyes were dark, larger than they should have been, luminous with either the cancer in her body or the fits of insanity that took possession of her mind.
'What happened to the other nigra girl?' she asked.
'Mr. Julian said you wanted her sent away, ma'am,' Ladice replied.
'That sounds like someone's fabrication. Why would I want to do that? Never mind. Come here. Let me look at you.'
Ladice walked closer to the tester bed. Mrs. LaSalle's pink nightgown was sunken into her chest, where her breasts had been removed.
'Why, you're a juicy little thing, aren't you?' she said.
'Ma'am?'
'I'm incontinent. I want you to rinse my panties.'
'Excuse me?'
'Are you deaf? Remove my panties and rinse them. I've soiled them.'
'I cain't be doing that, ma'am.'
'You impudent thing.'
'Yessum,' Ladice said. She turned and left the room.
That night Mr. Julian was at her door.
'My wife says you sassed her,' he said.
'I don't see it that way,' Ladice replied.
He opened the screen door and stepped inside without being invited. He was much taller than she, his shadow blocking out the evening light that shone through the trees outside. But she didn't move. She wore jeans and sandals and a blue V-necked T-shirt and a gold-plated chain with a small purple stone around her throat. Her body felt cool and fresh from the cold bath she had just taken, and she had put perfume behind her ears, and one lock
