Emmanuel still had his hand on my elbow, but it did not matter. I turned toward the window, and it was all I could do to keep myself from leaning out of it, from wanting to jump down to the ground below.
It was my Graces, come back to me.
I could not hear what words they were singing from so far away. But I could hear the clarity of their voices, the way they met and married in the air. I could hear how they wound their way to me. I could hear, too, how the crowd had quieted when they began.
“It’s Experience and Louisa singing,” I said.
Emmanuel looked exasperated. “It can’t be.”
But it was—I knew it was—and I listened as closely as I could until they were done, and then I heard my heart beat faster.
“You must find them. They must know I am here, but you must find them and bring them to the house.”
“How will I even get close? How will I get down to them?”
“Please go!” I said.
“I will go, if it makes you happy.”
And he was gone, and I thought of this man who would go out into the streets to find them for me. I thought of Ella, saying sourly, an accusation, He really loves you.
I sat in silence, in the darkening house, until I heard the great door downstairs open and close, and Bishop Chase and Ella purring their kindest regards, and Emmanuel laughing, and then the two voices I missed most in the world, after the voice of my mother.
Louisa and Experience looked better than they had when we’d left them. Experience was a little stouter—her chin had swelled slightly, a little dimple of fat sat in the middle of it. Louisa was standing straighter. They were both in new dresses, finer fabric than I had ever seen them wear.
When they saw me, they began to shout—“Ho!” and “My!”—even Experience.
Finally, Louisa said.
“You have seen her?”
“She came to our final performance,” Experience said, “before we began our engagement with the troupe.”
“It was too hard,” Louisa said, “to manage things on our own. We were nearly run out of town in Connecticut and robbed in Syracuse. We would have given up altogether and returned to school if we had not met Mr. Ashland and the Colored Troubadours. And then they announced their tour of the Caribbean, and that they would even come to Haiti, and we knew we had to join, if only for the chance to see you again.”
“Thank God Mr. Ashland is honest,” I said.
Louisa laughed. “Yes, he is a good man. We travel for six more months, and then we return to America and find another way, we suppose.”
“But you must stay here,” I said.
Emmanuel moved forward. “Yes, please stay.”
Louisa looked quickly to Experience. “Let us send Mr. Ashland word of our plans. We were to stay two nights here and then travel on to Port-au-Prince. Mr. Ashland tells us there is an opera house there, finer than anything you can find in New Orleans, almost as fine as Paris.”
“There was,” Bishop Chase said. “But it burnt down.”
“Mr. Ashland is not altogether honest,” I said, and was rewarded with another of Louisa’s laughs. I realized I had not made anyone laugh, besides Emmanuel, since I’d been here. Not kindly, anyways. Sitting at the dinner table for the first time in months, my back felt heavy against the chair.
Louisa and Experience told us all the things they had seen on their travels. It was strange to see them in front of the Chases. They did not understand the Graces’ irreverence but knew enough that these women were good, because they sang the word of God. Still, the bishop mostly looked back and forth between Experience and Louisa, as if they were saying words in a language he did not understand but he knew to be indecent.
“In Florida, there is a city that is governed entirely by black men and Indians,” Experience said, “and they have built an amphitheater so fine a whisper sounds like a shout.”
“In Cuba, they had us sing in the market square while a man slaughtered a bull behind us,” Louisa said. “We thought it would be a distraction, but no one clapped until we were done.”
“They even ignored the bull’s very pretty bow when he was brought down by the mace,” Experience added.
“They say we will sing for the colored people in New Orleans,” Louisa said, “though Mr. Ashland claims he had to take special care that we weren’t engaged at a fancy house.”
Ella put down her napkin at this and looked pleadingly at her father. But he shook his head slightly, as if to say Let it pass, for our guests.
“And,” Experience said, “every penny we earn, except for incidentals, is sent back to the college, Libertie.”
“We write to Alma Curtis every three weeks to assure her we are staying virtuous.” Louisa winked at me, and I felt my cheeks grow hot.
“She’ll be proud to know how you’ve turned out,” Experience said.
“How I’ve turned out?”
“Yes, she would be proud.”
“But I’ve done nothing I’ve been educated for,” I said.
They both look pained.
Emmanuel looked at me sharply. “You have done very well for yourself, Libertie.”
“Yes,” I said. “But Alma Curtis used to say I was a girl who could have an ambition.”
There was a brief, awkward silence. And then Louisa looked across the table to Ella, to compliment her on her cloak.
“It’s a coat of righteousness,” Ella said cheerfully. “As righteous as good brother Joseph’s was.”
Louisa looked at me quizzically. I shrugged.
Ella continued. “This coat is stitched with the word of the Lord.”
“Is that so?” Experience said.
Emmanuel cut her off. “Ella is excellent at needlework. She really is.”
“Very refined,”
