I Am Madame X Read Online Free PDF Page B

fact, if I didn’t know they were mother and daughter, I would have assumed they disliked each other, so chilly and formal were their relations. Yet now they gripped each other with a fierceness that frightened me.
    I started to cry. “What’s this? What’s this?” groused Rochilieu. “We can’t have crying. You’ll bring the armies down on us.” Mama and Grandmère broke apart. Their faces were wet.
    We mounted our horses and trotted along the path by the cane fields, away from the house. The moon looked like a pearl button above the roof, and the air was sweet with the perfume of magnolias and jasmine.
    Under Rochilieu’s plan, we would make our way to Port Hudson on the east side of the Mississippi, then follow the Old County Road to New Orleans. From there we would take the last leg of the river to the Gulf of Mexico and the open sea, where we would flag down a French or English ship.
    As we rode through the forest, Valentine stayed as still as death. But Mama, who hated horseback riding, complained constantly about her mount, her saddle, her aching back. “Shut up!” grunted Rochilieu. “For all we know, the Yanks or the Rebels are behind the next grove of trees.” He wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. Once, when a rabbit ran across the path, he clutched his chest and yelped. Mama was relying on God to see us through, and she mumbled prayers all night.
    At daybreak, we reached the Mississippi, where a rickety skiff was waiting on the bank. We piled into the leaky boat and pushed off. Rochilieu did the rowing. Mama held Valentine, and I lay against Mama’s legs with her shawl enfolding me. I fell asleep, and when I awoke, smoke from burning cotton on the levees rose against the pink sky. A pool of water from the boat’s leaky bottom had risen and soaked my shoes.
    After a while, the baby began to cry. “Will you hold her a moment?” Mama said. As I stood to take Valentine from her arms, a square of sunlight broke through the trees and blinded me momentarily. The boat rocked; I stumbled. The sack of gold slid from my waist, vanishing into the muddy water with a loud plop and narrowly missing the black, scaly head of an alligator lurking nearby.

Two
    A half hour later, we came ashore at Port Hudson and plodded through the woods. I couldn’t shake from my head the image of an alligator with huge open jaws. Cold terror, mingled with wretchedness over losing our gold, brought on a convulsion of sobs. I wailed loudly as we stepped over branches and brambles, wending our way to the Old County Road. Honeysuckle lined the shoulders, and the road was strewn with blue-clad bodies—Union men who had succumbed to illness and exhaustion on their march to battle. We didn’t look at the corpses and sucked in our breath to avoid the stench.
    It was a bright day and already boiling hot. Itchy red bumps had broken out on my neck where the tight collar of my dress met my skin, and I scraped them furiously with my fingers. “Stop that scratching. You’re a girl, not a dog!” Mama cried. She was furious with me. As she walked with Rochilieu, a few yards behind me, I could hear her moaning refrain, “How will we live without our gold?”
    A distant cannon shook the air, then another. “Right now, money should be the least of your worries,” said Rochilieu.
    We walked on, mile after mile, under the burning sun. A fine gray dust covered our clothes, and our shoes were cracked and coming apart. After a couple of hours, a rickety wagon driven by an old farmer rattled up beside us. “Don’t tell him anything,” Rochilieu warned. The farmer had a sunburned face, and when he smiled, two ragged teeth appeared in his black mouth. “Y’all look like you need a ride,” he said. We clambered into the back of the wagon. I quickly fell asleep, and when I woke, we were in New Orleans, parked in front of a small, run-down hotel with laundry hung over the balcony. I jumped down to the pavement, and Rochilieu