Big Easy Bonanza

deference to her teachers at McGehee’s, she resisted the impulse. She waited until he had sat and then reached for the gun.
    “Okay, Mrs. St. Amant, I’ll listen.”
    Bitty sat down. “What if I told you Chauncey was black?”
    Henry said, “Funny, he didn’t look black.”
    “Maybe he was an eighth black—a sixteenth. Who knows? He thought it was enough to ruin his life if anyone knew.”
    Skip nodded, suspicions confirmed, “I understand. I know about LaBelle.”
    “LaBelle?” Bitty sounded unconvinced that the word had come out of Skip’s mouth.
    “I know you gave birth to a black baby and gave her to a black woman to raise.”
    “How dare you say that! How could you know what it means to be a mother? I did
not
do that, Skip Langdon.
I did not give up my own child.
No mother would do that.
    Chauncey did it. He didn’t want anyone to know. He accused me … but how could
you
know Chauncey was her father? Even my own father never believed it.”
    “I made a lucky guess. I saw this kid—Estelle Villere’s child—who looked white even though his parents were black—or what passes for black in New Orleans. And I remembered Marcelle told me how much Chauncey hated the word bastard. I was playing around with different ideas, trying to figure out why LaBelle was given away. And I thought, what if
Chauncey
was the father? If he’d been adopted, he might look white and still be ‘black’ enough for the genes to come out in one of his children. So I called his mother and asked her.”
    “You talked to his mother? But she doesn’t know about the black … blood.”
    “I didn’t tell her.”
    “Marcelle doesn’t know either. We never told anyone Chauncey was adopted after Hélène was born—Chauncey couldn’t stand the thought that anyone would find out the truth. He didn’t know himself until she was born. And he never really accepted it, even though he had the same kind of birthmark she had, one that a lot of black kids have. That’s how we found out. A cute little nurse put her hand on the baby’s butt, where it was all blue, and said, ‘Oh, a Mongolian spot; I never saw one on a white baby before.’ And Chauncey turned pale. Ma-Mère said, ‘Oh, Chauncey had one till he was three or four.’ That was the only way you could tell, when Hélène was first born. She had such lovely silky red hair—did you know black babies don’t look black?”
    “No.”
    “They change after a few months, or even weeks. Hélène started changing almost right away. Chauncey made me keep her away from people—even his own parents. That’s how I know he knew he was the father. They’re racists, the St. Amants. They hated Chauncey’s musicians and they could never understand any of his civil rights positions.” She looked pathetically at Skip, defending her dead husband. “But he was like that before Hélène was born. Even when he didn’t know about himself. All that was genuine. He just couldn’t—” She bit her lip, on the verge of tears. “He couldn’t accept
himself
as black. It was okay for other people, just not for him.”
    Skip could imagine. What he had done was difficult enough if you were white—come up from nowhere, married a Mayhew, gone from there to become King of Carnival. No known black man could have done it—even a man who was one-sixteenth black, or whatever Chauncey was. To acknowledge his blackness was to give up life as he knew it. To die, in a sense, to throw everything away.
    “I would have loved him no matter what. As long as I could have kept my baby.”
    Skip wondered about that.
    “I thought there was no other way. I thought he wouldn’t love me any more if I didn’t do it.”
    “He talked you into giving her up?”
    “I was sick. I had the flu and this awful headache—I was full of drugs. They had to bribe a few people—he and my father and Tolliver—but not as many as you’d think. They just put a notice in the paper saying she was dead and we’d had her cremated. No one questioned it—not one single soul. Everyone sent flowers. Later he said I agreed. Even Tolliver said I did, so I must have. But I wouldn’t have—” She was wailing it, eyes pleading for belief. “I never,
never
would have, if I’d been in my right mind. All I remember was, we got in the car and Chauncey drove a few blocks, not very far, and Tolliver was waiting for us in his car. And Chauncey made me give her to him. And I did. I just handed her over. I thought I had