On the radio, Josephine Baker continues to sing “Bye Bye Blackbird” onrepeat. The knot in my chest has become a boulder that blocks my throat. The Bentley rolls on, changing time and place as we travel. The hours pass faster. The two-day drive from New York City to New Orleans is done in three hours. Old cars become new; the black-and-white world around us becomes sepia again and then bursts with color as we near our destination.
St. Louis Cathedral stabs into the night sky over the French Quarter.
“It still looks more like a castle than a church.” I glance up at the ivory building with its grand arches.
Women in flapper dresses spill out of bars and clubs. Their bobbed hairstyles, cloche hats, and bright clothes confirm our arrival in the right decade.
The familiar harmony of the city at night rings through the air—the bold jazz music, the laughter, the arguments, the many languages spoken at once. Demetri slows in front of a small pink-and-black café. In the window, the Bentley is reflected. I watch as the sleek gray car’s body darkens, elongates, and melts into the form of a black 1922 Rolls-Royce. Our Bentleys always mask themselves when we travel someplace new, morphing to look like horses and buggies or whatever vehicle is best suited to the time period that we’ve arrived in. A genius survival trick.
We make our way to the Garden District and Grandmère’s house.
“If we went to Paris right now, just a little further ahead in time, I could see Josephine Baker perform. She’ll be at the Moulin Rouge with her revue. Do you think Mom will ever let us travel just for fun?”
Demetri laughs. “I wouldn’t suggest asking her tonight. What’s with you and Josephine, anyway?”
“She’s everything!” I say. I envy her talent, her freedom to share it with the world as she pleases. “She left St. Louis and became a star on her own terms.”
I lean my head against the window, the cool glass a welcome reprieve from the sticky heat. I stare up at the moon, at the people out for their evening walks. I sigh. “One day I’ll be like her,” I tell Demetri. “Writing my own story. You’ll see.”
“You’ll be too busy helping me scout. Get serious, Emma. This is our life.”
I suck my teeth and fuss with my hem. When I was younger, I always wanted to be chosen to tiptoe through time and scout the family’s next circus location. There are only so many areas that have been historically safe for Black performers, and we never want to set up shop in the same place and time as the Davenports. However, I’ve never been entrusted with such a mission.
Maybe I should be grateful for that. Because Grace died while she was scouting. They tell me that she’d been sent to Washington, DC, the day before we were supposed to meet her there. But I fell down the cement stairs of the house we were staying in. I was seriously hurt, and the accident delayed us, so we arrived too late. Grace was dead, not a trace of warmth left in her. The trauma and the injury have robbed me of the memory of the last time I saw her; a lot that happened in that time is blank.
Demetri turns a corner, and we head down St. Charles Avenue.
I lose track of time as the French Quarter town houses and shotgun homes gradually give way to Garden District mansions. When Demetri eases the Bentley to a stop, my eyes burn as I squint, desperate to see the truth in the darkness. The run-down antebellum mansion sits behind an overgrown garden obscured from the street. I can’t see where the house ends; it blurs and melts into vapor like steam rising off hot beignets.
The gates open, and Demetri leads the procession inside. Once we’re away from the street, the fuzziness lifts. In the center of it all, Grandmère’s towering mansion.
Most can’t see through her gift and view nothing but the gabled peaks of a neglected, moss-covered yellow estate made in boxy geometric shapes. But the roof of her house actually reaches into the clouds. Outsiders see faded white shutters, a worn porch, tattered curtains, a steel gate, and a sagging slate roof. And they think a reclusive, elderly white woman named Mrs. Landry lives here, barely coming and going so there’s nothing to see. Just the way Grandmère likes it.
Without the veil, it’s magnificent. Decorated in elegant pinks and creamy whites, the iron lace porches welcome us home. The headquarters of Le Cirque Noir. Tonight, the moonlight gleams on the pearl-blue tile moons positioned above the manor’s arches and columns. The beautifullyclipped hedges adorning the front of the house are lined with bows, and ground torches light a cozy path through the yard. Next to the hedges, as always, stand ten gorgeous women, five on each side, their black-fringed dresses revealing skin in varying shades of brown. The light dances on their shiny revolvers.
My brother eyes them. “I wish I had a team like that guarding me.”
“Don’t make Grandmère’s security shoot you.” I smirk.
“Always trying to kill a man’s dreams, aren’t you?”
I raise an eyebrow and look around. “Did a man sneak in here with us?”
My brother laughs out loud as he parks the Bentley in the car hangar. I imagine our ancestors’ horse-drawn carriages pulling up where our automobiles are now parked, the same routine, just different trappings, and I sigh.
The car unlocks. He steps out.
I crawl into the back seat, open the hatch that leads to the trunk, and dig through silver cases until I settle on one labeledROARING TWENTIES. I breathe a sigh of relief as I change out of my high-waisted trousers and blouse and into a sleeveless dress with gold beading, pairing it with bright shoes with a low curving heel. I unpin my victory rolls, forcing my hair into a low chignon bun at the base of my neck, and place a rhinestone-covered bandeau hair accessory on my forehead. I cap it off with a long string of pearls, draped carefully around my necklace, and a fur stole. After I’m done, I climb out of the Bentley and wait as my brother goes in and changes.
Demetri emerges from the car in a bowler hat. An Arrow shirt peeks out from under the vest of a navy pin-striped suit with a single-breasted jacket.
“What’s taking Mom so long? They were right behind us.” I stare at the gate.
“She’ll be here,” he replies. “You know she’s never in a rush to see her mother.”
A few long minutes pass as we wait for our parents, and finally, a funnel of light washes over us as their Bentley parks behind ours. Only their car is now masked to look like a red 1920 Nash Touring, with big wheels in the front and a soft beige top.
Ragtime music with a scratchy Victrola sound spills onto the street, drifting from the regal mansion before us.
