Free Postmark Bayou Chene by Gwen Roland Page B

shapeless cotton housedress vaguely held in place by an apron, which probably would have clashed with the color of the dress if they hadn’t both been faded to a muddled gray. Who knows, maybe her day and night dress were the same garment? It was wrinkled enough to have been slept in. Maybe blind women could dress however they liked, or maybe it was the swamp. After all, who would ever see her to care what she wore? Just thinking about it made Roseanne’s nose convulse.
    Then she sniffed again, on purpose this time. Cream, butter, and vanilla—three of her favorite fragrances—wafted through the cracks in the floor and enticed her out of bed. Even though her stomach growled and she rushed through her morning toilette, it was nearly an hour before she felt presentable enough to go down the stairs. A night of hanging in the armoire had not taken the wrinkles out of her most casual outfit—a blue and black plaid linen skirt with a dark-gray blouse closely buttoned at cuffs and collar. She smoothed the fabric as best she could with her hands, but her nose still jerked when she looked in the armoire mirror. To make up for the dishevelment, she took extra care coiling her hair and securing it with additional pins. Roseanne’s spine was also straighter than usual as she descended the stairs, trying to pull the wrinkles out of the clothes with her body.
    Mr. Snellgrove had finished with his customer and returned to the kitchen. “Mrs. Barclay, you’re just in time for a fresh batch.” He greeted her with a wave of the spatula he was wielding over an iron skillet, where four pieces of French bread sizzled in butter.
    She knew the bread had been soaked in sweetened cream and beaten eggs, giving the breakfast dish the name “lost bread,” or pain perdu among the French Creoles of her hometown. Some people said the name came from the fact that the recipe reclaimed stale bread that would otherwise be lost, or thrown away. Roseanne preferred to imagine the dry crusts losing themselves in the rich custard, transformed until they were unrecognizable—truly lost bread. Her stomach growled once more as she watched the bread puff until it doubled in thickness.
    Roseanne was always hungry. Her heavy, form-fitting clothes discouraged eating more than a few spoonfuls at a sitting, and she rarely left a table feeling satisfied. Even so, she was constantly having to cut back on what she ate. Once she turned thirty, it seemed that every meal added another inch to her waist and hips. Now that she was thirty-five, every meal left her looking more like her mother’s side of the family. So said her trim stepmother, Clothilde.
    â€œThank you, Mr. Snellgrove, I will have a piece,” Roseanne said as casually as she could muster with those fragrances swirling around, confusing her thoughts.
    Clothilde’s sharp features and nagging voice faded from her mind as she settled into the chair pulled out for her. Once seated, she surveyed the kitchen table made of cypress planks worn smooth by years of dishes sliding across it. Her chair was in front of a small clearing just large enough for the plate and a cup of coffee. The rest of the table was littered with a milk bucket, spools of twine, several wooden shuttles, a few unopened tins of fruit, two boxes of fishhooks, five dirty coffee cups. She sniffed and flicked her handkerchief ineffectually at dried spills.
    Without asking how she took her coffee, Adam set a sugar bowl and small pot of scalded milk next to her cup. “You just help yourself, Mrs. Barclay. I hear someone across the way,” he said, and was gone through the screen door.
    Even though she always took coffee black, the scalded milk and the bowl of sugar had been put out just for her. She didn’t want to offend her generous host. It was the first meal she had ever eaten alone. There was no one to supervise her choices. Darting a furtive glance right and left without moving her