Thierry's Angel

1

Angelique covertly watched the couple at the adjacent table with envy and more than a little yearning. Both seemed to be roughly her age, maybe a little younger. They were sitting as close as they could get to one another, though no one else occupied their small café table. The man could not seem to keep his hands away from the woman. He touched her hair, her cheek, her legs, and her arms. Their kisses had started off innocently, almost like a question, but had grown in fervor. Angelique wondered how either of them could breathe. The woman was flushed, squirming in her seat while the man looked nowhere else but at his ladylove. What must that feel like to be desired in such a way? To have someone so into you they blocked out the entire world – as if you were the only thing in the universe that meant anything at all to them?

"Angelique, are you listening? I swear your mind is always in the clouds. And I don't understand why you would want to live on your own in that old house. You'll only have to move again after the ceremony. I am quite sure Paul would never want to live in that neighborhood!"

Paul, her so-called fiancé, had never looked at her the way the unknown man looked at his woman. He had never touched her in a way that made her burn.

"It doesn't seem be at all safe especially now, after the storm," Charline Dubois continued, completely unaware her audience was anything but captive. "I don't understand why your father would agree to let you buy that house. I can't imagine what you might have said to him to make him agree with such a foolish decision. What if something were to happen to you? Where would you be then? Just think about all the things you are going to have to do to make that place habitable...I mean it is a complete waste of money!"

Angelique stirred her coffee absently as her mother droned on and on. There was little point in interrupting or adding anything to the one sided conversation. She would just ignore her anyway.

"And look at your hair! It looks positively nappy. I don't understand how you could come out so, well, you look nothing like me or my family. I don't understand where that hair came from. And just look at your skin! Have you been using the fading cream I gave you? You are going to have to remember to stay out of the sun! You look positively bronze!"

Some people would love to look positively bronze, Angelique thought to herself. Of course, she said nothing out loud. Meeting her mother for shopping and coffee had been a huge mistake. When Charline Dubois had called claiming she missed "her little girl," Angelique felt that twinge of hope she had fostered all her life: maybe this time Mother would be different. Maybe they could just hang out and at least be civil to one another. Not that Angelique was ever anything but obedient and compliant as far as her parents knew. It still was not enough for her mother – she felt the need to point out everything wrong or undesirable about her at every opportunity. Her hair was too nappy, she was too dark, too naïve, too bookish. Angelique was not the perfect Creole daughter Charline had wanted. Instead of the dusky ivory and cream skin and "good hair" Angelique had skin that was an interesting mixture of browns and reds, like milk chocolate swirled with cinnamon and a touch of Kashmir saffron. Rather than having light colored eyes to declare her mixed linage, her eyes were dreamy brown. Soulful eyes, her grandmother called them. Plain mud brown was all Charline saw.

The Dubois clan was a proud Black Creole family. Her father, Adam, was currently the mayor of New Orleans. His father had been the first African American mayor. The family owned a multitude of businesses and properties throughout the state. They could trace their roots back through Creole gens de couleur libres to one Amélie Durand, who was the daughter of an African slave and some kind of French nobleman. Family legend had it that she married the illegitimate son of a French king. Angelique doubted most of the story was true, but it was pleasant family folklore. Her mother, however, believed every word. She reveled in it, flaunted it whenever the opportunity presented itself. The woman lived and breathed Dubois pride, which Angelique found a bit odd seeing as her mother was only a Dubois through marriage. It seemed that the family name meant far more to Charline and Anne, her aunt by marriage, than it did anyone else.