The World Beneath: A Story of Love & Physics

Have you ever struggled between fate and your destiny?

New Orleans, 1983
"Your Grand Moman told you of the Cadot curse, yet?" With no pause that warm January noon, my Moman Féy spun to face the double thick cypress doors I always shivered by when I passed to the staircase, my feet quickening down a hallway layered with two centuries of varnish and family secrets.

Her fingertips graced the door's always-locked fleur de lys handle before she turned, "Has she said we were named mal voodooienne? And termed me a temptress?"

I swallowed my nod. Grand Moman L had warned me we'd been cursed ever since Mama Sarr landed on these shores in 1619. And that though she'd avoided it, but my Moman Féy had not. She'd added no more. And given her tone, I'd never dared to ask.

Her thumb dusted my shoulder as she went on, "Well, has she spoken at least of the twelve portraits, your Cadot sister ancestresses?"

She swung her hand to the dozen portraits marching above the ruby red staircase up from our second-story parlor.

I dusted them and polished the old oil lamps between them once every month. Moman L said that knowledge of them was for when I was grown. So, I'd always been curious.

"Since Mama Sarr's daughter, Marie," Féy pointed down to the second portrait, "we've been cursed to fate-no boys, just one girl born per generation, and she to be abandoned, on stoop or altar." Her throat choked. "To be barred forever from any choice or destiny."

So even my so-called Moman felt cursed? With her wavy hair and café au lait skin? And she, a famous dancer in Paree as Moman L called it.

Now her fingers pressed into my arm. "But it's not true, Jeanne, all of our Cadot sisters have found a kind of destiny. Paradoxical maybe. You know this word? But we know how to bend cruelty, especially of powerful men."