The Book of Lost Friends - Lisa Wingate Page 0,172

I = indentured

L = libre

A = affranchi

I know the last two terms from our Underground research. Affranchi, a French word for those emancipated from slavery by their owners, and libre, those born as free persons of color—tradesmen and landowners, many highly prosperous, some slave owners themselves. My students have struggled to understand how people who suffered the effects of injustice could themselves perpetrate it on others and profit from it, yet it happened. It’s part of our historical reality.

Reproductions of newspaper articles, old photos, and documents remain pinned to the fabric here and there, awaiting the addition of more pockets, I suppose. Robin was thorough in her research.

“My sister…” Nathan mutters. “This is…”

“Your family’s story. All of it. The truth.” I recognize so many connections from my students’ work. Tracing the lines upward, I move past branches that dwindle and disappear, fading like estuaries into the ocean of time. Death. Disease. War. Infertility. The end of this family line and that one.

Other branches continue, twisting through the decades. I see Granny T and Aunt Dicey. Their lineage travels back to both the black and the white Gossetts. To the grandmother they have in common, Hannie, born 1857, enslaved.

“The New Century ladies,” I say, and point to Hannie’s leaf. “This is the grandmother that Granny T told my class about, the one who started the restaurant. Hannie was born here at Goswood Grove, enslaved. She’s also the grandmother of the woman who used to live in the graveyard house, Miss Retta.”

I’m fascinated, astounded. I let my hand travel outward, onto blank sections of Robin’s canvas. “A few of my kids would be right around here somewhere, LaJuna, Tobias—and Sarge, too. They’d all be farther along on this branch.”

I feel the tingle of history coming to life as I trace backward through the generations again. “Hannie’s mother is biracial, a half sister to the Gossetts living in the Grand House at the time. This generation, Lyle, Lavinia, Juneau Jane, and Hannie, are brother, sister, half sister, and a cousin in some form or fashion. Lyle and Lavinia die fairly young, and…that leaves the daughter of the second wife to…whoa…”

Nathan looks up from his study of the family tree, meets my eye curiously, then steps in beside me to take a closer look.

I tap a finger to one leaf, then another. “This woman, the mother of Juneau Jane, is not William Gossett’s second wife; she’s a mistress, a free woman of color. Her daughter, Juneau Jane LaPlanche, is born while William Gossett is married to Maude Loach-Gossett. He’s living here in this house as the owner of the plantation. He already has a son with Maude, and then he fathers two daughters less than two years apart, one with his wife and one with his mistress. Lavinia and Juneau Jane.”

I know such things went on, that an entire social system existed in parts of New Orleans and other places, through which wealthy men kept mistresses, raised what were casually referred to as left-hand families, sent mixed-race sons and daughters off for education abroad or kept them in convent boarding schools, or provided tradesmen’s education for them. Still, I can imagine the human drama that must have simmered below the surface of such arrangements. Jealousy. Resentment. Bitterness. Competition.

Nathan glances over but doesn’t answer. He’s tracing something up from the roots of the tree, toward the branches, the path of his fingertip connecting the tiny house-shaped symbols that track ownership of Goswood Grove.

“Here’s the thing,” he says, and stops on the leaf that represents William Gossett’s younger daughter, the one born to the mistress. “I can’t figure out how it is that Gossetts still own this house today. Because here, the last Gossett son, Lyle, dies. The Grand House and land pass to Juneau Jane LaPlanche, who, according to Robin’s tree, never has children. Even if she did, their name wouldn’t have been Gossett.”

“Unless this is just where the research stopped. Maybe Robin never got any further. She was obviously still working on the project. It seems almost like…an obsession.” I imagine Nathan’s sister poring over these documents, this quilt of the family history