Bayou Folk

Natchitoches Parish, a bend of the Cane River, and everybody within earshot: Creole planters gone to seed, Acadian farmers on thin strips, freed people and the families who used to own them. Kate Chopin lived up that river at Cloutierville, and she writes the place from inside, where everyone knows everyone's business and certain things are never said aloud. In Beyond the Bayou, a woman who has not crossed the water since a night of the war carries a bleeding child over it and keeps walking. La Belle Zoraïde leaves a mother holding a bundle of rags, her lover sold away and her newborn taken at her mistress's word. And Désirée's Baby is a young husband studying his infant son's skin, deciding what it means, putting his wife out of the house, with no idea what is folded in the letter waiting at the end. Chopin never raises her voice. She hands you the fact in four pages, in the tone she would use for a stolen turkey or a sold fiddle, and it stays in you for years.