The Sisters

Oh! Hello there!  My name is...well, introductions aren't very important.  Especially if the one narrating the story is a character herself, I'll just let the author do the talking for me...but this is where my story starts-Louisiana perhaps right before the South tried to divide the Union of the United States of America-I tend to get lost in time when I wander into stories about my life.  I had two other sisters, Margaret and Winifred, I being the eldest and set to marry an officer in the Navy.

I envied my sisters, for they had less obligations that I-they were not yet sixteen and no suitors had come calling on them so they had more time to be children and play while I had to attend debutante balls all over the South to get noticed by men who wanted my hand.  These affairs soon grew boring and tiresome when one Commander Harrison approached me and asked ever so kindly "Excuse me Miss Gertrude but will you do me the honor of dancing with me?" Mama told me that declining a dance from any gentleman was rude no matter what the cost so I painted a smile on my face and kindly obliged him.

Little did I know that the very next day he would march up to Papa and demand my hand in marriage and Papa agreed that it would be a fine match.  Seeing in those days women were more  of a material item than people, I just held my tongue and pretended to be happy.  I only being seventeen and this man being well into his thirties seemed like trying to kiss a raggity old dog-disgusting.

Margaret and Winifred were playing house when they saw me and they said "I sure do hope that I meet a man as rich and powerful as the Commander!" this made me turn to them softly and remind them that being forced to marry into money and not love was no marriage at all but they just laughed in my face and went on playing.  I could hear their squeals of delight from my bedroom and I couldn't help but sit in front of my vanity mirror and cry.

Margaret was fifteen and Little Winnie (my pet name for Winifred) was only twelve.  Margaret was more like a gnat than anything-always annoying people for attention since she was the middle child and almost never had any affection from Mama and Papa unless she was being naughty.  Her childish features were being replaced by those of a young woman-her breasts began to swell and she had begun her flow this month.  Her long, sunset orange hair flowed off her shoulders like honey, soft curls spilling onto her brown shawl.

Little Winnie was a sweet child-learning from her older sister's mistakes so not to make the same ones as time went by.  Her emerald green eyes were the first thing that I saw in the morning as they peeked at me and I greeted her with a warm hug and kiss. "How is my Little Green Eyed Monster this morning?" I would ask her and she would giggle and cuddle in my bed with me and tell me fables of the night before.  Her hay colored hair would sit in knots around her head and I would gently brush them out for her.  Mama was always too rough when it came to brushing out tangled hair.

While I was weeping at my vanity, Elphie our house slave was standing next to me in her full height.  You see, Elphie was what you would call a little person in today's world but back then she was called a dwarf for lack of a better term and the rampant ignorance that was the South in those days.  Miss Elphie was a kindly middle aged woman who had gone though all the act a woman was expected to in those days-grow up, marry and have children all while being subjected to the abomination that was slavery. "Why child!" she exclaimed "Whatever is the matter with you?"

"Oh Elphie..." I sobbed.  Miss Elphie was the only person with whom I can speak to freely about anything without being judged. "I am supposed to marry Commander Harrison, but I don't love him!"

She sighed and said "Come child.  Sit on the bed with Miss Elphie..." I went to her like she were my own mother and she explained to me "There are things in this time that we do not have control of-being a slave I speak from experience" she took my hands in hers and continued "sometimes we just have to grin and bear it.  Perhaps in the future there will be no more slavery and women will have the same rights as men but today that's just not how the world works.  Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"

"That my happiness doesn't matter if it serves the men's needs that I live according to their terms?" I ventured an educated guess.

"That's part of it child, but you're missing the point of setting an example for your siblings...to show them what is expected of women and the proper way to act when a gentleman caller is about" she pulled out a small skull brooch and said "This has been passed down from my mother to me and when my eldest son marries, I'll give it to his wife."

I looked at the thing with fear, me being the only person in the entire manor knowing that Elphie practiced Voodoo, the religion of her ancestors from Barbados.  The things she did such as chanting and dancing were considered to be the work of the devil by the Christian faith and punishable by death, so I kept that bit of information to myself for Elphie's sake.  I then thanked her and gave her a hug, the talk having made me feel somewhat better.

Two months later the wedding of Commander Harrison and I was to take place at the church but love never came between the Commander and I.  Mama said that love would come in due time but why does the marriage have to happen so soon is what I asked her.  She replied with "You are not going to stay young and healthy forever, and I just want you to be happy" I objected that her definition of happiness was not the same as mine, and she slapped me so hard that I fell to the floor.  My sisters and Miss Elphie were dead silent as the small squabble went on, Mama stood me up and helped me with my corset in the back.

I was too stunned to cry and the realization hit me like a cannon ball- I was to be married to a man I did not love.  Yes, the Commander was kind and thoughtful, but the fairy tale love that Mama always preached to us with the stories of Cinderella and Snow White was not there.  When Mama left the room, Margaret started with her attitude "I don't know why you're so frustrated.  You may even get lucky with all this talk of a Civil War breaking out and he'll be killed in combat!"

Elphie gasped and said "Child! Hold your tongue! Wishing death on someone darkens the soul!"

"If you like him so much then why don't you marry him?!" I retorted back, having quite enough of her sass these past two months.

"I wish I could!" she shouted back "Since you're acting like a child you may as well take Winnie's place and let me be the eldest and leave this wretched manor!"

My poor, innocent Little Winnie had begun to cry and plead for us to stop fighting but the both of her older sisters shouted at her to be quiet.  Elphie was growing irritated and begged for us to stop fighting.  We completely ignored her and kept at it, only when we heard her chant something in her native tongue and felt the earth shift with a violent quake did we stop, part of the roof falling and landing on top of us three sisters.  

When I awoke three days later, I was in Winnie's room.  Perplexed as to the reason why I was there I sought Mama to know what had happened.  When she saw me, she said "Oh Winifred!  I am so happy you're alive!"  I thought perhaps Mama had sunk into one of her forgetful moments and was about to correct her when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.  I was in Winifred's body!  I quickly ran into my bedroom to see myself-or Margaret rather looking at herself in the vanity.

"What are you doing?!" I hissed quietly "How did we come to be this way?!"

"That, little sister I have no clue as to how we switched bodies and furthermore I don't care!  I am set to marry the Commander this afternoon in your place!"  Then Winnie came in to the room in Margaret's body and whined about her body aching in places that were not there before.  "You did say that you wanted to be older so you can know what it feels like to begin to blossom into a beautiful flower!"

Winnie stomped Margaret's feet and protested in Margaret's voice "I meant that I wanted to do so naturally!  Not by some work of the devil!"

"The way I see it is that we all win-Gertrude doesn't have to marry a man she doesn't love, I don't have to stay in this manor any longer and Winnie is starting to feel the prick of the thorn that is womanhood" she applied the perfume Mama set out for the wedding day and said "we all got what we wished for."

The wedding went off without a problem, the only person in the manor not in attendance was Elphie.  When the ceremony was finished I went over to Mama and asked in Winnie's voice "Mama, where is Miss Elphie?  Why did she not come to the wedding?"

Mama pulled me aside and said in as gentle a tone as she could manage "Miss Elphie died in the quake that rattled the land three days ago.  We waited to tell you so you wouldn't be sad during the wedding.  She's being laid to rest by the slaves in the field beyond the woods tonight.  I'll have one of the house slaves take you if you'd like..." I agreed to it and when nighttime came, Elphie's son Henry took me to the burial.

"I know it's you Miss Trudy..." he said in his deep tone of voice.  People called me Trudy when we were in an informal setting.  "Mama wanted to teach you girls a lesson about being comfortable in your own skin but she got a little carried away..." he was holding back his sadness when we came upon the funeral pyre where Miss Elphie's body laid next to it, her tiny frame swaddled like a babe in red silk and her teeth plucked out of her mouth and fashioned around her head like a halo in the style of how Catholic saints were portrayed.

The mourners welcomed me, all of them knowing it was really Gertrude in Winifred's body.  The threw the bones of small animals into the fire and hearing them crackle apart was almost soothing in a way-then came a funerary song bidding the deceased farewell and luck in the afterlife.  After a few verses I learned the words and began to sing along with the slaves and then the most terrifying and miraculous thing happened.  Miss Elphie opened her eyes and began singing with us!  I was overjoyed and began to sing even louder, but at the end of the song Miss Elphie had closed her eyes and was dead again.

The years that followed were disastrous for us all-Commander Harrison was killed in the war and Margaret died in childbirth along with the baby.  The war was coming to an end when Union soldiers raided the manor and converted it to a military hospital.  Mama and Papa were resistant, so our captors shot them both and left them for dead.  It was only Winnie and I left to tend to the wounded soldiers with the help of the doctors.  We helped with amputations that caused many to die of infections, most of the patients catching fever and dying in a week.

Then it happened-my sweet Little Winnie was struck down with fever.  I pleaded with the soldiers to help her but they laughed in my face and said "Now why should we worry about traitors like you?"  That enraged me to my very core, but I held a stiff upper lip and went on myself to caring for Winnie.  The day she died is engraved in my memory forever-she apologized to me for causing a fuss that day and said she'd take it all back if she could.  I cried, held her hand and told her that it was my and Margaret's fault they were in this mess.  She smiled at me and said that she loved me and passed to be with our Lord.  That I could bear on my own.

However what I could NOT bear was that the Union soldiers tossed her remains in a nearby bayou to be eaten by the wildlife.   My blood boiled over and I could hear the whisper of Miss Elphie's language on the wind.  It was then I abandoned my humanity and laid waste to the entire population of the manor and retreated deep into the swamp.

That was the day I became the fabled Rougarou.