Dishing Up Love

“Then came the infamous party that took place here on April 10, 1834. A fire broke out in the LaLaurie mansion. When the firefighters arrived, they discovered the fire had been started by a slave who was chained to the stove and left to starve. The servant woman confessed later that she set the fire as an attempted suicide, because she’d rather die than be taken to the attic,” Ronnie says in an eerie tone, pointing up toward the mansion’s top floor. Everyone’s eyes follow his direction as he adds, “She said no one who was taken up there ever came back down.”

A shiver runs up my spine, and I’m grateful when our tour guide tells us, “There’s no one coming, so let’s cross over real quick.” And then he hurries across the street, our group following before stopping to turn and face the mansion. “This gives us a better view, so you can picture the horrors that took place that night.”

“Oh, goodie. Exactly what we needed. A clearer picture of that shitshow,” I murmur, and Erin giggles beside me again. When I look down at her, she gives me a lopsided grin.

“Pussy,” she whispers, and I raise a brow at her, unable to make a comeback as Ronnie tells the rest of his story.

“As Marie scrambled to save her valuables, the townsfolk and people at the party tried to help her. But no matter the awful screams coming from the slave quarters, she wouldn’t give up the keys, so they had to break the doors down to rescue all of them that were locked inside. The terrified slaves, finally being able to speak to guests in the pure chaos of the night, begged them to go up to the attic, to rescue their friends and family members inside.

“When they entered the attic, they found a scene from the most gruesome nightmare imaginable. According to Martineau, Seven slaves, more or less horribly mutilated… suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to the other. The slaves who could speak said they’d been imprisoned there for months. Recounts of Marie’s abuse have grown more fantastical over the years. You might’ve heard stories of the victims’ limbs being broken and reset at odd angles and such. Not to mention how American Horror Story embellished the tale. But newspaper accounts paint a gruesome enough picture without any need for exaggeration. In fact, the rescued slaves from the attic were put on display, so the people of New Orleans could see the evidence of Marie’s cruelty for themselves. This was not the work of a sweet and charming woman they all thought they knew. Oh no. These poor people had deep lacerations and scars from repeated floggings. They were skeletal in appearance from starvation. There was even a hole in one man’s head wriggling with maggots.”

At that, a woman in the group steps aside and gags, and I can’t say I blame her. I’m feeling a little queasy myself, hearing that story while standing directly in front of the location where it happened. Even Erin, who’d been all smiles through the darkest of stories tonight, except for that one time during the boarding school tale, had a sorry look on her beautiful face.

Ronnie continues, “Slavery was already a brutal, dehumanizing practice during this time period. They used spiked collars, iron masks, and beatings on the regular, but even in the South, what they discovered at LaLaurie mansion was more than even they would tolerate.

“When word spread of Marie’s cruelty, a crowd of locals of all classes and colors descended on the mansion and demolished and destroyed everything upon which they could lay their hands. After they destroyed most of the mansion, a local paper released articles stating there had been two more bodies found buried on the LaLaurie property, including one of a small child.”

At that, Erin leans into me, and my arm automatically wraps around her as she shivers. I try not to look too much into her reaction. After all the wicked grins and giggles she’s been sending me while listening to her city’s dark history, it makes me wonder why this—the mention of two more bodies being found on the property—is what still gets a reaction out of her, even as she’s heard these stories a hundred times over.

And then it dawns on me.

The two times she had this sad response were when small children were the victims.

What’s up with that? I ask myself, and I make a mental note to pry later.

“Unfortunately, there is no great tale of justice being served. In order to get that, you’ll just have to watch that third season of AHS and pretend it’s real. In reality, Marie escaped with her driver, a slave named Bastien, where she lived out the rest of her life in comfort and freedom in Paris. When she died December 7, 1849, she was first buried at Montmartre—the area of Paris where the beautiful Sacré-Coeur is, along with the nightclub district, which includes the world-famous Moulin Rouge. Some people believe her body was later exhumed and returned to New Orleans, though it can’t be proven.”