Miss Carmelia Faye Lafayette
9000 Words
Miss Carmelia Faye Lafayette was born in Cane River, Louisiana, in 1892 to a French blacksmith and his colored house servant, whom he had hired to take care of his ill mama. A short while after her employ, he began a relationship with the house servant, marrying her a few months after his mama’s death. He was a fairly wealthy man, yet he drank excessively, oftentimes becoming verbally and physically violent.
Miss Carmelia was an only child and saw much abuse in her lifetime. She ran away from home when she was sixteen to escape the abuse by her papa. She met Hawk Edmonson at a colored traveling minstrel show and married him within a week of meeting him. She wasn’t in love with him, but she believed it couldn’t be any worse than what she was experiencing in her home life.
Miss Carmelia and Hawk traveled all over Louisiana and to parts of Mississippi with the minstrel show, Miss Carmelia earning her fare playing Three-Card Monte, becoming exceptional at conning her marks out of their hard-earned cash. When Hawk spent a stint at Parchman Farm, a year after they married, Miss Carmelia was devastated. She had no home, living in low-grade motels as the minstrel show traveled throughout the state. At Hawk’s request, one of the minstrel show members allowed her to live with his family in Wayne County, Mississippi, until Hawk got out of prison two years later. During that time the minstrel show disbanded, leaving Miss Carmelia unemployed once again. She found employment as a barmaid at a colored barrelhouse, called the Hankering, and made some pretty good wages, saving up every penny. When Hawk got out of prison, he started working at the barrelhouse as a bouncer, and a year later with his savings and hers, they bought the barrelhouse.
As the Hankering began to make money, in fact a lot of money, it drew the unwanted attention of Sheriff Theodore Hostler and his deputies. They began to shake down Hawk until he got fed up with their blackmail and settled the issue in a fight right in the middle of the Hankering. Hawk killed one of the deputies before being shot himself. Sheriff Hostler dragged Miss Carmelia and every colored resident at the joint down to the sheriff’s office to answer a ton of questions about the deputy’s death.
Everyone told the same story, “I ain’t seen nothing, sir. My face was in the wall.”
Every day for a week, Sheriff Hostler made his rounds to the joint to harass Miss Carmelia. Customers stopped coming around because of the harassment, and Miss Carmelia eventually had to close down the Hankering. Sheriff Hostler knew he had nothing to pin on Miss Carmelia, but he wanted to make her squirm anyway. He didn’t like her nor Hawk, having no compunction about sending her to jail for anything he could pin on her. With little to no evidence against her, he eventually dropped the investigation and closed the case.
Over the next few weeks, Miss Carmelia’s mood had changed. She had grown bitter and had become a bit jaded, lashing out at anyone who tried to take advantage of her, something Hawk had tried to do when they were married. He was extremely jealous and over-possessive, demanding to know her every move. He couldn’t fathom she had a mind of her own, and she refused to be controlled by anyone, including Hawk.
Fed up with her determined ways, Hawk started creeping around on her during their marriage. When she found out about his affairs, she divorced him at age twenty and didn’t see him for over six months. Eventually, they got back together, Hawk asking her to remarry him and Miss Carmelia refusing, vowing never to be in a position where a man had total control over her life again. She told him if he wanted her, it would be on her terms, and marrying him was not negotiable.
Hawk accepted her terms but didn’t like it. He had a fiery temper, and whenever he thought
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