Liora was not all bad. It would be a lie to paint her as a creature made entirely of darkness, because she had moments that was brief, fleeting, and precious where she was genuinely sweet and kind. But those moments were reserved only for me and for the animals she raised with a tenderness that seemed almost out of place in someone like her. She hated men and women alike, no matter their color, their age, or their station. Her disdain for people was universal, unwavering, and absolute. I never understood why she came to be that way, not fully, not until much later.
I asked her once, when she was fifteen and I was twenty‑three. Five years had passed since she killed her daddy and those white men, five years since she had dipped her hands into the kind of darkness that stains a soul forever. She had grown taller, her beauty deepening with each passing year. Her curls fell longer down her back, her body shifting from that of a girl into the unmistakable shape of a young woman. She was beautiful, and she knew it. She knew the power of her looks, knew how men’s eyes followed her, knew how women whispered behind their hands. She wielded that beauty like a weapon, sharp and deliberate, especially when we went into town to shop or run errands.
Everyone in Lafayette knew Liora Moreau. They knew exactly what she wanted them to know. They saw her give and volunteer at the church, smiling sweetly as she handed out food baskets. They saw her kindness when she helped the less fortunate, offering money or comfort with a gentle touch. They saw her donate her old, expensive dresses to struggling mothers for their daughters. All good, wholesome things that made people forget the kind of man her father had been. In fact, most people forgot she was a Negro child at all. Her pale skin and delicate features made her white‑passing, and she hid the truth of her heritage with the same ease she hid her cruelty.
She hid the fact that she came from a Black woman’s womb. She hid the fact that the dark‑skinned woman trailing behind her was her blood sister. To the people of Lafayette, Liora was a white woman who was kind, generous, refined, and wealthy.
I knew why she did it. I knew exactly why she hid her Blackness.
It was her way of stepping into the “better” part of society, the white upper echelon that had denied her everything her father promised her. Liora had learned her lesson well when those white men she later cursed to death took all the properties and businesses she had killed and schemed to inherit. She never recovered what was stolen from her, but she was satisfied that the men who robbed her were dead.
That did not mean Liora wanted to be white. No, she found white society boring, insufferable, and laughably predictable. She made fun of the men who tripped over their own feet trying to court her, mocking their desperation the moment their backs were turned. In the house, behind closed doors, and especially with me, Liora acted and spoke like the colored people who raised her. She slipped into Creole rhythms, into Southern slang, into the warmth and bite of the language she grew up hearing.
But her hatred of people, that unnatural bone‑deep disdain, never changed.
Liora didn’t hesitate when I asked her why she hated people so fiercely. She didn’t soften her voice or try to spare my feelings. She spoke with the calm certainty of someone who had long ago made peace with her own darkness.
She leaned back in her chair, her curls spilling over her shoulders, and said, almost lazily, “People are weak, sissy. All of ’em. Weak and pathetic. They crawl through life ruled by their selfish little desires; beggin’ for attention, beggin’ for validation, beggin’ for love they ain’t never deserved. They’re greedy for affection, greedy for praise, greedy for anything that makes ’em feel important.”
She smiled then, a soft, dreamy smile that chilled me more than any scream could have.
“I like watchin’ ’em fall for my acts,” she continued, her voice dipping into a whisper as though she were confessing a secret she cherished. “I like seein’ ’em melt when I smile at ’em, like they think I’m some sweet little angel. I like watchin’ ’em believe every lie I feed ’em. They’re so easy to fool, Nadira. So easy to play. I put on my innocence like a pretty dress, and they come runnin’ to me, thinkin’ I’m somethin’ pure.”
Her eyes gleamed, bright and cruel.
“But the best part,” she said, leaning forward, “is the moment their faces change. The moment they realize I tricked ’em. When the truth hits ’em like a slap. When they see what I really am. That look, oh, sissy, that look, is beautiful. It’s like watchin’ a candle go out. Trust turnin’ into terror. Hope turnin’ into despair. It’s the prettiest thing in the world.”
She spoke with a softness that made my skin prickle, as though she were describing a sunset instead of the ruin of a human soul.
“People are predictable,” she went on. “Easy to read. Easy to break. Their selfishness blinds ’em, and their blindness makes ’em mine. They walk right into my hands, beggin’ to be fooled, beggin’ to be hurt, beggin’ to be destroyed. And I give ’em exactly what they ask for.”
She touched my hand then, her voice dropping to a murmur.
“But not you, sissy. Never you. You’re the only one I don’t want to break.”
A part of me was scared of Liora, truly scared in a way I had never admitted aloud. It wasn’t the kind of fear that made you run or hide; it was the kind that settled deep in your bones, the kind that made you watch her closely even when she smiled, the kind that made you wonder what she saw when she looked at you. I knew what she was capable of. I had seen the aftermath of her anger, her curses, her whims. I had seen the way spirits bent toward her, the way shadows seemed to gather at her feet. I knew she was dangerous, and yet I stayed.
But there was another part of me, a darker part, a part I had never dared to acknowledge that felt something far more complicated than fear. It was fascination. A quiet, shameful fascination with the way she moved through the world without apology, without hesitation, without the burden of guilt that weighed so heavily on me. Liora was true to herself in a way I had never been brave enough to be. She embraced her desires, her impulses, her cruelty, her beauty, her hunger for power. She did not hide from the darkness inside her; she wore it like a second skin.
And I wondered, in the privacy of my own thoughts, if there was something inside me that mirrored her, something small and buried, something I had spent my whole life trying to smother.
I had always strived to be good. To be kind. To be gentle. To be the opposite of Mama.
I had spent years shaping myself into a woman who helped others, who soothed pain, who carried burdens quietly, who tried to be a light in a house built on shadows. I wanted to be better than the woman who birthed us, better than the legacy she left behind. I wanted to be the proof that darkness did not have to win.
But when Liora spoke, when she told me how she delighted in watching people fall for her lies, how she savored the moment their trust shattered, how she found beauty in their terror, I felt something twist inside me. Not agreement. Not approval. But recognition. A faint echo of something I did not want to name.
It frightened me. It fascinated me. It made me feel closer to her than I should have.
And in that moment, listening to her speak with such calm certainty, I realized that my fear of Liora was tangled with something far more dangerous: the fear that some part of me understood her too well.
