When I was a little girl, boys tried to frighten me by putting snakes in my desk. The girls around me would scream and back away, while I calmly picked up the snake and set it free outside the building. Even my teachers refused to touch them. Most snakes were curious and gentle, and even the poisonous ones weren't nasty to you if you let them be. To me, that seemed to be the simplest rule to go by: Live and let live. I didn't try to talk Yvette out of marrying a man so much older, for example. If that was what she wanted, I was happy for her. But neither she nor Evelyn could treat me the same way. Because I didn't think like they did and do the things they wanted to do, I was foolish or stubborn, even stupid.

Except for the time Nicolas Paxton invited me to a fais do do at the town dance hall, I had never been invited to a formal party. Other boys had asked me for dates, but I had always said no. I had no interest in being with them, not even any curiosity about it. I looked at them, listened to them, and immediately understood that I would not enjoy being with them. I was always polite in refusing. A few persisted, demanding to know why I turned them down. I told them. "I don't think I would enjoy myself. Thank you."

The truth was a shoe that almost never fit gracefully on a twisted foot. It only made them angrier and soon they were spreading stories about me, the worst being that I made love with animals in the swamp and didn't care to be around men. More than once Daddy got into a fight at one of the zydeco bars because someone passed a remark about me. He usually won the fight, but still came home angry and ranted and raved about the shack, bawling out Mama for putting "highfalutin" ideas in my head about love and romance.

"And you," he would shout, pointing his longer forefinger at me, the nail black with grime, "instead of playing with birds and turtles, you should be flittin' your eyes and turnin' your shoulders at some rich buck. That pretty face and body you've been blessed with is the cheese for the trap!"

The very idea of being flirtatious and conniving with a man made my stomach bubble. Why let someone believe you wanted something you really didn't? It wasn't fair to him and it certainly wasn't fair to myself.

However, even though I never told my two girlfriends or even Mama for that matter, I did think about love and romance; and if believing something magical had to happen between me and a man was "highfalutin," then Daddy was right. I didn't want people to think I was a snob, but if that was the price I had to pay to believe in what I believed, then I would pay it.

Everything in Nature seemed perfect to me. The creatures that mated and raised and protected their offspring together were designed to be together. Something important fit. Surely it had to be the same way for human beings, too, I thought.

"I can't do that, Daddy," I wailed.

"I can't do that, Daddy," he mimicked. Liquor loosened his tongue. Whenever he returned from the zydeco bars, which were nothing more than shacks near the river, he was usually meaner than a trapped raccoon. I had never been in a zydeco bar, but I knew the word meant vegetables, all mixed up. Often I heard the African-Cajun music on the radio, but I knew that more took place in those places than just listening to music.

Of course, I burst into tears when Daddy ridiculed me, and that set Mama on him. The fury would be in her eyes. Daddy would put his arms up as if he expected lightning to come from those dazzling black pupils. It sobered him quickly and he either fled upstairs or out to his fishing shack in the swamp.

My biggest problem was understanding why Mama and Daddy married and had me. They were beautiful people. Daddy, especially when he cleaned up and dressed, was about as striking a man as I had ever seen. His complexion was always caramel because of his time in the sun, and that darkness brought out the splendor of his vibrant emerald eyes. Except for when he was swimming in beer or whiskey, he stood tall and flu in as an oak tree. His shoulders looked strong enough to hold a house, and there were stories about him lifting the back end of an automobile to get it out of a rut.

Mama wasn't tall, but she had presence. Usually she wore her hair pinned up, but when she let it flow freely around her shoulders, she looked like a cherub. Her hair was the color of hay and she had a light complexion. Her eyes weren't unusually big, but when she fixed them angrily on Daddy, they seemed to grow wider and darker like two beacons drawing closer and closer. Daddy couldn't look at her directly when she interrogated him about things he had done with our money. He would put up his hand and plead, "Don't look at me that way, Catherine." It was as if her eyes burned through the armor of his lies and seared his heart. He always confessed and promised to repent. In the end she took mercy on him and let him slip away on his magic carpet of promises for better tomorrows.

As I grew older, Mama and Daddy grew further apart. Their bickering became more frequent and more bitter, their animosity sharp and needling. It hurt to see them so angry at each other. As a child, I recalled them sitting together on the galerie in the evening, Daddy holding her in his arms and Mama humming some Cajun melody. I remember how Mama's eyes clung worshipfully to him.

Our world seemed perfect then. Daddy had built us the house and was doing well with his oyster fishing and frequent small carpentry jobs. He wasn't a guide for rich Creole hunters yet, so we didn't argue about the slaughter of beautiful animals. We always appeared to have more than we needed during those earlier days. People would give us gifts in repayment for the healing Mama performed or the rituals she conducted, too.

I know Daddy believed he was blessed and protected because of Mama's powers. He once told me his luck changed after he married her. But he came to believe that that same spiritual protection would carry over when he indulged in backroom gambling, and that, according to Mama, was the start of his downfall.

What I wondered now was, how could two people who had fallen so deeply in love fall so quickly out of it? I didn't want to ask Mama because I knew it would make her sad, but I couldn't keep the question locked up forever. After a particularly bad time when Daddy came home so drunk he fell off the galerie and cracked his head on a rock, I sat with Mama while she fumed and asked her.

"If you have the power to see through the darkness for others, why couldn't you have seen for yourself, Mama?"

She gazed at me a long moment before she replied.

"There's no young man you've looked at who has made something tingle inside you?"

"No, Mama," I said.

She thought for another long moment and then nodded.

"Maybe that's good." Then she sighed deeply and looked into the darkness of the oak and cypress trees across the way. "Just because I was handed down the gift of spiritual healing and became a traiteur doesn't mean I'm not a woman first," she said. "The first time I set eyes on Jack Landry, I thought I had seen a young god come walking out of the swamp. He looked like someone Nature herself had taken special time to mold.

"It wasn't a tingling that started within me, it was a raging flood of passion so strong, I thought my heart would burst. I sensed that when he set eyes on me he liked what he saw, and that stirred me even more. Something happens when the woman in you takes a front seat, Gabrielle. You stop thinking; you just depend on your feelings to make decisions.

"You remember I told you about the shoemaker who worked so hard for everyone else, he had no shoes for himself?"

"Yes, Mama. I remember."

"Well, that was me. I couldn't see what would happen to me the next hour, much less over the next ten years. Jack Landry was all I wanted to see, and he was . . ." She smiled and sat back. "Very charming in his simple way. He was good at spinning tales and making promises. And he was always showing off for me. I remember the Daisys' shingling party. After the roof was raised, there was a picnic and games. Your father wrestled three men at the same time and whipped them all, just because I was watching. Everyone knew it. They said, 'You put the life in that man, Catherine.' Then he took to saying it, and I came to believe it.

"You're old enough for me to tell you your father was a wonderful lover. We had a few good and wonderful years together before things started to go sour." She sighed deeply again. "Beware of promises, Gabrielle, even the ones you make yourself. Promises are like spiderwebs we weave to trap our own dreams, but dreams have a way of thinning out until you're left with nothing but the web."

I listened, but I didn't understand all of it, for I thought if Mama with all her wisdom could make a mistake in love, what chance did I have?

I had been thinking deeply about this after I left Evelyn and Yvette. Their questions had stirred up the same old questions about myself.

Then I heard the screen door slam a second time, this time followed by Mama's angry screams.

"You don't come back here until you return that money, Jack Landry, hear? That was Gabrielle's dowry money and you know'd it, Jack. I want every penny replaced! Hear? Jack?"

I broke into a trot and came around the bend in time to see Daddy stomping through the tall grass, his hip boots glistening in the afternoon sun, his hair wild and his arms swinging. Mama was standing on the galerie, her arms folded over her bosom, glaring after him. She didn't see me coming and pivoted furiously on her moccasins to charge back into the shack.

Daddy began to pace back and forth on our small dock, raging into the wind, his arms pumping the air as he complained to his invisible audience of sympathizers. I hesitated on the walkway and decided to speak with him first. He stopped his raging when he saw me approaching.

"She send you out here? Did she?" he demanded.

"No, Daddy. I just came home from school and heard the commotion. I haven't spoken to Mama yet. What's wrong now?"

"Aaaa," he said, waving at me and then turning away. He stood there with his hands on his hips, his back to me. His shoulders dipped as if he carried a cypress log on them.

"I heard her shout something about money," I said.

He spun around, his face red, but the corners of his mouth white with anger.

"I had a chance to make us a bundle," he explained. "A good chance. This city fella comes along selling this miracle tonic water, see? It comes from New York City! New York City!" he emphasized with his arms out.

"What's it supposed to do, Daddy?"

"Make you younger, take all the aches and pains out, get rid of the gray in your hair. Women especially can rub some of it into their face and hands and wrinkles disappear. If you got loose teeth, it makes 'em tight again. I seen the woman he was with. She said she was well into her sixties, but she looked no more than twenty-five. So I run back to the shack and I dig out the bundle your mother's kept hidden from me. Thinks I don't know what she's doin' with all the loose change . . . Anyway, I go back and buy up all the tonic the man has. Then I come back and tell your mother all she got to do is tell her customers what this tonic does and they'll buy it at twice the price. Everyone believes what she says, right? We make twice the money, and quickly!"

"What happened?"

"Aaaa." He waved at the shack and then bit down on his lower lip. "She goes and tastes it and says it's nothing but ginger, cinnamon, and a lot of salt. She says it ain't worth the bottle it's in and she couldn't tell anyone to buy it for any purpose. I swear . . ."

"Why didn't you bring home one bottle first and ask her to look at that before you bought all of it, Daddy?"

He glared at me.

"If you ain't birds of a feather. That's what she said, too. Then she starts that ranting and raving. I went back looking for the man, a course, but he and his lady friend are long gone. I was just trying to get us a bundle," he wailed.

"I know you were, Daddy. You wouldn't just give away our money."

"See? How come you understand and she don't?"

"Maybe because you've done things like this many times before, Daddy," I said calmly.

He raised his eyebrows.

"Mary and Joseph. A man can't live with two women nagging him to death. He needs breathing room so he can think and come up with good plans." He looked back at the house. "You got any money?"

"I have two dollars," I said.

"Well, give it to me and I'll try to double it at bourre," he said. That was a card game that was a cross between poker and bridge. Mama said she had fewer hairs on her head than the number of times Daddy had stuffed the pot, which was what the loser did.