But now that was gone too.

Darkness came thundering over the swamp, rolling, seeping, thick and deep. We were drowning in it. I clawed out a little space for myself and curled up in bed, wondering what sort of a world awaited the child of love inside me. Being born was probably our greatest act of trust, our greatest faith. As we let go of the precious, safe world inside our mothers, we entered this one hopeful.

It's not really the mother who's expecting; it's the child, I thought.

I began to wish I could keep him or her forever inside me. That way there would be no disappointments.

I started to turn the corner, just as Mama had told me to do.

And I trembled.

And I was afraid.

And I had every reason to be.


15

  Gone but Not Forgotten

Time dripped by like molasses. Sometimes the sun looked like a wafer pasted on the sky, barely moving toward the horizon. Everything began to irritate me: the days without the slightest breeze, the overcast nights shutting away the stars and the moon, mosquitoes and dragonflies circling madly over the water or the tall grass, the screech of a night owl. Things that I had barely noticed before or even enjoyed were suddenly oppressive.

Mama was right about my swelling up faster than I had during my previous pregnancy. I saw the bloatedness in my face and felt it in my legs. I tried to eat less and Mama bawled me out for that.

"It's not food that's doing this to you, Gabrielle. You can't diet like some lady worried about fashions. You need to keep up your strength," she warned.

But it wasn't just worry about my plumpness that stopped me from eating the way I should. These days I had little interest in anything that had interested me before, and that included food as well. Mama did her best. She made all my favorite things. Most of the time I ate more than I wanted to eat just to please her. She knew it and shook her head sadly as I moved mechanically at the table and around the shack.

I couldn't shake off this shawl of depression, no matter how I tried. With the feud between Mama and Daddy growing worse and worse every passing day, and with every day passing without my hearing a word from Pierre, the world turned gray, the flowers dull. Even when the stars were out, they lost their twinkle and resembled nothing more than flat white dots staining a shroud of sable. All the songs of birds became dirges. The swamps never looked as gloomy, the Spanish moss draped like curtains closing off the light. My precious canal world had turned into a maze of loneliness and melancholy.

I spent my days working beside Mama and listening to her stories about people she treated for this or for that. She rattled on and on, trying to fill the deep silences that fell between us. To cheer me up she would talk about things we would do in the future. She even began to describe how we would change the shack to accommodate the baby.

I attempted a little bit of reading every night, but my eyes would drift off the page and I would sit there for long intervals before realizing I was staring at nothing, my mind blank. It frightened me to see how I was dying in small ways. Mama had often told me about people she had known who had pined away when a close loved one had passed on. She said their absence created too great a hole in the hearts of the mourners, and eventually those hearts just stopped beating. I wondered if that would happen to me.

Occasionally either Mama or I would find something Daddy left for us on the front galerie. He was trapping and harvesting oysters for a living. We learned he had taken his things and gone to live in his daddy's old swamp shack. Usually he left some canned goods, sometimes some pralines. Mama didn't want to take them, and often left them there. I would bring them in before the bugs or field mice could get to them and I would put them away, but Mama would pretend she had never seen them or didn't know from whom they had come. She wouldn't discuss them either, or anything that had to do with Daddy for that matter. The moment I would mention his name, she would draw up her shoulders and sew her lips closed.

If she said anything about him, it was along the lines of "He's where he belongs, finally."

I couldn't help feeling sorry for him, no matter what he had done. One day when I was just strolling mindlessly along the canal, he came along in his pirogue. I heard him call me and then he poled to shore to show me the muskrats he had trapped, forgetting that I hated to see any of my precious swamp creatures caught and killed. As usual, there was the stink of whiskey on his breath.

"How's that woman you call Mama?" he asked, anticipating no hope of reconciliation.

"The same," I said.

"I just did what I thought was right and best," he claimed. "And I ain't ever going to apologize for it."

"I'm sorry, Daddy," I said.

"Yeah. Me too. Sorry about a lot of things," he muttered. "I'll come by later this week and leave something. She takes what I leave at least, don't she?"

"Not willingly, Daddy," I revealed.

He grunted. "Just the same, I'll come by," he added. As he poled away from the shore, he turned to me and said, "Those rich people ain't giving up on you, Gabrielle. You don't close your ears and eyes like your mother, hear?"

I looked after him, surprised. What did he mean? What else would be said? Was Pierre included in his reference to those rich people?

Before I could ask, Daddy was pushing hard and moving away quickly, his long arms extended, the muscles in his shoulders and neck lifting and stretching with his effort. I watched him disappear around a bend. My heart hadn't thumped this way for a while. I thought about what he had said; in fact, I couldn't get it out of my mind, but it wasn't until nearly a week later that I heard any more about it, and how I heard was as surprising as what I heard.

It happened one night after dinner. Mama wanted me to accompany her to visit the Baldwins. Maddie Baldwin was pregnant with her fifth child, but she had been having complications, which included the most intense back pains she ever had. Her ankles were swollen something terrible too. Mama was afraid I was heading in the same direction.

But if there was anything I wanted to avoid these days, it was seeing another pregnant woman, especially one who was having problems. I told Mama I would rather stay home. She promised to return as soon as she could.

I sat on the galerie in her rocker after she left. I was just rocking gently, listening to the monotonous song of the cicadas and peepers, when suddenly a sleek, long white limousine appeared. It was so quiet and so unexpected, it looked as if it had popped magically out of the darkness. It came to a stop in front of our shack and the driver stepped out. He looked my way, spoke to someone in the rear, and then started toward me. I stopped rocking and waited, holding my breath.

He was a tall, caramel-skinned black man with strikingly green eyes, dressed in a chauffeur's uniform with a family crest on the breast pocket. He paused at the steps and removed his cap.

"Excuse me, mademoiselle. I am looking for Mademoiselle Gabrielle Landry."

"That's me," I said.

He smiled. "I have been instructed to ask you if you would be so kind as to speak with Madame Dumas in her limousine," he said, and for a moment my tongue felt as if it had been glued to the roof of my mouth. I started to swallow and stopped to look at the limousine again.

"Who?" I finally asked.

"Madame Dumas," he said softly. "She wishes only a few minutes of your time, mademoiselle."

I didn't move; I didn't speak. He stepped back and gazed at the limousine and then he looked at me, his face full of anticipation, his smile frozen. I wasn't sure what to do. Madame Dumas? Pierre's mother was dead, so this had to be his wife. Why would his wife come here to see me? Was Pierre in the limousine as well?

"Is it just Madame Dumas?" I asked.

"Oui, mademoiselle." He raised his eyebrows.

Slowly I rose from the rocking chair.

"Why doesn't she come out of the automobile?" I asked, gazing at the sleek limousine.

"She prefers to speak with you confidentially, mademoiselle. I assure you, it's very comfortable in the limousine. There is something for you to drink, if you like," he added.

I was a little frightened of the idea, but I didn't want to appear afraid, nor did I want to appear ignorant. It wasn't just that I had never sat in a limousine. I couldn't imagine what would bring Pierre's wife here, and all sorts of dark thoughts passed through my mind.

"You'll be quite safe, mademoiselle," the driver said, interpreting my hesitation. "I assure you."

"I'm sure of that," I said as bravely as I could. "All right. I'll see her," I said, and started down the stairs.

The driver waited for me and escorted me to the automobile, the rear, windows of which were tinted so that no one would be able to look inside and see the passengers. The driver reached for the door handle and opened the door, stepping back as he did so. I gazed into the dark interior and I saw her sitting on the far side.

"Entre, s'il vous plait," she said. "I just want to talk to you," she snapped when I didn't move. I looked at the driver and then I stepped cautiously into the limousine. It had a large, plush black leather seat with a table before it on which there were glasses and a bottle of sparkling water. I was immediately struck by the heavy scent of jasmine. As soon as the driver closed the door, Madame Dumas leaned over and flipped a switch to light up the cabin.

For a long moment we contemplated each other. I could see she was a tall woman, perhaps as tall as six feet, with a regal demeanor. Her pale reddish blond hair lay softly over her sable shawl. She wore a dark blue ankle-length dress with a tight waist and a high collar. There were pearl buttons along the bodice and lace on the sleeves. So beautiful did she appear to me, with her big, light blue eyes and a mouth I couldn't have drawn more perfectly, that I wondered how any man could have risked losing her love, or would even contemplate turning from her, even for a short tryst. I thought I was in the presence of a movie star. Her radiant beauty and sophisticated demeanor made me feel so inferior, I felt sick inside.

Her lips cut a hard, cold smile in her rich peach complexion. She nodded as if to confirm a thought and then shook her head.

"You're just a child yourself," she said. "But that doesn't surprise me."

She pressed a button that lowered the window on her side and then she reached down to take a cigarette from her gold cigarette case. At the same time she pushed the lighter in and then plucked the pearl cigarette holder from the table. She didn't speak until she had lit her cigarette and blown some smoke out the open window. Then she turned back to me.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yes," I said. "You're Pierre's wife."

"Oui, Pierre's wife. Whatever that means," she added dryly.

"Does Pierre know you've come here?" I asked.

"No, but don't worry. He will. I have no fear of telling him anything."

"What is it you want?" I asked sharply. I had my hand ready to grab the door handle so I could leap out if I wanted.

"I don't know what Pierre promised you or told you, but I assure you, none of it will come true." She took another puff of her cigarette and waited to see what I would say.

"I didn't ask for anything," I said.

"That's a pity and quite foolish. You have a right to ask for something. Your father has."

"I know. I didn't send him, nor did my mother," I told her.

She smiled coolly. "I have heard how you Cajuns can be stubborn and foolhardy. Perhaps it's a consequence of having to live in this godforsaken part of Louisiana," she commented.

"This is hardly the godforsaken part of Louisiana, madame. If God is anywhere, He is here. There is more beauty, more natural goodness, than there is in the city," I told her proudly.

"Oh? You've been to New Orleans?"

"No, but . . . I know," I said.

She smiled again.

"What is it you want from me?" I demanded. "Or did you come here just to gloat or threaten me? I didn't plan for what happened to happen, but it did."

"And you're not sorry, is that it?" she said, her eyes turning to glass.

"I don't know," I replied.

She softened, her eyebrows rising. "Oh?"

"I have brought a lot of pain to my family . . . to my mother," I said.

She stopped smoking and quickly crushed her cigarette in the ashtray. "I will come right to the point, Gabrielle—if I may call you Gabrielle?" I nodded. "I would like Pierre to have his child. It's something that his father wants very much, too. I suppose Pierre told you that we have been unable to have children. The failure to have a family has made my marriage something of a failure as well.