Hidden Jewel

1

The Future Beckons

I woke to the sound of shouting just outside my window. The extra workers Daddy had hired to spruce up our house and gardens for my graduation party had arrived and were being assigned their jobs. It had rained the night before and the damp, sweet scent of green bamboo, gardenias, and blooming camellias floated all around me. After I ground the sleep from my eyes, I sat up and saw that the sun was nudging aside whatever clouds remained and dropping golden rays over the pool and the tennis courts. It was as if someone had lifted a blanket off precious jewels. Our gardens were dazzling, our blue and mauve Spanish tiles glittering. Could there be a more beautiful beginning to one of the most important days of my life? In seconds all the webs of confusion, shadows of darkness, and childhood fears were washed away.

I was seventeen and about to graduate from high school. And I was the class valedictorian, too! I sighed deeply and then let my eyes move over my room. Long ago Mommy had returned it to the way it had been when she had first arrived in New Orleans. I slept in her actual dark pine queen-sized canopy bed, the canopy made of fine ivory-colored silk with a fringe border. My pillows were so enormous and fluffy I felt as if I sank a foot whenever I lowered my head to them. The bedspread, pillowcases, and top sheet were made from the softest and whitest muslin. Above my headboard was a painting of a beautiful young woman in a garden feeding a parrot. There was a cute black-and-white puppy tugging at the hem of her full skirt.

On either side of my bed was a nightstand with a bell-shaped lamp, and in addition to a matching dresser and armoire, my room had a vanity table with an enormous oval mirror in an ivory frame decorated with hand-painted red and yellow roses. Mommy and I had often sat side by side and gazed at ourselves in the mirror while we did our hair and makeup and had our girl-to-girl talks, as she liked to call them. Now, she said, they would be woman to woman; but soon they would be few and far between, for I was about to go to college. I had been so anxious to grow up and so excited about reaching this day, but now that it was finally here, I couldn't help feeling somewhat melancholy too.

Good-bye to my Huckleberry Finn days, I thought. Good-bye to sleeping late on weekend mornings; good-bye to not worrying about tomorrow. Good-bye to wasting time and cramming for tests at the last moment. Good-bye to sitting outside in the garden for hours, dreaming away the afternoons. With a sweep of its hand, the clock would thrust me and my fellow graduates forward into the real world, the world of work and serious study in college where the only one looking over your shoulder was your own conscience.

As my eyes retreated from the mirror, I looked at my door and discovered it was partly open. A further investigation revealed my brother Jean on his hands and knees peering in at me and my brother Pierre on Jean's back peering in as well. The two duplicate faces with their cerulean blue eyes under their golden bangs gaped with curiosity and anticipation. What they expected I would do the moment I woke up on my graduation day I did not know, but I knew they were waiting for me to say or do something that they could tease me about later.

"Jean! Pierre! What are you doing?" I cried. The two stumbled sideways. Laughing and squealing, they scurried back to their room, the room that had once been our great-uncle Jean's room, my mother's father's brother. I heard them slam their door shut and all was quiet for a moment.

Most of the time the twins were like two puppies sniffing and poking where they didn't belong. Usually it got them into some sort of trouble, and Daddy, despite his apparent reluctance to do so, had to discipline them. He was very fond of his twin sons, very proud or them, and full of expectations for them, too.

Between the two of them, they did seem to mirror Daddy. Jean had his athletic ability, his love of sports and hunting and fishing. Pierre had his inquisitiveness, his sensitivity and love of the arts, but neither looked down on the other. Rather, my twin brothers were like halves of one brother, a hybrid called Pierre-Jean. What one couldn't do, the other did for him, and what one didn't think, the other thought for him. They were already the Two Musketeers and didn't need a third.

What was amazing to everyone, even the most skeptical, was the way they both came down with the same childhood diseases at just about the same time. If one got a cold, the other was sure to have it minutes later, and I swear, whenever Jean bumped his head or his knee, Pierre grimaced with just as much pain, and vice versa.

They liked to eat the same things and almost always ate the same amount, although Jean, who was growing faster, was beginning to eat more.

"What's going on out here?" I heard Mommy say. She listened for a moment and then came to my door. "Good morning, Pearl honey. Were you able to go back to sleep?"

"Yes, Mommy."

"Were your brothers here waking you up?" she asked with a scowl.

I didn't want to tell on them, but she didn't need me to testify.

"I swear they're like two muskrats getting under everyone's feet these days. I don't know what to do about them. One will swear the other's innocent and do it with the sweetest, most innocent eyes himself." She shook her head. She was complaining, but I knew how happy she was that they were so close. It had been so different between her and her twin. Whenever she talked about her sister Gisselle, she did so with a deep sigh of regret, still blaming herself for not being able to get Gisselle to become the sister she should have been.

"I should be getting up anyway, Mommy. There's so much to do, and I want to help."

"I know," Mommy said, her eyes small and dark. For both of us, but maybe more for Mommy, this was one of those happy-sad days. If she could have kept me a little girl forever, she would have, she said. "It all goes so fast," she had warned me. "Why rush it?"

Mommy always said she didn't want me to lose a day of my childhood. She claimed she had skipped her childhood completely. She blamed the hard life she had for making her grow up so fast.

"I want to be sure you don't struggle and suffer like me," she told me often. "If that means you'll be a little spoiled, so be it!"

But I knew she couldn't keep me a little girl forever, not if I had anything to say about it. Although I'd loved growing up here, now mostly I couldn't wait to leave and explore the world outside.

"I think I'm more excited today than you are," she said, her eyes beaming. She looked radiant, despite the early hour. Mommy was never one to wear a great deal of makeup or pamper herself the way the mothers of some of my girlfriends did. She hardly ever went to the beauty parlor and was not one to flit from one style to another, although she always looked chic and elegant. But maybe that was because Mommy was one of those special people who set the style. Other women were always interested in what she chose to wear, what colors, what fashions. She was a highly respected artist in New Orleans and her appearance at an art gallery or an exhibition would be noted, photographed, and printed on the society pages.

Mommy rarely cut her rich ruby hair, her name-sake. She kept it long and when she wore it down, she had it curled or twisted in a French knot. She told me that simplicity was the keynote to being attractive.

"Women bedecked in expensive jewels and caked with makeup might attract attention, but often they are not attractive, Pearl," she advised. "A pair of earrings, a necklace, should be used to highlight and not overwhelm, and the same is true for makeup. I know that girls your age think it's fashionable and exciting to dab on the eye liner lavishly, but the trick is to emphasize the positive, not smother it."

"I don't know what's positive about me, Mommy," I said, and she laughed.

Then she fixed those emerald-green eyes on me and shook her head. "If God had come to me when I was pregnant and said, 'Paint the face you want your child to have,' I couldn't have done better or thought of someone more beautiful than you, Pearl.

"And you have a wonderful figure, the sort of figure that will make most women green with envy. I don't want your good looks to go to your head. Be modest and grateful, but don't be the insecure little person I once was. That's when people take advantage," she cautioned me, and her eyes grew smaller and darker so I knew she was remembering one of the sadder or uglier events of her life.

Of course, my brothers and I knew that Mommy had been born and brought up in the bayou. Until she was sixteen, her father, after whom my brother Pierre was named, didn't know she existed. He thought her twin sister, Gisselle, was the only child born out of his love affair with Gabrielle Landry. He was married at the time, but his wife, Daphne, accepted Gisselle and pretended she was her own when my great-grandfather Dumas purchased her from the Landrys and brought her to New Orleans as soon as she was born. My mother's surprise appearance on their doorstep sixteen years later nearly exposed the grand deception, but the family concocted the story that she had been stolen immediately after she was born and had returned when the Cajun couple who stole her were struck with a fit of conscience.

From time to time, Mommy described how difficult life was living with a twin sister and a stepmother who resented her, but Mommy hated speaking ill of the dead. She had been brought up by her grandmère Catherine, who was a Cajun traiteur, a healer who combined religious, medical, and superstitious methods to treat the sick and injured. She believed in spirits. She told me that her grandmère Catherine and Nina Jackson, the Dumas family's old voodoo-practicing cook, would warn her that if she dragged up the dead with these stories, they could haunt us all.

Mommy didn't try to get me to believe in these things; she just wanted me to respect people who did and not take any chances. Daddy sometimes reprimanded her and told her, "Pearl is a woman of science. She wants to be a doctor, doesn't she? Don't fill her with those tales."

But when it came to keeping my twin brothers in line, Daddy wasn't above trying to scare them with Mommy's stories. "If you don't stop running up and down those stairs, you'll wake up the ghost of your evil aunt, and she'll haunt you when you sleep," he warned. Mommy would turn a twinkling eye of reprimand at him, and he would go sputtering off, complaining about a man's home no longer being his castle.

"I wish you and Daddy hadn't decided on such a big party for me, Mommy," I said as I rose to get washed and dressed for the work ahead. Daddy had hired one of the famous New Orleans jazz bands to play on the patio. He had a pastry chef from one of the finer restaurants to make desserts, and he had employed waiters and waitresses. He had even contracted with a film company to record the affair. He was doing so much for my graduation, I couldn't imagine what he would do for my wedding.

But then, I couldn't imagine getting married, either. I couldn't envision having my own home and raising my own children. The responsibilities were so enormous. But what I really couldn't imagine was falling so deeply in love with someone that I would want to spend the rest of my life with him, see him every morning at the breakfast table and in the evening at the dinner table, go everywhere with only him, and be so beautiful and so desirable all the time that he would want to be only with me. I had had boyfriends, of course. Right now I was going steady with Claude Avery, but I couldn't envision spending my life with him, even though he was one of the handsomest boys at school, tall with dark hair and silver blue eyes. Many times Claude had told me he loved me and waited for me to say the same about him, but all I could muster was "I like you very much, too, Claude."

Surely love had to be something different, something more special, I thought. There were many mysteries in the world, many problems to be solved, but none seemed as impossible as the answer to the question What is love? My girlfriends hated it when I challenged their dramatic declarations of affection for one boy or another, and they were always accusing me of being too inquisitive and looking at things with microscopic eyes.

"Why do you have to ask so many questions?" they complained, especially my best friend Catherine Didion. Catherine and I were different in so many ways, it was hard to understand why we were so close, but perhaps it was those very differences that attracted us. In a way it was our curiosity about each other that kept us so interested in each other. Neither of us fully understood why the other was the way she was.

"It's not such a big party," Mommy said. "Besides, we're proud of you, and we want the whole world to know it."

"Can I see my portrait this morning, Mommy?" I asked. Mommy had painted a picture of me in my graduation gown. She was planning to unveil it tonight at our party, but I had yet to see the finished work.

"No. You have to wait. It's bad luck to show a portrait before it's completed. I have a little touching up to do today," she said, and I didn't protest. Mommy believed in good and bad gris-gris, and never wanted to tamper with fate. She still wore the good-luck dime that Nina Jackson had given her years ago. It was on a string around her right ankle.

"Now I'd better go speak to those brothers of yours to be sure they don't make a nuisance of themselves around this house today."

"Will you help me decide what to wear and do my hair later, Mommy?"

"Of course, dear," she said just as my phone rang. "Don't spend your morning gossiping with Catherine," Mommy warned before leaving to go to the twins.

"I won't," I promised, but when I said hello, it wasn't Catherine, I greeted, but Claude.

"Did I wake you?"

"No," I said.

"Well, it's here: our day," Claude announced. He too was a senior and he too was graduating, but I knew he wasn't referring only to that. Claude and I had been going steady for nearly a year. We had kissed and petted and once been almost naked beside each other at Ormand Lelock's house when his parents left him alone for two days. We had nearly gone all the way twice, but I had always resisted. I told Claude that for me it had to be something very special, and he had come up with the idea that it would be something we would do on graduation night. I hadn't agreed, but I hadn't disagreed, either, and I knew Claude thought that meant it would happen.

The first time it had almost happened, I stopped him by explaining why it was a prime time for me to get pregnant. He was frustrated and annoyed and fumed as I explained a woman's cycle.

"It starts when an egg is released," I began.

"I go out with you," he moaned, "and find I'm in science class getting a lecture on human reproduction. You think too much; you're always thinking!"

Was he right? I wondered. When his fingers touched me in secret places, I trembled, but I couldn't help analyzing and thinking of why my heart was pounding. I thought about adrenaline and why my skin had become warm. Textbook illustrations flashed before my eyes, and Claude complained that I was too distant and uninvolved.

The next time we were alone he was prepared and proudly showed me his protection. I didn't want to hurt his feelings, but I told him I wasn't ready.

"Ready!" he exclaimed. "How do you know when you're ready? And don't give me some complicated scientific answer."

What was my answer? We had been having a lot of fun together, and all of our friends assumed we were in love. The other students at school considered us a perfect couple. But I knew we weren't perfect. There had to be something else, something more that happens between a man and a woman, I thought.

I watched Mommy and Daddy when they were together at parties or at dinners, and I saw the way they were in tune with each other, reading each other's faces, knowing each other's feelings, even when a roomful of people separated them. There was an electricity in their eyes, a need and a love for each other that made me feel they were secure in their affection. Maybe I was asking for too much from life, but I wanted a love like theirs, and I knew I didn't have it with Claude.

I didn't know how to tell Claude that he wasn't the one, and I almost talked myself into doing it with him just to satisfy him and satisfy my scientific curiosity about sex. But I had resisted right up to this night, the night Claude planned for us to make love.

"It's all set," he said. "Lester Anderson's parents are leaving for Natchez right after graduation. We've got his house for our private party."

"I can't leave my own party, Claude."

"Not right away, no; but later, when we're all going out, I'm sure your parents will understand. They were young once, too," he said. He had a way of turning his eyes and looking at a girl from head to foot that made her self-conscious. Most of the girls giggled and felt flattered when Claude did this. During the last few weeks, I'd suspected that Claude was seeing someone else on the side, maybe Diane Ratner, whose gaze followed us so closely down the hallway that I felt the hair on the back of my neck tingle.

"My mother never had a party like this when she was my age," I said softly.

"She'll still understand, I'm sure. You want to go, don't you?" he asked quickly. When I didn't reply immediately, he punched out another "Don't you?" his voice full of desperation.

"Yes," I said.

"Then it's set. I'll see you later. I've got a lot to do before the graduation ceremony, but I'll pick you up."

"Okay," I said.

"I love you," he added and hung up before I could respond. I sat there for a moment, my heart pounding. Would I finally surrender myself tonight? Should I? Maybe I was just finding excuses because I was simply afraid.

Mommy and I had had our intimate conversations, but she never really answered my questions. Instead, she told me no one could.

"Only you can answer those questions for yourself, Pearl. Only you will know when and with whom it's right for you. Make it something special and it will be. Women who treat sex casually usually get treated casually. Do you understand?"

I did and I didn't. I knew the fundamentals, the science, but I didn't know the magic, for that's what love had to be for me, I thought, something magical.

When I went downstairs I found the house at sixes and sevens. People were scurrying to and fro, following Mommy's directions to change this and rearrange that. Flowers were being placed in vases everywhere. The maids were hunting down the smallest specks of dust. Every window was being washed, all the furniture polished. The hum of vacuum cleaners filled the air. Mommy was having our ballroom decorated. A six-foot-long glittering Congratulations sign was being hung from the ceiling, as were multicolored balloons, rainbow streamers, and tinsel. The jazz band had arrived to check out the acoustics and set up their stands and instruments.

"Good morning, Pearl," Daddy called as soon as he came in from the patio. "How's my little intern?" He kissed my forehead and embraced me quickly. Nothing I had done or said had pleased Daddy more than my decision to become a doctor. It was something he had once hoped for himself.

"I went as far as pre-med," he had told me.

"Why didn't you continue, Daddy?" I had asked. For a few moments it looked as if he wouldn't answer. His lips tightened; his eyes grew small, his face dark.

"Events carried me in a different direction," he replied cryptically. "It wasn't meant to be. But," he added quickly, "perhaps that was because it was meant for you."

What events? I wondered. How can something you desire so much not be meant to be? Daddy was so successful in business, it was difficult to imagine anything he couldn't do when he set his mind on it. When I pursued him for the answers, however, Daddy tightened up and became uncomfortable.

"It was just the way things were," he said and left it at that. Because I saw it was too painful for him to discuss, I didn't nag, but that didn't mean the questions were gone. They hung over all of us, dangled invisibly in the house and attached themselves to the pictures in our family albums, pictures that traced the strange and mysterious turns my parents' lives had taken before and just after I was born. It was as if we had secrets buried in some dusty old trunk in the attic and someday—maybe soon—I would open the trunk and, like Pandora, release the discoveries I would quickly regret.

"I'm afraid you'll have to have breakfast with your brothers only this morning," Daddy said. "I've al-ready eaten, and so has your mother, and we're busier than two bees in a hive."

"I wish you and Mommy hadn't planned quite such a large affair for me, Daddy."

"What? I wouldn't have it any other way. In fact, it's not big enough. Every hour I remember someone else we should have invited."

"The guest list is already a mile long!"

He laughed."Well, with my business interests and your mother's art crowd, not to mention your teachers and friends, we're lucky it's only a mile."

"And my portrait will be unveiled in front of all those people. I'll be so embarrassed."

"Don't think of it as your portrait, Pearl. Think of it as your mother's art," he advised. I nodded. Daddy was always so sensible. He would surely have made a wonderful doctor.

"I'll eat quickly and help you, Daddy." "Nonsense. You relax, young lady. You have a big night ahead of you. You won't know how big until it starts. And you have your speech to worry over, too."

"Will you listen to me practice later?"

"Of course, princess. We'll all be your first audience. But right now I've got to see about our parking arrangements. I've hired a valet service."

"Really?"

"We can't have our guests riding around looking for a place to park, can we? Make sure your brothers eat their breakfast and don't annoy anyone, will you?" he asked and kissed me again before hurrying to the front of the house.

Jean and Pierre were at the table, both looking so polite and innocent that I knew they were up to something. Strands of Jean's blond hair hung down over his forehead and eyes. As usual his shirt was buttoned incorrectly. Pierre's appearance was perfect, but Pierre wore that tiny smirk around his lips and Jean looked at me with his blue eyes twinkling. I checked my seat to be sure they hadn't put honey on it so I would stick to it.

"Good morning, Pearl," Pierre said. "How's it feel to be graduating?"

"I'm very nervous," I said and sat down. They both stared. "Did you two do anything silly?"

They shook their heads simultaneously, but I didn't trust them. I scrutinized the table, checked the floor by my chair, and studied the salt and pepper shakers. Once, they put pepper in the salt shaker and salt in the pepper, and another time, they put sugar in the salt shaker.

They dipped their spoons into their cereal and ate with their eyes still fixed on me. I looked up at the ceiling to be sure there wasn't a fake black widow spider dangling above me.

"What have you two done?" I demanded.

"Nothing," Jean said too quickly.

"I swear if you do anything today, I'll have the two of you locked in the basement."

"I can get out of a locked room," Jean bragged. "I know how to pick a lock. Right, Pierre?"

"It's not hard to do, especially with our old locks," Pierre said pedantically. He had a way of making his eyes small and pressing his lower lip over his upper whenever he offered a serious opinion.

"I can take the hinges off the door, too," Jean claimed.

"All right. Stop talking about it. I'm not serious," I said. Jean looked disappointed.

"Good morning, mademoiselle," our butler, Aubrey, said as he came in from the kitchen with a glass of fresh orange juice for me. Aubrey had been with us for years and years. He was the proper Englishman at all times. He was bald with small patches of gray hair just over his ears. His thick-rimmed glasses were always falling down the bridge of his bony nose, and he would squint at us with his hazel eyes.

"Morning, Aubrey. I'll just have some coffee and a croissant with jam this morning. My stomach is full of butterflies."

"Ugh," Jean said. "They were caterpillars first,"

"She just means she's nervous," Pierre explained.

"Because you got to make a speech?" Jean asked.

"Yes, that mostly," I said.

"What's it about?" Pierre asked.

"It's about how we should be grateful for what we have, for what our parents and teachers have done for us, and how that gratitude must be turned into hard work so we don't waste opportunities and talents," I explained.

"Boring," Jean said.

"No, it's not," Pierre corrected him.

"I don't like sitting and listening to speeches. I bet someone throws a spitball at you," Jean threatened.

"It better not be you, Jean Andreas. There's plenty that has to be done around here all day. Don't get underfoot and don't aggravate Mommy and Daddy," I warned.

"We can stay up until everyone leaves tonight," Pierre declared.

"And Mommy let us invite some of our friends," Jean added. "We should light firecrackers to celebrate."

"Don't you dare," I said. "Pierre?"

"He doesn't have any."

"Charlie Littlefield does!"

"Jean!"

"I won't let him," Pierre promised. He gave Jean a look of chastisement, and Jean shrugged. His shoulders had rounded and thickened this past year. He was tough and sinewy and had gotten into a half dozen fights at school, but I learned that three of those fights were fought to protect Pierre from other boys who teased him about his poetry. All their friends knew that when someone picked a fight with Pierre, he was picking a fight with Jean, and if someone made fun of Jean, he was making fun of Pierre as well.

Mommy and Daddy had to go to school to meet with the principal because of Jean's fights, but I saw how proud Daddy was that Jean and Pierre protected each other. Mommy bawled him out for not bawling them out enough.

"It's a tough, hard world out there," Daddy said. "They've got to be tough and hard too."

"Alligators are tough and hard, but people make shoes and pocketbooks out of them," Mommy retorted. No matter what the argument or discussion, Mommy had a way of reaching back into her Cajun past to draw up an analogy to make her point.

After breakfast I returned to my room to fine-tune my valedictory address, and Catherine called.

"Have you decided about tonight?" she asked.

"It's going to be so hard leaving my party. My parents are doing so much for me," I moaned.

"After a while they won't even know you're gone," Catherine promised. "You know how adults are when make parties for their children; they're really making them for themselves and their friends."

"That's not true about my parents," I said.

"You've got to go to Lester's," she whined. "We've been planning this for months, Pearl! Claude expects it. I know how much he's looking forward to it. He told Lester, and Lester told me just so I would tell you."

"I'll go to the party, but I don't know about staying overnight," I said.

"Your parents expect you to stay out all night. It's like Mardi Gras. Don't be a stick-in-the-mud tonight of all nights, Pearl," she warned. "I know what you're worried about," she added. Catherine was the only other person in the world who knew the truth about Claude and me.

"I can't help it," I whispered.

"I don't know what you're so worried about. You know how many times I've done it, and I'm still alive, aren't I?" Catherine said, laughing.

"Catherine . . ."

"It's your night to howl. You deserve it," she said. "We'll have a great time. I promised Lester I would see that you were there."

"We'll see," I said, still noncommittal.

"I swear, Pearl Andreas, you're going to be dragged kicking and screaming into womanhood." She laughed again.

Was this really what made you a woman? I wondered. I knew many of my girlfriends at school felt that way. Some wore their sexual experiences like badges of honor. They had a strut about them, a demeanor of superiority. It was as if they had been to the moon and back and knew so much more about life than the rest of us. Promiscuity had given them a sophistication and filled their eyes with insights about life, and especially about men. Catherine believed this about herself and was often condescending.

"You're book-smart," she always told me, "but not life-smart. Not yet."

Was she right?

Would this be my graduation night in more ways than one?

It was difficult to return to my speech after Catherine and I ended our conversation, but I did. After lunch, Daddy, Mommy, and the twins sat in Daddy's office to listen to me practice my delivery. Jean and Pierre sat on the floor in front of the settee. Jean fidgeted, but Pierre stared up at me and listened intently.

When I was finished, they all clapped. Daddy beamed, and Mommy looked so happy, I nearly burst into tears myself. Graduation was set to begin at four, so I went upstairs to finish doing my hair. Mommy came up and sat with me.

"I'm so nervous, Mommy," I told her. My heart was already thumping.

"You'll do fine, honey."

"It's one thing to deliver my speech to you and Daddy and the twins, but an audience of hundreds! I'm afraid I'll just freeze up."

"Just before you start, look for me," she said. "You won't freeze up. I'll give you Grandmère Catherine's look," she promised.

"I wish I had known Grandmère Catherine," I said with a sigh.

"I wish you had too," she said, and when I gazed at her reflection in the mirror, I saw the deep, far-off look in her eyes.

"Mommy, you said you would tell me things today, things about the past."

She nodded and pulled back her shoulders as if she were getting ready to sit down in the dentist's chair.

"What is it you want to know, Pearl?"

"You never really explained why you married your half brother, Paul," I said quickly and lowered my eyes. Very few people knew that Paul Tate was Mommy's half brother.

"Yes, I did. I told you that you and I were alone, living in the bayou, and Paul wanted to protect and take care of us. He built Cypress Woods just for me."

I remembered very little about Cypress Woods. We had never been back since Paul's death and the nasty trial for custody over me that had followed.

"He loved you more than a brother loves a sister?" I asked timidly. Just contemplating them together seemed sinful.

"Yes, and that was the tragedy we couldn't escape."

"But why did you marry him if you were in love with Daddy and I had been born?"

"Everyone thought you were Paul's daughter," she said. She smiled. "In fact, some of Grandmère Catherine's friends were angry that he hadn't married me yet. I suppose I let them believe it just so they wouldn't think I was terrible."

"Because you had gotten pregnant with Daddy and returned to the bayou?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you just stay in New Orleans?"

"My father had died, and life with Daphne and Gisselle was quite unpleasant. When Beau was sent to Europe, I ran off. Actually," she said, "Daphne wanted me to have an abortion."

"She did?"

"You wouldn't have been born."

I held my breath just thinking about it.

"So I returned to the bayou where Paul took care of us. He even helped me give birth to you. When I heard Daddy was engaged to someone in Europe, I finally gave in and married Paul."

"But Daddy wasn't engaged?"

"It was one of those arranged things. He broke up with the young lady and returned to New Orleans. My sister had been seeing him. She had a way of getting whatever she wanted, and your father was just another trophy she wanted," Mommy said, not without a touch of bitterness in her voice.

"Daddy married Gisselle because she looked so much like you, right?" It was something I had squeezed out of Daddy when he had decided to stem the flood of questions I poured at him.

"Yes," Mommy said.

"But neither of you were happy?"

"No, although Paul did so much for us. I devoted all my time to my art and to you. But then, when Gisselle became sick and comatose . . ."

"You took her place." I knew that story. "And then?"

"She died, and there was the terrible trial after Paul's tragic death in the swamp. Gladys Tate wanted vengeance. But you knew most of that, Pearl."

"Yes, but, Mommy . . ."

"What, honey?"

I lifted my eyes to gaze at her loving face. "Why did you get pregnant if you weren't married to Daddy?" I asked. Mommy was so wise now; how could she not have been wise enough to know what would happen back then? I had to ask her even though it was a very personal question. I knew most of my girlfriends, including Catherine, could never have such an intimate conversation with their mothers.

"We were so much in love we didn't think. But that's not an excuse," she added quickly.

"Is that what happens, why some women get pregnant without being married? They're too much in love to care?"

"No. Some just get too caught up with sex and lose control. You can be the smartest girl in school, the best reader, have the highest grades, but when it comes to your hormones , well, just be careful," she said.

"It doesn't seem fair," I said.

"What?"

"That men don't face the same risks."

Mommy laughed. "Well, let that be another reason why you don't let a young man talk you into something you don't want to do. Maybe if men knew what it was like to give birth, they wouldn't be so nonchalant about it all."

"They should feel the same labor pains," I said.

"And get sick in the morning and walk around with their stomachs hanging low and their backs aching," Mommy added.

"And get urges to eat pickles and peanut butter sandwiches."

"And then have contractions."

We both roared and then hugged.

Daddy, coming up the stairs, heard us and knocked on the door. "Exactly what are you two females giggling about now?" he asked.

"Pregnant men," Mammy said.

"Huh?"

We laughed again.

"Women are not just another sex; they're a different species altogether," Daddy declared. That only made us laugh harder.

After I had my hair the way I wanted it to look, I picked up the dress I would wear under my graduation gown. Then I opened the box that contained my cap and gown and screamed.

"What is it, Pearl?" Mommy gasped.

"My mortarboard's gone, Mommy."

"What? That can't be." She looked herself and then she lifted her eyes. "Your brothers," she declared and marched out. I followed her in my graduation gown as we descended the stairs, Mommy shouting for Pierre and Jean. They came running down the hallway, Pierre right behind Jean.

"Did you take your sister's graduation cap?" she demanded, her hands on her hips.

Pierre looked guiltily at Jean, who shook his head. "Jean? Are you telling a fib?"

"What's happening?" Daddy demanded, hurrying up behind us.

"Pearl's graduation cap is missing, and I think these two imps have an idea where we can find it," Mommy said, her eyes still on the twins. Pierre's gaze dropped quickly.

"Boys," Daddy said in a stern voice.

"I saw a hat on the statue of Adonis in the garden," Jean confessed.

"What?" Daddy and Mommy looked at each other, and then we all traipsed out to the garden.

There was my graduation cap on the statue. People had been going past it all day and no one had noticed it or commented on it. Daddy's lips curled into a quick smile and then became taut and thin after he looked at Mommy's face. He got the cap for me and then turned to the twins, who looked terrified.

"How could you pull such a prank on your sister? You both know how nervous she is."

"It was all my idea," Pierre said.

"No it wasn't; it was mine," Jean insisted.

Daddy looked at the statue and then at them. "My guess is that Jean boosted Pierre up so he could put that cap on the statue's head. Am I right, boys?" Pierre nodded.

"I think tonight you two will go directly to your rooms and miss the party."

"Oh, no!" Jean exclaimed. "We just meant to tease Pearl. We were going to tell her where it was."

"Nevertheless . . ."

"It's all right, Daddy," I said. "They'll be little angels from now on, won't you, little brothers?" I said. They both nodded vigorously, grateful for my forgiveness.

"Well, if your sister can forgive you, you're lucky. You should do everything you can to see that this is the happiest night of her life," Daddy warned them.

"We will," Pierre promised.

"Uh-huh. We will," Jean said.

"Get dressed and look very neat," Daddy said. They turned and scurried back into the house.

Mommy and Daddy gazed at each other and then at the statue before the three of us broke into laughter.

It seemed to break the ice that had formed around me. I wasn't as afraid of what was to come.

But maybe I should have been. Maybe it was better to always be a little frightened of the future, so you would be careful. Maybe that was why Mommy believed so strongly in good and bad gris-gris and crossed herself three times if we ever came upon a funeral.

Somehow I knew I would know for sure sooner than I ever dreamed.