Pearl in the Mist

18

Why Me?

The tears streamed down my face faster and harder as I continued walking through the darkness. Cars and trucks rushed by me, some honking their horns, but I walked on and on until I came to a gas station. It was closed, but there was a telephone booth beside it. I dialed Beau's number and prayed with all my heart that Beau had talked his family into permitting him to stay in New Orleans. As the phone rang, I wiped the tears from my cheeks and caught my breath. Garton, the Andreas family butler, answered.

"May I speak with Beau, please, Garton?" I said quickly. "I'm sorry, mademoiselle, but Monsieur Beau is not here," he said.

"Do you know where he is or when he will return?" asked with desperation in my voice.

"He's on his way to the airport, mademoiselle." "Tonight? He's going away tonight?"

"Oui, mademoiselle. I am sorry. Is there a message, mademoiselle?"

"No," I said weakly. "No message. Merci beaucoup, Garton."

I cradled the receiver slowly and let my head fall against the phone. Beau was leaving before we had even had a chance to say goodbye. Why didn't he just run away and come to me? I asked myself but then realized how unreasonable and foolish such an act would have been. What good would it have done for him to give up his family and his future?

I sighed deeply and sat back. The dark clouds that had covered the moon slipped off and the pale white light illuminated the road, making it look like a trail of bones that led into yet deeper darkness. I had made a decision back there, I thought. There was nothing to do now but carry it out. I started to walk again.

The sound of a truck horn blaring behind me spun me around just as the driver of a tractor-trailer slowed it down to a stop. He leaned out the passenger-side window and gazed down at me.

"What in all tarnation are you doin' walking along this highway in the dead of night?" he demanded. "Don't you know how dangerous that is?"

"I'm going home," I said.

"And where's that?"

"Houma."

He roared. "You're planning on walking to Houma?"

"Yes sir," I said in a sorrowful voice. The realization of just how many miles I had to go set in when he laughed at me.

"Well, you're in luck. I'm passing through Houma," he said, and swung the door open. "Git yourself up and in here. Come on," he added, when I hesitated, "fore I change my mind."

I stepped up and into the truck and closed the door. "Now how is it a girl your age is walkin' all by herself on this highway?" he asked, without taking his eyes off the road. He looked like a man in his fifties and had some gray hair mixed in with his dark brown.

"I just decided to go home," I said,

He turned and looked at me, then nodded with understanding. "I got a daughter about your age. She run off once. Got about five miles away before she realized people want money for food and lodging, and strangers don't usually give a tinker's damn about you. She high-tailed it back as fast as she could when a skunk of a man made her a nasty offer. Git my meaning?"

"Yes sir."

"Same could have happened to you tonight, walking this lonely road all by yerself. Your parents are probably out of their mind with worry too. Now don't you feel foolish?"

"Yes sir, I do."

"Good. Well, fortunately, no harm come of it, but before you go runnin' off to what you think are greener pastures next time, you better sit yourself down and count the blessings you have," he advised.

I smiled. "I certainly will do that," I said.

"Well, no harm done," he said. "Truth is, when I was about your age . . . no," he added, looking at me again, "I guess younger . . . I done run off myself." He laughed at the memory and then began to tell me his story. I realized that driving a truck for long distances was a lonely life, and this kind man had picked me up for the company as much as to do a good deed.

By the time we'd pulled into Houma, I had learned how he and his family had left Texas, where he had gone to school, why he'd married his childhood sweetheart, how he'd built his own home, and how he'd become a truck driver. He wasn't aware of how much he had been talking until he brought the truck to a stop.

"Tarnation! We're here already and I didn't even ask you your name, did I?"

"It's Ruby," I said. And then, as if to symbolically emphasize my return, I added, "Ruby Landry," for I was a Landry again as far as the people of Houma were concerned. "Thank you," I said.

"All right. You think twice 'fore you go running off to be a big-city girl, hear?"

"I will." I got out of the truck. After I had watched him pull away and disappear around a turn, I started to walk home. As I ambled down the familiar streets, I recalled the many times Grandmère Catherine and I came into town together or went visiting one of her friends together. I recalled the times she took me with her on one of her traiteur missions, and I remembered how much the people loved and respected her. Suddenly the thought of returning to that toothpick-legged shack of ours without her being there seemed terrifying, and then there was the prospect of confronting Grandpère Jack. Paul had told me so many sad stories about him.

I paused at another pay phone and dug some more change out of my purse, this time to call Paul. His sister Jeanne answered.

"Ruby?" she said. "My gosh! It's been so long since I've spoken to you. Are you calling from New Orleans?"

"No," I said.

"Where are you?"

"I'm . . . here," I said.

"Here? Oh, that's wonderful. Paul!" she screamed. "Come to the phone. It's Ruby, and she's here!"

A moment later I heard his warm and loving voice, a voice that I needed so desperately to give me comfort and hope.

"Ruby? You're here?"

"Yes, Paul. I've come home. It's too long a story to tell you on the phone, but I wanted you to know."

"You're returning to the shack?" he asked incredulously. "Yes." I explained where I was and he told me not to take another step.

"I'll be there before you can blink your eyes," he promised. It did seem like only a few minutes later that he pulled up in his car and hopped out excitedly. We embraced each other, me holding onto him as tightly as he held onto me.

"Something terrible has happened, hasn't it? What has Daphne done now? Or is it Gisselle? What could either of them do that would send you back here?" he asked, then noticed I had no luggage. "What did you do, run off?"

"Yes, Paul," I said, bursting into tears. He got me into his car and held me until I could speak. It must have sounded like crazy babble to him, for I burst forth with the whole story, inserting almost everything and anything that had been done to me, including Gisselle's planting a bottle of rum in my dorm room. But when I described my pregnancy and the butcher doctor in the dirty office, Paul's face turned pale white and then flashed red with anger.

"She would do that to you? You were right to run away. I'm glad you've returned."

"I don't know what I'm going to do yet," I said, wiping away my tears and taking a deep breath. "I just want to go back to the shack for now."

"Your Grandpère . . ."

"What about him?"

"He's been on a real tear lately. Yesterday when I drove by, he was digging up the front and shouting into the wind, his arms waving. My father says he's run out of money for rotgut whiskey and he's got the DTs. He thinks it's almost the end for him. Most everyone is surprised he's gone on this long, Ruby. I don't know as I should take you back there."

"I've got to go back there, Paul, It's my only home now," I said, determined.

"I know, but . . . you're going to find it a terrible mess, I'm sure. It'll break your heart. My father says your Grandmère must be spinning in her grave something terrible."

"Take me home, Paul. Please," I begged.

He nodded. "Okay, for now," he said. "But I'm going to look after you, Ruby. I swear I will."

"I know you will, Paul, but I don't want to be a burden to you, to anyone. get back to doing the work Grandmère Catherine and I did, so I can keep myself."

"Nonsense," he said. He started the engine. "I got way more than I'm ever going to need. I told you, I'm a manager now. I've already approved the plans for my own home. Ruby..."

"Don't talk about the future, Paul. Please. I don't believe in the future anymore."

"All right," he said. "But you're going to be fine as long as I'm around. That's a promise you can take to the bank," he bragged.

I smiled. He did look much older. He had always been more mature and responsible than other boys his age, and his father had not hesitated to give him important work. "Thank you, Paul."

I don't think there was a way I could have prepared myself for what the shack and the grounds around it would look like when I set eyes on it again. I was lucky I was arriving at night when so much of it wasn't visible, but I saw the deep holes dug in the front, and when I set eyes on the galerie and saw the way it leaned, the railings cracked and broken, the floorboards torn up in places, my heart sank. One of the front windows was broken wide open. Grandmère Catherine would have been in tears.

"You sure you want to go in there?" Paul asked when we came to a stop.

"Yes, Paul. I'm sure. No matter what it looks like now. It was once my home and my Grandmère's home."

"Okay. I'll go in with you and see what he's up to. He might not even remember you, the way he is," Paul declared.

"Careful," Paul said when we stepped up to the galerie. The boards complained loudly; the front door squeaked on its rusted hinges and threatened to fall right off when we opened it, and 'the house itself smelled like every swamp creature had made some part of it its home.

There was only a single lantern lit on the old kitchen table. Its tiny flame flickered precariously as the breeze flowed unabated through the shack from the opened rear windows.

"All the bugs in the bayou have come in here, I'm sure," Paul said.

The kitchen was a filthy mess. There were empty whiskey bottles on the floor, under the tables and chairs, and on the counters. The sink was filled with dishes caked with old food and the floor had food drippings decomposing on it, some of it looking like it had been there for weeks, if not months< I took the lantern and walked through the downstairs.

The living room was in no better condition. The table was turned over, as well as the chair in which Grandmère used to sit and fall asleep every night. There were empty bottles in here too. The floor was plastered with mud, grime, and swamp grass. We heard something scurry along the wall,

"Probably rats," Paul said. "Or at least field mice. Maybe even a raccoon."

"Grandpère!" I cried.

We went to the rear and searched and then walked up the stairs. I think the effort it took for Grandpère to climb those steps saved the upper part of the house from the same abuse and deterioration the downstairs suffered. The loom room was not very changed, nor was my old bedroom and Grandmère Catherine's, save everything that could have been opened and searched had been. Grandpère had even pulled off some wallboards.

"Where could he be?" I wondered.

Paul shrugged. "Down at one of the zydeco bars, begging for a drink maybe," he said, but when we descended the stairs again, we heard Grandpère Jack's shrill screams coming from the rear of the house. We hurried around back and saw him, naked but caked with mud, swinging a burlap sack over his head and yelping like a hound dog after game.

"Stay back," Paul advised. "Jack," he called. "Jack Landry!"

Grandpère stopped swinging the sack and stared through the darkness. "Who's there? Robbers, thieves, git on wit' ya!"

"No thieves. It's Paul Tate."

"Tate? You stay away, hear? I ain't giving you nothin' back. Stay away. This is my fortune. I earned it. I found it. I dug and dug until I found it, hear? Back, back or I'll heave a rock at yer. Back!" he screamed again, but he backed up himself.

"Grandpère!" I cried. "It's me, Ruby. I've come home."

"Who? Who's that?"

"It's Ruby," I said, stepping forward.

"Ruby? No. I ain't takin' the blame for that. No. We needed the money. Don't blame me. Don't go blaming me. Catherine, don't you blame me!" he screamed. Then, clutching his burlap sack to his chest, he went running toward the canal.

"Grandpère!"

"Let him go, Ruby. He's gone mad from the rotgut whiskey."

We heard him scream again, and then we heard the splash of water.

"Paul, he'll drown."

Paul thought a moment. "Give me the lantern," he said, then went after Grandpère. I heard more splashing, more screaming.

"Jack!" Paul cried.

"No, it's mine! Mine!" Grandpère replied. There was more splashing, and then it grew quiet.

"Paul?" I waited and then charged, through the darkness, my feet sinking into the soft swamp grass. I ran toward the light and found Paul gazing over the water.

"Where is he?" I asked in a loud whisper.

"I don't know, I . . ." He squinted and then he pointed.

"Grandpère!" I screamed.

Grandpère Jack's body looked like a thick log floating along. It bounced against some rocks and then got caught in the current and continued on until it became entangled in some brush that stuck up out of the water.

"We'd better get some help," Paul suggested. "Come on."

Less than an hour later, the firemen hoisted Grandpère Jack's body out of the water. He was still clutching his burlap sack, only instead of buried treasure, it was filled with rusted old tin cans.

How could I have a more horrible homecoming? Despite the terrible things Grandpère Jack had done and the pathetic creature he had become, I couldn't help but remember him when I was a little girl. He had his soft moments. I would go out to his swamp shack and he would talk about the bayou as if it were his dearest friend. At one time he was a legend. There wasn't a better trapper. He knew how to read the swamp, knew when the waters would be rising and falling, knew when the bream would be running, and knew where the 'gators slept and the snakes curled.

He liked to talk about his ancestors then, about the scoundrels who raised hell on the Mississippi, the famous gamblers and flatboat polers. Grandmère Catherine said he spun most of it out of his own imagination, but it didn't matter to me whether it was wholly true or not. I just liked the way he told his tales, staring out at the Spanish moss and puffing on his corncob pipe as he rattled on and on, pausing only occasionally in those days to take a swig from his jug. He always had an excuse for it. He had to clear his throat of the grime that floats through the air in the swamp or he had to chase a cold away. Sometimes he just had to keep his gizzards warm.

Despite the break between Grandmère Catherine and Grandpère Jack after he had contracted to sell Gisselle to the Dumas family, I sensed that once, a long time ago, they were true sweethearts. Even Grandmère, during one of her calmer moments, would admit that he had been a strikingly handsome, virile young man, dazzling her with his emerald-green eyes and his sun-darkened skin. He was quite a dancer too, who could cut up the floor better than anyone at a fais dodo.

But time has a way of drawing the poisons in us to the surface. The evil that nestled under Grandpère Jack's heart seeped out and changed him—or, as Grandmère was fond of saying, "turned him into what he was: a no-account rogue who belongs with the things that slither and crawl."

Perhaps he had turned to his rotgut whiskey as a way of denying what he was or what he saw reflecting back at him when he leaned over his pirogue and gazed into the water. Whatever it was, the demons inside him got their way, and finally they dragged him down into the waters he had once loved and cherished and even worshiped. The bayou out of which he'd made his life had claimed his life.

I cried for the man he was when Grandmère Catherine first fell in love with him, just as I imagined she had cried for him when he had stopped being that man.

Despite Paul's pleading, I insisted on staying in the shack. If I didn't force myself to do it the first night, I would find reason not to the next and the next after that, I thought. I made my old bed as comfortable as I could and, after everyone had gone and I had said good night to Paul and promised to be waiting for him in the morning, I went to sleep and passed out quickly from total exhaustion.

It didn't take an hour or so after sunrise for all of Grandmère Catherine's old friends to learn of my return. They thought I had come back intending to look after Grandpère Jack. I rose early and began to clean the shack, working on the kitchen first. There was little to eat, but before an hour had passed, Grandmère's old friends began arriving, each bringing me something. Everyone was shocked at the condition of the shack, of course. None had been inside since Grandmère's death and my departure. Cajun women throw themselves at someone else's chores as if they are all of one family when that person is in need. By the time I turned around, they were all scrubbing down the floors and walls, shaking out the rugs, dusting the furniture, washing windows. It brought tears of joy to my eyes. No one had cross-examined me as to where I had been and what I had been doing. I was back, I needed their help, and that was all that mattered. Finally, I felt I really had come home.

Paul came by with armloads of things his parents had sent over and thing. The knew I would need. He went around the shack with a hammer and nails and tacked down as many loose boards as he could find. Then he took a shovel and began to fill in the dozens and dozens of holes Grandpère had dug, searching for the treasure he imagined Grandmère Catherine had buried. I saw how the women watched him work and whispered to themselves, smiling and glancing my way. If they only knew the truth, I thought, if they only knew. But there were still secrets to be kept locked up in our own hearts; there were still people we loved and had to protect.

Grandpère Jack's funeral was a quick and simple one. Father Rush advised me to have it conducted as soon as possible.

"You don't want to attract Jack Landry's sort to your home, Ruby. You know that kind only looks for an excuse to imbibe and cause a ruckus. Best leave him at peace and pray for him on your own."

"Will you say a mass for him, Father?" I asked.

"That we will. The good Lord has compassion enough to forgive even a man as lowdown as Jack Landry, and it is not for us to judge anyway," he said.

After the burial, Grandmère Catherine's friends returned to the house and only then began to ask some questions about my whereabouts since Grandmère Catherine's passing. I told them I had been with relatives in New Orleans but that I'd missed the bayou. It wasn't untrue, and it was enough to satisfy their curiosity.

Paul went about the grounds and the shack, continuing to do handyman's work, while the women sat and talked into the evening hours. He lingered until they all bid me good night, all still smiling and chattering about him.

"You know what they think," he said when we were finally alone. "That you returned to be with me."

"I know."

"What are you going to do when you start to show?"

"I don't know yet," I said.

"The easiest thing to do is marry me," he said firmly, his blue eyes full of hope.

"Oh Paul, you know why that can never be."

"Why not? The only thing we can't do is have children of our own, but we don't have to now. You've got our baby in your oven," he said.

"Paul, it wouldn't be right to even think of such a thing. And your father . . ."

"My father wouldn't say a word," Paul snapped, and I couldn't remember when I last saw him so dark and angry. "If he did, he'd have to confess to the world what sins he committed. I'll make a good life for you, Ruby. Honest I will. I'm going to be a rich man, and I've got a prime piece of land on which to build my house. Maybe it won't be as fancy as the house you lived in in New Orleans, but . . ."

"Oh, it's not fancy houses or riches that I want, Paul. I told you once before that you should look to find yourself a wife with whom you can build your own family. You deserve your own family."

"You're my family, Ruby. You've always been my family."

I looked away so he wouldn't see the tears in my eyes. I didn't want to hurt him.

"Can't you love me without having children with me?" he asked. It sounded more like pleading.

"Paul, it's not only that . . ."

"You do love me, don't you?"

"I love you, Paul, but I haven't thought of you the way you want me to since . . . since we learned the truth about ourselves."

"But you might start again if you think about us in a different way," he said hopefully. "You're back here and . . ."

I shook my head.

"It's more than that then, isn't it?"

I nodded.

"You still love that Beau Andreas, even though he's made you pregnant and left you, don't you? Don't you?" he demanded.

"Yes, Paul, I guess I do."

He stared a moment and then sighed. "Well, it doesn't change things. I'll still be here for you all the time," he said firmly.

"Paul, don't make me feel sorry I came back."

"Of course I won't," he said. "Weil, I'd better get home," he said and walked to the doorway. He paused and looked back at me. "You know what they're going to think anyway, don't you, Ruby?"

"What?"

"That the baby's mine," he said.

"I'll tell the truth when I have to," I said.

"They won't believe you," he insisted. "And as Rhett Butler said in Gone With the Wind, 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.'

He laughed and walked out, leaving me more confused than ever, and more frightened than ever of what the future had in store.

I made myself at home again faster than I had thought possible. Within the week I was upstairs in the loom room, weaving cotton jaune into blankets to sell at the roadside stand. I wove palmetto leaves into palmetto hats and made split-oak baskets. I wasn't as good at cooking gumbo as Grandmère Catherine used to be, but I tried and made a passably good one to sell for lunches. I would work evenings and be out setting up the stand in the morning. Once in a while I thought about doing some painting, but for the time being I didn't have a spare moment. Paul was the first to point that out.

"You're working so hard at making what you need to eat and get by that you have no time to develop your talent, Ruby, and that's a sin," he said.

I didn't answer because I knew what he meant.

"We could have a good life together, Ruby. You would be a woman of means again, able to do the things you want to do. We'll have a nanny for the baby and—"

"Paul, don't," I begged. My lips trembled, and he changed the subject quickly, for if there was one thing Paul would never do it was make me cry, make me sad.

The weeks turned into months, and soon it felt like I had never left. Nights I would sit on the galerie and watch the occasional passing vehicles or look up at the moon and stars until Paul arrived. Sometimes he brought his harmonica and played a tune or two. If something sounded too mournful, lie jumped up and played a lively number, dancing and making me laugh as he puffed out the notes.

Often I took walks along the canal, just the way I used to when I was growing up here. On moonlit nights the swamp's Golden Lady spider webs would glisten, the owls would hoot, and the 'gators would slip gracefully through the silky waters. Occasionally I would come across one sleeping on the shore and go cautiously around him. I knew he sensed my presence but barely opened his eyes.

It wasn't until the beginning of my fifth month that I began to show. No one said anything, but everyone's eyes lingered a long moment on my belly and I knew I had begun to be the topic of afternoon conversations everywhere. Finally I was visited by a delegation of women led by Grandmère Catherine's old friends Mrs. Thirbodeaux and Mrs. Livaudis. Mrs. Livaudis was apparently chosen to be their spokeswoman.

"Now Ruby, we've come here because you haven't got anyone to speak for you anymore," she began.

"I can speak for myself when I have to, Mrs. Livaudis."

"Maybe you can. Being Catherine Landry's granddaughter, I'm sure you can, but it don't hurt to have some of us old biddies squawking alongside you," she continued, and she nodded at the others, who nodded back, all of one determined face.

"Who are we to be speaking to, Mrs. Livaudis?"

"We'll be speaking to the man who's responsible," she said, nodding at me, "that's who. We all think we know who that young man is, too, and he comes from a family of substantial means in these here parts."

"I'm sorry, everyone," I said, "but the young man you're thinking about is not the father of my child."

Mouths dropped, eyes widened.

"Well, who is then?" Mrs. Livaudis asked. "Or can't you say?"

"It's someone who doesn't live here, Mrs. Livaudis. It's someone from New Orleans."

The women eyed each other, their faces now skeptical.

"You're not doing yourself or your baby any good to protect the father from his responsibilities, Ruby," Mrs. Thirbodeaux said. "Your Grandmère wouldn't let you do such a thing, I assure you."

"I know she wouldn't," I said, smiling as I imagined Grandmère Catherine giving me a similar lecture.

"Then let us go with you and help you make the young man bear his share," Mrs. Livaudis said quickly. "If there is an ounce of decency in him, he'll do the right thing."

"I'm telling you the truth. He doesn't live here," I said as sincerely as I could, but they shook their heads and looked at me with pity in their eyes.

"We just want you to know, Ruby, that when it comes time to do what's right, we'll be with you," Mrs. Thirbodeaux said. "Do you want a doctor or a traiteur? There is a traiteur living just outside Morgan City who will come to see you."

The thought of going to some other traiteur besides Grandmère Catherine bothered me.

"I'll see the doctor," I told them.

"The bills should be paid by you know who," Mrs. Livaudis commented, shifting her eyes toward the others, who all nodded in firm agreement.

"I'll be all right," I promised them.

They left, convinced that what they believed was the truth. Paul had been right, of course. He knew our people better than I did. But this was my burden now, something I would have to live with and deal with on my own. Of course, I thought about Beau and wondered what, if anything, he had heard about me.

As if she heard my thoughts, Gisselle sent me a letter through Paul.

"This came this afternoon," he said, bringing the letter over. I was in the kitchen preparing a shrimp gumbo. I wiped my hands and sat down.

"My sister wrote to me?" I smiled with surprise and opened the envelope. Paul stood in the doorway, watching me read.

Dear Ruby,

Bet you never dreamed you'd receive a letter from me. The longest thing I ever wrote was that dumb English report on the old English poets, and even that was half written for me by Vicki.

Anyway, I found Paul's old letters in your closet when Daphne told me to go into your room and take anything I wanted before she gave the rest away to the needy. She had Martha Wood strip down your room and shut it up. She said as far as she was concerned, you never existed. Of course, she still has the problem of the will to face. I overheard her and Bruce talking about it one night and he told her to get you out of the will. It would take a lot of legal maneuvering and might upset their own apple cart, so for the time being, you're still a Dumas.

I know you're probably wondering why I'm writing from New Orleans. Well, guess what? Daphne gave in and let me come home and return to school here. Know why? Word of your pregnancy spread around the school. I wonder how? Anyway, it became disgraceful and Daphne couldn't stand that, especially when I started calling her night and day to tell her what the girls were saying, how the teachers were looking at me, what Mrs. Ironwood thought. So she gave in and let me come home, where your secret is well kept.

Daphne's told everyone you just ran off to the bayou to live with your Cajuns because you missed them so much. Of course, people wonder about Beau.

"I bet you're wondering about him, huh?" she wrote at the bottom of the page, making it seem as if she wouldn't tell me anymore.

Just like Gisselle, I thought, teasing me even in a letter. I turned the paper over and found the rest.

Beau is still in France, where he is doing very well. Monsieur and Madame Andreas are telling everyone about his accomplishments and how he will be going to college there too. And it seems he is seeing a very wealthy French girl, someone whose family lineage goes back to Louis Napoleon.

I got a letter from him last month in which he begged me to tell him anything at all about you. I just wrote today and told him I don't know where you are. I told him I'm trying to find you by writing to one of our Cajun relatives, but I heard you might have gotten married in one of those Cajun marriage ceremonies on a raft in the swamp with snakes and spiders at your feet.

Oh, I forgot. Before I left Greenwood, I had a visitor at the dorm. I bet you know who: Louis. He was very nice and very handsome. He was heart-broken to hear you had a baby coming and you had run off to live in the swamps with your Cajuns. He had a sheet of music he had hoped to send you, so I promised him if I ever find out where he should mail it, I would let him know.

But promises are made to be broken, aren't they?

Just joking. I don't know if I will ever hear from you again or if this letter will get to you. I hope it does and I hope you write back. It's sort of nice to have a notorious sister. I'm having loads of fun making up different stories about you.

Why didn't you just do what Daphne wanted and get rid of the baby? Look at what you gave up.

Your darling twin sister,

Gisselle

"Bad news?' Paul asked when I lay down the letter and sat back. Tears filled my eyes, but I smiled.

"You know how my sister is always trying to hurt me," I said through my tears.

"Ruby . . ."

"She makes things up; she just sits around and thinks, What would hurt Ruby the most? And then she writes it in the letter. That's all. That's what she's doing. That's all."

My tears flowed faster. Paul rushed to me and embraced me.

"Oh Ruby, my Ruby, don't cry. Please."

"It's all right," I said, catching my breath. "I'll be all right."

"She wrote something about him, didn't she?" Paul asked perceptively. I nodded. "It may not be a lie, Ruby."

"I know."

"I'm still here for you."

I looked up at him and saw that his face was full of love and sympathy for me. I probably wouldn't ever find anyone as devoted, but I couldn't agree to the arrangement he was proposing. It wouldn't be fair to him.

"I'll be fine. Thanks, Paul," I said, wiping away my tears. "A young woman like you, alone here and pregnant," he muttered. "It worries me."

"You know everything's been fine," I said. He had taken me to see the doctor twice, which only added to the rumor that my child was his. In our small community, it didn't take long for people to find out the news, but he didn't care, even after I had told him what Grandmère Catherine's friends believed.

During the last half of my seventh month and the first half of my eighth, Paul was at my house every day, sometimes appearing more than once. It wasn't really until the eighth month that I started to grow real big and carry low. I never complained to him, but a couple of mornings he came upon me without my realizing he was present and he caught me moaning and groaning, my hands on my lower back. By this time I felt like a- duck, because I waddled when I walked.

When the doctor told me he couldn't be exactly sure when I would give birth but that it would be sometime within the next week or so, Paul decided he would spend every night with me. I could always reach him or someone else during the day, but he was afraid of what could happen at night.

Early one afternoon at the beginning of my ninth month, Paul arrived, his face flushed with excitement.

"Everyone's saying we're going to be hit with a hurricane," he declared. "I want you to come to my house."

"Oh no, Paul. I can't do that."

"It's not safe here," he declared. "Look at the sky." He pointed to the dull red sunset caused by a thin haze of clouds. "You can practically smell it," he added. The air had become hot and sticky, and the little breeze we had had all day had all but died.

But I couldn't go to his house and be with his family. I was too ashamed and afraid of his father's and his mother's eyes.

Surely they resented me for returning and creating all these rumors.

"I'll be all right here," I said. "We've been here for storms before."

"You're as stubborn as your Grandpère," Paul said. He was angry with me, but I wouldn't budge. Instead, I went in and prepared some dinner for us. Paul went into his car to listen to the radio. The weathermen were making dire predictions. He came into the house and started to button down whatever he could. I set out two bowls of gumbo, but the moment we sat down, the wind began to howl something fierce. Paul looked out the rear of the house toward the canals and groaned. A dark storm cloud had appeared quickly, and the torrential rains could be seen approaching.

"Here she comes," he announced. After what seemed like only seconds later, the rain and the wind hit. Water poured down the roof and found every crack in the building. The wind lashed at the loose boards. We heard things lifted and thrown, some of them bashing against the house, slamming so hard i tto the walls we thought they would come clear through. I screamed and retreated to the living room, where I cowered on the sofa. Paul rushed about, closing up and tying down whatever openings he could, but the wind threaded itself right through the house, blowing things off shelves and counters and even turning over a chair. I thought the tin roof would lift away and in moments we would be exposed to the jaws of this raging storm.

"We should have left!" Paul cried. I was sobbing and holding myself. Paul gave up trying to tie anything down and came over to embrace me. We sat beside each other, holding each other and listening to the howling, thundering wind tear trees from their roots.

Suddenly, just as quickly as it had started, the storm stopped. A deadly calm fell over the bayou. The darkness lifted. I caught my breath and Paul got up to survey the damage. We both gazed out the window and shook our heads in shock at the sight of the trees that had been split. The world looked topsy-turvy.

And then Paul's eyes widened when the little patch of blue above us started to disappear.

"It was the eye of the storm," he declared. "Back, back . . ."

The tail of the storm reached us, ripping and howling like an angry giant creature. This time the house shook, walls cracked, and windows came splintering out, their shards of glass flying everywhere.

"Ruby, we've got to get under the house!" Paul screamed. The thought of going out terrified me. I pulled out of his arms and retreated toward the kitchen. But I stepped into a puddle that had formed under a leak in the roof and slipped. I fell face forward, just catching myself in time to prevent the floor from smashing into my nose. However, I did fall sharply on my stomach. The pain was excruciating. I turned over on my back and screamed and screamed. Paul was beside me quickly, trying to get me up.

"I can't, Paul. I can't . . ." I protested. My legs felt like lead, too heavy to bend or lift. He tried to pick me up, but I was a deadweight, I was too much for him, and he too had begun to slip and .slide on the wet floor. And then I felt the sharpest pain of my life. It was as if someone had taken a knife and started to cut from my belly button down. I squeezed Paul's shoulder.

"Paul! The baby!"

His face was filled with abject terror. He turned toward the door as if he were considering going for help, realized how impossible that was, and turned back to me, just as my water broke.

"The baby's coming!"

The wind continued to twist the building. The tin roof groaned, and some of it loosened and slammed against the bracing.

"You've got to help me, Paul! It's too late!"

I was positive I would pass out and maybe even die on the floor of the shack. How could anyone endure such agony and live? I wondered. It came in waves of pain and tightness, the waves occurring closer and closer in time until I actually felt the baby moving. Paul knelt before me, his eyes so wide I thought they would burst. He shook his head in disbelief.

It got so I didn't even hear the storm or realize it was still around us. I seemed to drift in and out of consciousness, until finally I gave this great push and Paul exclaimed with delight. The baby was in his hands.

"It's a girl!" he cried. "A girl!"

The doctor had explained about the umbilical cord. I instructed Paul, and he cut and tied it. Then my baby started to wail. He placed her in my arms. I was still on the floor, and the storm, although diminished, remained around us, the rain pounding the house.

Paul brought me some pillows and I sat up to gaze down at the little face that was turned toward me, already searching for comfort and security and love.

"She's beautiful," Paul said.

The rain became a shower, the shower a sprinkle, and then the weak rays of the falling sun broke through the clouds and came through a window to drop the warm illumination over my baby and me. I covered her face with my kisses.

We had survived. We would go on together.