Ruby

5

Who is the Little Girl If It's Not Me?

The weeks before summer and the end of the school year took ages and ages to pass. I dreaded every day I attended school, for I knew that some time during the day, I would see Paul or he would see me. During the first few days following our terrible talk, he continued to glare at me furiously whenever he saw me. His once beautiful, soft blue eyes that had gazed upon me with love so many times before were now granite cold and full of scorn and contempt. The second time we approached each other in the corridor, I tried to speak to him.

"Paul," I said, "I'd like to talk to you, to just—"

He behaved as if he didn't hear me or he didn't see me and walked past me. I wanted him to know that I wasn't seeing another boy on the side. I felt dreadful and spent most of my school day with a heart that felt more like a lump of lead in my chest.

Time wasn't healing my wounds and the longer we went on not talking to each other, the harder and colder Paul seemed to become. I wished that I could simply rush up to him one day and gush the truth so he would understand why I said the things I had said to him at my house, but every time I decided I would do just that, Grandmère Catherine's heavy words returned: "Do you want to be the one who puts enmity in his heart and drives him to despise his own father?" She was right. In the end he would hate me more, I concluded. And so I kept my lips sealed and the truth buried beneath an ocean of secret tears.

Many times I had found myself furious with Grandmère Catherine or Grandpère Jack for not revealing the secrets in their hearts and keeping my family history a deep mystery, a mystery it should no longer have been for me at my age. Now, I was no better than they had been, keeping the truth from Paul, but there was nothing I could do about it. Worst of all, I had to stand by and watch him fall in love with someone else.

I always knew that Suzzette Daisy, a girl in my class, had a crush on Paul. She didn't wait long to pursue him, but ironically, when Paul first began spending more and more time with Suzzette Daisy, I felt a sense of relief. He would direct more of his energies toward caring for her and less toward hating me, I thought. From across the room, I watched him sit with her and eat his lunch and soon saw them holding hands when they walked through the school corridors. Of course, a part of me was jealous, a part of me raged over the injustice and cried when I saw them laughing and giggling together. Then I heard he had given her his class ring which she wore proudly on a gold chain, and I spent a night drenching my pillow in salty tears.

Most of the girls who had once been envious of Paul's affection for me now gloated. Marianne Bruster actually turned to me in the girls' room one June afternoon and blared, "I guess you don't think you're someone special anymore since you were dumped for Suzzette Daisy."

The other girls smiled and waited for me to respond.

"I never thought I was someone special, Marianne," I said. "But thank you for thinking so," I added.

For a moment she was dumbfounded. Her mouth opened and closed. I started past her, but she spun about, flinging her hair over her face, then tossing it back and whipping around to make it fan out in a circle as she grinned broadly at me.

"Well, that's just like you," she said, her hands on her hips, her head wagging from side to side as she spoke. "Just like you to be smart about it. I don't know where you come off being snotty," she continued, now building on her anger and frustration. "You're certainly no better than the rest of us."

"I never said I was, Marianne."

"If anything, you're worse. You're a bastard child. That's what you are," she accused. The others nodded. Encouraged, she reached out to seize my arm and continue. "Paul Tate finally has shown some sense. He belongs with someone like Suzzette and certainly not a low-class Cajun like a Landry," she concluded.

I pulled away and brushed at my tears as I rushed from the girls' room. It was true—everyone thought Paul belonged with someone like Suzzette Daisy and thought they were the perfect couple. She was a pretty girl with long, light brown hair and stately features, but more important, her father was a rich oil man. I was sure Paul's parents were overjoyed at his choice of a new girlfriend. He'd have no trouble getting the car and going to dances with Suzzette.

Yet despite his apparent happiness with his new girlfriend, I couldn't help but detect a wistful look in his eyes when he saw me occasionally and especially at church. Starting a relationship with Suzzette, and the passage of more time since our split-up, finally began to calm him. I even thought he was close to speaking to me, but every time he seemed to be headed in that direction, something stopped him and turned him away again.

Finally, mercifully, the school year ended, and with it my daily contact with Paul, as slight as it had been. Outside of school he and I truly did live in two different worlds. He no longer had any reason to come my way. Of course, I still saw him at church on Sunday, but in the company of his parents and sisters, he especially wouldn't even look in my direction. Occasionally, I would hear what sounded like his motor scooter's engine and go running to my doorway to look out in anticipation and in the hope that I would see him pull into our drive just as he used to so many times before. But the sound either turned out to be someone else on a motorcycle or some old car passing by.

These were my days of darkness, days when I was so sad and tired that I had to fight to get out of bed each morning. Making everything seem worse and harder was the intensity with which the heat and the humidity greeted the bayou this particular summer. Everyday temperatures hovered near a hundred with humidity often only a degree or two less. Day after day the swamps were calm, still, not even the tiniest wisp of a breeze weaving its way up from the Gulf to give us any relief.

The heat took a great toll on Grandmère Catherine. More than ever, she was oppressed by the layers and layers of heavy humidity. I hated it when she had to walk somewhere to treat someone for a bad spider bite or a terrible headache. More often than not, she would return exhausted, drained, her dress drenched, her hair sticking to her forehead and her cheeks beet red; but these trips and the work she did resulted in some small income or some gifts of food for us and with the tourist trade dwindling down to practically nothing during the summer months, there wasn't much else.

Grandpère Jack wasn't any help. He stopped even his infrequent assistance. I heard he was hunting alligators with some men from New Orleans who wanted to sell the skins to make pocketbooks and wallets and whatever else city folk made out of the swamp creatures' hides. I didn't see him much, but whenever I did, he was usually floating by in his canoe or drifting in his dingy and guzzling some homemade cider or whiskey, satisfied to turn whatever money he had made from his gator hunting into another bottle or jug.

Late one afternoon, Grandmère Catherine returned from a treateur mission more exhausted than ever. She could barely speak. I had to rush out to help her up the stairs. She practically collapsed in her bed.

"Grandmère, your legs are trembling," I cried when helped her take off her moccasins. Her feet were blistered and swollen, especially her ankles.

"I'll be all right," she chanted. "I'll be all right. Just get me a cold cloth for my forehead, Ruby, honey."

I hurried to do so.

"I'll just lay here a while until my heart slows down," she told me, and forced a smile.

"Oh, Grandmère, you can't make these long trips anymore. It's too hot and you're too old to do it."

She shook her head.

"I must do it," she said. "It's why the good Lord put me here."

I waited until she fell asleep and then I left the house and poled our pirogue out to Grandpère's shack. All of the sadness and days of melancholy I had endured the past month and a half turned into anger and fury directed at Grandpère. He knew how hard it was for us during the summer months. Instead of drinking up his spare money every week, he should think about us and come around more often, I decided. I also decided not to discuss it with Grandmère Catherine, for she wouldn't want to admit I was right and she wouldn't want to ask him for a penny.

The swamp was different in the summer. Besides the waking of the hibernating alligators who had been sleeping with tails fattened with stores, there were dozens and dozens of snakes, clumps of them entwined together or slicing through the water like green and brown threads. Of course, there were clouds of mosquitos and other bugs, choruses of fat bullfrogs with gaping eyes and jiggling throats croaking and families of nutrias and muskrats scurrying about frantically, stopping only to eye me with suspicion. The insects and animals continually changed the swamp, their homes making it bulge in places it hadn't before, their webs linking plants and tree limbs. It made it all seem alive, like the swamp was one big animal itself, forming and reforming with each change of season.

I knew Grandmère Catherine would be upset that I was traveling alone through the swamp this later in the summer day, as well as being upset that I was going to see Grandpère Jack. But my anger had come to a head and sent me rushing out of the house to plod over the marsh and pole the pirogue faster than ever. Before long, I came around a turn and saw Grandpère's shack straight ahead. But as I approached, I slowed down because the racket coming from it was frightening.

I heard pans clanging, furniture cracking, Grandpère's howls and curses. A small chair came flying out the door and splashed in the swamp before it quickly sunk. A pot followed and then another. I stopped my canoe and waited. Moments later, Grandpère appeared on his galerie. He was stark naked, his hair wild, holding a bullwhip. Even at this distance, I could see his eyes were bloodshot. His body was streaked with dirt and mud and there were even long, thin scratches up his legs and down the small of his back.

He cracked the whip at something in the air before him and shouted before cracking it again. I soon understood he was imagining some kind of creature and I realized he was having a drunken fit. Grandmère Catherine had described one of them to me, but I had never seen it before. She said the alcohol soaked his brain so bad it gave him delusions and created nightmares, even in the daytime. On more than one occasion, he had one of these fits in the house and destroyed many of their good things.

"I used to have to run out and wait until he grew exhausted and fell asleep," she told me. "Otherwise, he might very well hurt me without realizing it."

Remembering those words, I backed my canoe into a small inlet so he wouldn't see me watching. He cracked the whip again and again and screamed so hard, the veins in his neck bulged. Then he caught the whip in some of his muskrat traps and got it so entangled, he couldn't pull it out. He interpreted this as the monster grabbing his whip. It put a new hysteria into him and he began to wail, waving his arms about him so quickly, he looked like a cross between a man and a spider from where I was watching. Finally, the exhaustion Grandmère Catherine described set in and he collapsed to the porch floor.

I waited a long moment. All was silent and remained so. Satisfied, he was unconscious, I poled myself up to the galerie and peered over the edge to see him twisted and asleep, oblivious to the mosquitos that feasted on his exposed skin.

I tied up the canoe and stepped onto the galerie. He looked barely alive, his chest heaving and falling with great effort. I knew I couldn't lift him and carry him into the house, so I went inside and found a blanket to put over him.

Then, I pulled in a deep fearful breath and nudged him, but his eyes didn't even flutter. He was already snoring. I went cold inside. All the hopes that had lit up were snuffed out by the sight and the stench rising off him. He smelled like he had taken a bath in his jugs of cheap whiskey.

"So much for coming to you for any help, Grandpère," I said furiously. "You are a disgrace." With him unconscious, I was able to vent my anger unchecked. "What kind of a man are you? How could you let us struggle and strain to keep alive and well? You know how tired Grandmère Catherine is. Don't you have any self-respect?

"I hate having Landry blood in me. I hate it!" I screamed, and pounded my fists against my hips. My voice echoed through the swamp. A heron flew off instantly and a dozen feet away, an alligator lifted its head from the water and gazed in my direction. "Stay here, stay in the swamp and guzzle your rotgut whiskey until you die. I don't care," I cried. The tears streaked down my cheeks, hot tears of anger and frustration. My heart pounded.

I caught my breath and stared at him. He moaned, but he didn't open his eyes. Disgusted, I got back into the pirogue and started to pole myself home, feeling more despondent and defeated than ever.

With the tourist trade nearly nonexistent and school over, I had more time to do my artwork. Grandmère Catherine was the first to notice that my pictures were remarkably different. Usually in a melancholy mood when I began, I tended now to use darker colors and depict the swamp world at either twilight or at night with the pale white light of a half moon or full moon penetrating twisted sycamores and cypress limbs. Animals stared out with luminous eyes and snakes coiled their bodies, poised to strike and kill any intruders. The water was inky, the Spanish moss dangling over it like a net left there to ensnare the unwary traveler. Even the spiderwebs that I used to make sparkle like jewels now appeared more like the traps they were intended to be. The swamp was an eerie, dismal, and depressing place and if I did include my mysterious father in the picture, he had a face masked with shadows.

"I don't think most people would like that picture, Ruby," Grandmère told me one day as she stood behind me and watched me visualize another nightmare. "It's not the kind of picture that will make them feel good, the kind they're going to want to hang up in their living rooms and sitting rooms in New Orleans."

"It's how I feel, what I see right now, Grandmère. I can't help it," I told her.

She shook her head sadly and sighed before retreating to her oak rocker. I found she spent more and more time sitting and falling asleep in it. Even on cloudy days when it was a bit cooler outside, she no longer took her pleasure walks along the canals. She didn't care to go find wild flowers, nor would she visit her friends as much as she used to visit them. Invitations to lunch went unaccepted. She made her excuses, claimed she had to do this or that, but usually ended up falling asleep in a chair or on the sofa.

When she didn't know I was watching, I caught her taking deep breaths and pressing her palm against her bosom. Any exertion, washing clothes or the floors, polishing furniture, and even cooking exhausted her. She had to take frequent rests in between and battle to catch her breath.

But when I asked her about it, she was always ready with an excuse. She was tired from staying up too late the night before; she had a bit of lumbago, she got up too fast, anything and everything but her owning up to the truth—that she hadn't been well for quite some time now.

Finally, on the third Sunday in August, I rose and dressed and went down, surprised I was up and ready before her, especially on a church day. When she finally appeared, she looked pale and very old, as old as Rip van Winkle after his extended sleep. She cringed a bit when she walked and held her hand against her side.

"I don't know what's come over me," she declared. "I haven't overslept like this for years."

"Maybe you can't cure yourself, Grandmère. Maybe your herbs and potions don't work on you and you should see a town doctor," I suggested.

"Nonsense. I just haven't found the right formula yet, but I'm on the right track. be back to myself in a day or two," she swore, but two days went by and she didn't improve an iota. One minute she would be talking to me and the next, she would be fast asleep in her chair, her mouth wide open, her chest heaving as if it were a struggle to breathe.

Only two events got her up and about with the old energy she used to exhibit. The first was when Grandpère Jack came to the house and actually asked us for money. I was sitting with Grandmère on the galerie after our dinner, grateful for the little coolness the twilight brought to the bayou. Her head grew heavier and heavier on her shoulders until her chin'-rested on her chest, but the moment Grandpère Jack's footsteps could be heard, her head snapped up. She narrowed her eyes into slits of suspicion.

"What's he coming here for?" she demanded, staring into the darkness out of which he emerged like some ghostly apparition from the swamp: his long hair bouncing on the back of his neck, his face sallow with his grimy gray beard thicker than usual, and his clothes so creased and dirty, he looked like he had been rolling around in them for days. His boots were so thick with mud, it looked caked around his feet and ankles.

"Don't you come any closer," Grandmère snapped. "We just had our dinner and the stink will turn our stomachs."

"Aw, woman," he said, but he stopped about a half-dozen yards from the galerie. He took off his hat and held it in his hands. Fishhooks dangled from the brim. "I come here on a mission of mercy," he said.

"Mercy? Mercy for who?" Grandmère demanded.

"For me," he replied. That nearly set her laughing. She rocked a bit and shook her head.

"You come here to beg forgiveness?" she asked.

"I came here to borrow some money," he said.

"What?" She stopped rocking, stunned.

"My dingy's motor is shot to hell and Charlie McDermott won't advance me any more credit to buy a new used one from him. I gotta have a motor or I can't earn any money guiding hunters, harvesting oysters, whatnot," he said. "I know you got something put away and I swear—"

"What good is your oath, Jack Landry? You're a cursed man, a doomed man whose soul already has a prime reservation in hell," she told him with more vehemence and energy than I had seen her exert in days. For a moment Grandpère didn't reply.

"If I can earn something, I can pay you back and then some right quickly," he said. Grandmère snorted.

"If I gave you the last pile of pennies we had, you'd turn from here and run as fast as you could to get a bottle of rum and drink yourself into another stupor," she told him. "Besides," she said, "we haven't got anything. You know how times get in the bayou in the summer for us. Not that you showed you cared any," she added.

"I do what I can," he protested.

"For yourself and your damnable thirst," she fired back.

I shifted my gaze from Grandmère to Grandpère. He really did look desperate and repentant. Grandmère Catherine knew I had my painting money put away. I could loan it to him if he was really in a fix, I thought, but I was afraid to say.

"You'd let a man die out here in the swamp, starve to death and become food for the buzzards," he moaned.

She stood up slowly, rising to her full five feet four inches of height as if she were really six feet tall, her head up, her shoulders back, and then she lifted her left arm to point her forefinger at him. I saw his eyes bulge with shock and fear as he took a step back.

"You are already dead, Jack Landry," she declared with the authority of a bishop, "and already food for buzzards. Go back to your cemetery and leave us be," she commanded.

"Some Christian you are," he cried, but continued to back up. "Some show of mercy. You're no better than me, Catherine. You're no better," he called, and turned to get swallowed up in the darkness from where he had come as quickly as he had appeared. Grandmère stared after him a few moments even after he was gone and then sat down.

"We could have given him my painting money, Grandmère," I said. She shook her head vehemently.

"That money is not to be touched by him," she said firmly. "You're going to need it someday, Ruby, and besides," she added, "he'd only do what I said, turn it into cheap whiskey.

"The nerve of him," she continued, more to herself than to me, "coming around here and asking me to loan him money. The nerve of him . . ."

I watched her wind herself down until she was slumped in her chair again, and I thought how terrible it was that two people who had once kissed and held each other, who had loved and wanted to be with each other were now like two alley cats, hissing and scratching at each other in the night.

The confrontation with my Grandpère drained Grandmère. She was so exhausted, I had to help her to bed. I sat beside her for a while and watched her sleep, her cheeks still red, her forehead beaded with perspiration. Her bosom rose and fell with such effort, I thought her heart would simply burst under the pressure.

That night I went to sleep with great trepidation, afraid that when I woke up, I would find Grandmère Catherine hadn't. But thankfully, her sleep revived her and what woke me the next morning was the sound of her footsteps as she made her way to the kitchen to start breakfast and begin another day of work in the loom room.

Despite the lack of customers, we continued our weaving and handicrafts whenever we could during the summer months, building a stock of goods to put out when the tourist season got back into high swing. Grandmère bartered with cotton growers and farmers who harvested the palmetto leaves with which we made the hats and fans. She traded some of her gumbo for split oak so we could make the baskets. Whenever it appeared we were bone-dry and had nothing to offer in return for craft materials, Grandmère reached deeper into her sacred chest and came up with something of value she had either been given as payment for a traiteur mission years before, or something she had been saving just for such a time.

Just at one of these hard periods, the second thing occurred to put vim and vigor into her steps and words. The postman delivered a fancy light blue envelope with a lace design on its edges addressed to me. It came from New Orleans, the return address simply Dominique's.

"Grandmère, I've got a letter from the gallery in New Orleans," I shouted running into the house. She nodded, holding her breath, her eyes bright with excitement.

"Go on, open it," she said, slipping into a chair. I sat at the kitchen table while I tore it open and plucked out a cashier's check for two hundred and fifty dollars. There was a note with it.

Congratulations on the sale of one of your pictures. I have some interest in the others and will be contacting you in the near future to see what else you have done since my visit.

Sincerely, Dominique

Grandmère Catherine and I just looked at each other for a moment and then her face lit up with the brightest, broadest smile I had seen her wear for months. She closed her eyes and offered a quick prayer of thanks. I continued to stare incredulously at the cashier's check.

"Grandmère, can this be true? Two hundred and fifty dollars! For one of my paintings!"

"I told you it would happen. I told you," she said. "I wonder who bought it. He doesn't say?"

I looked again and shook my head.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "Many people will see it now and other well-to-do Creoles will come to Dominique's to look for your work and he will tell them who you are; he will tell them the artist is Ruby Landry," she added, nodding.

"Now you listen to me, Grandmère," I said firmly, "we are going to use this money to live on and not bury in your chest for some future thing for me."

"Maybe just some of it," she accepted, "but most of it has to be put away for you. Some day you will need nicer clothing and shoes and other things, and you will need traveling money, too," she said with certainty.

"Where am I going, Grandmère?" I asked.

"Away from here. Away from here," she muttered. "But for now, let us celebrate. Let's make a shrimp gumbo and a special dessert. I know," she said, "we'll make a Kings Cake." It was one of my favorites: a yeast cake ring with colorful sugar glazes. "I'll invite Mrs. Thibodeau and Mrs. Livaudis for dinner so I can brag about my granddaughter until they burst with envy. But first we'll go to the bank and cash your check," she said.

Grandmère's excitement and happiness filled me with joy I hadn't felt in months. I wished that I had someone special with whom to celebrate and thought about Paul. I had seen him only one other time beside church the whole summer and that was when I was in town shopping for some groceries. When I came out of the store, I caught sight of him sitting in his father's car, waiting for him to come out of the bank. He looked my way and I thought he smiled, but at that moment his father appeared and he snapped his head around to face front. Disappointed, I watched him drive off, not looking back once.

Grandmère and I walked to town to cash my check. On the way we stopped at Mrs. Thibodeau's and Mrs. Livaudis's homes to invite them to our dinner of celebration. Then Grandniece began to cook and bake like she hadn't done for months. I helped her prepare and then set the table. She decided to stack the crisp twenty dollar bills at the center of the table with a rubber band around them just to impress her old friends. When they set eyes on it and heard how I had received it, they were astonished. Some people in the bayou worked a whole month for this much money.

"Well, I'm not surprised," Grandmère said. "I always knew she would become a famous artist someday."

"Oh, Grandmère," I said, embarrassed with all the attention, "I'm far from a famous artist."

"Right now you are, but one day you will be famous. Just wait and see," Grandmère predicted. We served the gumbo and the women got into a discussion about varieties of recipes. There were as many gumbo recipes in the bayou as there were Cajuns, I thought. Listening to Grandmère Catherine and her friends argue over what combination of ingredients was the best and what accounted for the best roux amused me. Their spirited talk became even more so when Grandmère decided to bring out her homemade wine, something she saved for only very special occasions. One glass of it went right to my head. I felt my face turn crimson, but Grandmère and her two friends poured themselves glass after glass as if it were water.

The good food, the wine, and the laughter reminded me of happier times when Grandmère and I would go to community celebrations and gatherings. One of my favorites had always been Flocking the Bride. Each of the women would bring a chicken to start the flock for a newlywed, and there was always lots to eat and drink, and lots of music and dancing. Grandmère Catherine, being a traiteur, was always an honored guest.

After we served the cake and cups of rich, thick Cajun coffee, I told Grandmère to take Mrs. Thibodeau and Mrs. Livaudis out to the galerie. I would clear the table and do the dishes.

"We shouldn't leave the one in whose honor we're celebrating with all the work," Mrs. Thibodeau said, but I insisted. After I cleaned up, I realized we still had the stack of money on the table. I went out to ask Grandmère where she thought I should put it.

"Just run up and put it in my chest, Ruby dear," she said. I was surprised. Grandmère Catherine never let me open her chest or rifle through it before. Occasionally, when she opened it, I looked over her shoulder and gazed in at the finely woven linen napkins and handkerchiefs, the silver goblets, and ropes of pearls. I remembered wanting to sift through all the memorabilia, but Grandmère Catherine always kept her chest sacred. I wouldn't dare touch it without her permission.

I hurried away to hide my new fortune. But when I opened the chest, I saw how empty it had become. Gone were the beautiful linens and all but one silver goblet. Grandmère had bartered and pawned much more than I imagined. It broke my heart to see how much of her personal treasure was gone. I knew that every item had had some special value beyond its money value. I knelt down and gazed at what remained: a single string of beads, a bracelet, a few embroidered scarfs, and a pile of documents and pictures, wrapped in rubber bands. The documents included inoculation certificates for me, as well as Grandmère Catherine's grade school diploma, and some old letters with ink so faded they were barely legible.

I sifted through some of the pictures. She still kept pictures of Grandpère Jack as a young man. How handsome he had been when he was a young man in his early twenties, tall and dark with wide shoulders and a narrow waist. A charming smile flashed brightly from the photograph and he stood so straight and proud. It was easy to see why Grandmère Catherine would have fallen in love with such a man. I found the other pictures of her mother and father, sepia colored and old and faded, but enough left for me to see that Grandmère Catherine's mother, my great-grandmother, had been a pretty woman with a sweet, gentle smile and small delicate features. Her father looked dignified and strong, tight-lipped and serious.

I put back the packets of documents and old family photographs, but before I deposited my money in the chest, I saw the edge of another picture sticking out from the pages of Grandmère Catherine's old leather-bound Bible. Slowly, I picked it up, handling the cracked cover carefully and gently opening the crisp pages that wanted to flake at the corners. I gazed at the old photograph.

It was a picture of a very good-looking man standing in front of what looked like a mansion. He was holding the hand of a little girl who looked a lot like me at that age. I studied the picture more closely. The little girl resembled me so much it was like looking at myself at this young age. In fact, the resemblance was so remarkable, I had to go to my room and find a picture of myself as a little girl. I placed the two side by side and studied them again.

It was me, I thought. It really was. But who was this man and where was I when this picture was taken? I would have been old enough to remember a house like this, I thought. I couldn't have been much less than six or seven at the time. I turned the picture over and saw there was scribbling on the back near the bottom.

Dear Gabrielle,

I thought you would like to see her on her seventh birthday. Her hair is very like yours and she's everything I dreamed she would be.

Love, Pierre

Pierre? Who was Pierre? And this picture, it was sent to my mother? Was this my father? Had I been somewhere with him? But why would he be telling my mother about me? She had already died. Could it be he hadn't known at the time? No, that made no sense, for how could he have gotten me even for a short time and not known my mother was dead? And how could I have been with him and not recalled anything?

The mystery buzzed around inside me like a hive of bees making my stomach tingle. It filled me with a strange sense of foreboding and anxiety. I looked at the little girl again and again compared our faces. The resemblance was undeniable. I had been with this man.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself so when I went back downstairs and saw Grandmère and her friends, they wouldn't know something had disturbed me, disturbed my very heart and soul. I knew how hard, if not impossible, it would be for me to hide anything from Grandmère Catherine, but fortunately, she was so involved in an argument over crabmeat ravigote, she didn't notice how disturbed I was.

Finally, her friends grew tired and decided it was time for them to leave. Once again, they offered me their congratulations, kissing and hugging me while Grandmère looked on proudly. We watched them leave and then we went into the house.

"I haven't had a good time like that in ages," Grandmère said, sighing. "And look at what a wonderful job you did cleaning up. My Ruby," she said, turning to me, "I'm so proud of you, dear and . . ."

Her eyes narrowed quickly. She was flushed from the wine and the excitement of all her arguments, but her spiritual powers were not asleep. She quickly sensed something was wrong and stepped toward me.

"What is it, Ruby?" she asked quickly. "What's stirred you up so?"

"Grandmère," I began. "You sent me upstairs to put the money in your chest."

"Yes," she said, and then followed that with a deep gasp. She stepped back, her hand on her heart. "You went looking through my things?"

"I didn't mean to snoop, Grandmère, but I was interested in the old pictures of you and Grandpère Jack, and your parents. Then, I saw something sticking out of your old Bible and I found this," I said, holding the picture out toward her. She looked down at it a if she were looking down at a picture of death and disaster. She took it from me and sat down slowly, nodding as she did so.

"Who is that man, Grandmère? And the little girl—it's me, isn't it?" I asked.

She lifted her head, her eyes swollen with sadness and shook her head.

"No, Ruby," she said. "It's not."

"But it looks just like me, Grandmère. Here," I said, putting the picture of me at about seven years old next to the one of Pierre and the little girl. "See."

Grandmère nodded.

"Yes, it's your face," she said, looking at the two, "but it's not you."

"Then who is it, Grandmère, and who is this man in the picture?"

She hesitated. I tried to wait patiently, but the butterflies in my stomach were flying around my heart, tickling it with their wings. I held my breath.

"I wasn't thinking when I sent you up to put the money in my chest," she began, "but maybe it was Providence's way of letting me know it's time."

"Time for what, Grandmère?"

"For you to know everything," she said, and sat back as if she had been struck, the now all too familiar exhaustion settling into her face again. "To know why I drove your Grandpère out and into the swamp to live like the animal he is." She closed her eyes and muttered under her breath, but my patience ran out.

"Who is the little girl if it's not me, Grandmère?" I demanded. Grandmère fixed her eyes on me, the crimson in her cheeks replaced by a paleness the color of oatmeal.

"It's your sister," she said.

"My sister!"

She nodded. She closed her eyes and kept them closed so long, I thought she wouldn't continue.

"And the man holding her hand . . ." she finally added. She didn't have to say it. The words were already settling in my mind. ". . . is your real father."