Tarnished Gold

6

Madame's Secret Pain

Days passed into weeks, and weeks into months, with me following the same routine. I had no clock, so I told time by the rays of light that filtered through the shade and by the sounds and noises in the house to which I had grown accustomed. The maids followed a strict schedule and always cleaned the rooms right below me about the same time of day. I could hear their muffled voices and envied them for their occasional laughter. I couldn't recall the last time I had laughed so freely. Most of the time my thoughts were tangled with knots of worry and weighted down with rocks of sorrow, for I knew how troubled Mama was about my state of affairs and could easily imagine her tossing and turning at night, dwelling on me trapped in this small room.

The silvery sounds of water swishing through pipes in the morning told me when the Tates were rising, and the aromas of foods being cooked suggested how soon my meals would be served. Despite her veiled threats to the contrary, Gladys Tate didn't miss delivering a meal, nor did she make me wait as long as she had first threatened, I think that was Mama's doing. Mama frightened her by telling her the baby's health could be in jeopardy if I was in any way denied my basic needs.

The only time I was denied anything was once when my lamp ran out of kerosene. I told her and she chided me for leaving it on too long or too high. To emphasize her point, she didn't bring me a new supply of kerosene for two days, claiming she didn't have it. I had to sit in the darkness once the sun went down and I couldn't read or sew. I asked her to bring me some candles at least, but she said she was afraid of my causing a fire.

"I often sit in the darkness," she told me. "It's soothing."

It wasn't soothing to me, but I knew she would have the kerosene miraculously for me on the third day, for that was the day Mama was scheduled to visit. Everything was always made perfect when Mama came. I began to feel like a prisoner of war visited occasionally by the Red Cross. To pass the time and amuse myself, I pretended that I was a spy the Germans had caught and Gladys Tate was the prison camp warden. I plotted an escape, which I discussed with my night heron while he paraded on the railing.

"I'll tie my bedsheet to my blanket and my clothes and make a rope down which I will slide," I said. "But I better wait until midnight. The guards are careless then."

My heron lifted his wings and bobbed his neck as if to say, "Good plan."

It finally brought me some laughter. The evenings had become my favorite time. When I was permitted to raise the window shade, I could measure the passing of the hours with the movement of the moon or with the movement of stars and planets like Venus. Mama had taught me about the heavens, the constellations, and I knew how to read the night sky, I loved to sit by my small window on the world and watch the evening thunderstorms, the sizzling lightning that slashed the darkness and sent a strong breeze my way.

I would sit for hours at the window and listen to the sounds of the evening, bedazzled by the flickering fireflies that looked like sparks of someone's campfire shooting through the darkness. Even the drone of insects was pleasing to someone like me, someone shut up for almost all the day and night. I took such pleasure in the hoot of an owl or the caw of a hawk. Aside from Mama and Gladys Tate, I hadn't spoken with another human being for so long.

Gladys Tate brought out her tape measure more frequently, and after the fifth month, Gladys decided I was showing enough for any casual observer to notice and accurately guess about my being pregnant. Gladys said it meant that I could no longer take a walk outside on Thursday night for fear some worker would see a pregnant young woman and wonder who she was and why she was always here. Although those walks weren't much because I was confined to the area around the house and couldn't go into the woods or approach the swamp, they had been something to look forward to, a change and a chance to visit with Nature.

Just as she promised she would do, Gladys Tate took to wearing something under her own clothes that, to my amazement, continued to accurately match my own development. She even padded her bra. She would have me stand beside her and confirm that we were about the same size. I couldn't understand why it was so important to her that she be that precise, but I didn't ask because questions like that only infuriated her.

On the other hand, her interrogation of me concerning my symptoms and my health was incessant. She went so far as to ask me if I was having any strange dreams, especially about the baby, and if so, would I describe them? When she told Mama I was eating nothing less than what she was eating, she wasn't lying. Before Mama arrived, Gladys reviewed every meal and told me what I had finished, she had finished; what I had left over, she had left over, not that I left over much. She was constantly changing the menu, cataloging foods to see what I fancied and what I didn't.

"The cook understands my finickiness," she told me. "It's just part of being pregnant. In some ways it's nice being pregnant. Everyone excuses your eccentricities," she concluded. I told her I'd rather not be pregnant and not be excused, but she didn't appreciate my reply."

One day I didn't hear her come up the stairway, and when she opened the door, she found me crying. She demanded to know what was wrong, grimacing as if I were doing her a terrible injustice.

"I'm feeding you well. You're getting whatever you need. You're not going to suffer any embarrassment after this ordeal is over. What more do you want from me?" she wailed, her hands on her padded hips.

"I don't want anything from you, Madame Tate. I'm not crying right now because of this," I said, indicating the room and my confinement.

"Then why are you crying?"

"I don't know. Sometimes . . . I just cry. Sometimes I just feel so sad, I can't help myself. I'm on emotional pins and needles."

The anger left her face and was quickly replaced by curiosity and concern.

"Does it happen often?"

"Often enough," I said.

"Did you ask your mother about it?" she pursued.

"Yes. She said it's not uncommon for pregnant women to be this way."

"What way?"

"Shifting abruptly from happiness to sadness and without any apparent reason," I explained. "I'm sorry," I said. She stared at me a moment and nodded.

That night, when I went to the bathroom to empty my chamber pot and bathe, I heard sobbing coming from her room, and when I peered in the doorway, I saw her sitting on her bed, wiping real tears from her cheeks. Suddenly she stopped and then laughed. Then she started again. I left before she discovered me watching her, and for the first time, I began to consider that this situation might be just as emotionally draining for her as if was for me.

Of course, I realized that even though pregnancy made me emotionally fragile, some of my gloom had to have to do with my being caged up in Gladys Tate's old playroom. I didn't want to complain and make everyone feel bad and suffer any of Gladys Tate's lectures about how much she was doing to solve this terrible problem and how much I should be grateful.

But despite my books, my embroidery, my sketching and keeping of the journal, I had so much time on my hands and nothing left to discover about my tiny, new world. Where could I put my eyes where they hadn't been dozens of times? I spent hours daydreaming, imagining myself free and outside, walking through the tall grass, dipping my hand into the canal water, smelling the honeysuckle and magnolia blossoms or the damp odor of the hydrangeas and pecan and oak trees after a good rain. I imagined the cool breeze coming in from the Gulf caressing my face or making strands of my hair dance over my forehead. I heard the quacking ducks flying north for the summer and saw the nutrias working feverishly on their dome houses.

When Mama found out I was no longer permitted to take my walks on Thursdays, she complained to Gladys and told her it was unhealthy for a pregnant woman to remain sedentary.

"You have to keep her legs and stomach strong," Mama chastised. "She needs exercise."

Gladys's solution was to permit me to wander through the house after dinner.

"Just keep away from the windows. I don't want anyone knowing you're here, especially now," she emphasized. To make the point, she drew every curtain and kept the rooms as dimly lit as possible.

The Tate mansion was filled with expensive furnishings, many of them antiques, some of which predated the Civil War. The living room looked like a room in a museum. It seemed to me that no one ever used it. The maids kept it polished and clean, not a cushion out of place, not a speck of dust on a table. The Persian rug looked like it had never been trod upon. There were artifacts everywhere, some Oriental vases, ivory figurines, crystal and glass pieces on tables and shelves and in a cherry-wood glass case. Rich satin drapes framed the windows.

Gladys Tate let me peruse the library to choose new books to read, but I always had to restrict myself to no more than two at a time and always replace the two I had finished before taking any additional volumes. This way, she explained, no one would notice any were missing. Of course, I was forbidden to touch anything else. I could look at everything, go practically anywhere, but never disturb a thing. It made me feel like I was walking through a house made of thin china, terrified that I would bump into a table and send some very valuable piece shattering or leave footprints on the immaculate floors.

One Thursday night I ventured farther into the upstairs corridor. Usually the doors were kept closed and Gladys Tate made it very clear that I was never to open a closed door during my walk. This particular night, however, one of the always-closed doors was almost half open. I paused and gazed in, as timidly as a turtle at first, and then more like a curious kitten when I saw a pair of man's trousers draped over a chair. The closet door was open, so I could see the contents: all men's clothing. I realized that Octavious used this room. What did that mean? He and Gladys weren't sleeping together? Was it because of her fabricated pregnancy or was it always this way? I wondered.

I said nothing about it until Gladys and I sat down to our usual cold Thursday night dinner the following week.

"Your mother says that walking up and down the stairs is actually good for a pregnant woman, as long as she doesn't overdo it," Gladys remarked. "She says too many women baby themselves and are babied when they become pregnant. I'm sorry you can only do the big staircase on Thursday nights. However, you can walk up and down your own little stairway quietly when you come down to use the bathroom, I suppose.

"I'm not babying myself," she continued. "I used to have breakfast in bed occasionally. And everyone expects me to now, of course, but I am not going to appear to be one of those spoiled women your mother talks about," she said. She thought a moment and then said, "I never realized exercise was so important for a pregnant woman. I always thought they had to lie in bed and be waited upon hand and foot, but your mother thinks it should be exactly the opposite. She says unless the woman has some problem, she never tells her to stop working. Some have worked right up to the day she's delivered them."

"Mama's delivered enough babies to know," I assured her. "One time she delivered four in one day: a baby boy in the morning, a pair of twin girls in the afternoon, and a baby girl in the evening."

She nodded and then, after a pause, screwed those inquisitive eyes on me and asked, "You don't sleep well these nights, do you?"

"No."

"You wake up a lot and moan and groan. I can hear you through the ceiling sometimes. You've got to control that," she warned. "Remember, the window is open at night."

"I don't realize I'm doing it," I said. "Did I wake you and Octavious?"

"Not Octavious. His bedroom is across the corridor," she said quickly.

"You don't sleep in the same room?" I asked before I could stop my tongue.

She fixed her eyes on me with a stone glint this time. "No. We have different sleeping habits. It's not uncommon. My mother and father slept in separate bedrooms from the first day they were married."

I said nothing.

"You knew Octavious was sleeping in his own room anyway, didn't you?" she said with a tone of accusation. "You're snooping around the house now. You're into every nook and cranny, I suppose."

"No, madame. I . . ."

"It doesn't make any difference," she said, and then gave me one of her crooked smiles. "You can't tell anyone anything about this place and our lives or it will be known you were here and then questions will be asked and you'll have ruined everything. Then, instead of your baby having a good home and all that he or she needs, he or she will be labeled an illegitimate child and it will all be your fault. You understand that, don't you?" she asked, sounding more concerned than threatening.

"Of course, madame. I don't mean to be snoopy. I just meant . . ."

"You'll learn for yourself one day," she said, and then sighed. "You'll learn just how hard it is to live with a man. Men are more than just physically different; they're more selfish. They want to be satisfied all the time, no matter how we feel. All they care about is their own raging lusts," she said, practically spitting the words.

She leaned forward and then in a loud, raspy whisper, she said, "It's because of their hormones. They overflow and it makes them throb all over until they get satisfied. That's what my father told me."

"Your father discussed such things with you?" I asked, unable to hide my surprise.

She shrugged. "My mother was too prudish to do so. She wouldn't even tell me about the birds and the bees. Do you know we had skirts on our piano legs because my mother thought naked piano legs were too suggestive?" She laughed a thin laugh and then screwed her face into a serious expression and added, "Of course, young people in my time weren't as concerned about sexual matters as they seem to be today.

"It was different then," she continued, looking around as if she could see the room twenty years ago. She smiled softly. "Things were less complicated. Everything was in its proper place. Courting was more civilized, proper. I so wanted it to be that way forever, but . . ."

I just stared at her, but she looked like she was gazing through me. It gave me the shudders because she appeared to be talking to herself more than to me. Something she saw in her own memory made her eyes hateful and small. She shuddered and twisted her lips into a crooked smile before continuing.

"Octavious has never forgiven me for our honeymoon," she said angrily. "He accused me of planning it that way. He said I should have known, have kept track with the calendar."

"Calendar?" I wondered aloud. "I don't understand." She blinked her eyes and then looked at me and smirked. Then she sat back, wagging her head.

"Girls like you drive me mad," she began. "You have your fun, but you don't know what's what with your own bodily functions."

I shook my head, still confused.

"Octavious accused me of having a period for three weeks instead of one," she snapped with impatience. "I know you know what a period is."

"Oui, madame," I said. "Of course."

"Well, sometimes mine's irregular and it just worked out that way after we got married and Octavious couldn't gratify his lust on our wedding night, nor the night after or the one after that. Is that spelled out simply enough for you to understand, or do I have to draw pictures?"

She looked away and then, when she turned back, there were tears in her eyes. "It's very difficult when your husband is not sensitive to your needs. It's just better for a man and a woman to have separate bedrooms. It was better for my mother and it's better for me. Does that satisfy your need to know? Does it?" she demanded.

"I'm sorry, madame. I don't have a need to know the private details of your life. I didn't mean to pry."

"Of course not. You didn't mean to come barging into my life either."

"No, Madame Tate. I did not," I said firmly. "It was the other way around. Octavious came barging into my life."

She glared a moment and then her face softened. "You're right. Of course. Anyway, we shouldn't be having this kind of nasty talk. We have to cooperate and help each other get through this ordeal," she said in a sweetened voice. "Have you had enough to eat?"

"Oui, madame."

"Good. Take your exercise then. Wait," she said when I started to rise. "I'll walk with you. I want to study how you walk."

"How I walk?"

"Yes. Pregnant women do walk differently. I've seen you rubbing your lower back when you walk sometimes. You have a sort of pregnant waddle."

"Oh," I said. I nodded and she followed along, keeping a step or two back so she could analyze and imitate me. I tried not to be self-conscious of my every move, but when someone is studying you under a magnifying glass, you can't help but think about every gesture, ever movement in your face, every twinge in your legs and back. I found I was even holding my breath at times.

But after a while, the walk through the house became more pleasant because she began to explain things, point to this work of art or this vase and tell me its history, who bought it and why. She explained why she held affection for certain of her household possessions. I noted that anything her mother bought, she spoke about with joy, but things her father bought seemed to resurrect painful memories. As she went on about them, I realized that most of the things her father had bought, he had bought to compensate for some sad moment or something he had done that had displeased her mother. She called them "Gifts of Repentance," and then added, almost casually, "That goes for my wonderful dollhouse, too." She looked mean, wrathful, when she said it.

"Didn't you love your father, Madame Tate?" I asked softly.

She replied with a short, thin laugh, and then said, "Love him? Of course. He demanded it."

"How can you demand love?" I asked.

"My father could demand the sun to rise or fall." "I don't understand," I said.

"Be happy you don't," she replied, and then, with her hand on her 1pwer back as if she really did suffer from the same aches I experienced, she groaned and added, "I've walked enough. Watch the time," she warned, "and be sure to get upstairs before anyone can discover you."

She left me standing in the corridor.

On my way back upstairs, I paused in the doorway of the den and gazed up at the portrait of Gladys Tate's father. What sort of a man thought that love demanded was any sort of love at all? I wondered. His painted eyes seethed to be shooting needles my way and his firm lips appeared caught in a sneer. I didn't linger and went up to my tiny world even though I had more time to wander about this dark and foreboding house.

Gladys Tate had lived up to her promise to Mama: She had kept Octavious from me from the day I had arrived. Only once or twice did I hear what I was sure was the sound of his muted voice below, and once, when I was gazing out the window at night, I thought I saw him standing in the shadows looking up at me, but either I imagined it or he stepped back into deeper darkness and was gone in an instant.

Almost a week after Gladys Tate had told me about her disastrous honeymoon, I went downstairs after hours to take my bath and empty my chamber pot as usual. After I undressed, I studied the changes in my body,, noting the stretch marks on my breasts and abdomen. It was harder to. get in and out of the bathtub, too. Every muscle seemed to be aching these days. I had a good soak, brushed my hair, and put on my nightgown, but the moment I returned to my quarters, I sensed something different.. When, you have spent. as much time every day m a room as small as mine was for as long as I had, you get so you can smell the slightest change, much less see it The lamp was very low, so I turned it up, and when I spun around, .I found him standing there in. the corner, his back to the wall.

"Monsieur Tate!" I exclaimed.

He stepped forward quickly, his finger on his lips. "Please. Don't scream."

"What is it you want?" I demanded. "You frightened me," I said angrily.

"I had to sneak up here, of course. I'm sorry," he said. "Please, relax. I'm not here to hurt you or bother you,"

"What do you want?" I demanded, my heart thumping like a tin drum.

He wore a white cotton shirt and a pair of dark slacks. His hair was combed neatly, and the aroma of his cologne reached my nostrils in waves. He smiled.

"I just want to talk to you for a few moments," he said, his hands up to keep me from screaming.

"We have nothing to say to each other. I must ask you to leave immediately," I said, jabbing my finger toward the door and then pressing my nightgown against my bosom to give me some more cover from his searching eyes.

"I don't blame you for hating me," he said. "Nothing I can say will change what I have done to you or make things better, but I thought since you have been here awhile, you might at least understand a little more about my situation, and perhaps, I was hoping . . . you would be somewhat more sympathetic."

"I don't understand anything except you are a horrible person, mean and selfish."

"Perhaps I am," he admitted. "I don't want to be." He lowered his head. I retreated to my bed and sat with my arms folded over my bosom. With his eyes staring, I couldn't help but feel naked even though I wore my nightgown. He raised his head and smiled again. "How is everything?" he asked. "Is there anything you need?"

"My freedom," I replied.

He nodded, the thin smile evaporating. "I understand everything's going along as it should and it won't be much longer."

"To me each day seems like a week, each week a month, and each month a year. Not to be able to go outside when the sun is up, to have to walk through the house on tiptoe and stay within the shadows until I feel like a shadow myself, is torture," I pointed out with tears in my eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice cracking. Then he added, "I pray for your forgiveness every night. I know you probably don't believe that, but it's true. Despite what I have done, I am a religious man. Why, Gladys and I haven't missed a Sunday service since we got married. We even attended church during our honeymoon."

"It's not only my forgiveness you must pray for, monsieur," I replied, my voice as cold as ice. If indeed there was any forgiveness to sprout in my heart, it was far too early for the seeds to open. I was still in the winter of my suffering, and my heart was far from a fertile place for a pardon to blossom.

His smile returned, and even in the dim light I could see it was a small, tight smile.

"If you are referring to my asking for the forgiveness of my illustrious wife, I don't think the weight on my conscience is as heavy as you would imagine. By now, even confined to these quarters and restricted in your movements around our home and property, you must have reached a realization about our relationship," he said.

"That's not my business."

"I know. Unfortunately, it's no one's business but my own. Remember the things I told you at the pond? They weren't lies, only now you probably see it's even worse than I described. We haven't been as husband and wife for some time. I'm hoping that when the baby is born and she becomes a mother, things will change."

"Monsieur, none of this—"

"Oh, Gabrielle," he said, falling to his knees and reaching out for my hand. His gesture took me by surprise. I held my breath, but my heart continued to pound like rain in a storm drain. "I want you to understand everything. Only then will you perhaps find some small place in your heart for an infinitesimal amount of forgiveness."

He swallowed hard and then continued. "Gladys and I don't sleep together because making love for her is too painful. She just lies there and whimpers. Can you imagine what that is like for me? I'd like to be a real husband and sire children with her as I should, but she makes it so difficult."

"Why tell me, a stranger? Why not bring her to a doctor, monsieur?" I asked in my same hard, sharp voice. I had used all my power of pity for Mama and myself. I certainly had nothing left for him, the man whose lust had shut me up in this tiny room.

"Because a doctor can't help her unless he can wipe away years of horrid childhood memories," he blurted.

I felt a wave of blood flow up my neck and pulled my hand back from his.

"I do not understand, monsieur," I said, even though the dark thoughts had been lingering in the corners of my mind from the day I had discovered the strange drawings in the closet and the damaged dolls. These thoughts were so horrid and frightening to me, I kept them smothered.

"Gladys's father used her . . . sexually, when she was just a little girl," he said, and I gasped. "I realized something was wrong from the first day after we had been married. In order to postpone our consummation of the marriage, she secretly had one of her laborers butcher a pig and put some of the blood into a small bottle, which she brought along on our honeymoon and then used to pretend she had gotten her period. One afternoon, toward the end of our week, I found the bottle buried in a drawer. When I confronted her with it, she broke down and cried and babbled some of the past.

"Naturally, I was horrified. Her father was a well-respected and important man, a man I personally admired. He had brought me into the business and treated me like a son from the first day forward. It was he who arranged for my courting of Gladys, and although she was somewhat aloof from my advances, I thought it was only because of her shyness. She had never had a boyfriend before me, really.

"So I was willing to give it time, and when our marriage was arranged, I thought we would surely learn to love each other and things would be fine. When I discovered her past, I confronted her father, who, as you might know, had been suffering from emphysema for some time. It had grown very serious. He could barely get around and spent most of his time confined in bed, hooked to an oxygen tank. It looked like an umbilical cord and he shriveled until he appeared no more than a baby. I was running the business already."

"What happened after you confronted him?" I asked, unable to prevent myself from being interested in his story even though apart of me abhorred the details.

"He denied everything, of course, and told me Gladys had always been a fanciful child who actually believed her own imaginings. He begged me not to give up on her, however, claiming I was the only hope she had for a normal life."

"You believed him?"

"I didn't know what to believe. It didn't seem to make any difference whether or not it was true. The result was the same. Gladys was, as one psychiatrist I conferred with told me, impotent. He said he had seen other similar cases in which a woman's psychological condition actually affected her ability to get pregnant. He called it mind over matter. "Oh, I forced myself on her a number of times, hoping to break through this wall of frigidity, but it has, until now, proven impenetrable. Can you understand what it has been like for me to live under such conditions?

"I had made promises to her father and accepted her and the holy sacrament of marriage, but . . . I am only a man with a man's needs and weaknesses.

"I know," he said quickly, "that is no excuse for what I have done to you, and it's laughable for me to even suggest you forgive me because of it, but I wanted you to understand that I am not an evil person and I do suffer remorse." He lowered his head.

"You denied it when my father first came to you," I. reminded him,

"Who would have admitted such a thing to Jack Landry? He looked like he would tear my arms out and rip off my head. I was terrified. I know his reputation. Don't think my legs weren't quaking under that desk when you and your father burst into my office and I tried to frighten him with my own threats.

"I know you have no reason to believe this now, but I was preparing to send you money to help you with your pregnancy and with the child. I was going to do it anonymously. I never expected your father would go to Gladys, and as you remember, I was quite surprised by her reaction and decision.

"Well," he said, sitting back, "that's the whole truth. Now you know it and perhaps you won't hate me as much as you did."

"How much I hate you isn't what matters," I said, and then I added in a softer voice, "I don't hate you. Mama always says hate is like a small fire kindled in your soul; it eventually burns away all the goodness and consumes you in its rage."

"She's right and you're very sweet to tell me that. That's what's made this so terrible, your goodness." He smiled. "Really, is there anything I can do for you? Something I could bring you?"

"No, monsieur."

He stared at me and smiled. "I wish I had been born years later and met a girl like you first," he said.

"But my father doesn't own a big cannery," I reminded him.

His smile widened. "You're a very clever girl besides being a very beautiful one, for someone who claims she hasn't been with men very much," he said. "Tell me the truth now. There were others, weren't there?"

"I have told you the truth and I don't care what you believe about me, monsieur."

He smiled as if to humor me and then he looked around, remaining on the floor at my feet. "It has to have been very lonely for you here, n'est-ce pas?"

"Oui, monsieur."

"You miss your friends, I'm sure."

"I miss my mother and my freedom to go where I want when I want."

"I'm sorry. Really, there must be something else I can do for you," he insisted. Then he rose and sat beside me. "I know. I could visit you more often," he suggested. "Amuse you, comfort you. You're a lovely girl. You shouldn't be so alone. It's not fair."

"I'll endure it. As you said, it's not for much longer." I shifted on the bed so I wouldn't be sitting so close to him.

"Yes, but as you said, every day is like a week, every week a month, a month a year, when you're so locked up and without company. We can play checkers or just talk, and I can comfort you with my shower of affection whenever you need it. Pregnant women need affection, even more than women who aren't pregnant, no?"

He reached across my lap and took my hand into his. I started to pull back, but he held on to me.

"You needn't worry now. The damage, as they say, has already been done. You can't get any more pregnant. You won't have twins," he added with a laugh.

"Please, monsieur." I pulled my hand from his, but he took it again, pressing firmer, more desperately.

"Gabrielle, I'm lonely, too. It's not just for you that I make the suggestion."

"Monsieur Tate . . ."

"Pregnancy does make a woman even more beautiful," he said. "Here you are locked away in this closet, shut away from the sunlight you love so, and yet you still bloom with a freshness and a radiance that makes my heart skip beats."

"I don't feel fresh and radiant."

"But you are," he insisted. "These past months I've lain in my bed and stared up at the ceiling thinking about you closed up in this room. I go into Gladys's bedroom to hear every movement, every squeak, and a few times," he confessed, "I've watched you from a distance or from the shadows and admired you for what you are doing for your parents and for the baby."

"I do what must be done," I said, my voice weak because of the way my heart thumped with fear and anxiety, imagining him hovering below listening for a squeak in the ceiling.

"Your courage takes away my breath and in my eyes makes you more beautiful. If you will only let me give you real comfort," he said, and leaned toward me to kiss my cheek, his hands moving up the sides of my body toward my breasts.

Surprised and terrified, I put my hand on his chest and held him away. "Get out, monsieur. Now!" He hesitated. "I will scream. I warn you." My throat tightened, but he saw the determination in my eyes.

"All right," he said, standing and pumping his palms against the air between us. "Stay calm. Relax. I'll go. I just thought you needed some comfort and . . ."

"I don't want you here," I said, tears burning beneath my eyelids. "I don't want this kind of comfort."

"Okay. Fine. But what I'll do is look in on you from time to time to see if you are all right."

"No, don't bother."

"It's not a bother."

"Monsieur," I said firmly, swallowing back my tears to make my words sharp and firm, "if you set foot in this room again, I will complain to Madam Tate and I will leave this house. I swear I will."

He shook his head. "Where do you get your strength?"

"From my sense of what is right," I replied pointedly. He was silent and then he retreated to the doorway where he paused once more to look back at me. He sighed deeply and shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said, and descended the stairs quietly.

I waited until I heard the downstairs door close. Then I let out a breath and felt my tears pour hotly over my lids and down my cheeks. Now that he was gone, I was filled with amazement. How could he come up here and, pretending to be remorseful, try to seduce me again? Madame Tate was right, I thought, men must have raging hormones that turn them into monsters. Had he no shame?

I went to the window to take deep breaths. My heart was still pounding.

If Mama knew what had happened, she would rip me from the place in an instant, I thought. Maybe what I was doing was not so wise. Maybe I shouldn't leave my baby in this house, rich people or no.

Oh, I didn't know what was right and what was wrong anymore. I couldn't throw myself on Mama for the answers. I knew she was so selfless she would choose what would make life easier for me, no matter what the consequences to her. If only there were someone else to speak to, someone else I trusted and loved and someone who loved me.

I gazed up at the stars, hot tears still streaking down my cheeks; and then my heron appeared out of nowhere, it seemed, and landed on the railing. He lifted his wings and did a small jump as if to amuse me. I laughed.

"What are you up to tonight, Mr. Heron?" I asked. He bobbed his head.

Then he turned and soared off into the night.

My animals had no false faces. They were exactly who they appeared to be. They broke no promises. They lived in a world without any false hope. Maybe I should have been born a heron. Right now it seemed a better thing to be.

I sighed and sat back, and then I felt the strange twinge in my stomach. I felt it again and my eyes brightened, my tears fell back.

It's the baby, I thought. It was the first time I had felt it move within me.

And suddenly all the dark clouds lifted and a ray of sunshine brightened the dark corridors in my heart, causing it to beat with a joy I never felt before. The pain I felt now was the pain that came from having no one with whom I could share this new excitement.

Loneliness was just as difficult to withstand when you had happiness as it was when you had sadness, I thought, for you needed to share it. I began to understand what loving someone really meant. It meant sharing every discovery, every realization, every tear, every laugh, every dream, and even every nightmare.

It meant having someone to trust with your fears and your hopes.

It meant so much more than the people in this house thought it did. Maybe the birth of the baby would bring them the understanding they lacked. The Tates might stop doting on themselves and their problems and dote on the child. It could bring them together in a good way. They would share the baby's development, laugh at its smile, be in awe of its growth, its first steps, first words. And then maybe Octavious would prove to be right: Gladys would want more children, children truly of her own.

When something bad happened, Mama, quoting Scripture, often said, "To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven . . . a time to rend and a time to sew."

The baby kicked again.

I had passed through the season of rending. Now I was about to begin the season of sewing.