Ruby

  "I do feel terrible about ruining the evening," he said. "You didn't ruin it; Turner Browne ruined it. Besides, we got in plenty of dancing first," I added.

  "It was fun, wasn't it?"

  "You know," I said. "This was my first real date."

  "Really? I used to think you had a stream of boyfriends knocking on your door, and you wouldn't give me the time of day," he confessed. "It took all the courage I could muster, more courage than it took to attack Turner Browne, for me to walk up to you that afternoon at school and ask to carry your books and walk you home."

  "I know. I remember how your lips trembled, but I thought that was adorable."

  "You did? Well, then I'll just continue to be the shyest young man you ever did see."

  "As long as you're not too shy to kiss me now and then," I replied. He smiled and grimaced with the pain it caused to stretch his lip. "Poor Paul," I said, and leaned forward to kiss him ever so gently on that wounded mouth. His eyes were still closed when I pulled back. Then they popped open.

  "That's the best poultice, even better than your grandmother's magical medicines. I'm going to have to come around every day and get another treatment," he said.

  "It will cost you," I warned.

  "How much?"

  "Your undying devotion," I replied. His eyes riveted on me.

  "You already have that, Ruby," he whispered, "and always will."

  Then he leaned forward, disregarding the pain, and kissed me warmly on the lips.

  "Funny," he said, opening his car door, "but even with this bruised cheek and split lip, I think this was one of the best nights of my life. Good night, Ruby."

  "Good night. Don't forget to keep that ice on your lip like Grandmere told you to," I advised.

  "I won't. Thank her again for me. See you tomorrow," he promised, and started his engine. I watched him back away. He waved and then drove into the night. I stood watching until the small red lights on the rear of his car were swallowed by the darkness. Then I turned, embracing myself, and saw Grandmere Catherine standing on the edge of the galerie looking out at me. How long had she been there? I wondered. Why was she waiting like that?

  "Grandmere? Are you all right?" I asked when I approached. Her face was so gloomy. She looked pale, forlorn, and as if she had just seen one of the spirits she was employed to chase away. Her eyes stared at me bleakly. Something hard and heavy grew in my chest, making it ache in anticipation.

  "Come on inside," she said. "I have something to tell you, something I should have told you long ago."

  My legs felt as stiff as tree stumps as I went up the stairs and into the house. My heart, which had been beating with pleasure after Paul's last kiss, beat harder, deeper, thumped deep down into my very soul. I couldn't remember ever seeing such a look of melancholy and sadness on Grandmere Catherine's face. What great burden did she carry? What terrible thing was she about to tell me?

  She sat down and stared ahead for a long time as though she'd forgotten I was there. I waited, my hands in my lap, my heart still pounding.

  "There was always a wildness in your mother," she began. "Maybe it was the Landry blood, maybe it was the way she grew up, always close to wild things. Unlike most girls her age, she was never afraid of anything in the swamp. She would pick up a baby snake as quickly as she would pick a daisy.

  "In the early days, Grandpere Jack took her everywhere he went in the bayou. She fished with him, hunted with him, poled the pirogue when she was just tall enough to stand and push the stick into the mud. I used to think she was going to be a tomboy. However," she said, focusing her eyes on me now, "she was to be anything but a tomboy. Maybe it would have been better if she had been less feminine.

  "She grew quickly, blossomed into a flower of womanhood way before her time, and those dark eyes of hers, her long, flowing hair as rich and red as yours, enchanted men and boys alike. I even think she fascinated the birds and animals of the swamp. Often," she said, smiling at her memory, "I would see a marsh hawk peering down with yellow-circled eyes to follow her with his gaze as she walked along the shore of the canal.

  "So innocent and so beautiful, she was eager to touch everything, see everything, experience everything. Alas, she was vulnerable to older, shrewder people, and thus, she was tempted to drink from the cup of sinful pleasure.

  "By the time she was sixteen, she was very popular and asked to go everywhere by every boy in the bayou. They all pleaded with her for some attention. I saw the way she teased and tormented some who were absolutely in agony over her smile, her laugh, dying for her to say something promising to them whenever they came around.

  "She had young boys doing all her chores, even lining up to help Grandpere Jack, who wasn't above taking advantage of the poor souls,I might add. He knew they hoped to court Gabrielle's favor by slaving for him and he had them doing more for him than they did for their own fathers. It was downright criminal of him, but he wouldn't listen to me.

  "Anyway, one night, about seven months after her sixteenth birthday, Gabrielle came to me in this very room. She was sitting right where you're sitting now. When I looked up at her, I didn't need to hear what she was going to say. She was no more than a windowpane, easy to read. My heart did flip-flops; I held my breath.

  "Mama,' she said, her voice cracking, 'I think I'm pregnant.' I closed my eyes and sat back. It was as though the inevitable had occurred, what I had feared and felt might happen, had happened.

  "As you know we're Catholics; we don't go to no shack butchers and abort our pregnancies. I asked her who was the father and she just shook her head and ran from me. Later, when Grandpere Jack came home and heard, he went wild. He nearly beat her to death before I stopped him, but he got out of her who the father was," she said, and raised her eyes slowly.

  Was that thunder I heard, or was it blood thundering through my veins and roaring in my ears?

  "Who was it, Grandmere?" I asked, my voice cracking, my throat choking up quickly.

  "It was Octavious Tate who had seduced her," she said, and once again it was as if thunder shook the house, shook the very foundations of our world and shattered the fragile walls of my heart and soul. I could not speak; I could not ask the next question, but Grandmere had decided I was to know it all.

  "Grandpere Jack went to him directly. Octavious had been married less than a year and his father was alive then. Your Grandpere Jack was an even bigger gambler in those days. He couldn't pass up a game of bourre even though most times he was the one stuffing the pot. One time he lost his boots and had to walk home barefoot. And another time, he wagered a gold tooth and had to sit and let someone pull it out with a pliers. That's how sick a gambler he was and still is.

  "Anyway, he got the Tates to pay him to keep things silent and part of the bargain was that Octavious would take the child and bring it up as his own. What he told his new wife and how they worked it out between them, we never knew, didn't care to know.

  "I kept your mother's pregnancy hidden, strapping her up when she started to show in the seventh month. By then it was summer and she didn't have to attend school. We kept her here at the house most of the time. During the final three weeks, she stayed inside mostly and we told everyone that she had gone to visit her cousins in Iberia.

  "The baby, a healthy boy, was born and delivered to Octavious Tate. Grandpere Jack got his money and lost it in less than a week, but the secret was kept.

  "Up until now, that is," she said, lowering her head. "I had hoped never to have to tell you. You already know what your mother did later on. I didn't want you to think terrible of her and then think terrible of yourself.

  "But I never counted on you and Paul. . . becoming more than just friends," she added. "When I saw you two kiss out by his car before, I knew you had to be told," she concluded.

  "Then Paul and I are half brother and half sister?" I asked with a gasp. She nodded. "But he doesn't know any of this?"

  "As I told you, we didn't know how the Tates dealt with it."

/>   I buried my face in my hands. The tears that burned beneath my lids seemed to be falling inside me as well, making my stomach icy and cold. I shivered and rocked.

  "Oh, God, how horrible, oh, God," I moaned.

  "You see and understand why I had to tell you, don't you, Ruby dear?" Grandmere Catherine asked. I could feel how troubled she was by making the revelation, how much it bothered her to see me in such pain. I nodded quickly. "You must not let things go any further between the two of you, but it's not your place to tell him what I've told you. It's something his own father must tell him."

  "It will destroy him," I said, shaking my head. "It will crack his heart in two, just as it has cracked mine."

  "Then don't tell him, Ruby," Grandmere Catherine advised. I looked up at her. "Just let it all end."

  "How, Grandmere? We like each other so much. Paul is so gentle and kind and--"

  "Let him think you don't care about him anymore like that, Ruby. Let him go and he'll find another girlfriend soon enough. He's a handsome boy. Besides, his parents will only give him more grief if you don't, especially, his father, and you will only succeed in breaking the Tates apart."

  "His father is a monster, a monster. How could he have done such a thing when he was married for such a short time?" I demanded, my anger

  overcoming my sadness for the moment.

  "I make no excuses for him. He was a grown man and Gabrielle was just an impressionable young girl, but so beautiful, it didn't surprise me that grown men longed for her. The devil, the evil spirit that hovers in the shadows, crept over Octavious Tate day by day, I'm sure, and eventually found entrance into his heart and drove him to seduce your mother."

  "Paul would hate him, he would hate his own father if he knew," I said vehemently. Grandmere nodded.

  "Do you want to do that, Ruby? Do you want to be the one who puts enmity in his heart and drives him to despise his own father?" she asked softly. "And what will Paul feel about the woman he thinks is his mother? What will you do to that relationship, too?"

  "Oh, Grandmere," I cried, and rose off the settee to throw myself at her feet. I embraced her legs and buried my face in her lap. She stroked my hair softly.

  "There, there, my baby. You will get over the pain. You're still very young with your whole life ahead of you. You're going to become a great artist and have beautiful things." She put her hand under my chin and lifted my head so she could look into my eyes. "Now do you understand why I dream of you leaving the bayou," she added.

  With my tears streaming down my cheeks, I nodded. "Yes," I said. "I do. But I never want to leave you, Grandmere."

  "Someday you will have to, Ruby. It's the way of all things, and when that day comes, don't hesitate. Do what you have to do. Promise me you will. Promise," she demanded. She looked so anxious about it, I had to respond.

  "I will, Grandmere."

  "Good," she said. "Good." She sat back, looking as if she had just aged a year for every minute that passed. I ground the tears from my eyes with my small fists and stood up.

  "Do you want something, Grandmere? A glass of lemonade, maybe?"

  "Just a glass of cold water," she said, smiling. She patted my hand. "I'm sorry, honey," she said.

  I swallowed hard and leaned down to kiss her on the cheek.

  "It's not your fault, Grandmere. You have no reason to blame yourself."

  She smiled softly at me. Then I got her the glass of water and watched her drink it. It seemed painful for her to do so, but she finished it and rose from her chair.

  "I'm very tired, suddenly," she said. "I've got to go to bed."

  "Yes, Grandmere. I will soon, too."

  After she left, I went to the front door and looked out at where Paul and I had kissed good night.

  We didn't know it then, but it was the last time we would ever kiss like that, the last time we would ever feel each other's heart beating and thrill to each other's touch. I closed the door and walked to the stairway, feeling as if someone I knew and loved with all my heart had just died. In a real sense that was true, for the Paul Tate I knew and loved before was gone and the Ruby Landry he had kissed and loved as well was lost. The sin that had given Paul life had reared its ugly head and taken away his love.

  I dreaded the days that were now to follow.

  That night I tossed and turned and woke from my sleep many times. Each time, my stomach felt as tight as a fist. I wished the whole day and night had just been a bad dream, but there was no denying Grandmere Catherine's dark, sad eyes. The vision of her face lingered behind my eyelids, reminding, reinforcing, confirming that all that had happened and all that I had learned was real and true.

  I didn't think Grandmere Catherine had slept any better than I had, even though she had looked so exhausted before going to bed. For the first time in a long time, she was up and about only moments before me. I heard her shuffling past my room and opened the door to watch her make her way to the kitchen.

  I hurried to go down to help her with our breakfast. Although the rainstorm of the night before had passed, there were still layers of thin, gray clouds across the Louisiana sky, making the morning look as dreary as I felt. The birds seemed subdued as well, barely singing and calling to each other. It was as if the whole bayou were feeling sorry for me and for Paul.

  "Seems a Traiteur should be able to treat her own arthritis," Grandmere muttered. "My joints ache and my recipes for medicine don't seem to help."

  Grandmere Catherine was not one to voice complaints about herself. I'd seen her walk miles in the rain to help someone and not utter a single syllable of protest. No matter what infirmity or hard luck she suffered, she always re-marked that there were too many who were worse off.

  "You don't drop the potato because hills and valleys suddenly appear on your road," she told me, which was a Cajun's way of saying you don't give up. "You bear the brunt; you carry the excess baggage, and you go on." I always felt she was trying to teach me how to live by example, so I knew how much pain she must be suffering to complain about it in my presence this morning.

  "Maybe we should take a day off from the road stall, Grandmere," I said. "We've got my painting money and--"

  "No," she said. "It's better to keep busy, and besides, we've got to be out there while there are still tourists in the bayou. You know we have enough weeks and months without anyone coming around to buy our things and it's hard enough to scrounge and scrape up a living then."

  I didn't say it, because I knew it would only get her angry, but why didn't Grandpere Jack do more for us? Why did we let him get away with his lazy, swamp bum life? He was a Cajun man and as such he should bear more responsibility for his family, even if Grandmere was not pleased with him. I made up my mind I would pole out to his shack later and tell him what I thought.

  Right after breakfast, I started to set up our roadside stall as usual while Grandmere prepared her gumbo. I saw the strain on her face as she worked and then carried things out, so I ran and got her a chair to sit on as quickly as I could. Despite what she had said, I wished it would rain hard and send us back into the house, so she could rest. But it didn't and just as she had predicted, the tourists began to come around.

  About eleven o'clock Paul drove up on his motor scooter. Grandmere Catherine and I exchanged a quick look, but she said nothing more to me as Paul approached.

  "Hello, Mrs. Landry," he began. "My cheek is practically all healed and my lip feels fine," he quickly added. The bruise had diminished

  considerably. There was just a slight pink area on his cheekbone. "Thanks again."

  "You're welcome," Grandmere said, "but don't forget your promise to me."

  "I won't." He laughed and turned to me. "Hi."

  "Hi," I said quickly, and unfolded and folded a blanket so it would rest more neatly on the shelves of the stall. "How come you're not working in the cannery today?" I asked, without looking at him.

  He stepped closer so Grandmere wouldn't hear.

  "My father and I
had it out last night. I'm not working for him anymore and I can't use the car until he says so, which might be never unless--"

  "Unless you stop seeing me," I finished for him, then turned around. The look in his eyes told me I was right.

  "I don't care what he says. I don't need the car. I bought the scooter with my own money, so I'll just ride around on it. All I care about doing is getting here to see you as quickly as I can. Nothing else matters," he declared firmly.

  "That's not true, Paul. I can't let you do this to your parents and to yourself. Maybe not now, but weeks, months, even years from now, you'll regret driving your parents away from you," I told him sternly. Even I could hear the new, cold tone in my voice. It pained me to be this way, but I had to do it, I had to find a way to stop what could never be.

  "What?" He smiled. "You know the only thing I care about is getting to be with you, Ruby. Let them adjust if they don't want to drive us apart. It's all their fault. They're snobby and selfish and--"

  "No, they're not, Paul," I said quickly. His face hardened with confusion. "It's only natural for them to want the best for you."

  "We've been over this before, Ruby. I told you, you're the best for me," he said. I looked away. I couldn't face him when I spoke these words. We had no customers at the moment, so I walked away from the stall, Paul trailing behind me as closely and as silently as my shadow. I paused at one of our cypress log benches and sat down, facing the swamp.

  "What's wrong?" he asked softly.

  "I've been thinking it all over," I said. "I'm not sure you're the best for me."

  "What?"

  Out in the swamp, perched on a big sycamore tree, the old marsh owl stared at us as if he could hear and understand the words we were saying. He was so still, he looked stuffed.

  "After you left last night, I gave everything more thought. know there are many girls my age or slightly older who are already married in the bayou. There are even younger ones, but I don't just want to be married and live happily ever after in the bayou. I want to do more, be more. I want to be an artist."

  "So? I would never stop you. I'd do everything I could to--"