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"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.
