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"My hair's still very wet, Mama. I'm too hungry to wait." She laughed and we started to eat.
"Well, like I told you. Your father's not coming home for dinner. I'm locking him out tonight," she declared. "He's nothing but a thief, stealing your dowry money for that stupid scheme. If he spent half the time and energy he spends on schemes doing legitimate work instead, we'd be millionaires, as least as rich as the Tates," she said, and I nearly dropped my spoon.
"What's wrong, Gabriel?" she asked quickly.
"I swallowed too fast, Mama."
"Well, take your time, honey. You got all the time in the world. Don't rush your life like I did. Think twice and then think twice more before you say yes to anything. No matter how simple or small it seems."
"Yes, Mama."
The music had stopped.
"I'm going to wind it up again," Mama said. "Tonight I just feel like hearing music. Tonight I don't want to hear silence."
I watched her get up and go to the Victrola. I hated being deceitful to her, but she was so down, so depressed and alone, I could never add even a pinch of sadness to her misery. I lowered my eyes to my food. After I ate, I helped clean up and then went upstairs to finish sewing my graduation dress. Mama had cut out the pattern. She went out on the gallery to- weave some split-oak baskets, but she wasn't out there long before Mr. LaFourche came to fetch her in his Ford pickup truck. His wife was having terrible stomach cramps.
"I got to go make a visit," she called up to me. "You be all right?"
"Yes, Mama. I'm fine."
"If that no-account father of yours shows up, don't give him anything to eat," she said.
"I won't, Mama," I said, but she knew I would. After I heard the truck leave, I came out of the loom room and put on my dress. I went to Mama's mirror again and gazed at myself in the light of the butane lamp. The dress fit perfectly. I thought it made me look years older.
But I didn't smile at my image.
I didn't feel my heart burst with joy and excitement.
I began to cry. I sobbed so hard, my stomach ached. And then I ran out of tears and sat silently on my bed, staring through the window at the sliver of moon above the willow trees. I sighed deeply, took off my graduation dress, put on my nightgown, and crawled under my blanket.
When I closed my eyes, Mr. Tate's face with his lustful smile appeared. I moaned and sat up quickly, my heart pounding. How would he sleep tonight? I wondered. Was it easier for him to put the sinful act out of mind than it was for me, or would his conscience come roaring down over him and drive him to his knees to pray for forgiveness?
I was very angry. I wanted to pray to God to refuse him. I wished him centuries of pain and suffering. I hoped that when he had left my pond, he had fallen out of his canoe and been attacked by snakes and alligators. His cries would be music to my ears. I raged for a while like this and then I felt guilty for doing so and shut down my vengeful thoughts.
But Mr. Tate had stolen more than my youth and innocence when he had attacked me, he had invaded and stained my private world. My sadness was deeper because of that. I was afraid of what it meant, for before this, I never felt alone. No matter that I had no real friends; no matter that I wasn't invited to parties and did not go to dances and shows.
But if I lose my world, I thought, if I lose the swamp and the animals, the fish and the birds, the flowers and the trees, if I fear the twilight and cringe when shadows fall, where will I go? What will become of me?
Would the beautiful blue heron return to her nest above the pond?
I was afraid of the morning, afraid of the answers that would come up with the sun.
2
Paradise Lost
.
I was positive that Daddy's not coming home
all night was the only thing that kept Mama from noticing that something serious was bothering me the next morning. Mama had been out late treating Mrs. LaFourche, who Mama believed had eaten a few- bad shrimp, so Mama was pretty tired and irritable anyway. She rose, expecting to find Daddy either sprawled out on the front gallery or on the floor of our living room, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Mama didn't notice that I ate very little breakfast or that I was quiet and tired myself. I had tossed and turned, flitting in and out of nightmares most of the night. But Mama ranted and raved to herself, raking up old complaints about Daddy, criticizing not only his excessive drinking and gambling, but his laziness.
"All the Landrys were lazy," she lectured, returning to an old theme. "It's in their blood. I should have know'd what your father would be like right from the start. Oh, he charmed me in the beginni
ng by building this house and working hard for a while, but he was only setting me up the way the Landry men always set up their women, so he could throw it back at me all the time about just how much he done for me already.
