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"We put Gabriel through all that horror living in that dreadful woman's house secretly just so no one would know what a terrible thing had happened to her, and you go and spill your guts out to the likes of Jed Atkins? Why? Tell me that, huh?"
Daddy licked his dry lips, closed his eyes, and swayed. He lay back against the settee for a moment, making no attempt to respond or defend himself.
"And then you go and promise your daughter to a no-account slob, no better than the vermin living in the rotted shrimp boats. Where's your conscience, Jack Landry?"
"Aaaa," he finally cried, putting his hands over his ears. Mama paused, put she continued to stand over him, her little frame intimidating as she glared down at him. He took his hands from his ears slowly.
"I just done what I thought would be good for everyone, woman. I ain't no traiteur with spiritual powers like you. I don't read the future like you, no."
"Oh? You don't read the future like me? Well, it ain't hard to read your future, Jack Landry. Just go follow a snake. How it lives and how it ends up is about the same as you will," she said.
Daddy waved his hand in the air between them the way he would swat at flies. "Never mind all this. Where's that stuff you made for headaches and bad stomach trouble?"
"I'm all out of it. You get drunk so much and so often, I can't keep tip with the demand anyway," she scolded. "Besides, there's no traiteur alive who can concoct a remedy for what ails you, Jack Landry."
Whatever blood was left drained from Daddy's face. His bloodshot eyes shifted my way and then back to glance at Mama.
"I ain't staying here and be abused," he threatened. "That's 'cause you're the one who's been doing the abusing, not us."
"That did it," he said, struggling to stand. "I'm going to go move in with Jed until you apologize."
"When it snows in July," Mama retorted, her eyes turned crystal-hard.
Daddy kicked a chair and then marched out of the house, slamming the screen door behind him. He wobbled down the steps and tripped on his own feet before making it to the pickup. Mama watched him struggle to get into his truck, gun the engine, grind the gears, and then spit up dirt as he spun the vehicle around and shot off.
"Every time I get to feeling too good for my shoes, I'm reminded how stupid I've been," she muttered. Despair washed the color from her face as she sighed deeply.
"Oh, Mama, this is all my fault," I moaned.
"Your fault? How can any of this be your fault, honey? You didn't go and pick who'd be your daddy, did you?"
"If I cared more about being married, Daddy wouldn't do these things," I wailed. I flopped into a chair, my stomach feeling like a hollowed-out cave.
"Believe me, child. He would do these things anyway, your being married or no. Ain't no rock around that Jack Landry can't crawl out from under," she said. "Pay him no mind. He'll come to his senses and come crawling back, just like he always does." She gazed after him one more time and then went back to work.
But days passed and Daddy didn't return. Mama and I worked and sold our linens, our towels and baskets. In the evenings after dinner, we sat on the gallery and Mama talked about her youth and her mama and papa, whom I had never seen. Sad times always made her nostalgic. We listened to the owls' mournful cries and spotted an occasional night heron. Sometimes there was an automobile going by, and that would make us both anticipate Daddy's return, but it was always someone else, the car's engine drifting into the night, leaving the melancholy thick as corn syrup around us.
I had a lot of time to pole in my canoe in the late afternoons, to sit alone and drift through a canal and think. Through my mind flitted all kinds of dreary thoughts. Virgil Atkins was probably right with his predictions, I concluded. I would die a spinster for sure now, working beside Mama, watching the rest of the world pass by. All the eligible young men would find out about me and no one decent would ever want me. I would never fall in love. Any man who showed any interest in me would show it for only one reason, and once he had his way with me, he would cast me aside as nonchalantly as he cast aside banana peels. Real affection, romance, and love were things to dream about, to read about, but never to know.
Every one of Mama's friends and even people who just stopped by to get Mama's help or buy something we made usually commented about my good looks. It became more and more painful to face them and hear the compliments. Most were surprised I wasn't married or pledged, yet whenever I went to town or to church, it seemed to rue that all the respected, decent young men looked through me. I felt invisible and alone. The only place I experienced any contentment was here in the swamp with the wildflowers, with the animals and the birds; but how could I ever share this pleasure with anyone? He would have to have been brought up in the swamps, too, and love it with as much passion as I did. Such a person surely did not exist. I was as lost as a cypress branch, broken, floating, drifting toward nowhere.
Sometimes I lay in the bottom of my canoe and just let the current take me wherever it wanted. I always knew where I ended up and how to get back, but it felt good just floating without purpose or direction, gazing up at the powdery blue sky and the egrets and marsh hawks that glided through the air between me and the clouds. I'd hear the bullfrogs or the bream breaking the surface of the water to feed on insects. Sometimes a curious gator would swim alongside and nudge the canoe; and often I would fall asleep and awaken with the sun down below the tree line, the shadows long and deep over the brackish lake.
This is how I thought my life would be now: a life of drifting, going along with the breeze, uncaring, like a leaf tossing and turning in the wind, indifferent, resigned. I did not understand my destiny or my purpose, but I was tired of the questions and the struggle to find the answers. I didn't take any real interest in how I looked and I avoided talking to people, saying as little as possible to the tourists who came by to make purchases.
My behavior upset Mama. She said the look of age in my eyes pained her heart. Unfairly, my youth had been stolen from me. She blamed herself, telling me that somehow, she, a woman with great spiritual powers, had left her own home and family
unprotected. She said she had been too arrogant, thinking the evil eye could never focus on her and her own. Of course, I told her she was wrong, but in my secret, put-away heart, I wondered about these dark mysteries that had a way of weaving themselves into our lives.
Late one day Daddy finally came home, acting as if he had been gone only a few hours. He drove up, hopped out of his truck, and came through the front door whistling. Mama didn't say much to him, but she didn't turn him out, and without any fanfare, she put a plate of food on the table for him. He sat and ate and spoke with animation about some of the tours he had guided, describing the long alligators or the rich flock of geese they hunted. Before he finished eating, he sat back and dug into his pocket to produce a roll of dollars and some change.
"All tips from my rich customers," he boasted. "Get whatever you need," he told Mama, and went on eating. She eyed the money, but didn't touch it until he had left the table. After dinner he sat on the gallery and smoked his pipe. I sat outside, too, and listened as he described some of the wealthy Creoles he had been guiding through the swamp. He talked about them as if they were gods because of the way they threw around their money, and because of the fine clothing, boots, and guns they had.
"One of these days and soon, I mean to take me a trip into New Orleans myself," he told me. "How'dja like to go along, Gabriel?"
I widened my eyes. I had never actually been to New Orleans proper, never to the Vieux Carre, but I had heard so much about it, I couldn't help but be curious.
"That would be nice, Daddy. We would all go, I suppose."
