"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 Grandmère 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 Grandmère 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?
"Grandmère? 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 Grandmère 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, Grandpère 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 Grandpère 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 Grandpère 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, Grandmère?" 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 Grandmère had decided I was to know it all.
"Grandpère Jack went to him directly. Octavious had been married less than a year and his father was alive then. Your Grandpère Jack was an even bigger gambler in those days. He couldn't pass up a game of bourré 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. Grandpère 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?" Grandmère 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."