"Where'd you put the money, Catherine? I got to have the money to take care of our granddaughter, don't I? Where is it?"
Finally, he grew quiet. I tiptoed out and looked over the railing to see him collapsed at the kitchen table, his head on his arms. I returned to my room and I sat by my window and gazed up at the horned moon half hidden by dark clouds and I thought, this is the same moon that rode high over New Orleans, and I tried to imagine my future. Would I be rich and famous and live in a big house some day like Grandmère Catherine predicted?
Or was all that just a dream, too? Just another web, dazzling in the moonlight, a mirage, an illusion of jewels woven in the darkness, waiting, full of promises that were as empty and as light as the web itself?
There was no period in my life when I thought time passed more slowly than it did during the days following Grandmère Catherine's funeral and burial. Every time I looked at the old—and tarnished brass clock set in its cherry wood case on the windowsill in the loom room and saw that instead of an hour only ten minutes had passed, I was surprised and disappointed. I tried to fill my every moment, keep my hands and my mind busy so I wouldn't think and remember and mourn, but no matter how much work I did and how hard I worked, there was always time to remember.
One memory that returned with the persistence of a housefly was my recollection of the promise I had made to Grandmère Catherine should anything bad happen to her. She had reminded me of it the day she had died and she had forced me to repeat my vow. I had promised not to stay here, not to live with Grandpère Jack. Grandmère Catherine wanted me to go to New Orleans and find my real father and my sister, but the very thought of leaving the bayou and getting on a bus to go to a city that loomed as far away and as strange to me as a distant planet was terrifying. I was positive I would stand out as clearly as a crawfish in a pot of duck gumbo. Everyone in New Orleans would take one look at me and say to himself, "There's an ignorant Cajun girl traveling on her own." They would laugh at me and mock me for sure.
I had never traveled very far, especially on my own, but it wasn't the fear of the journey, nor even the size of the city and the unfamiliarity with city life that frightened me the most. No, what was even more terrifying was imagining what my real father would do and say as soon as I presented myself. How would he react? What would I do if he shut the door in my face? After having deserted Grandpère Jack and then, after having been rejected by my father, where would I go?
I had read enough about the evils of city life to know about the horrors that went on in the slums, and the terrible fates young girls such as myself suffered. Would I become one of those women I had heard about, women who were taken into bordellos to provide men with sexual pleasures? What other sort of work would I be able to get? Who would hire a young Cajun girl with a limited education and only simple handicraft skills? I envisioned myself ending up sleeping in some gutter, surrounded by other downcast and downtrodden people.
No, it was easier to put off the promise and lock myself upstairs in the grenier for most of the day, working on the linens and towels as if Grandmère Catherine were still alive and just downstairs doing one of her kitchen chores before joining me. It was easier to pretend I had to finish something she had started while she was off on one of her traiteur missions, easier to make believe nothing had changed.
Of course, part of my day involved caring for Grandpère Jack, preparing his meals and cleaning up after him, which was an endless chore. I made him his breakfast every morning before he left to go fishing or harvesting Spanish moss in the swamp. He was still mumbling about finding Grandmère Catherine's stash and he still spent every spare moment digging and searching around the house. The longer he looked and located nothing, the more he believed I was hiding what I knew.
"Catherine wasn't one to let herself go and die and leave something buried without someone knowing where," he declared one night after he had begun to eat his supper. His green eyes darkened as he focused them on me with suspicion. "You didn't dig somethin' up and hide it where I've already looked, have you, Ruby? Wouldn't surprise me none to learn that Catherine had told you to do just such a thing before she died."
"No, Grandpère. I've told you time after time. There was no stash. We had to spend everything we made. Before Grandmère died, we were depending on what she got from some of her traiteur missions, too, and you know how much she hated taking anything for helping people." What my eyes must have shown convinced him I was not lying, at least for the time being.
"That's jus' it," he said, chewing thoughtfully, "people gave her things, gave her money, too, I'm sure. I just wonder if she left anything with one of those busybodies, 'specially that Mrs. Thibodeau. One of these nights, I might pay that woman a visit," he declared.
"I wouldn't do that, Grandpère," I warned him.
"Why not? The Money don't belong to her; it belongs to me . . . us that is."
"Mrs. Thibodeau would call the police and have you put in jail if you so much as stepped on the floor of her galerie," I advised him. "She's as much as told me so." Once again, his piercing eyes glared my way before he went back to his food.
"All you women are in cahoots," he muttered. "A man does the best he can to keep food on the table, keep the house together. Women take all that for granted. Especially, Cajun women," he mumbled. "They think it's all coming to them. Well it ain't, and a man's got to be treated with more respect, especially in his own home. If I find that money's been hidden on me . . ."
It did no good to argue with him. I saw why Grandmère Catherine made no attempt to change the way he thought, but I did hope that in time, he would give up his frantic search for the nonexistent stash and concentrate on reforming himself the way he had promised and work hard at making a good life for us. Some days he did return from the swamp laden down with a good fish catch or a pair of ducks for our gumbo. But some days, he spent most of his time poling from one brackish pond to the next, mumbling to himself about one of his favorite gripes and then settling down in his pirogue to drink himself into a stupor, having traded his catch for a cheap bottle of gin or rum. Those nights he returned empty-handed and bitter, and I had to make do with what we had and concoct a poor Cajun's jambalaya.
Grandpère repaired some small things around the house, but left most of his other promises of work unfulfilled. He didn't patch the roof where it leaked or replace the cracked floorboards, and despite my not so subtle suggestions, he didn't improve his hygienic habits either. A week would go by before he would take a bar of soap and water to his body, and even then, it was a quick, almost insignificant rinse. Soon, there were lice in his hair again, his beard was scraggly, and his fingernails were caked with grime. I had to look at something else whenever we ate or I would lose my appetite. It was hard enough contending with the variety of sour and rancid odors that reeked from his clothes and body. How someone could let himself go like that and not care or even notice was beyond me. I imagined it had a lot to do with his drinking.
Every time I looked at the portrait I had done of Grandmère Catherine, I thought about returning to my painting, but whenever I set up my easel, I would just stare dumbly at the blank paper, not a creative thought coming to mind. I attempted a few starts, drawing some lines, even trying to paint a simple moss-covered cypress log, but it was as if my artistic talent had died with Grandmère. I knew she would be furious even to hear such a thought, but the truth was that the bayou, the birds, the plants and trees, every-thing about it in some way made me think of Grandmère and once I did, I couldn't paint. I missed her that much.