"I'm sure it would," I said. "He's not wrong about that, Paul. Why hurt her any more than she has been hurt?"
"What about me?" he cried. "What about . . . us?"
"We're young," I said, thinking about Grandmère Catherine's words of wisdom.
"That doesn't mean it hurts any less," he moaned.
"No, it doesn't, but I don't know what else we can do about it, but go on and try to find other people who we can love and care for as strongly as we love and care for each other now."
"I can't; I won't," he said defiantly.
"Paul, what else can we do?"
He fixed his eyes on me, the defiance in his face, the anger and the pain, too.
"We'll just pretend it isn't so," he said, reaching out to take my hand.
I couldn't stop the tingle that had begun around my heart and then shot through my blood to fly through my stomach and my legs and make my breath quicken. Suddenly everything about him, everything about us was forbidden. Just his merely sitting on my bed, holding my hand, gazing at me with such longing was taboo, and just like most anything prohibited, it carried an elevated excitement along with it. It was like teasing fate, testing, exquisitely tormenting our own souls.
"We can't do that, Paul," I said, my voice barely a whisper.
"Why not? Let's ignore that half of ourselves and think only about the other half. It won't be the first time such a thing happened, especially in the bayou," he said. His hand moved up my wrist, the fingers sliding softly over my skin as he lifted himself to sit closer. I shook my head gently.
"You're just upset and angry now, Paul. You're not thinking about what you're saying to me," I told him. My heart was pounding so hard, I thought I would lose my breath.
"Yes, I am. Who knows about us anyway? Just your Grandpère Jack and no one would believe anything he would say, and my father and mother who wouldn't want anyone to know the truth. Don't you see? It doesn't matter."
"But we know; it matters to us."
"Not if we don't let it matter," Paul said. He leaned forward to kiss my forehead. Now that we both knew the truth of his origin, his lips felt as hot as a branding iron. I backed away abruptly and shook my head, not only trying to refuse his advances, but refusing the excitement that was building in my own heart.
My blanket fell away and my nightgown dropped so low most of my bosom was visible. Paul's eyes lowered and rose, climbing slowly back to my neck and shoulders and my face.
"Once we do it, once we ignore the ugly past and make love, we will be able to do it easier and easier every time afterward, Ruby," he said. "Don't you see? Why should the other half of ourselves, the better half be denied? We haven't been brought up as brother and sister; we've never thought of ourselves as related.
"If you just close your eyes and forget, if you just let your lips touch mine," he said, drawing close again.
I shook my head, closed my eyes, and sat back as far as I could, but Paul's lips touched mine. I tried to deny him, to slide myself out from under, but he pressed onward, more demanding, his hands finding the bare flesh of my exposed bosom, his fingers turning so the tips would touch my nipples.
"Paul, no," I cried. "Please, don't. We'll be sorry," I said, but I felt myself slipping as the tingle grew into a wave of warm desire. After so much sorrow and so much hardship, my body craved his warm touch, forbidden as it was.
"No, we won't," Paul insisted. His lips grazed my forehead and moved down the side of my face as his hand slipped completely under my nightgown to fully cup my breast. He lifted it to bring his lips to my nipple and I felt myself weaken. I couldn't open my eyes. I couldn't speak. I continued to slide under him and he pressed forward, insistent, driven, unrelenting in his determination to batter down not only my feeble resistance, but all the morals and laws of church and man that not only forbid our erotic touching, but looked down on it with disgust.
"Ruby," he whispered in my ear, sending my mind spinning, my heart racing, "I love you."
"What the hell in tarnation is goin' on here!" we suddenly heard. Paul snapped back and I gasped. Grandpère Jack was standing in the hallway gazing in at us, his hair sticking up and out, his eyes wide and bloodshot, his body swaying as if a wind were tearing through the house.
"Nothing," Paul said, and stood up, quickly straightening his clothes.
"Nothing! You call that nothing?" Grandpère Jack focused his gaze and stepped through the doorway. He was still drunk, but he recognized Paul. "Who the hell . . . you're the Tate boy, ain't you? The one who's always comin' around here?"
Paul looked down at me and then nodded at Grandpère.
"Figures you'd come around here at night and sneak into the house and into my granddaughter's room. It's in the Tate blood," Grandpère said.
"That's a lie," Paul snapped.
"Humph," Grandpère said and combed his long fingers through his disheveled hair. "Yeah, well, you got no business bein' in my granddaughter's bedroom this time of night. My advice to you, boy, is to tuck in your tail and git."
"Go on, Paul," I said. "It's better if you go," I added.
He looked down at me, his eyes swimming in tears.
"Please," I whispered. He bit down on his lower lip and then charged out the door, nearly bowling Grandpère Jack over in the process. Paul pounded his way down the steps and out the door.
"Well now," Grandpère Jack said, turning back to me. "Looks like you're a lot older than I thought. Time we thought about finding you a proper husband."
"I don't need anyone finding me a husband, Grandpère, and I'm not ready to marry anyone anyway. Paul wasn't doing anything. We were just talking and—"
"Just talkin'?" He laughed that silent chuckle that made his shoulders shake. "Out in the swamp that kinda talkin' makes new tadpoles," he added, and shook his head. "No, you're right grow'd; I just didn't take a good look at you before," he said, gazing at my uncovered body. I brought the blanket to my chest quickly. "Don't you worry about it none," he said, winking and then he stumbled out and made his way to Grandmère's room where he now slept, whenever he was able to climb the stairs to go to bed.
I sat back, my heart thumping so hard, I thought it would crack open my chest. Poor Paul, I thought. He was so mixed up, so confused, his anger pulling him in one direction, his feeling for me pulling him in another. Grandpère Jack's surprise arrival and accusations didn't help matters any, but it might have saved us from doing something we would have regretted later on, I thought.
I put out the light and lay back again. I had to confess to myself that for a moment, when Paul was so insistent, part of me wanted to give in and do just what he had said: be defiant and seize what fate had made off-limits. But how do you bury such a dark secret in your heart, and how do you keep it from infecting and eventually destroying the purity of any love you might possess for each other? It couldn't be; it wasn't meant to be. it mustn't be, I thought. If anything, I knew now that I couldn't let myself get that close to him again. I didn't have the strength of will to resist the passion either.
As I closed my eyes and tried to sleep again, I realized, this was another reason, maybe even a bigger reason, to find the strength and the courage to leave.
Maybe that was why Grandmère Catherine was so insistent about it; maybe she knew what would happen between Paul and me despite what we had learned about ourselves. I fell asleep with her words echoing in my mind and my promises to her on my lips.
9
Hard Lessons
I didn't see Paul for the remainder of the weekend and I was surprised when I went to school on Monday and didn't see him there either. When I asked his sister Jeanne about him, she told me he wasn't feeling well, but she looked put out that I had asked, especially in front of her friends, and wouldn't say another thing.