"I'll have people believing you were a teenage prostitute in the bayou. For all I know, you were."
"That's a lie, a dirty, horrible lie," I cried, but she didn't soften. Her face, the face with the alabaster complexion and those beautiful eyes, turned into the cold visage of a statue as she gazed down at me.
"Is it?" She smiled again, a small, tight smile that drew her lips into thin lines. "I already have Dr. Cheryl's preliminary findings. He thinks you're obsessed with sex and will so testify if I like. And now you've gone and run away from the institution, embarrassing us even further."
I shook my head, but there was no denying her vicious determination to overcome my defiance.
"I'm going to see Daddy," I said in almost a whisper. "I'm going to tell him everything."
"Go on." She lunged forward and grabbed my shoulders to turn me to the stairway. "Go on, you little Cajun fool. Go tell your Daddy." She pushed me toward the steps. I threw her an angry look and then charged up the stairs, my tears flying off my cheeks.
When I got to the upstairs landing, I saw the door to Uncle Jean's room was shut tight, but I had to get Daddy to see me; I had to get him to let me in. I approached slowly and knocked and then pressed my cheek to the door and sobbed.
"Daddy, please . . . please, open up and let me in. Please, let me talk to you and tell you what Daphne did to me. I saw Uncle Jean, Daddy. I was with him. Please," I begged. I continued to sob softly. Finally, when he didn't open the door, I sank to the floor and embraced myself, my shoulders heaving with my deeper sobs. After all that had been done to me and after my great effort to return, I was still shut out; Daphne was still victorious. I sucked in some air and let my head fall back against the door. Then I let it fall back again and again until finally the door was pulled open and I looked up at Daddy:
His eyes were bloodshot, his hair disheveled. His shirt was out of his pants and his tie was loose. He looked like he had slept in his clothes. He had an unshaven face.
I struggled to my feet and ground the tears out of my eyes quickly.
"Daddy, I must talk to you," I said. He threw me a quick glance of deepest despair. Then his shoulders slumped and he backed into the room to let me enter.
The candles were nearly burned out around Uncle Jean's pictures so the room was very dimly lit. Daddy retreated to a chair by the pictures and sat down. His face was shadowed and hidden in the deepening gloom.
"What is it, Ruby?" he said, speaking as though it took all of his strength to pronounce the four words. I rushed to him and seized his hand, falling to my knees at his feet.
"Daddy, she took me to the institution this morning, supposedly to see Uncle Jean for his birthday, but when we get there, she had them lock me up. She tried to have them keep me there. It was horrible, but a nice young man helped me escape."
He raised his head and gazed at me with his sad eyes showing just a hint of surprise. He shook his head in a bewildered fashion, the tears still eking from beneath his lids.
"Who did this?"
"Daphne," I said. "Daphne."
"Daphne?"
"But I got to see Uncle Jean, Daddy. I sat with him and spoke to him."
"You did?" he asked, his interest growing. "How is he?"
"He looks very good," I said, wiping the tears off my cheeks with the back of my hand. "But he's afraid of people and doesn't talk to anyone."
Daddy nodded and lowered his head again.
"Except, I got him to say something, Daddy."
"You did?" he replied, his interest quickly returning. "Yes. I told him to tell me something I could bring back to you and he said 'jib.' What did he mean, Daddy?"
"Jib? He said that?"
I nodded. Then I had to tell him the rest.
"Afterward, he started to scream and held his head in his hands. They had to take him back to his room."
"Poor Jean," Daddy said. "My poor brother. What have I done?" he asked in a heavy, flat voice. One of the candles went out and a shadow came to darken his eyes even more.
"What do you mean, Daddy? Why did he, say 'jib'? Is it what this young man sitting beside me thought . . . something to do with sailing?"
"Yes," Daddy said. He sat back, his gaze far-off now. He looked like he could see into the past. And then he began to speak like one in a trance. "It was a nice day when we started out. I wasn't anxious to go at first. Jean kept taunting me, making fun of me for being so unathletic. 'You're as pale as a bank teller,' he said. 'No wonder Daphne would rather spend her time with me. Come on, get yourself into the fresh air. Let's test those muscles and limbs.'
"Finally, I gave in and accompanied him to the lake. The sky had already begun to change. There were storm clouds hovering along the horizon. I warned him about it, but he laughed and said I was just trying to find another excuse. We started sailing. I wasn't as ignorant about it as I pretended and I didn't like my younger brother telling me to do this or that like some galley slave.
"He seemed particularly arrogant to me that day. How I hated his self-confidence. Why didn't he have any doubts about himself like I had? Why was he so secure in the presence of women, especially Daphne?
"The clouds mounted, expanding, mushrooming, darkening, and the wind grew fiercer. Our sailboat rose and fell as the water became rougher and rougher. Every time I urged Jean to turn us back to shore, he laughed at me for not being adventurous enough.
"This is where we test our manhood,' he declared. 'We look Nature in the eye and we don't blink.'
"I pleaded with him to be more sensible and he continued to mock me for being too sensible. 'Women don't like men to be reasonable and sensible and logical all the time, Pierre,' he said They want a little danger, a little insecurity. If you want to win Daphne, take her out here on a day like this and let her scream as the spray hits her face and the sailboat tips and totters like it's doing now,' he cried.
"But the storm grew worse than even he expected. I was angry at him for putting us in this unnecessary danger. I was angry and jealous and during our battle against the storm, when he was struggling with the sail . . ." He sighed, closed his eyes, and then concluded, "I sent the jib flying around and it struck him in the head. It wasn't an accident," he confessed, and lowered his head to his hands.
"Oh, Daddy." I reached up and took his hand as he sobbed. "I'm sure you didn't mean to hurt him so badly. I'm sure you regretted it the moment you did it."
"Yes," he said, lifting his face from his palms. "I did. But that didn't change things and look where he is and what he is now. Look at what he was," he said, lifting one of the silver framed photographs. "My beautiful brother." Tears of remembrance clouded his eyes as he gazed at him. Then he sighed so deeply, I thought his heart had given out, and lowered his chin to his chest.
"He's still your beautiful brother, Daddy. And I think that he could make enough progress to leave that place. I really do. When I spoke to him and told him things, I felt he really understood."
"Did you?" Daddy's eyes lit up as he raised his head again. "Oh, how I wish that were true. I'd give anything now . . . all my wealth, if that were true."
"It is, Daddy. You must go to him more often. Maybe you should get him better treatment, find another doctor, another place," I suggested. "They don't seem to be doing anything more than making him comfortable and taking your money," I said bitterly.
"Yes. Maybe." He paused and looked at me and smiled. "You are a very lovely young lady, Ruby. If I was to believe in any forgiveness, it would be that you were sent here to me as an indication of that. I don't deserve you."
"I was almost shut away, too, Daddy," I said, returning to my original theme.
"Yes," he said. "Tell me more about that."