"No," he said, laughing. "Not necessarily. And don't you bring home anyone who could be your father," he warned. Then we hugged and started upstairs. At my bedroom doorway, he kissed me on the forehead.

"Good night, princess," he said.

"Night, Daddy."

"When you were opening your gifts downstairs," he said, "I thought I saw something around your ankle. Is it what I think?" I nodded. He shook his head. "Well, they say if you believe in something hard enough, it will happen. Who am I to disagree?" He kissed me again, and I went into my room.

Mommy came to say good night, too. I told her Daddy had seen the dime.

"Now he'll tease me to death," she said. "But I don't care. I've seen my grandmère do things that defied reason and logic."

"There's so much you still haven't told me about the past, isn't there?"

"Yes," she said sadly.

"But you will now. You'll tell me everything, won't you? The good and the bad. Promise?"

"Just think happy thoughts tonight, honey. There's plenty of time to open the dark closets." She kissed me and stared down at me a moment with that angelic smile on her lips, and then she left.

I could hear music in the night, trumpets and saxophones, trombones and drums. New Orleans was a city that hated to go to sleep. It was as if it knew that when it did, the spirits and ghosts that hovered outside the wall of laughter, music, and song would have free rein to wander the streets and invade our dreams.

At Lester's house Claude was probably kissing Diane. It was supposed to be my kiss.

My kiss was on hold, waiting in the wings for the lips of my mysterious lover. But maybe that was just a dream, too. Maybe there was no lover and never would be. Maybe one of those curses Mommy feared were left at our doorstep was a curse designed for me.

I reached over to the nightstand and opened the locket Aunt Jeanne had given me, so that I could gaze at myself being held by Paul. Love could be painful, too, I thought.

I had graduated from high school as class valedictorian, but at the moment I felt I didn't know very much. I closed the locket, turned off the lights, and closed my eyes.

Then I fell asleep to the sound of the applause I had received when I ended my speech saying, "Today is commencement, and commencement means a beginning."

Was it the beginning of happiness and success or the beginning of loneliness and error?

"Don't look down," Mommy had once told me. "Be like a tightrope walker and keep your eyes focused on the future. You have to have more trust in yourself, Pearl."

That was what I would try to do.


3

  A Brave New World

The first official day of summer vacation declared itself with record heat. Temperatures cleared the one hundred and five mark and the humidity was so high, I imagined I could see droplets forming in the air right before my eyes. I had only a few blocks to walk to catch the Saint Charles streetcar, which would take me to Broadmoor General Hospital, where I was to work, but by the time I stepped into the car, my clothes were sopping wet and my hair felt glued to my forehead and scalp. Everyone looked subdued by the heat and humidity and sat with drawn, tired faces, anxious to get into their air-conditioned workplaces. Even the canopy of spreading oak, usually high and regal, appeared weighted down and exhausted, the leaves drooping sadly. The birds that normally flitted about joyfully, looked stuffed and stuck to these branches, not wasting their energy.

But despite the weather, I was bubbling with excitement. Although I didn't expect to do much more than aid the nurses and run errands, I was still looking forward to being around the medical staff and seeing and hearing the business of caring for the sick. For the first time in my life, really, I would be part of that mysterious, magical world in which doctors and nurses, with wisdom, knowledge, and insight, determined the treatments that would heal people and save lives. It wasn't too much of a stretch for me to understand how and why Mommy's Cajun relatives believed in the power of traiteurs. Even though medicine was a science, doctors and nurses were magicians in the minds of most people. They listened to and viewed our insides to discover where our bodies broke down and what tiny enemies had invaded us to do us harm.

Broadmoor General had been constructed on a grassy knoll. Two pairs of tall, full sycamore trees stood out in front, and patches of Queen Anne's lace ran alongside the driveway. The gardens were filled with azaleas, yellow and red roses, and hibiscus. Trumpet vine ran over the lower gallery, and purple wisteria peeked through the scrolled iron fence. Off to the right was-E small pond, the water the color of dark tea.

The original building had been a mansion seized by the Confederate army during the Civil War and converted into an emergency hospital. The facility had been expanded and modernized over the years, but it wasn't one of the city's biggest. However, Daddy thought I would get more out of working in a small hospital because it would be more personal.

The streetcar stopped about a block away, and I walked quickly to the front entrance. The lobby was tiny compared to those of the more modern hospitals in the city. The old chandeliers had been replaced with bright, antiseptic-looking fluorescent lights, and the beige walls had been freshly painted. The tile floor had just been scrubbed; a small sign warned about it being slippery. I paused at the information desk to get directions to the personnel office. An elderly lady in a pink uniform directed me to the short corridor on the right and told me it was the first door on the left.

I found a tall, dark-haired woman slamming file cabinet drawers closed while she kept her eyes on a duplicating machine that was spitting out forms. When she turned to see who had entered the office, I noticed a thin blue ink stain on her chin. She was at least six feet tall with very hard, bony features. Her collarbones were prominent under her dark blue blouse. She had long arms and hands with slender fingers.

Her smile was a quick rubber-band tightening of her lips, a pale red line slashed across her face. She tweaked her slim nose and widened her dull brown eyes, the lids of which had been drooping to the point of shutting completely. She gasped before speaking as if she had to suck in enough air to make speech sounds first.

"Yes?" she asked, not disguising her annoyance at being interrupted.

"I'm looking for Mrs. Morgan," I said.

"I'm Mrs. Morgan."

"Bonjour! I'm Pearl Andreas, I'm reporting to work today," I said. "Mr. Marbella, the hospital administrator, said I should come here as soon as I arrived."

"You have to fill out these papers," she said, gesturing toward a small, narrow table on my right. There were stacks of forms on it.

"All of them?" I asked.

"Start at the left and fill out one form from each of the first three stacks. Be sure to put down your Social Security number. I can't issue a release to the financial office so they can issue your first paycheck unless that's included. And be sure it's correct."

"Yes, ma'am."

"As soon as you have all that completed, go see Mrs. Winthrop on the second floor. She's the head nurse on this shift. You can take the stairway at the end of the hall and make a right. She'll issue you a uniform and explain your duties."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Your uniform doesn't belong to you," she lectured. "It belongs to the hospital. You can take it home, if you like, and you are responsible for keeping it clean and in good shape. A ten-dollar deposit will be held against your first week's salary."

She leaned over the desk and looked down at my feet. "You can wear those sneakers today, but tomorrow you should wear soft-soled white shoes. You can buy them at Medical Supplies on Canal Street. You have to pay for them yourself."

"I understand," I said.

She sighed again; this time it looked like her body would simply collapse inside her blouse and skirt, the hem of which-was so low it brushed the floor when she walked. "Is this your first job?"

"Well, actually . . ."

"I'll explain all about FICA, withholding, medical, food allowances . . . after you complete the forms," she said and shook her head. "My assistant is out sick again. She usually handles new enrollments. She works in a hospital and she's constantly out sick," she added. "I haven't missed a day's work in twelve years, but people don't have the same attitude about their work anymore. Younger people are very lackadaisical when it comes to responsibilities."

"I'm not," I said. "Actually, I'm very excited about working here this summer. I'm going to become a doctor," I told her.

"Really?" She bit the inside of her cheek and tilted her head. "I myself have never gone to a woman doctor, and probably never will." She snapped her head straight and nodded toward the desk as if someone had poked her to remind her she was at work. She jabbed her long right forefinger toward the stack of forms. "The quicker you fill those out, the quicker you can earn your pay. You have to punch in and punch out every day right over there," she said nodding toward the opposite wall. "I'll have your temporary card for you before the day's over. For today I'll write in when you actually begin. Don't expect to get credit for the time it takes to fill out the forms."

"Yes, ma'am," I said and went to the forms. After I completed them all and handed them to her, she rattled off the information about my pay voucher slip, explaining everything so fast that I barely had time to hear, much less comprehend.

Then she leaned toward me, pursed her lips for a moment, and said, "Do your work and don't put your nose into anyone else's affairs and you'll do fine."