Slowly, I retreated, following my footsteps back. Yes, I thought, the swamp was a beautiful place, filled with wonderful and interesting animal life, with fascinating vegetation, sometimes mysterious and still and sometimes a symphony of nature with its frogs croaking, its birds singing, its gators drumming water with their tails. But it could be a hard, cold place, too, wrought with death and danger, with poisonous snakes and spiders, with quicksand and sticky, sucking mud to draw the unsuspecting intruder down into the darkness beneath. It was a world in which the stronger fed on the weaker and into which men came to enjoy their power over natural things.

Today, I thought, it was like everywhere else on earth, and today, I hated being here.

By the time I returned, the showers had begun and Grandmère Catherine had begun to take in most of our handicraft goods. I hurried to help her with what remained. The rain fell harder and harder, so we had to rush as quickly as we could and we had no time to speak to each other until everything had been safely stored. Then Grandmère got us some towels to wipe our hair and faces. The rain pounded the tin roof and the wind whipped through the bayou. We ran around the house, closing the batten plank shutters.

"It's a real tosser," Grandmère cried. We heard the wind whistle through the cracks in our walls and saw brush and anything else that was loose and light being lifted and driven every which way over the road and lawn. The world outside became very dark.

Thunder clapped and lightning scorched the sky. I could hear the cisterns overflowing as sheets of rain came off the roof and collected in the barrels. The drops fell so hard and thick, they bounced when they hit the steps or little walkway in front of the house. For a while it sounded like the tin roof would split. It was as if we had fallen into a drum. Finally, it subsided and just as quickly as it had developed into a heavy downpour, it became a slight drizzle. The sky lightened and moments later, a ray of sunlight threaded itself through the opening in the overcast and dropped a shaft of warm brightness over our home.

Grandmère Catherine took a deep breath of relief and shook her head.

"I never get used to those sudden cloudbursts," she said. "When I was a little girl, I used to crawl under my bed."

I smiled at her.

"I can't imagine you as a little girl, Grandmère," I said.

"Well, I was, honey. I wasn't born this old with bones that creaked when I walked, you know." She pressed her hand against the small of her back and straightened up. "I think I'll make a cup of tea. I'd like something warm in my stomach. How about you?"

"All right, Grandmère," I said. I sat at the kitchen table while she put up the water. "Grandpère Jack is doing some guiding for hunters again. I just saw him in the swamp with two men. They shot a deer."

"He was one of the best at it," she said. "The rich Creoles were always after him when they came here to hunt, and none ever left empty-handed."

"It was a beautiful deer, Grandmère."

She nodded.

"And the thing is, they won't care about the meat; they just want a trophy."

She stared at me a moment. "What did you tell Paul?" she finally asked.

"That we shouldn't just be with each other, that we should see other people. I told him because I was an artist, I wanted to meet other people, but he didn't believe me. I'm not a good liar, Grandmère," I moaned.

"That's not a bad fault, Ruby."

"Yes, it is, Grandmère," I retorted quickly. "This is a world built on lies, lies and deceptions. The stronger and the more successful are good at it."

Grandmère Catherine shook her head sadly.

"It looks that way to you right now, Ruby honey, but don't give into the comfort of hating everything and everyone around you. Those you call stronger and successful might seem so to you, but they're not really happy, for there is a dark place in their hearts that they cannot deny and it makes their souls ache. In the end they are terrified because they know the darkness is what they will face forever."

"You've seen so much evil and so much sickness, Grandmère. How can you still feel hopeful?" I asked.

She smiled and sighed.

"It's when you stop feeling hopeful that the sickness and the evil wins over you and then what becomes of you? Never lose hope, Ruby. Never stop fighting for hope," she advised. "I know how much you're hurting now and how much poor Paul is suffering, too, but just like this sudden storm, it will end for you and the sun will be out again.

"I always dreamed," she said, coming over to sit beside me and stroke my hair, "that you would have the magical wedding, the one in the Cajun spider legend. Remember? The rich Frenchman imported those spiders from France for his daughter's wedding and released them into the oaks and pines where they wove their canopy of webs. Over them, he sprinkled gold and silver dust and then they had the candlelight wedding procession. The night glittered all around them, promising them a life of love and hope.

"Someday, you will marry a handsome man who could be a prince and you, too, will have a wedding in the stars," Grandmère promised. She kissed me and I threw my arms around her to bury my head in her soft shoulder. I cried and cried and she petted me and soothed me. "Cry honey," she said. "And like the summer rains turn to sunshine so will your tears."

"Oh, Grandmère," I moaned. "I don't know if I can."

"You can," she said. She lifted my chin and looked into my eyes, hers those dark, mesmerizing orbs that had seen evil spirits and visions of the future, "you can and you will," she predicted.

The teapot whistled. Grandmère wiped the tears from my cheeks and kissed me again, and then got up to pour us our cups.

Later that night, I sat by my window and looked up at the clearing sky and I wondered if Grandmère was right; I wondered if I would have a wedding in the stars. The glitter of gold and silver dust danced under my eyelids when I lay my head on the pillow, but just before I fell asleep, I saw Paul's wounded face once more and then I saw the marsh deer open its mouth to voice an unheard scream as it crumbled to the grass.


5

  Who is the Little Girl If It's Not Me?

The weeks before summer and the end of the school year took ages and ages to pass. I dreaded every day I attended school, for I knew that some time during the day, I would see Paul or he would see me. During the first few days following our terrible talk, he continued to glare at me furiously whenever he saw me. His once beautiful, soft blue eyes that had gazed upon me with love so many times before were now granite cold and full of scorn and contempt. The second time we approached each other in the corridor, I tried to speak to him.

"Paul," I said, "I'd like to talk to you, to just—"

He behaved as if he didn't hear me or he didn't see me and walked past me. I wanted him to know that I wasn't seeing another boy on the side. I felt dreadful and spent most of my school day with a heart that felt more like a lump of lead in my chest.

Time wasn't healing my wounds and the longer we went on not talking to each other, the harder and colder Paul seemed to become. I wished that I could simply rush up to him one day and gush the truth so he would understand why I said the things I had said to him at my house, but every time I decided I would do just that, Grandmère Catherine's heavy words returned: "Do you want to be the one who puts enmity in his heart and drives him to despise his own father?" She was right. In the end he would hate me more, I concluded. And so I kept my lips sealed and the truth buried beneath an ocean of secret tears.

Many times I had found myself furious with Grandmère Catherine or Grandpère Jack for not revealing the secrets in their hearts and keeping my family history a deep mystery, a mystery it should no longer have been for me at my age. Now, I was no better than they had been, keeping the truth from Paul, but there was nothing I could do about it. Worst of all, I had to stand by and watch him fall in love with someone else.

I always knew that Suzzette Daisy, a girl in my class, had a crush on Paul. She didn't wait long to pursue him, but ironically, when Paul first began spending more and more time with Suzzette Daisy, I felt a sense of relief. He would direct more of his energies toward caring for her and less toward hating me, I thought. From across the room, I watched him sit with her and eat his lunch and soon saw them holding hands when they walked through the school corridors. Of course, a part of me was jealous, a part of me raged over the injustice and cried when I saw them laughing and giggling together. Then I heard he had given her his class ring which she wore proudly on a gold chain, and I spent a night drenching my pillow in salty tears.

Most of the girls who had once been envious of Paul's affection for me now gloated. Marianne Bruster actually turned to me in the girls' room one June afternoon and blared, "I guess you don't think you're someone special anymore since you were dumped for Suzzette Daisy."

The other girls smiled and waited for me to respond.

"I never thought I was someone special, Marianne," I said. "But thank you for thinking so," I added.

For a moment she was dumbfounded. Her mouth opened and closed. I started past her, but she spun about, flinging her hair over her face, then tossing it back and whipping around to make it fan out in a circle as she grinned broadly at me.

"Well, that's just like you," she said, her hands on her hips, her head wagging from side to side as she spoke. "Just like you to be smart about it. I don't know where you come off being snotty," she continued, now building on her anger and frustration. "You're certainly no better than the rest of us."