"Oh? There!" she pounced. "You see, there was something else for you to tell me. Watch my weight. Must I discover these things by accident?"

"I didn't think . . ."

"You've got to think." She leaned forward, her eyes beady. "We have an elaborate and complicated scheme to conduct. We must trust each other with the most intimate details about our bodies," she said, and I wondered what detail about her body she imagined I would have the vaguest interest in. I decided to risk a question.

"Have you ever seen a doctor or another traiteur about your difficulty getting pregnant, madame?"

She pulled herself back in the seat. Her face turned crimson and her eyes widened. "Don't assume because you are living here under these circumstances that you may take liberties with my privacy," she declared.

"I meant no disrespect, madame. You yourself just said we must trust each other."

She stared a moment and then, just as suddenly as she had become indignant, she erased that indignation and smiled.

"Yes, that's true. No. I haven't gone to any physicians or traiteurs. I trust in God to eventually bless my fertility. I am, as you can see, in every other way a healthy, vigorous person."

"Mama's helped some women get pregnant," I offered. She raised her eyebrows.

"I'm sure she would help you, too."

"If I ever get that desperate, I will call on her," Gladys said. The grandfather clock bonged and she shifted her gaze to the door.

"Did you want me to return to my room before Octavious comes home?" I asked, assuming that was what concerned her.

"Octavious won't be home until much later," she said. "Your mother said you must exercise to make the birthing easier. You can go for a walk around the house, but don't go down the driveway, and whatever you do, don't speak to any of my field workers if one of them should be nearby. My maids, however, will return around eleven, so you must be upstairs before that."

"Oui, madame."

She stared at me again, her face softening. "Do you want coffee?" she asked, nodding at the silver pot on a warmer.

"Please," I said. She rose and actually served me. Then she sat down and sighed deeply.

"I am not happy with what Octavious has done, of course," she began, gazing around the large dining hall, "but the prospect of little feet pitter-pattering over these floors, and hearing another voice in this house, is a wonderful thing. I will spend all my time with my baby. Finally I will have a family."

"You have no brothers or sisters, Madame Tate?"

"No," she said. "My mother . . . my mother did not do well when she was pregnant with me, and the delivery, I was told, was very difficult. She almost died."

"I'm sorry."

"My father wanted a son, of course, and was very unhappy. Then he finally settled on finding a proper son-in-law, proper in his eyes," she added, almost spitting the words. She glared at the table a moment and then raised her eyes quickly. "But that's all in the past now. I don't want to think about it." She smirked. "I would appreciate it if you would not ask me so many personal questions," she continued, her voice taking on the steely edge of a razor. "For me to answer them is like tearing a scab off a wound."

"I'm sorry, madame. I didn't intend . . ."

"Everyone has such good intentions. No one means any harm," she said with a sneer. Then her face crumpled and she looked like a little girl for a moment. "Daddy, my daddy, he never meant any harm either. All the men in my life meant no harm." She laughed a thin, hollow laugh. "Even Octavious meant you no harm, he says. He meant to give you the gift of the love experience. Can you imagine him telling me such a ridiculous thing? I think he really believes that."

I shook my head, my heart pounding, not sure what to expect next. She didn't fail to surprise and shock me. Her face turned into granite again.

"Where do you think he has gone tonight?" she asked with venom. "To give some other poor, deprived young woman the benefit of his love experience. So," she said, her eyes steaming as she leaned over her plate toward me. "Don't feel sorry for yourself. Feel sorry for me and do whatever I ask to make things right."

I could barely nod. My throat wouldn't swallow and my fingers felt numb.

She sat back. The granite softened again and she sighed deeply. "Go enjoy your walk," she said with a wave of her hand. "Your inquiries have given me indigestion."

I rose slowly. "Can I help you with anything?" I asked, nodding at the table.

"What? No, you fool. Do you think I do anything with the dishes and food? My maids will take care of it all when they return. Just go, go."

"Thank you, madame. It was a delicious dinner," I said, but she seemed lost in her own thoughts. I left her sitting there, her head tilted slightly to the right, her eyes watery and her chin quivering.

I did feel sorrier for her than I did for myself at the moment. Despite her big house, filled with the most expensive and wonderful artifacts, furniture, paintings; despite the money her and Octavious' factory made, she appeared to be one of the saddest and most unhappy women I had ever met.

What was happiness? I wondered. From what well was it drawn? Money and wealth in and of itself didn't guarantee it. I knew far poorer families in the bayou who had ten, no, twenty smiles for every one on Gladys Tate's face. If she doubled her lifespan, she wouldn't laugh and sing as much as they had already laughed and sung.

No one was truly happy unless he or she had someone who loved him or her and someone she or he could love, I realized, and with that realization came the understanding of why Gladys Tate had so eagerly, willingly, and now cleverly worked on taking the baby into her home and into her life.

She would finally draw up a pail of pleasure from the well of happiness, but the path to get there was still cluttered with obstacles and even dangers. How I wished this journey would soon be ended.


6

  Madame's Secret Pain

Days passed into weeks, and weeks into months, with me following the same routine. I had no clock, so I told time by the rays of light that filtered through the shade and by the sounds and noises in the house to which I had grown accustomed. The maids followed a strict schedule and always cleaned the rooms right below me about the same time of day. I could hear their muffled voices and envied them for their occasional laughter. I couldn't recall the last time I had laughed so freely. Most of the time my thoughts were tangled with knots of worry and weighted down with rocks of sorrow, for I knew how troubled Mama was about my state of affairs and could easily imagine her tossing and turning at night, dwelling on me trapped in this small room.

The silvery sounds of water swishing through pipes in the morning told me when the Tates were rising, and the aromas of foods being cooked suggested how soon my meals would be served. Despite her veiled threats to the contrary, Gladys Tate didn't miss delivering a meal, nor did she make me wait as long as she had first threatened, I think that was Mama's doing. Mama frightened her by telling her the baby's health could be in jeopardy if I was in any way denied my basic needs.

The only time I was denied anything was once when my lamp ran out of kerosene. I told her and she chided me for leaving it on too long or too high. To emphasize her point, she didn't bring me a new supply of kerosene for two days, claiming she didn't have it. I had to sit in the darkness once the sun went down and I couldn't read or sew. I asked her to bring me some candles at least, but she said she was afraid of my causing a fire.

"I often sit in the darkness," she told me. "It's soothing."

It wasn't soothing to me, but I knew she would have the kerosene miraculously for me on the third day, for that was the day Mama was scheduled to visit. Everything was always made perfect when Mama came. I began to feel like a prisoner of war visited occasionally by the Red Cross. To pass the time and amuse myself, I pretended that I was a spy the Germans had caught and Gladys Tate was the prison camp warden. I plotted an escape, which I discussed with my night heron while he paraded on the railing.

"I'll tie my bedsheet to my blanket and my clothes and make a rope down which I will slide," I said. "But I better wait until midnight. The guards are careless then."

My heron lifted his wings and bobbed his neck as if to say, "Good plan."

It finally brought me some laughter. The evenings had become my favorite time. When I was permitted to raise the window shade, I could measure the passing of the hours with the movement of the moon or with the movement of stars and planets like Venus. Mama had taught me about the heavens, the constellations, and I knew how to read the night sky, I loved to sit by my small window on the world and watch the evening thunderstorms, the sizzling lightning that slashed the darkness and sent a strong breeze my way.

I would sit for hours at the window and listen to the sounds of the evening, bedazzled by the flickering fireflies that looked like sparks of someone's campfire shooting through the darkness. Even the drone of insects was pleasing to someone like me, someone shut up for almost all the day and night. I took such pleasure in the hoot of an owl or the caw of a hawk. Aside from Mama and Gladys Tate, I hadn't spoken with another human being for so long.

Gladys Tate brought out her tape measure more frequently, and after the fifth month, Gladys decided I was showing enough for any casual observer to notice and accurately guess about my being pregnant. Gladys said it meant that I could no longer take a walk outside on Thursday night for fear some worker would see a pregnant young woman and wonder who she was and why she was always here. Although those walks weren't much because I was confined to the area around the house and couldn't go into the woods or approach the swamp, they had been something to look forward to, a change and a chance to visit with Nature.