"Keep her away or else," she warned, pivoted, and marched back to her car.

I couldn't swallow. I felt numb and incapable of movement. It was as if my feet had been nailed to the galerie floorboards. We watched her churn the lawn with her tires and then spin out and away.

"A horrid woman," Mama said. "It's like she has a snake eating away her heart." She turned and looked at me. "Gabrielle, you have got to let go, honey. It's over; he's gone."

"Yes, Mama. I'm sorry."

"It's all right, honey," she said, embracing me and petting my hair. "It's all right. Let's have a good dinner and think about tomorrow."

I nodded. In the distance we could hear Gladys Tate's car squeal around a turn and accelerate. With it went my hopes of ever really knowing my own baby.

We never told Daddy about Gladys Tate's visit. He would have just ranted and raved and threatened reprisals. He might even have seen it as a new opportunity to extort some money from them.

He surprised us the next day anyway when he brought home a new dress for Mama and a new dress for me. Now it was her turn to think he was extravagant, for she could make a dress as good or better than any store-bought one.

"And what did you do, Jack Landry," Mama asked with suspicious eyes, "win a big pot at bourre?'

"No. This comes from all honest work, woman." He poured himself some lemonade and sat at the dinner table, smiling widely.

Mama gazed at me, looked at the new dresses, and then shook her head. "Something's up."

"Nothin's up. I was just thinkin' it was about time I took you and Gabrielle out for a night. We should go to the fais dodo at the Crab House this Saturday night."

"Fais dodo? A dance? You want to take me to a dance?" Mama asked with amazement.

"And Gabrielle. It's a good place for her to meet someone. I been thinking I ain't done enough to provide the opportunities for her."

Mama stared at him, still not believing what she heard. "That's all, woman. It's no big thing here," he said, looking down quickly.

"You ain't asked me to a dance for a long time, Jack Landry," she told him. "Something smells rotten."

"What? Howja like them apples, Gabrielle? A man asks his wife to a dance and she says it smells rotten."

"Well, I can't help it, it does," Mama said.

"Well nothing. I realized we ain't been out together for a long time and thought it was time I asked, is all."

"You ain't going to take us there and then get stupid drunk, are you, Jack?" she asked, her head tilted, her eyes scrutinizing him.

"On my honor," he said, holding up his right hand. "I have changed. You see that, don'tcha?" He nodded emphatically to drive home his own claim.

"You going to get cleaned up?"

"Absolutely. You'll see."

Although she was still suspicious, Mama agreed. She said she was doing so mostly for me. She tried on the dress. It was pretty and she was very pleased at how she looked in it. She made me try my dress on, too. She decided to take in the waist and let out the hem a bit, but otherwise, she thought Daddy had made amazingly fine choices.

"It's been so long since we did something like this," she told me. "It's against my better judgment, but I think I'll let myself go a bit and trust him."

On Saturday Mama washed and ironed Daddy's pants and shirt and then sat him on a rain barrel behind the house and trimmed his hair, beard, and mustache. He didn't put up his usual opposition. Scrubbed and pruned so even his fingernails turned from green-brown to clean, Daddy, looked his handsome self again. It was as if a human being had peeled off this smelly, grimy swamp creature and stepped forward..

I watched Mama brush out her own hair and put her fancy combs in it, and when she put on the new dress and a little lipstick, she was about the prettiest woman in the bayou.

Daddy rained compliments over her .He said it made him proud, proud to be escorting the two prettiest women in the bayou. Mama blushed like a young girl. She helped me with my hair, and after I put on my new dress, she stepped back and said "You might just catch yourself a handsome young man tonight. I hate to say your daddy could be right, but he could be."

I hadn't been to a fais dodo since I was in, school. I hadn't made any new girlfriends, and most of the girls in my class had gotten married or were of living with relatives because there was someone nearby who would soon be marrying them. Evelyn Thibodeau had married Claude LeJeune, just as she had planned. He was doing well shrimping and owned two boats. Evelyn had a two-year-old boy and was pregnant with her second. Yvette Livaudis married her uncle's foreman, Philippe Jourdain, just as she had said she would, and then, a year later, gave birth to twin girls. I had just gotten a letter from her a month ago with a photo of her daughters inside. It took me a week to write back. I really had nothing new to tell her about myself, and it looked like her and Evelyn's predictions for me would come true: I would remain a spinster working beside Mama at our roadside stand forever.

The night of the dance was warm, although a bit overcast with sprinkles threatening. I remember as the three of us, all fancied up, stepped out of the house, I felt hopeful. Maybe we could be a family yet. Maybe Daddy was telling the truth about himself, about the changes in him. Maybe there was a new future for me, waiting out there, waiting like some beautiful pink rose, waiting to be plucked.

It wasn't until we were halfway to town that Daddy let out what his real motives were. Mama almost made him turn back. The truck took a big bounce. Daddy laughed and told us to hold on.

"Don't want to see my beauties messed up 'fore we get there," he said. "By the way," he added, "I went ahead and promised out Gabrielle's first dance."

"What? What are you talking about, Daddy? Promised me to who?"

"Jed Atkins's brother's boy Virgil is visiting from Lafayette."

"An Atkins?" Mama wailed.

"Nothin's wrong with him. He's got a good job working for Jed's brother."

"And what sort of work is that?"

"They have a busy service station in Lafayette. Jed says the boy's a master mechanic, a natural with engines."

"Uh-huh," Mama said. "And what else about him, Jack?"

"Nothin' else." He paused. "Cept one minor physical thing."

"Physical thing? What might that be, Jack? Spit out the whole truth," she added quickly. "I know how truth always tastes bitter in your mouth anyway."

"Zat so?" He hesitated. "Well, he has this birthmark on his cheek. Just a minor thing . . . a big blob of red, but I told Jed my Gabrielle especially ain't one to look down on a man because he got a little birthmark on his cheek. Ain't that right, Gabrielle?"

"Yes, Daddy," I said cautiously.

"That's what I thought."

"There's more to this story, Jack Landry," Mama said, focusing her eyes on him so intently, he couldn't look at her. "'What is it, Jack?"

"Nothin' else. He's a strapping young man, tall, about my height, rich dark hair . . ."

"How come he hasn't asked anyone to marry him, and how come he's not in the army, Jack? Mechanics ain't being excused."

"Well . . he was in the army," he replied quickly.

"Was? What happened?"

"He got accused of something, but he swears he was innocent."

"Accused of what, Jack?" Mama said. Daddy hesitated. "This is worse than pulling ticks out of a child's hair."

"Attacking a nurse. Now, don't that sound stupid?"

"Attacking? You don't mean sexually, do you, Jack? You do," Mama said, answering her own question. "And you want Gabrielle to meet this man after what's happened to her?"

"He was innocent. The woman was one of them, you know, one of them who likes men, all men, and he refused her, so she accused him and—"

"And they threw him out of the army?"

"After he served his time in the brig unfairly, yes. He's better off anyway. Probably would have been killed. He's a good boy, Catherine. I'll vouch for that."

"It's like the devil swearing for Judas."

"What's that?"

"Nothing. And how much did Jed say his brother would give you if you arranged this marriage, Jack?"

"How much . . . ! How could you accuse me of that?"

"Easy," Mama said. "Now I know why you were so eager to get us to this fais dodo," she added, her voice thick with disappointment.

"Why, that's a downright lie."

"Just tell us how much money you were promised and get it all out, Jack, so we don't discover nothing under a rock later."

"It ain't that he's paying me anything. He just said he would be sure we had something for our own nest egg. He's just a generous man when it comes to those who are members of his family," Daddy explained. "Now, ain't that a nice family to marry yourself into?" he asked.

"Jed Atkins's family can't be much to holler about," Mama replied.

"There you go, putting my friends down again. You don't let a man breathe, Catherine."

"Breathing is not what worries me about them; it's what they do with their breath and how it stinks," Mama said with a knowing, small smile.

"Nevertheless, Gabrielle," Daddy said, leaning over to speak to me, "we ain't folks who look down on other folks because they've had some bad luck, are we?"

"No, Daddy."

"Tell your mother. It ain't like we don't have our own skeletons to keep in the closet, right?"

"Yes, Daddy."

"All I ask is you give the boy a chance. He's a shy one, which goes to prove he couldn't do what they accused him of doing in the army."

Mama smirked. "Why did I let myself get talked into this?" she muttered. "I should have known."