"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's 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.
Just as she promised she would do, Gladys Tate took to wearing something under her own clothes that, to my amazement, continued to accurately match my own development. She even padded her bra. She would have me stand beside her and confirm that we were about the same size. I couldn't understand why it was so important to her that she be that precise, but I didn't ask because questions like that only infuriated her.
On the other hand, her interrogation of me concerning my symptoms and my health was incessant. She went so far as to ask me if I was having any strange dreams, especially about the baby, and if so, would I describe them? When she told Mama I was eating nothing less than what she was eating, she wasn't lying. Before Mama arrived, Gladys reviewed every meal and told me what I had finished, she had finished; what I had left over, she had left over, not that I left over much. She was constantly changing the menu, cataloging foods to see what I fancied and what I didn't.
"The cook understands my finickiness," she told me. "It's just part of being pregnant. In some ways it's nice being pregnant. Everyone excuses your eccentricities," she concluded. I told her I'd rather not be pregnant and not be excused, but she didn't appreciate my reply.
One day I didn't hear her come up the stairway, and when she opened the door, she found me crying. She demanded to know what was wrong, grimacing as if I were doing her a terrible injustice.
"I'm feeding you well. You're getting whatever you need. You're not going to suffer any
embarrassment after this ordeal is over. What more do you want from me?" she wailed, her hands on her padded hips.
"I don't want anything from you, Madame Tate. I'm not crying right now because of this," I said, indicating the room and my confinement.
"Then why are you crying?"
"I don't know. Sometimes ... I just cry. Sometimes I just feel so sad, I can't help myself. I'm on emotional pins and needles."
The anger left her face and was quickly replaced by curiosity and concern.