The smile left her face. "You're pretty insolent for a girl your age, but I'm not surprised, considering where you live and how you've been brought up. We'll tolerate each other and do what we have to do, but the day this baby is born, that's the day you leave this house and my life," she declared.
"Madame," I said. "That's the first real thing we agree about."
It seemed all the blood in her body rushed to her face. She jerked up her shoulders and straightened her back. For a moment she simply glared at me. Then she turned and went to the door.
"Remember all I have said," she ordered, and left, closing the door softly behind her. I heard her tiptoe down the stairs and go out the second door. But then I heard her insert the key and turn the lock.
Now I was alone.
I gazed about my new world. I felt like Alice but in a stranger wonderland. The diminutive furniture, the faded walls, the dusty dolls, made it all seem unreal, dreamlike. I had been deposited in Gladys Tate's past, a past obviously rarely visited, a past draped in cobwebs and filled with discarded memories. It was as if I had fallen into someone else's nightmare.
The dolls glared down at me with distrust. The thick shadows cast by the lantern danced with the flicker of the flame. Below me and even above me, the great house creaked. I was afraid to move, afraid that if I made the slightest sound, Gladys would come rushing back upstairs to order me out of the house. But I took off my moccasins and rose slowly to go to the window and raise the shade a few inches. A slight breeze flowed through and I caught the lovely scent of blooming jasmine. When I peeked out, I saw the darkness and the cypress and oak trees silhouetted like sentinels against the still purple-black night sky.
I unpacked my bag, setting Mama and Daddy's picture on the tiny dresser along with my combs and brushes, and the small statue of Saint Medad. Then I took off my dress and underthings and put on my nightgown.
There was nothing to do but put out the light and crawl into bed. I said my prayers and lay there with my eyes open, staring into the darkness. I envisioned Mama miles away getting ready for bed herself, hiding her tears from Daddy, maybe gazing into my empty room and feeling the emptiness in her heart.
I felt that same emptiness now.
And then, for the first time since all this had begun, I thought about the baby forming inside me. Was it a girl or a boy and how would he or she like living under this roof'? How would Gladys Tate really treat the child? Would she be cruel to him or her or would she really accept the baby as her own and find a place in her heart for the infant? It would be horrid to learn she mistreated the baby. Right now she seemed capable of taking her vengeance out on anyone or anything, and yet . . .
And yet, I had this abiding faith, this deep-set belief that she somehow saw me as a necessary evil, a temporary place of incubation for her own longsought-after child. She was hard and filled her sentences with threats, but surely she wanted it all to go well. I would not be neglected or abused, I thought.
My hope, no, my prayer, was that time would pass quickly and I would go home to the only world I had known and cherished. Just as I closed my eyes, I heard the cry of a night heron. I went to the window and peeked out to see it had landed on the railing outside my window. It turned and looked at me and then lifted its wings as if in greeting and as if to tell me all the animals of the swamp I loved and I believed loved and trusted me were here, watching over me.
The heron lifted off the railing and swooped toward the shadows and trees, its neck bent in that S shape. A moment later it was gone and all was quiet. I returned to the tiny bed, crawling in as quietly as I could, and then I closed my eyes and pretended I was falling asleep in my own room. In the morning Mama would call to me and all this . . .
All this would have just been a nasty dream.
5
Denied the Sun
.
Sometime during the night someone must have
come into my tiny room and pulled down the shade so that when dawn came it provided only a dim light through the sole window. Of course, it had to be Gladys. It shocked and amazed me that I hadn't heard and awoken when she had entered the room. But the emotional strain associated with coming here and my own pregnant condition had put me into a deep sleep.
The moment my eyes snapped open and I had scrubbed the drowsiness from them, my instinct was to rise and pull up the shade, but Gladys Tate's warnings buzzed around in my head like a bee trapped in a jelly jar. How dismal it was to open my eyes and not see the bright sunshine or be able to look out the window and see the birds flitting and flowers spreading their blossoms to catch the invigorating rays. Mama always said I was like a wildflower and needed the sunshine to make me happy and help me grow and be healthy.
I sat up, but I couldn't peel back the blanket of depression. Would I be able to endure this for the number of months I had left before the birth of the baby? Had I made promises I couldn't keep? All I could do to counter the dreariness and despair was remind myself of how this would keep the shame from our doorstep and provide a good home for the baby who bore no blame for its existence. Why should a child suffer for a father's sin?
The aroma of freshly brewed, dark Cajun coffee, just-baked bread, fried eggs, and sausages permeated my room, slipping in under the
floorboards. It made my stomach churn in
anticipation. I rose and, because of the dimness, turned on the lantern. Then I dressed and, using the back of one of Gladys Tate's toy cooking pans as a mirror, brushed and pinnned my hair. I used the chamber pot and some of the water to wash my face and feel as refreshed as possible under these conditions. After that, I sat on the bed and listened hopefully for the sound of footsteps that would signal Gladys's arrival with my breakfast. I could hear the muffled voices of people below, the slam of a door, the barking of dogs, some grounds workers shouting to each other outside, but I heard no footsteps heralding her arrival.
Bored with the wait, I rose and began to explore the room. First I took the lantern to the small closet and, after blowing the dust away, brought out the books, which were all children's stories. What had Gladys Tate been thinking when she had said I could read these books to pass the time? They were designed for a child who had just learned to read and consisted mostly of pictures with occasional simple words.
The most impressive thing in the closet was the handmade dollhouse with everything inside it constructed to scale. I quickly realized that it was a model of The Shadows, and by studying it, I could learn where every room was and what was in each room. However, absent from the model was the room in which I was presently living.
There was tiny furniture, even tiny books in the bookcases and tiny kitchen implements in the kitchen. My fingers were too thick to fit in some of the small openings, so I imagined it had been built for Gladys when she was very little. Aside from the dust that had made it a home, the dollhouse was in perfect condition. Exploring it further, I discovered that the roof could be detached and I could have a godlike view of the interiors. I saw what I was sure was meant to be Gladys's mother and father lying beside each other in the king-size bed in the master bedroom. What looked like Gladys's room had a bed with a canopy, but the miniature doll meant to represent her was gone. There were wee dolls to represent the maids, cooks, and the butler, even minuscule replicas of some hound dogs sleeping in the den by the fireplace.
There were no other children in the dollhouse, and the only other bedrooms were for the maids or empty guest rooms. The kitchen, as in most Cajun homes, was in the rear, and just behind it was a pantry filled with things so small, my fingernail was twice the size. I decided whoever had built this toy world had been a master craftsman, an artist in his or her own right.
I put the house aside and rummaged through the old mag