lived with us again?'
Her eyes cut sharply toward rue. 'No, it's not just because of his drinking.' She was quiet a moment. 'Although that's good enough a reason.'
'Is it because of the way he gambles away his money?'
'Gambling ain't the worse of it,' she snapped in a voice that said I should let the matter drop. But for some reason I couldn't.
'Then what is, Grandmere? What did he do that was so terrible?'
Her face darkened and then softened a bit. 'It's between him and me,' she said. 'It ain't for you to know. You're too young to understand it all, Ruby. If Grandpere Jack was meant to live with us . . . things would have been different,' she insisted and left me as confused and frustrated as ever.
Grandmere Catherine had such wisdom and such power. Why couldn't she do something to make us a family again? Why couldn't she forgive Grandpere and use her power to change him so that he could live with us once more? Why couldn't we be a real family?
No matter what Grandpere Jack told me and other people, no matter how much he swore, ranted, and raved, I knew he had to be a lonely man living by himself in the swamp. Few people visited him and his home was really no more than a shack. It sat six feet off the marsh on pilings. He had a cistern to collect rainwater and butane lanterns for lights. It had a wood heater for burning scrap lumber and driftwood. At night he would sit on his galerie and play mournful tunes on his accordion and drink his rotgut whiskey.
He wasn't really happy and neither was Grandmere Catherine. Here we were returning from the Rodrigues home after chasing off an evil spirit and we couldn't chase off the evil spirits that dwelt in the shadows of our own home. In my heart I thought Grandmere Catherine was like the shoemaker without any shoes. She can do so much good for others, but she seemed incapable of doing the same sort of things for herself.
Was that the destiny of a Traiteur? A price she had to pay to have the power?
Would it be my destiny as well: to help others but be unable to help myself?
The bayou was a world filled with many mysterious things. Every journey into it, revealed something surprising. A secret until that moment not discovered. But the secrets held in our own hearts were the secrets I longed to know the most.
Just before we reached home, Grandmere Catherine said, 'There's someone at the house.' With a definite note of disapproval, she added, 'It's that Tate boy again.'
Paul was sitting on the galerie steps playing his harmonica, his motor scooter set against the cypress stump. The moment he set eyes on our lantern, he stopped playing and stood up to greet us.
Paul was the seventeen-year-old son of Octavious Tate, one of the richest men in Houma. The Tates owned a shrimp cannery and lived in a big house. They had a pleasure boat and expensive cars. Paul had two younger sisters, Jeanne, who was in my class at school, and Toby, who was two years younger. Paul and I had known each other all our lives, but just recently had begun to spend more time together. I knew his parents weren't happy about it. Paul's father had more than one run-in with Grandpere Jack and disliked the Landrys.
'Everything all right, Ruby?' Paul asked quickly as we drew closer. He wore a light blue cotton polo shirt, khaki pants, and leather boots laced tightly beneath them. Tonight he looked taller and wider to me, and older, too.
'Grandmere and I went to see the Rodrigues family. Mrs. Rodrigues's baby was born dead,' I told him.
'Oh, that's horrible,' Paul said softly. Of all the boys I knew at school, Paul seemed the most sincere and the most mature, although, one of the shyest. He was certainly one of the handsomest with his cerulean blue eyes and thick,
She flashed her gaze on him with that look of suspicion she had ever since the first time Paul had walked me home from school. Now that he was coming around more often, she was scrutinizing him even more closely, which was something I found embarrassing. Paul seemed a little amused, but a little afraid of her as well. Most folks believed in Grandmere's prophetic and mystical powers.
'Evening,' she said slowly. 'Might be a downpour yet tonight,' she predicted. 'You shouldn't be motoring about with that flimsy thing.'
'Yes, ma'am,' Paul said.
Grandmere Catherine shifted her eyes to me. 'We got to finish the weavin' we started,' she reminded me.
'Yes, Grandmere. I'll be right along.'
She looked at Paul again and then went inside.
'Is your grandmother very upset about losing the Rodrigues baby?' he asked.
'She wasn't called to help deliver it,' I replied, and I told him why she had been summoned and what we had done. He listened with interest and then shook his head.
'My father doesn't believe in any of that. He says superstitions and folklore are what keeps the Cajuns backward and makes other folks think we're ignorant. But I don't agree,' he added quickly.
'Grandmere Catherine is far from ignorant,' I added, not hiding my indignation. 'It's ignorant not to take precautions against evil spirits and bad luck.'
Paul nodded. 'Did you . . . see anything?' he asked.
'I felt it fly by my face,' I said, placing my hand on my cheek. 'It touched me here. And then I thought I saw it leave.'
Paul released a low whistle.
'You must have been very brave,' he said.
'Only because I was with Grandmere Catherine,' I confessed.
