Tarnished Gold

Prologue

'You've got to let go of innocence,' Mama once told me, 'or it will take you down with it when it sinks like some old rotted shrimp boat in the canal.'

One spring morning I had come running up to the galerie where she sat weaving palmetto hats to sell to the tourists. In my hands I cupped a dead baby blue jay. I thought it had fallen from the nest, but Mama said its mother most likely threw it out.

I shook my head. I was only seven. It was inconceivable that a mother of any kind could cast one of its offspring out of the nest.

'No, Mama. It must have tried to fly and fell,' I insisted.

She put down her palmetto leaves and looked at me with that soft, sad expression in her dark onyx eyes that brought tears to my own eyes. Her gaze went to the baby bird and then she shook her head.

'It's too small to have tried to fly, Gabrielle. It was sickly and either died or would have died. The mother knew what was best.'

I, too, gazed down at the diminutive creature, its eyes glued shut, its tiny beak slightly open, its tiny claws tightly closed.

'How can it be best to throw your baby out?' I asked angrily.

'She had other babies to care for, Gabrielle honey, strong, healthy ones who needed her attention and the food she brought. If she spent time worrying over one that was going to die anyway, one of the healthy ones would get sick and die.'

I shook my head. I wouldn't believe it.

'It's not a decision she sits around munching over, Gabrielle, no. It comes from instinct. She just knows what's necessary. It's how she makes sure her good babies will survive and have a chance in that jungle you love so much.'

'Is she sad about it?' I asked, hopefully.

'I suppose, but there's nothing she can do about it. Understand?'

'No,' I said. 'Maybe if she tried harder, this baby would live, too.'

Mama sighed deeply and that's when she told me about innocence.

I didn't know what she meant then. I was too young to measure the world in terms of innocence. To me, waking up every day was still like ripping off the wrapping paper to get at the wonderful gifts that awaited as soon as I finished my breakfast and shot out the screen door, bounded down the steps to our front galerie, and turned around the corner of the house toward the swamp and the canals and all my animals. Sickness and death, violence and cruelty, were not permitted entry to this world. If something died, it was because its time had come fairly. Hope struggled to survive within me.

'Can't you bring the baby bird back to life, Mama?' I asked. 'Can't you give it some herbal drink with a eye dropper or sprinkle some magic powder over it? Can't you?'

Mama was a traiteur, a healer whose hands did magical things. What she knew had been passed down to her from her mother and her grandmother and her grandmother's mother. She took the fire out of burns, blew smoke into the ear of a child and chased out the ache, put warm palmetto leaves on old people and helped them to stand and walk and move their arms freely. Evil spirits were afraid of her. She could sprinkle holy water on the steps of a house and keep the devil out. Surely she could stir life back into a creature as small as the bird in my hands.

'No, honey, I can't bring back the dead,' she told me. 'Once you go through that doorway, it locks forever and ever behind you.' She saw the disappointment in my face, however, and added, 'But this baby bird will grow up in a better world.'

How could there be a better world? I still wondered. My world was full of colors and sunshine, beautiful flowers with wonderful scents, magnificent birds that glided through the air as lightly and easily as dreams, delicious flavors in the food Mama made, fluffy white clouds that tickled my imagination so I could see them as camels or whales or even cotton candy.

'What'cha got there, Gabrielle?' Daddy asked as he came out of the shack house he had built for us just before I was born. Although it was still morning, he had a bottle of beer in his hand. Sometimes that's all he had for breakfast. His dark brown hair was unbrushed, the long strands over his forehead and just parted enough for his beautiful emerald eyes to peer through. He wore only his pants, no shirt, no shoes or hip boots. A trail of curly brown hair left his belly button and shot up to his chest where it exploded into a V-shaped matting. My Daddy was tall and strong with long arms that rippled with muscles whenever he pulled on something or lifted something. Mama once told me he had wrestled an alligator for a two-dollar bet. She said that's how foolish he was, but I thought it meant he was the strongest daddy in the world.

'A dead baby blue jay,' Mama answered for me.

'So?' he said. 'What'cha going do with it, Gabrielle? Throw it in the gumbo?'

'Jack!'

Daddy laughed.

'I wanted Mama to bring it back to life,' I explained. 'She said its mother threw it out of the nest.'

'Most like,' Daddy said. He sucked on the neck of the beer bottle, drawing its contents down his throat as his Adam's apple bounced like a tiny rubber ball. 'Just throw it away,' Daddy said.

I looked horrified at Mama.

'Why don't you bury it in the backyard, Gabrielle,' she suggested softly.