'I promise, I'll spoil our child something awful, just because whenever I look at him or her, I will see you,' he vowed.
I nodded, my own tears burning under my eyelids.
'I'd better go,' he said, his voice cracking.
We simply stared at each other.
'Promise you'll send word to me if you need anything, ever,' he said.
'I promise.'
He stepped toward me and we embraced. He kissed me and held me for a long moment.
And then he turned and walked away, into the dark path under the cypress, disappearing just as I imagined my ghost lover would. It seemed centuries ago when, on our way home from school, I had told Yvette and Evelyn about the myth.
But it wasn't a myth for me any longer.
For me, it had come true.
Epilogue
I don't remember poling home that day. One minute I was saying good-bye to Pierre forever, and the next minute I was sitting on Mama's rocker, staring out at the road, watching the sun sink below the crest of the trees and the shadows creep out of the woods and into my heart.
When Mama stepped out on the galerie, she was surprised to find me sitting there.
'I've been looking for you, honey. Where have you been?'
I smiled at her, but I didn't answer. She tilted her head for a moment, studying my face, and then her eyes filled with alarm.
'What's wrong, Gabrielle?' she asked.
I shook my head. 'Nothing, Mama,' I said, and held my smile.
Mama said I moved around the house like a ghost, drifting from one place to the other after that. She said I was so quiet, she thought I was walking on air. Suddenly she would turn and find me beside her.
She told me I became a little girl again, confused about time, easily hypnotized by something in Nature. She said I would sit for hours and watch honeybees gather nectar or watch birds flit from branch to branch. She swore that one day she looked out and saw me approach a blue heron. It didn't flee. She claimed I was inches from it and it had no fear. She said she had never seen anything like it.
I remembered none of this. Time drifted by as anonymously as the current in the canal. I stopped distinguishing one day from the next, and always had to be called to the dinner table. I wasn't very much help to Mama either, barely doing any of the work. If I started to do something in the kitchen, she would chase me away and tell me to rest.
It really was difficult for me to move around anyway; my stomach had gotten so big. I thought I would just explode. Mama examined me almost every day, sometimes twice, her face full of concern. Occasionally my underthings were spotted with blood and I began to have what Mama called false labor pains.
Daddy came by often during my last month. He would just wait outside, fuming. Finally, one day, while I was in the rocker, Mama stepped out to speak with him. She folded her arms under her breasts and kept her head up, her eyes cold, looking through him rather than at him.
'I'll let you know when to send for them,' she said. 'It's what Gabrielle wants or I wouldn't do it. You're to keep them out of the shack, hear? I don't want them settin' foot on these steps, Jack. I'm warning you. I'll have the shotgun loaded and you know I won't hesitate. After the delivery, I'll bring the baby out myself.'
'Sure,' Daddy said, happy she was speaking to him, even though she was really speaking at him. 'Whatever you say, Catherine. How much longer is it going to be?'
'Not much,' she said.
'That's good. I got some money for you,' he added.
'And I told you I don't want none of that money, Jack.'
'Well, maybe Gabrielle wants it,' he said, nodding at me.
Mama looked at me.
'I don't need any money, Daddy,' I said with a smile. He looked at Mama, puzzled.
'Just go on, Jack. God have mercy on you,' she told him. He shuddered as if he had been hit with lightning and then put on his hat and stomped off. But he stopped by every day after that, sometimes twice. Mama would just come out and tell him, 'Not today,' and he would nod and leave.
'Too bad he couldn't have stayed so close to home before,' she muttered sadly.
Almost a week later, I had a bad spell of bleeding and Mama kept me in bed all day. She didn't like the sort of pain I was having either. She fed me and washed me down and burned some banana leaves. She was praying all the time, and always trying to smile at me through a mask of worry.
'I'm all right, Mama,' I told her. 'I'll be just fine.'
'Sure you will, honey.' She squeezed my hand and read to me, and sometimes she put on the records and listened to music with me. She sat there and talked more about her childhood than ever. Her voice took on a rhythm and melody of its own, often serving as a lullaby.
