Tarnished Gold

her eyes could look deeply into mine. 'When evil thoughts come to mind, you think of me, honey, and my blood will come rushing over those thoughts, drowning them. If it don't . . .'

'Yes, Mama?'

'Then maybe what you're thinking ain't so evil after all,' she said. Then she took a deep breath as if the advice had drained her of the little energy that remained after so hard a day of cooking and baking. She also did a lot of cleaning around the shack so it would look as presentable as possible to our guests tomorrow.

'You're tired, Mama. You should go to sleep.'

'Oui. I should,' she admitted. She sighed, gazed into the darkness for a moment, her gaze sliding over the shadows in search of Daddy, and then she rose with great effort. We went into the shack together and upstairs.

'Tonight's the last night you go to bed a little girl,' Mama told me after I got into bed. She sat at my feet for a few moments. 'Tomorrow you graduate. You're a young woman now.' She started to hum a Cajun lullaby, one she used to sing to me when I was a little girl.

'Mama?'

'Yes, honey.'

'Before you met Daddy, did you have any other boyfriends?'

'I had a number of young men on my tail,' she said, smiling. 'My father would shoo them away like flies.'

'But . . . did any of them become your boyfriend?'

'Oh, I had my little romances.'

'Did you . . .'

'Did I what, honey?'

'Did you kiss and do things with the other boys?'

'What kind of a question to ask is that, Gabrielle?' she said, pulling her shoulders up. She held a small smile, however.

'I just wondered if that was what was supposed to be.'

'Kissing and things is supposed to be, if that's what you mean, but you got to remember what I told you my grandmere told me: 'Sex, Catherine,' she used to say, 'is just Nature's little trick to bring the two people right for each other together.' '

'What if people who aren't right for each other have sex?' I pursued, speaking softly, afraid that if I spoke too loudly or too fast, the magic moment during which Mama would tell me intimate things would burst and be gone.

'Well then, it's just sex. It might make them feel good for the moment, but afterward,' she said with a scowl, 'they'll feel they lost a little of something precious, something of themselves. That's what I believe. I suppose,' she added, raising her right eyebrow, 'your girlfriends would laugh at that, n'est-ce pas?'

'I don't know, Mama. I don't care what they think.'

She stared at me a moment. 'You want to tell me something, Gabrielle, something gnawing at your insides?'

The words were on my tongue, but I swallowed them back.

'No, Mama. I just wondered, that's all.'

She nodded. 'Just natural. Trust your instincts,' she said. 'You got good ones. Well, good night, Miss Graduate,' she said, and leaned over to kiss my cheek. I held on to her a bit longer than I should have, and Mama's eyebrows went up again, her eyes sharp and small.

'I'm always willing to listen and help you, honey. Don't ever forget that,' she said.

'I know, Mama. Good night.'

'Good night,' she said, and got up even though I sensed she wanted to remain there until I told her what was behind my dark eyes.

I thought about Mama's words and wondered what part of myself I had left in the swamp. My worrying caused something hard and heavy to grow in my chest, making it ache. I put my palms together under my chin, closed my eyes, and prayed.

'Please, dear God,' I muttered, 'forgive me if I did anything to cause this evil thing to happen to me.'

I tried to throw off the dreary feelings. Fatigue closed my eyes, but sleep was driven back by my tossing and turning. Anticipating the excitement of tomorrow, worrying about what had happened, worrying about Daddy and about Mama, kept me wide awake until the wee hours of the morning. The sun was actually turning the inky sky into a shade of red slate when I finally drifted into a deep repose. I woke to Mama's shaking the bed.

'Gabrielle, you can't oversleep this morning!' she said, laughing.

'Oh. Oh, what time is it?' I looked at the clock and leaped out of bed.

We were getting our final report cards, turning in our books, saying our good-byes today, the last day of school.

'Go wash the sleep out of that face in the rain barrel,' Mama ordered. 'I'll have some breakfast for you.'

'Did Daddy come home?' I asked.

'No. You would have smelled him if he had,' she offered, and went down to make breakfast.

I washed my face in the rainwater, brushed my hair, and put on my clothes. Mama was mumbling about all the