'This all requires great cooperation on your part to work,' she explained. 'I assure you, if it fails, it won't be because of something I've done.'
'I'll do my best, madame.'
'Your best might not be enough. Do what I want,' she corrected.
'I will try.'
'Yes, try,' she said, twisting her mouth. 'It's so much easier to conceive a child, isn't it? You just lie back and the man puts his hardness in you and grunts his pleasure.'
'I didn't just lie back, madame,' I retorted.
She stared at me with that wry smile.
'I'm telling the truth. I was raped!'
'It's not a big secret around here that Octavious is not a man of great strength. My father chose him, trained and schooled him in our business, prepared him to be my husband. He was afraid I wouldn't find a decent enough, proper man, so he found one for me.
'He arranged for our courting and practically dragged us both to the altar. Octavious is a meek individual. I find it hard to believe that he could force himself on anyone, even a supposedly helpless young girl.
'But whatever happened, the damage has been done, and once again, I had to come up with a solution to a problem.'
'You should never have married a man if you weren't in love with him, madame,' I criticized, my anger and indignation fueling my courage.
Her smile became crooked and mean as she shook her head.
'You young girls today amuse me. You go to picture shows and see all these movie stars in their dream romances and think that can be you, too. You think you'll meet a man and suddenly there will be music and you'll skip off into the sunset together. Well, life isn't like a movie. It's real and in the real world, people are brought together for more practical reasons, and even if there is love in the beginning, it doesn't last long.
'Are your parents still in love?' she asked disdainfully. 'Do they still cherish and adore each other until death do them part? Well? You're not answering me,' she said before I could take a breath.
I sucked in air and straightened my back the way Mama often did. 'Not everyone has a perfect life, madame, but you began yours believing it wasn't perfect to start. You knew and yet you did it. That,' I said firmly, undaunted, 'was your mistake.'
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 long-sought-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
