Tarnished Gold

'A horrid woman,' Mama said. 'It's like she has a snake eating away her heart.' She turned and looked at me. 'Gabrielle, you have got to let go, honey. It's over; he's gone.'

'Yes, Mama. I'm sorry.'

'It's all right, honey,' she said, embracing me and petting my hair. 'It's all right. Let's have a good dinner and think about tomorrow.'

I nodded. In the distance we could hear Gladys Tate's car squeal around a turn and accelerate. With it went my hopes of ever really knowing my own baby.

We never told Daddy about Gladys Tate's visit. He would have just ranted and raved and threatened reprisals. He might even have seen it as a new opportunity to extort some money from them.

He surprised us the next day anyway when he brought home a new dress for Mama and a new dress for me. Now it was her turn to think he was extravagant, for she could make a dress as good or better than any store- bought one.

'And what did you do, Jack Landry,' Mama asked with suspicious eyes, 'win a big pot at bourre?'

'No. This comes from all honest work, woman.' He poured himself some lemonade and sat at the dinner table, smiling widely.

Mama gazed at me, looked at the new dresses, and then shook her head. 'Something's up.'

'Nothin's up. I was just thinkin' it was about time I took you and Gabrielle out for a night. We should go to the fais dodo at the Crab House this Saturday night.'

'Fais dodo? A dance? You want to take me to a dance?' Mama asked with amazement.

'And Gabrielle. It's a good place for her to meet someone. I been thinking I ain't done enough to provide the opportunities for her.'

Mama stared at him, still not believing what she heard. 'That's all, woman. It's no big thing here,' he said, looking down quickly.

'You ain't asked me to a dance for a long time, Jack Landry,' she told him. 'Something smells rotten.'

'What? Howja like them apples, Gabrielle? A man asks his wife to a dance and she says it smells rotten.'

'Well, I can't help it, it does,' Mama said.

'Well nothing. I realized we ain't been out together for a long time and thought it was time I asked, is all.'

'You ain't going to take us there and then get stupid drunk, are you, Jack?' she asked, her head tilted, her eyes scrutinizing him.

'On my honor,' he said, holding up his right hand. 'I have changed. You see that, don'tcha?' He nodded emphatically to drive home his own claim.

'You going to get cleaned up?'

'Absolutely. You'll see.'

Although she was still suspicious, Mama agreed. She said she was doing so mostly for me. She tried on the dress. It was pretty and she was very pleased at how she looked in it. She made me try my dress on, too. She decided to take in the waist and let out the hem a bit, but otherwise, she thought Daddy had made amazingly fine choices.

'It's been so long since we did something like this,' she told me. 'It's against my better judgment, but I think I'll let myself go a bit and trust him.'

On Saturday Mama washed and ironed Daddy's pants and shirt and then sat him on a rain barrel behind the house and trimmed his hair, beard, and mustache. He didn't put up his usual opposition. Scrubbed and pruned so even his fingernails turned from green-brown to clean, Daddy, looked his handsome self again. It was as if a human being had peeled off this smelly, grimy swamp creature and stepped forward..

I watched Mama brush out her own hair and put her fancy combs in it, and when she put on the new dress and a little lipstick, she was about the prettiest woman in the bayou.

Daddy rained compliments over her .He said it made him proud, proud to be escorting the two prettiest women in the bayou. Mama blushed like a young girl. She helped me with my hair, and after I put on my new dress, she stepped back and said 'You might just catch yourself a handsome young man tonight. I hate to say your daddy could be right, but he could be.'

I hadn't been to a fais dodo since I was in, school. I hadn't made any new girlfriends, and most of the girls in my class had gotten married or were of living with relatives because there was someone nearby who would soon be marrying them. Evelyn Thibodeau had married Claude LeJeune, just as she had planned. He was doing well shrimping and owned two boats. Evelyn had a two-year-old boy and was pregnant with her second. Yvette Livaudis married her uncle's foreman, Philippe Jourdain, just as she had said she would, and then, a year later, gave birth to twin girls. I had just gotten a letter from her a month ago with a photo of her daughters inside. It took me a week to write back. I really had nothing new to tell her about myself, and it looked like her and Evelyn's predictions for me would come true: I would remain a spinster working beside Mama at our roadside stand forever.

The night of the dance was warm, although a bit overcast with sprinkles threatening. I remember as the three of us, all fancied up, stepped out of the house, I felt hopeful. Maybe we could be a family yet. Maybe Daddy was telling the truth about himself, about the changes in him. Maybe there was a new future for me, waiting out there, waiting like some beautiful pink rose, waiting to be plucked.

It wasn't until we were halfway to town that Daddy let out what his real motives were. Mama almost made him turn back. The truck took a big bounce. Daddy laughed and told us to hold on.

'Don't want to see my beauties messed up 'fore we get there,' he said. 'By the way,' he added, 'I went ahead and promised out Gabrielle's first dance.'

'What? What are you talking about, Daddy? Promised me to who?'