Tarnished Gold

'All right, what of your spider who sets up such a seemingly harmless world around him, so innocent looking, the fly always steps into it and realizes it too late?

'A rich, sophisticated man like Monsieur Dumas has the power to weave a very inviting world around him. He will catch you in it, and when you realize it, it will be too late.'

'Pierre is no more conniving than I am, Mama. You don't know him yet.'

'And you do? Already?'

'Our feelings for each other have opened our hearts and minds to each other. When you love each other deeply, truly, it takes only minutes to know everything there is to know. He has told me of his great unhappiness and I see how much he suffers, even though he is a wealthy man.'

'And what of his wife, then?' she asked.

'They lead separate lives right now. She has been unable to give him a child and she is more involved with her society friends than with him,' I explained.

'But where will all this take you, Gabrielle?' she asked with despair.

'I don't know,' I admitted.

'And for the moment, you don't care because you're blinded by your feelings and your excitement. Don't you think I know how desperate you are for a real love, how much you need someone who will love you truly, especially after your horrid experience? You're jumping on the first opportunity, only it's not an opportunity, Gabrielle. It's like a false dawn. You're going to plummet into a deeper darkness.'

She sat back firmly, her words lying heavy in the air between us.

'I want you to tell this man first chance you get that you won't ever see him again, hear? If you don't, I will, Gabrielle, even if it means marching down that road all the way to New Orleans and knocking on his front door,' she threatened.

'Oh Mama, please . . .'

'If I stood by and watched you drown, I'd be wrong, wouldn't I? Well, I ain't gonna stand by and watch this, neither,' she vowed.

We heard the floorboards above us groan.

'It's best your daddy don't know nothing about this, Gabrielle, hear?'

'Yes, Mama.' I looked down.

'I'm sorry, honey, but I know what's best for you.'

I shot an angry glance at her. Why did she always know what was best for me? She wasn't me. What did she think it was like having a traiteur for a mother, thinking all these years that my every thought, my every feeling, was as naked as a newly born doe before her eyes? Besides, I thought, when it came to love, Mama wasn't infallible. Look at the mistake she had made, the marriage she had. Defiant, I rose from the table and left the room.

'Gabrielle!'

The front door slammed shut behind me as I jogged down the galerie steps and around back, heading toward the canal. I remained away from home most of the day, wandering through my paths, weaving along the water, sitting on a big rock and watching the birds and the fish. I spent most of the time arguing with myself.

The sensible side of me took Mama's side, of course, claiming she was only looking out for my happiness and trying to protect me from sadness and disappointment. That side of me warned against living for the moment. It ridiculed the pledge Pierre and I had made to each other. What sort of a pledge was it anyway, a pledge to ignore everything and anything but our own pleasure? Living for the moment was shortsighted. What would happen when that day of reckoning came?

The other side of me, the wild and free side that found its strength in Nature, that side of me which was never comfortable confined by clothes and houses and man-made rules, refused to listen. Look at the birds. They don't sit worrying about the winter; they enjoy the spring and the summer and feel the warm breeze around them when they glide through the air, free . . . happy.

And what of these people who have been sensible and who have married the so-called right person? What of these people who have never been naked under the sun and the stars, who have listened first to their minds and then their hearts? Trapped in their wise and reasonable decisions, they wither away wondering what it might have been like if they had followed their feelings instead of their thoughts.

But your mama followed her feelings instead of her thoughts, my sensible side retorted. That thought shut me up for a while. I sat there, brooding. My sensible side continued. She's only trying to give you the benefit of her wisdom, a wisdom unfortunately gained through pain and suffering. Can't you take her gift gracefully and stop being a stubborn, selfish little girl?

I swallowed back my tears and took a deep breath.

Still defiant, or tying to be, I turned my face to the wind and screamed.

'I love Pierre! I will always love him. I won't give him up. I won't!'

My words were swept away. They changed nothing. It didn't take very much effort to scream them; I could scream them again. What took great effort was to shut them up in my heart, to lock the door on that secret place within me where Pierre's face resided and his words resounded.

As I started walking back home, I wondered if every birth, whether it be the birth of a tadpole or the birth of a spider or the birth of a human being, was another beat in the heart of the universe. Maybe my birth was an irregular beat. I was simply out of sync with the rhythms of this world, and I would not ever find a place in it. I would never find happiness and a love that could be. I was destined to be an outcast. Maybe that was why I was so drawn to simple, natural things and felt safer in the swamp than I did in society.

Mama looked up from the clothes she was washing in the rain barrel when I appeared. She wasn't angry; she was very sad for me. She stopped working and waited as I drew closer.