Tarnished Gold

meal. Afterward Pierre understood why I wasn't in the mood to make love. He held me and repeated his promises and elaborated on his plans. I left somewhat earlier than usual because I wanted to talk to Mama before she went to bed.

'Remember,' Pierre said on the dock, 'I'll be here if you need me.'

'Yes. Good night.'

'Good night, my secret wife,' he whispered. He remained on the dock watching me glide over the water.

After I tied up the canoe, I walked to the house, and when I turned the corner, I was surprised to find Mama still on the galerie, but asleep in her rocker. Daddy's truck was there, too, but he was nowhere in sight.

For a moment I just stood there staring at her in sweet repose. Mama didn't deserve me, she didn't deserve another burden, another thing to accelerate her aging. Daddy was enough of a weight around anyone's neck. I knew no one who was as caring and loving as Mama, no one who worried about the elderly, the handicapped, the sick and the weak, as much as Mama did. She was truly a saint to her people, and what amazed everyone was how so much compassion and so much wisdom and goodness could be packed into so small a woman.

Her eyelids flickered and then opened once, closed and opened again when she realized she was looking at me. She sat up in the rocker and scrubbed her cheeks with her palms for a moment.

'What time is it?'

'It's not late, Mama.'

She took a deep breath and nodded at Daddy's truck.

'He's inside, sleeping on the living room floor. I had to sew up a gash in his head. He got into a fight in town and someone hit him with a crowbar. Least, that's what he tells me. He could have fallen over a railing, dead drunk, too, and smashed himself on something.'

She looked at me again. 'What is it, Gabrielle? You've got something to say.'

'Oui, Mama,' I replied in a small voice. Her body tightened as if she were preparing to receive a blow herself. I guessed that's what it would be.

'I've been seeing Pierre for some time now.'

'You ain't telling me anything I don't know, child. I might as well have spoken to the wind about that, no?'

I nodded. 'I love him, Mama, and he loves me. It's not something we planned or something we can help. It happened and it is,' I said, my head down.

'You're still not telling me anything I didn't know before, Gabrielle,' she said, rocking.

I swallowed back a throat lump and rallied all the courage I could muster.

'I'm pregnant, Mama.'

She stopped rocking, but she didn't say anything. She gazed into the darkness across the road and then began to rock again.

'Pierre knows and he wants to take care of me and the baby. He wants to take care of all of us,' I said quickly.

Mama didn't look at me. She kept rocking. 'Of course, that's what he would say now. He would say anything.'

'No, Mama, he means it. Pierre really does love me. He bought the Daisys' shack just to be near me and —'

'Buying a toothpick-legged shack in the swamp ain't much of an investment for a man like that, Gabrielle. Taking care of a child from the day it's been born . . . that's an investment, not only of money, but of love and affection and concern. It doesn't come in an envelope every week either, hear?'

'I know that, Mama. But I want the baby more than anything. It's a baby that comes from love,' I told her. I didn't even feel the tears that were streaming down my cheeks, but I felt them fall from my chin.

Mama sighed. 'You're going to be some rich Creole man's mistress, have his child and live on his generosity for the rest of your life, Gabrielle? That's what you want?'

'I want Pierre as much as I can have him, oui, Mama,' I told her.

She closed her eyes and put her hand on her heart. 'I'm tired,' she said. 'I think I'll go to bed.'

'Mama, please . . .'

'What is it you want me to say, Gabrielle? That I'm happy for you? That I'll help you any way I can? You know I will, but don't ask me to believe in promises like the ones you've been given.' She stood and her face grew dark, serious, her eyes small.

'I don't know everything, honey. I don't know why the Legrands' five-year-old boy drowned last year; why Mrs. Kenner, who's only thirty-nine, had a heart attack and died on her rear galerie washing her children's clothes, and leaving Lyle with three young boys to raise; I don't know why hurricanes come and wipe out the fishermen and destroy natural, good things. I don't know why people are killing each other every day on the other side of the ocean.

'The world is full of mysteries and questions, and we struggle to understand our tiny part in it. I don't love anything more than I love you. I want your happiness more than I want anything else, but I can't pretend that what I know to be ugly and hard won't be.

'We'll do what we can and what has to be done. We always do and we always will as long as we have the strength and the breath, but we won't, or at least I won't, pretend to understand why what's happened, happened.

'Maybe,' she said, looking into the darkness again, 'maybe there's a reason for all this. Maybe it ain't all caprice, but we just don't have the power to understand. I guess we have to live with that faith if we're to live at all, no?'