Tarnished Gold

'I'm the one who's no damn good. I'm the one who is a no-account, lazy so-and-so, and I don't provide; but where's her moral learning, huh? She goes and does this right under your nose, Catherine. You go and face your saints now, hear? You go and wave your wand and make this all go away.

'I won't be looked down on anymore,' he emphasized. 'You and your daughter ain't nothin' special. Just remember that and remember to stop cursing the Landrys, hear?'

Mama had no strength to reply. I heard her go into the kitchen and start dinner while Daddy continued to rant and rave to himself in the living room. When he came out, I pretended to be asleep and kept my eyes closed. I felt him standing there, staring at me, and then I heard him charge down the steps and go off in his truck, mumbling to himself.

I never felt so sick inside, so depressed and disgusted with myself. Poor Mama, I thought. She had to take the brunt of Daddy's rage. I went inside to apologize and found her sitting at the table, her palms pressed against her forehead.

'It's all my fault, Mama. I'm sorry,' I said. For a moment she didn't move. Then she raised her head slowly, as if it weighed as much as a barrel of rainwater. She looked so tired and worn and she looked like she had been crying, too. It made my heart ache and tears burn the insides of my lids.

'What's done is done,' she said. 'Don't let your father's ranting bother you. He just looks for excuses to be the no-account man he is. He'll use this to justify getting drunk and wasting time and money, is all.' She rose. 'Let's eat.'

'I'm not very hungry, Mama.'

'Me neither, but we better put something good inside to help fight the bad outside,' she declared, and gave me a tiny smile.

I went to her and we embraced. She stroked my hair and kissed my forehead.

'Pierre will be back to help, Mama. I know he will,' I said to reassure myself as well as her.

'Oui,” she said with a tired voice. 'But until then, we better learn to help ourselves, no?'

Mama and I ate and then had some coffee on the galerie.

It was one of those nights when the air is so still, you think the world had stopped spinning. Nothing moved either, not a bird, not a rabbit, nothing. The stillness had a way of creeping inside you, too, making you feel hollow and full of echoes. Mama was just as quiet for most of the time, and then she suddenly put down her cup and turned to me.

'I guess this is as good a time as any to tell you the truth, Gabrielle,' she declared. 'Goodness knows, I kept it locked up too long.'

'The truth? The truth about what, Mama?'

'About me and your daddy. About you,' she added.

Her bleak eyes told me it was a dark surprise. I held my breath and waited for her to continue. She had to swallow a few times before she did so.

'I often told you how handsome he was. He still can be when he cleans himself up and cares enough. Well,' she said, 'he courted me on and off for some time. He was unreliable then, too, but I didn't pay enough attention to that. My mother didn't want me to marry him, of course. She knew the Landrys, and warned me time after time, but . . . as I told you before, I let the woman in me have first say.

'The fact is,' Mama said, turning to me again, 'I got pregnant before I got married.'

'You did?'

'Oui. We lied about our marriage date, pretended we got married by a judge months before we actually did. We had a church wedding just to satisfy the family. I didn't think your father was going to marry me when he found out I was pregnant, and I wasn't sure I was going to marry him, even then; but he surprised me by being happy about it and told me if I didn't marry him, he'd tell everyone in the world you were his child anyway.

'My mother was brokenhearted about it. She barely said a word after the actual wedding, but being married seemed to settle Jack Landry down for a while. He was productive and responsible, and then he just fell back into his old ways.

'But whenever I stop and have regrets, I think how lucky I am to have you, honey,' she added, her face beaming.

'Oh, Mama,' I wailed, 'I just keep adding to your burden.'

'Now, now . . . what I'm trying to tell you is I don't want you to apologize and feel bad about me. It says in the Bible that he without sin cast the first stone. I'm no one to cast stones, and your daddy, he couldn't cast a pebble at an ax murderer. Understand, honey?'

'Oui, Mama,' I said.

'I mean it,' she said firmly.

I smiled. Mama's confession gave me the strength to offer my own.

'Mama, I wanted Pierre's baby and I still do. Very much. I know it's wrong, especially because Pierre is married, but you know how terrible I feel about losing Paul.'

'Yes,' she said with a deep sigh. It amazed me how she could bear so much weight on those small shoulders. 'We'll make do, somehow. We always manage. Great strength comes from great burdens, I suppose.

'But,' she added, turning back to me with a very serious expression on her face, 'we have to live here, and some of these people can be pretty mean and vicious when they want to, you know. I think it might be best to come up with some explanation down the road. I don't like lying to anyone, even to your father; but it may be necessary to stretch the truth a bit. We have so many other sins to be forgiven for, a little white lie don't seem like much to add, no?' she said with a smile.