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9

My Cajun World

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As Daddy and I headed out of the city toward

Terrebonne Parish and Houma, the town from which Mommy had come, a kind of paralyzing numbness gripped me. I had not been back there since I was an infant. Our troubles with Uncle Paul's mother and father since the famous trial to determine who should have custody of me had created an almost impenetrable wall around that part of the bayou. The income from the oil well Uncle Paul had left in my name had built a substantial trust for me, but I had never seen the well, since it was at Cypress Woods and neither Daddy nor Mommy could ever find the courage to return. At least, not until now.

Legal wrangling over the property had kept everyone from enjoying it, although Daddy had vowed never to go back there anyway, and Mommy apparently had too many sad memories that would- be revived in those grand rooms. What was true for them was apparently true for Octavius and Gladys Tate as well, for it was our understanding that they did nothing with the mansion. Aunt Jeanne said her mother wanted it kept like a monument to Paul's memory.

Mommy might have returned to the shack in which she and her grandmere Catherine had lived and where I was born, but as far as I knew, it had been years and years since her last visit. Whenever I asked her why, she said that none of Grandmere Catherine's friends were still alive, and there weren't many people she cared to see.

Whenever she talked of her past and told me stories, they were fascinating. So much of her background was interesting to me, and yet so much of it was obviously painful for her. I wondered just how hard it had been for her to make this trip now, if she had indeed made it. Even doing it under the advice of someone speaking from beyond the grave must have been very difficult for her.

For the first part of our journey, neither Daddy nor I spoke very much. We were both lost in our thoughts and our fears, I suppose. It was a partly cloudy day.

Most of the -clouds were long, wide fluffy ones and when one of them passed over the sun, the shadows thickened and stretched over the highway and the countryside before us. Soon the roadside restaurants, service stations, and fruit and vegetable stands were fewer and fewer. Snowy egrets and brown pelicans began to appear along the banks of the canals, and every once in a while I saw an old shrimp boat, rusting and rotting in the underbrush.

r /> Soon the toothpick-legged houses began to appear more frequently, some with children playing in the yards, some with Cajun women sitting on their galleries talking as they shelled peas into black castiron pots or wove split oak baskets and palmetto hats to sell to tourists. They looked up as we motored by. Just ahead of us, three fisherman emerged from a swamp, their poles over their shoulders, their beards long and straggly.

And suddenly it occurred to me how different my mother's old world was from the world in which we now lived. How difficult and frightening it must have been for her at such a young age to leave this world on her own and enter a new world of rich people and sophistication. It must have been like going to another country. But she'd had no choice. She had fled from her drunken grandpere, hoping to be rescued.

Now she had fled back to that Cajun world, also hoping to be rescued, and we were rushing there, praying we could save her. Life seemed to be drawn in circles. I sighed deeply and turned to look at Daddy. He was smiling at me in the strangest way.

"Why are you smiling like that, Daddy?" I asked.

"I was just thinking how right your mother is about you. You've turned out to be quite a strong and amazing young woman," he said. "Other girls your age would probably wilt and moan at home, but not you. You probably get your grit from your mother's Cajun side."

"What about your family, Daddy?"

"My family? Well, my whole family was spoiled, and I was no better off for having been born with that silver spoon in my mouth. It would have been better if I'd been born a Cajun."

"When were you last here, Daddy?"

"During the trial for custody of you, I suppose. Before that, when your mother was living at Cypress Woods, I took a ride up there occasionally. It was a beautiful place. I was very jealous," he admitted. "And terrified."

"Terrified? Why?"

"I thought your mother had everything she could ever want. I would never win her back. She had that beautiful setting, that magnificent studio, a man who doted on her. And what did I have? I had Gisselle, complaining in one ear until that ear was red from listening, and then she would shift to my other." He laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"One time when Gisselle and I went to Cypress Woods, your uncle Paul took us all on a tour of the swamps. Gisselle had nightmares for weeks afterward."

"Why?"

"The alligators, the insects. Ruby and Gisselle were twins, of course, but one was night and the other was day," he said.

"It must have been hard for Mommy to pose as Gisselle if she was so different," I said. That part of our story had always intrigued me: Mommy's assuming her sister's identity after Gisselle contracted Saint Louis encephalitis and the switch was accomplished.

"And now talk about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Ruby had to sound like Gisselle, act like Gisselle. I had hired new servants so she could at least be herself when she was with the help. Gisselle was always nasty to those she considered underlings, and Ruby would have had to treat them just as poorly. I know your mother actually was relieved when the ruse was exposed and she could go back to being herself.

"Now let's see," he said as he studied the road ahead. "I know there's a turn coming up soon." He slowed down and stopped to gaze at his map.

We were deep in the bayou now. The vegetation was very thick on both sides of the road, and through the brush and cattails, I could see the ponds. When I rolled down my window, I could hear the symphony of cicadas and tree frogs in the marsh. I didn't see it at first, but as I studied the surroundings, a shack appeared behind a cluster of weeping willows. The dull wood-frame house was nearly hidden by banana trees. The yard, or what remained of it, was cluttered with automobile and machine parts. Beside the house, just off the bank, was a half-submerged pirogue. What had happened to the people who lived here? I wondered. Could they have been relatives of mine? Was there a girl my age who was just as curious about my life in New Orleans as I was about her life here?

"Okay, I remember now," Daddy said. "We go down the road to the left about a mile and then turn left again. The shack is another mile or so along that road. Ready?"