Page 48

"Ruby," he whispered in my ear, sending my mind spinning, my heart racing, "I love you."

"What the hell in tarnation is goin' on here!" we suddenly heard. Paul snapped back and I gasped. Grandpere Jack was standing in the hallway gazing in at us, his hair sticking up and out, his eyes wide and bloodshot, his body swaying as if a wind were tearing through the house.

"Nothing," Paul said, and stood up, quickly straightening his clothes.

"Nothing! You call that nothing?" Grandpere Jack focused his gaze and stepped through the doorway. He was still drunk, but he recognized Paul. "Who the hell. . you're the Tate boy, ain't you? The one who's always comin' around here?"

Paul looked down at me and then nodded at Grandpere.

"Figures you'd come around here at night and sneak into the house and into my granddaughter's room. It's in the Tate blood," Grandpere said.

"That's a lie," Paul snapped.

"Humph," Grandpere said and combed his long fingers through his disheveled hair. "Yeah, well, you got no business bein' in my granddaughter's bedroom this time of night. My advice to you, boy, is to tuck in your tail and git."

"Go on, Paul," I said. "It's better if you go," I added.

He looked down at me, his eyes swimming in tears.

"Please," I whispered. He bit down on his lower lip and then charged out the door, nearly bowling Grandpere Jack over in the process. Paul pounded his way down the steps and out the door.

"Well now," Grandpere Jack said, turning back to me. "Looks like you're a lot older than I thought. Time we thought about finding you a proper husband."

"I don't need anyone finding me a husband, Grandpere, and I'm not ready to marry anyone anyway. Paul wasn't doing anything. We were just talking and--"

"Just talkin'?" He laughed that silent chuckle that made his shoulders shake. "Out in the swamp that kinda talkin' makes new tadpoles," he added, and shook his head. "No, you're right grow'd; I just didn't take a good look at you before," he said, gazing at my uncovered body. I brought the blanket to my chest quickly. "Don't you worry about it none," he said, winking and then he stumbled out and made his way to Grandmere's room where he now slept, whenever he was able to climb the stairs to go to bed.

I sat back, my heart thumping so hard, I thought it would crack open my chest. Poor Paul, I thought. He was so mixed up, so confused, his anger pulling him in one direction, his feeling for me pulling him in another. Grandpere Jack's surprise arrival and accusations didn't help matters any, but it might have saved us from doing something we would have regretted later on, I thought.

I put out the light and lay back again. I had to confess to myself that for a moment, when Paul was so insistent, part of me wanted to give in and do just what he had said: be defiant and seize what fate had made off-limits. But how do you bury such a dark secret in your heart, and how do you keep it from infecting and eventually destroying the purity of any love you might possess for each other? It couldn't be; it wasn't meant to be. it mustn't be, I thought. If anything, I knew now that I couldn't let myself get that close to him again. I didn't have the strength of will to resist the passion either.

As I closed my eyes and tried to sleep again, I realized, this was another reason, maybe even a bigger reason, to find the strength and the courage to leave.

Maybe that was why Grandmere Catherine was so insistent about it; maybe she knew what would happen between Paul and me despite what we had learned about ourselves. I fell asleep with her words echoing in my mind and my promises to her on my lips.

9

Hard Lessons

.

I didn't see Paul for the remainder of the

weekend and I was surprised when I went to school on Monday and didn't see him there eithEr. When I asked his sister Jeanne about him, she told me he wasn't feeling well, but she looked put out that I had asked, especially in front of her friends, and wouldn't say another thing.

After I returned home from school, I decided to take a short walk along the canal before preparing dinner. I strolled down the path through our yard which was abloom with hibiscus and blue and pink hydrangeas. Spring was rushing in this year, the colors, the sweet scents, and the heightened sense of life and birth was all around me. It was as if Nature herself were trying to comfort me.

But my confused and troubled thoughts were like bees buzzing around in a jar. I heard so many different voices telling me to do so many different things. Run, Ruby, run, one voice urged. Get as far from the bayou and from Paul and Grandpere Jack as you can.

Forget running, be defiant, another voice told me. You love Paul. You know you do. Surrender to your feelings and forget what you've learned. Do what Paul wants you to do: live like it was all a lie.

Remember your promise to me, Ruby, I heard Grandmere Catherine urge. Ruby. . . your promise . . . remember.

The warm Gulf breeze lifted strands of my hair and made them dance over my forehead. The same warm breeze combed through the moss on the dead cypress trees in the marsh, making it look like some sprawling green animal, lifting and swaying to catch my attention. On a long sandbar, I saw a cottonmouth coiled over some driftwood soaking up the sun, its triangular head the color of a discolored copper penny. Two ducks and a heron sprung up from the water and flew low over the cattails. And then I heard the distant purr of a motorboat as it sliced through the bayou and wove its way closer and closer until it popped out from around a turn.

It was Paul. The moment he saw me, he waved, sped up, and brought the boat close to the shore, the wakes from the motorboat swelling up through the lily pads and cattails and slapping across the cypress roots along the bank.

"Walk down to the shale there," he called, and pointed. I did and he brought the boat as near as he could before shutting the engine and letting it drift up to me.