Page 157

Daddy came by often during my last month. He would just wait outside, fuming. Finally, one day, while I was in the rocker, Mama stepped out to speak with him. She folded her arms under her breasts and kept her head up, her eyes cold, looking through him rather than at him.

"I'll let you know when to send for them," she said. "It's what Gabriel wants or I wouldn't do it. You're to keep them out of the shack, hear? I don't want them settin' foot on these steps, Jack. I'm warning you. I'll have the shotgun loaded and you know I won't hesitate. After the delivery, I'll bring the baby out myself."

"Sure," Daddy said, happy she was speaking to him, even though she was really speaking at him. "Whatever you say, Catherine. How much longer is it going to be?"

"Not much," she said.

"That's good. I got some money for you," he added. "And I told you I don't want none of that money, Jack." "Well, maybe Gabriel wants it," he said, nodding at me.

Mama looked at me.

"I don't need any money, Daddy," I said with a smile. He looked at Mama, puzzled.

"Just go on, Jack. God have mercy on you," she told him.

He shuddered as if he had been hit with lightning and then put on his hat and stomped off. But he stopped by every day after that, sometimes twice. Mama would just come out and tell him, "Not today," and he would nod and leave.

"Too bad he couldn't have stayed so close to home before," she muttered sadly.

Almost a week later, I had a bad spell of bleeding and Mama kept me in bed all day. She didn't like the sort of pain I was having either. She fed me and washed me down and burned some banana leaves. She was praying all the time, and always trying to smile at me through a mask of worry.

"I'm all right, Mama," I told her. "I'll be just fine."

"Sure you will, honey." She squeezed my hand and read to me, and sometimes she put on the records and listened to music with me. She sat there and talked more about her childhood than ever. Her voice took on a rhythm and melody of its own, often serving as a lullaby.

At night I called to her in my dreams, and sometimes called for Pierre. I often saw him the way he was when we first met. If I stared out my window long enough, he was there in a pirogue, waving and smiling up at me, or just standing on the dock. His blue cravat was always waving in the breeze.

Sometime Mama would come upon me and ask me why I was crying. I would have to touch my face to feel the tears. "Am I crying, Mama?"

"Oh, honey, my precious little Gabriel," she would say, and kiss me.

Almost exactly two weeks after Mama had told Daddy I would give birth, I woke in the middle of the night with the most excruciating pain I ever had. My screams brought Mama hurrying to my side. She put on the butane light and gasped. My bed was soaked with my blood.

"Oh, Gabriel," she cried, and went to get hot towels. Daddy must have been sleeping under my window because moments later he was at the screen door. I heard him ask loudly what was going on.

"A baby's coming," Mama declared, and he was gone.

Soon after the bleeding started, my water broke. It was then and only then that Mama told me the most astounding news of all. She knelt at my side, took my hand into hers, and in a loud whisper said, "There'll be two babies, Gabriel."

"What? Two? Are you sure, Mama?"

"I've been sure for quite a while, honey, but I didn't want to say anything for fear that scoundrel would go and sell the other one just as quickly."

"Two?" My heart was pounding so hard, I had trouble breathing. Mama put a cool cloth on my forehead.

"You don't want me to give them both, do you, honey? It's a blessing. You'll have your child. Those rich folks won't have everything after all."

"You want a grandchild, Mama?"

"Oui, " she said, smiling, but there was something else in her eyes, something she saw that I now saw, too. Maybe I did have some of the traiteur in me, I thought.

"I understand, Mama," I said.

Mama bit down on her lower lip and nodded, tears streaming down her face. Then she got to work.

My pains were so intense, I know I passed in and out of consciousness. It went on for hours and hours, right through the rest of the night. Morning came and still the first child had yet to be born. Mama was exhausted herself.

"They're fighting to stay out of this world," Mama said angrily. "We're wisest before we're born, it seems. Push, honey," Mama ordered. "Go on."