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Just as I reached for my diploma, Daddy jumped up in the audience and shouted.

"That there's my daughter, the first Landry to graduate school! Hal-le-luja!"

There was a roar of laughter. I felt my stomach sink to my knees. I turned and saw Mama tugging on Daddy's shirt to get him to sit down. Tears blinded my vision. I took my diploma quickly and ran off the stage and into the school building to escape the laughing eyes. I was supposed to go back to my seat and march away with my class, but I couldn't do it, and it wasn't only because of Daddy's outburst.

Monsieur Tate's eyes had burned through my graduation gown. I had felt naked on that stage, naked and obviously violated. I had felt as if everyone in Houma could see what had happened to me. I ran down the corridor and into the girls' bathroom where I sat on a closed toilet seat and cried, my diploma in my hands. Moments later, Mrs. Parlange came rushing in after me.

"What are you doing? Mr. Ternant is having heart failure out there. You're supposed to go back to you

r seat and leave the stage with your class. You knew that, Gabriel. Why are you crying?" she followed, as if she first opened her eyes and saw me.

"I can't go back, Mrs. Parlange. I can't. I'm sorry. I'll apologize to Mr. Ternant later."

"Oh, my dear. Dear, dear," she said, waving her right hand back and forth to fan her face.

Bewilderment clouded her expression. "This has never happened before. I really don't know what to do."

"I'm sorry," I wailed.

"Yes, well, yes," she said, and walked out on tiptoes.

I choked back my sobs, feeling as if I had cried dry that bottomless well of tears. Then I took a deep breath and looked at my diploma. How proud Mama was of me and how sick to her stomach she must be right now, too, I thought. I sat there, not sure of what I should do next. My heart stopped racing, finally, and I rose. When I gazed at myself in the mirror, I saw a face flushed and streaked with dry tears. I washed and dried it, took another deep breath, and walked out just as the processional to take the students off the stage had begun. I was at the doorway when they began to enter.

"What happened to you?" Yvette demanded.

"You made a fool out of the whole class," Evelyn said. "What you do, see your ghost

boyfriend?"

"What ghost boyfriend?" Patti Arnot asked, which brought a half dozen others around us quickly.

"You'll have to ask her," Evelyn said. "I'm disgusted with her behavior."

"Me too," Yvette said.

It was as if I had broken out with measles. Everyone kept away from me. I retreated to a corner and took off my graduation gown and cap, just as Mr. Tennant came looking for me.

"You graduated," he said angrily before I could apologize, "so I can't punish you, put you on detention, or have you wash blackboards until your fingers turn blue, but what you did out there embarrassed us all, young lady."

"I'm sorry, sir," I said, my eyes down.

"Why did you do such a thing?"

I didn't reply except to say, "I'm sorry."

"Well, it's not a very auspicious way to begin your adult life. I'll take that," he said, seizing the box that contained my gown and cap. "Who knows what you'll do next, and these things are expensive."

He pivoted and marched off. Everyone who heard was glaring at me. Defeat seemed all around me.

I looked away and started for the exit.

"She should have graduated in the swamp with her animal friends instead of us," someone shouted, and everyone laughed. I emerged from the laughter like someone drowning in a murky pool and hurried outside where I found Mama, worried, waiting. Daddy was off to the right shouting at someone who had passed a remark about me.

"I'm sorry, Mama," I said before she could ask why I had run off the stage.

"It's all right, honey. Let's go before your father gets arrested again. Jack!" she cried. He stopped shouting, his fist dangling above him, and looked at us. Then he glared at the man with whom he was arguing.

"Lucky for you I gotta go," he spat.