Whispers of the Bayou (19 page)

…at times a feeling of sadness
Passed o’er her soul, as the sailing shade of clouds in the moonlight
Flitted across the floor and darkened the room for a moment.
And as she gazed from the window she saw serenely the moon pass,
Forth from the folds of a cloud, and one star follow her footsteps.

After making a number of detours to make sure we weren’t being followed, I turned finally from the empty road onto the long driveway of Twin Oaks. It was nearly ten p.m. and I felt terrible about showing up here so late, especially after such a difficult day. I dialed the cell phone number Lisa had given me, and though it sounded as though I had roused her from sleep, she said she’d be at the door waiting.

True to her word, Lisa was there tying the belt on her robe. She ushered us inside, locked the door behind us, and showed us to the bedroom that was to be ours while we were here. It was down a hall to the left of the kitchen, next to Deena’s room, and through the walls I could hear the vague rumble of the older woman’s snores. Our suitcases were already there, waiting on the floor between twin beds. The room itself was so cramped and small that there was barely enough space to move around, but it would do, at least for tonight.

“Hey, it’s not so hot in here,” I whispered suddenly, realizing that cold air was pouring down from a vent on the ceiling.

“Charles put his foot down and made Deena turn on the central air ’cause you’re here,” Lisa whispered in return, rolling her eyes. “They had a big fight about it until he promised her that he would prorate the gas bill so she wouldn’t have to pay for it.”

Lisa led us next back up the hall and past the kitchen, to point out the bathroom we should use. She offered to make us a late night snack, but I declined and thanked her for her help.

“See you in the morning, then,” she said, and with that she padded off toward her bedroom in the opposite direction.

Leading the exhausted Tess back to our tiny bedroom, I unpacked our nightgowns and toothbrushes and helped her get ready for bed as quickly as possible. After I had tucked her in, I dimmed the lights and headed quietly down the hall to the bathroom where I took a long, hot shower. Tess also needed a bath, but she could take one in the morning.

The pounding water felt wonderful on the back of my neck and head, working out the kinks of this difficult day, smoothing out the aching roots of hair that had been twisted up since morning.

Despite the urge to linger in the hot steam, I finally finished my shower, toweled off, and put on my nightgown. When I got back to our bedroom, I was surprised to see that Tess was still awake, so overwhelmed by her own exhaustion that she couldn’t go to sleep. Afraid her whining might wake up Deena, I spoke to her in soothing tones as I unwrapped the towel from my head and rubbed it around on my hair, careful not to reveal the bald patch in the back. Finished, I hung the towel on a nearby chair and quickly ran a comb through my hair.

“Do you remember how we put you to bed when you were just a baby?” I whispered to Tess, knowing that at the tender age of five she already loved stories about her own youth.

“How?” she asked, a tiny pout tugging at her bottom lip.

“Come here. I’ll show you.”

With a grunt, I reached down, scooped her up, and put her on my hip. I carried her over to the window, explaining softly that when she was little
we used to go all over the apartment and tell different things good night. Here in our tiny room, I reached up and parted the curtains, revealing the moon-splashed lawn outside.

“Good night, moon,” I said in a singsongy voice. “See you in the morning.”

“See you in the morning,” my child echoed.

I let the curtain fall closed and walked several steps to the door.

“Good night, doorknob,” I whispered. “See you in the morning.”

“See you in the morning,” Tess added.

I glanced down to see that her eyelids were drooping.

Together, we went around the small room and said good night to the mirror and the lamp and suitcases, slowly calming her toward sleep. By the time we had worked our way back to the bed, her little head was resting against my shoulder. There in the darkness, I just stood there and rocked back and forth for a moment, thinking that sometimes I loved my child so much it hurt inside, like a knife pressing into my ribs.

Leaning awkwardly, I pulled back the covers and laid Tess on the bed. She climbed down and snuggled in as I tucked the sheets around her. I sat on the bed beside her, smoothing the hair from her forehead as she closed her eyes.

“Mommy?” she whispered.

“Yes, baby?”

“Is there a dragon behind the wall?”

I stifled a laugh.

“No, that’s just somebody snoring.”

“Okay.”

Tess didn’t speak again, and soon I realized that she was asleep, her breathing even and soft. I sat there for a long time, just watching her little chest rise and fall with each breath.

My baby’s cheeks were rosy, her lips almost puckered, and there in the soft glow of the lamp she looked like a tiny china doll. There was so much of blond-haired, blue-eyed Nathan in Tess’s features that sometimes I forgot to look for myself in there too. Here in the region of my birth, I couldn’t help but wonder not just how much of me was in my child, but
how much of my mother, my grandmother? If Tess did have the slope of their chin or a similar wave in her hair, how would I even know? I wouldn’t, for I couldn’t recall either woman and had never seen any pictures. AJ always said it was better not to look back.

Tess let out a heavy sigh, and I again reached up and gently touched her hair, twining one soft little curl around my finger. I was filled with a surge of love, deep and strong, the kind of love that filled me up and made me more than whole.

Then, in a flash, my mind filled with the image of Willy Pedreaux, dead in his bed, a scrawny lump under white sheets.

With a gasp, I released Tess’ curl and pulled back my hand, throat-clinching fear engulfing the love I had felt just the moment before.

I closed my eyes, a surge of dread rising up from deep inside. It wasn’t the pulse-pounding, shaking-sweating panic I’d felt on the airplane, but a different sensation entirely, an old, familiar, and disturbing ripple of fear that ran from heart to stomach and back again. I became nauseous with the resurgence of my most deep and secret shame: The truth was that I had spent much of Tess’s lifetime preparing myself for the impending inevitability of her death.

Since the day I first learned I was pregnant five years before, I had been plagued with the horrible, persistent conviction that one day my child was going die, maybe even before she was born. I couldn’t explain it—I had never told anyone about it—but even after an easy delivery and healthy birth, the fear persisted. Those first few months, I would stand beside her crib for hours, terrified that at any moment she might stop breathing. When she survived infancy and became a toddler, I just knew she would toddle off a ledge one day or fall down a flight of stairs.

By the time she started preschool, I was convinced that the school would be bombed or that a kidnapper or murderer would steal her away when the teacher wasn’t looking. Of course, I got through the days by reminding myself that I was being overprotective and irrational, that nothing bad had happened to her thus far, which was good proof that probably nothing ever would. Still, logic was weak compared to the strength of my conviction. I suspected that losing my mother at a young age had gone
a long way in creating this fear in me. Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, the knowledge that Tess could die at any time never completely left my mind.

Even now, as I sat here in this tender moment, rather than relish the precious treasure I had been given, all I could think of was death, of an old man whose lungs filled with a fluid that could not be expelled, whose yellow eyes solidified into twin marbles of nothingness as I stood nearby and watched.

Swallowing hard, I moved to my own bed and got between the sheets, my hand shaking so badly when I went to turn off the light that I knocked something on the floor. Glancing down, I saw that it was a book, a black leather-bound Bible. I leaned down and picked it up, put it in a drawer, and then turned off the lamp. In the dark, I listened to Deena’s snores and the whisper of the air conditioner and the creaks and moans of the old house, and I thought about death and life and my little girl.

“Good night, my baby,” I whispered out loud, hoping the sound of my own voice would comfort me. “See you in the morning.”

I closed my eyes, overwhelmed with exhaustion, knowing with certainty that truly loving someone required not just selflessness and generosity—two things I could handle much of the time—but also bravery. Loving someone without fear overwhelming that love was an act of immeasurable bravery.

And that kind of bravery was something I had in very short supply—for my child, my husband, or even for myself.

And through the night were heard the mysterious sounds of the desert,
Far off, indistinct, as of wave or wind in the forest,
Mixed with the whoop of the crane and the roar of the grim alligator.

“Ooo, Mommy’s in big trouble.”

I awoke to the sound of Tess’s voice. Opening my eyes, I rolled over to see her standing there between the beds, pointing at my head. The room was still dark, but the moon glowed through the sheer curtains, casting a triangle of light across my face.

“Mommy, you let somebody draw a picture on your head,” Tess announced, her eyes wide. “In permanent marker! And you cut off your hair!”

Rubbing my eyes, I propped up on one elbow, mad at myself for not thinking to put my hair in a ponytail before I went to sleep.

“I know,” I whispered. “Grandma Janet and I were just playing around, trying something new. But it doesn’t look very good, and now I’m sorry we did it.”

“Grandma Janet says you’re not supposed to draw on people or walls, only paper,” she said, the words sounding as if they were coming straight from AJ’s mouth.

“That’s true. It was a dumb thing to do.”

Tess reached up and gently pushed my face away so that she could take a closer look.

“What’s it a picture of, Mommy?”

“Keep your voice down, honey. It’s just a doodle,” I told her, trying to act nonchalant. I thought about adding that it was a secret, our little secret. But then I was afraid that might give it too much importance, turning the whole thing into big news, which to Tess was almost as much fun as big trouble. “I’m embarrassed about it,” I said instead, “so I think I’ll keep it covered with my hair until it wears off.”

“Good idea. It looks weird.”

Grabbing my watch from the bedside table, I saw that it was a little after five a.m.

“Tess, we have to go back to sleep. It’s too early to get up yet.”

“I know, Mommy,” she replied, smoothing down my hair so that it would cover the tattoo. “But I got scared. Can I get in your bed with you?”

“Um, sure,” I said, though there wasn’t much room in the narrow twin. I wasn’t in the mood for a few sharp kicks to the kidneys—par for the course when sharing a bed with Tess—but I didn’t want her to be frightened. I helped her climb over me so that she was wedged between me and the wall.