Tarnished Gold Read online

  "I think the events made the decision for me, madame," I said. No matter what she claimed to be doing for me, I wanted to be sure she understood I was the real victim, not her.

  "Whatever," she said. "How's your appetite in general?" she inquired.

  "Unpredictable. Sometimes I'm very hungry in the morning, and sometimes I don't feel like eating anything. Even the thought of food upsets my stomach."

  "Pregnant women have these weird cravings, don't they?" she asked, once again making me feel as if I were the adult and she the young woman.

  "They can. Mama told me about a pregnant woman who used to eat bark."

  "Bark? You mean from a tree?"

  "Out, madame."

  "Ugh," she said, grimacing. "I was just referring to strange combinations. Do you have any such cravings?"

  I thought a moment. "I had a passing craving for pepper jelly smeared over a piece of pecan pie."

  She nodded. "Yes, that's more like it," she remarked. I started to smile, but she suddenly looked very angry.

  "I want you to tell me these things as they occur. Hold nothing back," she ordered. "I must know exactly what to say to people. We'll be showing soon and they will have questions about my pregnancy. Understand?"

  "Oui, madame."

  "Is there anything else you want to tell me right now?" I thought and then shook my head.

  "Very well, eat your dinner," she said, and ate silently for a while, her eyes vacantly focused on some thought rather than on me. All the food was delicious. I enjoyed every morsel.

  "There's French chocolate silk pie," she announced, and lifted a cover off the dish.

  "I'll have just a small piece, madame. Mama told me to watch my weight."

  "Oh? There!" she pounced. "You see, there was something else for you to tell me. Watch my weight. Must I discover these things by accident?"

  "I didn't think . . ."

  "You've got to think." She leaned forward, her eyes beady. "We have an elaborate and complicated scheme to conduct. We must trust each other with the most intimate details about our bodies," she said, and I wondered what detail about her body she imagined I would have the vaguest interest in. I decided to risk a question.

  "Have you ever seen a doctor or another traiteur about your difficulty getting pregnant, madame?"

  She pulled herself back in the seat. Her face turned crimson and her eyes widened. "Don't assume because you are living here under these circumstances that you may take liberties with my privacy," she declared.

  "I meant no disrespect, madame. You yourself just said we must trust each other."

  She stared a moment and then, just as suddenly as she had become indignant, she erased that indignation and smiled.

  "Yes, that's true. No. I haven't gone to any physicians or traiteurs. I trust in God to eventually bless my fertility. I am, as you can see, in every other way a healthy, vigorous person."

  "Mama's helped some women get pregnant," I offered. She raised her eyebrows.

  "I'm sure she would help you, too."

  "If I ever get that desperate, I will call on her," Gladys said. The grandfather clock bonged and she shifted her gaze to the door.

  "Did you want me to return to my room before Octavious comes home?" I asked, assuming that was what concerned her.

  "Octavious won't be home until much later," she said. "Your mother said you must exercise to make the birthing easier. You can go for a walk around the house, but don't go down the driveway, and whatever you do, don't speak to any of my field workers if one of them should be nearby. My maids, however, will return around eleven, so you must be upstairs before that."

  "Oui, madame."

  She stared at me again, her face softening. "Do you want coffee?" she asked, nodding at the silver pot on a warmer.

  "Please," I said. She rose and actually served me. Then she sat down and sighed deeply.

  "I am not happy with what Octavious has done, of course," she began, gazing around the large dining hall, "but the prospect of little feet pitter-pattering over these floors, and hearing another voice in this house, is a wonderful thing. I will spend all my time with my baby. Finally I will have a family."

  "You have no brothers or sisters, Madame Tate?"

  "No," she said. "My mother . . . my mother did not do well when she was pregnant with me, and the delivery, I was told, was very difficult. She almost died."

  "I'm sorry."

  "My father wanted a son, of course, and was very unhappy. Then he finally settled on finding a proper son-in-law, proper in his eyes," she added, almost spitting the words. She glared at the table a moment and then raised her eyes quickly. "But that's all in the past now. I don't want to think about it." She smirked. "I would appreciate it if you would not ask me so many personal questions," she continued, her voice taking on the steely edge of a razor. "For me to answer them is like tearing a scab off a wound."

  "I'm sorry, madame. I didn't intend .

  "Everyone has such good intentions. No one means any harm," she said with a sneer. Then her face crumpled and she looked like a little girl for a moment. "Daddy, my daddy, he never meant any harm either. All the men in my life meant no harm." She laughed a thin, hollow laugh. "Even Octavious meant you no harm, he says. He meant to give you the gift of the love experience. Can you imagine him telling me such a ridiculous thing? I think he really believes that."

  I shook my head, my heart pounding, not sure what to expect next. She didn't fail to surprise and shock me. Her face turned into granite again.

  "Where do you think he has gone tonight?" she asked with venom. "To give some other poor, deprived young woman the benefit of his love experience. So," she said, her eyes steaming as she leaned over her plate toward me. "Don't feel sorry for yourself. Feel sorry for me and do whatever I ask to make things right."

  I could barely nod. My throat wouldn't swallow and my fingers felt numb.

  She sat back. The granite softened again and she sighed deeply. "Go enjoy your walk," she said with a wave of her hand. "Your inquiries have given me indigestion."

  I rose slowly. "Can I help you with anything?" I asked, nodding at the table.

  "What? No, you fool. Do you think I do anything with the dishes and food? My maids will take care of it all when they return. Just go, go."

  "Thank you, madame. It was a delicious dinner," I said, but she seemed lost in her own thoughts. I left her sitting there, her head tilted slightly to the right, her eyes watery and her chin quivering.

  I did feel sorrier for her than I did for myself at the moment. Despite her big house, filled with the most expensive and wonderful artifacts, furniture, paintings; despite the money her and Octavious's factory made, she appeared to be one of the saddest and most unhappy women I had ever met.

  What was happiness? I wondered. From what well was it drawn? Money and wealth in and of itself didn't guarantee it. I knew far poorer families in the bayou who had ten, no, twenty smiles for every one on Gladys Tate's face. If she doubled her lifespan, she wouldn't laugh and sing as much as they had already laughed and sung.

  No one was truly happy unless he or she had someone who loved him or her and someone she or he could love, I realized, and with that realization came the understanding of why Gladys Tate had so eagerly, willingly, and now cleverly worked on taking the baby into her home and into her life.

  She would finally draw up a pail of pleasure from the well of happiness, but the path to get there was still cluttered with obstacles and even dangers. How I wished this journey would soon be ended.

  6

  Madame's Secret Pain

  .

  Days passed into weeks, and weeks into

  months, with me following the same routine. I had no clock, so I told time by the rays of light that filtered through the shade and by the sounds and noises in the house to which I had grown accustomed. The maids followed a strict schedule and always cleaned the rooms right below me about the same time of day. I could hear their muffled voices and envied
them for their occasional laughter. I couldn't recall the last time I had laughed so freely. Most of the time my thoughts were tangled with knots of worry and weighted down with rocks of sorrow, for I knew how troubled Mama was about my state of affairs and could easily imagine her tossing and turning at night, dwelling on me trapped in this small room.

  The silvery sounds of water swishing through pipes in the morning told me when the Tates were rising, and the aromas of foods being cooked suggested how soon my meals would be served. Despite her veiled threats to the contrary, Gladys Tate didn't miss delivering a meal, nor did she make me wait as long as she had first threatened, I think that was Mama's doing. Mama frightened her by telling her the baby's health could be in jeopardy if I was in any way denied my basic needs.

  The only time I was denied anything was once when my lamp ran out of kerosene. I told her and she chided me for leaving it on too long or too high. To emphasize her point, she didn't bring me a new supply of kerosene for two days, claiming she didn't have it. I had to sit in the darkness once the sun went down and I couldn't read or sew. I asked her to bring me some candles at least, but she said she was afraid of my causing a fire.

  "I often sit in the darkness," she told me. "It's soothing."

  It wasn't soothing to me, but I knew she would have the kerosene miraculously for me on the third day, for that was the day Mama was scheduled to visit. Everything was always made perfect when Mama came. I began to feel like a prisoner of war visited occasionally by the Red Cross. To pass the time and amuse myself, I pretended that I was a spy the Germans had caught and Gladys Tate was the prison camp warden. I plotted an escape, which I discussed with my night heron while he paraded on the railing.

  "I'll tie my bedsheet to my blanket and my clothes and make a rope down which I will slide," I said. "But I better wait until midnight. The guards are careless then."

  My heron lifted his wings and bobbed his neck as if to say, "Good plan."

  It finally brought me some laughter. The evenings had become my favorite time, When I was permitted to raise the window shade, I could measure the passing of the hours with the movement of the moon or with the movement of stars and planets like Venus. Mama had taught me about the heavens, the constellations, and I knew how to read the night sky, I loved to sit by my small window on the world and watch the evening thunderstorms, the sizzling lightning that slashed the darkness and sent a strong breeze my way.

  I would sit for hours at the window and listen to the sounds of the evening, bedazzled by the flickering fireflies that looked like sparks of someone's campfire shooting through the darkness. Even the drone of insects was pleasing to someone like me, someone shut up for almost all the day and night. I took such pleasure in the hoot of an owl or the caw of a hawk. Aside from Mama and Gladys Tate, I hadn't spoken with another human being for so long.

  Gladys Tate brought out her tape measure more frequently, and after the fifth month, Gladys decided I was showing enough for any casual observer to notice and accurately guess about my being pregnant. Gladys said it meant that I could no longer take a walk outside on Thursday night for fear some worker would see a pregnant young woman and wonder who she was and why she was always here. Although those walks weren't much because I was confined to the area around the house and couldn't go into the woods or approach the swamp, they had been something to look forward to, a change and a chance to visit with Nature.

  Just as she promised she would do, Gladys Tate took to wearing something under her own clothes that, to my amazement, continued to accurately match my own development. She even padded her bra. She would have me stand beside her and confirm that we were about the same size. I couldn't understand why it was so important to her that she be that precise, but I didn't ask because questions like that only infuriated her.

  On the other hand, her interrogation of me concerning my symptoms and my health was incessant. She went so far as to ask me if I was having any strange dreams, especially about the baby, and if so, would I describe them? When she told Mama I was eating nothing less than what she was eating, she wasn't lying. Before Mama arrived, Gladys reviewed every meal and told me what I had finished, she had finished; what I had left over, she had left over, not that I left over much. She was constantly changing the menu, cataloging foods to see what I fancied and what I didn't.

  "The cook understands my finickiness," she told me. "It's just part of being pregnant. In some ways it's nice being pregnant. Everyone excuses your eccentricities," she concluded. I told her I'd rather not be pregnant and not be excused, but she didn't appreciate my reply.

  One day I didn't hear her come up the stairway, and when she opened the door, she found me crying. She demanded to know what was wrong, grimacing as if I were doing her a terrible injustice.

  "I'm feeding you well. You're getting whatever you need. You're not going to suffer any

  embarrassment after this ordeal is over. What more do you want from me?" she wailed, her hands on her padded hips.

  "I don't want anything from you, Madame Tate. I'm not crying right now because of this," I said, indicating the room and my confinement.

  "Then why are you crying?"

  "I don't know. Sometimes ... I just cry. Sometimes I just feel so sad, I can't help myself. I'm on emotional pins and needles."

  The anger left her face and was quickly replaced by curiosity and concern.

  "Does it happen often?"

  "Often enough," I said.

  "Did you ask your mother about it?" she pursued.

  "Yes. She said it's not uncommon for pregnant women to be this way."

  "What way?"

  "Shifting abruptly from happiness to sadness and without any apparent reason," I explained. "I'm sorry," I said. She stared at me a moment and nodded.

  That night, when I went to the bathroom to empty my chamber pot and bathe, I heard sobbing coming from her room, and when I peered in the doorway, I saw her sitting on her bed, wiping real tears from her cheeks. Suddenly she stopped and then laughed. Then she started again. I left before she discovered me watching her, and for the first time, I began to consider that this situation might be just as emotionally draining for her as if was for me.

  Of course, I realized that even though

  pregnancy made me emotionally fragile, some of my gloom had to have to do with my being caged up in Gladys Tate's old playroom. I didn't want to complain and make everyone feel bad and suffer any of Gladys Tate's lectures about how much she was doing to solve this terrible problem and how much I should be grateful.

  But despite my books, my embroidery, my sketching and keeping of the journal, I had so much time on my hands and nothing left to discover about my tiny, new world. Where could I put my eyes where they hadn't been dozens of times? I spent hours daydreaming, imagining myself free and outside, walking through the tall grass, dipping my hand into the canal water, smelling the honeysuckle and magnolia blossoms or the damp odor of the

  hydrangeas and pecan and oak trees after a good rain. I imagined the cool breeze coming in from the Gulf caressing my face or making strands of my hair dance over my forehead. I heard the quacking ducks flying north for the summer and saw the nutrias working feverishly on their dome houses.

  When Mama found out I was no longer permitted to take my walks on Thursdays, she complained to Gladys and told her it was unhealthy for a pregnant woman to remain sedentary.

  "You have to keep her legs and stomach strong," Mama chastised. "She needs exercise."

  Gladys's solution was to permit me to wander through the house after dinner.

  "Just keep away from the windows. I don't want anyone knowing you're here, especially now," she emphasized. To make the point, she drew every curtain and kept the rooms as dimly lit as possible.

  The Tate mansion was filled with expensive furnishings, many of them antiques, some of which predated the Civil War. The living room looked like a room in a museum. It seemed to me that no one ever used it. The maids kept it polished and clean, not a cu
shion out of place, not a speck of dust on a table. The Persian rug looked like it had never been trod upon. There were artifacts everywhere, some Oriental vases, ivory figurines, crystal and glass pieces on tables and shelves and in a cherry-wood glass case. Rich satin drapes framed the windows.

  Gladys Tate let me peruse the library to choose new books to read, but I always had to restrict myself to no more than two at a time and always replace the two I had finished before taking any additional volumes. This way, she explained, no one would notice any were missing. Of course, I was forbidden to touch anything else. I could look at everything, go practically anywhere, but never disturb a thing. It made me feel like I was walking through a house made of thin china, terrified that I would bump into a table and send some very valuable piece shattering or leave footprints on the immaculate floors.

  One Thursday night I ventured farther into the upstairs corridor. Usually the doors were kept closed and Gladys Tate made it very clear that I was never to open a closed door during my walk. This particular night, however, one of the always-closed doors was almost half open. I paused and gazed in, as timidly as a turtle at first, and then more like a curious kitten when I saw a pair of man's trousers draped over a chair. The closet door was open, so I could see the contents: all men's clothing. I realized that Octavious used this room. What did that mean? He and Gladys weren't sleeping together? Was it because of her fabricated pregnancy or was it always this way? I wondered.

  I said nothing about it until Gladys and I sat down to our usual cold Thursday night dinner the following week.

  "Your mother says that walking up and down the stairs is actually good for a pregnant woman, as long as she doesn't overdo it," Gladys remarked. "She says too many women baby themselves and are babied when they become pregnant. I'm sorry you can only do the big staircase on Thursday nights. However, you can walk up and down your own little stairway quietly when you come down to use the bathroom, I suppose.