Hidden Jewel, Page 2

  “And you have a wonderful figure, the sort of figure that will make most women green with envy. I don’t want your good looks to go to your head. Be modest and grateful, but don’t be the insecure little person I once was. That’s when people take advantage,” she cautioned me, and her eyes grew smaller and darker so I knew she was remembering one of the sadder or uglier events of her life.

  Of course, my brothers and I knew that Mommy had been born and brought up in the bayou. Until she was sixteen, her father, after whom my brother Pierre was named, didn’t know she existed. He thought her twin sister, Gisselle, was the only child born out of his love affair with Gabriel Landry. He was married at the time, but his wife, Daphne, accepted Gisselle and pretended she was her own when my great-grand-father Dumas purchased her from the Landrys and brought her to New Orleans as soon as she was born. My mother’s surprise appearance on their doorstep sixteen years later nearly exposed the grand deception, but the family concocted the story that she had been stolen immediately after she was born and had returned when the Cajun couple who stole her were struck with a fit of conscience.

  From time to time, Mommy described how difficult life was living with a twin sister and a stepmother who resented her, but Mommy hated speaking ill of the dead. She had been brought up by her grandmere Catherine, who was a Cajun traiteur, a healer who combined religious, medical, and superstitious methods to treat the sick and injured. She believed in spirits. She told me that her grandmere Catherine and Nina Jackson, the Dumas family’s old voodoo-practicing cook, would warn her that if she dragged up the dead with these stories, they could haunt us all.

  Mommy didn’t try to get me to believe in these things; she just wanted me to respect people who did and not take any chances. Daddy sometimes reprimanded her and told her, “Pearl is a woman of science. She wants to be a doctor, doesn’t she? Don’t fill her with those tales.”

  But when it came to keeping my twin brothers in line, Daddy wasn’t above trying to scare them with Mommy’s stories. “If you don’t stop running up and down those stairs, you’ll wake up the ghost of your evil aunt, and she’ll haunt you when you sleep,” he warned. Mommy would turn a twinkling eye of reprimand at him, and he would go sputtering off, complaining about a man’s home no longer being his castle.

  “I wish you and Daddy hadn’t decided on such a big party for me, Mommy,” I said as I rose to get washed and dressed for the work ahead. Daddy had hired one of the famous New Orleans jazz bands to play on the patio. He had a pastry chef from one of the finer restaurants to make desserts, and he had employed waiters and waitresses. He had even contracted with a film company to record the affair. He was doing so much for my graduation, I couldn’t imagine what he would do for my wedding.

  But then, I couldn’t imagine getting married, either. I couldn’t envision having my own home and raising my own children. The responsibilities were so enormous. But what I really couldn’t imagine was falling so deeply in love with someone that I would want to spend the rest of my life with him, see him every morning at the breakfast table and in the evening at the dinner table, go everywhere with only him, and be so beautiful and so desirable all the time that he would want to be only with me. I had had boyfriends, of course. Right now I was going steady with Claude Avery, but I couldn’t envision spending my life with him, even though he was one of the handsomest boys at school, tall with dark hair and silver blue eyes. Many times Claude had told me he loved me and waited for me to say the same about him, but all I could muster was “I like you very much, too, Claude.”

  Surely love had to be something different, something more special, I thought. There were many mysteries in the world, many problems to be solved, but none seemed as impossible as the answer to the question What is love? My girlfriends hated it when I challenged their dramatic declarations of affection for one boy or another, and they were always accusing me of being too inquisitive and looking at things with microscopic eyes.

  “Why do you have to ask so many questions?” they complained, especially my best friend Catherine Didion. Catherine and I were different in so many ways, it was hard to understand why we were so close, but perhaps it was those very differences that attracted us. In a way it was our curiosity about each other that kept us so interested in each other. Neither of us fully understood why the other was the way she was.

  “It’s not such a big party,” Mommy said. “Besides, we’re proud of you, and we want the whole world to know it.”

  “Can I see my portrait this morning, Mommy?” I asked. Mommy had painted a picture of me in my graduation gown. She was planning to unveil it tonight at our party, but I had yet to see the finished work.

  “No. You have to wait. It’s bad luck to show a portrait before it’s completed. I have a little touching up to do today,” she said, and I didn’t protest. Mommy believed in good and bad gris-gris, and never wanted to tamper with fate. She still wore the goodluck dime that Nina Jackson had given her years ago. It was on a string around her right ankle.

  “Now I’d better go speak to those brothers of yours to be sure they don’t make a nuisance of themselves around this house today.”

  “Will you help me decide what to wear and do my hair later, Mommy?”

  “Of course, dear,” she said just as my phone rang. “Don’t spend your morning gossiping with Cather-ine,” Mommy warned before leaving to go to the twins.

  “I won’t,” I promised, but when I said hello, it wasn’t Catherine, I greeted, but Claude.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, it’s here: our day,” Claude announced. He too was a senior and he too was graduating, but I knew he wasn’t referring only to that. Claude and I had been going steady for nearly a year. We had kissed and petted and once been almost naked beside each other at Ormand Lelock’s house when his parents left him alone for two days. We had nearly gone all the way twice, but I had always resisted. I told Claude that for me it had to be something very special, and he had come up with the idea that it would be something we would do on graduation night. I hadn’t agreed, but I hadn’t disagreed, either, and I knew Claude thought that meant it would happen.

  The first time it had almost happened, I stopped him by explaining why it was a prime time for me to get pregnant. He was frustrated and annoyed and fumed as I explained a woman’s cycle.

  “It starts when an egg is released,” I began.

  “I go out with you,” he moaned, “and find I’m in science class getting a lecture on human reproduction. You think too much; you’re always thinking!”

  Was he right? I wondered. When his fingers touched me in secret places, I trembled, but I couldn’t help analyzing and thinking of why my heart was pound-ing. I thought about adrenaline and why my skin had become warm. Textbook illustrations flashed before my eyes, and Claude complained that I was too distant and uninvolved.

  The next time we were alone he was prepared and proudly showed me his protection. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I told him I wasn’t ready.

  “Ready!” he exclaimed. “How do you know when you’re ready? And don’t give me some complicated scientific answer.”

  What was my answer? We had been having a lot of fun together, and all of our friends assumed we were in love. The other students at school considered us a perfect couple. But I knew we weren’t perfect. There had to be something else, something more that happens between a man and a woman, I thought.

  I watched Mommy and Daddy when they were together at parties or at dinners, and I saw the way they were in tune with each other, reading each other’s faces, knowing each other’s feelings, even when a roomful of people separated them. There was an electricity in their eyes, a need and a love for each other that made me feel they were secure in their affection. Maybe I was asking for too much from life, but I wanted a love like theirs, and I knew I didn’t have it with Claude.

  I didn’t know how to tell Claude that he wasn’t the one, and I almost talked m
yself into doing it with him just to satisfy him and satisfy my scientific curiosity about sex. But I had resisted right up to this night, the night Claude planned for us to make love.

  “It’s all set,” he said. “Lester Anderson’s parents are leaving for Natchez right after graduation. We’ve got his house for our private party.”

  “I can’t leave my own party, Claude.”

  “Not right away, no; but later, when we’re all going out, I’m sure your parents will understand. They were young once, too,” he said. He had a way of turning his eyes and looking at a girl from head to foot that made her self-conscious. Most of the girls giggled and felt flattered when Claude did this. During the last few weeks, I’d suspected that Claude was seeing someone else on the side, maybe Diane Ratner, whose gaze followed us so closely down the hallway that I felt the hair on the back of my neck tingle.

  “My mother never had a party like this when she was my age,” I said softly.

  “She’ll still understand, I’m sure. You want to go, don’t you?” he asked quickly. When I didn’t reply immediately, he punched out another “Don’t you?” his voice full of desperation.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then it’s set. I’ll see you later. I’ve got a lot to do before the graduation ceremony, but I’ll pick you up.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I love you,” he added and hung up before I could respond. I sat there for a moment, my heart pounding. Would I finally surrender myself tonight? Should I? Maybe I was just finding excuses because I was simply afraid.

  Mommy and I had had our intimate conversations, but she never really answered my questions. Instead, she told me no one could.

  “Only you can answer those questions for yourself, Pearl. Only you will know when and with whom it’s right for you. Make it something special and it will be. Women who treat sex casually usually get treated casually. Do you understand?”

  I did and I didn’t. I knew the fundamentals, the science, but I didn’t know the magic, for that’s what love had to be for me, I thought, something magical.

  When I went downstairs I found the house at sixes and sevens. People were scurrying to and fro, follow-ing Mommy’s directions to change this and rearrange that. Flowers were being placed in vases everywhere. The maids were hunting down the smallest specks of dust. Every window was being washed, all the furniture polished. The hum of vacuum cleaners filled the air. Mommy was having our ballroom decorated. A six-foot-long glittering Congratulations sign was being hung from the ceiling, as were multicolored balloons, rainbow streamers, and tinsel. The jazz band had arrived to check out the acoustics and set up their stands and instruments.

  “Good morning, Pearl,” Daddy called as soon as he came in from the patio. “How’s my little intern?” He kissed my forehead and embraced me quickly. Noth-ing I had done or said had pleased Daddy more than my decision to become a doctor. It was something he had once hoped for himself.

  “I went as far as premed,” he had told me.

  “Why didn’t you continue, Daddy?” I had asked. For a few moments it looked as if he wouldn’t answer. His lips tightened; his eyes grew small, his face dark.

  “Events carried me in a different direction,” he replied cryptically. “It wasn’t meant to be. But,” he added quickly, “perhaps that was because it was meant for you.”

  What events? I wondered. How can something you desire so much not be meant to be? Daddy was so successful in business, it was difficult to imagine anything he couldn’t do when he set his mind on it. When I pursued him for the answers, however, Daddy tightened up and became uncomfortable.

  “It was just the way things were,” he said and left it at that. Because I saw it was too painful for him to discuss, I didn’t nag, but that didn’t mean the questions were gone. They hung over all of us, dangled invisibly in the house and attached themselves to the pictures in our family albums, pictures that traced the strange and mysterious turns my parents’ lives had taken before and just after I was born. It was as if we had secrets buried in some dusty old trunk in the attic and someday—maybe soon—I would open the trunk and, like Pandora, release the discoveries I would quickly regret.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to have breakfast with your brothers only this morning,” Daddy said. “I’ve already eaten, and so has your mother, and we’re busier than two bees in a hive.”

  “I wish you and Mommy hadn’t planned quite such a large affair for me, Daddy.”

  “What? I wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact, it’s not big enough. Every hour I remember someone else we should have invited.”

  “The guest list is already a mile long!”

  He laughed. “Well, with my business interests and your mother’s art crowd, not to mention your teachers and friends, we’re lucky it’s only a mile.”

  “And my portrait will be unveiled in front of all those people. I’ll be so embarrassed.”

  “Don’t think of it as your portrait, Pearl. Think of it as your mother’s art,” he advised. I nodded. Daddy was always so sensible. He would surely have made a wonderful doctor.

  “I’ll eat quickly and help you, Daddy.”

  “Nonsense. You relax, young lady. You have a big night ahead of you. You won’t know how big until it starts. And you have your speech to worry over, too.”

  “Will you listen to me practice later?”

  “Of course, princess. We’ll all be your first audience. But right now I’ve got to see about our parking arranaements. I’ve hired a valet service.”

  “Really?”

  “We can’t have our guests riding around looking for a place to park, can we? Make sure your brothers eat their breakfast and don’t annoy anyone, will you?” he asked and kissed me again before hurrying to the front of the house.

  Jean and Pierre were at the table, both looking so polite and innocent that I knew they were up to something. Strands of Jean’s blond hair hung down over his forehead and eyes. As usual his shirt was buttoned incorrectly. Pierre’s appearance was perfect, but Pierre wore that tiny smirk around his lips and Jean looked at me with his blue eyes twinkling. I checked my seat to be sure they hadn’t put honey on it so I would stick to it.

  “Good morning, Pearl,” Pierre said. “How’s it feel to be graduating?”

  “I’m very nervous,” I said and sat down. They both stared. “Did you two do anything silly?”

  They shook their heads simultaneously, but I didn’t trust them. I scrutinized the table, checked the floor by my chair, and studied the salt and pepper shakers. Once, they put pepper in the salt shaker and salt in the pepper, and another time, they put sugar in the salt shaker.

  They dipped their spoons into their cereal and ate with their eyes still fixed on me. I looked up at the ceiling to be sure there wasn’t a fake black widow spider dangling above me.

  “What have you two done?” I demanded.

  “Nothing,” Jean said too quickly.

  “I swear if you do anything today, I’ll have the two of you locked in the basement.”

  “I can get out of a locked room,” Jean bragged. “I know how to pick a lock. Right, Pierre?”

  “It’s not hard to do, especially with our old locks,” Pierre said pedantically. He had a way of making his eyes small and pressing his lower lip over his upper whenever he offered a serious opinion.

  “I can take the hinges off the door, too,” Jean claimed.

  “All right. Stop talking about it. I’m not serious,” I said. Jean looked disappointed.

  “Good morning, mademoiselle,” our butler, Aubrey, said as he came in from the kitchen with a glass of fresh orange juice for me. Aubrey had been with us for years and years. He was the proper Englishman at all times. He was bald with small patches of gray hair just over his ears. His thick-rimmed glasses were always falling down the bridge of his bony nose, and he would squint at us with his hazel eyes.

  “Morning, Aubrey. I’ll just have some coffee and a croissant with jam this morning.
My stomach is full of butterflies.”

  “Ugh,” Jean said. “They were caterpillars first.”

  “She just means she’s nervous,” Pierre explained.

  “Because you got to make a speech?” Jean asked.

  “Yes, that mostly,” I said.

  “What’s it about?” Pierre asked.

  “It’s about how we should be grateful for what we have, for what our parents and teachers have done for us, and how that gratitude must be turned into hard work so we don’t waste opportunities and talents,” I explained.

  “Boring,” Jean said.

  “No, it’s not,” Pierre corrected him.

  “I don’t like sitting and listening to speeches. I bet someone throws a spitball at you,” Jean threatened.

  “It better not be you, Jean Andreas. There’s plenty that has to be done around here all day. Don’t get underfoot and don’t aggravate Mommy and Daddy,” I warned.

  “We can stay up until everyone leaves tonight,” Pierre declared.

  “And Mommy let us invite some of our friends,” Jean added. “We should light firecrackers to celebrate.”

  “Don’t you dare,” I said. “Pierre?”

  “He doesn’t have any.”

  “Charlie Littlefield does!”

  “Jean!”

  “I won’t let him,” Pierre promised. He gave Jean a look of chastisement, and Jean shrugged. His shoulders had rounded and thickened this past year. He was tough and sinewy and had gotten into a half dozen rights at school, but I learned that three of those fights were fought to protect Pierre from other boys who teased him about his poetry. All their friends knew that when someone picked a fight with Pierre, he was picking a fight with Jean, and if someone made fun of Jean, he was making fun of Pierre as well.

  Mommy and Daddy had to go to school to meet with the principal because of Jean’s fights, but I saw how proud Daddy was that Jean and Pierre protected each other. Mommy bawled him out for not bawling them out enough.