Hidden Jewel (16 page)

Lieutenant Ribocheaux took out his notepad. "You've called all her friends, people she might go see, I imagine?"
"Everyone we could think of," Daddy said. "No one has heard from her or seen her."
"Relatives?"
"We have none presently in New Orleans. My parents are in Europe for the summer."
"Well, where are your closest relatives?"
"My wife's family comes from the bayou, around Houma, but she wouldn't go to them," Daddy added. "We don't get along that well."
"Except with Aunt Jeanne," I reminded him. "Yes, but I don't think she would have gone to Jeanne," Daddy said.
"Okay," Lieutenant Ribocheaux said. "Let me have the address of that house, the Jackson residence." I gave it to him, and he jotted it down quickly. "We'll pay them a visit," he promised. "In the meantime give us a recent picture of Madame Andreas, please. I'd like to speak with the butler, too, and get a description of what she was wearing when she was last seen here."
Daddy turned to me, and I went to fetch Aubrey. He was reluctant
to tell the police any of the bizarre details about Mommy's behavior, but I urged him to be as forthcoming as possible. Lieutenant Ribocheaux took more notes.
The patrolmen returned. They had found the snake's head, but Lieutenant Ribocheaux said there was nothing remarkable about it. "As I suspected, it's no different from what you can buy at Marie Laveau's. Someone's having some fun with you," he added.
"If that's true, it's very cruel," I replied.
After the police left, I sat with Daddy in his study.
"I'm not optimistic about their finding her, Pearl. They'll send a patrol car around, all right, but unless Mommy is standing right in front of them . . . I know these voodoo people. They believe they are doing something spiritual and something good. They won't want Mommy to be found and brought back. That might break some sort of spell."
"Maybe we should go to Nina's sister's house too, Daddy," I suggested, "and stay until she tells us the truth."
"We won't fare any better. At least the police carry some authority. Why don't you go up to bed, honey? No sense in both of us staying up and worrying all night. Besides, I need you strong and healthy for the days to come."
"You're not going to remain down here all night, are you, Daddy?" I gazed at the bottle of bourbon.
Daddy saw where my eyes were fixed. "I won't drink anymore," he promised. "I've got to stay alert in case we're needed."
I nodded, rose, and went to him. We hugged, and he held on to me for a few moments longer than usual before releasing me and sitting back.
"Good night, Daddy."
"Good night, princess. Thanks for making me come to my senses," he said, smiling. "For a moment there I thought I was looking at your mother when she was about your age."
I kissed him again and walked away. At the doorway I turned. He had already swung his chair around and was gazing up at his and Mommy's portrait again, wondering, I'm sure, how they would ever get back to the happy, wonderful time they had when the portrait was painted.
When I peeked in on Pierre, both he and Mrs. Hockingheimer were fast asleep, so I closed the door softly and went to my room. Just as I got into bed, Sophie called. I told her all that had happened, right up to the black girl throwing the snake's head out of the streetcar window.
"I don't know much about voodoo," she said, "but nana does. I could ask her if you want."
I thought about it. I was beginning to agree with Daddy. The more we involved ourselves with these things, the more twisted and confused we became. All it did was fill my head with bad thoughts and give me nightmares. "No, thanks. I'd rather not know."
"I can come over after work and help you go looking, if you want," she volunteered.
"Thank you, but I wouldn't even know where to start. We'll wait and see what the police say tomorrow."
"Maybe she'll come home tonight."
"Maybe."
"I'll say a prayer for you and your family," she said. How ironic, I thought. A few weeks ago Sophie had sat in the streetcar gazing out the window at the Garden District, her face full of envy as I waved good-bye and started for home. She would have given anything to trade places with me, I'm sure. Now I was the object of her pity and sympathy. Money makes people comfortable, but it doesn't guarantee happiness, I thought.
"Thank you, Sophie." It brought tears to my eyes to think that none of my so-called upper-class friends from school had called or visited, but my new friend, my poorest friend, cared enough to volunteer her time to help me.
After I hung up, I put my palms together under my chin, closed my eyes, and said my own prayer. I prayed for Mommy, I prayed for Pierre, I prayed for Daddy, and I prayed that I would have the strength to help everyone. Then I tried to fall asleep. I tossed and turned for hours before drifting off, but my sleep was restless and continually interrupted. I woke often with a start, listening hard for the sound of a door being opened or a phone ringing. I longed to hear Mommy's voice echoing through the hallway or up the stairs, but the dead silence of our morgue-like house was all I heard.
Daddy was disheveled and tattered-looking in the morning. No doubt he had stayed awake most of the night. He had slept on the sofa in his study when he did catch some sleep. I made sure he ate something substantial for breakfast and then persuaded him to take a shower. Mrs. Hockingheimer had Pierre up and washed. She got him to eat a portion of his breakfast, but he had the same empty look in his eyes, the same anticipation when I entered. I spoke to him for a while. His lips quivered and then formed the word "Mommy." It shattered the thin veneer on my heart and made me gulp back the tears.
I convinced Daddy that he should call Lieutenant Ribocheaux to see if they had any leads, but they didn't. Daddy hung up the phone and looked at me, his face lined with exhaustion and frustration.
"I told you it wouldn't do us any good to call the police," he said. "They don't take this voodoo thing seriously, and when an adult disappears, they're not really concerned. Of course, they promised to keep looking."
"I can't stand this waiting around, Daddy. We've got to do something."
"What, honey? Ride around the city?"
"I don't think she's in the city anymore," I said. "I think we should go to the bayou."
Daddy laughed. "A lot of good that would do-- you and I, two city slickers trying to find someone in the swamps. If we have little hope of doing so here, where we are familiar with the territory, can you imagine how futile it would be for us to go out there? I wouldn't even know where to begin."
I thought for a moment, recalling Mommy's stories, and then looked up at him with bright, hopeful eyes. "We'll start at the shack," I said.
"Shack?"
"Her old shack, where she returned when she became pregnant with me. She believes in spirits; surely she hopes her grandmere Catherine's spirit will still be there, or even her mother's spirit."
Daddy said, "Let me look at the picture you said she painted."
We went to Mommy's studio, and he stood gazing thoughtfully at it for a while.
"What are you thinking, Daddy?"
"What was it that crazy old lady, Nina's sister, told us . . . that Ruby went to wherever the curse started. You might be right. In her mind that could very well mean the bayou. Especially when I look at this picture. I'll give Jeanne a call." He returned to his office to do so. I followed and waited at the door while he spoke to Uncle Paul's sister.
Aunt Jeanne hadn't heard about Jean's death. That news was devastating enough for her to digest. Then Daddy told her about Mommy's disappearance. I waited hopefully at his side, but it was clear from the rest of the conversation that she hadn't heard from or seen Mommy, nor had anyone she knew.
Daddy shook his head and cradled the receiver. "Well, we know she hasn't been to the bayou yet," he said and sat back.
"We should still go out there, Daddy."
"I don't know."
"It's better than just sitting here and staring at each other hopelessly. Please. Let's go there and search. She might have just arrived, or she could be somewhere the Tates wouldn't know about. They certainly don't go looking around the old shack."
He considered. "Okay," he said. "I suppose it's worth a try and you're right. Not doing anything but waiting for phones to ring is just eating away at both of us."
"I'll go up and tell Mrs. Hockingheimer and Pierre what we're doing so he won't miss us," I said.
"Good idea. I'll dig out my maps of the bayou. It's been a while since I drove there."
Having a strategy and something concrete to do put hope back into our hearts and renewed our energy. I hurried upstairs to change my clothes, and then I went to see Pierre.
"I was just about to go down to see you and Monsieur Andreas," Mrs. Hockingheimer said. "I don't like the way Pierre keeps drifting off, and now he's refusing to drink any water."
"Oh, Pierre," I said, sitting beside him on his bed and taking his hand into mine. His eyes remained fixed on the wall. "You can't do this to yourself any longer. You've got to get strong and well again. We need you to help with Mommy. Daddy and I are going to find her and bring her home to you, but you must eat and drink so you can be strong when she returns. Please," I begged. "Please try."
His blinking quickened, and he took a deep breath. I brushed back his hair. "Will you, try, Pierre? Will you?"
He didn't respond, but I thought there was more light and alertness in his eyes.
"We'll be gone most of the day, Mrs. Hockingheimer, but we'll phone you in a few hours."
"I'll ask the doctor to stop by later this afternoon," she promised.
"Fine."
"Good luck, my dear."
"Thank you." I gazed back at Pierre. His lips were moving, so I sat beside him again and brought my ear close to his mouth.
"Mommy . . . Mammy went to get Jean," he whispered.
His words put a block of ice in my chest where my heart should have been. For a moment I couldn't speak or swallow.
"Oh, Pierre honey," I moaned. I embraced him and kissed him and rocked back and forth with him. Then I wiped away my tears and rushed from the room, hoping with all my soul that we would find Mommy and bring her home where she belonged.

9
My Cajun World
.
As Daddy and I headed out of the city toward

Terrebonne Parish and Houma, the town from which Mommy had come, a kind of paralyzing numbness gripped me. I had not been back there since I was an infant. Our troubles with Uncle Paul's mother and father since the famous trial to determine who should have custody of me had created an almost impenetrable wall around that part of the bayou. The income from the oil well Uncle Paul had left in my name had built a substantial trust for me, but I had never seen the well, since it was at Cypress Woods and neither Daddy nor Mommy could ever find the courage to return. At least, not until now.

Legal wrangling over the property had kept everyone from enjoying it, although Daddy had vowed never to go back there anyway, and Mommy apparently had too many sad memories that would- be revived in those grand rooms. What was true for them was apparently true for Octavius and Gladys Tate as well, for it was our understanding that they did nothing with the mansion. Aunt Jeanne said her mother wanted it kept like a monument to Paul's memory.

Mommy might have returned to the shack in which she and her grandmere Catherine had lived and where I was born, but as far as I knew, it had been years and years since her last visit. Whenever I asked her why, she said that none of Grandmere Catherine's friends were still alive, and there weren't many people she cared to see.

Whenever she talked of her past and told me stories, they were fascinating. So much of her background was interesting to me, and yet so much of it was obviously painful for her. I wondered just how hard it had been for her to make this trip now, if she had indeed made it. Even doing it under the advice of someone speaking from beyond the grave must have been very difficult for her.

For the first part of our journey, neither Daddy nor I spoke very much. We were both lost in our thoughts and our fears, I suppose. It was a partly cloudy day.

Most of the
^-
clouds were long, wide fluffy ones and when one of them passed over the sun, the shadows thickened and stretched over the highway and the countryside before us. Soon the roadside restaurants, service stations, and fruit and vegetable stands were fewer and fewer. Snowy egrets and brown pelicans began to appear along the banks of the canals, and every once in a while I saw an old shrimp boat, rusting and rotting in the underbrush.

Soon the toothpick-legged houses began to appear more frequently, some with children playing in the yards, some with Cajun women sitting on their galleries talking as they shelled peas into black castiron pots or wove split oak baskets and palmetto hats to sell to tourists. They looked up as we motored by. Just ahead of us, three fisherman emerged from a swamp, their poles over their shoulders, their beards long and straggly.

And suddenly it occurred to me how different my mother's old world was from the world in which we now lived. How difficult and frightening it must have been for her at such a young age to leave this world on her own and enter a new world of rich people and sophistication. It must have been like going to another country. But she'd had no choice. She had fled from her drunken grandpere, hoping to be rescued.

Now she had fled back to that Cajun world, also hoping to be rescued, and we were rushing there, praying we could save her. Life seemed to be drawn in circles. I sighed deeply and turned to look at Daddy. He was smiling at me in the strangest way.

"Why are you smiling like that, Daddy?" I asked.
"I was just thinking how right your mother is about you. You've turned out to be quite a strong and amazing young woman," he said. "Other girls your age would probably wilt and moan at home, but not you. You probably get your grit from your mother's Cajun side."
"What about your family, Daddy?"
"My family? Well, my whole family was spoiled, and I was no better off for having been born with that silver spoon in my mouth. It would have been better if I'd been born a Cajun."
"When were you last here, Daddy?"
"During the trial for custody of you, I suppose. Before that, when your mother was living at Cypress Woods, I took a ride up there occasionally. It was a beautiful place. I was very jealous," he admitted. "And terrified."
"Terrified? Why?"
"I thought your mother had everything she could ever want. I would never win her back. She had that beautiful setting, that magnificent studio, a man who doted on her. And what did I have? I had Gisselle, complaining in one ear until that ear was red from listening, and then she would shift to my other." He laughed.
"What's so funny?"
"One time when Gisselle and I went to Cypress Woods, your uncle Paul took us all on a tour of the swamps. Gisselle had nightmares for weeks afterward."
"Why?"
"The alligators, the insects. Ruby and Gisselle were twins, of course, but one was night and the other was day," he said.
"It must have been hard for Mommy to pose as Gisselle if she was so different," I said. That part of our story had always intrigued me: Mommy's assuming her sister's identity after Gisselle contracted Saint Louis encephalitis and the switch was accomplished.
"And now talk about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Ruby had to sound like Gisselle, act like Gisselle. I had hired new servants so she could at least be herself when she was with the help. Gisselle was always nasty to those she considered underlings, and Ruby would have had to treat them just as poorly. I know your mother actually was relieved when the ruse was exposed and she could go back to being herself.
"Now let's see," he said as he studied the road ahead. "I know there's a turn coming up soon." He slowed down and stopped to gaze at his map.
We were deep in the bayou now. The vegetation was very thick on both sides of the road, and through the brush and cattails, I could see the ponds. When I rolled down my window, I could hear the symphony of cicadas and tree frogs in the marsh. I didn't see it at first, but as I studied the surroundings, a shack appeared behind a cluster of weeping willows. The dull wood-frame house was nearly hidden by banana trees. The yard, or what remained of it, was cluttered with automobile and machine parts. Beside the house, just off the bank, was a half-submerged pirogue. What had happened to the people who lived here? I wondered. Could they have been relatives of mine? Was there a girl my age who was just as curious about my life in New Orleans as I was about her life here?
"Okay, I remember now," Daddy said. "We go down the road to the left about a mile and then turn left again. The shack is another mile or so along that road. Ready?"
"Yes, Daddy." I had my fingers crossed.
We drove on. Through a break in the overgrown bushes and heavy foliage, I saw a young man poling a pirogue. He slipped into a large island of lily pads, and about a dozen sleeping bullfrogs sprang up and splashed around him, making the water pop like bursting bubbles. I had only a glimpse of him, but he looked statuesque and brown-skinned, with a smile of deep pleasure on his face.
We made the second left and Daddy
announced, "There it is!"
My heart began to thump faster. Would we find Mommy sitting on the gallery or wandering about the shack or sitting inside? I hoped she would be surprised but happy we had come for her. We pulled up, and Daddy turned off the engine. For a long moment we both just sat there staring at the shack.
I wasn't prepared for what I was seeing. I suppose I had been romanticizing the shack in my mind for years. Most of my memories were vague, but whenever I thought about it, I conjured up a sweet little toothpick-legged house with a rug of fine grass and beautiful wildflowers. I envisioned it coated in fresh paint, its corrugated metal roof glimmering in the noonday sun. In my memories the canal ran clear behind the shack. Pelicans and egrets hovered; bream leaped out to catch insects for dinner and the heads of alligators with curious eyes popped up to look our way.
Instead, we confronted an overgrown front yard where even the weeds were choking to death. The gallery leaned to the right, and the shack leaned to the left. Some of the clapboard had torn loose, and all of the windows had been shattered, probably by young boys having rock-throwing contests.
Still, my infant memories were stirred. A vision of the gallery flashed in my mind, and in it I felt myself being rocked in a chair and listening to a radio playing zydeco music in the living room. The roadside stand where Mommy had sold her woven hats, baskets, jellies, jams, and gumbo lay broken in the tall grass.
"It doesn't look like anything on two legs was here recently," Daddy commented.
"We better look, Daddy," I said.
He nodded, squeezed my hand and opened the door. "Be careful," he said as I followed. We paused at the foot of the vague front pathway, however. It did look as if someone had traipsed through recently. Daddy and I glanced at each other and then moved faster toward the gallery. The short stairway creaked and groaned under our weight, as did the floorboards. Daddy tued the front door open. It complained on rusted hinges and wobbled.
Something scurried away inside when we started to enter, and I jumped back with a cry.
"Could be a raccoon," Daddy whispered. My heart was drumming so hard I thought I would lose my breath. There was a dank stench and gobs and gobs of cobwebs on the ceiling and walls, but the old furniture was still there. Daddy and I paused and gazed around the living room. Then I looked down at the floor and pulled Daddy's sleeve.
"Someone was here recently, Daddy. See the footprints in the dust?"
He nodded, crouched, and studied them. "Small, like your mother's."
We continued through the house. The kitchen was a mess. What was left of the stove was badly rusted. The door of the old-fashioned icebox had been torn off one of its hinges, someone had been swinging on it. Drawers were pulled out, some of them smashed, and here and there were gaping holes in the floor. Daddy gazed at the stairway.
"Maybe you better wait down here," he suggested. "I don't know how safe that is."
He started up. The steps creaked, but held. I waited at the bottom while he searched the bedrooms and the loom room. He stayed up there awhile.
The shack seemed so tiny to me. It was hard to imagine that Mommy and I once lived here. And now that it was so wrecked, it was creepy. The walls creaked in the wind, and things scurried under the floorboards. There were stains that looked like dried blood on the chipped plank table. I had visions of my great grandpere drunk and raging. Despite the high humidity and heat, my thoughts gave me the chills. I embraced myself and looked up the stairway. I hadn't heard any movement for a while.
"Daddy?"
He didn't respond.
"Daddy?" I called, a bit more frantic. A few moments later he came down the stairs slowly. In his hands was the picture of Jean that Mommy had torn off the photograph of him and Pierre together. It looked as if candle wax had dripped over it.
"She was here," Daddy said in a hoarse whisper. "You were right."
Excited by the discovery, we searched the property for more evidence of Mommy's presence, but there was nothing else to be found and no trail to lead us anywhere. Most of the land around the property was heavily overgrown, and Daddy thought we weren't properly dressed to go traipsing through marshland.
"Too dangerous. She couldn't have gone that way anyhow," he said.
"Where should we look for her, then?"
"There's only one other place I know. Cypress Woods," he said with a deep sigh. "She's going back through her past, a journey I hoped we wouldn't have to make."
We returned to our car, and Daddy sat thinking a moment.
"Let's go into town and get something to eat first," he suggested. "Town's not far, but Cypress Woods is the other way. It might be hours and hours before we have another chance to get a bite or something to drink."
"All right, Daddy," I said. I wasn't as hungry as I was thirsty. Just walking through the shack and around it for a little while was enough to get us hot and sticky. Our clothes looked pasted on us. It was that humid.
Some of the other shacks we saw along the way toward the town also looked deserted, but most were well kept, the grounds trim. We pulled into the parking lot of the first restaurant we saw. It advertised crawfish, "All you can eat." Because it was summer, there were few tourists at the restaurant. Nearly all of the patrons paused and looked up from their large bowls of crawfish when we entered. Although they didn't appear unfriendly, they did study us with some suspicion. One woman with long black hair and dark eyes paused and craned her neck like a bird around the man sitting in front of her to gape at us. I smiled at her, and she nodded.
A group of men all dressed in jeans and Tshirts, some with their forearms streaked with grease and oil, rose from a table to our right and started out, laughing as they walked. They all wore high boots. Every one of them glanced at us, but the youngestlooking man flashed a warm, soft smile and fixed his dark eyes on me for a moment longer. He tipped his hat as he went by, hesitating as if he wanted to say something.
"Come along, Jack. That's too rich for your blood," one of the older men said. Embarrassed, he hurried out the door and into their laughter.
We took our seats and a young girl in a red apron with her hair tied in thick knots came to take our order. Daddy had a chicken and seafood gumbo and I ordered jambalaya.
I saw a poster advertising a
fais dodo
on Saturday night with music by the Cajun Swamp Trio.
"What is that?" I asked. "
Fais dodo
?"
"That's a dance and big feed," she said with her hand on her hip and her shoulder up. "You ain't ever been to one?"
"No."
"Where you from?"
"We're from New Orleans," Daddy said, smiling.
"Oh. Well, you should come," she said. "You can do the two-step." She leaned toward me and added, her eyes shifting toward the door, "I know some boys who'd like to see you there."
"We're not staying," I said quickly.
Daddy laughed. He ordered a mug of beer for himself and E had iced tea.
"So," he said "What do you think of your mother's world so far? You don't remember much, obviously."
"It's interesting," I said in a loud whisper. "But so different."
Daddy nodded and smiled at a memory."When I first set eyes on your mother, I thought she was Gisselle. It was during Mardi Gras, and we were all getting into our costumes. I met her in front of the house, thinking Gisselle had dressed up like a poor girl. I should have realized Gisselle would never do anything like that, even for a costume party. I kept insisting she was Gisselle because I didn't even know Gisselle had a twin. After your mother's continued protests, I realized she was someone else, and I looked at her more closely. She was so fresh and natural, timid, but not afraid to say what she thought. Sometimes," he said after a long pause, "I wonder if she wouldn't have been better off if she'd remained here in this world."
"But what about her grandfather, and the terrible thing he was doing, selling her to a man for his wife?" I reminded him.
"Yes, that's true. Every place has its problems, I guess."
"Daddy, don't you think we should call or go see Aunt Jeanne?"
"Maybe after we check Cypress Woods," he said. "I'm not anxious to run into Gladys Tate."
"Why does Aunt Jeanne's mother hate us so, Daddy? Is it just because of their losing the trial?"
"No. Gladys blamed your mother for what happened to her son Paul. After his death she started the custody battle even though she knew you weren't Paul's real daughter. She did it for revenge. She never wanted Paul to be with your mother, of course, and from what Ruby has told me, I understand she was never very pleasant to either of you after you moved to Cypress Woods."
"Aunt Jeanne told me her mother was crippled up with arthritis these days. She doesn't get around much."
"Yeah, well, hate twists and turns your insides until you become something even you despise," Daddy said. "It's best we avoid her."
So much of Mommy's past was dark and unhappy. I understood why she had resorted to voodoo rituals and good-luck charms and why she believed that old curses followed in her shadow. Poor Mommy, I thought. She was in such torment.
Our food was delicious, but neither Daddy nor I had the appetite we expected. We were both thinking only about Mommy now. I hoped we would find her soon.
The roof of the mansion my uncle Paul had named Cypress Woods rose over the sycamore and cypress trees, looming higher and higher as we approached from the long driveway. The once beautiful grounds were overgrown, the flower beds choked with weeds, the fountains dry and littered with discarded junk here and there, and the gazebos had grass growing through the floorboards, weeds invading everywhere.
Off to the right were the canals and the swamps. A pirogue, tied to the dock, dipped and fell with the water. A large egret stood on the bow, its chest out as if it claimed the canoe. To the west we saw the oil wells and the rigs, and immediately visions from my recurring nightmare flashed in my mind. To me it was a bad omen. I leaned down and touched the good-luck dime Mommy had given me.
"Are you all right?" Daddy asked. He knew the oil rigs were always in my nightmare.
"Yes," I said after taking a deep breath. I turned to the house. It resembled a Greek temple. Across the upstairs gallery ran a diamond-design iron railing. On both sides of the house, wings had been constructed to echo the predominant elements of the main building.
Daddy stopped at the front and we sat in the car staring up slate steps to the portico and lower gallery. The windows were boarded. The vines that ran along the scrolled gates had gone wild and crisscrossed themselves, choking out the weaker sections so that they draped brown and dead over the iron works.
"Doesn't look like anyone's been here for ages," Daddy said, discouraged.
We got out of the car and started up the steps. We walked between the great columns, and Daddy tried the front door. It wasn't locked, but it was warped, so he had to push hard to open it. We paused in the Spanish-tiled entryway. The foyer was designed to take away the breath of visitors the moment they set foot in this mansion, for it was not only vast and long but so high-ceilinged that our footsteps and our voices echoed.