Southern Ruby (4 page)

I hung my head and my lips trembled as I tried to explain: ‘I . . . I wanted . . . I wanted to see a picture of my father,' I stammered. ‘To see if we have the same nose.'

‘Nose? For God's sake, Amanda!' she said, stepping towards me. ‘That man ruined our lives!'

It was no use trying to explain. ‘You'll never understand!' I shouted, before fleeing to my room and slamming the door. The sight of the
Cosmopolitan
magazines on my bed enraged me and I began to tear out the pages. Not only were the girls pretty but they probably knew who they had inherited their prettiness from. I had no-one to talk to about my feelings. I was an outsider: I never truly belonged anywhere.

Nan knocked on the door. ‘Mandy?' she called, opening it. Her gaze fell to the mess of magazine pages scattered on the floor. She sat on the end of my bed, no longer looking angry but stricken, like someone who's had the air knocked out of them.

‘I'm sorry, Mandy,' she said, fighting back tears. ‘What I said about you being stubborn isn't true. You're a good girl who does her best despite having been put in a difficult situation.'

‘There isn't anyone in the world that I love more than you,' I told her. ‘Why is wanting to know if I look like my father so wrong?'

She exhaled sharply and took my hand. ‘When I argue with you, it's like arguing with Paula all over again. I'm too old for that. I don't want to argue any more — and I don't want to lose you like I did her. I told her to use the money she was saving from her job to put a deposit on an apartment and get a bit of security in her life first. She could travel later when she got married. But she was always ready to head off in any direction without knowing what was waiting for her at the other end.

‘I drove her to the airport the morning she left for her “grand trip”. She was young and lively and full of hope. As she went through the departure gate, she turned to wave at me and flashed her enchanting smile. That's my last memory of her. The next time I was at the airport, it was to collect her suitcases and you. I didn't even witness my only child being buried. She's lying in a tomb in a strange city I don't know and don't care to know either.' She lifted her eyes to look directly into mine. ‘Your father was careless and selfish! Forget about him!'

I might have only been fifteen but I was wise enough to understand the truth when I heard it. Nan had destroyed my father in those photographs because she believed he'd destroyed her daughter.

The memory of that argument with Nan was still painful, even after so many years. I had become tired of arguing with her too, so I hid my feelings. But all that did was confuse me further. Now, with her gone, not only did I not fit in anywhere but I was totally alone in the world.

Nan wasn't able to hide the photographs from me now. I opened the wardrobe doors, but the sight of her neatly hung
jackets and dresses hit me like a wave and I shut them again. I rubbed my hand over my face then tried another time. More than anything else in the room, Nan's clothes carried with them distinct memories: from the champagne lace dress she'd worn for my graduation to the Chanel-style suits she'd favoured for work. I took out an emerald-green cardigan and a pair of taupe pull-on pants and hugged them to me. They had been Nan's favourite winter loungewear. I saw us sitting together snuggled up under throw blankets on the couch, drinking tea and watching episodes of
Antiques Roadshow
. I couldn't understand how it was possible: how could all these things that Nan wore and were once such a part of her daily life still be here while she was gone?

I took the clothes out of her wardrobe and laid them on one side of her bed to deal with later. My eyes travelled to the bottom of the wardrobe where Nan kept her archive file boxes. I took them all out and lined them up along one wall, but the box that had contained the photographs and letters my mother had sent from New Orleans wasn't among them. A hollow sensation formed in the pit of my stomach. Was it possible that Nan had destroyed them?

I moved the stool from Nan's dressing table to the wardrobe and searched the top shelves. I spotted an archive box hidden behind a winter-weight quilt, and stretched and grasped it, then hugged it towards me as I climbed off the stool, and lowered it to the floor. The lid had been sealed shut with tape. I used my thumbnail to slit it open. When I saw the shoebox and yellow envelope inside, dizziness overcame me. I had to sit for a while and let my head clear.

After a few moments I gathered the courage to take out the envelope and look at the photographs of me with my mother in New Orleans. Tears blurred my eyes as I realised how hungry I was for any scrap of the brief life we'd had together. The photographs of us were tangible proof that our relationship had once existed.

Then I took out the letters my mother had written.

The first one I picked up was dated 12 October 1979 and was written on pink paper with a gingham border and a Betsey Clark waif child on a swing in the corner. The sweet musty smell of old paper made my nose twitch.

Hi Mum,

I've arrived in New Orleans! This place is like no other! I'm staying in a hostel in the French Quarter (or the ‘Voo-car-eh' as the locals call it). Outside my window a green parrot is squawking in a palmetto tree, and across the road in a pub — the bars are open all day and night here and it's perfectly legal to walk up and down the street with a drink in your hand — a Cajun zydeco band is playing. A woman wearing a metal washboard on her chest is beating out a blues rhythm with thimbles on one hand and a spoon in the other. I'm tapping my feet and my fingers. It's crazy! This place is just crazy! It's like a 24-hour party. I LUUUVVVV IT! But everyone I talk to says that if I love it now, I should come back for Mardi Gras . . .

I stopped reading and pressed the letter to my heart. It was as though I'd heard my mother's voice in her writing: breathy, vibrant and revealing a personality ready for adventure. She sounded so young. Well, she had been young. She was nineteen when she went to the United States. Twenty when she gave birth to me. I was older now than my mother had been when she died. It was a strange feeling to know that I'd already outlived her in terms of age.

‘Mum!' I said out loud, wondering what it would have been like to have called her that. I pictured her floating around the room like a girlish spirit, before settling next to me and looking over my shoulder as I continued reading.

After I started this letter, the maid wanted to vacuum the room so I took a break and went for a walk. On the corner of the street a woman in platform shoes and a straw hat was hula-hooping. Just hula-hooping! She didn't appear to be on drugs or trying to draw attention to herself, she was simply being herself. The people of this city don't seem to be self-conscious at all, and everyone more or less lets each other be. Can you imagine a woman hula-hooping in Roseville in the middle of the day? She'd be arrested and carted away to hospital. There was a hurricane warning when I arrived and do you think anyone was worried? The bars ran out of vermouth! The people here laugh at danger and carry on partying. What a way of life! I LUUUVVVV IT!

Kisses and hugs, Paulie XOXOXOXO

The tone of my mother's letter made me smile. I wished I'd known her. I could imagine talking to her about everything, from guys, to creative fashion, to music, without feeling anxious about garnering her disapproval. I wondered if I'd grown up in New Orleans, would I now be playing in a zydeco band or hula-hooping on a street corner in the middle of the day simply for the joy of it? I felt the weight of my own seriousness. I'd always thought the melancholy that haunted me came from having lost my parents so young, but maybe it was only the restraint of my stitched-up environment? Perhaps in a different place, I'd be a free spirit like my mother?

I put the letter back in its envelope and picked up the next one. My breath caught in my throat when I read its contents.

Hi Mum,

I'm in Luuuvvvv! His name is Dale Lalande! I met him at Preservation Hall where he was playing saxophone. We locked eyes and I didn't take mine off him until the last
note was played. It was like being drunk on a magic potion from the witchcraft store. We have a ball together, with my eccentricities and his sense of humour. I've listened to him play at the Maple Leaf Bar and Snug Harbor. He sometimes breaks away from the band to dance with a member of the audience before picking up his sax again. You'd like him. Off stage, he's quite sensible, especially for a New Orleanian. In the middle of soul-food city he sticks to a macrobiotic diet. And in a place where most people are sloshed, he limits himself to a drink a night . . .

My face tingled and my throat felt dry. Apart from his name and that he lived in New Orleans I'd known nothing about my father. This was the most information I had ever been given. He'd been a musician! A jazz musician!

I held up my hands and hot tears burned my eyes. I had to wipe them away with the edge of my shirt so as not to smudge the ink on the letter. He'd been responsible and a moderate drinker? How on earth then could he have driven a car with his wife and young daughter in it as drunk as a skunk, as Nan had always told me?

. . . I fell in love with Dale's family as quickly as I did with him. They're posh and live in the Garden District. His father passed away in January and is badly missed. Dale's sister, Louise, is warm and welcoming to me and she ‘oohs' and ‘aahs' as if everything that Dale and I do is wildly exciting. Her husband, Johnny, is charming. He's a lawyer, but looks way too hip to be one in his denim jumpsuit and alligator boots. Then there's Dale's mother, Ruby. She is the most amazing character of all. A French Creole by birth, she apparently caused quite a stir when she married into an American family. Whatever the time of day or the occasion, she is exquisitely
dressed. Dale says she was a ‘Heroine of the Civil Rights Movement' and showed me the award she was given last year by the city in remembrance of that. Despite her refined appearance, she has a kind of mystique about her and I can't help thinking she's keeping a secret.

My scalp prickled. It had never occurred to me that my father might have a family apart from my mother and me. Perhaps it was because there had only been Nan and me here in Sydney so it was difficult to picture anything other than a contained family unit. I'd assumed that with the death of my parents all ties to New Orleans had been severed — but I wasn't all alone in the world after all. There were still people related to me: another grandmother, and an aunt and uncle. The idea of it baffled me. It was as if everything I'd believed about myself was now being challenged.

I continued to read my mother's letters through the night, falling in love with this delightful, cheeky and adventurous young woman and the city she described. The announcement of her marriage startled me as it must have startled Nan:

I don't know how to begin this letter — so I'll jump right in. Dale and I got married yesterday. Louise and Johnny were our witnesses. You'll like Dale, Mum. It's impossible not to like him. He's exactly the kind of man you would want me to marry: responsible and kind.

Again that word ‘responsible'. I picked up another letter and discovered the news of my birth:

Dear Mum,

You're a grandmother!!

Amandine came into the world three days ago, on 12 April. In rather a rush, I might add — she didn't even give us time to get to the hospital.

Everybody here is beside themselves with joy and they want you to come over as soon as possible! Dale is the proudest father you could imagine! He positively glows every time he picks up Amandine . . .

When I read the name my parents had given me — Amandine — a deep sense of loss washed over me. It was a name for another city and another time that was lost to me forever. I hadn't been aware that Nan had anglicised my name to Amanda until we applied for passports for our planned trip to Europe and I saw my real name on my birth certificate. I reread the sentence, ‘He positively glows every time he picks up Amandine' several times, as if I could somehow conjure up an image of my mysterious father.

There were no copies of the replies from Nan, but clearly she hadn't been pleased by my mother's hasty marriage and was angry that she had decided to make New Orleans her home.

I know you think I'm selfish, Mum, but I never intended to hurt you. A big lavish wedding with all the trimmings was never what I wanted. I had no idea when I left Sydney that it would be for good. Please come and visit us here. I've talked non-stop about you and everyone wants to meet you. You would like the Lalande family too, they are old-fashioned and elegant and the house is beautiful . . .

My mother's desire to make amends with Nan was palpable. I cringed at her attempts at appeasement:

I'm enclosing a gold bracelet for you, Mum. I hope you'll like it!