Whispers of the Bayou

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “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.

  SIXTEEN

  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.

  “There is a dragon in the other room,” she whispered. “Don’t you hear it?”

  I explained the cause of snoring and told her that the rhythm of the breathing proved it was a person and not a dragon. That did much to allay Tess’s fears, and soon she was sound asleep by my side.

  I, on the other hand, tossed and turned for more than half a hour. Though my body was weary, my brain was firing on all pistons, jumping from thoughts of Willy to Nathan to Twin Oaks to my work back home to the symbol tattooed into my scalp. Finally, I decided that I might as well give up on the idea of sleep altogether. It simply wasn’t going to happen.

  Surrendering to the inevitable, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up, focusing on the small pile of library books I had brought in from the car last night. At least I could get some reading and research done while Tess slept, especially since we wouldn’t need to start getting ready for church with my new friend Livvy for several more hours.

  First, however, I freshened up in the bathroom and then made coffee in the kitchen, hoping the delicious smell and soft crackling sound of the coffeemaker wouldn’t wake anyone else in the house. Back in our bedroom, I made myself comfortable on the bed that had been Tess’s, parting the curtains just enough to let in a little early morning light. I stacked the books in a pile next to me, intending to go through them one by one, hoping that I might uncover the myth of the bell or at least find the location of Colline d’Or.

  The first book I grabbed was a history of the Cajun people, and though I had intended just to skim quickly through, I was soon drawn into the narrative, spellbound by the facts surrounding Le Grand Dérangement, or the Great Expulsion, as it was known—which seemed to be the pivotal event in the history of the Cajuns.

  Their story began in an area of Nova Scotia known as Acadia. In the year 1755, the book said, French settlers there were given a difficult choice: swear an oath of allegiance to the British crown or risk expulsion. Up to that point, the Acadians had always focused on farming, trade, and community, remaining as neutral as possible toward the various outside powers that came and went. They refused to take the oath, and as a result they were forcibly detained and then deported in what became the largest ever forced migration of whites in North America. Though many of the Acadian refugees managed to escape to Quebec and other surrounding areas, over the next few months more than 10,000 of them were expelled from the region and shipped off to unreceptive American colonies or to Europe, placed in prison camps there, or simply left on the docks to fend for themselves or die.

  I took a sip of coffee and continued to read, moved by their tales of suffering and misery, of starvation and sickness and death. By the end of the Seven Years’ War, half had died, and of those that were left, the Acadians were truly a people without a home. Throughout Europe and the American colonies, the Acadian refugees were never really welcomed or accepted anywhere they went—until they made their way to Louisiana. There, the Acadians were greeted with open arms and given tools and land west of the Mississippi, compliments of the ruling Spanish government, who hoped these hardworking people would establish new settlements in the marshes and prairies there. During the next twenty years, more than 3000 exiled Acadians made their way to Louisiana, where families and communities were reunited and allowed to flourish as they learned a whole new way of farming and building and living. Over time, the Acadians became simply “Cajuns,” a people known for their hard work and even harder play. I was amazed to read that from those 3000 original Acadians who settled in Louisiana, more than 500,000 had descended! It brought tears to my eyes when I thought about the fact that I was one of the 500,000.

  Tess was stirring in the bed, so I forced myself to skim through their more modern history, the ups and downs of an American people group with their own language, music, food, and folklore. It was the folklore that I was most interested in, so I put down the history book and flipped through the other resources, particularly a collection of Cajun folktales. In that entire book, I could find only one story that had anything to do with a bell, a silly yarn about a man who snored so loudly that the ladies in town thought he was the church bell, so they got up, dressed, and went to mass in the middle of the night.

  Frustrated, I tossed that book onto the heap and reached for the next one. It was an atlas, and I pored over it in search of a place known as Colline d’Or. I couldn’t find any such town in Louisiana, so I also checked Nova Scotia, Britain, and France, all to no avail. As far as I could tell, either Colline d’Or did not exist or it was so small that it hadn’t earned a spot on any map.

  Tess began to wake up, so I put the atlas away and grabbed the last book, a collection of literature that included the well-know epic poem “Evangeline,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I was skimming through, trying to remember if I had studied the story in college, when the word “angelus” popped out at me. I stopped and reread the stanza, a lovely description of the Nova Scotian town of Grand Pré, just prior to the expulsion:

  Softly the Angelus sounded, and over the roofs of the vill
age

  Columns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense ascending,

  Rose from a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment.

  My pulse quickened. It might be a long shot, I thought, but perhaps this was the myth of the angelus. Tess sat up and began chatting, but I ignored her, instead continuing to read the sad tale of two lovers, Evangeline and Gabriel, who were separated when British soldiers took Gabriel and the other young men of the village away. In the poem, Evangeline spent most of her life trying to find her true love again. By the end, she had finally tracked him to a Philadelphia poorhouse where he lay dying, and the lovers were tearfully reunited just before he passed away.

  I closed the book and put it down, doubting that this story had anything to do with Willy’s cryptic words about the myth of the bell. The word “angelus” had appeared in the fictional poem only three times—and hadn’t figured into the plot at all. I realized I was grasping at straws. Perhaps talking to Livvy’s Cajun friends would help me out after all, because these books, while quite interesting, still hadn’t been able to answer any of my biggest questions.

  I pushed all of the books aside, realizing that Tess was awake now and talking almost nonstop in an attempt to get my attention. I took her to the bathroom, filled the tub, and left her there with a few toys. Leaving the bathroom door open so that I could hear her playful chatter, I padded down to the kitchen, where Deena was just sitting at the breakfast table, reading the newspaper. After sawing wood all night long, she didn’t look very rested, though the puffiness around her eyes could have been a result of crying rather than exhaustion.

  She sounded very matter-of-fact as she described the removal of her husband’s body yesterday afternoon and the fact that she would be going down to the funeral home this afternoon to finalize plans for the viewing and funeral.

  “Otherwise,” she added, “I’m just trying to pack up and move out of here as fast as I can. I know you’re waitin’.”

  “Waiting?”

  “For me to leave. It’s your house now.”

  I took a deep breath, wondering if this bitter woman had ever experienced a kindness in her life. I would feel more relaxed once she was gone, but I wasn’t about to rush her off at such a painful time.

  “Deena, you don’t have to hurry on my account. Please, stay as long as it takes. Really.”

  She seemed suspicious of my generosity, but she finally agreed to take me up on it as long as I would let her do the cooking for all of us while we were here.

  “That’s very kind of you,” I said, “but Tess is leaving this afternoon, and I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to stay, either.”

  I hadn’t let myself think about that, about the husband and the job that awaited me back home, about the life I could easily return to now that Willy was dead. Except for the missing hair, which would grow back eventually, nothing had really changed. Had it?

  Of course it had.

  Heading up the hall to check on Tess, I had to admit to myself that everything had changed. It had changed with the appearance of Jimmy Smith in the doorway of my office, with the attack in the alley, with my flight to Louisiana, with the limited information Willy had given me, with the oath I had taken, with the man at the fair last night, with my return to this family home that was now mine.

  With a surge of determination, I decided that I wasn’t leaving here until I found the answers I sought and had set things right again.

  SEVENTEEN

  So passed the morning away. And lo! with a summons sonorous

  Sounded the bell from its tower, and over the meadows a drum beat.

  An hour and a half later, with Tess in her nicest dress and me in white slacks and a light blue silk shirt, I found the church in town, a big white structure with inlaid stained glass panels along the sides and what looked like an education center out back. Before leaving the car I stuffed my purse with crayons and paper, hoping I would be able to keep Tess quiet for a full hour. Once we got inside, however, we found Livvy waiting for us in the vestibule and learned that she had arranged for Tess to join the five-year-old class. That sounded good to me. Surely she would enjoy hanging out with a group of kids much more than sitting still next to me in the service, trying to behave.

  We got her settled in her classroom and proceeded to the sanctuary, Livvy apologizing that her husband couldn’t join us because he was away on business. She did introduce me to her stepdaughters, Melanie and Scarlett, who smiled at me shyly and then excused themselves to sit with the other teens.

  As Livvy and I walked in and chose a pew, I thought how funny it was that Nathan was also in a church this morning for his ribbon-cutting ceremony. Except for weddings and funerals, we hadn’t been in a church in years, and now here we were both in one at the same time, albeit a thousand miles apart. Like Nathan, I believed there was a God; I just didn’t see why it was necessary to go to a church to find Him if He was supposedly everywhere.

  Waiting for the service to begin, I leaned over and asked Livvy if she had ever heard the expression, “Let the wicked fall into their own nets,” thinking of the words the old Cajun man had told me at the festival last night. Livvy nodded, but rather than telling me what it meant, she simply picked up her Bible and started flipping through the pages. With a flush of heat to my face, I got the point: This was church time, not chatting time, and I needed to shut up.

  The service began with a few songs followed by announcements. I didn’t pay much attention until a woman about my age got up and put in a plug for their young mother’s group. As she talked about their summer picnic, play dates, mom’s night out, and more, I found myself feeling isolated and even kind of lonely. How I wished there was something like that near us in Manhattan. Probably there was, but I just hadn’t taken the time to find it. I should look into it, I thought, certain that I could learn to be a better mother if I had friends who were also mothers. Our lives were so busy and our schedules so packed that except for AJ our social circle consisted mostly of professional acquaintances, workout partners, and occasional friendly conversations in the elevator with neighbors.

  When the woman went to sit down, Livvy slid her Bible onto my lap, her finger pointing to a passage.

  “Here it is,” she whispered, and with another flush of heat I realized that she hadn’t been ignoring me. She’d been flipping through her Bible for the answer to my question.

  Bending my head, I read the words on the page, which had the heading “Psalm 141.” The passage was a prayer, and it ended with those words: “Let the wicked fall into their own nets.”

  The next fifteen minutes of the service were lost on me as I sat there and read and reread the passage, trying to decipher the words. From what I could tell, it was a prayer for protection against bad people, describing what fate awaited them:

  …my prayer is ever against the deeds of evildoers;

  their rulers will be thrown down from the cliffs,

  and the wicked will learn that my words were well spoken.

  They will say, “As one plows and breaks up the earth,

  so our bones have been scattered at the mouth of the grave.”

  But my eyes are fixed on you, O Sovereign Lord;

  in you I take refuge—do not give me over to death.

  Keep me from the snares they have laid for me,

  from the traps set by evildoers.

  Let the wicked fall into their own nets,

  while I pass by in safety.

  Last night, had it been the man’s intention to let me know that God had my back, so to speak? Or was he being more literal, trying to pass along some sort of clue about the information I sought? If that were the case, then I would have to look everywhere from cliffs to graves to snares in my search to find the angelus, whatever it was. A clue this vague really didn’t help at all.

  Feeling disappointed, I decided to let the words roll around in my subconscious mind for a while, thinking maybe there was something here that I was missing. The
choir was just finishing a lovely, inspiring number, and I forced myself to focus on that instead.

  Following the song was a sermon, an interesting twenty minutes or so about brotherly love. I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention until the preacher began to talk about the Lord’s plan for fellowship, companionship, and even marriage. In almost a direct echo of Nathan’s recent words to me, the preacher said that God did not want us to go through life alone but to join with others in our walk, learning to give and to receive in kind.

  “ ‘Though one may be overpowered,’ ” the preacher said, “ ‘two can defend themselves.’ And three? Well, folks, ‘a cord of three strands is not quickly broken.’ ”

  I thought that was a lovely way for him to put it, especially when he explained that that third strand was supposed to be God. As the man moved on to his conclusion, I wondered if maybe that was the missing element in my troubled marriage, that third strand that right now wasn’t intertwined in our rope at all. If Nathan and I chose to “invite God” into our union, whatever that meant exactly, would we be bound more tightly? Would we finally be able to connect on the level that Nathan desired? I didn’t know, but it was an interesting train of thought, one I hoped to come back to later.

  By the time church was over and Livvy had finished rounding up a group to go to lunch, I was starving. I took my own car to the restaurant and listened to Tess talk nonstop about her Sunday school class the entire way. Not surprisingly, she had loved every minute of it and was now the proud owner of a lion’s den made out of macaroni noodles. At the wheel, I was mostly consumed again with thoughts of Psalm 141 and the hidden message I simply knew it must contain.

  True to her word, Livvy had found two Cajun families to join us for lunch. I forgot most of their names after the introductions, but it didn’t seem to matter. Mostly, they referred to each other—and to me and Tess, for that matter—as Boo or Cher or Ton Ton. One of the teenagers was named Ya Ya, and when I said that that had been my grandmother’s name, I was informed that Ya Ya was common for any name that ended in an “a.” Hence, my grandmother Portia had become Ya Ya.