All That Glitters

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In the early evening just after the sun has slipped below the tops of the cypress trees in the western bayou, I sit in Grandmère Catherine's old oak rocker with Pearl in my arms and hum an old Cajun melody, one that Grandmère Catherine used to hum to me when she put me to sleep, even when I was already a little girl with pigtails bouncing over my shoulders as I ran across the fields from the banks of the swamp to our toothpick-legged shack. I can close my eyes and still hear her calling.

"Ruby, it's time for supper, child. Ruby. . ."

But her voice fades from my memory, like smoke from someone's potbelly stove drifting into the wind.

I am nearly nineteen now and it has been almost three months since Pearl was born during one of the most vicious hurricanes to hit the bayou. Trees that were blown over the roads have been pulled aside, but still lay along the macadam like wounded soldiers waiting to be healed and restored.

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