"I know the cause, my brother, but the truth does not alter the face in the mirror or the size of her girth."
"In case you did not realize this"—Armand's words dripped sarcasm—"the begetting of those babes can be put as squarely at your doorstep as at her own."
The elder Sonnier brother shrugged. "Still," he said wistfully. "I would that I had not wed so soon. Could I do it again, I would have stayed a bachelor much much longer."
He grinned and shook a finger at Laron Boudreau. "At least long enough to try my chances at routing you for the hand of the beautiful Aida."
"You think you would have had a chance for her?" Laron asked, deliberately making his words light. "I'm not sure the taste of the mamselle runs to worn-out old married men like yourself."
Jean Baptiste laughed then. "No, I suspect not," he admitted.
"Of course not," Armand concurred. "There has never been any question that she would choose any man but Laron. It is completely like her."
"What do you mean?" his friend asked.
"We have all known Aida since she was in braids," he said. "A more foolish featherbrain was never seen on this prairie."
Armand's opinion of the most beautiful woman on the Vermilion river was well-known. He made certain that it was, since his scorn was the mask he held up to cover his feelings.
"You will get no argument from me on that," Laron said with a chuckle.
Armand nodded and continued, "Aida Gaudet chose her husband the same way she would have chosen a bolt of store-bought fabric. Value and durability come second, my friend, to what pleases her eye."
Laron laughed out loud. "And you think I am pleasing to the lady's eye?"
Armand only shrugged. There was nothing further to say. Truth was truth and Armand had faced it a long time ago. Laron's thick black hair, tied loosely at the nape of his neck with leather cord, his strong features, and his perfectly straight white teeth spoke for themselves. He had the looks to take a woman's breath away.
His friend was tall, strong, and attractive. Armand was short and very ordinary. He could still recall Aida's girlish declaration. She would be the bride of the most handsome man in the parish. Clearly his best friend, Laron Boudreau, was that man.
"I know why Aida Gaudet chose you," Armand stated firmly. "But what continues to puzzle me is why you chose Aida Gaudet."
Laron tipped his chair back on two legs and stretched out to rest his bare feet against the porch rail. He folded his arms across his chest and perused his best friend with speculation.
"My brother is truly crazy," Jean Baptiste piped in. "Every man wants her, Armand."
"Laron does not."
"Why would he not?"
"Because he has a veuve allemande to keep him warm through winter nights," Armand replied.
Laron's expression turned stony. The front legs of his chair banged against the floorboards.
"I have no idea what you mean," he said flatly.
The coldness of his friend's reply did not deter Armand Sonnier in the least. The quiet contemplation of the dark night and the aching of his own heart somehow brought forth words that he had never in his life intended to speak.
"I mean exactly what I said," he answered evenly.
It was common knowledge on the river that Laron Boudreau had taken up illicitly with the veuve allemande, the German widow. Some even said that Laron was father to her youngest child, a pretty three-year-old. Armand didn't believe that. He knew his friend too well. But he was aware that Laron spent every spare moment in the widow's company. And the very furtive nature of those visits left little doubt that the two were not merely passing comments about the weather.
"I mean exactly what I said," Armand continued. "While I am a poor bachelor near-starved for a woman's touch, my friend Laron has set up a bower as warm and lush as any married man's."
Laron's jaw was tightly set and his voice was cold. "I will not have the name of Madame Shotz spoken ill, even by my closest friend," he warned.
"And I would not speak ill of her," Armand said quietly. "I do not know her, but I do know you. If you respect her, so do I."
Laron accepted his words as apology.
"I meant merely," Armand explained more lightly. "That you seem as much at peace with your life as any man I know on bayou or prairie."
Laron hesitated a long moment before he replied. "I have found a measure of contentment with Helga," he admitted finally.
"I know that," Armand said. "And it is why I worry about your lengthy engagement to the fair Aida. It will be difficult to cast off that ease for the certain misery of husbanding a woman that you do not love."
There was silence between them.
"It will only be misery in the daytime," Jean Baptiste piped in quickly with a sigh of longing. "Nighttime with Aida Gaudet would surely be paradise."
His humor broke the tension between the two other men and they relaxed.
"Truthfully, you have the right of it, my friend," Laron admitted. "Helga is woman enough for me, but a man must marry."
None contradicted that statement. Like birth and death, marriage among the Acadian people was expected. Only the priesthood exempted a man from such duty. Laron Boudreau was no candidate for the priesthood. And he couldn't marry Helga Shotz.
Though she was known as a widow, Helga was already married.
Her dress was too plain and the neckline too high. Aida sighed sadly, but there was no help for it. Were she the daughter of a rich Creole, she could clad herself in crinoline and lace and show the swell of her bosom with impunity. But her father was a simple Acadian farmer and Acadian women dressed modestly in homespun cottonade with an occasional decoration of linen or crochet. At least it was colorful, bright and cheery with wide stripes on the skirt and a vest corset of vivid indigo with red ribbon laces. She looked well enough, she thought.
And besides, as Father Denis would tell her, shaking his finger menacingly, vanity is unbecoming of womanhood. Easily she pushed away her mild disappointment. It was Saturday night and vanity or not, she was the prettiest girl on Prairie l'Acadie, perhaps the prettiest girl on the Vermilion River, maybe the prettiest girl in Louisiana.
At least, that was what people said.
Aida tried to hold that thought to herself with comfort. Carefully she inspected her teeth, especially the tiny chipped corner of her right incisor. At age ten she'd tripped on her own skirts and fallen against the porch. No one remembered the incident or ever mentioned the imperfection, but Aida remained ever aware of it. The chipped tooth was, she thought, her only flaw. And she knew it was her own fault. God had denied her a fine wit or a true purpose in life. He'd intended her for perfect beauty; any less than that was her own failing.
Aida had schooled herself not to smile broadly, laugh with her mouth open, or display any other expression that might draw attention to the broken tooth. If men found her tiny wavering tilt of lips intriguing and alluring, well, so much the better.
"Aida, ma petite, it is time that we go," her father called from the doorway. "I can hear already the music begin to play."
"Coming, Poppa," she answered. "One minute more."
She gazed at herself again in the mirror. Her thick black curls were tied away from her face and secured beneath her lace-trimmed cap. But the length of it was twisted and balled at the nape of her neck to remind the gentlemen, if they were wont to forget, that her hair was long and luxuriant and certain to be prized by the man who married her.
Aida was thoughtful. A prize. That's how most saw her. A pretty, gaily wrapped prize. A thing to be won and displayed like a sixteen-point deer head or a fourteen-foot-long alligator hide. Aida didn't want to be a man's trophy. She wanted to be loved.
Father Denis had scolded her. Almighty God, the priest told her, had given her much. She had a good home, a devoted father, plenty to eat, and fine things to wear, and she was the most beautiful woman on the Vermilion River. Did she dare to ask heaven for more?
"No good can come of you
r romantic lingering," he'd warned her. "It is your duty to marry and bear children. You hesitate over some foolish female notion; God is not pleased."
What God truly thought, Aida did not know, but she suspected that Father Denis had not been pleased with her for some time.
"You are a vain, undutiful daughter," the priest had charged. "You are selfish and spoiled!"
That's what Father Denis always said. And Aida had to admit that it was the truth. She never suggested that the good father was not absolutely right. She always made her confessions and sorrowfully she did her penance, but she didn't really reform.
How could she? She really wanted to be a better woman, a better person. But could a person really not put herself first? Could a person truly say, I only wish to do my duty and I will find happiness in that? Perhaps another, a better person could say that. Aida Gaudet could not.
Aida was not evil, but she knew that she was not at all saintly. She also knew that beauty was not enough upon which to base a marriage.
"Aida! Are you coming now?" her father called out.
"Yes, Poppa, I'm coming," she lied.
Most Acadian farm girls began dreaming of weddings and trousseaus while still dressed in pinafores. A wedding was the pinnacle of a woman's life, the measure of her success. Aida, too, had dreamed of a beautiful wedding, flowers and ribbons and every eye upon her. And she had dreamed of a handsome man standing beside her. She dreamed of love. She dreamed of being loved by a husband. With a little shake of her head she remembered a long-ago wedding when she'd gathered up some flower petals and flotsam and made herself a love charm to ensure that happened. Vaguely she wondered what had become of that silliness wrapped in a handkerchief.
Aida was to marry Laron Boudreau. He was handsome, kind, hardworking. Everyone in Prairie l'Acadie thought the two of them a perfect match. The most beautiful woman on the Vermilion River should be won by the most handsome man.
That's what people thought. Aida's choice, in fact had nothing to do with Monsieur Boudreau's good looks. Laron had not money or property to recommend him. To Aida his lack of finances worked in his favor. She'd thought it all out carefully. Laron would come live with her at her father's house. Though he would be her husband, it would still be her father's house and he would always work her father's land. For that he would, of necessity, be grateful for his marriage. Gratitude was not love, but it was closer than admiration. If he could need her, then he could love her, her and not the most beautiful woman on the Vermilion River.
Of course there was the German widow. Aida tapped her teeth thoughtfully with her fingernail. She doubted that Laron realized Aida knew about her. Aida wasn't hurt or worried about that alliance. She wasn't even certain that she would object to it continuing after they had wed.
The German widow was Laron's mistress. Aida allowed the thought to flow over her like water, testing the feel of it. It was not bothersome at all. Aida thought that it should bother her, but it didn't. That he held another woman in his arms, that he probably did with her unspeakably intimate things, was not disturbing or hurtful, but merely a curiosity.
If Aida never acted as if she noticed, no one would ever suspect that she knew. Surely he couldn't love the German widow. Her brow furrowed unhappily at the suggestion. Aida didn't mind Laron having a mistress, as long as he didn't love her. When Monsieur Boudreau finally began to love, Aida wanted to be the recipient.
She pushed away the troubling thoughts. She was young and pretty, and tonight, just up the river, music was playing. Somehow, some way, her husband would come to love her. She was Aida Gaudet, young and beautiful and ready for a party.
"Aida!" her father called out impatiently once more.
"Coming," she answered as she began looking around for her fancy kid dancing slippers. She bit her lower lip, worried. Where were they? It was one of the terrible realities of her life; Aida was likely to lose things. Well, perhaps that wasn't exactly true. She would simply forget where they had been put.
"She would forget her head, were it not attached," the old women joked of her. Unfortunately, it was probably true. Somehow she could not seem to recall what she was supposed to do when. Where things were or why. Or even if she had done what she was required to do.
Frantically she began searching the room, sorting through the worn old sea chest, searching through the unstraightened bedclothes, kneeling to look under the bed. By complete chance she spotted them. The slippers of aged buckskin dyed with poke salet berries were hanging from the rafters. The rains had been bad last week and she had feared the damp floors would ruin them.
She climbed up on a chair and brought them down, grateful for their safety. Brushing them lightly to assure herself they were not dusty, she slipped them into her sleeve for safekeeping. She grabbed her guinea feather fan and hurried from her room, through her father's, and into the main part of the house.
Her wooden sabots sat next to the door and she slipped her bare feet into them. They clomped against the porch boards as she made her way noisily outside.
The dancing slippers could not be risked to the damp dangers of water travel. If a shoe became muddy or lost in the water, it should be a wooden one, easily replaced.
"Coming, Poppa," she called out to the gray-haired man waiting rather impatiently at the end of the dock.
The Gaudet house, like most on the Prairie l'Acadie, was built on the natural rise of land beside the water. The stream facilitated travel, whether for visiting neighbors or for transporting goods to market. Water access meant prosperity.
But water could also mean flood. The whole area was low and wet. Good for game and crops, but people and their possessions needed to be high and dry. As if God understood this wet paradox, all along the bayous and rivers, thousands of years of sediment deposit built up along the banks, making the areas near the water the safest in time of flood. So even with huge areas of open space behind them, the residents of Prairie l'Acadie lived bunched together on the natural levees in close proximity to the river and its tiny tributaries.
Jesper Gaudet was wearing his best cottonade culotte tied just below the knee and his striped blue chemise. His face was shaded from the last of the afternoon sun by a wide-brimmed hat woven of palmetto.
"We're going to miss everything," he complained as he helped Aida into the long narrow boat known in the bayous as a pirogue. She ignored his words and settled herself comfortably in the narrow, seatless hull, her cherry-striped skirt billowing around her like a frothy soufflé, as her father pushed off from the dock and began the slow, laborious task of poling the pirogue upstream.
"They've been playing and singing for seems like half a day already," Jesper continued to fuss. "All the good food is likely gone."
"Oh, I'm not hungry," Aida told him lightly.
"Well, I certainly am," the old man complained.
With a little O of surprise and shame, Aida covered her mouth. She had forgotten once more to fix Poppa any supper.
It was near sunset. The light was low and filtered through the thick line of aging cypress and tupelos on either side of the broad expanse of water. The outstretched branches of the trees were draped and weeping with Spanish moss. And the quiet serenity of coming evening was disturbed only by the call of crickets and the buzz of mosquitoes.
The loud hungry squawk of a heron caught Aida's attention and she watched the bird's smooth graceful flight just above the water as it searched for prey. It was beautiful. She admired beautiful things.
The pirogue cut a neat swath through the bright green duckweed, so thick and verdant, it looked as if a person could simply walk across it to the distant banks where the knobby knees of the trees were visible above the water. The river was light and color and beauty. It was home.
They came around a bend in the waterway, and the sounds of song and merriment grew more distinct. Up ahead the glow of lanterns was visible in the distance. Aida sighed happily. This was life, this was what life was meant to be, joie de vivre.
Chapter 2
The whine of bowed fiddles and the pounding of dancing feet against cypress planking filled the air, mixing with the smells of boiled shrimp, gumbo fevi, and fresh baked miches. It was Saturday night and for Acadians that meant dancing and laughing and fun.
Fais-dodo was what the people had jokingly begun to call these community outings. The term, meaning "go to sleep," was coined from the practice of putting all the babies together in a bed at the back of the house. Children, typically much beloved and coddled, found suddenly that the parents who normally were content to converse with them for hours on end now only had one phrase to say: "Go to sleep!"
It was a phrase that Armand Sonnier himself uttered as he helped his sister-in-law get her three children tucked into the Marchand family's low-slung four-poster. A half-dozen children already reclined there, boys and girls alike wearing the traditional shapeless knee-length gown.
His niece and two nephews were healthy, rowdy, and active, much too much for his sister-in-law to handle alone.
Felicite Sonnier was heavily pregnant again. Her once pink, pretty face was round as a plate and splotched with the faint brown mask of childbearing. Her formerly lustrous brown curls were dull and limp and wound rather untidily about her head. And below the hem of her skirt her feet were so swollen no shoes would fit her and it appeared she had no ankles at all. Her best dress hung around her massive body like a tent, the shoulder stained with baby spit-up. Felicite Sonnier was tired. Armand knew by the sounds of her sighs that she was very tired.
"You rabbits get down in your den," Armand told the three curly-headed children. "And I don't want to hear a one of you calling out for Maman."
"I'm too big to go to sleep," four-year-old Gaston complained with a yawn.
"Me, too," his three-year-old sister chimed in. Little Marie's words were hard to make out as her thumb was already tucked firmly in her tiny little mouth.
"You two must lie here with Pierre," their uncle explained to them with great seriousness. "The baby needs his rest and you must watch over him."
Pamela Morsi Page 2