Southern Ruby

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘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!

  And:

  Here is a picture of me and Amandine during Halloween. Everything fascinated her — all the ghouls, witches and ghosts. They go all out here — real skeletons and full on costumes. I’ve also enclosed a picture of her in her high-chair eating her grits. She’s a true New Orleans baby.

  I knew exactly what she was feeling. Nan was a good woman who would do anything for the people she loved. But if you displeased her, she could shut down on you in a way that made your blood turn cold. It took her a long time to forget a grudge. I didn’t like to think anything but good about Nan, especially now she was gone. But I had to admit the truth, and the evidence was there in my mother’s letters.

  The last line in the final letter brought tears to my eyes again:

  Please write to me, Mum. You can’t stay mad about this forever!

  I glanced at the date: 3 September 1982. One month before my parents died. Perhaps much of Nan’s grief had been that she and my mother never reconciled before the accident.

  ‘Oh, Nan!’ I cried out. ‘Why?’

  I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a long time. The journey to the past was exhausting. Finally, I summoned the strength to gather my mother’s letters into a pile and retied the ribbon around them. I was about to return them to the box when I noticed another letter inside. I was sure it hadn’t been there when I’d looked in the box when I was fifteen because I would have remembered it.

&n
bsp; The envelope was cream cotton fibre and had been closed with a wax seal. The writing wasn’t my mother’s loopy cursive, but graceful calligraphy. I examined the postmark and saw that it was dated March 2001. The letter didn’t smell musty like the others, but gave off a hint of jasmine and patchouli when I opened it.

  Dear Cynthia,

  This may be the last letter I ever write to you. I have been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and will undergo electric shock treatment for it next month. Nobody knows how long I have got. I may last for years yet, or I might be gone tomorrow from a stroke or heart attack. The date for my surgery is the same as sweet Amandine’s twenty-first birthday, April 12. Do you expect that I could have forgotten her? I think of her every day, and am sure my grief at not seeing her grow up is what is slowly killing me, not the irregular heartbeat that the doctors have diagnosed. It is as if you took my soul along with her to Australia.

  I am sorry we fought over her. That was a dreadful mistake that has cost me dearly. But we were younger women then, foolish and selfish. We should have come to some better compromise than to involve lawyers and diplomats. Have the years and the ebbs and flows of life not brought you to feel any pity for me? Just as Amandine is your last contact with Paula, she is my last with my beloved Dale. Yet you have denied me not only all contact with her but any news of the young person she is becoming. As a mother yourself, you must understand the meaning of this?

  You have a right to your anger, but by holding on to it you have also deprived Amandine of a large part of herself. She has a family here too: people who love her and miss her and always will. She also has a significant property that will come into her possession when I pass away. This property is of great sentimental value to our family and I ask one more time that you will allow her to come here so I might show it to her myself and explain its history.

  To get what you want is a responsibility: I have learned that in life. You won, Cynthia. Why then are you still afraid of me? What could I possibly do to harm you . . . or Amandine?

  Yours truly,

  Ruby (Vivienne Lalande)

  I was stunned. All the excuses and rationalisations I’d made to justify Nan’s behaviour collapsed. My father’s family in New Orleans hadn’t forgotten me. They’d wanted me to be part of their lives. And after the death of my parents, there’d been a dispute about whether I should remain with them or come to live with Nan in Australia. It went part of the way to explain Nan’s secrecy and her denial of any details about my father. But as much as I tried to see everything in a detached manner, I was furious.

  ‘Nan!’ I cried. ‘How could you have done that to me? You must have understood how badly you were hurting me!’

  I paced the room, rereading the letter. And what was this about an inheritance? How could I inherit something from people I’d never known? Gradually my anger gave way to a deep sense of loss.

  By the time the sun rose, my conflicting feelings had been overshadowed by questions. Was this woman — my Grandmother Ruby — still alive? And if so, what kind of woman was she?

  THREE

  Ruby

  New Orleans, 1953

  Lord, my Aunt Elva was evil and I wished her dead! But I smiled sweetly instead and offered her another piece of Doberge cake.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said, pursing those thin lips of hers and shaking her head so her double chin wobbled like a turkey’s wattle. ‘It’s rather dry. When my Millie makes it, it practically melts in your mouth.’

  I glanced at Mae, who stood in the doorway in her faded uniform and watched us with her mahogany eyes. Her pride would be hurt. We’d eaten gravy on bread all week to put on a good show for Aunt Elva. It wasn’t Mae’s fault our oven was old and she’d had to go easy on the butter. I could have killed Aunt Elva with my bare hands right then if it didn’t mean I would hang and then burn in hell.

  It was my gracious mother who saved the moment. ‘More tea then, Elvie?’ she offered, picking up the pot and pouring some into Aunt Elva’s cup.

  My heart sank at the sight of Maman’s trembling hands. She was getting worse, and yet she had dressed up in her mauve-pink pleated dress, powdered her face and buffed her nails.

  Aunt Elva studied the teacup with calculating rather than admiring eyes. It was Haviland Limoges France and had been a wedding gift to my grandparents. These days I usually hid anything of value when Aunt Elva visited, but Maman had insisted that we always offer our guests the best we had. I knew what Aunt Elva was thinking when she stared at the cup, and it wasn’t how pretty the rose and violet pattern was.

  What else does the old witch want? I thought, looking at the bare walls of our parlour where the collection of Degas paintings used to hang. Our blood?

  I loved Maman fiercely and wanted to protect her like a lioness protects her cub. She was everything a Southern belle should be — pretty, unfailingly polite and always thinking of others. But she seemed to live in some time in the past and couldn’t adapt to our present circumstances. Mae and I had been pawning things left and right the past year to keep us going, and Maman acted like she didn’t even notice. In her mind, she was still living in a plantation mansion with a drive lined by oak trees.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, rising from my chair. I grimaced at Mae as I passed her on my way to Maman’s bedroom.

  Mae followed me, and gripped my hands after I’d punched the bed viciously several times. I didn’t know from whom I’d inherited my fierce ability to see reality as it was, but it certainly wasn’t from Maman or any of my de Villeray ancestors, who had almost without exception perished through embarking on romantic but doomed ventures.

  ‘Miss Ruby,’ Mae said in a hoarse whisper, ‘you control your temper now . . . for your mama’s sake.’

  ‘I’m going to kill that old witch,’ I said under my breath. ‘Why’d she come here without Uncle Rex? She’s up to something! I can see it in her beady eyes.’

  ‘You kill her and who’s gonna look after your mama when they lock you up?’

  I pulled away from Mae and sat on the bed, catching my reflection in Maman’s bevelled dressing-table mirror. My eyes looked wild.

  Everyone called me Ruby, but that was my pet name. My real name was Vivienne — Vivienne de Villeray. Maman said she couldn’t remember how I’d gotten the name Ruby and it must have been because of the pretty gemstone, but Mae said it was because when I was a baby I used to scream and turn ruby red until I got what I wanted. The name stayed, although I could no longer scream for my demands.

  I turned away from my reflection. I was only seventeen and yet I felt worldly compared to Maman. Couldn’t she see that Aunt Elva was a bad woman who would steal the food off a baby’s plate if she wanted it? If I was a man I would have thrown her out, but I was a young woman who’d been brought up to ‘behave’. It was utterly ridiculous that I had to act like a charming and proper lady when we had no money to fund such genteel appearances.

  My gaze fell to the row of medicine bottles lined up on the dressing table. When I was a child, enticing crystal perfume dispensers and a silver brush set used to sit there instead. The dresser and mirror would bring us a tidy sum, but I couldn’t sell it. Maman loved beauty and I couldn’t take every last vestige of it away from her, especially not now. She was one of those fragile, sensitive souls who needed beauty the way the rest of us needed food and water.

  ‘Aunt Elva wants to send me to the convent,’ I told Mae. ‘I heard her talking about it to Uncle Rex. She said it was the only future for a “girl in my position”.’

  Mae put her arm around me and stroked my hair the way she used to do when she was my nursemaid instead of our housekeeper. ‘Now, don’t be silly,’ she said, laughing gently. ‘You in a convent? Lord have mercy on the sisters! No, your Uncle Rex won’t allow that. He likes you and your mama too much. Besides, you’re the prettiest girl in town. You’re going to find yourself a good man to marry.’

  Dear Uncle Rex. While my father had been a gadabout Southern dandy who wore his je
t-black hair slicked behind his ears, Uncle Rex was stocky and wore pin-striped suits like a man of business. He spoke in measured tones and was polite without ever resorting to my father’s honeyed flattery. In my mind, he was the only reliable man in the de Villeray family and I loved him for it. After my father died, my uncle started discreetly putting money for housekeeping and living expenses in a jar on our mantelpiece. But now Maman was sick, that money wasn’t enough and Aunt Elva was watching him like a hawk.

  ‘You don’t give these people another cent,’ she’d told him one day in front of us. ‘If Desiree can afford to make a debutante dress like that for Ruby, then she can afford to pay her own way.’

  Never mind that we’d sold our last pieces of silverware to pay for the dress material. I hadn’t wanted to debut, considering our circumstances, but Maman had insisted. ‘It’s the most beautiful night of a young girl’s life,’ she’d told me.

  ‘It was only right for Ruby to debut,’ Uncle Rex had replied to Aunt Elva. ‘She’s beautiful and at the right age to marry.’

  ‘Well, I don’t see any suitors from good families knocking down the door for her hand!’ his wife had retorted.

  I cringed at the memory. I loved Uncle Rex for his kindness, but Aunt Elva was correct in her summing up of the situation. To the chagrin of the other debutantes, especially Aunt Elva’s own frumpy daughter, Eugenie, I had been the belle of the ball. My dress had indeed been exquisite, far more stunning than the other debutantes’, because Maman herself had sewn the pearl embroidery onto the strapless silk bodice. But while the young men all wanted to dance with me, their mothers had forbidden them to court me because I didn’t have a dowry. The whole thing had been a humiliating disaster.

  ‘Listen,’ said Mae, lifting me to my feet and smoothing my hair, ‘you go out there and help your mama put on a show for Mrs Elva. Remember what she always told you.’