"Unfortunately, many times," she replied. "As did Traiteurs before me as far back as our days in the old country."
"And did you always succeed in chasing away the evil spirit?"
"Always," she replied with a tone of such confidence that I suddenly felt safe.
Grandmere Catherine and I lived alone in our toothpick-legged house with its tin roof and recessed galerie. We lived in Houma, Louisiana, which was in Terrebonne Parish. Folks said the parish was only two hours away from New Orleans by car, but I didn't know if that was true since I had never been to New Orleans. I had never left the bayou.
Grandpere Jack had built our house himself more than thirty years ago when he and Grandmere Catherine had first been married. Like most Cajun homes, our house was set on posts to keep us above the crawling animals and give us some protection from the floods and dampness. Its walls were built out of cypress wood and its roof out of corrugated metal. Whenever it rained, the drops would tap our house like a drum. The rare stranger to come to our house was sometimes bothered by it, but we were as accustomed to the drumming as we were to the shrieks of the marsh hawks.
"Where does the spirit go when we drive it away?" I asked.
Back to limbo where it can do good Godfearing folks no harm," she replied.
We Cajuns, who were descendants of the Arcadians driven from Canada in the mid- 1700s, believed in a spirituality that commingled Catholicism with pre-Christian folklore. We went to church and prayed to saints like Saint Medad, but we clung to our superstitions and age-old beliefs as firmly. Some, like Grandpere Jack, clung to them more. He was often involved in some activity to ward off bad luck and had an assortment of talismans like alligator teeth and dried deer ears to wear around his neck or carry on his belt at times. Grandmere said no man in the bayou needed them more than he did.
The gravel road stretched and turned ahead, but at the pace we were keeping, the Rodrigueses' cypress wood house now bleached a gray-white patina, soon loomed before us. We heard the wailing coming from within and saw Mr. Rodrigues on the front galerie holding Theresa's four-year-old brother in his arms. He sat in a split-oak rocking chair and stared into the night as though he had already seen the evil spirit. It chilled me even more, but I moved forward as quickly as Grandmere Catherine did. The moment he set eyes on her, his expression of sorrow and fear turned to one of hope. It felt good to see how much Grandmere was respected.
"Thanks for comin' so fast, Mrs. Landry. Thanks for comin'," he said, and rose quickly. "Theresa," he cried, and Theresa emerged from the house to take her little brother from him. He opened the door for my grandmother, and after I set the lantern down, I followed her inside.
Grandmere Catherine had been to the Rodrigueses' house before and went directly to Mrs. Rodrigues's bedroom. She lay there, her eyes closed, her face ashen, her black hair spread out over the pillow. Grandmere took her hand and Mrs. Rodrigues looked up weakly. Grandmere Catherine fixed her gaze on Mrs. Rodrigues and stared hard as though searching for a sign. Mrs. Rodrigues struggled to raise herself.
"Rest, Delores," Grandmere Catherine said. "I am here to help."
"Yes," Mrs. Rodrigues said in a loud whisper. She clutched Grandmere's wrist. "I felt it, Catherine. I felt its heartbeat start and stop and then I felt the couchemal slip away. I felt it.. ."
"Rest, Delores. I will do what has to be done," Grandmere Catherine promised. She patted her hand and turned to me. She nodded slightly and I followed her out to the galerie, where Theresa and the other Rodrigues children waited wide-eyed.
Grandmere Catherine reached into her split-oak basket and plucked out one of her bottles of holy water. She opened it carefully and turned to me.
"Take the lantern and lead me around the house," she said. "Every cistern, every pot with water in it, needs a drop or two of the holy water, Ruby. Make sure we don't miss a one," she warned. I nodded, my legs trembling, and we began our foray.
In the darkness, an owl hooted, but when we turned the corner of the house, I heard something slither through the grass. My heart was thumping so hard, I thought I'd drop the lantern. Would the evil spirit do something to try to stop us? As if to answer my question, something cool and wet slipped past me in the darkness and just grazed my left cheek. I gasped aloud. Grandmere Catherine turned to reassure me.
"The spirit is hiding in a cistern or a pot. It has to hide in water. Don't be afraid," she coached, and then stopped by a cistern used to gather rainwater from the roof of the Rodrigueses' house. She opened her bottle and tipped it so as to spill only a drop or two into it and then closed her eyes and mumbled a prayer. We did the same thing at every barrel and every pot until we circled the house and returned to the fron
t where Mr. Rodrigues, Theresa, and the other two children waited in anticipation.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Landry," Mr. Rodrigues said, "but Theresa's just told me the children have an old gumbo pot out back. It's surely got some rainwater in it from the downpour late this afternoon."
"Show me," Grandmere ordered Theresa, who nodded and led the way. She was so nervous, she couldn't find it at first.
"We've got to find it," Grandmere Catherine warned. Theresa began to cry.
"Take your time, Theresa," I told her, and squeezed her arm gently to reassure her. She sucked in a deep breath and nodded. Then she bit down on her lower lip and concentrated until she remembered the exact location and took us to it. Grandmere knelt down and dropped the holy water in, whispering her prayer as she did so.
Perhaps it was my overworked imagination; perhaps not, but I thought I saw something pale gray; something that resembled a baby, fly up and away. I smothered a cry, afraid I would frighten Theresa even more. Grandmere Catherine stood up and we returned to the house to offer our final condolences. She set a totem of the Virgin Mary at the front door and told Mr. Rodrigues to be sure it remained there for forty days and forty nights. She gave him another one and told him to put it at the foot of his and his wife's bed and leave it there just as long. Then we started back to our own home.
"Do you think you chased it off, Grandmere?" I asked when we were sufficiently away from the house and none of the Rodrigues family would hear.
"Yes," she said. Then she turned to me and added, "I wish I had the power to chase away the evil spirit that dwells in your grandpere as easily. If I thought it would do any good, I'd bathe him in holy water. Goodness knows, he could use the washing anyway."
I smiled, but my eyes soon filled with tears as well. For as long as I could remember, Grandpere Jack had lived apart from us, lived in his trapper's shack in the swamp. Most of the time, Grandmere Catherine had only bad things to say about him and refused to set eyes on him whenever he did come around, but sometimes, her voice got softer, her eyes warmer, and she would wish he would do this or that to help himself or change his ways. She didn't like me to go poling a pirogue through the swamps to visit him.
"God forbid you turn over that flimsy canoe or fall out. He'd probably be too soaked with whiskey to hear your cries for help and then there are the snakes and gators to contend with, Ruby. He ain't worth the effort of the journey," she'd mutter, but she never stopped me and even though she pretended not to care or want to know about him, I noticed she always managed to listen when I described one of my visits to Grandpere.
How many nights had I sat by my window and looked up at the moon peeking between two clouds and wished and prayed that somehow we could be a family. I had no mother and no father, but only Grandmere Catherine who had been and still was a mother to me. Grandmere always said Grandpere could barely care for himself, much less substitute as a father for me. Still, I dreamed. If they were together again. . . if we were all together in our house, we would be like a normal family. Perhaps then, Grandpere Jack wouldn't drink and gamble. All of my friends at school had regular families, with brothers and sisters and two parents to come home to and love.
But my mother lay buried in the cemetery a half mile away and my father. . . my father was a blank face with no name, a stranger who had come passing through the bayou and met my mother at a fais dodo, a Cajun dance. According to Grandmere Catherine, the love they made so wildly and carefree that night resulted in my birth. What hurt me beside my mother's tragic death was the realization that somewhere out there lived a man who never knew he had a daughter, had me. We would never set eyes on each other, never exchange a word. We wouldn't even see each other's shadows or silhouettes like two fishing boats passing in the night.