Whispers of the Bayou (8 page)

“He has pretty eyes, like Daddy,” Tess said, running one tiny finger across the Egyptian’s face. “I miss Daddy.”

“I know you do,” I replied lightly. “But you’ll have lots of adventures to tell him about when we get home.”

Tess grew bored with the puzzle and asked for her favorite storybook instead. I put the puzzle away and pulled out
Garamond and the Gator,
a beautifully illustrated Cajun folktale that Nathan had given her last Christmas. Tess absolutely loved the book and had made us read it to her at least twice a day for months. Secretly, I wondered if the story appealed to some basic instinct inside of her, that portion of Cajun heritage that had come down from my paternal grandmother. As I read the story to Tess now, letting her find for the millionth time the crab, the spider, and the crawfish that were hidden in the elaborate drawings on every page, my hand reached absently for the French twist at the back of my head that artfully hid the bald patch.

What kind of family tattoos a child?

Maybe it was a Cajun thing, a right of passage or a ceremonial ritual. At the library yesterday, as a part of my search for an ornate cross inside a bell or an upside-down shield, I had gone down the path of every country and heritage for which I could find literature, studying their symbols and icons, both modern and ancient. I hadn’t found a match for my tattoo anywhere, but perhaps much of Cajun history and icons were more verbal than written anyway. It wouldn’t be the first time an entire offshoot culture had preserved its history in oral form.

“Turn the page, Mommy,” Tess scolded me now. “You’re not paying attention.”

I did as she instructed, reading the next page of text with extra enthusiasm.

What kind of family tattoos a child?
I wondered again after I finished reading and waited for her to find the crab, spider, and the crawfish. Had my mother done this to me while she was still alive? If she had, wouldn’t AJ have known about it?

According to AJ, she and my mother had been extremely close their whole lives, best friends as well as sisters. They had grown up on the “wrong side of the tracks,” as AJ put it, though both had escaped their humble beginnings—AJ by running off to New York City to try her hand
at modeling, my mother by marrying the handsome and wealthy Richard Fairmont, who brought her to live in his family home across town. That was the same home I was heading to now, the one that had been left to me by my grandparents.

“Do you see the crawfish, Mommy?”

I pointed to the tiny lobsterlike creature peeking from behind a bucket, knowing that even when AJ and my mother lived a thousand miles apart they were in constant touch; AJ said the two of them had written letters almost daily and spoken via long distance once a week.
We knew each other’s details,
was how she had explained it to me yesterday,
and nothing in her life or yours or your grandparents, for that matter, ever indicated anything strange or unusual, at least not until I found this tattoo.
Strange and unusual was right.

“Read, Mommy,” Tess commanded with a groan.

I took a deep breath and kept going. I had hoped Tess might nap on the plane, but I realized now that she was obviously nowhere near sleep, feeling her usual morning peppiness times ten. I gave up on having any quiet time for my own thoughts and focused on her energy and enthusiasm instead. We interacted for the rest of the flight and somehow between the puzzles, picture books, and toys—not to mention a welcome soda and snack from the flight attendant—we managed to get through the next few hours.

It wasn’t until I felt a shift in the airplane, a slight downward tilting of the nose, that I realized we were getting close to our destination. I glanced out of the window over Tess’s head, shocked at how drastically the landscape below us had changed. Gone was the sprawling suburbia of the northeast corridor, gone were the rolling fields and red clay of the Southeast hill country. We were in the Delta now, the land vast and green and flatter than any flat I had ever seen.

For some reason, at the sight of the unusual terrain my heart felt as though it had flipped. It began to pound furiously in my chest, air whooshing from my lungs as if someone punched me in the solar plexus. The sound of my heartbeat roared in my head:
Boom! Boom! Boom!

“What is it, Mommy?”

Tess followed my shocked gaze to look out of the window herself. Right behind her, I felt sure I was having some kind of attack. All sound left my ears save for the pounding
boom boom boom
of my heart. I opened my mouth wide and gasped in another breath, refilling my suddenly aching lungs, and wondered why I had thought this trip would be no big deal, just another voyage in a lifetime of travel. I had not one single memory of here, not of the people or the houses or the land, but somehow the downward tilt of the plane and the sight of the unfamiliar topography outside caused my heart to race and my lungs to ache and my eyes to well with sudden tears.

What was wrong with me?

Squeezing my eyes shut, I swallowed hard and sucked in more air and tried to calm my pounding chest. Clearly, this wasn’t a heart attack. It was a panic attack, something I had heard of a million times but had never experienced before.

As I clutched the armrest and tried to get a breath and waited for my heart to explode, all I could think was that AJ had been right.

We weren’t even there yet, and already I was off the deep end, fragmenting into a thousand pieces.

Thus ere another noon they emerged from those shades; and before them
Lay, in the golden sun, the lakes of the Atchafalaya.
Water-lilies in myriads rocked on the slight undulations
Made by the passing oars, and, resplendent in beauty, the lotus
Lifted her golden crown above the heads of the boatmen.

“Ooo, look,” Tess cooed, oblivious to my condition, her little voice muffled against the clear portal. “The grass is all sparkly!”

Boom, boom, boom!

I counted to ten, willing my heart rate to slow down, praying they wouldn’t have to take me off of the plane either sedated or in a straightjacket.

Suck it up, Miranda!
my mind screamed.
Calm down!

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Through sheer force of will, I slowly succeeded in making myself relax, resisting the urge to gasp for air. Instead, I kept my eyes closed and just breathed, in and out, in and out, in a steady rhythm. It took nearly a minute, but finally the slamming of my heart against my chest became less all consuming, both in sound and feeling. Eventually, the urge to gasp for air dissipated as well and I continued to breathe steadily: in, out, in, out. Finally, I opened my eyes and wiped my face with the back of my hand, frustrated at the drama of it all.

Why was I reacting this way, all breathless and teary-eyed over some
place,
some stupid scenery spotted from an airplane window? Was this strange reaction just a visceral response to the idea of coming home? In theory at least, if not in memory, this region was indeed my home.

“Mommy, answer me!” Tess was saying, though thankfully her eyes were still focused in the other direction, out of the window. “Why is it sparkly? Is that diamonds?”

Twenty-seven years. That’s how long I had been gone from here. Twenty-seven years since I must have witnessed the same terrain from the sky, though flying in the opposite direction. Maybe I had a memory of it, lodged somewhere deep inside. Maybe seeing this place again had tapped into feelings that had been buried ever since. AJ had warned me, and I hadn’t listened—either that, or the warnings themselves had caused me to overreact. I wasn’t sure which it was.

I forced myself to sit up and look out again, hoping the scenery wouldn’t set off another bout of panic. Blessedly, it did not. I scanned the view more calmly this time, breathing deeply as I did, noting that the ground far below seemed marshy, with glints of light sparkling from among the grass.

“It looks like water that’s making it sparkle,” I replied, finding my voice. “That must be swampland.”

“It is!” Tess said, nodding sagely. “I can see alligators.”

We were still too far up to see cars clearly, much less alligators, but I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her.

“Can you count the alligators?” I prodded, hoping to keep her attention focused out of the window a while longer, at least until the heat left my cheeks and redness faded from my eyes.

Tess counted as high as she could and then threw in some extra numbers for good measure. As she did, I pulled out a tissue, wiped at my face, and blew my nose. By the time she grew bored with counting, I seemed to have myself pretty much under control. At least I could breathe now, and the tightness in my chest was gone, though I still felt shaky and light and clammy.

I stole another look out the window. The empty marshland was now sprinkled with farms and towns. I was amazed again at the flatness of it
all, the greenness. The Louisiana landscape was utterly foreign and yet somehow completely familiar to me, though I doubted that my familiarity was based on anything real. Maybe I had seen pictures or something. Maybe I just wanted to think I could remember.

“Look, Mommy. Houses.”

Knowing we would probably reach the ground in about ten minutes, I told Tess it was time for us to straighten up and put all of her things away.

“This was fun,” she said emphatically as she gathered together her dolls and their tiny clothes. “Mommies almost never just play.”

Ouch.

“I play with you all the time, honey,” I replied evenly, trying not to sound hurt. Good grief, I made a point of sitting down with her nightly, no matter how tired or stressed I was from work, giving her a good half hour of undivided attention between bath and bed, to read or draw or play any game she wanted. “We almost never miss a night.”

“Yeah, but that’s because you have to,” she said, cramming the dolls into her carry-on bag. “I like it better when you want to.”

I let that one roll around in my head for a while without comment as we finished putting our things away. Even today on the plane, I hadn’t
wanted
to spend so much time playing with her. I had done it just because I’d had no other choice. Was that one of the reasons I struggled so with parenting, because I interacted out of obligation while other mothers did it simply because it was something they enjoyed? Not having any close friends who were mothers themselves, I had no answer for that question.

“You’re right. That was fun,” I said finally, wishing I really meant it. “Maybe we can get something new to play with on the flight back.”

“Okay!”

I tucked our bags under the seats in front of us. As we angled toward the treetops, I placed an arm across Tess’s chest and looked out the window, noting how the rows of dark roofs were punctuated here and there by bright blue tarps. In the row behind us, I heard a man explaining to his seatmate that the tarps were there to cover the roofs that still awaited repair after Hurricane Katrina.

“We made it,” I said, pulling my arm back as we taxied to a stop at the gate.

As we waited for the airplane doors to open, I took a deep breath, thinking about my shocking anxiety attack and the fear that I would have to be carried from the plane in a straightjacket. I didn’t know what that whole thing had been about, but as the doors opened and Tess and I got in line to file off, I decided that for now at least I really was okay. My body and mind were back to normal and under control.

After going downstairs and retrieving our bags, we moved away from the chaos of the baggage claim area and watched for Nathan’s sister, Quinn, who was supposed to be meeting us here. I also had an eye open for Mr. Benochet, who had called me first thing this morning, as soon as he saw my e-mail. He insisted that I cancel the rental car and let him take me to Twin Oaks. When I had protested that I would need some sort of transportation while I was in town, he said that there were several cars out at the house, any one of which I could use while I was here.

“Miranda? Miranda Miller?”