Read Southern Ruby for Free Online Page A

debutantes’, because Maman herself had sewn the pearl embroidery onto the strapless silk bodice. But while the youngmen 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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜If you must do a thing, then do it graciously,’ I parroted, then returned to the parlour to find Aunt Elva talking to Maman about the beaus who were courting Eugenie.
    â€˜That charming Leboeuf boy lights up whenever he’s around Eugenie,’ she was saying. ‘When I saw him talking to her at the Rombeaus’ annual garden party, he looked positively smitten. Then there’s Harvey Boiselle, a good catch indeed . . .’
    I glanced at Maman. She used to be good friends with Lisette Rombeau; they’d grown up together. We hadn’t been invited to the garden party this year and that was a snub if ever there was one. However, although Aunt Elva was doing her best to make a point of our fall in status, Maman took it all in serenely, firm in her belief that one day I would meet the right man and fall in love with him and all our misfortunes would be swept away.
    I wished I could lose my worries about the future in romantic delusions. It would sure beat the humiliation I felt whenever Mae and I had to take something else to Mr Joseph’s pawn shop.
    Later in the afternoon, while Maman was taking her ‘lady’s nap’, I wandered around the apartment, trying to think clearly. Everything was going to pieces. What were we going to do? The de Villerays were one of the oldest Creole families. We could trace our ancestry to a naval officer who had accompanied Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville to found the city of New Orleans, and whose descendants had become wealthy plantation owners on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. The apartment we now lived in had once been part of one of the many townhouses our family had owned, but lavish living by my forebears had gradually eroded the family’s fortune. My great-grandfather had been famous forhis duelling, but had gotten himself killed at sixty years of age by a younger man’s bullet on account of some scandal over a woman’s honour. My grandfather’s reckless disregard for money and expenditure had left the family with nothing but debts. I only had a few recollections of my own father, also a gambler and womaniser, because he was often away somewhere involved in some swashbuckling scheme to regain the family’s fortune. His last attempt was in Brazil, where he was convinced he’d make his millions rediscovering an old gold mine that had been abandoned by the British. The only thing he achieved was to contract malaria, and he died ten days later on my twelfth birthday.
    I could hear Mae in the bathroom, washing our clothes with a scrubbing board. Why did she stay with us? Other maids had modern appliances like vacuum cleaners and washing machines to help them with their work, while she had developed painful fluid on the knee from polishing floors. I couldn’t stand it any more. After picking up my hat and gloves from the stand, I walked out the front door and quietly closed it behind me.
    Often when I felt sad and frustrated, I would ride on one of the streetcar routes until I felt better. That day I decided to go to Audubon Park, but when I reached Uptown, instead of heading to the park as usual I walked onto Tulane’s campus and sat under a large oak tree watching students hurry to and from classes. Each year there were more girls coming here. I studied them with curiosity. They looked so confident in their Peter Pan–collared sweaters and circle skirts.
    â€˜What are you studying?’ I asked one dark-haired girl. She wore light pink lipstick