Ruby Read Online Free PDF Page A

hallway or down the stairs, which usually creaked loudly when I
descended. Weekend mornings Grandmere Catherine was up especially early so as to prepare everything for our roadside stall.
    I hurried down to join her.
"Why didn't you wake me?" I asked.
"I'd wake you when I needed you if you didn't
    get yourself up, Ruby," she said, answering me the same way she always did. But I knew she would rather take on extra work than shake me out of the arms of sleep.
    "I'll fold all the new blankets and get them ready to take out," I said.
"First, you'll have some breakfast. There's time enough for us to get things out. You know the tourists don't come riding by for a good while yet. The only ones who get up this early are the fishermen and they're not interested in any-thing we have to sell. Go on now, sit down," Grandmere Catherine commanded.
We had a simple table made from the same wide cypress planks from which our house walls were constructed, as were the chairs with their grooved posts. The one piece of furniture Grandmere was most proud of was her oak armoire. Her father had made it. Everything else we had was ordinary and no different from anything every other Cajun family living along the bayou possessed.
"Mr. Rodrigues brought over that basket of fresh eggs this morning," Grandmere Catherine said, nodding toward the basket on the counter by the window. "Very nice of him to think of us during his troubled times."
She never expected much more than a simple thank-you for any of the wonders she worked. She didn't think of her gifts as being hers; she thought of them as belonging to the Cajun people. She believed she was put on this earth to serve and to help those less fortunate, and the joy of helping others was reward enough.
She began to fry me two eggs to go along with her biscuits. "Don't forget to put out your newest pictures today. I love the one with the heron coming out of the water," she said, smiling.
"If you love it, Grandmere, I shouldn't sell it. I should give it to you."
"Nonsense, child. I want everyone to see your pictures, especially people in New Orleans," she declared. She had said that many times before and just as firmly.
"Why? Why are those people so important?" I asked.
"There's dozens and dozens of art galleries there and famous artists, too, who will see your work and spread your name so that all the rich Creoles will want one of your paintings in their homes," she explained.
I shook my head. It wasn't like her to want fame and notoriety brought to our simple bayou home. We put out our handicrafts and wares to sell on weekends because it brought us the necessary income to survive, but I knew Grandmere Catherine wasn't comfortable with all these strangers coming around, even though some of them loved her food and piled compliments at her feet. There was something else, some other reason why Grandmere Catherine was pushing me to exhibit my artwork, some mysterious reason.
The picture of the heron was special to me, too. I had been standing on the shore by the pond behind our house at twilight one day when I saw this grosbeak, a night heron, lift itself from the water so suddenly and so unexpectedly, it did seem to come out of the water. It floated up on its wide, dark purple wings and soared over the cypress. I felt something poetic and beautiful in its movements and couldn't wait to capture some of that in a painting. Later, when Grandmere Catherine set her eyes on the finished work, she was speechless for a moment. Her eyes glistened with tears and she confessed that my mother had favored the blue heron over all the other marsh birds.
"That's more reason for us to keep it," I said.
But Grandmere Catherine disagreed and said, "More reason for us to see it carried off to New Orleans." It was almost as if she were sending some sort of cryptic message to someone in New Orleans through my artwork.
After I ate my breakfast, I began to take out the handi-crafts and goods we would try to sell that day, while