Green Dragon Jitterbug

Sometime around 1920, J’Papa and several other rural real estate hopefuls, pooled what money they had to buy Louisiana rice farmland. J’Mama came to their marriage with means, so J’Papa used her money to make the deal with his cronies. It’s hard for me to imagine the barb-wire thin, rough hewn 6’4” man I knew as my grandfather having friends under any circumstances. The gaze I remember from the 1950s was so stern, he couldn’t even summons a softened smile for his energetic grandchildren. But, by the time I met him, he had lost all of J’Mama’s money in the plantation investment due to weather conditions that could not support his dream of rice crops. By now, he and J’Mama were living as sharecroppers in an unpainted wooden three-room house with no electricity, water, or indoor plumbing. Occasionally, it was fascinating to visit the house in Richard that lay near the winding gravel roads far off the crudest highways of Southwest Louisiana. We’d roll out of the car that Daddy had parked under the shade of a grand bank of twisted oaks, draped in low-hanging moss cast carelessly about by moist breezes. Beyond these trees that seemed to congregate like a gossipy gathering of wise old women, lay a contradiction of raw landscape. Hard sandy dirt clods supported a squeaky, rusty, iron fence absent of elaboration. Sometimes, after a hard rain, it was just a mud pit. The two-holer outhouse was off to the left. A few equally uninviting pigs forced their snouts through the wire fence at the right and snorted for attention. We usually dealt with my mother’s discomfort during these visits by kicking away approaching chickens and fighting with each other over who could be first to pump water from the well and get a cool drink. Dust was still flying on the wind as we ran from the pump to take our places on an uncooperative wooden porch swing. We were never successful with our first approach to it. It usually dumped one of us off the back or front.

Once we were on the porch, J’Mama rumbled over to dispense giggly squeezes all around and then disappeared into the kitchen to fire up the iron wood-burning stove. We soon caught coffee smells bursting through her open windows and ran inside to see what else she might be making. Sometimes she let me turn the shiny black beans in the grinder and help her drizzle quarter-cupsful of water over the fragrant brown powder until it wept into an inky brew. J’Mama’s warm embraces erased all the fear we shared about the few snaggly teeth that remained in her generous smile. Once the coffee had been dripped, she pulled out freshly baked yeast rolls and a bowl of cane syrup. Her banquet helped us ignore oily-smelling kerosene lanterns that cast sooty black shadows onto the walls and ceiling.

As we dipped the warm rolls in the gooey syrup, I mined the shack for remnants of my mother’s childhood. I never could find the young barefooted Clarisse sitting alone for hours shaping dolls out of discarded paper. Nor could I see the young girl trailing J’Papa through his shared fields to collect vegetables for dinner. Much later, Mother told me that only occasionally would J’Papa turn around to see if she was still following him. He never smiled or took her hand to reassure her that she was welcome to accompany him. What none of us knew was that J’Papa couldn’t provide the basics, like meat, for his family. Most of the neighboring farmers could pool their money to participate in the boucherie of cow. Cajun families often slaughtered an animal together, cooking and canning as much of the meat as they could harvest, then divided it equally. Mother’s family got the leftover suet and lard to flavor their vegetables. Any money there might have been for meat usually bought staples. When mother was old enough to be trusted, she walked barefooted along the winding gravel road to the grocer to negotiate a trade of one of their chickens for flour, cornmeal, or milk. With the limp neck of the animal hanging form her hand, she made her way from the store, often sprayed by dirt flying off a laughter-filled car filled with neighboring children. Over the years, this humiliation and shame moved into the crumpled cottage with her.

J'Papa didn’t live much past the age of 50, but managed to save enough money to buy the unpainted three-room farmhouse and land beneath it. After he died, J’Mama used money from the sale of the property to move to Eunice to a tiny white frame house with naked light bulbs hanging from wires and indoor plumbing. She started to frequent the Green Dragon nightclub to dance with the men who hung out there. She cut her hair and wore rouge for the first time. Some of her friends and relatives thought she'd become a harlot. On one of my visits to her new old house, the recent object of her desire was propped against the kitchen wall in a cowhide stick chair. I knew it wasn’t polite to stare, but I couldn’t help myself. It wasn’t that Ernest didn’t have any teeth; J’Mama only had a few. And it wasn’t that he was wearing a tight white sleeveless undershirt with baggy khakis. It was that he was so young—about thirty years younger than J’Mama. When he didn’t smile, he was almost handsome. His jet black hair, wet dark eyes, and tan skin, were seductive in their own way. Sadly, he was dimmer than J’Mama’s kitchen light bulbs. He had but a few laughs in response to our efforts to tease a dialogue out of him.

Still, I understood her attraction to him. I imagined J’Mama showering behind the rag curtain in the corner of her bedroom from which a raw piece of plumbing dispensed water. I could hear her sweet humming of Cajun tunes as she dusted her ample body in “Evening in Paris” powder bought from the dime store. I imagined her broad smile as she slipped into her best handmade cotton dress and readied her dancing legs for a night at the Green Dragon. Ernest, for all of his shortcomings, could make dance. He could scoop J’Mama into his arms and jump like lightning with Cajun accordions and fiddles. Just a few nights of Cajun two-step could erase years of stinky pigs, outdoor toilets, and whatever else hurts in your heart. These two souls found each other and became one. J’Mama married Ernest Prejean.

Not long after this visit to Eunice, I started college and immersed myself in the drill team, modern dance classes, books, and finding a boyfriend. I never visited J’Mama again, until I saw her in the funeral home. My mother said she died of a heart attack, complicated by the diabetes she fought so long. She looked so strange lying there, all frothed up in a pink nightgown, far away from the house with Ernest and forays to the Green Dragon. Her immense chiseled face with its cafe au lait American Indian features and her tight gray braids were still tucked neatly around her head, but all the bubble and wiggle of that squat fluffy body were gone. Yet, as hard as death tried to steal it, the hint of her welcoming smile lay there with her, faintly concealed under the waxy application of burial makeup. There was nothing wrong with her heart, I thought. She just used most of it on loving and dancing. The fiddler and accordian players may have taken a break, but the music would always be with her.

Uncle Snaky

No one ever knew what to do with Uncle Snaky when he came to visit our home in Louisiana. He stormed down the gravel driveway in his always immaculately polished Chevy, bolted from the car with Aunt Hilda dutifully following, struggling to keep up with him. Then, he stood inside the hurriedly slammed door, ready to go home as he entered our house. He shifted from foot to foot, cleared his throat, mumbled to no one in particular, and glared at Hilda. It was the signal to spend the next 17, not 18 minutes, getting the most she could from a visit with my mom, her sister. As Hilda began to settle in, Snaky, still standing, would turn his fedora in his hands, his eyes darting from side to side as though the ‘big deal’ might be breaking somewhere in his world and he was missing it.

Snaky was tall and lean, physically unattractive, if all you did was glance at him for a moment. But, he had an indescribable appeal and perhaps an untold story or two. He was a dapper dresser, crisp white shirts with risky ties, summer weight wool suits and spectator shoes, polished so well you could feel the shine before he entered the room. He often carried a boater or fedora from which he focused an unblinking stare and often wore snuggled down on his forehead allowing a quick getaway without eye contact. Eraste Doucet had one of those gaunt craggy faces with dark shifty eyes that make children stiffen in fear. He loved to tell graphically dirty jokes, his only meaningful contribution to a conversation with my family. Snaky was a Pied Piper of bad little boys. My brothers adored him, and well, so did I.

There was something intoxicating about riding with him in his car as he made his stops along the rural backwater routes of Southwest Louisiana, collecting liquor orders from the barkeeps of his territory. Snaky was a sales rep for Mr. Nathan, Nathan Levy’s, the largest liquor wholesaler in Church Point. He had every novelty item that Black and White Scotch ever produced and kept them enshrined on a sideboard in his kitchen. Big and little, black and white, plastic ‘Scotty’ dogs perched in various sassy diorama-type settings as though the purchase of scotch makes the drinker as tough as the breed.

Aunt Hilda, my mother’s shy funny older sister, shamelessly indulged Snaky by manicuring his house and clothes and cooking his favorites: chicken gumbo and rice, watermelon pickles, and grits and grillades. All of Aunt Hilda’s family, Mother included, scratched their heads and gossiped about what Hilda saw in this slippery, odd dude. We knew. Snaky had cool. He was people reduced like a rich Bordeaux sauce down to a basic, thick glace′. He didn’t have time for bullshit, polite exchanges, or a public veneer of niceness. Even though he spent the majority of his time on his wheels and wardrobe, Snaky was the real deal. He was disreputable and disagreeable and he knew it. He was James Dean, Stanley Kowalski, and Snidely Whiplash all buttoned up in a coarse elegance. Snaky often disappeared from home, several weeks at times, never explaining his absence to Hilda. When I got older, I asked Hilda where he went. “I don’t know, chere,” she whispered. “It’s just something Snaky has to do.”

On one memorable visit to our home, Snaky came limping rather than blasting through the door. One of my intrepid brothers nervily asked, “Hey, Uncle Snaky, what happened to you?” Snaky blurted out, “those damn doctors cut on my balls.” “You ever had your balls cut on, huh?” None of us stuck around for the details.

Snaky and Hilda never had children. So, whenever he could stand for us to visit, Hilda invited us to stay and sleep on the bed and pallets she made on the floor of their extra bedroom. We jumped at the chance to explore the drawers and cabinets of this mystery man. Aunt Hilda let us keep the gum and change we excavated. We had the feeling it made Snaky edgy, but Hilda never stopped our exploring every crevice of their neat little home. The first nude pictures I ever saw hung on the back door of Snaky’s bathroom. There she was, Marilyn Monroe, shamelessly spread on a red satin sheet. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. A vague thrill sneaked into my imagination as I envisioned being her.

I was similarly delirious riding in Snaky’s car. Each one of us, my brother’s and I, would take turns sitting in Snaky’s lap while he fired up the Chevy. As he pumped the accelerator to 55, we forced the suicide knob on the steering wheel as far to the right as it would go. Then, releasing our hands quickly, let is spin freely as we hurled around the corners of the streets in Church Point. The irresponsibility of it all collided with the deepest values my parents held and made us giddy.

Many years later, when Snaky was 80 years old, I sat in Aunt Hilda’s kitchen and watched tears pool in her eyes as she told me that Snaky’s driver’s license had been taken away by the police. It seems his driving had become hazardous to the general public of Church Point. I never got to see Snaky sitting at home, in his starched white shirt, polished brown spectators and fedora pulled just above his furrowed brow, with no place to roam. I could only imagine what it must have been like, his free spirit harnessed by age. But if he were still here today, he would smile that signature serpentine leer if he knew that his crazy heart had taken up a new residence. Like a hermit crab which moves to new digs when his home becomes too small, I welcome the hint of the spirit of that rogue that now resides in me.

Saints and Traiteurs

The most common image one conjures up of Southwest Louisiana is a plantation laden, majestic oak-covered, Spanish moss landscape tossed about by humid Gulf breezes. But, what is most remarkable about the place is the invisible and imagined, as you visit with its people and walk about its cemeteries. During a trip back home several years ago, I asked to see where my mother’s parents, J’Mama and J’Papa had been laid to rest. Mom and Dad drove my sister and me to the community of Richard, near Church Point. Their homestead, long ago demolished, lay near a locale called Point Noir. On the front row of their graveyard in Richard, near St. Edward’s Church where all are buried above ground, is a prominent white marble crypt of Charlene Marie Richard. Charlene, dubbed the “Little Cajun Saint,” died of leukemia at the age of 12. During her arduous treatment, she never complained and prayed for the priest and staff who tended her care until she died. Non-believers who were placed in the room where she expired, converted to Catholicism and many who visit her gravesite are miraculously cured of their afflictions. At the foot of her grave is a glass box whose top opens easily for visitors to place a small personal memento so that they too can become the recipient of an interceding miracle. While my mother kneels to pray at Charlene’s grave, my sister and I scramble to find something personal to leave in the glass miracle box. No one wants to be left out of the promise of a miracle.

As we dig through our purses, my mother scoffs at our gesture. “I go directly to God, now,” she states flatly. “Charlene refused to help Anthony (my brother) when he was dying of pancreatic cancer.” My sister ignores her and leaves a metal angel she carries in a neatly organized purse. While my purse holds an entire world of personal papers, cards, coins, and possibly angels, it always throws up the detritus of a life in disarray. I have two settle for two of my favorite aspirin, the bright orange, Maalox-covered ones. This is the ‘personal item’ I leave for Charlene work with. I assume my sister asks for a man; my guess is that I’m going to get stuck with relief from headaches, but I hope instead for some revelation about my grandparents. I dare not tempt faith by asking for some real miracle. It seems to have soured my mother on Charlene. After the requisite litany of prayers at Charlene’s grave, we amble around the big white graves looking for the ones holding J’Mama and J’Papa. I nearly laugh out loud as I finally see them side by side with their last name spelled differently. My mother explains that wherever the literacy rate of the faithful is low, the priests fill out the paperwork and spell names they way they choose. It does not seem remarkable to my mother that the priest in this parish chose to spell the names of people married to each other for life as “Olivia Jeanise” and “Alus Jeannies.” Mother always thought her name was spelled “Jeannis.”

The trip to my grandparents’ graves reminded me that the treatment arsenal for ailing bodies and spirits in Louisiana goes beyond what we think of as real medicine. Traiteurs are still abundant and dispense, often at no charge to the suffering, a combination of first aid, herbal remedies, Catholic prayers, somatic hand movements, voodoo, and white magic. As a child, Mother suffered from frequent ear aches and the traiteur was summoned to my grandparents’ home for treatments with herbs, garlic, chanting, and hand movements.

My own experience with a traiteur was remarkable. Out of curiosity about the trade during this same visit, I asked Mother for a referral (they aren’t listed in the local Yellow Pages). She came up with Helen Higginbotham about whom my mother had only heard but didn’t know. “I don’t even know if she’s for real” Mom said. But, I called her anyway, skeptical that her name wasn’t French nor did she sound African American on the phone. I drove to the outskirts of Lafayette where much of the large machinery and oil drilling equipment is sold and stored. My expectations for an authentic experience now reduced immensely. Several small trailers lined a short street where Mrs. Higginbotham was waiting outside her little white frame house with an overfed Basset Hound dragging its belly around the yard. I was startled to see this heavy set weathered 70-ish woman who looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t connect her to any time or place. As I followed her and entered the back door of her trailer, the stench of oily dog overcame me and I asked myself if I could spend more than five minutes here.

My first attempt to find a place to sit was foiled. “The sofa belongs to Minnie,” she said so quietly I didn’t connect the name to the dog. The only chair I was allowed was near the window. Not knowing what else to say when I called for a treatment, I told Mrs. Higginbotham I had a headache and that my aspirin was lying on the grave of Charlene. As I sat, Helen began to assess my condition. “Do you have a lot of stress in your job?” she questioned. “No, but I have lots of allergies,” I said concealing that dust and animal dander are my primary triggers. “Well, then I have work to do,” and her face took on a more serious look. I tried to read the room for the herbs and talisman of the traiteur. But she used no accessories of any kind. Rather, she began to speak soft prayers in French as she moved her hands rhythmically across the top of my head and down my neck and back. After three cycles, she smiled and proclaimed them, “gone.” She had such a sweet and inviting countenance that I forgot the reeking animal odor and found the courage to ask for more information. “When did you start treating people?” “I’ve always had the gift,” she said with a startled look as though most everyone should know this. “But” she continued, “I received real training when my three year old son almost died from asthma. An old black man named Michael Thomas had treated me as a young girl with asthma by cutting a lock of my hair and burying it in the hole of a tree in his yard. Years later, I brought my son to him, and he taught me how to use my gift on my son.” She then announced to me that I would need three treatments. When I told her I was headed home for Dallas the next day, she studied my face and said, “well, I’ll just have to put three treatments together for you now.”

She began another cycle of prayers and rhythmic movements, this time asking me the questions. “Who is the family you are visiting here?” Their names meant nothing to her, so she pressed on by asking where they were born. “My mother was raised in Church Point,” I began. “What was her maiden name? I was raised in Church Point,” she interrupted. I went into a chronicle of the Jeannis family and began to see surprise in her eyes. “I’m a Jeannis from Church Point,” she stated with more excitement now. “I’m really from Pont Noir. All of the Jeannis’ around Point Noir are related.” She began the story of the family. Her great grandfather fought in a battle in France and was on the losing side. After that, he moved to Nova Scotia and was thrown out of the Canadian province because of his Catholic beliefs. They moved to New Orleans, but quickly set out in flat boats through the bayous landing near Point Eglise, or Church Point. They burned old persimmon trees to clear an area for houses on land they claimed and named it Point Noir for it’s charred appearance. My Mother and Helen are cousins.

By now, the hair on my arms is standing up and I can’t take in any more information. I can’t decide if the smell of dog is finally getting to me or I am stunned by all of the coincidences. I drive to my parents home and tell them about Helen. Mother immediately remembered Helen’s father as Lovensti “Beebe” Jeannis, the Church Point Justice of the Peace. She laughed as she recalled an ‘accident’ that Beebe had one night when he searched outside for suspected intruders. “As he crept around outside in his long johns, shotgun in hand ready to fire, Beebe’s dog sniffed at his ass, as dogs like to do,” Mother is now laughing and unable to go on with her story. “His shotgun went off and poor old Beebe crapped in his long johns.” How this story made it around Point Eglise, I’ll never know. But, this I do know, Cajuns will tell anything on themselves and others if they know it will entertain a crowd.

As we sat in rocking Lazy-Boys that afternoon, I wasn’t thinking about how old Beebe soiled himself that night or about any of the other Church Point characters of renown my parents recalled that day. I was musing, and still do, about how my family shapes their existence. How their beliefs and customs form them and create a colorful lifestyle where storytelling, traiteurs, the Catholic Church, food and wine co-exist in a savory mélange. Where my mother hedges her bets by consulting card readers, but asks God for forgiveness for all of her transgressions and prays for healings, both of the body and spirit.

The next day I left on a small airplane for Dallas. The combination of dry air and altitude usually gives me a headache. It didn’t escape my notice that I didn’t have one. But, my mind still throbs to contemplate the coincidence that Steve, my husband, has a mother with the maiden name, “Beebe.”

Bargain Hunting

Left: My former bedroom, one of Mom's nine closets in her Louisiana home. Dad has 1/2 of a closet, for which he had to fight and continues to maintain a vigilant watch.

I don’t know what was more fun growing up an Army brat—going to the Post Exchange to make out my Christmas toy wish list or going by myself with Mom each fall to buy the new winter coat. As much as I loved the PX toy department, the annual shopping trip downtown by bus, in whatever city we lived, will remain the high point of my youth. Mom and I would get all dressed up, gloves and hats were mandatory. We would alight from the bus, chase through the magnificent department store doors, and feel our way down the aisles touching every scarf, glove, and stocking on the first floor. Eventually we would arrive at the place of magical metamorphosis, the hat department. There we would play for at least an hour lifting each hat from its form and running to a mirror to assess out transformation. “No, Mom, that’s too severe.” “Not that one either, you look like a stork has made a nest on your chimney.” “Oh God, too much hat, not enough body.” We would take turns exacting appraisals from each other and make imaginary life trades with movie stars and celebrities. Eventually, one of us would find The Hat that made us the woman we wished to be. Mom often delayed buying new curtains for the house so one or both of us could renovate our look from top to bottom. We’d finish off hunting day by collapsing at the department store lunch counter to order up chicken salad sandwiches and super large cherry cokes. The red leather swivel stools on stainless posts allowed just enough room for us to squeeze in with our new coats draped in department store zipper bags, hats carefully laid in important-looking spherical boxes, and a shoe box or two. It was a divine day on which I felt like a princess.

Over the years, fashioning just the right outfit for each important event became an even more consuming activity as Mom learned to sew and design for me and my sister, Danielle, who somehow escaped the shopping gene. An informal contract slowly evolved: Mom would sew; I would cook for the crew. It often took three weeks of night time sewing and eighteen dinners of spaghetti, meat loaf, and fried chicken for Dad and the boys to acquire a Chanel-like boxy suit fashioned from velvet with a matching or contrasting satin lining. A blue-dotted Swiss Easter dress took many bivouacs in fabric stores to piece together three separate patterns, acquire the fabric, confer over a strategy, and build the masterpiece. Standing still, in a tissue paper form, was a ritual so holy and prescribed that I dare not wiggle or interrupt it once it was underway. My mother, once possessed of the vision we designed together, bent herself over her sewing machine and plunged the pedal to the floor as though she was in a race for her life with a driver in the next lane threatening to overtake her. Pit stops were infrequent, but copious profanity-laced explosions were commonplace when the thread broke or the machine took the wrong path along a jacket sleeve. But, holed up like a monk in our laundry room, Mom persevered in her mission to shape a dream.

The men in our family were the unwilling victims in this ritual. My brothers traded many hours crawling under the garment racks and in fabric stores for time they longed to be in the yard blowing up plastic Army men with Black Cat firecrackers. Mom and I conspired how to keep the pack stable. As long as there was the hint, promise, or predictability of warm food, the little wolves remained contained and rarely bit or snarled at either of us.

Our shopping trips eventually terminated when the harmonic shopping bond between Mom and me broke. Not long after the birth of my second child, mother came to Dallas armed with her usual itinerary of stores to hit, but equipped with less than her usual stamina. Two weeks before her trip to Dallas, Mom fell in a deep hole in the bayou and broke her ankle while laying out crab nets to catch the swamp dwellers for a cookout. She appeared at my door in Dallas on crutches, my Dad following her with a wheelchair in tow that Mom had rented for her Dallas shopping extravaganza. Out first sortie took us to NorthPark Shopping Center where I pushed my other through Lord and Taylor, Titche’s, and more of her regular targets. One of the wheels on the chair didn’t line up with the other three so that movement down aisles of clothing was like pushing a boat through mud. This obstacle would shoot down whatever fantasies the average hunter had about bagging the perfect kill. Mother was not deterred, however. “Push, Dear, there’s a skirt over there I have to see.” “Right across that aisle, over there, the perfect blouse.” “I need a smoke, let’s go outside for a while.” My last vision of this excursion is still burned in memory. Mother is in her wheelchair, planted halfway between the doorway of the Neiman Marcus dressing room and the ready-to-wear blouses department. Ladies are shopping all around her. There she sits, stripped to the waist in all but her bra, trying to wrestle a new catch over her head. The wheelchair didn’t go through the door into the tiny dressing room so I left her to look at racks near the dressing room. Mom is oblivious to frustrated shoppers lined up behind her awaiting their turn at a fitting room. She has blocked the flow with her chair, but can’t resist a try-on of yet one more blouse. The look on her face is undeniable. With this garment, she has a chance to be somebody.

Bless Me, Sister

J’ai ete-z-au bal au soir
Tout habille en noir
Je fais serment de ne plus boire
Pour courtiser la belle.

I went to the dance last night,
All dressed up in black.
I promise never to drink again
To court my beautiful girl.

Poem by Ivy Lejeune from the Les Acadiens d’Asteur

The only path to grace, a momentary state at best for me as a young Catholic schoolgirl, was to raise enough money every Lent to buy at least one pagan baby. It was an endless struggle of impure thoughts, unkind words, and wasteful actions locked in a battle with unattainable ideals. Little white paper boxes came to the Catholic classrooms the week before each Lenten season. Sister Benignus began distribution from front to back, each dirty soul grabbing his chance at redemption as the cardboard coin receptacles passed to the edges of the room. I vaguely knew where in Africa the money might be going as I struggled to visualize the face and body of paganism. For me, it took the form of dark, wet and unclothed people. I could feel a mother’s agony in a grass hut as she enveloped an unwanted infant in her saggy, empty breast. Years of National Geographic, a Catholic’s Playboy magazine, probably painted these images for me. All I knew was that I could put rice in bowls and milk in chests by giving up Saturday morning trips to Mr. Biddle’s candy store. Five dollars was all it took to feed one African baby and baptize him into a new life. All I had to do was stare down my depravity for 40 days.

It seemed simple at first. If I didn’t get on my bike and ride to Mr. Biddle’s with my brothers Anthony and Greg, I wouldn’t see the layers of boxes and colorful rows of B-B Bats, Turkish taffy, ruby red wax lips, peanut butter-flavored Mary Jane’s, day-long Black Cow suckers, and firesticks. Pretty soon, however, I felt left out of the lazy day ritual and rode along “just to read” recycled comic books stacked in the store corner, ten cents apiece if you wanted to bring them home. Walking along the counters, as my brothers loaded up on the three for a penny and two for a nickel treats, my torture was shoved to a conscious level. But, I quickly basked in piety and reasoned that eternal salvation was within my grasp. I could almost smell the soapy, clean scent of my spirit receiving its saintly bath. I was evolving into Holiness. Sister Benignus was going to be so proud.

Trips to the Saturday afternoon twenty-five cent movies were a little more of a challenge. Mom dropped the three of us off and I was in charge of two ungrateful scoundrels, my younger brothers, who of course, had money to burn on Dots, Junior Mints, and Milk Duds. I could get a dill pickle the size of a small refrigerator but the esthetics of it was all wrong for me. The retrieval of the rubbery, frog-like object from a jar of green swill with swirling seeds usually resulted in shriveled hands and lips, squinty, tearing eyes and a soggy napkin, the side effects of over-vinegarization. This seemed like way too much suffering for a continent I’d never visited. Popcorn was the usual substitute. As we took our seats close to the screen and prepared to watch black and white newsreels and serials featuring walls that move to squash beautiful women trapped in rooms with handsome heroes in dark suits, smacking sounds emitted from my two brothers. It was interminable anguish to watch them suck the life out of the fragrant boxes crammed up against their faces and dislodge caramel from their stuck teeth. I began to question my choice of suffering. Why didn’t I give up movies, Indian Baseball, Red Rover, Four-Square, Hopscotch, or Jacks. Sister Benignus said to give up something that’s difficult to live without. Candy met this criterion and still allowed me recess with my friends at school. And, the biggest payoff was how much money I saved. It would go into the white box with the cross on it!

I won my engagements with evil by becoming fortified through a Monday classroom ritual. Each morning, we stood by our desks, faced the American flag, recited the Pledge of Allegiance aloud, and then sat and listened to Father read prayers over the intercom. On Lenten Mondays, Sister Benignus lit fires of passion for more pain. There she stood, her squatty body swathed in yards of black fabric. Her pinched, pale face poked through a starched, white, bib-like construction of selflessness. Her enormous black belt supported an oversized rosary and leather strap (weapon), which she alternated with a wooden yardstick to strike reluctant readers. She pontificated eloquently about the needy around the world and restated how each child’s $5 was the hand needed to snatch souls from those muddy huts and thrust them into the comfort of God’s waiting arms. Circus carnies, take lessons here. She was so good at selling God that I never questioned the method, even when repeated requests from my classmates and me to go down the hall to the bathroom were cruelly ignored or rebuked. This often resulted in at least one child per classroom wetting the schoolroom floor during arithmetic at the board or choral reading, including me. We were extruded through the church’s purification framework, nuns crafting the die into which we were cast. Spunk, individuality, and creativity were the broken cookies in this factory.

Visits to the confessional provided another opportunity to stay the course of self-righteousness. I built up a large cache of mercy as I usually got credit in the confessional for larger sins than I actually committed. I discovered this quite by accident one day in a clumsily worded divulgence. A priest got the impression that I actually had sex with a boy when my description was only meant to cover unchaste thoughts. The result was a mere extra two or three “Hail Marys” and “Our Fathers” penance and a bona fide bonanza of a redemption strategy. It was a simple way to keep secret reserves in the event of Complete Conscience Collapse, which I sensed was in my future.

After a series of stockpile confessions, rosaries, and graphic tours around the church tracing the Christ’s steps through the Stations of the Cross, Easter came and we indulged our greed, gorging ourselves into a sugar-induced stupor. We all became like Uncle Brud, my grandmother’s youngest brother. Brud, a corruption of “baby brother,” still looked like the infant name he bore as an adult. He was over six feet tall, weighed in at around 300 pounds and sported a red round angelic countenance. He visited Mamam’s home every Easter and Christmas but we never had verbal exchanges with him. He usually plowed through the door with his compass set on "dining room table" uttering only grunts if young ones blocked his path. He heaved his corpus load onto fragile, cane back, homemade chairs and we held our breath and privately saluted the furniture. Brud emptied serving bowls of potato salad, jambalaya, pork roast and gravy, and mache choux. And with utensils ready for battle, he dispatched the next round of fresh, coconut cake, sweet dough pies, and fudge. Brud beat the food in his mouth with the precision of an electric mixer. And then, as if the breaker to the home's light source had been flipped, he froze, wide-eyed and motionless. My brothers and I caucused in hushed whispers about how much food was still lodged in his cheeks, waiting for retrieval and more chewing later in the day. His next move was to the living room sofa where he took root and stared off with no hint of delight or satiation. I watched Brud and marveled at his endowment--this child-man sibling of Mamam, Tante Nola, and Tante Swit had three tireless women in service to him.

I still stand in awe of the messy mysterious courtship of Catholic Louisiana and springtime. In February, the strict, Catholic ritual and kaleidoscopic celebration culture escort each other arm in arm at masked Krewe balls and noisy street dances. Each wretched sinner waltzes in a delirious trance with his own greedy excess. And by design, the transgressor recognizes his defects, gives them a costumed form, and ushers them out through the dogma and liturgy of the church that is Lent. Easter provides each ragged spirit with a rehabilitated soul and the promise of Love for eternity. Sinners call this grace. Cajuns call it living.

J’ai ete-z-au bal au soir
Tout habille en noir
Je fais serment de ne plus boire
Pour courtiser la belle.

One Yellow Plate

My brother Greg is past fifty years old now. I’m older than he, but I’m not telling by how much. Greg remembers ‘the yellow plate incident’ like it was yesterday. You will want the plate, too, when you hear the story. It happened at one of our big Sunday lunches when we were children. Mom set the table with Melmac, the hot consumer dinnerware item of the 1950’s. Public bus seats were made out of it. Kids couldn’t break it. You could toss it like a Frisbee. It wouldn’t come back. But if it did, you could lose your nose. No cracks in the Melmac, though. Like its now higher brow vintage cousin, Fiestaware, it came in bright colors—coral, lemon, and turquoise. At this particular lunch, at the place where Greg always sat, was placed a lemon-colored Melmac plate. Before this day, the yellow plate had no real value in our family. Greg raced to his place with great dispatch and announced loudly, “Ooh, I get yellow today!” We all fixed our gazes on him and searched our brains to assess what this could mean. My sister, Danielle, no slacker as a scorekeeper of our parents’ love, grasped the monumental significance of the plate before Anthony, Marc, or I did. Though billed by reputation as indestructible, my mother had managed to burn and shatter all but one yellow Melmac plate. There were still multiples of the blue and red. You could see the horror on my sister’s face as she realized that Greg, four years older than she, was given the only yellow plate in the house by Mother. My sister burst into spasmodic sobs, “he has the yellow plate!”

Mother snatched at the most expedient solution and barked, “Greg, switch plates with Danielle.” Greg quickly seized control, “No, I want the yellow plate.” Mother, wanting lunch to go on as planned, urgently pleaded with Greg to give my sister the plate. Greg said “no” more defiantly this time. He was going down with the plate. Grasping the plate tightly against his chest, Greg decided Danielle should back off. Mother then gave Dad ‘the look” we all know so well. It had “make it happen” written all over it. If Mother was the Court of First Instance, Dad was the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court. He only stepped in when a grenade was necessary. While he rarely spanked any us, we saw him frequently in a military jeep, dressed in his uniform loaded with World War II and Korean War medals on his chest. We all assumed he was capable of barehanded assault on any enemy target. Dad moved to stand over Greg and boomed, “Greg, give your sister the plate.” He then snatched the plate from Greg’s clutch and planted it in front of Danielle. “The plate goes in this spot.” My sister then did something no graceful victor should do. She turned to Greg with an impishly smug smile and waited for a reaction. Greg left the table and, as far as I can remember, didn’t eat that day.

We all recently gathered on Memorial Day for another Sunday lunch around the same table in my parent’s home. This time, Marc, our youngest brother, told a story to the group about a recent trip to the hospital emergency room to be with Mom. My Dad fell unconscious from his chair to the ground at an outdoor barbeque cooked by the Mire Fire Department at their headquarters. After the ride in the fire department ambulance to the hospital, Mother called Greg, now our oldest living brother, to discuss what happened. She wrongly assumed that he would sense her panic and rush from Lafayette to be by her side. He, on the other hand, hearing no urgency in her voice, laid down for an afternoon nap. My brother Marc, the recipient of the second call, hearing panic mixed with the disgust about Greg in Mother’s voice, drove quickly to support her. Recounting this story at our Memorial Day lunch, Marc ended with self-satisfaction by saying, “After this, I’ll probably get the keys to the safety deposit box.” Greg fired back losing no time, “I already have it.” Then he dangled the little gold key in front of us all. My sister Danielle, now registering the same expression Greg wore on the day he lost the yellow plate, sputtered in disbelief,” I didn’t know. I didn’t even know there was a safety deposit box!” Later, from her home in Florida, she mailed Greg the yellow plate. Some people know when they’ve lost a war.