Les femmes de Mamou
Qu'elles boivent comme les trous secs
Elles sont aussi fortes que des ours
Et elles fart comme les mules
The women from Mamou
They drink like dry holes
They are as strong as bears
And they fart like the mules
We drove an hour and a half north on Interstate 45 to just outside Alexandria to visit Uncle Albern. My family calls him ‘Uncle’ but he’s really my cousin on mother’s side of the family. This happens a lot in Louisiana. Uncles are called “brother,” sisters are “tante so-and-so,” and my mother’s last name is spelled four different ways. My maternal grandparents lay side-by-side in a small cemetery near Richard. J’Mama’s gravestone reads “Olivia Sonnier Jeanis”; J’Papa’s reads Alus Jeanise. I grew up thinking of my mother as Clarisse Jeannis Moroux; her nephew is John Albern Jeanise. Other versions of the name in this same family are spelled “Jeanisse.” It just doesn’t matter. But, you better get their names right when you’re visiting them, whatever they are. You just can’t switch out your uncle for a cousin, even if he is.
I hadn’t seen Albern since my brother’s funeral fifteen years ago. And I was too disturbed by my brother’s death to focus on any one person that day. Before that, I was very young when we visited our cousins, so I missed getting to know that Albern is one of the most entertaining people in our family. When he found out last year that I was staying with my parents for a week, Albern invited us to his home for gumbo, pickled okra, and croissants. It was in the fall, so all of the things he had planted in the little garden behind his house were ripe for a celebration. But, even if it had been winter and nothing was on the vines, Albern would have canned and frozen fresh vegetables ready for his gumbo, maque choux, or anything else we might want.
He was loaded with family stories the moment we entered the door. “Oh, Chere, you still look the same,” he shouted to me. “You got you daddy’s eyes.” Albern works as a printer, but his original calling is as raconteur et chanteur de divertissement. “You know the Jeanise’s, if they couldn’t find anyone to fight with, they would fight with themselves,” as he brings life to the cantankerous Jeanise boys, sent home from elementary school for beating each other up on the playground. The story that follows tells us about Mozine Sonnier, my grandmother’s sister and illuminates the unique reasoning that defines Cajuns. Mozine is riding to church one Sunday with her friend, Jacque, in the black canvas-covered buggies so prevalent in early 20th century Louisiana. Mozine finds it difficult to make the journey to church without going to the bathroom. “Jacque.” Mozine demands, “pull over to the side and let me out. You tell me when I pull down my pants if a car comes. “OK,” replies Jacque. As soon as Mozine lifts her skirt and pulls down her panties, a car passes their parked buggy on the road. “Jacque,” Mozine shrieks, why you don’t tell me about the car?” “Well,” Jacque provides, “I didn’t think there was anybody in it.”
To illustrate the strength that Albern feels all Cajun women posses, he picks up the accordion lying next to his brown, over-stuffed Lazy Boy and beings to sing, “Les Femmes du Mamou,” a song J’Papa sang to him before bedtime every night he stayed with his grandfather. Albern’s lanky frame dances in the easy chair, providing a rhythm line for his solo. He smiles broadly when he reaches the phrase, “elles fart commes les mule.” The French speakers in our family audience erupt into spasms of laughter. Albern is encouraged to go on. He shares the genealogy of our family he spent five years assembling. I am so excited at the sight of this enormous document that he gifts me with the 24 x 30-inch poster of fifteen generations of Amiraults, DeGrandaires, LaFleurs, Jugnacs, Marchands, and Poiriers.
Albern proudly details our heritage originating from Alsace-Lorraine and ends by saying, “you know J’Mama was very well-educated. She could read and write in French and English. She came from a family of self-employed business owners and was in possession of valuable property when she married our grandfather.” These facts contradict the woman I knew to be a poor tenant farmer’s wife living in a wood frame house with no indoor plumbing, heat or electricity. “How did she evolve into the woman I saw slopping pigs and chasing after chickens in her drab cotton dresses and muddy shoes?” I asked incredulously. “J’Papa lost her inheritance in a failed deal to parlay her money into rice-producing land.” They became just another casualty of the drought around the time of The Great Depression.
I thought about this and other stories Albern sang and delivered so deliciously to us as we wound our way back to Lafayette that day. I was still analyzing the mettle of our gentle, incredibly humorous grandmother the next evening as I spoke with my brother, Greg, about our family. “No wonder our mother is so headstrong,” I remarked to Greg and shared with him how I didn’t understand our mother as I was growing up. “Don't you remember the story about Mama and the chicken under her arm?” Greg asked. “J’Papa told Mama to take a live chicken to the country store to pay for groceries for which they had no cash. Along the gravel road she used to walk barefooted to the store, a carload of young boys zoomed past her spraying dust and laughing as they hung out of the windows. Some threw rocks at this diminished girl. “Isn't that really all you need to know about Mama?” Greg pleaded to me for understanding. When Mama told Greg this story, he said she demonstrated how she shielded the chicken under her arm, protecting it from the dust as they blew past her. And how humiliated she felt by them as she bartered with the grocer for flour, oil, and other supplies. She was given "change" for whatever she wanted after the groceries were paid for, for her trouble. “Isn’t that an incredible story?” Greg repeated several times.
I don’t know why it took Mama so long to tell me her story. I had only just heard this one a couple of years ago, as I begged her for background about our family. After she shared it with me, I wrestled with how I could make her know I was so proud to be her daughter. She could have trusted me with the fear and shame long before I dragged the details out of her. I already knew that she could drink like a dry hole. I now believe her to be as strong as a bear, no matter how her name is spelled. And the other, well,
