Praise for
The Goddess of Fried Okra
“Inspiring and touching.”—RT Book Reviews
“With characters full of heart…and vinegar, Jean Brashear takes us on a road trip through the back doors of modern life. And we get to read every hilarious marker on the way.”
—Pam Morsi, USA Today bestselling author
“Jean Brashear has that “it” factor. She is an incredibly talented writer who can hit every note with enough clarity to bring the reader tears, laughter, or just, “Oh, my, this is an amazing story.” THE GODDESS OF FRIED OKRA is stunning, powerful and raw. Pea is on journey to heal herself, and find herself—and you will want to go with her to find her dear, dead sister—I do.”
—New York Times bestselling author Stella Cameron
“A wonderfully engaging story of one woman’s search for self. Jean Brashear tugs on your heartstrings and won’t let go.”
—Julia London, New York Times bestselling author of A Courtesan’s Scandal
“THE GODDESS OF FRIED OKRA is a fabulous read. Riveting. Original. Those characters grabbed my imagination and didn’t let go.”
—Cathy Maxwell, New York Times bestselling author
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead,) events or locations is entirely coincidental.
Bell Bridge Books
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Memphis, TN 38130
ISBN: 978-0-9841258-9-0
Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 by Jean Brashear
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
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Cover design: Debra Dixon
Interior design: Hank Smith
Photo credits: scene -© Orientaly | Dreamstime.com
sword/alphabet © Jaguarwoman Designs
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Dedication
For my mother, Diane Roberson, who daily teaches me about being a strong and admirable woman (and one who was determined to have Pea for her own book clubs to read);
For Kathy Sobey, who has walked a few thousand miles with me over nearly twenty years of mornings (and some nights) being both laughing playmate and unpaid shrink;
For my cherished brother Buddy, who ignored most of my big sister bossing but somehow turned out pretty great anyway ;
For my beloved children, Jonathan and Seneca, and my adored grandgirlies Emma and Kate, who give my life meaning and my every day joy beyond measure;
And, as always, for Ercel, the love of my life, my rock and my greatest inspiration.
The Goddess
of Fried
Okra
Jean Brashear
BellBridge Books
Mount Bonnell
Mount Bonnell was site of picnics and outings in 1850s and 1860s, as it is today. Legend has it that an excursion to the place in the 1850s inspired the popular song “Wait for the Wagon and We’ll All Take a Ride.” As a stunt in 1898, Miss Hazel Keyes slid down a cable stretched from the top of Mount Bonnell to the south bank of (then) Lake McDonald below.
Austin, Texas
MADAME EVA SAYS
Nothing else could have put me on the road again, not after eighteen years of being dragged all over creation. The road was Mama’s perpetual escape clause for boyfriends, bill collectors or just boredom.
Sister, she used the road to save me.
All those years, I swore up and down that once I was old enough, I would find a spot and no force on earth would budge me.
But I didn’t count on Sister.
Sister gave up everything for me, see, and I owed her. She was only sixteen when Mama died; I was eight. Life could have been so much easier on her if she’d let the social services people have me like they wanted. Instead, she even chased off her no-good daddy Alvin when he showed up saying he would take care of us. She understood lighting-quick that what he really meant to do was lay on his sorry behind. Only get up long enough to take the child welfare money and buy lottery tickets. Sure as shooting, he would have let Sister do all the work.
But Sister turned those spooky eyes on him—I can still see him shrinking from them.
Sister, she had mojo. In spades.
Once she was gone, just shy of my twenty-ninth birthday, I lost everything I knew of home. Ten months went by, endless hours and weeks when no matter what I tried, I could not get comfortable in my skin. The hole in my heart was just too big to paste any more patches over. If only I could see her, talk to her, I thought, maybe the world would make sense again.
Especially if she would forgive me.
Yes, of course she was dead, but Sister believed in reincarnation, see, and she took great comfort from the notion of a do-over. Me, I couldn’t quite say I shared her faith, but I was desperate. Sister had it in her mind that the first year was critical for finding a person’s new body, and no matter how much I read on the topic—which I assure you I did, since a person cannot have too much information and anyway, I’d sooner read than breathe—I could not find one surefire source to say she was wrong. I couldn’t even locate any proof that souls always took up residence in babies. Some people thought a person could have a near-death experience and awaken as someone else.
Others believed the soul could be an animal next time, or even a plant. I could find arguments about almost every dadgum thing, while details on the actual process were pretty much non-existent. That was too many unknowns for a person like me, but if there was a chance in this world that she’d been right, I had to try to find her. I was whole when Sister lived; what I knew of family came from her. I needed that again. Needed her.
And I was getting scared, real scared, that if I didn’t hurry, I would be too late.
That was when I turned to Madame Eva, Sister’s favorite psychic. I wasn’t sure what to expect on my way over, but I kinda liked that little stucco house with its turquoise door and purple shutters, the riot of zinnias and marigolds tumbling along the cracked sidewalk. I was nervous, though, about going inside, wondering what all she might be able to see in my head.
She was nice to me, I have to admit. Took my hand real gentle, and if she spotted all the mistakes I’d made and the misery, she was too kind to say so. Instead, she told me if I opened my heart, I would find my family, but when I asked where, she only smiled and said the journey was up to me. That wasn’t one bit what I wanted to hear from her, and I got too caught up in my disappointment and missed some things.
But you can bet that when she told me New Mexico might be in my future, my ears perked right up. Sister always swore she was descended from Pueblo Indians. Someday, Pea, she would tell me, I’m going there to meet my people.
Note she said her people, not ours, ‘cause we had different daddies—well, at least she had one. My daddy I called Casper, like the Friendly Ghost, since he never came to visit. I don’t think it was very friendly, though, not to show up even once.
Sister was short with brown eyes, like Mama and Alvin. My eyes were blue like Casper’s. Sister said he was even taller than my six feet, but without all this mess of red hair. I read somewhere that my
coloring meant I had Viking blood, and that was a comfort. Vikings were strong and fierce, and I cottoned to the notion that I had warrior maiden written all over me.
Well, except for the maiden part.
And also the muscles.
I probably could have used some warrior skills when I set off that July day that turned out to be only the beginning of my life’s strangest chapter. All I owned in this world, once I’d gone a little crazy with grief and sold most everything we had, filled up the trunk and spilled into the back seat of the beat-up sedan she and I had shared. What I had left of Sister was a photograph and a tarnished Indian bracelet of Mama’s that Sister treasured.
With my last paycheck from the store, my grubstake was six-hundred seven dollars and eighty-three cents, which the hospital collection agency would have dearly loved to snatch from me. But I had a mission, and I could not worry about the place that spit Sister out on the sidewalk and left her in the hands of the wrong person.
Namely, me.
The road, like a tongue-flicking serpent sidling up to Eve, called to me. Madame Eva said the stars were aligned, that Fate would lead me home.
Home could only mean Sister. All I could hope was that my hearing was good enough, even after all the loud rock and roll she and I used to dance to. I was desperate to hear when Fate would whisper to me There she is, there’s her new body.
When I found her, as I hoped so hard I could, would she remember me, I wondered, or would I need to introduce myself? Would she give me a chance to talk or just turn tail and run from me? Or what if she was a man this time? Boy, that would be rich, given that the women of my family had, at best, an uneasy relationship with the male of the species.
Stop it now, Pea, she would say if she were here right now. My real name is Eudora O’Brien, but Pea is for Sweetpea, the name she gave me when I was a baby. You are frettin’ again.
Like one of us didn’t need to. I was good at it, and I never liked to get out of practice.
The steering wheel about fried my hands when I grabbed it, but I held on. Started the engine and backed out of the stained driveway. I was a little scared to leave, but I had to.
I propped Sister’s picture—one where she looked young and carefree in a way I’d never seen her—in the ashtray, and I pointed the car northwest. I decided I had best be alert; no telling where I might find Sister along the way. There were a lot of unanswered questions, I admit. Still, despite the heat of the day and the ache in my heart, I felt hopeful, for a change.
Hold on, Sister, I thought as I steered away. I’m gonna find you, and when I do, I pinky-promise I will not let you down, not ever again.
C.S.A. Salt Works
Located between Tow Valley and Old Bluffton, 15 miles NE. Since 1935 under Lake Buchanan. During Civil War made salt for table, curing meat and hides, feeding cavalry horses. A day’s boiling in 100 iron, 250-gallon kettles produced 20 to 30 bushels of salt. Cooled, sacked and hauled out, this met Texas’ wartime shortages.
First Llano County district court was held at salt works. Stagecoach stop was nearby. Brine here was from Cambrian sea waters trapped 500 million years ago in sand and strata. Indians led first settler here.
THE LATE SHIFT
Texas has something like 220,000 miles of roads, not counting city streets, I read once. A ways down the road, the weight of them was pressing on me. Central Texas is a long haul from New Mexico, a direction I’d never traveled, and I had barely started. Plus, the car’s radio wasn’t all that reliable, and I was already a little tired of my own singing.
Then I remembered Tell Me, Mama’s favorite road game. We would see something like, say, that fireplace and chimney standing alone in a field I had just passed, and we would fill in the story.
Mama would start with how the woman who lived there had had seven children and three miscarriages, then she would go on about how the woman would drag out the kettle and boil the wash water, then hang the laundry on bushes and trees until her man came back from selling the cattle. He would give her his hand-me-down rope for a clothesline, strung up between the big live oak around the side and that skinny one in back. Ropes, she told us, were valuable tools when you worked with cattle, and a fifteen-hundred pound bull required more strength to hold onto than a bed sheet.
We never knew where her stories would meander, but they could last for miles, and that old fallen homestead would linger in our memories forever.
Tell Me didn’t have to be history, though. Take that cell tower ahead, loaded down with vultures. Mama would have gone crazy over that. I didn’t have her storytelling gift, but I’d give it a try.
There was a pecking order, I decided. Not a one of them was perched closer to its neighbor than about three feet, and only one bird rested on the top rung. Below it were his lieutenants, swooping down to settle a fracas here and there or to spot the juiciest morsel that had slammed into the grill of an eighteen-wheeler.
Just then I spied a marker. Another of Mama’s favorite travel pastimes was reading roadside historical markers, which are thick on the ground in Texas. Out of habit, I swerved to the shoulder and stopped. Mama wasn’t much on reading in general, but the markers made perfect little snacks of information. Something to think about as you drove down the road. I myself was partial to the ones about women.
Leanderthal Lady
On Dec. 29, 1982, Texas Highway Department archeologists uncovered the skeleton of a prehistoric human female at the Wilson-Leonard Brushy Creek site (approx. 6 mi. SE). Because of the proximity of the grave site to the town of Leander, the skeleton became known as the Leanderthal Lady. Carbon testing indicates the woman lived 10-13,000 years ago. She was about 30 years old at the time of death and measured 5'3” in height. As one of the earliest intact burials uncovered in the United States, the site is a valuable source of information on the nation's pre-historic past.
Afterward, my brain’s hunger was eased by the tidbit, but my stomach was a whole different story. I got back in my car and hoped I would find a convenience store soon. Just the thought of food, water and facilities—not to mention functioning air conditioning—had me focusing only on the road and no more sightseeing.
My car’s A/C was always cranky, to say the least. Some days it was pure Arctic Circle, other days, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. That day it was definitely Maggie, down to her slip and snarling at Brick. Mama was a big fan of old movies, and that was one I remembered vividly. Not that I was supposed to be watching, but I snuck a peek from behind the couch more than one night when Mama thought I was sleeping.
So when I got to Lampasas, I pulled into the first convenience store I saw, a hallelujah in my heart as I entered. The guy behind the counter looked up and nodded.
“Hey,” I said and glanced around. With the shoulder move only the crème de la crème of us store clerks knows, he indicated the location of the bathroom. Singular. This wasn’t your top-of-the-line Skymart of the future. No cappuccino. No twelve-flavor coffee bar.
This was the real deal, a convenience store the way God made them before Starbucks and yuppies messed up everything. I looked around on my way to the john and couldn’t help feeling homesick. Cracked linoleum, Cashier-Has-No-Large-Bills signs and all, I had found a world where I belonged and there I had stayed, except for the times I had to work two jobs to keep Sister and me going once she got sick.
The last extra job had been at Fat Elvis, the bar where I met Jelly, my former boyfriend and good riddance. Fat Elvis was a miserable place to work, but you could rake in good tips if you played your cards right, and I needed money, even if it meant wearing those ice-pick heels. Like anyone could have missed me if they needed a fresh drink.
Mostly, except during the Fat Elvis period when I had to switch to days as a clerk, I had worked nights. People think that’s really dangerous, but it’s all in the eye, in how you smile and carry yourself. I was only robbed once, and the kid apologized before he left in handcuffs. What can I say? I’m a professional.
Rust-stained po
rcelain and walls that could use a good scrub, handles that were crying for a toothbrush to root out the gunk—this bathroom needed a firm hand. Not everyone takes pride in professionalism, but they ought to. Especially when women have to share a facility with a gender that never seems to think it needs to wash its hands.
So I used a towel to turn the handles, washed up and sprinkled water over my face and chest. Not that more humidity was exactly desirable in Central Texas, but in those precious seconds, the water cooled me as the air slid over my skin. I whirled like some ballerina, lifting my arms, letting my head fall back, my hair swirl behind. When I was little, I imagined myself a dancer of heartbreaking grace. I still could, if I didn’t look in the mirror. Imagination can be your best friend, you know.
If I hadn’t stayed to dance, I might’ve never heard the mewing. I stopped spinning and concentrated. The sound was coming from behind the back wall, some very young kitten, from the sound of things.
I always wanted a cat, but Sister had insisted I was allergic. Nonetheless, I couldn’t just leave that little creature in distress. Walking out the door, I headed for my colleague. “Storage behind the bathroom, right?”
He was making change for a big black dude and only shrugged. “It is, indeed,” he said, his accent the rich, thick melody of Egypt.
Another shiver of homesickness rippled up my spine. I didn’t wait for his nod but headed that way.
Professional courtesy only extends so far. “You may not go there,” he said. In his voice was his dilemma. Other people were in the store; he couldn’t leave his register. Like postal workers or Guardians of the Pearly Gates, my colleagues and I do our job with rain-nor-sleet-nor-snow, 24/7/365, never-leave-your-post kind of fidelity.
“Don’t hit the button. It’s only a kitten.” I tried the handle and found it unlocked. Opening the door, familiar scents assaulted me—pine cleaner, Windex out the wazoo. Flipping on the light, I waded through mops and buckets and extra shelving.
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