Love, Cajun Style

by Diane Les Becquets

  “Hummingbirds like red,” I said, not knowing from where the words came, and the way those three women looked at me, I could tell they didn’t know from where those words had come, either. But then the bright light of an idea lit up on Ms. Pitre’s face.

  “Perfume!” she exclaimed. “Every woman needs a little nectar.”

  I thought of sitting through Miss Trapman’s health class in junior high, Sex Education 101. Listening to Ms. Pitre and Miss Balfa carry on served up a much more entertaining education.

  Billy

  The Bankses lived in a small bungalow on Hill’s Orchard, a quiet street on the edge of town. Tanny Hill, one of the earlier natives of Sweetbay, now long passed on, had once farmed a persimmon orchard on that land. After he died, the town expanded into his estate, uprooting trees and building houses, though most every yard still had persimmon trees that bore fruit.

  I rode up to the Bankses’ a little before six and leaned my bike against the side of the house. About fifteen yards in front of me was a man on a ladder, pruning one of the old trees that looked about fifty feet tall. I watched the man snip a few branches, then take the blade on the end of the pruner and start sawing away at a thicker limb. I knew the wood on persimmon trees was as dense as rock, and its bark the consistency of alligator hide. Whenever the trees died or were cut down to make room for a house, the wood was harvested and sold for anything from golf clubs to baseball bats. Needless to say the man on the ladder had mustered up a lot of willpower to saw off that limb he was going at.

  The man was wearing sunglasses and a cap, so I didn’t get a good look at his face, but through his T-shirt, I could tell the muscles on his back bore some mighty fine definition.

  “Hi,” I said.

  He stopped sawing and pivoted his torso around. “Hi,” he said back. “Are you the babysitter?”

  I stood there with my hands in the pockets of my jean shorts and nodded. “I’m Lucy,” I said.

  “Tell Savannah I’ll be another minute. I’m just going to finish up.”

  He turned back around with the pruner blade.

  I walked to the front of the house and knocked on the door.

  When Savannah met me, she didn’t look like the Savannah I’d seen at the shop earlier that day. She was wearing a short denim skirt and a pair of platform shoes, making her almost as tall as me. In her arms was a plump, round-faced baby with a head full of blonde hair. The baby smiled when she saw me, giving me one of those toothless grins.

  “This is Mattie,” Savannah said, gesturing for me to come in. “She can barely sit up, so you have to be careful with her. And she likes to put things in her mouth.”

  I reached for the baby and started talking all kinds of silly talk to her, to which she responded with more grins and coos and giggles.

  “She likes you,” Savannah said.

  We walked into the living room. Big floral slipcovers were draped over a sofa and chair situated around a TV, and black-and-white photos—mostly ones of Mattie, others of a man with dark hair and dark eyes, whom I recognized as the man on the ladder—were arranged on top of the furniture.

  Savannah showed me the kitchen. On the walls were more photos, and a corkboard by the telephone, thumbtacked with all kinds of snapshots.

  “I usually feed Mattie around seven, then change her and put her down. Make sure you lay her on her back,” Savannah said.

  She opened the refrigerator. On the top shelf was a strawberry pie, some cans of beer, Coca-Cola, juice, and a couple of baby bottles.

  “You’ll need to warm the bottles up in the microwave,” she said, “about forty seconds, until the milk is lukewarm. Test the temperature by putting a couple of drops on your arm before you feed her,” she explained.

  Before we left the kitchen, I looked at the pictures on the walls more closely.

  “That’s Ted,” Savannah said, pointing to one of the pictures of the man.

  No sooner had she said his name than the back door off the kitchen opened.

  Mr. Banks walked in, removing the cap from his head and running his hand through his sweaty hair.

  “Give me five,” he told Savannah. “I’m just going to get a quick shower.”

  Savannah went on talking about this and that about the baby. While she talked I kept thinking about how different she looked from earlier in the day.

  By the time Mr. Banks was out of the shower, Savannah and I had moved into the living room with Mattie. Savannah was showing me how to work a battery-operated swing.

  “You ready?” Mr. Banks said, joining us in the living room. I couldn’t help but notice him. His hair was thick and wet and his face freshly shaven. He was wearing jeans with a navy blue short-sleeved collar shirt, and the cologne he’d lathered on his skin smelled wonderful.

  “We’re going to dinner and a movie over in Beaufort,” Savannah told me. “Our cell number is on the refrigerator.”

  “We’ll be fine,” I assured her.

  After the Bankses left, I moseyed around the house with Mattie in my arms, talking to her and looking at all the photos. Pretty soon she started squirming and getting fussy. I warmed up one of the bottles and sat with her on the sofa in the living room. Mattie smacked her lips a couple of times. Her breathing slowed and her crying simmered down. I continued feeding her until all the milk was gone, pulling the bottle away from her intermittently to burp her.

  Savannah had told me there was a stroller in their bedroom and I could take Mattie for a walk if I wanted. I found the stroller folded up behind their bedroom door. With Mattie in one arm and the stroller in the other, I carried both outside. I strapped Mattie in and started for the driveway, but then stopped to look back at the tree. The branches were still strewn around the trunk. I wheeled Mattie toward the yard, deciding I’d gather up the limbs and haul them out to the street.

  Just a few feet from the trunk of the tree, so close I almost stepped on them, were two broken robin eggs. They reminded me of the colored Christmas bulbs I’d dropped when Daddy and I were stringing lights around the house. Poking out of the broken shells were the tiny, lifeless bodies of baby birds—heads and bulging eyes and wings and white tufts of down growing along their little spines. And next to the two broken eggs were the bodies of two more baby birds that had already hatched. A sound erupted from clear down to my heart. I looked up at the tree. The nest was still in place. I realized those little ones had literally been shaken from their home. I thought I would cry seeing those birds, and knew I couldn’t just leave them there.

  I went inside the garage and found a small trowel, then dug a hole underneath the trunk of the tree. All the while Mattie just watched me. One by one I scooped up the shells and each of the dead birds and laid them in the divot I had made. I refilled the hole and etched a cross into the soft soil with my finger.

  “It’s okay, Mattie,” I said, feeling like I had to console someone.

  Later that night after I put Mattie down, Billy, Mary Jordan’s big brother, pulled up to the house in his Bronco, with Evie and Mary Jordan in tow. I hadn’t seen Billy since March, when he’d come home from college for his spring break. Billy was a sophomore at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

  “How’s my glamorous Tower of Pisa?” he said, lifting me off the ground in a bear hug before I could answer. Billy had cracked tall jokes on me for as long as I could remember.

  Billy looked about as good as I’d ever seen him. He was wearing a pair of faded blue jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. He had straight brown hair the color of dark chocolate that always looked like the wind had just played with it, even if the sky was raining cats and dogs. Unlike Mary Jordan, who was as fair-skinned as a porcelain doll, Mama would tell her, Billy’s skin was a deep olive, like his dad’s, and his eyes just as blue and clear as a swimming pool.

  “I thought you weren’t getting back for another week?” I said.

  “He ditched finals,” Mary Jordan told me.

  I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him inside. �
�You can’t do that. What were you thinking?”

  “Wait till Mom and Dad find out,” Mary Jordan said.

  “They don’t know?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “I just got in about an hour ago. They’re out playing bridge or something.” Billy walked into the living room and fell back into the armchair, letting out a big sigh. “It’s not for me,” he said.

  “What’s not for you?” I asked.

  “College. Classes. It all feels like such bullshit. I’m just not cut out for it.”

  Mary Jordan and Evie sat on the sofa. I joined them.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Get a job. Maybe start my own business. Stick around here.”

  Mary Jordan said, “You want to spend the rest of your life in Sweetbay?”

  Billy laughed a little. “Don’t knock it, sis. This place isn’t so bad.”

  “You won’t see me hanging around,” Mary Jordan said.

  “Maybe not,” Billy said. “But I wasn’t meant to keep my head in a book. I got to be doing something. College isn’t for everyone.”

  Billy Jacques hung the moon as far as Evie and I were concerned. We both swore that he was our first love. He’d called Mary Jordan and Evie and me the three Princesses of Avalon for as long as we could remember. We didn’t even know what Avalon was. He said it was paradise. I knew Billy wasn’t like most big brothers. Maybe it was because his and Mary Jordan’s parents were so old. Instead of fighting with his little sister, he looked after her, and because Evie and I were friends with Mary Jordan, he looked after us, too.

  The summer Evie’s dad walked out, Billy was playing catcher for Trudeau’s junior high team. At the end of the season, he gave Evie his catcher’s mitt. “To catch you when you fall,” he told her.

  He’d played quarterback for the Trudeau Tigers his last two years of high school. We’d wait for him outside the locker room after the games. He’d give each of us high fives if the team won and swing us in his arms. He always smelled of Dial soap and Stetson cologne. If the team lost, he’d give us low fives, and say, “We’ll get ’em next time.”

  Since Billy had been away at college, we hadn’t seen him much anymore. He’d stayed in Baton Rouge the summer before, picking up a couple of credits and working at a restaurant. Though I was surprised about his dropping out of college, I was also glad he was home.

  I told Billy and Mary Jordan and Evie about the baby birds. Told them how I had buried them.

  Billy stood up.

  “Where are you going?” Evie asked.

  “Thought I’d check out the nest. See if there are any eggs left.”

  The monitor in Mattie’s room was on. Taking the portable with me, I followed Billy outside.

  He retrieved a pair of binoculars from his Bronco, then stood on the hood of his truck and hoisted himself onto the garage roof. He walked up to the highest point and, holding the binoculars to his eyes, looked out at the tree.

  “Can you see anything?” Mary Jordan asked.

  “Mama robin’s back,” Billy said.

  From where I stood I could spot her, too.

  “I think there’s one egg left,” he told us. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

  I don’t know why I’d gotten so caught up in this whole bird thing. It was as if I’d been the one who’d knocked those babies from their home.

  “Come take a look,” Billy said.

  I thought of my babysitting responsibilities, and glanced back at the house.

  “I’ll check on Mattie,” Mary Jordan said.

  And so Evie and I climbed on the edge of the Bronco’s hood and hoisted ourselves onto the garage roof.

  Billy handed me the binoculars. Mama robin was still in the nest. Sure enough as she shifted herself around, I spotted a light blue egg. Strange, but my stomach got butterflies. I felt elated. And I knew I was going to pull for that little bird to make it.

  Billy nudged me in the arm. “How ’bout that.”

  I smiled. “I’m glad you’re home,” I said.

  Statue of Liberty

  The Bankses didn’t get back from Beaufort until a little before midnight. I’d thought their night out was supposed to do them some good. Either they were especially tired, or things hadn’t gone so well.

  “Sorry to keep you up so late,” Savannah said when they walked into the house. “How did everything go?”

  I was sitting on the sofa watching TV.

  “Mattie was great,” I told her.

  Mr. Banks had passed by me, not saying a word, and was now in the kitchen.

  “Did he like your new look?” I asked her.

  She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. But I did,” she said. “I guess that should count for something.”

  “I think you look nice,” I said.

  Savannah smiled. “Thanks. Would you be willing to babysit again sometime?”

  “Sure.” I thought about telling her about the birds, but decided she didn’t need any bad news.

  After Savannah paid me, I left out the front door, not seeing Mr. Banks again that night.

  * * *

  The next morning I went to mass with Mama. On our way home we stopped by the Piggly Wiggly. While Mama shopped, I walked over to the paperback section and picked up a romance suspense book I’d been reading. I found my place, lightly marked in pencil two-thirds of the way through, and sat down on the edge of one of the display shelves stocked with shampoo. Sometimes it took Mama an hour to shop, as she liked to socialize down each aisle.

  I was reading about a tall, dark, handsome man who adored a young female artist. She was visiting her aunt in a small coastal town in Oregon. The book got me thinking about myself. I wasn’t an artist, or a musician like my mother. I liked my friends and I liked to go to the beach, but other than my height, I couldn’t think of anything that set me apart.

  I must have read more than fifty pages before Mama showed up at one of the checkout aisles. A person could hear my mom a mile away.

  I put the book away and met her just as she finished paying. “Lucy, I have discovered a wonderful opportunity for you.”

  Next to her was a cart stacked to the hilt with paper bags full of groceries. I took the cart from her and pushed it out to the parking lot to her blue minivan with its JESUS IS THE WAY! and LET ME COOK YOUR CAJUN PEPPERS bumper stickers. “What opportunity is that, Mama?” I asked, completely unconvinced.

  “On my way past the dairy department I stopped to look at the postings on the bulletin board. I always check out the postings. You never know what you might come across. Well I’ll have you know there is a play starting up right here in our little town.”

  “I’m not interested in a play,” I said.

  Mama ignored my statement. “And I thought to myself, What a remarkable opportunity for Lucy.”

  I loaded the bags of groceries into Mama’s van while she went right on talking.

  “The new drama teacher at the high school is organizing the whole thing. There’s going to be a meeting Tuesday night. I just love it when young people have ideas. It’s so healthy for the community.”

  “Mama, I’m not trying out for the play,” I told her.

  “I don’t see why not. You and Evie and Mary Jordan all ought to try out.”

  I closed up the van and wheeled the cart over to the pickup rack.

  “You always were a dramatic child,” Mama said when I returned.

  “I’m dramatic?”

  “What about that time in fifth grade when you played the Grinch and you got stuck in the chimney? You started hollering to kingdom come till the teacher came onstage and pulled you out.”

  “They should have known I was claustrophobic,” I said.

  “Or what about the time in fourth grade when you got hit in the chest with a basketball. You asked the nurse in the infirmary to send you home, certain in your head you had yourself some deadly hematoma.”

  That was the day the nurse informed me that I didn’t have a hematoma at al
l, but rather my right flower had already started to blossom. I didn’t see why my left flower couldn’t blossom at the same time.

  “Then there was the time you got your first cramps from your monthly visitor and you thought you were dying of stomach cancer,” she went on to recall.

  “I swear, Mama, you’ve got a memory like an almanac. Don’t you think there are a few things you could selectively try and forget?”

  “I just think you ought to go to that meeting. I’d love to see you onstage.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, seeing no other way to diffuse the matter.

  Back at the house, I helped Mama put the groceries away. “What time are Papa and Sissy coming for dinner,” I asked.

  Papa Walter and Grandma Sissy were Mama’s parents. They came for dinner every Sunday.

  “They’re supposed to drive over once he finishes putting in a transmission in that old car of his.”

  Papa had been driving a gold Impala since before Mama and Daddy were married. He said good cars were like good women. “Just ’cause they start fallin’ apart ain’t no reason to trade them in.”

  Mama had picked up a pound of shrimp at the grocery store and a couple dozen oysters in jars with liquor, which I knew meant we were having oysters Iberville for supper, one of Papa’s favorites. After we finished putting all the food away, I went upstairs to my room.

  Then Evie called.

  “Guess what I just saw?” she said.

  “What?”

  “That guy you were babysitting for is starting a play. This morning Mary Jordan and I were riding back to town from my dad’s. We saw a poster about it in the diner’s front window.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s having a meeting Tuesday night.”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “I think we should go.”

  “Why would we want to do that?”

  “I think it would be fun. Maybe we ought to try out.”

  “I haven’t been in a play since fifth grade,” I told her.

  “So?”

  Both of us got quiet for about a whole minute.