Bayou Suzette

by Lois Lenski

  Suzette darted over the levee and into the yard. Marteel looked at Maman’s face again and then, without a word, followed Suzette.

  That summer, several rows of okra had been planted down the length of the garden. Their prickly dead stalks reached from the shed to the picket fence which separated the yard from the marshy field beyond. Suzette saw the squawking hen between the rows and chased her.

  Suddenly she stopped short in the path. “O-o-o-o-h!” she screamed.

  There at the end of the row stood a wild-cat, ready to pounce on the hen. “Ee-ee-ee-ee-ee!” hissed the animal.

  The hen got away and came toward her. Suzette stood staring. Her breath was gone. She couldn’t scream now.

  “Run back!” The sharp words hit her ear. A hand touched hers and Marteel was beside her.

  Suzette looked down in the path in front of her. The wild-cat was there now. She saw Marteel’s bare, brown foot on the struggling animal’s head. On the fence beyond, she saw three more wild-cats with angry eyes, hissing mouths and spreading whiskers.

  “I hold him. You run!” Marteel’s words came again.

  Then Suzette saw the animals on the fence leap down upon the hen in the path and roll over fighting. The air was filled with flying feathers, but there was no more squawking. She screamed and ran.

  The screams brought Papa Jules and Ambrose, with their guns, running. The screams brought the dogs, Roro and Toto and little Poo-poo, barking. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! The shots followed one after the other in rapid succession. The wild-cats turned and fled, with the dogs at their heels.

  Afterwards, no one knew exactly how many wild-cats there had been, but one thing was sure. At least two of them would never leap the fence again.

  Marteel sauntered slowly toward the house, where the family waited by the back doorstep.

  She looked up at Maman with a glint in her eye. “That hen, she won’t never lay no more eggs,” she announced.

  Maman said nothing. She turned to Suzette and listened as she began to tell about Marteel’s bare foot on the wild-cat’s head.

  Suddenly Maman took the Indian girl in her arms, held her tight and wept. “And I tole you to go back to the woods!” she wailed. “Marteel! My leetle Marteel!”

  Papa Jules looked on, surprised.

  Maman tried to explain: “She en’t not’ing to me—but she’s got herself wrapped round my heart and me, I can’t turn her loose.”

  “Joyeux Noël!” said Grandmère, softly, “Merry Christmas!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mardi Gras

  “I threw a stick up in the plum tree,

  Some oranges they dropped down—

  Oh, let me poom-ta-la-le

  Oh, let me go play! go play!

  They fell kerplop upon my head,

  Broke two of my toes right off—

  Oh, let me poom-ta-la-le

  Oh, let me go play! go play!”

  “W’y you sing?” asked Marteel.

  “’Cause I happy!” said Suzette, softly. “Spring it here.”

  The girls came round toward the front of the faded orange-colored house. A flash of red caught Suzette’s eye. A cardinal sat on a branch of the blossoming peach tree, whistling a gay tune. In the corner by the fence, the little fig tree was leafing out, and beneath the bedroom window, the rose-bush was in full bloom.

  “Grandmère, she plant the rose-bush when she came, a bride, long ago to live in this house,” Suzette explained. “She gave it to me to take care of.” Pulling a half-opened bud, she tucked it behind the Indian girl’s ear. “Now you look purty, Marteel.”

  Marteel pulled another and tucked it behind Suzette’s ear. “Suzette purty, too,” she said.

  Inside the house, Maman took up the song Suzette had begun. The window was open, to let the spring sunshine in, and they could hear her voice plainly:

  “I am going out to plow

  Where there is no land at all—

  Oh, let me poom-ta-la-le

  Oh, let me go play! go play!

  I put my horse upon my back

  I put my plow into my pocket—

  Oh, let me poom-ta-la-le

  Oh, let me go play! go play!”

  “W’y she sing?” asked Marteel.

  “She happy, too,” said Suzette. “Spring it here, I tole you!”

  “W’y ev’body happy in spring?”

  Suzette thought for a moment, then replied: “In spring comes Mardi Gras.” She ran lightly up on the front gallery. Then she pointed to the parterre, the narrow, fenced-in flower bed beside the steps.

  “Me, I gonna buy flower seeds by Père Eugène,” she said. “Pretty four-o’clocks I plant here, to bloom all summer.”

  “W’at for?” asked Marteel.

  “To look purty, of course,” answered Suzette.

  “Plenty flowers in the fields and woods,” said Marteel.

  “Each day,” said Suzette, “when the four-o’clocks open up, it time to go in and drink coffee! You wait here, I ask Maman ’bout Mardi Gras.” She went indoors and Marteel listened.

  “W’at! Masks and costumes?” cried Maman, amazed. “W’at you t’ink? When Papa he owe Père Eugène money for all the flour and sugar we eat all winter? No, Père Eugène, he mad at your Papa. He won’t give you not’ing for Mardi Gras.”

  Suzette came back and sat on the step beside Marteel. “Maman say, we can’t have no Mardi Gras. Me, I don’t care, but w’at I gonna say to Beulah and Doreen?”

  Marteel did not appear to be listening. Suzette took her by the arm and shook her. “W’at I gonna tell them?”

  “Mardi Gras, w’at dat?” asked Marteel, with a grin.

  Suzette explained that soon Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday would come, a day to be joyfully celebrated before the beginning of Lent. Like all the bayou children, Suzette looked forward to it with longing.

  Marteel shrugged her shoulders, got up and walked off down the bayou path. Then she began to run and finally disappeared in the woods. All the rest of the day she was gone. Late in the evening she returned, saying nothing.

  On Mardi Gras morning, Beulah and Doreen came early. Suzette hid in the shed, unwilling to face them, but Marteel dragged her out. Marteel’s eyes shone bright and she behaved mysteriously. “Come,” she said. Suzette came and Beulah and Doreen followed. As they went along, they were joined by Felix, Ophelia, Theo and Jacques.

  “Come with me,” cried the Indian girl, and they all followed her to the edge of the woods.

  “Mischief afoot!” exclaimed Tante Céleste, sourly, standing by the gate.

  “On Mardi Gras,” laughed Maman, “w’at else you expect? Père Eugène he won’t give no mask for the children to have a leetle fun. Marteel she smart girl, she fix somet’ing.”

  Soon the excitement began. Young children appeared with stockings or paper bags, in which holes for eyes and nose had been cut, drawn down over their faces. Others had their faces blacked with soot or wore store-bought masks and costumes. An older boy who looked suspiciously like Ambrose was dressed in a woman’s long skirts and sun-bonnet. He carried a willow switch and chased the children, shouting:

  “Mardi Gras, chick-a-la-pie,

  Run away and tell a lie!”

  Then suddenly, back from the woods, came the others, dressed in outlandish Indian costumes, with duck and goose feathers stuck in their hair and bright stains, red, yellow and black, painted on their faces. It looked as if Marteel had not only raided the Indians’ wardrobes but the old Indian squaw’s dye-pots as well.

  “Mardi Gras, chick-a-la-pie,

  Run away and tell a lie!”

  Up and down the bayou path the children shouted and war-whooped, brandishing long willow switches and shaking noisy gourd rattles. The smaller youngsters were soon chased and frightened into their homes, but bravely peered out the windows. In everything, Marteel was the leader. It was she who invented the strange sounds the whooping troop made, the strange steps they took, the strange antics they played. She seemed like a diff
erent creature, come from some gayer, brighter world, to bring new life to this.

  “That Sabine!” scowled Tante Céleste. “Bringin’ all them savage clothes and feathers and dances right here to the by’a! It en’t Christian, that!”

  Papa Jules tweaked her ear. “Go paint your face and put on a fancy dress and mebbe somebody’ll kiss you, Céleste!”

  “Don’t forget, it Mardi Gras!” cried Maman. “Marteel, she give the children more fun than they ever had before, bless ’er heart.”

  The fun reached its height that night in a Mardi Gras ball held in the whitewashed hall next to Eugène LaBlanc’s store. The village musicians—Arsene Cheramie with his fiddle and Alcide Brunet with his accordion—furnished the music, while young and old danced to their rollicking tunes. All the men were masked and disguised in loud-colored, fantastic clothes. Nonc Moumout wore deer antlers on his head, his face was blacked and he roared like an alligator. Many of the women were dressed in old-fashioned dresses taken from attic trunks. The smallest children were left on benches along the walls, and babies were put to sleep on the floor beneath, to allow their gay mamans to join in the fun.

  Suzette and Marteel skipped happily about among the crowd. They discovered Eulalie dancing with a young man wearing a clown mask and suit, and followed the couple till they came to rest on a bench. Suzette crept behind them, curious. She reached up suddenly, lifted the white mask from the youth’s face and saw that it was Jean Broussard.

  “Ma foi!” she exclaimed.

  “Git outa here, you leetle Sabine!” he shouted gaily.

  Lala and Jean together—should she tell Papa Jules? How furious he would be! But it didn’t seem dreadful now. It was all part of the fun. Before she could do anything about it, the couple went flying off, hand in hand.

  Refreshments were sold at the rear of the building—gumbo, cocoanut and pecan pralines, anise-seed cakes, lemonade and black coffee. Suzette watched Lala and Jean settle down to enjoy huge dishes of gumbo and rice.

  “Buy us some gumbo,” she begged, coming up. “Marteel and me hungry too.”

  The young people went on eating and paid no attention.

  “I hear somebody say it time for the men to unmask!” cried Suzette. But Lala kept on talking to the clown as if she did not hear.

  “Papa Jules, he comes!” shouted Suzette. “You better run, Lala!”

  This time Lala heard. “Where, Susu?” she cried.

  “There!” cried Suzette, laughing. “He got Maman’s sunbonnet on his head and rabbit gloves on his hands—and oh, see his ruffled apron!”

  Eulalie and Jean waited to hear no more, but skipped out the open door and away. After they left, the fun reached its height, when all the men pulled off their masks. Then the jollity stopped at midnight sharp, because no one would think of dancing on Ash Wednesday.

  So the day came to an end, as even the happiest days always do, and Marteel, the sprightly Sabine, shed her cloak of gaiety. The next morning she went off to the woods again, returning the clothes she had borrowed. After that she did little work and seemed lazier than ever, as if all her energy were spent.

  Easter came early that year, and preparations for Easter meant housecleaning. The weather continued bright and sunny and soon Little Village was in a great upheaval.

  Joseph and Jacques sat on the front steps, hammers in hand, pounding fragments of red bricks into dust.

  “W’y everybody scrub?” asked Marteel. Such excessive cleanliness seemed entirely unnecessary to the Indian girl.

  “Ev’body gotta get his house clean for Easter,” explained Suzette.

  She brought a bucket of water and set it on the front gallery. She sprinkled powdered brick dust over the floor, then took her broom and began to scrub. Marteel leaned against the gallery wall at the other end and watched idly.

  “You gotta all the time keep your house clean,” Suzette went on. “Every morning, Maman she dust and sweep. Once a week, she scrub with a brush.”

  “W’at she do dat for?” asked Marteel.

  “That good cleanin’, Maman say,” replied Suzette. She swished the water over the floor in great puddles. “Me, I like better scrubbing with a broom. When you scrub with a brush, it wear out your knees, it hurt’ your stomach and it git your arms all tired. I git tired quick, me.”

  “W’y you do it then?” asked Marteel.

  “’Cause my Maman, she tell me to, of course,” said Suzette. “Git outa my way or I drown you!” She tipped the water in Marteel’s direction, which made her move leisurely down to the bottom step.

  Maman came round the house with her arms full. She carried two brooms, a bucket, a brush on a long pole and a rake. She walked round the front gallery and disappeared on the other side.

  “W’at her walkin’ round the house for?” asked Marteel.

  “She gonna sweep down the outside walls. The house gotta be clean on the outside, too. She gonna rake up the leaves in the yard. She gonna scrub the board walk to the shed,” explained Suzette. “Plenty work to do, you lazy t’ing. W’y you not help?”

  “W’at for?” asked Marteel.

  “Look, see all the other women working,” said Suzette, pointing. The same things were happening at all the other bayou houses. Suzette lowered her voice to a whisper. “All the women do it,” she said. “You gotta do it too, or they talk about you.”

  Suzette finished her scrubbing and put broom and bucket away. After the floor was dry, she brought an armful of winter clothing and hung it out to sun on the clothes-line, stretched across the gallery. Then she sat down on the step beside Marteel to rest.

  Beulah Bergeron and Doreen Dugas came walking by. They stopped to talk.

  “Oh, Susu!” cried Beulah. “My new hat, it got pink roses on it.”

  “Me, I gonna get my hair curled,” said Doreen. “My Maman, she gonna put it up in curl papers.”

  “My new dress,” Beulah went on, “it got lace and insertion all over the ruffles, and my new shoes, they patent leather.”

  “My dress, it got blue polka dots,” said Doreen, “and a wide blue sash. And I got new slippers with silver buckles.”

  Suzette did not speak.

  “W’at you got for Easter, Susu?” asked Beulah.

  Suzette gave her head a defiant toss. “My Maman, she got more important t’ing to do than fuss makin’ new dresses,” she said.

  “Marteel, she en’t got one neither?” asked Doreen.

  “No,” said Suzette.

  The two girls walked on.

  “W’at dat they talk about?” asked Marteel.

  “Their new Easter outfit,” said Suzette.

  “W’at dat?” asked Marteel.

  “You hear ’em,” said Suzette, with impatience. “New hat, new dress, new sash, new shoes, new everyt’ing—all w’at they gonna wear for Easter.”

  “You wear ’em too?” asked Marteel.

  “No,” said Suzette. “Me, I like my ole clothes best.”

  “W’at they wear shoes for?” asked Marteel.

  “Stop askin’ questions!” scolded Suzette, sharply. She heard voices inside the house now.

  Maman had not used her brooms and buckets and brushes after all. She was in the kitchen, talking to Papa Jules and Grandmère. With all the doors and windows open, they could be heard plainly.

  “Me, I go ’cross the by’a,” said Papa Jules, loudly. “Guidry, he give me a job on his plantation. I plow sugar cane for a change. He tole me he give me work any time I ask for it.”

  “Mais non!” cried Maman, alarmed. “You can’t never work the land. You not a farmer. You a fisherman.”

  “Mebbe I not a fisherman, after all,” said Papa Jules, with sadness in his voice.

  “All the Durands, since the first one came from France, they been fishermen,” said Grandmère. “They have love’ the sea and the bayous of Louisiana. They go to sea and come back with the t’ings of the sea, to feed and clothe and shelter them and their families. You got the sea in your blood, my s
on. You can’t run away from it.”

  “The sea, it wicked! The sea, it treacherous!” shouted Papa Jules, angrily. “Sometime it give, sometime it take. All the time, it try to break a man’s body … and his spirit, too. That the truth and you know it.”

  “Mais non, my son!” said Grandmère, quietly. “All good t’ings, they come from the sea.”

  “How ’bout storms and hurricanes and floods?” demanded Papa Jules. “You call them good?”

  “Your Père and your Grandpère and your Great-grandpère, they never worry about food or shipwreck or storm,” said Grandmère, “they love the sea so much. When a storm come, the fisherman, he wait patiently for it to pass, and always, it pass.”

  “The life of a fisherman, it not’ing but a gamble,” said Papa Jules, bitterly. “Riches on the one hand, danger and death on the other.”

  “All life, it a gamble,” said Grandmère, “but when you show courage, the rewards are worth the struggle.”

  “How can I be a fisherman,” shouted Papa Jules, “when I not got even a boat of my own?”

  Maman spoke up. “W’at matter dat? We get along somehow. You en’t never had a boat, and we en’t starve’ yet. Not with the by’a full o’ fish at our doorstep, we won’t.”

  “I go ’cross the by’a,” said Papa Jules again. “I go see Guidry.”

  “Yes, Jules,” said Maman, quietly. “A good t’ing to try, that.”

  Suzette heard her father’s chair scrape on the floor, as he rose to his feet. She heard his footsteps on the board walk as he came round the house. She watched him get in the skiff and go.

  Monsieur Guidry was as good as his word, being short of help. So each day Papa Jules rowed across the bayou, coming home at night. For this reason, it was Ambrose who started the early gardening. He dug a “canal” or narrow ditch round the four sides of the garden patch to drain off the water. After the soil dried out, he spaded and hoed it fine. On Holy Thursday he made high ridges the length of the patch, ready for planting.

  On Good Friday it rained, but Maman planted her beans anyway. She made holes in the top of the ridges with her hands and dropped the beans in. It was muddy work, for no tools might be used on Good Friday. It rained hard for the rest of the day. The family took only bread and coffee without milk, as it was a time for fasting. That night they waited till long past bedtime for Papa Jules, but he did not come. They went to bed and in the morning learned that he had not come home at all.