Lulu’s Recipe for Cajun Sass

by Hill Sandra

  “Well, I never,” Lily Rose said on a gasp.

  “Ain’t that the truth, honey?” Louise replied, shaking her head as if Lily Rose was a pitiful soul, which she was.

  “Rumor sez that you—” Lily Rose started to say.

  Rumor sez that,” Louise interrupted, not wanting to know what people were saying about her, “before you ‘caught’ yer husband Leon, you’d seen more ceilings than Michelangelo.”

  It took Lily Rose several moments to get the insult and she gasped, “Oh…oh…!”

  On that note, Louise pivoted and stormed out of the store and drove to town. Once in Houma, she had her hair cut and permed at that new salon on the corner into a curly bob that made her look…sassy. The next day, still fuming from her encounter with Lily Rose, Louise went shopping and came away with three sets of nylons, a pair of strappy high heels, two silk blouses, a pair of hiney-hugging pants, and a new wraparound dress, all in bright sassy colors. The third day, she picked up Adèle from her morning kindergarten session.

  “Where we going, auntie?” Adèle asked when she noticed them going in the opposite direction from home.

  “It’s a surprise,” Louise said and drove a short distance before driving into a used car lot on the outskirts of Houma. Dapper Dan’s. Dan had mentioned at the wedding reception last month that he could give her a good deal on a trade-in. Adèle skipped along beside her and Dan as they walked up one aisle and down another before exclaiming with joy, “Look, Tante Lulu, it’s a purple car.”

  “Well, butter mah butt an’ call me a biscuit,” Louise muttered under her breath.

  It was actually lavender, not purple, which was Adèle’s favorite color, and it was a convertible, but it was big…a Chevy Impala.

  “Oh, I doan know,” Dan protested. “It’s kinda big for a little ol’ gal like you. You’d need a pillow or two so you could see over the dashboard.”

  It was crazy. Impractical. But it sure would make a statement.

  A short time later, with cushions under both their behinds, Louise and Adèle grinned at each other as they drove off the lot in the new Lillian.

  If this isn’t Cajun Sass, nothing is, Louise thought.

  To her surprise, the voice was back in her head, and he proclaimed, ’Tis the best cure for hopelessness.

  The car?

  No, my child. The attitude…the Cajun Sass.

  Louise never lost her Cajun Sass after that. In fact, she grew an attitude that became legendary.

  Chapter 11

  Present day

  As time goes by…

  Louise sat in the passenger seat of Luc’s ess-you-vee as they drove to the Triple L Ranch for the big birthday bash. They were a little late because Louise had insisted on extra precautions being made with the Peachy Praline Cobbler Cake she’d brought.

  Not that there wouldn’t be a birthday cake there already, but knowing Charmaine, it would probably be store-bought, and everyone knew they were never as good as homemade, even if it came from Samantha’s upscale family supermarket chain, Starr Foods. Samantha was married to Dr. Daniel LeDeux, one of Louise’s many “great-nephews.” Their sons, the D & A twins, were among the seven birthday boys today, even though they were six months older.

  Tee-John’s wife, Sylvie, sat in the back with their one-year-old son Christopher, who was asleep in his car seat. Good thing, too. Chris was one of the birthday boys, and he would need all his energy to keep up with his cousins who looked like a marathon of crawlers when they were all together. She wouldn’t be surprised if some of them started walking today as they tried to imitate D & A who’d recently discovered toddling, amidst lots of spills on their diaper-padded bottoms. If they didn’t start walking soon, Louise intended to make them knee pads.

  “I still don’t see why you had to bring your car, too,” Luc said. “Lillian is a gas guzzler. You oughta get rid of that thing.”

  “As if!” she replied, glancing behind to see that her lavender convertible was indeed riding their tail. They had all been surprised when their family arrived to pick up Louise and she’d asked Luc’s three daughters if one of them could drive her car to the ranch. The three girls had all practically jumped with glee. The oldest, Blanche, 20, who was following in her daddy’s footsteps as a law student at Tulane, won out as the driver. Camille, 19, a French Quarter chef in training, rode shotgun; and a disgruntled Jeanette, about to be a high school senior, sat in back.

  “I have my reasons for wanting Lillian at the ranch,” Louise told Luc then, but not feeling obliged to explain herself. “Speaking of gas guzzlers, what were you thinkin’ when you bought that boat las’ month? I hear tell it’s like a mini yacht. You havin’ a mid-life crisis or somethin’?”

  Sylvie giggled from the back seat and said, “That’s putting him in his place, Tante Lulu.”

  “It’s a fishing boat.”

  “What? You cain’t buy yer fish from Captain B.J.’s market lak everyone else? Or throw a line in the bayou?”

  “Hmfph! Arguing with you is lak throwing sticky rice against the wall,” Luc said, but he was grinning. He loved arguing with her, and they both knew it. “I sure hope you don’t think I’ll allow you to drive back yourself tonight.”

  “I sure hope you don’t think you’re the boss of me,” she replied.

  He rolled his eyes, which was the usual reaction from her great-nephews (or grandsons, if they only knew) when she said something they disagreed with. A bunch of know-it-alls, they were, bless their hearts.

  “Did you hear Dad is in the hospital again? Pretty bad shape this time.”

  “Valcour?”

  “He’s the only Dad I have. Unfortunately.”

  “His liver, I bet. The human body kin take only so much booze…and meanness.” Louise didn’t usually wish ill on folks, but Valcour LeDeux had been her sworn enemy ever since he’d ruined Adèle’s life and a whole passel of legitimate and illegitimate children he begat on dozens of women throughout the South. Luc understood better than most why she hated the man so. After Adèle suffered years of abuse following her marriage to the brute when she was only seventeen, she died of cancer (though Louise was inclined to attribute it to heartbreak). She left behind three pitiful orphan boys, Luc being the oldest at twelve, followed by Rene and Remy, who’d been only nine and eight. Luc had done his best in the rusted-out trailer they called home, trying to care for his younger brothers, including washing their clothes for school in a nearby stream when the washing machine broke down or the power was turned off for failure to pay the electric bill. Many a time, one or all the boys would flee to her cottage for protection. The authorities would do nothing in those days because Valcour was the father.

  Years later, oil was discovered on Valcour’s property, and he became a wealthy man, in cahoots with the petroleum companies that raped the bayou. He married again and had Tee-John, but he still spread his seed from one end of the state to the other. At last count, Louise figured he had fathered at least fifteen legitimate and illegitimate kids. And Louise, though blood related to only three of them, had become Tante Lulu to them all. In fact, to everyone on the bayou. Not a bad legacy, she figured.

  Still, if Valcour was dying or something, he would get his just desserts on the other side. It wasn’t her place to judge. “I’m sorry, Luc. He’s yer daddy, no matter what,” she said. “Do ya think I should go visit him?”

  “Whaaat?” Luc exclaimed and glanced her way with horror. “Don’t you dare. He’d probably have a heart attack, on top of everything else.”

  “Whatever you say,” she replied, folding her hands with innocence on her lap. At least I tried. Maybe I’ll go see him anyhow.

  They were approaching the gates to Triple L Ranch now. By the looks of all the vehicles parked in front of the rustic lodge style home and in a nearby pasture, they were among the last to arrive. And there were numerous newspaper and TV vans with those dishes on top parked outside the fence.

  She assumed that they were here for her great-great-
“nephew” (or great-grandson) who supposedly planned to make some kind of announcement about his football career plans any day now. Even though they weren’t here for her, you never knew when you might catch the cameraman’s eye. Therefore, Louise was glad she’d dressed in her most photogenic outfit—a red-and-white polka dot, wraparound sundress with matching red, low-heeled sandals (not her favorite red high heels on a property where horse poop might pop up at any moment), and a straw sun hat with pretty red roses. Her lipstick and nail and toe polish were matching shades of “Hot Sex” from Charmaine’s salon. Not that she’d had any of that for a long, long time. Not with a partner, ha, ha, ha. After changing her mind over and over, she’d finally settled on her strawberry blonde Reba McEntire wig in a shoulder-length bouncy style that fitted her mood today.

  “Welcome, everyone!” said Raoul Lanier, or Rusty as he was known, who came down the wide front steps of the big, rambling log home they referred to as a “lodge” to greet them. He waved at Sylvie who was just getting out of the car and said, “And happy birthday to you, young Christopher.”

  Chris was still half asleep in his mother’s arms, his head resting on her shoulder, a thumb locked in his tiny mouth, but he gave Rusty a shy smile.

  Rusty was around fifty years old, but he was still the hottest Cajun in Louisiana. And that was saying a lot. All the LeDeux males were good looking, and Cajun men in general had what girls in her day called the va-va-voom factor. But with Rusty…well, women did double takes when he walked down the street, especially if he was wearing his cowboy hat and tight jeans. Whoo-ee! She had to give the man credit, though; he had eyes only for Charmaine. Even after all these years, his eyes lit up when she walked into a room (usually with a sexy swish of her hips) and he was wont to mutter his usual expression, “Mercy!”

  Sylvie went into the house with Chris, mentioning something about needing a bathroom. Rusty leaned down and gave Louise a warm hug, followed by a full-body perusal and a wolf whistle. “You’re lookin’ good today, Tante Lulu.”

  Louise wasn’t sure if he was serious or poking fun at her. Didn’t matter. She dressed for herself, not anyone else. “Kin you help Luc with mah cake? Mebbe you should put it in the fridge fer a while. It might melt in this heat.”

  Rusty’s attention was drawn then to Luc, who was swearing under his breath (as if I can’t hear him) as he tried to maneuver her unwieldy cake out of the car; it must weigh about ten pounds.

  “We don’t have a fridge that big,” Rusty said.

  “Put it in one of yer cow trucks then.”

  “My cow trucks?” Rusty looked at Luc who had pulled the cake on its three-foot tray onto the tailgate of his SUV.

  Luc shrugged at Rusty. “She probably means one of those refrigerated meat trucks.”

  Why were people always trying to interpret what she said? As if she spoke another language. Idjits, that’s what they were!

  Rusty looked back at her. “I don’t have refrigerated meat trucks. My cows are alive when we truck them to market.”

  Louise waved a hand airily. “Whatever. I smell cow.”

  “Of course you smell cow. This is a cattle ranch.”

  “Doan be snippy with me. I meant cooked cow.”

  “Oh. Sorry. The firepits were just opened, and the meat is resting.”

  “Come out on the patio, auntie,” Charmaine said. She’d just come out of the front door and onto the porch. “Everyone’s here, waitin’ fer you so the party can start.”

  Louise didn’t doubt that one bit. “Where’s Timmy?”

  “I just put him down for a nap. He’s been crawling around like a crazy bedbug all morning.”

  Charmaine came down the steps and hugged Louise. “You look wonderful today, auntie,” she said.

  Rusty and Luc looked at her like she must be blind, or was seeing something they didn’t.

  But then, Charmaine was dressed in a strapless little hot pink sundress that molded her body on top and swirled out in a bunch of pleats to mid-thigh. On her feet were high-heeled wedgie sandals, which, combined with her already tall frame, made her about six feet tall. Her hair was a mass of spiral curls. Her make-up was perfect. And huge chandelier earrings dangled all the way to her shoulders. Since she’d begun nursing her baby and still did occasionally, her breasts, already a buxom 34C, had blossomed out to porno fullness. In her strapless dress made of some light cotton material, the shape of the enlarged nipples was clearly visible.

  “Girl, be careful we doan get any breezes t’day, or yer gonna get old and new-monia in that outfit. Tee, hee, hee,” Louise said.

  Rusty gaped as Charmaine approached him and said, clear as a bell, “Mercy!”

  Luc, who was Charmaine’s half-brother, said, “I am not looking. I am not looking.”

  Honestly, Charmaine had Cajun Sass down to an art form. It still puzzled Louise why Mary Lou went to someone as old as her and not to Charmaine for advice. But then, she recalled that Mary Lou had mentioned how embarrassing it would be to confide in her mother.

  Which reminded Louise…it was her goal today to see just how well Mary Lou was doing in her Cajun Sass lessons. Looking for her, she looped arms with Charmaine and walked around the side of the house to the back yard, then came to a screeching halt.

  There had to be at least seventy-five people standing around the firepit, sitting on folding chairs on the grass and at umbrella tables on the flagstone patio. A bunch of toddlers and young’uns had been plopped inside a twenty-foot wide portable fence, which pretty much amounted to an outdoor playpen. Laughter and splashing noises came from the other side of the house where there was an in-ground swimming pool.

  “Lawdy, lawdy, didja invite everyone in the parish?”

  Charmaine laughed. “Nope. You gotta realize, auntie, that we have more than fifty in our immediate family alone. No thanks to you.”

  “I keep tellin’ you, I had nothin’ to do with all you gals getting’ preggers las’ year. All I did was say that I wished there were more babies around.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t be doin’ any wishin’ t’day.”

  Louise just grinned. Let them all think she had that kind of power.

  Someone came from behind and put hands over her eyes. “Guess who?”

  She smelled coconut sunscreen and recognized the voice. “Lak I wouldn’t know you anywhere, Etienne LeDeux,” she said, turning around and straightening her hat to give Tee-John’s oldest a fake glare.

  He gave her cheek a quick kiss and danced away from her as she attempted to swat him on the arm with her St. Jude fan. What a rascal, just like his Papa was. He was only fourteen years old, but his thin body, already almost six foot tall, in a wet bathing suit and nothing else, showed promise of a hunkiness that would have the girls buzzin’ around him like bees to honey.

  “I tol’ ya, Tante Lulu, that I changed mah name ta Steve,” the boy, who was fourteen going on forty, said and grinned at her. “My name’s too hard fer mah friends ta pronounce.”

  Steven was the English translation of Etienne.

  “Why’s it so hard ta say Ay-T-en? Yer friends mus’ be dumb as stumps.”

  Etienne just laughed and hugged her to his side. Never mind that he was wet. She didn’t care. She loved the boy, almost as much as she did his daddy.

  René came up to them then, on his way to a small wooden platform that had been set up over near the barbecue pits. He wore a black tank top, khaki shorts, flip-flops and a baseball cap on his head with the logo “Swamp Rats,” which was the name of the band he played with on weekends when he wasn’t teaching school. He had a frottir, or washboard, hung over his shoulders.

  “Oh, goody, we’re gonna have music,” she said, clapping her hands. “This party is lookin’ kinda…boring.” Her eyes widened with surprise as she hit on that word. Maybe Mary Lou isn’t the only one needing sassed up with Cajuness.

  “Would it be a fais do do, a party on the bayou, if there was no music? René asked.

  “Speakin’ of boring…
it occurs ta me, René, that we haven’t done our Cajun Village People act in ages. Isn’t it time to resurrect our group?” Louise asked.

  René let out a little hoot of laughter and several men standing nearby, who’d overheard their conversation—Luc, Remy, and Rusty—gave her dirty looks and said, as one, “No way!” One of them even added, “No frickin’ way!”

  “What’s the Village People?” Etienne wanted to know.

  “The Village People were a campy type of disco music group in the 1970s, all men, known for their costumes…cowboy, cop, construction worker, soldier, biker, that kind of thing,” René explained.

  “And they did a sexy kind of dance while they sang,” Louise contributed, “sort of like the Chippendudes.” She fanned herself as if she got hot just thinking about them.

  “Eew!” René said.

  She swatted him with her purse, which was about the size of a boat.

  While Etienne was pulling a little Ziplock bag out of his back pocket which held a phone and was then tapping in some buttons, Louise elaborated, “For a while back there, we formed the Cajun Village People, made up of all the men in the family when they wanted to woo a young gall who was havin’ none of them. Sort of a serenading.”

  “Strippers?” exclaimed Jude LeDeux, René’s son, who had walked up to see what was going on. Jude was only ten years old, but looked a lot like his father. Another hunk-to-be. “Whoa, Dad! You and the uncles were strippers? Cool!”

  “Us wimmen were involved, too. I think I still have mah red spandex dress. I could pull it out, easy peasy.”

  René make a choking sound which he tried to hide as a cough. Then he told Etienne and his son, “The Village People were not strippers. They just had moves that some people considered…um, suggestive. They only had a couple of hits before they broke up. ‘YMCA’ and ‘Macho Man’, as I recall.”