Prologue
Sunday, April 7, 1968
Thibodaux, Louisiana
Daddy said I didn’t need to go to Mama’s funeral service at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church.
We disagreed about that. Eight years old was not at all too young to attend a funeral, especially my own mama’s.
I stared out our front window, my Sunday shoes rooted to the wooden parlor floor, and pressed my nose to the cool pane. I prayed to God to bring back Mama while Father Sean did the opposite—committed Mama back to God.
Grandma Betsy stayed behind with me at our great big house on Legard Street, but she spent the whole time in the kitchen, running water in the sink and banging pots around. Grandma was Daddy’s mother, and she loved Mama, just like every one of us did.
The trees threw their dappled shade like it was any normal day. They didn’t have enough sense to know today was different. Birds perched up high, and a squirrel peeked around the bark of the oak tree across the street at the Getty house. The world should have stopped turning, but it just kept on.
I stood watch at the window for what seemed like hours until the grandfather clock in the hallway struck noon. Soon after, Daddy pulled into the drive in his silver Dodge Dart. He got out and stood still, swaying a bit like his shoes were rooted to the ground too. But then Father Sean arrived and Daddy pushed away from the car, took off his hat, and fiddled with the brim as the priest walked up the drive. I saw them talking, then I hurried to the ladder-back cane chair at the entry to our formal living room. Wearing my best Sunday dress, I swung my feet while I sat on my white-gloved hands. Mama would be proud of me.
Daddy entered and gave me a somber smile. He dragged a chair up next to me and sat down. “The service is over,” he said quietly. “Family and folks from town will be coming to our house now to give us condolences.”
He didn’t take the time to explain “condolences” like he usually did when I didn’t know a word. Folks were already arriving. I rushed back to the window to see them parking their cars in a long line down our street. I watched them get out one by one, carrying dishes of food and boxes wrapped in brown paper, so I figured condolences must be one of those things.
The sound of their car doors slamming shut reminded me of the time I saw what Daddy called a twenty-one-gun salute on TV. Everyone moved toward the house in slow motion, like they’d been called to the blackboard and didn’t know the answer.
I hurried back to my chair once more and sat down. Its sturdy back felt like the pew in church. As everyone filed in, they kissed me on the head, patted my cheek, and said “sorry” a lot. One of the neighbor ladies said, “Margaret Thibodeaux, your mama would be so proud of you. Take good care of your daddy. You’re the lady of the house now.”
That seemed like a big responsibility. I looked down at my lap and placed my hands one on top of the other like a lady I saw posed on the cover of a magazine at the Piggly Wiggly, but it didn’t make me feel grown up enough to be the lady of the house.
I watched our guests drift from group to group like the koi in Grandma Betsy’s pond. They looked like fish too, with their eyes red and puffy and their lips moved without saying anything I understood. Mrs. Flint, Mrs. Browner, and the other Church Ladies made their way to the buffet, and gathered in a semicircle, glancing my way in disdain. When my eyes met theirs, they quickly turned toward each other and put gloved hands to their lips to block my view of their words. But I heard them just the same.
“Do you think it was intentional?”
“No,” said Mrs. Flint, trying to take Mama’s side. “It had to be an accident. It was an accident, right?”
Mrs. Browner, wearing her brown beeping hearing aids, whispered too loudly, “Well, if she did it on purpose, you know where she’s going.”
Other folks in the room stopped talking. They all looked at me to see if I’d heard.
A tear rolled down my cheek. No one said a word, not in reprimand or agreement. The hush sat like a threat, painful and stealthy as ground fog, until Daddy strode in from the kitchen.
The Fish swam off to the other side of the room. Daddy started to follow them but turned toward me instead. He handed me a glass of milk and knelt in front of me. His dark Acadian hair showed silvery-gray strands I’d never noticed before. I was more familiar with his shirt buttons and his voice than his eyes, cheeks, and hair.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Want to go outside and play in the backyard with the other children?”
I shook my head. “No, sir. Not yet.”
He wiped the tear from my cheek and took in a deep breath. “Dr. King was buried today, too.”
“He was?”
Daddy nodded, then turned to face the gathering, “President Johnson declared a National Day of Mourning today. I think it’s appropriate.”
The Church Ladies nodded, raised tea glasses to their lips, and turned their backs to me. Fish.
“Daddy, did the president know Mama?” I asked.
He smiled and patted my leg. “No, Pea. The man who died the same day as Mama, he was important.”
“Oh.”
I took a drink of the cold milk and felt it go down, down, down, then set the glass on the table next to me. I pushed my fingers together to make my hands prayerful, even if my heart did not talk to God this time. It made sense that a king who was also a doctor was important. But Mama was my whole world.
Daddy rose and walked over to The Fish. He spoke in his quiet, serious voice.
“Garbage is taken to the curb in this house.”
“We didn’t mean anything by it,” Mrs. Browner said, her voice dripping with a sweetness that made me gag.
“Like hell, you didn’t.” Daddy’s tone was soft and sharp at the same time. “Margaret heard you. I heard you. Everyone heard you.”
The Fish grew quiet. Father Sean stepped in front of me and tried to form a barrier, but it was too late. Daddy moved out of Father Sean’s eclipse and silently ushered Mrs. Browner out the front door.
Father Sean knelt beside me like Daddy had. “Sorry you had to hear all that.”
“Did Mama . . .” I swallowed hard, “. . . is—was it—did I?”
The words didn’t come out right, and I took big breaths to keep from crying.
“It’s not for me to say,” said Father Sean. It sounded like a practiced answer.
The way he’d left it open made me think about how I had disobeyed Mama the week before by climbing the tree in the backyard when I wasn’t supposed to. How I didn’t keep my room tidy. How on Monday I had left the dishes in the sink so long that Mama finally did them before Daddy got home. She had even scolded me for not doing my chores. Then, on that morning, the last one I saw Mama, I forgot to give her the birthday card I had made. I had rushed off to school, late again.
“We buried her in consecrated ground,” Father Sean added, “and we all pray she goes to heaven,”
I stared at the little triangle sandwiches The Fish had brought, stacked in a pyramid. Father Sean was the second person to be unsure of her destination. I hadn’t prayed for her safe arrival in Paradise when I said my prayers this morning. God, please take her to heaven. Amen.
Daddy returned and told me to eat something while he and Father Sean spoke in the kitchen, but I wasn’t hungry. As I turned toward the parlor, a bright-flowered dress caught my eye. An older black woman I hadn’t noticed before was sitting there alone. She raised her teacup in hello but didn’t make a move to come talk to me. I wished everyone did that.
Just then, there was a knock at the door. Daddy opened it and invited the people in. A girl with golden hair, a boy a little older than her, and an older man entered the parlor.
“My name’s Honey,” the girl said. “You must be Margaret. I’m sorry about your mother.” It sounded real, not practiced. I liked her right away.
“Thank you,” I said.
“This is my pop and my brother, David.”
Daddy had told me they’d be at the house today and that I might make a new friend. They had just moved in around the block on Second Street, one block from Bayou Lafourche, on the big corner lot with the pretty white house. He had also said David was a juvenile delinquent.
“Hi, Margaret,” her pop said, “I’m sorry about your mama.”
David said nothing, but he smiled at me and raised his hand briefly like you do when the teacher calls roll.
“My mother couldn’t come today,” Honey said. “She said to tell you she’s sorry.”
They flocked toward the gathering and introduced themselves. The Fish, Daddy’s family from Tennessee, Mama’s sisters from Mobile, and all the neighbors said their hellos. I watched how at ease Honey was with new people. After several minutes, she broke away from the grownups and came up to me.
“Here, I brought you something,” she whispered. She looked around as if she had something we would get in trouble for, then dropped a sugar cube into my gloved hand. My gloves were too small so they were tight like a drum and the cube almost bounced off to the floor. But I caught it before it escaped and we popped the cubes into our mouths at the same time. It occurred to me that I was wrong about condolences being some kind of present and I was a little disappointed. But our white Sunday gloves hid the evidence of thievery, and sugar was a better condolence than kisses and pats.
As I savored the cube in my mouth, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the lady in the bright-flowered dress open the door and disappear.
#
Robert Pennington moved in next door about three weeks after Mama’s funeral, near the first of May. The day he and his mother arrived, I rang their doorbell.
“My name’s Margaret,” I announced. “Do you want to play?”
He was two years older, and big for a ten-year-old.
“Sure.” He said, then turned and yelled, “I’m going outside with Margaret!”
We walked around to his backyard, where the previous neighbors had kept their dog tied up all the time, so no grass grew near the back tree. A recent rain left a big mud puddle.
“Let’s make mud pies,” Robert said, adding a grin to his suggestion.
I shrugged like it was only a so-so idea, but I actually thought it was brilliant.
We made the mud pies the size of hamburger patties. “I’m gonna put these in the freezer next to the real hamburger,” said Robert. “Mama won’t know until they thaw out.”
I laughed for the first time since the funeral and I loved him for that.
#
Mama came in one night during the first summer without her and sat on my bed, near my feet. It was like a heating pad on my leg, and the bed sank a little, but I wasn’t afraid. I knew who it was. Her perfume came to me, very faint, like when I’d snuck into her room and squirted one spray out of the bottle before getting scared and running back to my room.
I couldn’t wait for her to come back the next night, but she didn’t. It wasn’t until a few nights later that I felt the bed sink again and I caught the smell of her perfume. I realized I couldn’t predict when she would appear. But about a week later, on her third visit, she sang to me.
Go to sleepy, little baby.
Go to sleepy, little baby.
When you awake, you’ll patty, patty-cake
and ride a shiny little pony.
#
In the fall, Grandma Betsy died. This time, Daddy let me accompany him to her funeral at St. Joseph’s Church. She was laid out and pasty in the casket and looked more like a plastic mannequin from Manci’s department store than a person. I thanked God that I hadn’t seen Mama in her casket.
Daddy and I said our last goodbyes to Grandma where they buried her in the cemetery. I expected Daddy to stop by Mama’s grave and take flowers or talk to her for a bit, but instead he took my hand and led me back to the car.
