I’ve passed another test.
“Get some eggs. From Sweet Pea.”
“Who?”
Grandmère laughs, sounding like sparkling water over rock. I don’t feel embarrassed; it’s a happy laugh.
“Sweet Pea. My chick. Her coop is ’round back.”
I dash out the door, leaping off the porch. I’ve never seen a live chicken. Stones and pressed dirt make a trail leading past a garden to a yellow-painted box, low and long.
Sweet Pea is beautiful—reddish brown, with copper silk feathers. A red crown, a yellow beak. She cocks her head. Her right eye, a black pupil surrounded by hazel, blinks. Or winks?
I tiptoe forward. Sweet Pea sits on a shelf. Wood chips line the floor. She looks at me.
Do chickens smile?
Sweet Pea stands on her two three-toed feet. Beautiful brown eggs nestle in hay.
She’s proud. Her feathers are puffed; her beak pecks forward and back, then down. She’s inviting me.
I walk, slowly. Softly. Crunching dirt.
I lift each egg, warm, smooth. I cradle two of them. Miss Sweet Pea clacks, her beak jutting, like she’s asking for something.
“Thank you?” I try.
Miss Sweet Pea clucks, turns in a circle and lifts her feet, one by one, and then, shimmying her feathers, sits again.
Grandmère is in the kitchen flipping meal cakes.
Without turning, she says, “Bring the eggs here.”
“How’d you know I’m here?”
“Know plenty.” Grandmère cracks the eggs, and I watch as they sizzle, the whites turning opaque then bright white and the yolk becoming a firmer, quivering yellow.
“Do you know Sweet Pea talks?”
Brows arched, Grandmère stares at me.
“I mean, not words,” I say nervously. “But she wanted me to speak. Say ‘Thank you,’ I think. So I did.”
“So you should,” says Grandmère, turning back to the stove. “Being ungrateful is the worst.”
I slip into the chair, ready to eat.
“Wash your hands.”
I mumble-grumble.
“Non, no. Don’t have eyes in the back of my head.”
“How’d you know what I was saying?”
“Mumbling, you mean?”
“Sorry.”
“‘Sorry’ accepted.”
I worry Grandmère’s mad. Back home, at least once a day, my sisters are mad at me.
Smiling, Grandmère flips an egg, not mad at all. “Ask the firefly, Maddy. Miss Firefly knows how I know. All kinds of knowing, all different ways to know.”
My sisters are right. Grandmère is strange. But if she’s strange, then I’m strange, too. It’s daylight and I’m looking for a glowing bug.
“Is it here? The firefly?”
“Down by the riverside,” Grandmère says. “Not ‘it,’ she. Won’t see her ’til night.”
She points to a water-filled ceramic bowl. Beside it is a soap bar with green specks.
Before I ask, Grandmère answers, “Thyme. For strength, courage.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Lots you don’t know.”
I scrub my hands, arms. Even my face. “Me and Ma cook with thyme.” I dry myself, smelling lemony, woodsy. I feel better already.
Before I can even ask, Grandmère calls out, “Yes, Maddy, you can take as much soap as you want. A bucketful.”
Grandmère plates the eggs, cakes, and bacon. I pour the purple syrup into a cup.
“Grandmère?” My voice squeaks. I want to ask a thousand questions. Like how come she’s never lived anywhere else? How come we’re both so tiny? How come I feel at home, yet not? Afraid, then unafraid? At ease, then uneasy?
But I don’t ask anything.
Grandmère’s face is calm. Her eyes say, No need to talk.
I burst my egg, and yellow yolk spills like a river over my plate. Bits of cornmeal, softer, grainier, float. Grease glistens on egg whites. Bacon curls like a branch. I pour dewberry syrup in squiggly purple waves.
I eat and eat some more like I’m starving.
Grandmère
Every morning, me and Grandmère hum. I hum low; she hums high. She starts the rhythm. I change the tune. Slow it down, speed it up.
I like my overalls. I like thanking Sweet Pea for her eggs. She clucks, “Welcome.”
In the kitchen, Grandmère stirs dewberry syrup. I scramble eggs and set the table. She flips griddle cakes onto the plates.
We eat as sunlight streams through the windows. Grandmère likes the quiet. I do, too. No sisters hollering, “More waffles” or “Stop eating all the bacon.”
Today, Grandmère breaks the quiet, her voice warm. “Rituals are important.”
“What’s a ritual?” I bite a piece of bacon.
“Doing something the same way every day.”
I nod, munching. Four days here and I’m less scared. It helps knowing how I’m going to start the day. “Dishes next.”
I wash. Grandmère dries.
Then, we sit on the porch—Grandmère on the rocker, me on the step.
We sit watching birds fly, lizards zigzag through dirt. I study leaves—three-point leaves, one-point leaves, and leaves with smooth or jagged edges. Leaves have veins that don’t carry blood, only moisture.
We read the bayou like Pa reads his newspaper.
The bayou brings good news to me. But seeing shadows floating, quivering on the ground, seeing branches sway, bend, and snap, I sense there could be bad news, too. How else to explain weeping willows? Or how a pretty, sparkly snake with dark bands and a red stripe can be a rattler?
“Canebrake rattler,” I remember Grandmère saying. “Tries to pretend it’s sweet.”
The bayou excites me, but I haven’t left the yard. Grandmère excites me, too. But sometimes she frowns, and I sense the unhappiness I felt when I first hugged her.
“Bored, Maddy?”
“No, ma’am.”
Grandmère stands and comes to sit beside me. We’re both tiny, like two little kids on a step, but Grandmère is wrinkled all over. Her right hand trembles. Her eyes are the softest brown.
I shiver a little. Grandmère is looking inside me, seeing me from the inside out. Like she knows everything about me. Even stuff I don’t know.
I want to blurt, “Are you a witch?” Instead I ask, “Is this how Ma lived?”
“Oui. She outgrew it—will you?”
I squirm, not ready to answer. “In stories,” I say, “characters never outgrow magic lands.”
“Is this what you think this is? Magic?”
“Yes. No.” I wiggle my feet. “Maybe.”
Grandmère laughs.
I’m flustered.
“Let’s work.”
This is when the day changes. When I feel Grandmère’s most testing me. It’s like a teacher saving up a hard question, asking just me, “Maddy, do you know the answer?”
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.
But I also know that Grandmère seems to be asking me questions without really asking. It’s like there’s a secret between us. But I don’t know what it is any more than I know why Grandmère sometimes seems so sad.
“Grandmère, what’s our work today?”
“Herbs. Bark. Picking what’s good for ailments. Healing the sick.”
“Isn’t there a drugstore?”
“Me, I’m the drugstore.”
I blush, feeling dumb. I knew there weren’t any stores.
Grandmère pretends not to notice. “Old days there weren’t any drugstores. Doctors, either. Folks made do. Lavaliers been healing for over two hundred years. What do you think of that, Maddy-girl?”
I lick my lips. I can hear the dare. “Show me.”
“Come on,” she says, handing me a basket from beneath the porch.
Together, we search the yard, the garden’s herb patch. A beat and a step behind, I do whatever Grandmère does. We dig in the dirt and pluck green and brown stems.
<
br /> “Always good things at the base of trees.”
I nod, agreeing, like I know what Grandmère’s talking about.
“This here, elderberry.” She plucks.
I twirl the stem; tiny white flowers spin.
“The flower is good for fever. Headaches.”
I squat. “What’s that?”
“Baby’s breath.”
I scoot left, touching a tree with three-point leaves. “Oooh, I know what this is. Ma showed me a picture. It’s… it’s—”
“Sassafras.”
I sing, “Sip it in the morning, sip it in the evening. I like sassafras. You like sassafras. We like sassafras tea!”
“You sing good, Maddy.”
“Thanks.” But I feel silly. “Ma said sassafras calms.”
“Did she now?”
“I was nervous before a test. She didn’t have sassafras tea, so she taught me the song. Ma says, ‘City dirt doesn’t grow sassafras.’”
“Bayou has plenty. Sassafras, good for bruises. Make a paste and bruises heal quick.”
I sniff the bark, chew a tiny piece.
“What’s it taste like?”
“Root beer.”
Grandmère laughs, strokes my hair. “You remind me of me.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Depends.”
My face twists. I don’t understand. Ma’s always flattered when someone says I act, talk, or look like her.
I pluck sassafras bark, laying it in the basket.
Shade fills the trees. The sun is going down. It’s always this way—time slows when me and Grandmère sit on the porch, then it flies like lightning when we’re working.
We walk back to the cottage.
“This bayou’s been the Lavaliers’ home for generations. After slavery, all kinds of folks lived here.”
“I know,” I say, skipping. “French, Africans, some Spanish, and native peoples, too.”
“Everybody helped one another.”
“Made a community,” I recite. “Everybody was either friend or kin. Blood like river water flows.”
“Who told you that?”
“Ma.”
Grandmère opens the screen door. It’s not any cooler inside. Sweat drips down my neck.
“Your ma’s strong. She remembers our stories.”
“I’m strong.”
I want Grandmère to say, Yes, you are, Maddy-girl. But all she says is, “Make me some sassafras tea.”
Grandmère’s changing moods make me nervous. I scratch a match to light the stove. I fill the kettle.
Water drains over the bark. I hope it calms Grandmère.
I pour steaming water over the bark and let it steep.
“Maddy, who do you want to be when you grow up?”
She didn’t ask “what.” What do you want to be? I know the safe answer to that. Answer “doctor,” “lawyer,” “engineer,” “businesswoman,” and everyone smiles. But grown-ups, except for Grandmère, never, ever ask who.
Who do you want to be?
Strangely, I feel like I can tell Grandmère things I can’t tell Ma.
“A hero. Like in my stories,” I rush. “I want to do good. Be brave.” I stop, embarrassed.
Grandmère gazes at me, curious. “To be a hero, bad things have to happen.”
I don’t want bad things happening.
Grandmère, hands clenched, stares out the window. “Sometimes, the best bravery is surviving.”
The firefly dances, blinking yellow in the air above the porch. Seeing her, I feel better.
Grandmère cups my face. Her hands are rough, her touch gentle-soft. She kisses the tip of my nose.
I feel better. But I worry whether Grandmère thinks my “who” is stupid. I should’ve answered “what.”
Bear
I wake, humming. Yesterday, I talked silly. A hero. Maybe Grandmère forgot what I said? I know I’m not special. “Just plain Maddy,” as my sisters would say.
I hum quick, bright notes.
Grandmère hums back. Our ritual has begun.
I dress and run to the backyard, thanking Sweet Pea for her eggs. She clucks back.
Grandmère stirs dewberry syrup. I scramble eggs, cracking the shells on the side of the pan. Quiet, I set the table. Grandmère flips griddle cakes.
We eat. Sunlight streams while I gulp water. It’s going to be a regular day.
I take another gulp of water. Water is sweeter in the bayou.
I scrape the plates and wash the dishes. Grandmère dries. Her head bobs like she’s still humming our happy tune. I exhale, relieved; maybe I didn’t ruin anything.
Grandmère’s head lifts; her whole body stills. “Bear’s here.”
I don’t hear anything. I’m scared of bears.
There’s a whistle. At least I think it’s a whistle.
“Oui. Bear’s here. Time to play.”
“A bear?”
“No, Bear. Come. See.” Grandmère opens the screen door. Damp heat smacks me.
“See.” She points. A boy, shaggy-haired, sits high in a cypress tree. “Bear.”
“It’s a boy.”
“True, c’est vrai. He’s your new best friend.”
“But I don’t know him.” I clutch the porch rail.
“You will. Go on. Go play. Quick. Vite.” Grandmère shoos me down the steps.
Dragging my feet, I grumble, “What if I don’t like him?”
“You will.”
I’m reluctant to go. We haven’t finished our ritual. “Do I have to?”
“Oui. Children should play.”
“When should I come home?”
“When you get tired.”
“What if it’s dark?”
“Don’t matter. Stay away all night. Somebody will give you shelter.”
I’m exasperated. “What about a cell phone?”
“Don’t work here. ’Sides, what for? You’ll hear me holler if I need you.”
I want to holler, What if I need you? I’m nervous. I didn’t know I was supposed to make friends.
Hands on her hips, Grandmère smiles, encouraging. Like a squirrel, the boy scrambles down the tree.
“Ma wouldn’t be happy,” I shout, feeling stubborn.
“Sure she would. You’re safe here, Maddy. Enjoy the wild. Bear will keep you out of trouble.”
“Won’t promise,” says Bear with a grin. Fingertips to his head, he tips an imaginary hat at Grandmère.
He’s taller than me, big-boned but skinny-legged. His cheeks are red, his brows bushy, thick. His smile is goofy and crooked.
I’m not so sure about Bear. I murmur, “You don’t have to play with me.”
Bear frowns, his brows meet in the middle. He looks sad.
How can I say I’m feeling shy, fearful, worried, all at once? I look past the bushes and trees. Who knows what’s deep in the bayou? What wild things wait?
Why can’t I stay on the porch, studying the yard with Grandmère?
Grandmère looks like Ma when she’s disappointed in me—lips tight, eyelids lowered, back taut. Even her arms are crossed like Ma’s.
Bear kicks the dirt. “I get it,” he says, muttering. “Your sisters didn’t want to play with me, either.”
“My sisters?”
“They never liked running. Never wanted to have any fun.”
“You met Layla? Dionne?”
“Aisha, Aleta, too. A different sister each summer,” Bear grumbles.
“What?”
“They squealed, scolded me,” Bear blurts. “They didn’t like dirt, didn’t like water. Wouldn’t fish. Touch a worm. Or climb a tree.”
I can see it—my sisters staring down their noses at Bear and his bayou.
“They didn’t like me.”
I step back, hearing his hurt.
I look at Grandmère.
Who do you see? Like Sweet Pea, she’s talking to me even though she isn’t. She stands still, watching me.
Bear’s head hangs lik
e it’s going to fall off, loneliness weighing him down. This I can understand. Even in a house full of sisters, I’m lonely, sometimes.
Bear tips his pretend hat again. “’Bye, Maddy.”
“Wait!” I swallow, not liking what I’m thinking. “You’re sorry you met me.”
“Hoped you’d be different,” he says, woeful. “Guess city girls just don’t like me.” He starts walking, fast, bouncing off his toes. Any second, I think, he’s going to take off running.
“But I like you!” I shout. “I’m sorry I acted mean.” Just like my sisters.
Bear turns. His grin is the biggest I’ve ever seen.
“Ready for an adventure?” he asks, mischievous.
Am I?
I look past Bear. The bayou seems alive, moving with the breeze.
What did Grandmère say? Said the bayou had been waiting, dreaming forever. I shiver.
From the porch, the bayou is beautiful. But now Bear is asking me to dive into it. Grandmère’s urging me, too.
I’ve never seen so much soft dirt, so many jagged rocks and pebbles. Giant trees, bushes, and weeds, twist and tangle, hiding animals. Secrets. Why did I think that?
“Scared?”
Even though I am, I answer, “No.”
“Maddy,” says Grandmère, startling me, “you’re like me. Like my mother and her mother before.” She squeezes me, her white hair tickling my cheek. “Brave, isn’t that you?” she asks, letting go.
“Come on.” Bear whoops, stretching out his hand. It’s dirty, strong, calloused. Not soft like city hands. “Catch it.”
Something inside me snaps, breaks. I’m ready for something big.
“On land, Maddy,” Grandmère mutters. “Bear’s your best friend on land.”
Grandmère makes no sense.
“I can do water, too,” says Bear. “Anyplace you want.”
I laugh. Bayou folks are funny strange.
“Come on.”
I clasp Bear’s hand, hard. He runs, tugging me, leaping over rocks. My arm feels like it’ll tear from its socket.
“Faster,” Bear shouts. “Faster.”
I inhale and burst into my fastest run. Sun pouring down, we’re running side by side.
Squishy soil shifts beneath our feet. Sweat runs down my face. A chipmunk darts up a tree. I feel good. Running, I feel free.
Bear yells, “Ya-hoooooo. Ya-hoooooo!”
Bayou Magic Page 2