She always seems to know the right thing to say.
I put an ad up on the bulletin board at school. RIDE NEEDED TO MARINA AFTER SCHOOL. WILL PAY FOR GAS. I wait a few days, but no one gets in touch. Then I hear the cafeteria ladies talking while I’m in line for lunch one day, and one of them is saying how she’s helping her husband rebuild their boat. “Do you go down there in the afternoons?” I blurt out. She looks annoyed, but she says she does. So after some negotiations, I am riding to the marina with Ms. Dolores, who makes me call her that rather than Dolores. She’s grumpy and hardly speaks the whole time.
When I show up at the marina for the first time, Daddy shakes his head. “I’m here to work,” I say.
He looks at the ground, then back up at me. “Well, we’ve got plenty of that to do around here.”
I learn to sand fiberglass. I scrounge around for parts and help Daddy put them in. I mend the damaged nets we bought secondhand to save money. Sometimes we fish. I am exhausted at the end of the day. But I feel more alive than I have in months. I’m learning a new way to live in the place I’ll always call home.
So there are signs of hope, like that little flower. There are a few charters going out again at the marina — can’t keep the sports fishermen away when it’s their season. It’s in their nature to get back out on the water. Like it’s in mine.
One day, Daddy goes up to Algiers for a part and I go out on the water and get that sense of peace and clarity I always find on the water. But I can’t sleep that night. No dogs are allowed in the trailer park, but they’re here anyway. I can hear one howling and howling. I’m restless. I have strange dreams. I can feel the weight and warmth and softness of a body next to me. Surprising, but comforting. It’s Mamere, I think sleepily. She kisses me on the forehead and I wake up, confused about where I am. I could swear she was just right next to me.
I get up and walk out to Daddy, who I can hear talking on the phone in the kitchen. I am suddenly afraid. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I can hear heaviness in his voice.
“Do you want me to come up there?”
It must be Mama. Something must have happened.
“We’ll meet you there. I can start making the arrangements.”
It’s dark in the kitchen. I can see his outline against the light filtering in from those floodlights near the back fence. I can’t see the expression on his face.
“What is it? What happened?” But somehow, before the words come out of his mouth, I know what he is going to say. Mamere is dead. That really was her in my dream. She came to say good-bye.
He grabs my hand. “You better sit down, darlin’.”
“Just tell me. Mamere’s dead, isn’t she?”
He nods. Something inside me shatters.
“No. No.” I am shaking my head.
He grabs me, hugs me tight. He’s trembling; he’s crying. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
“That can’t be right. What did Mama say?”
“She wasn’t feeling well after dinner, and she went upstairs to lie down. When Cel went up to check on her, she was gone. She went off in her sleep. She’d had this heart thing for a while, and she didn’t tell anybody about it. Didn’t want to worry us.”
I start to pace. “But . . . but . . .” She can’t be dead. I didn’t get to say good-bye.
“I’m so sorry, darlin’,” Daddy repeats. “You know you meant the world to her.”
I sit down on the couch, pull my feet up under me, make myself into a ball. I am rocking back and forth. “What do we do now?”
“They’re going to bring her to St. Martinville. We’re going to meet them up there. Go back to bed, darlin’. There’s nothing we can do now.”
But how could I possibly sleep? I can’t close my eyes or I’ll see her. I stare into space until I go in to wake Daddy up and find that he’s awake, too. We throw a few things in bags and head out while it’s still dark.
I feel like I’m going to be sick, so I have to close my eyes. The clop-clop of the tires over the bridge turns into a soothing rhythm and I drift off. When I wake up, we’re somewhere that looks like the suburbs of Baton Rouge. I’m not sure if we’re coming up to it or we’ve already passed it. For a minute, I’m not sure if I dreamed it all. I look at Daddy, his eyes focused on the road.
“Is it true? Is Mamere dead?”
He takes one hand off the wheel and reaches over to touch my shoulder. “Yeah, darlin’. It’s true.”
I look back out the window, feeling my heart go hard. Maybe it’s my punishment. For being so stubborn. For not staying with my mother. For leaving Mamere. I will never forgive myself for this.
We pull up outside Tante Sadie’s little brick house in St. Martinville. She opens the door in her robe — a quilted satiny pink one. Her long silver hair is in braids, the way Mamere used to have them. Her face is somber, but she hasn’t been crying. She hugs Daddy wordlessly and strokes my face. “You were her favorite, you know. Her namesake.”
She makes coffee as we sit at her tiny kitchen table with a pack of powdered doughnuts open in front of us. “Kenny and the kids are coming in this afternoon,” she says. “Fifi’s goin’ to have the gathering after the funeral at her house.”
Funeral. The word stings me. I brace myself for what will be a horrible few days. Then after that, who knows? When I try to look into the future now, I don’t see anything.
I go to the funeral home with Daddy to meet with the director. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he says as he presses his cold hand into mine. He speaks in a hushed tone, showing us the different options for caskets. Daddy doesn’t hesitate, knows what to do. Mamere already has her burial plot, next to Grandpere and near her whole family at St. Martin’s. They will take care of everything, the funeral director says — receive the body when it arrives, make sure that the family doesn’t have anything more to worry about in our time of grief. I don’t say a word the whole time. I feel like I am watching this scene from above. He called Mamere a “body.”
We go back to Tante Sadie’s house to wait for Mama and Mandy. Whereas I couldn’t sleep at all before, now I’m so tired, I can barely move. I lie down in the little pink room upstairs that was Cousin Candy’s when she was little. It is perfectly quiet here, perfectly restful. I close my eyes.
When I wake up, I have that disoriented feeling you get when you’ve slept too long and at the wrong time. I don’t know where I am at first. I can hear voices downstairs. It takes me a minute to realize that Mama is here. I walk down the stairs still in a fog and can see her and Daddy on the couch. She is crumpled up next to him, with her head on his chest. She looks like a little girl. He is running his hand through her hair. His eyes are closed. The step creaks under me and they both look up. When Mama’s eyes catch mine, I know that the wall between us has washed away. I cross over to her, put my arms around her. She is soft again, the Mama I remember from when I was little, who would tuck me in, who made me my favorite fries at the diner when I was having a tough day. The three of us sit there on the couch together silently, until Mandy comes in with Aunt Sadie with groceries and we snap into doing what needs to be done.
The visitation is at the funeral home the next night. When we pull up, we can hardly find a parking space, there are so many cars. There are people I’ve never seen before going in, men in suits, people all dressed up. “That’s Grandpere’s nephew Dell,” says Mama. “And his kids. I think that’s Delphine, Mamere’s cousin. She must be ninety by now.” It hits me that I had thought of Mamere as just mine. But her reach was so much further than I ever thought.
My cousin Ami is there greeting people when we walk in, telling people where to go. She hands me a prayer card, with a Madonna-and-child picture on the front and a picture of Mamere on the back. In loving memory of Evangeline Arceneaux Beauchamp, devoted wife, mother, sister, grandmother, and teacher. There’s a Bible verse, too:
There is a season for everything, a time for every occupation under heaven:
A time for giving
birth, a time for dying; a time for planting, a time for uprooting what has been planted.
A time for killing, a time for healing; a time for knocking down, a time for building.
A time for tears, a time for laughter; a time for mourning, a time for dancing.
A time for throwing stones away, a time for gathering them; a time for embracing, a time to refrain from embracing.
A time for searching, a time for losing; a time for keeping, a time for discarding.
A time for tearing, a time for sewing; a time for keeping silent, a time for speaking.
A time for loving, a time for hating; a time for war, a time for peace.
— Ecclesiastes 3:1–8
She said that she would come back home when it was time. So that’s what she meant. It was her time.
I walk into the gathering room and see the open casket. I have to do this. I have to say good-bye, whether I’m ready or not. It feels like I am the only person in this crowded room as I approach, and I see her there, her hair up in a bun like it always was. She’s wearing her Sunday best, a floral dress with a dark jacket over it, her pearl necklace and little pearl earrings. But it strikes me immediately; I don’t have any doubt: this isn’t Mamere. It may be her body, but it isn’t her. What I knew was her spirit, and it isn’t contained in this body. It’s somewhere else now — it’s in me, it’s in all these people around me.
I lower myself to the padded kneeler in front of me and make the sign of the cross. Mamere, I say inside my head, I know you can hear me somewhere. I’m sorry I didn’t get to say good-bye. I’m sorry I wasn’t with you. But I know you’re going to be with me always, just in a different way. This isn’t really good-bye for us. If I ever need you, I know you’re going to be there for me.
I walk out into the lobby, where Aunt Cel and Uncle Jim, Mama and Daddy are in a receiving line. Someone — probably Aunt Cel — created a poster-board collage of pictures of Mamere throughout her life, and it’s leaning on an easel in the lobby. I pore over all the photographs. The big wedding picture of her and Grandpere. Her holding Aunt Cel when she was a baby, her lips dark with lipstick in that black-and-white photo. There’s a bunch of her class pictures when she was a teacher, standing on the edge of rows and rows of little kids. Someone taps me on the shoulder. It’s Mr. Ray from the gas station in Bayou Perdu. I haven’t seen him since the day we were evacuating.
“Hey, darlin’,” he says. He has tears in his eyes. “Your grandma was a good woman. She taught me how to read, you know. My mama and daddy didn’t know how to read — they couldn’t teach me. People looked down on us, ’cause we didn’t have nuthin’. But she never did. When I heard she passed, I got in my car and came here. I said that I got to pay my respects to Ms. Beauchamp.”
The tears start to well up in my eyes and I have to push them back. Mr. Ray tells me he is living in Baton Rouge now and that he heard about Mamere’s passing from Mr. Sumps. Somehow the word has gotten around to people from Bayou Perdu, no matter where they are. What Mr. Ray said is only the first story like that I hear. Miss Helen from the Dollar Store is here. When she was little, she says, Mamere used to give her boxes of Mama and Aunt Cel’s old clothes because she only had one thing to wear and it smelled bad and the other kids made fun of her. This woman I’d never met tells me that Mamere would bring her the leftovers from the diner so she could feed her kids. She’s sobbing the whole time she tells the story. The retired superintendent of schools from the parish is here. He tells me that when they rebuild the elementary school — and they will rebuild, he says — he’s going to recommend that they name it after Mamere. In those hours, I learn that my sweet little old Cajun grandma was the one who was secretly a superhero.
The funeral is packed, so many people that some are standing at the back of the big old church. Grandpere’s remaining brothers — there were six of them, now three, my great-uncles — my great-aunts, their children and their children’s children, cousins, former students, people from Bayou Perdu. Mrs. Menil comes wobbling down the aisle, supported by Delbert, and plops herself across from us. Delbert smiles sympathetically at me. I smile back.
Mandy sits next to me and holds my hand. Daddy and Mama are on the other side of her. They are holding hands, too. Daddy reaches for Mandy, and together we form an unbroken chain. We sing all Mamere’s favorite hymns — “Amazing Grace” and “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace.” There are three priests, so old they can barely stand up. We follow the casket out to the cemetery behind the church, passing all those dead Evangelines. She and Grandpere share a headstone. Her name was already right there next to his. They only had to fill in the year. She came back to St. Martinville, just like she said she would. When it was her time.
When it’s over, we go back to Tante Fifi’s house. The cars line the side of the street. The doors are open and people come and go. The dining room table is practically groaning from the weight of the food everybody has brought: there’s gumbo, jambalaya, boudin, tasso, red beans and rice, chicken. Nobody is going to go hungry. Mama and Daddy are talking to cousins. Mandy and I go sit on the front steps together.
“So did you tell Mama? About LSU?” I say.
She nods.
“How’d that go?”
“Not great,” she says. She looks off into the distance. “But I do have a plan. There’s this school in Atlanta. It’s not too late to apply to it, and Aunt Cel said I could live at her house in the fall for free if I wanted to go there while I apply for LSU again. People drop out freshman year, so there are spaces. If you get good grades.”
“Why would you live with her, though? Wouldn’t you and Mama stay at the town house?”
“I don’t know. . . .” She looks around, making sure that Mama and Daddy aren’t within earshot. “Mama hasn’t been happy since you left. She’s thinking of coming back. I heard her on the phone one night when she didn’t know I was listening. Apparently someone at the chicken company knows someone who does the catering at one of those golf courses in New Orleans, and they need someone to manage the dining room. She’s talking about doing it. The pay is pretty good.”
My heart skips a beat. “She said that?”
Mandy nods.
“Would you want to stay in Atlanta with Aunt Cel?”
She stares out into the yard. “Chris is going to Auburn next year, which is only two hours away. But if I came back to Louisiana, it would be like five hours away.”
I want to tell her not to plan her life around this guy. But I stop myself. Mandy needs to do things her way, just like I need to do them mine. I smile and put my arm around her shoulder.
From the back of the house, I hear the strains of an accordion. We follow the music out the back door onto the patio. It’s an older guy playing; I think he is one of Grandpere’s nephews. He plays something slow, a little mournful, but so soothing. One of Mama’s cousins — Tante Marie’s son Joseph — comes down with a fiddle and joins. Mamere would have loved this. Like when we were little and Grandpere and his friends used to play on the porch. When they take a break, I approach Joseph.
“Did you ever know this song that Grandpere wrote for Mamere?” I ask. “Called the ‘Sweet Evangeline Waltz’?”
He smiles. “My daddy used to play that with Uncle Claude,” he says.
He and the other cousin, whose name is Russ, start playing it. It’s a few minutes later when I see some of the old folks get up to dance. They are spinning slowly around, looking into each other’s eyes or holding on to each other. Then I notice out of the corner of my eye that Mama and Daddy have gotten up to dance. It’s like they don’t see anyone around them, they’re in their own little world, looking at each other, completely absorbed. They love each other. They still do.
I start to drift toward the hammock in the back of Tante Fifi’s yard, to be alone, away from everyone. The music follows me, haunting me, a ghost of Grandpere and Mamere. A friendly ghost. In the hammock, I lie down and look up through the trees. I rock a little, pushing off from the
ground with my foot. I close my eyes, feel the breeze on my face, hear the music in the distance. The warmth surrounds me. I feel completely blank. Then the buzzing of my phone near my hip breaks the silence.
“Hey.” It’s Tru.
“Hi.” I am stepping into a moment that I knew was waiting for me.
“It’s Tru.”
“I know.”
“Is this a good time? You sound . . . I don’t know. Where are you?”
I sit up. “I’m in St. Martinville.” I know I sound flat, not like I should sound when I am hearing his voice for the first time in months. “Mamere died. The funeral just ended.” It comes out with a crack, a creak in my voice.
“What? Oh, my God.” There is panic in his voice. “I’m so sorry. I . . . Can I come see you?”
Ms. Bell’s words come back to me: It’s OK to ask for help. “Please come. Come now.”
“I’ll be there in an hour and a half.”
“OK,” I say, surrendering to whatever comes next.
“Wait, where should I meet you?”
And there’s only one thing that pops into my mind. The Evangeline Oak.
“I’m going for a walk to get a little fresh air,” I whisper to Mandy in the kitchen. “If anyone asks, I’ll be back soon.”
I leave the house with nothing, not even my purse, walking down the sidewalk toward town with the shadows growing long. The houses on Tante Fifi’s street are big and pretty and settled, with tall trees in the yards, and grass. The azaleas are in bloom.
I reach the sleepy little downtown. There are a few restaurants, shops open. Some people are sitting outside because it’s nice out. I catch a glimpse of myself in the window of the floral shop. I forgot that I was still in my funeral clothes. I look older than myself. I feel older. Older than I did yesterday.
At the side of the church, I stop at the Evangeline statue. There she is, in her cloak and her wooden shoes, staring off with her blank stone eyes. She sits atop what’s supposed to be the tomb of Emmeline Labiche, whom Longfellow based his poem on, but everyone says that the tomb is empty. I look back into the graveyard. There is the canopy over Mamere’s grave. I have to look away.
Between Two Skies Page 19