by H. M. Mann
“What kind of name is that for a boat?” she asks.
“It’s the name they gave it, I don’t know.”
“Let me speak to her,” Rose says.
“Auntie June, I’m here in Memphis with my boss. Would you like to speak to her? Her name is Rose.”
I hand the phone to Rose, who immediately gets to work. “Hey, Auntie June, how you doin’? I’m Emmanuel’s boss on the boat … No, I am not a harlot.” She covers the mouthpiece and whispers, “She thinks I’m a harlot. Are all your people this crazy?”
The few that I know, I guess.
She uncovers the mouthpiece. “Your nephew is an outstanding worker, and— Yes, he’s clean. I’ve been making sure of that … We’re just out after a night at the Rum Boogie Café. It’s a blues club … No, we didn’t drink any rum … Right, in Memphis … How can I prove it to you?” She covers the mouthpiece again. “She says she has to see it to believe it.”
Auntie June’s faith must be slipping.
She uncovers the mouthpiece again. “We’ll send you a picture or two, all right? And we’ll send you another check … He earned that money the old-fashioned way, Auntie June, with blood, sweat, and muscle. He’s a very good cook, and what’s that? Don’t tear up the next check. Promise me … All right … Okay. Here’s Emmanuel.” She hands me the phone. “Crazy doesn’t fall far from the tree in your family.”
“Hey, Auntie June.”
“I don’t know what’s going on here, what kind of scam you’re trying to pull, but—”
“Your prayers are being answered, Auntie June,” I interrupt. “Where’s your faith?”
“Don’t you blaspheme, boy! You talking about faith is like a fish talking about dry land!”
How can I make her believe me? I need to change the subject. “Uh, have you seen Mary?”
“Why would I want to see her?”
“Because she’s going to have my baby.”
Silence.
“Auntie June?”
“This, I believe, and you said my prayers were being answered.”
“Could you go over there, make sure her mama doesn’t tear up her check?” I ask.
“You know I don’t go out in the rain, and I don’t converse with heathen either.”
“They’re just Catholic, Auntie June. They’re not heathen.”
Silence.
“Could you at least call her for me, let her know we talked?”
“Whatever for?”
I grip the phone until I think it’ll break. “Look, Auntie June, you’re going to be a sort of grandma by Christmas, and I plan to marry Mary when I get back.”
“That’s not an answer to prayer either. I never wanted you to be with that virgin-worshiper, and we both know she isn’t a virgin. She’s going to expect you to become a Catholic.”
“So?”
“So? Emmanuel, how am I going to face the folks at Ebenezer with them knowing I raised a boy to be a virgin-worshiper?”
“Didn’t you also raise me to be happy?”
She scowls.
“Mary makes me happy, and—”
“I have to go,” she interrupts.
“Where, Auntie June? It’s after midnight.”
“I just … I have to go.”
I talk fast. “I’ll be sending you some—”
Click.
“Pictures,” I say to the air. I hang up.
“Is she always like that?” Rose asks.
“No. Sometimes she’s worse.”
“Well, don’t you worry, Emmanuel. We’ll take a few pictures first thing in the morning.”
“She still might not believe us.”
“Sure she will.” She takes my arm. “And to make absolutely sure, we’ll even take a picture of you holding tomorrow’s newspaper to prove it.”
11: On the American Queen, Memphis to New Orleans
The next morning, while the Mississippi swells, bugs swarm, and humidity drenches us, Rose takes pictures of me all over the boat with one of those one-step cameras, the skyline of Memphis in the background. I see myself acting like I’m cooking, washing dishes, and doing laundry, and I even hold up a newspaper. I take half the pictures and send them to Auntie June with a hundred-dollar check, and I mail the other half to Mary with a check for one hundred and fifty.
“She’ll have to believe you now,” Rose tells me.
“I don’t know. She’ll find a way not to believe.” In me.
It doesn’t take long for news to arrive in the galley that Mrs. Walker has left the boat. I don’t think anything of it, mainly because that’s one problem I don’t want to deal with anymore since Mittie is sick again.
“You scared her off,” Rose tells me.
“No I didn’t.”
“Yeah, you did,” Rose says. “She got on in New Orleans.”
“Maybe the weather cut her trip short.”
“You scared her off.” She smiles. “I’m proud of you, Emmanuel.”
Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t, but I let it all slide off my back. And my uniform is about to slide off my back. The further south we go, the steamier it gets. The river itself gets crowded but not with boats. I see incredible amounts of garbage and rolling debris, even a few floating cars, some huge oak trees, and the top of someone’s house. Rose tells me that I won’t be seeing Rufus anytime soon because “he’ll have to watch out for more bumps in the night.”
Near the end of my breakfast shift, Rose pulls me aside. “The lady you’re serving at table seven is Mrs. Genevieve Broussard of the Baton Rouge Broussards.”
“Uh-huh. And …”
“And she’s serious trouble. She must have sneaked on in Memphis. We like to call her the Belle from Hell.”
I look back at Mrs. Broussard. She’s forty-ish with a dark tan, long fingernails tipped with sculpted nails, and blondish-brown hair that cascades down her back. “She’s kind of classy.”
“Classy?” Rose says. “She ruined a little country boy from Arkansas a couple trips ago.”
“How?”
“You know, ruined him. She made him into her personal slave, so steer clear of that Creole witch.”
“Creole? What’s Creole?”
“Or Cajun, I get ‘em confused.”
Cajun, huh? So what if she’s a temptress in silky white clothes. I can get to know my people better.
I return to her table and freshen her coffee. “Is everything satisfactory?”
“Yes, thank you,” she says in a husky voice. “Your service has been excellent, Emmanuel.”
“Thank you.”
She puckers her lips and leans back, drawing one of those sculpted nails down her neck. “I don’t like coming down to the dining room for my meals, so could you serve me my dinner up in my stateroom?”
“With pleasure.”
“Wonderful. Have it to room five-oh-one by six o’clock sharp.”
“I will, Mrs. Broussard.”
She smiles. “And you know my name. But call me Genevieve.”
“Yes, Genevieve. See you at six.”
Rose isn’t very supportive. “I’m telling you, Emmanuel, that boy was wrong in the head from the day he met her till the day he left us. She worked some roots on him or something.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
At six, I knock on 501, one of four outside suites that cost over $4,000 a cruise.
“It’s open,” Genevieve calls, and I walk in to see her standing by a window in a silky orange robe, which is open down to her navel. She doesn’t have a single tan line. I can see why that Arkansas country boy lost his mind. She bends at the waist, pointing at a table in front of a fainting couch. “Just put everything here,” she says, and she stands ever so slowly.
I put down my tray as she lounges on the fainting couch.
Would you look at that!
Not now. And where have you been anyway? You said you’d see me in Memphis.
I been aro
und.
Ain’t nothing gonna happen.
“Are you cold, Emmanuel?” Genevieve asks.
“No ma’am.”
“Your lips were moving.”
Oh. “Will there be anything else, Genevieve?” I try staring at the table, but my eyes have little minds of their own.
“It depends,” she says, sipping a glass of wine that costs more than my entire paycheck.
“It depends on what, Genevieve?”
“On how willing you are to please me.”
You’re in trouble now, boy.
Hush. She could be a relative of mine.
“It is my duty to serve you, Genevieve.”
She isn’t related to you. She’s rich!
Shh.
Ever hear of Potiphar’s wife? Here she is!
Who?
Potiphar’s wife! The woman who nearly ruined Joseph in the Bible.
Oh.
“I know that, Emmanuel, but I am talking about … more.”
Come on, Manny! This woman throws money around like confetti.
“I wish I could oblige you, Genevieve, but one of our servers is sick, and I really have to get back to the dining room.” I turn to leave.
“Later perhaps?”
I stop. “I have laundry duty until very late, Genevieve, but I can see you in the morning.” I glance back and see a mixture of amazement and confusion on her face. “Have a good evening.”
As I’m shutting the door, she calls out, “Have my breakfast here by eight o’clock sharp.”
“Yes, Genevieve, I will.”
For breakfast the next morning, I see Genevieve once again in that little robe she’s almost wearing, her hair falling like a waterfall onto the back of that fainting couch.
Don’t play so hard to get!
No. She could be my long-lost sister or something.
“Enjoy your breakfast,” I say after I set down her tray. I turn to go.
“Wait,” she says, and she stands. “Don’t you find me attractive?”
I shrug. “No.”
“No?”
“No … ma’am.” No more first-name basis for her.
She blinks.
I smile. “I am engaged to be married.” Well … almost.
“Oh.”
“I will return for your tray in one hour.”
When I return, Mrs. Broussard is dressed in tan pants and a crème top. I pick up the tray, smiling at the ten-dollar tip.
“You have great self-control, Emmanuel,” she says.
You could have had some fun with her if you had listened to me. Listen to how cool her voice is. She’s done with you now.
“You were warned of my reputation, yes?” she asks.
I smile. “Yes ma’am.”
“Yet … you chose to serve me anyway, even though you knew?”
“Yes.” I return the tray to the table. Mittie’s back serving, so I really don’t have to rush back to the galley.
“May I know why?”
“My father was Cajun, or so I’ve been told, and you’re Cajun, right?”
She squints. “Yes.”
“I was hoping to learn more about my Cajun heritage.”
She lights a cigarette and blows smoke behind her, settling back onto the fainting couch. “And what do I receive in return for this … lesson?”
“I can only offer you my gratitude, I’m afraid.”
“Well, I mind a great deal being your … teacher.”
She does not know when to stop flirting, does she? “Fine. I’ll have someone else replace me in time for lunch.” Rico would do it.
She blows more smoke. “You have guts, Emmanuel. I can probably have you fired for this.”
See? Now you’re gonna lose your job!
“True. You could.”
She sighs. “I don’t scare you at all, do I?”
“No ma’am.” Only darkness scares me, and sometimes The Voice.
I knew I was gettin’ to you.
Hush.
She stubs out her cigarette and lights another. “So you really want to know what it means to be Cajun?”
“Yes ma’am.” I sit in a chair opposite the loveseat. “May I sit?”
“You are already seated.” She takes a drag, exhales, and squints through the smoke. “I am Cajun, but I am not. The fact that no man owns me is proof of that. Cajun men … are greedy. They do not so much love a woman as own her love. I am too free a spirit to be owned.”
“My father wasn’t like that,” I say. “He left my mama before I was born.”
“All men leave,” she says, rolling her eyes, “but a true Cajun gentleman would not have left. A true Cajun gentleman would have stayed to the bitter end.” She stubs out another cigarette. “Did your father know that your mother was pregnant?”
“I don’t know.” Maybe Auntie June would know.
“If he didn’t know … Hmm. Tell me about him.”
“All I know is that he was a steel worker in Pittsburgh for a time.”
“A steel worker? Not in oil?”
“No.”
“Hmm. Now tell me about your mother.”
How much do I tell? “Well, she was black, and—”
She waves the hand with the cigarette. “That is all I need to hear. Your father was probably married. A true Cajun man marries another Cajun but sleeps around when he can and when his Cajun wife is busy spending his money.”
She has to be talking from experience. Her voice is too bitter for it not to be.
“Was your mother a prostitute, perhaps?” she asks.
“That’s none of your business.”
Mrs. Broussard smiles. “I take it she was, and that explains it.”
My face is getting hot. “She’s wasn’t a prostitute.”
“Emmanuel, if your father was a true Cajun, he would not have left the bayou.”
“The what?”
“The swamps of Louisiana.” She shakes her head slowly. “You really don’t know anything about him, do you?”
“Just what my aunt told me.”
“True Cajuns live in swamps, shooting ducks, being Catholic, drinking, eating mudbugs—”
“Huh?”
“Crawfish, the staple food of the Cajun man. Oh yes, and there’s plenty of shrimp, okra, and rice to go along with them. Dreadful stuff. They make it so spicy that you can’t taste how truly dreadful it is. And the music? Backwoods and intolerably happy. Laissez les bon temps rouler.”
“What?”
“It’s French for ‘Let the good times roll.’ Cajun men need no special occasion to get drunk.” She sucks hard on her cigarette. “And the way they talk on the bayou … Imagine deep South English with a mumbling French accent. It sounds something like … I figger dey people don there won say nuttin you can unnerstand.”
I understood her perfectly. It almost sounds like Pittsburgh where “down” sounds like “dawn.”
“They are common, Emmanuel, and they intermarry only with themselves, although,” she stubs out another cigarette, “there are some Houma around.”
“Houma?”
“Swamp Indians. You may have some Houma in you, you never know.” She looks at my face, as if appraising a painting or something. “You might. You have very distinctive features.” She lights yet another cigarette.
And I thought that I was a junkie.
“Other people are like food to Cajuns. They cut off a hunk, take a bite, chew it up for a while, swallow what tastes good, and vomit the rest.”
And this is starting to tick me off. My daddy vomited my mama and me? “So what’s your story, Mrs. Broussard. Do you come on this boat to nibble?”
She laughs. “I like you. You are so direct.”
“Have you chewed me up and spit me out yet?”
She laughs harder. “I have made you angry. I am sorry.”
I turn to go.
“No, wait, I am truly sorry.”
I turn back.
“This is what I think happened,
Emmanuel. Your father was in oil, not steel, and he was up in Pittsburgh securing steel for his pipeline or his oil derricks. He came up, impregnated your mother without knowing he had, and went home to his wife, a bitter woman like me who will not leave him because of the security and money he gives her. He probably has children, and he may even be rich by now or be in politics. I would not be surprised if I know this man—or know of him.”
This regal, sophisticated lady is so … common. She’s living in a dream world. My mama might, just might, have sold her body for heroin. What would a rich guy want with her? Unless she started using heroin after he left her. It had to be that way. I was born with no problems, no defects, no addictions. So he turned her into a junkie? I have to ask Auntie June more about Mama.
“Why have you not spoken to your mother about this?” she asks.
I look down. “She died when I was four.”
“Really? Hmm. How did she die?”
“She was … she was murdered.”
“I’m sorry. Was the killer caught?”
I doubt you’re sorry. “No.”
“Perhaps your mother tried to get money from your father, maybe threatened to tell his wife, present you as proof of the liaison.”
She’s crazy.
But you’ll never know, right?
“Cajun men value their marriages over their wives. He would not care of the devastation caused to his wife, but to his marriage … That is a different story.”
And that’s what all of this is. It’s a bitter story told by a bitter woman. “Do you have any children, Mrs. Broussard?”
“No. I was not a good Cajun woman squirting children into the bayou.”
“I see.” Time to leave. “Does your husband have any children?”
She seems to stop breathing for a moment, her eyes little black dots. “Get out.”
I smile. “That answered my question. I’ll be going now.”
Mrs. Broussard didn’t teach me a thing. I think my daddy was really was a steel worker, not some rich guy in oil. I think he hooked up with my mama several times, and he might have even dated her. Then she got pregnant with me, so my daddy had to be around a lot. Auntie June should know more. My daddy was a hard-working man like I’ve become … who my mama might have even loved … who might have ruined her so badly when he left that she turned to heroin in her despair. This is giving me a headache.