Part of Me (2 page)

Momma was already in bed, but Possum and Pie were playing cards on the floor next to a kerosene lamp. I lighted the other one and headed toward the outhouse, not wanting anyone to discover me. Inside I hung the lamp on the nail and uncovered the books. The envelope said “Rose” across it. One of the books was
The Good Earth
by Pearl S. Buck. The other was a brown leather book.

I tore the envelope and read the letter.

Dear Rose,

The women from the church visiting committee said they would be happy to give these books to you when they went calling. You are a gifted student and writer. Always keep the words flowing from your pen.

Sincerely,

Mary Pratt

I opened the leather book and discovered it was blank. Every single page was just waiting for words.

*   *   *

The beans ran out the day after Christmas. Momma didn't say anything, but that afternoon she gave us each a box to squeeze our belongings in. We were given strict orders to take only what could fit in the box. And I was surprised when Momma softened and let Radio come along.

After we finished packing the truck, I slipped in beside Momma, while Pie and Possum rode in the back with Radio. A second later, Momma started the engine and headed east toward her birthplace in south Louisiana.

I didn't look back. I didn't want to see our little farmhouse disappear from sight, fearful that it might disappear from my memory forever.

There hadn't been enough money in the flour tin to stay at a hotel, so every night, Momma pulled off the road and we slept in the bed of the pickup. That first evening on our journey, I ignored Pie while she asked Momma a million questions. But I listened for Momma's answer when she asked, “What does Houma look like?”

Momma grabbed Pie's hand and held it up in the moonlight. She traced the space between her fingers. “Deese are de bayous. De rest is de land.” She touched the valley between two of her fingers. “I grew up here next to Bayou du Large.”

Pie thought she was on an adventure. But she had the sense of an old dumb cow, standing in the middle of the road, chewing its cud while cars moved toward it. Except for Papa leaving, Pie hardly knew a bad time. Everything was fun to her.

Momma had been driving for two long days and she'd grown tired of it. Most of the way, I'd ridden on the passenger's side, sometimes trading spots with Possum or Pie, who seemed to like sitting in the back of the pickup.

The third morning Momma pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the engine. “All right, Rose. Time for you to drive.”

“But I don't know how to drive,” I told her.

“And how you going to learn?” Momma tightened her lips and glared at me.

There was no arguing with her. When she got out, I slid over into her place behind the steering wheel. She didn't give me any instructions. No “put the key in the ignition and turn it.” No “put your foot on the brake.” No “push in the clutch.” Not Momma. She leaned her head against the window and said, “Drive, Rose.” Then she quickly fell asleep.

I froze and looked into the rearview mirror at my little brother and sister, who looked like their eyes were going to pop out of their sockets. I wanted to nudge Momma and wake her and ask,
What do I do?
But she probably would have said, “I drive for hundreds of miles and you don't know what I do?”

My hands were sweaty. I wiped them on my skirt and turned the key. The engine started, but I got the brake mixed up with the clutch. The truck jerked forward and back. Then it took off down the side of the road. I stuck my head out the window and hollered back, “Hang on!”

Even though it was a bit bumpy, the grass seemed a safer place to be. I would have continued on that way, but Momma opened her eyes.

Without moving, she said, “Get on de road.” Then she shut her eyes again.

Momma slept as I sweated and hoped that no one would pass us on the road. And when a black car got close behind us, I held my breath and swerved to the right. Pie, Possum, and Radio juggled to and fro in the back of the pickup like three marbles being shaken in a jar.

The next morning, Momma handed me the key. “You gonna drive today.”

Possum and Pie yelled, “NO!”

Momma sighed and got back behind the steering wheel. She never asked me to drive again, because that day we crossed the state line into Louisiana. “If we don't watch out,” she'd said, “we'll get pulled over with deese Texas plates.”

The day before we reached Houma, Possum rode in the front with Momma while I sat in the back with Pie. It was warm even though it was December. We passed bare sugarcane fields that had recently been harvested. Stalks that had dropped from the trucks littered the road. Maybe Papa would have stayed if he'd had a Louisiana farm where rain fell almost every day. In the last hour, gray hills and valleys had formed in the sky. I dug out Papa's rain slicker from behind the boxes and unfolded it.

Pie glanced down at Papa's slicker. I knew she was thinking of him. “How will Papa know we're in Houma?”

I swallowed a lump that had formed in my throat. “He left us, Pie.”

“But he'll go back to the farm and he won't know where to find us.”

Pulling her close to me, I said, “He's not coming back.” I knew it now, just as sure as I knew there wasn't a man on the moon.

Fisherman

(1939)

M
OMMA MIGHT AS WELL
have flown us to the moon. Because Houma looked nothing like Texas. Land seemed to be an afterthought in Houma with slivers of it squeezed between the dark bayous. When I asked, “How does anyone farm out here?” Momma said, “Dey don't. Dey fish.”

Moments after we arrived in Houma, we were looking into the face of an old man that we'd been told all our lives was dead. It was like staring at a ghost. Our grandfather, Antoine Marcel, studied us like we weren't from this world either. Momma hadn't bothered to stay in touch with him since she left eighteen years ago, and he knew nothing of us.

We stood, facing him, soldiers ready for inspection. Even Radio sat at attention. The way Antoine Marcel's stare traveled from our heads to our toes, I half expected him to check behind our ears for dirt.

He rubbed his white beard and studied Momma's face. “You look old,” he told her.

“You look older,” she told him.

“I think you look like a skinny Santa Claus,” said Pie. She smiled at him so big her dimples appeared. I hated Antoine Marcel for giving her nothing back but a frown.

Glancing from him to Momma, it seemed like we were watching a standoff in front of a saloon. Instead we stood in front of his home, which was perched upon tall stilts and squeezed on a narrow strip of land along Bayou du Large. His neighbors' homes were close by, built high off the ground, too. Momma said they were built that way to keep the water from coming into their houses when the tide rose too high, especially during a hurricane. We'd waited out tornadoes in our storm shelter before, but I'd never been in a hurricane. Judging by the height of those stilts, the water must sometimes rise as much as twenty feet.

Docked by the homes were fishing boats with women's names painted on them—
Irene, Josephine, Betty.
Standing there with the salty breeze blowing through my hair, I longed for our white farmhouse with its wraparound porch overlooking the land that stretched to the horizon.
Why did you bring us here, Momma?

That first night in Houma we tried to be as quiet as mice, tried to take up as little space as possible. The sofa became Possum's bed, and I slept with Momma and Pie in Momma's old bedroom. We hadn't eaten since our breakfast of Rice Krispies, straight from the box. But we didn't ask for food. Surprisingly, Pie didn't either.

*   *   *

Antoine Marcel acted like we were invisible. He ate his breakfast of eggs, grits, and toast alone, not offering us a crumb. Momma waited until he left to gather his oysters before she slipped into the kitchen to get us a bowl of rice for breakfast.

Pie studied her bowl. “I bet Chinese people eat rice for breakfast, too.”

“Rose,” Momma said, “you take Pie and Possum to school today. I need to find some work.”

“Shouldn't I go to the high school after I take them?”

“Tomorrow,” she said, looking past my shoulder, avoiding my eyes.

She made sandwiches for the three of us, spreading a thin layer of blackberry jelly on crusty slices of French bread. I didn't know why she was so stingy with the jelly since there were three full jars of it. It was as if she didn't want to owe Antoine Marcel anything more than she already did.

Before beginning her job hunt, she dropped us off at the grade school. In the office, I filled out paperwork for my brother and sister. The women studied us suspiciously.

“Where are you from?” the school secretary asked. She was shaped like a bell, skinny on top and a big round rear. I swear she'd ring if she wiggled.

“We're from outside Amarillo,” I told her.

Every woman in the office looked up at us.

“And why did you move here?”

I didn't know how to answer that. I wasn't going to say because our papa left us and we had nowhere else to go. So I said, “We're staying with my grandfather for a while.” It was the plain truth.

The school secretary's eyebrows shot up. “And who is your grandfather?”

“Antoine Marcel.”

She looked like I'd socked her right between the eyes. “Antoine Marcel? The oyster man? I didn't know he had any grandchildren. Is Marie your mother?”

“Yes.”

“And Conrad McGee is our papa,” Pie said.

I hadn't heard the mention of Papa's birth name in so long.

After filling out the forms, I headed back to Antoine Marcel's house, hoping I wouldn't have to go through the same nosy questions tomorrow when I started school.

At home, I wrote in my journal. I wrote more than I'd ever written before. I wrote about the journey, Momma's lie, this new place, this new grandfather—the oyster man.

Momma got a job that day, working as an oyster shucker at the Boudreaux Oyster Company. She came home that first night looking like she'd hitched a ride in a tornado. Some of her dark hair had escaped the pins, and her dress was wrinkled like it had never been in contact with an iron. Scrapes and cuts covered her hands and forearms. Her face looked pinched, and instead of smelling like the Emeraude perfume, she smelled like bayou.

That evening, Antoine Marcel fried a huge platter of oysters, too many for him to eat. The smell of the hot oil cooking those oysters drove me crazy. He slathered some bread with mayonnaise and ketchup. Then he placed some oysters on top, shook some hot sauce over it, and ate at the table alone, again. After he washed his dish, he pointed to the heap of oysters. “Someone better get rid of dose oysters. Dey won't be no good tomorrow. Maybe dat dog of yours will want dem.”

We wanted them, but we waited until he left the room, then hurried toward the platter like hungry orphans. I'd never tried an oyster and if I hadn't been so hungry I would have spit out the salty, squishy thing. Momma must have noticed my disgust as I struggled to swallow because she said, “Deese oysters fed and clothed me.”

Momma said that every Tuesday and Friday afternoon Antoine got into his pirogue and rode up and down the bayous playing his fiddle, letting folks know that he was there with his oysters. She said, “All along de water, people call out, ‘Antoine Marcel is coming!' And dey meet him on de docks with sacks in der hands.”

“How does he steer the boat and play the fiddle at the same time?” Possum asked.

“I used to steer de boat,” Momma said. “I don't know who does now.” She stared at the wall, and I could tell her mind was a million miles away.

“These oysters taste funny,” Pie said, then she seemed to notice Momma's frown and quickly added, “but I think I like them.”

“They're delicious,” Possum said, gobbling down a half dozen in no time at all. But he thought possums and squirrels tasted good.

After we finished eating, we went outside and fed some to Radio, who ate them right up, then sniffed and licked our fingers.

“How was school?” Momma asked my brother and sister.

“My teacher talks funny, just like you, Momma,” Pie said.

For the first time in a very long time, Momma laughed. “Don't tell her dat.”

“Oh.” Pie sucked in her lips, and of course, we all knew she already had.

That afternoon I had waited for my brother and sister outside the school building. Pie came out of the main entrance skipping, her long hair bouncing with each step. She chattered away, covering every minute of her day in detail. Possum hadn't said a word.

Now Pie was telling it all again. I escaped into the bedroom and read chapter four of
The Good Earth.
I wondered what books we would read in my new English class. Rain began to fall, hitting the roof with a loud patter. I was deep into the story when Momma handed a newspaper to me.

“Read dat,” she said, pointing to a classified ad. Her Cajun accent had grown even stronger since our short time in Houma.

WANTED: BOOKMOBILE DRIVER

Must be 17 with a chauffeur license

Must know how to read

Contact the Terrebone Parish Library

“I'm fourteen,” I said.

“You look seventeen.”

“That's lying.”

“Dat's surviving. You want to stay with dis old grump forever? We need to make money so we can move into our own place. You go back to school later.”

My heart plunged. “When?” I asked.

“Not long. A year.” Momma picked up an old copy of
Ladies' Home Journal
she'd brought with her from Texas and flipped to one of the stories.