1935: The Social Security Act is signed. Huey Long, governor of Louisiana is assassinated in Baton Rouge. Hitler breaks the Treaty of Versailles five times. Amelia Earhart is first to fly solo from California to Hawaii. Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Ohio.
She sets a pan of water on the gas stove, waits for it to boil and leans against the counter. “Pearl didn’t finish school, but she was very intelligent. I finished school. I wrote for the school paper. I wanted to be a journalist. Pearl quit school to go to work. She put that paycheck in Mama’s hand every week. Proud of that. So beautiful. Men wouldn’t leave her alone. A temptation. For her.”
Pearl is her opposite, and she was closest to Pearl, the one who wore red, looked like a movie star, liked her Lucky Strikes and scotch, and ran off with a jazz musician. “I won’t wear red, even though Mama said it was my best color. Daddy told me only whores in the French Quarter wear red.” She also never drank or smoked, listened to classical music and opera. Her favorite book is Wuthering Heights. Her sisters thought of her as a prude, modest to a fault, the holy one, always helping their mama.
“Nobody told me Pearl died. Did y’all want to keep it from me? All of a sudden, she’s gone. That’s over. I was holding her hand. In the hospital, I held her hand. I wish I’d stayed longer; I think I rushed off. Hope I didn’t rush off.”
She sets down a cup of tea and a chipped plate of graham crackers on a plastic-coated Christmas placemat, stained and torn on one end. The surface of the placemat is uneven from all the bits of paper stored underneath. “When I die, you’re gonna have to go through all this.” She laughs.
A collection of tiny scraps of paper: grocery lists, reminders, dates, names and phone numbers, calculations of her age, word puzzles, holy cards of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She fumbles with the scraps and straightens them, glancing at one or two, putting them in some order so the mat falls smooth on the table. She moves her cup on top of Santa’s beard and dips a graham cracker into her tea until it gets soggy.
“I never saw Daddy drunk. But your Aunt Edith says I only remember the good things. He used to send me to the library for books. We would discuss them. History books. Literature. He was a different person when he stopped drinking. He looked so young again.”
1938: Snow White, the first cel-animated film, is released. Kristallnacht, Nazis mobilize against Jews. Benny Goodman’s famous Carnegie Hall jazz concert. Charity Hospital built in New Orleans. Eddie Cantor requests dimes sent to Roosevelt to fight polio, the March of Dimes.
She dips another graham cracker in her tea which looks like sludge from the disintegrating cookies. “Dorothy had meningitis. Very contagious. She was bent backwards. They had to put her in a tub of very hot water. She was always a little slow after that. But she learned to read. She did learn how to read.
“We had polio, too. Earl, he’s the one who had polio. Had to sit on the porch for a long time. Couldn’t play in the street with the other boys. He never should have married that girl. She tricked him with one of those, what do you call it? Where you push something around and it tells the future? A Ouija board. We were all around it one night, and she tricked that boy into marrying her with that Ouija board. She was a gypsy.
“And there was whooping cough, too. They put a sign on our front door. ‘Warning: Whooping cough here.’ Something like that. We couldn’t go to school. The whole school could get it.
“I don’t know why I’m crying.” She wipes her face. “Betty died from it. Elizabeth was her real name, but we called her Betty. Betty was the prettiest baby of all of us. My hair was dark, from the Spanish side, but Betty had golden curls and crystal blue eyes. She came after Miriam and Edith, but she was prettier.
“Betty was my eyes. We used to say that, it means that she was everything to me. At the age when little girls love babies. So full of life. She started with this terrible cough that kept us awake at night. Couldn’t catch her breath. She would wheeze. Mama couldn’t get it to stop. Whooping cough. Mama was pregnant with Bobby. Mama told me to take her to the grotto. It was Our Lady of Prompt Succor, I think, or maybe Our Lady of Lourdes.”
The grotto is still there, tucked between two buildings outside St. Mary’s Church, on Constance and Josephine Streets. It is the national shrine of Father Francis Seelos, who died during the yellow fever epidemic of 1870.
“Your Daddy built me a grotto.” It was made out of lattice with a yellow-stepped stone wall on either side and a blue-and-white-painted statue of Mary holding pink roses. We were able to stand inside it for our First Communion photos and -hold our mock Masses there with the neighborhood kids. “He was good to me. He made that little alcove in the bedroom wall, too, for my altar.”
“At St. Alphonsus or St. Mary’s Church. I don’t remember it much. Mama said, ‘If you get to Magazine Street, you went too far. Wrap her up in this blanket. Go as fast as you can.’ She had Miriam and Edith at home, and she was big, pregnant with Bobby, so she told me to do it. I was nine or ten.
“I didn’t want to take her. I was afraid I’d get lost. It was chilly for October, and I forgot to wear my sweater. I went fast, pushing the buggy. My arms got cold. Betty’s face was light blue, like an eggshell. Her curls were sweaty from coughing. Trying to pull air in like a fish. You know how a fish does that after they throw it on the shore? After that they took her to the doctor. She ended up at Charity. The Charity Hospital in New Orleans just opened for poor people. No phone at our house so we asked the boy at the grocery across the street to come get us.”
The points of her elbows rest on the table, and her hands are balled into fists. The veins protrude through the spotted skin like they are ready to separate from the flesh. She starts to weep. “That baby died alone. They wouldn’t let us in. Because it was contagious. Or because we were poor. They wouldn’t let us see her. “I don’t like to cry in front of you.”
The next sobs are stifled. “They put her in the parlor. Mama wouldn’t come in. Bobby had just been born in the other room, so she stayed in there with him. Mama wanted to remember Betty the way she was. Happy and full of life.”
1940: 17,000-year-old cave paintings discovered in Lascaux, France. Walt Disney’s Fantasia premieres. Penicillin is proven and purified. Paris bombed by the Luftwaffe. Naval Air Base commissioned at Lake Pontchartrain, New Orleans.
A pontoon motor murmurs on the bayou. The Kleenex balls up in her hand and the other hand fumbles with the things on her table, the placemat, the scraps under it, a powder compact, a lipstick, pens and tablets, a prayerbook.
A sunburst lights up the kitchen. “Oh, look at that sun! Let’s go sit on the porch. I need to get my Vitamin D.”
The long blue-and-white porch high is flanked by two blooming mimosa trees, the ancient cypress and the brown strip of bayou. The sun reflects off the white breast of an osprey preening up high in a lofty eastern pine. For the first time in thirty years since her husband, my father, died, she is not living independently, a decision she did not make on her own, and one although perhaps safer, is not in line with her desires or views of herself.
“I’m going to walk down later those steps later. Your brother wants me to tell them when I walk down the steps. But I don’t always tell them. I do it when they’re not home. I think it’s forty steps? But there are, what do you call it? Landings. I used to sit on the stair landing on General Taylor Street. It had a window on the landing, and I used to sit there and sing. I took the bus to singing lessons.
A few leaves blow up from the lawn and circle around the porch. “Do you like to rake? I love to rake. I love to sweep, too. I love the feel of a broom in my hands. I don’t have to do much around here anymore. Your brother does everything. Even comes in my room to clean the floors. He doesn’t have to do that. I could do it.
“All those years after your Daddy died, I lived alone, it was fine. I never needed friends, or clubs like some women do. I had my plants, my books, the opera. That was enough. Had somebody take me to the grocery, and to Mass.”
She pulls up the robe to let the sun hit her thin legs. “I wouldn’t do this if anybody could see me. Are you sure Pearl is dead? So, that’s over, then? Ten years. That’s a long time.”