MARCH 1997
Grace Desirée
Excerpt from Chapter One
by Nancy Rawles
All stories begin with Death. This fact cannot be helped. Consequently,
it is best to anticipate one's deaths and, if possible, to plan for them
with the utmost care and consideration. It is difficult to die suddenly,
worse yet to stagger across the stage clutching a bag of catsup to breasts
before twirling to the ground in a jittery mass, legs akimbo, lips quivering.
At its best, death is not fraught with anything, least of all complications.
How one dies determines how one lives.
With the family
in turmoil and leaderless, Grace saw her chance to get on with it. In that
time of the lengthening of days, in that darkest time of the year, a light
did dawn upon her: If she did not move now when everything on earth was
casting about for constancy, she would wake up to find the ground resettled
beneath her exactly the way it was before. She must bury her inheritance
once and for allthe ball of shame, the chain of devotion, the leg iron of
duty that kept her alive but motionless. Oh, how she would miss them! Already,
she was mourning the loss of predictability. Being a Broussard, Grace understood
that the only way to beat death was to mourn in advance. She stepped up
her efforts.
Mourning
was what Broussards did best. On any given day, one could find family members
of every age and ability engaged in this soulful activity. They mourned
the passings of trains, the bulldozing of buildings, the demise of neighborhoods.
They mourned when they were apart, when they were together, and when they
were in transit. Love was tied in their hearts to mourning for even the
youngest amongst them knew that love and death went hand in glove.
The hand,
the body, the hair, the foot, the eyes, the voice, the walk, the winkthis
is what one misses, the physical presence, all things corporal. The mud
of this earth gives way to ashes and soot. Bones are buried, never the heart.
They
came carrying flowers in watering cans and clippers to trim the disobedient
grass. Blankets they spread before them and pillows to soften the earthen
floor. Sweaters were needed in case of a breeze, and sunglasses helped against
weather and tears. Nothing helped against guilt, which tailed them like
a devoted pet. Before the day was over, they would fall to their knees,
the prayers of remembrance heavy on their lips. They'd laugh a little and
weep a little and leave with family loyalty embossed upon their hearts.
This time was not so
different from any other time. The hills still rolled down into the roadways
which poured into the ponds which sprouted water lilies for carp to swim
round and folks to stare into and wonder. Statues grew to adore the trees
that gave them comfort. Trees worshipped the fertility of this once-desert
stretch of land. The hills were watered and tended to softness, as though
they belonged to a golf course or to the nearby racetrack. They were lucky,
these hills, the envy of their brethren which lined the freeways hiding
truckloads of decomposing garbage. Life was decomposing here and in its
shadow, life was being born.
This was the place where
Calamity ended, where Tragedy came to rest. Occasionally, a sprinkler would
pop up right where a mourner was sitting and grieving. And, sometimes, that
mourner would laugh. From the fake grotto atop the sacred mound, the soul
of Los Angeles lay bare beneath its dusty sky. The city was never so quiet
as it was from these hills and no traffic ever bothered them.
There were no stones
that stood here. Every one was lying down, some close together, others aloof,
all the same size but half-sized for babies and small, plain, sad ones for
veterans. There were Spanish names surrounded by flowery Spanish words.
Often, Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared, etched into the stones next to the
words. Even though she was only one color hereset against black or
driven into grayshe still suggested all the colors of her glory. The
stars and rays and lightning of her robes were not lost to this flatness.
She seemed happy, that Lady. Always appeared to be floating, her bare feet
dangling under her gown. If you followed her far enough, you'd end up in
the Chinese section, which was small but impressive. Lengthy epitaphs, written
in Chinese, boasted about the deceased. The border was marked by a family
of Chinese Mexicans, the Wang Mendosas, some of whom had married Filipinos.
The Greek and Russian names were interesting to look at, almost familiar
in a Christian sort of way. Other names stood out because they sounded utterly
familiar, like characters from a famous book whose title didn't leap to
mind. A few of the stones bore portraits of the deceased, most of whom wore
mustaches. There was one whole section given to the nuns, buried in their
habits, rosaries in hand.
Christmas was the best
season in the cemetery. There was never any snow in this part of the world,
so that particular garnish had to be sprayed onto things. But save for this
one inconvenience, all the Christmas trimmings could be found in abundance.
Poinsettias with their regal heads, tiny trees on wooden legs, pine wreaths
that withered amidst all that manufactured joy. A mild wind would scatter
ornaments and tinsel and set aluminum pinwheels to spinning. Plastic music
boxes relayed carols till they ran out of batteries. Mechanical birds chirped
without ceasing. Lights flashed into the not-so-silent nights. The children's
graves had toys.
T-Papa had died near
Christmas. "T-Papa" wasn't his given name but what everyone called
him instead of "Henri." The stone read "Henri Joseph Broussard,
Jr., March 5, 1911Dec. 21, 1975." Camille Broussard had paid extra
for the stone cutter to carve the words "My presence shall go with
thee and I will give thee rest," and she had meant that as surely as
Yahweh had meant it in Exodus. The "T" in her husband's name stood
for "petit" and, coupled with "Papa," it meant "little
father." Camille thought of this name as the perfect description of
the frail and lonesome individual hiding inside the pioneer she'd married
(she alone had not been surprised by his death) but, in actuality, it was
merely a telling translation of "Junior." The name suited him.
He had been the most patronizing child anyone had ever come across, inclined
to tell both children and adults what they ought to do. They listened. And
during the Great Depression, when the young father and master workman determined
the only thing to do was leave the stifling white heat of Louisiana for
the dry brown heat of Los Angeles, everyone had followed him. He was the
one who had taken in the endless parade of cousins, who had turned the house
on Compton Avenue into a meeting hall against Camille's wishes, who had
trained the men to lay bricks and work wood, who had risen every morning
at five and cooked a hot breakfast of grits and blood sausage after warming
the coffee he kept in a jar on the second shelf of the refrigerator. He
was a large man with a wide, booming voice given as often to imparting ignorance
as wisdom but always commanding and frequently entertaining. His people
were lacking, now that he was gone. They could no more do without him than
catfish can do without hot sauce, than gumbo can do without garlic, than
red beans can do without rice. They missed him the way they missed crawfish
bisque. Nothing about Los Angeles could make up for the lack of crawfishnot
ocean, palm trees, Disneyland, not tacos, burritos, or teriyakiand
no one but no one could replace T-Papa. Family would continue to follow
him. Some of them had already purchased plots in his vicinity.
It was because Camille
was in the hospital having her uterus removed that Grace and Yvette had
come by themselves to make Christmas at their father's grave. For Camille,
the most painful part of being in the hospital over Christmas was not the
lack of gumbo feasting or the force-fed merriness or the pain of the surgery
itself, it was the knowledge that she could not take flowers to her husband's
grave. In the three years since T-Papa had died, she had not missed a single
week of flowers. He was a man who noticed everything and Camille feared
such a large loneliness as this one, a missing wife at Christmastime, would
set his soul to grieving. She knew him to be a "little father."
He needed things like flowers. Christmas day, after an eve of no sleeping,
she waited impatiently for Yvette to arrive. At 43, Yvette was her oldest
and always on time. She would come at exactly 7:59, carrying a bag of presents
and a box of pralines. She would be followed by her 20-year-old sister Grace,
the youngest of the seven Broussard children, who came brooding and plotting
her escape. With little more than a glance in their direction, Camille dispatched
her daughters with these words, "Go and see Papa for me."
Yvette drove.
"They think Zippy's
baby is retarded. Probably `cause he married so close." Yvette was
reviewing the family gossip for her sister's edification. Zippy was the
Broussard's first cousin once removed, whose real name was Gaston. He had
eloped with a second cousin on his mother's side who happened to be a third
cousin on his father's side. They'd married in a Catholic church in Tijuana,
which made the whole thing legal in the eyes of Rome. Together, they'd produced
a dimwit. But so had several of the kings and queens of Europe and this
fact was lovingly recalled every time Zippy's baby came up in conversation.
"I hear his wife
wants an annulment. Bet you anything Aunt Julie ends up raising that baby.
They won't even bring it over for Mama's blessing, they're so ashamed of
what they did. They never should have gone against family and run off like
that."
It seemed to Grace that
Zippy and his wife hadn't gone against family at all but had rather gotten
carried away with it. She did not bother to point this fact out to Yvette,
who was taking advantage of the confined quarters to accomplish what she
couldn't get away with at home, where Grace could always retreat to her
room. Yvette liked Grace. And her goodwill was reciprocated. But there it
stopped. They had nothing in common but a last name, nine letters that served
to bind them to each other for all time.
That last name. That
was Grace's problem. She was a Broussard. That was her trouble in a word.
She belonged to a mixed-up group of Louisiana Creoles, which was worse than
being a Chinese Mexican. In post Black Power America, it meant not knowing
who you were. When the boys had come home with "naturals" and
cake cutters in their back pockets, Camille accused them of "ruining"
their hair. They could not come into the house with the language of the
streets; they could not bring into the house the children of the streets,
their friends and neighbors who were not, after all, Broussards. They lived
in Watts but they were not of Watts. They were of Point Coupee Parish, where
there was lots of rain and plenty of crawfish.
Grace meditated on this
last thought. She could not understand why men would rise before dawn to
catch such ghastly little creatures and why women would spend all day stuffing
their crusty little bodies with dressing. She herself had participated in
this most elaborate of rituals and, contrary to all else present, she felt
that the meal, in no way, made up for the labor. She was glad there were
scant crawfish in Los Angeles.
Yvette chattered on relentlessly,
encouraged by her sister's lack of words. Their Uncle Claude, Camille's
brother, had been honored recently by the St. Vincent de Paul Society for
twenty years of outstanding service to the poor. Uncle Claude was no wealthy
man himself, but he'd given of his time and that was no little thing. Patrice's
daughter was getting married. Her intended wasn't a Creole, but he looked
like one. Did you know that Brother was moving up in his company? He was
practically one of the owners, after starting out as a lowly cement mixer.
My, but Lisette's son has big feet! Imagine having to buy men's shoes for
a nine-year-old!
No sooner had they passed
through the iron gates than Grace knew she had made a horrible mistake.
Yvette had talked her into going, Yvette, who was afraid to visit the dead
alone. Grace had wanted to point out that she would hardly be alone since
Christmas was such a popular time at the cemetery, but she stopped herself.
Something had drawn her there, something beyond herself. The cemetery looked
strangely festive to her.
If she closed her eyes,
Yvette could evoke the cemetery exactly as it now appeared before her, but
Grace squinted as though she were seeing it for the first time. Before Grace
could walk, she had felt the grass beneath her skirt. Once on her feet,
she had run laughing down the hill where Aunt Sylvie resided, tumbling and
rolling over stone and ground, waiting at the bottom for the world to stop
spinning, getting up and falling down again. She had collected pine cones,
fed the carp cookie crumbs, taken candles to the statues and danced in the
sprinklers. She had knelt quietly and watched her mother's face in prayer.
Over and over, she had heard the words, "Eternal Rest grant unto them,
Oh Lord. And let Perpetual Light shine upon them." She learned them
before she learned how to read and could recite them more readily than nursery
rhymes. She had come carrying flowers for the old dead relatives she'd never
known in any state but this one. But that was all a long time ago, when
Grace was still a child, details she did not like to recall at the distant
age of 20. From about 13 on, she had declined to go on the weekly excursions
to Holy Rosary. When her children were young, Camille would call out, "Who
wants to go to the cemetery?" like other mothers bellowed, "Who
wants to go to the store?" Various little Broussards would pile into
the car and spill out onto the holy park like marbles on a sidewalk. While
their mother made the rounds, the young Yvette at her side, the others chased
each other over coffin and corpse. But as they matured, the Broussard boys
realized that tending the sick and dead was women's work. Men's only duties
were to stay healthy till they died, bring home enough money to feed the
living, have enough left over to flower the dead. So, while the boys were
learning how to stucco walls and plaster ceilings, Yvette accompanied her
mother with a prayer book in her hand, and little Grace traipsed behind
them practicing her "Turn oh Rests" and "Pet you all Lice."
Once she was old enough to recognize absurdity (even in its family form),
she stopped going to the cemetery. It's not that she wanted to go shopping
instead. She enjoyed that activity even less. But there was something morbid
about the cemetery. She figured she'd spend enough time there once it was
all said and done. No need appearing overeager. Perhaps, by paying your
weekly respects, you could guarantee that generations yet unborn would make
the same frequent pilgrimages to lay flowers at your feet. Grace was not
interested in such a fate. She thought it obnoxious the way the living constantly
pestered the dead, petitioning them for good health and long life. "Rest
in peace" took on a new meaning when one belonged to a group as verbose
as the Broussards. Grace would have none of it. At 20, she was much too
old for the cemetery and for the superstitions of Catholics. She couldn't
remember the last time she'd been grave hopping. It wouldn't have been her
father's funeral because, on that day, they'd all just stood around the
casket dumbfounded with no thought of the "good company" T-Papa
had now joined. All the other dead had fallen away in the face of this one
grand departure.
That had been a terrible
occasion. Grace had only blurry memories of the Christmas landscape three
years ago. Her mother, veiled and trembling. Her brothers, tall and somber,
carrying their father's body with gloved hands, straining under the weight
of his legacy. Yvette, looking tiny behind black hat and white handkerchief.
The countless relatives, their heads rotating like electric fans, their
eyes glossy like cellophane. The mechanical birds chirping and the plastic
carols playing throughout the final words. Her brother Joseph had tried
to strangle one of the birds but succeeded only in tearing apart a neighbor's
yuletide display in his futile search to disconnect. Everyone had followed
Camille's lead and ignored him. All except Grace, who went over and took
his hand and gently led him back to the service. She'd worn a purple dress
and black pumps bought special for the occasion; she hadn't looked at them
since. But every time she thought of her father's death, she saw herself
in that purple dress, looking lost and suddenly old.
She had been dancing
when he died. She had been dancing to "Fiddler on the Roof" in
the living room of an old Communist home. A headache seized her at exactly
the moment they say he fell to the kitchen floor. She had not been there,
and it was the only thing she was glad about. She had not been there.
Yvette had been home
that night. It was a Friday night, but Yvette was home studying education
theory when she heard her father fall. She had called for Camille and the
paramedics. She had summoned her brothers and their wives, driven her frightened
mother to the hospital, waited with her for the priest, opened the door
for the undertaker, put on the coffee as relatives rushed to the house from
everywhere in that sprawling city.
Grace had come home sweaty
and reeking of smoke. Her friend had dropped her at the curb, which was
thick with her brothers' cars. She could see the Christmas tree blinking
in the window. Someone had forgotten to close the curtains. Marc was the
one who met her on the lawn, his gold eyes flashing gray. Right away, she
knew someone had died and that the someone was her father, whom she'd argued
with at dinner because she'd needed to go dancing and he hadn't understood
that. Marc held her arm as she felt her way up the stairs, choking on her
own breath. Relatives were already claiming the porch. She searched the
hollow rooms for her mother and Yvette. A wail went up from the kitchen
as the three Broussard women became one inconsolable tear. In the space
of an evening, the world had changed thoroughly and forever.
Grace had not come to
visit her father since the week he died, and she was the only one of his
seven children to so neglect him. She did not know why she had come with
Yvette today, unless it was for one last look before she turned from him
forever. Being at Holy Rosary brought up that painful time three years ago.
It was not the pain that troubled her now, but the memory of how comforted
she'd felt those days of her father's death, surrounded by her family. She
did not wish to dwell upon this feeling, now that her own departure was
imminent. Grace knew that if she turned around now, she'd be reduced to
a pillar of salty tears. She had to leave her family while the leaving was
still good.
The Broussards would
probably be a nice family to belong to if you hadn't been born into them.
Catholicism was probably a perfectly good religion for those who hadn't
been forced to sign on at birth. Likewise, the United States of America
was, no doubt, a fine place to settle for folks who had come of their own
free will. Lack of free will was the thing that most irked Grace about her
life as a human beingboth the actual lack of free will and the persistent
advertising to the contrary. Sure, if your parents were easy, you could
choose your own toothpaste or decide how to comb your own hair. But important
things like God, country and genes were mapped out completely before you
saw your first light. Well, that would all change soon enough. Nothing was
static. God, country, even genes could probably be altered in this day and
age. Grace was an adult now. She would make her own decisions. She had squandered
her childhood listening to other people; now, she would listen to no one
but herself. Dreams of deliverance flooded her heart.
© The Raven Chronicles 1997