But it’s a bad idea for tourists to take a stroll after dark. Drugs are a problem, and jobs are in short supply. And all those boarded-up houses that were abandoned after the flood still stand, flowering with toxic black mold, a daily reminder of the heartbreak of Hurricane Katrina.
Life can be good in Tremé, but it’s never been easy.
At the mention of a man, my mother got excited. “Well let me put on my glasses so I can hear you better!”
She often said nonsensical things like that. It was part of her charm. That, and her gift of making you feel welcome.
She slid her glasses up her nose and peered at me through them. Worn on a silver chain around her neck, they were her one concession to the fact that she was aging.
“It’s a long story, Mama,” I said with a sigh. “And not worth retelling.”
She squinted. Her big brown eyes were magnified even bigger through the lenses of her glasses. “No saucy bits?”
“Not even one.”
Instantly losing interest, she removed the dreaded glasses and let them dangle from the chain once more. “Did you have breakfast, chère?”
I shrugged. “Coffee and some aspirin.”
“That’s not breakfast, silly child!” she scolded. “Get your skinny behind in this house and eat!”
She turned and floated away to the kitchen in a cloud of perfume and motherly disappointment, her flowing purple robe billowing around her ankles as she moved. Barefoot and nimble, she still had her beauty queen’s graceful, gliding gait, even at sixty-four years old.
Excuse me. Thirty-nine. For a second there I forgot what year it was that she’d stopped aging.
“I made collard greens, shrimp and grits, and Cajun benedict,” she called over her shoulder. “And I’ve got okra gumbo and my famous jambalaya simmerin’ on the stove for later.”
That would’ve been a lot of food for a single woman living alone, but my mother had a steady stream of callers throughout the day, from brunch straight through to cocktail hour and beyond. There was nothing she enjoyed more than visiting. Or “holding court,” as I liked to call it.
And speaking of callers . . .
“Good morning, Colonel!” I called down the hall toward my mother’s closed bedroom door.
There was a pause, and then a muffled reply. “Mornin’, sugar!”
There was only one reason my mother’s bedroom door was closed in the morning, and the Colonel was it. Trying not to picture what might go on behind that door, I smiled.
“Leave him be, Bianca,” said my mother from the kitchen. “C’mon now, I’m making you up a plate.”
I strolled into the kitchen, dropped my knapsack on the floor next to the square wood table where I ate every meal as a child, and sat down, watching my mother put together a plate of food for me: a scoop from one pot, a ladle from another. She was more at home in front of a stove than anywhere else in the world.
I asked, “Another sleepover? Is this getting serious with you two?”
My mother looked over her shoulder and smiled. Her eyes danced with mischief. “No man could ever compete with your father, chère, God bless his soul, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop them from trying.” She fanned herself. “And my word, the Colonel is certainly trying.”
“Ugh. It’s depressing that you get more action than I do. I can already feel the emotional scars forming.”
“Please, child, you’re not that fragile. And how many times do I have to tell you to get back out there? Don’t let that fool boy put a hex on your love life. He isn’t worth it!”
The “fool boy” in question was my ex, Trace. I’d been head over heels for him, sure we’d get married, until I discovered his definition of monogamy meant he’d only cheat on me with one girl at a time. I’d been happily single for almost two years now, much to Mama’s dismay. As an only child, I was her sole hope for the grandbabies she so desperately wanted.
Avoiding that minefield, I quickly steered the conversation into safer, and more important, waters. “So what did Doc Halloran say?”
Mama turned back to the stove. There was a brief, almost-unnoticeable pause before she answered. “Just what I told you he’d say, baby. I’m right as rain.”
I frowned. “But you’ve had that cough for months now, Mama.”
Smiling brightly, she turned around again and faced me. I was struck by how beautiful she still was, her face unlined in the bright morning light spilling through the kitchen windows. I got my complexion from her—“toasted chestnuts” my milk-pale father called it—and hoped I’d age as well as she was.