Little Shep let me tickle his back the third day he was home. And I sang, “You Are My Sunshine,” which Jimmie Davis, a governor of our state, made famous. But I sang it with different words. Words to make him laugh and let him know I loved him. I am the oldest daughter. It is my job to take care of the little ones. I poured all my heart into that song, and when my brother started to giggle, it was the most beautiful sound in the world.
Little Shep and me and my family, we are warm-weather folks. We don’t take well to the cold. We like it when we’re warm, when it’s summer and we dive into warm water. We like it when we’re all okay. We don’t like to think about dying. We know it’s there, but so are hurricanes. Daddy says, “You can’t let fear of hurricanes stop you from putting seeds in the ground, even if they’re going to grow tall only to be destroyed.”
Little Shep just knocked himself out over frozen water, really. I know about water’s cycle from science class. Water that melts into the earth. Then all that humidity goes back into the sky, where it turns into clouds. When the clouds become too heavy, they fall back down again as rain. And they do it all over again, and again. No matter what happens to us, water will go on cycling like that.
My family is a family of farmers, and my little brother is the one who will go forward after Daddy is old. If we are lucky and God is good to us, Little Shep and me will grow old together. We’ll sit out on the porch and tell stories about how when we were children, about how he was the kind of little boy who’d knock himself out cold for something as beautiful and rare as snow.
SHOW AND TELL
November 1962
THORNTON DAILY MONITOR, NOVEMBER 19, 1962
Our Lady of Divine Compassion Church, at the corner of Oak and 21st streets, suffered a loss of one of its most treasured statues today. The Infant Jesus of Prague statue, donated to the church by Charles Messenger Chauvin, II, in 1928, was evidently hit by a car, causing the glass-framed wooden structure which held it to collapse. It appears that it was a random act of vandalism. Police are asking any potential witnesses to come forth. Monsignor Bergeron, of Our Lady of Divine Compassion, was quoted as saying, “Sad as this is, sacrilegious as this is, we must remember that this is a statue. This is not our God Himself. We must not confuse statues with God the Father or God the Son. We pray for the person or persons who did this.” Sister Howard Regina, a first-grade teacher at Divine Compassion Parochial School, was quoted as saying, “Whoever did this will be punished far worse by God than by man.” Charles Messenger Chauvin, III, son of Charles Messenger Chauvin, II, has offered a $400 award for anyone who can locate the vandal.
It was one of those damp, rainy, bone-chilling cold November afternoons that sometimes hit in the state of Louisiana and throw everyone’s bodies into a tizzy because we are semitropical people. We’re not used to the cold and never will be. So when it gets down into the low thirties, that is arctic to the people of Garnet Parish. Arctic. It was one of those days when the best thing in the world to do is to fix a nice hot drink of something soothing and lie in front of the fire, reading mysteries. The kind where the killer is caught and punished, where crimes get solved, where wrongs are made right, and you just feel like there is justice in the world even though the weather is crappy.
Vivi asked Caro if her children could play over at Caro’s house while she went to Divine Compassion Parochial School for a parent-teacher meeting.
“It’s nothing, Caro. Just one of the kids acting up in class, a tiny thing. But you know, one must be the good Catholic parent.”
“Hmm,” Caro took a long drag off her cigarette. “I’ve never had one of those meetings. They’ve pretty much left me and my boys alone.”
“Maybe because you have refused to call nuns ‘Sister’ since you were twelve years old. You just call them ‘Howard Regina’ or ‘Mary George’ like they’re regular people.”
“Well, they most definitely are not regular people.” Caro laughed.
“God knows they tried to correct you,” Vivi said.
“It’s because I say their names with such complete authority that they turn the other ear. Besides, they probably smell that if I were not so flat-out lazy, I would be Anglican. High Anglican. Much better choirs, much better music. Higher aesthetics all around.”
“Caro, you kill me.”
“I’m a real Phyllis Diller.”
“No, Dahlin, you’re a real Caro Brewer Bennett.”
It took Vivi quite a while to schedule the meeting after she received the note from Sister Howard Regina. Baylor had handed her the note back in mid-September demanding that Vivi visit her immediately about a matter of utmost importance regarding her youngest child, Baylor Walker. The kids had walked home from the bus stop at the end of Pecan Grove Lane and up to the backyard, where Vivi was stretched out on the old pink-checked bedspread with an array of peanut butter sandwiches, raisins, and lemonade. The September light, still warm, but comfortable, shone on Vivi and her brood as well as the 700 acres of cotton that all but surrounded the house. Cotton that was ripe to be picked any day now.
Soon after receiving the note, Vivi quit answering the phone herself. Every time Sister Howard Regina called, Vivi made Sidda take the call and say, “My mother said to tell you she is busy. She is just swamped.”
However, Lulu had picked up the phone two days before and handed it to Vivi because she didn’t know any better. It was Sister Howard Regina on the phone. At the sound of her voice, Vivi began to feel slightly queasy, like a ten-year-old who has just done something wrong and knows she is going to get it.
On this cold evening in November, it is almost dark in the small town of Thornton, Louisiana. Rain is turning to slush, and memories of summer are dim. Vivi Abbott Walker sits in her 1962 Thunderbird in the back parking lot of Pizzo’s Market. The turquoise blue two-door T-Bird, with its sleek design, its perfectly round taillights echoing the age of rocket design, the long sleek-lined side panels coming to a point at the front, and the chrome bumper coming up from underneath to meet and reinforce the point, is distinctive and modern. Now it is almost hidden by a large green Dumpster and some bushes behind the grocery.
Caro pulls up next to the T-Bird and blows the horn—shave-and-a-haircut! Two bits! Vivi startles so severely that she feels as though she has been electrocuted. Siddalee, Little Shep, Lulu, and Baylor, along with Caro’s boys, Turner and the twins Gavin and Bernard, are riding with Caro in her Renault station wagon, the only one like it in Thornton. Vivi puts her head in her hands and presses her thumbs against her temples.
There is a big dent in the back of the Thunderbird on the passenger side, interrupting its long, low modern lines. The T-Bird has a tight, low-sitting back seat with a hump in the middle that one of the kids always had to deal with. The two-door hardtop featured bucket seats in the front—a car definitely comfortable for the two front-seat passengers only. This is most definitely not a Catholic mom’s car.
But now Vivi’s little modern roadster is just a mess. It looks like someone took a big concrete bat and bashed it in, then dragged a pipe along the side of it. Caro fears that Vivi has been hurt. Clearly she has been in an accident. “Every one of yall stay in the car,” Caro whispers to the seven kids. “I’ll go see what’s up.”
While the children wait, they turn on the colored radio station and listen to Little Stevie Wonder. Every single one of them drums along with “Fingertips, Part 1.” They love Little Stevie Wonder. They want to meet him. Vivi’s kids try to think about Little Stevie, not about their mother. The world always looks better if you think about Little Stevie Wonder.
A moment later, Caro brings Vivi, shaking and freezing cold, to the station wagon and helps her into the passenger seat. “Vivi, what in the world is going on? Have you been in an accident?”
“Hit and run!” says Little Shep, excited.
Vivi holds a Jax beer can, and the rest of the six-pack is in her other hand. She automatically hands Caro a can of beer. She is all shook up. You can tell by the qu
iver of her hand and her tight lips and eyes.
“It’s too damn cold to be drinking beer,” Caro says.
“I can’t believe I did it,” Vivi says. “I just cannot believe it. It’s all her fault.”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“I sideswiped the Infant Jesus,” Vivi whispers loudly, terrified.
“Vivi, what in the hell are you talking about? Try and make some sense, please.”
The Petites Ya-Yas don’t know if Vivi is going off her rocker or if she’s trying to tell Caro something in Ya-Ya code, something they do when they don’t want the children to know what they are saying. The boys are all stirred up in the back seat and way-back of the wagon. They make donkey sounds, like they just discovered how to bray.
“Can it, spooks!” Caro says, “before I knock yall into yesterday.”
The boys quiet down a little.
Vivi leans over and whispers into Caro’s ear. “We have to leave the Thunderbird parked here. I can’t be seen in it anywhere near Divine Compassion.”
“Oh, all right. Your car doesn’t have enough room to fit two midgets, anyway.” Caro has long legs, and she always hits her head when she folds her long body into Vivi’s T-Bird. Caro backs the Renault out of the parking lot and heads down Alma Street, with Vivi giving directions.
“Drive around to the side of the church where the parking lot is,” Vivi directs Caro. “Go up Twenty-first. Whatever you do, do not drive by the convent, for God’s sake.”
Vivi turns to the kids. “Listen to me, Sidda-Shep-Lulu-Baylor. And Turner, and twins,” she says. “When we get in the block before the church, every one of yall duck! I do not want yall to peek, I don’t want your little heads visible at all. Do you hear me? This is serious. We could get in big trouble.”
Then Vivi slinks way down in the seat so nobody can see her. “The nerve! The sheer unadulterated nerve! I don’t care if she is a nun. I don’t care if she has taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. I don’t care if she has vowed to never have another bowel movement. She does not have the right to talk to me like that!”
They round the corner of Twenty-first and Olive, the block that leads to Divine Compassion. Vivi crouches down on the floorboard of the front seat. “Everybody get down!” she whispers loudly to the kids.
Caro pulls into the church parking lot. As Caro puts the car in park, Vivi, shaking, crawls onto the seat so that her eyes barely reach the passenger seat’s window level. This is signal enough for every single child to poke their heads up in unison. At the edge of the parking lot, near the side door of Divine Compassion Church, something isn’t quite right. Something looks out of place. It takes them a moment to realize just what. And then they spot it: the Infant Jesus of Prague statue that stood in that same spot for umpteen years suspended in a glass-enclosed altar framed by a wooden structure. The statue is no longer standing. The glass is shattered, and the Infant Jesus of Prague is lying there on the sidewalk! The Infant lies there like, like, well, like someone has backed into it with a Thunderbird and driven off. The statue’s hand is broken off, its head is cracked, and its tiara is shattered. The beautiful expensive robes and cloaks are soaked in rain and stained with mud. The only thing left unharmed is the globe that the Infant stands on. It is still intact.
Vivi was involved in a hit-and-run with the Savior of the World! They always knew she didn’t drive so good in reverse. But they never thought it would come to this.
Sidda gasps out loud. Little Shep, Turner, Gavin, and Bernard start yelling and shouting. “Wow! Look at that!” Little Shep says over and over. “Way to go, Mama, way to go!” Everyone but Baylor and Lulu jump around in the station wagon in excitement. Lulu chews on the ends of her blond hair. Baylor remains silent.
Vivi crawls back down on the floorboard. “Hit the gas, Caro! Get us the hell outta here!”
And so the two mothers and seven kids slink down the street in the Renault away from Divine Compassion. Caro heads in the direction of Lafayette Street. Vivi doesn’t sit back up until they’re three blocks away from the scene of the crime. When she finally gets back up, she keeps glancing out all the car windows and turning to look behind them to see if anyone is following. Someone could be tailing them. Some kind of Vatican FBI. Like Big Shep the pagan says: You can never tell about those Catholics.
“Well, where to, Viv-o?” Caro asks. “Should we drive you over to the police station and hand you over to the Gestapo?”
When Caro looks at Vivi, she realizes that she shouldn’t have said this. Vivi has temporarily lost her sense of humor. She looks more like she has been in a fatal car accident in which human life was lost. When you bump the Prince of Heaven off his stand, it can shake you up.
Caro tries again. “Want to go pick up the T-Bird?”
“No!” Vivi replies. “I don’t want to drive. Take me to your house. Please.”
Caro lights a fire in the fireplace. Almost everything in Caro and Blaine’s living room is white, black, or gray. The floors are all white terrazzo, covered partly by a large zebra-striped rug. The furniture is mostly black leather and chrome, and every piece of furniture is referred to by an architect’s name. Caro might say, “Just scooch the Eames over here and have a seat. But don’t break it, or my husband will have to sell his office.”
When Blaine the architect is home, the boys’ toys are never left in the main part of the house. If you didn’t know better, you would think they were a childless couple. When Blaine is away, of course, toys are everywhere, and the lives of three young boys compete with an architect’s idea of the perfect 1962 living room. One entire wall of the living room consists of windows that go from floor to ceiling. A big black primitive vase and a black African goddess sculpture stand on a pedestal. (The Petites all love the statue because of its bare pointy breasts. Like having a National Geographic native right in your own house. When Vivi isn’t looking, Little Shep loves to touch the teats on the statue, impure little imp that he is.) And then there is the massive black candle on the large kidney-shaped coffee table in front of the sofa. You can’t believe that you are still in Thornton when you are in this room. It always feels cool, and everyone is asked to leave their shoes at the door like they are in China or something.
Caro lights the black candle and hands Vivi a drink. “Drink. Just drink it down.”
Vivi takes a big gulp. This is one of Caro’s special drinks, with the rum that she discovered when she and Blaine went to that island in the Caribbean. This is all Caro drinks these days. She has Roger at the Abracadabra Liquor Store order the rum special for her. She drinks the dark thick rum with milk, rum on the rocks, rum with Community Coffee Dark Roast. But Vivi isn’t calmed down at all. Even though she has finished off her first “Caro,” which is what everyone now calls any rum drink that Caro makes with her Puerto Rico rum.
Caro lights two cigarettes and hands one to Vivi. They sit on the black sofa. The couch frame is a chrome grid with a gentle curve and boxy leather cushions. People are always shocked that it is actually so comfortable.
“Tell me about it, Vivi. Just start at the beginning.”
“All right,” Vivi says, and takes a drag off her cigarette. “That woman—I’m sorry, strike me dead if you want, but I am not going to call her a nun. She is just a mean-ass old hairy mole-faced woman. A while back, that woman sent home a note with Baylor. ‘Come in and talk to me,’ the note said. It was about the Show and Tell shit, you know.”
Caro nods. All the Ya-Yas know about the garter belt. They thought it was hilarious. Well, Necie called it a “tad risqué.”
Caro listens as Vivi sinks into the sofa and speaks without stopping.
“Okay, so I made a goddamn appointment. Granted, it took me a little while to get around to it, but I live a busy life. But I put on a skirt and hose and went to Divine Compassion for the face-to-face, okay? Well, I walked into that first-grade classroom, and the woman was sitting at her desk. Did not even stand up to say ‘Good afterno
on, kiss my ass.’ Nothing.
“‘Good afternoon, Sister,’ I said. ‘How are you this afternoon?’
“She did not even look up at me, Caro. Just kept on grading papers. I didn’t know whether I should stand up, sit down, genuflect, stick my butt in her face, or what. I mean, there were only these tee-ninecy little desks to sit on.
“She finally gestured for me to sit, with a little wave of her hand like she was the Pope or something. I stared at those baby desks and thought, Oh, what the hell. ‘A good thing I watch my weight,’ I joked, thinking I might as well try. Well, the bitch just frowned.
“‘Mrs. Walker—,’ the woman started.
“‘Please—just call me Vivi.’
“‘Mrs. Walker. Mrs. Walker, how recently have you received the Sacrament of Confession?’
“I think for a minute. ‘Well, Sister, probably a month ago,’ I said. ‘I’ll probably go again this Friday. I don’t go every week. I mean, with four little kids, I don’t have much time left over for sinning.’ I was still trying to get her to crack a smile.
“‘So,’ the old bat said, ‘have you confessed the sin of sending your six-year-old boy to school with an item of your intimate apparel to display to other innocents in a classroom of God?’
“‘Sister, are we talking about my garter belt here?’
“‘You know precisely what we are talking about here, Mrs. Walker,’ she said to me. Like I am one of her first-graders.
“I wanted to scream, I am a thirty-five-year-old woman! Don’t talk to me in that tone of voice. But I didn’t.
“Anyway, the penguin continued: ‘You have gone over a month with that sin on your soul, and still you have not sought the Sacrament of Penance?’