Remy Broussard’s Christmas
By Kittie Howard
Cover Design by Rachel Morgan
Copyright © 2012 Kittie Howard
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, please visit
www.kittiehoward.blogspot.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments or events is entirely coincidental.
Kindle ebook ISBN: 978-0-578-09623-0
I dedicate Remy’s story to Dick, my husband of many years, for his unwavering support along the twists and turns on life’s bayou road, and to those who know that the joy of squishing one’s toes in freshly turned soil trumps much.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: Rain
CHAPTER TWO: Christmas Tree
CHAPTER THREE: Cookies
CHAPTER FOUR: Gift
CHAPTER FIVE: Secret
CHAPTER SIX: Winds
CHAPTER SEVEN: Christmas Lights
AUTHOR’S NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CHAPTER ONE
Rain
The third-grader’s doe-like eyes fluttered shut. Black eyelashes drooped against a sallow complexion. “I hurt,” the sharecropper’s son moaned. Remy rubbed his right thigh, a stick of bone in a man’s trousers rolled at the ankles. “I hate Leonard. I hate it when he kicks me,” he said into one hand and wiped perspiration from his brow with the other. “And I’m hungry.” Raindrops dancing on the schoolhouse’s tin roof muffled the confession. Remy’s eyes blinked open and lingered on the Christmas tree at the front of the classroom. His face filled with wonderment.
Remy sat on the third row and in the fifth desk from the blackboard in the South Louisiana classroom. “Don’t growl,” he said, hugging his stomach, then leaning back. As if weary from life’s marathon, a sigh escaped his heart-shaped lips. The sliver of a child turned around. He stared at Leonard.
The fireplug of a kid sat in the seventh desk at the end of the first row, near the last of three windows facing a pasture dotted with pecan trees. A beefy face consumed Leonard’s features: hazel eyes, thin lips, and high cheekbones. A pale scalp glistened beneath a fresh crew cut, a popular style among those who could afford a barber in 1952.
“Thank God,” Remy said. “Leonard’s busy with the multiplication worksheets.” He propped his elbows on the worksheets on his desk and bowed his head. “Please, God, make the rain fall harder so Leonard won’t hear my stomach growl. I don’t want to sound poor. If Leonard knows I’m hungry, the bully will pinch me.” The prayer floated like a string of white clouds in the unheated, combined third- and fourth-grade classroom.
“Stop staring at me, stupid, or I’ll smash your head in,” Leonard hissed in Remy’s ear. “I’m waiting for you, you slimy coward. My fists will beat you into a pile of dog food,” he threatened, yanking Remy’s hair and spitting on the worksheets before slipping away.
Remy bit his lip. “Please, God, I can’t take anymore.” He reached into his jacket’s pocket, removed a square of calico feed sack, and blotted the spittle. “Yuck,” he said, holding the handkerchief at the edge. As he stood, a drop of blood fell onto the desk. “Not again,” he said, licking the bottom lip. He limped to the trashcan at the end of the side blackboard, near the door to the classroom, and dropped the handkerchief. “I can’t tell mama I lost another handkerchief,” he said and returned to his desk. With a low, primeval moan, he curled into a ball and covered his head with his arms.
“Leonard, do you need help?” Mrs. Guidry called, closing the door to the bookroom behind her. The door stood near the right corner at the front of the room and anchored the side blackboard. “Leonard, did you hear me?” When Leonard didn’t respond, she crossed to the opposite side of the room, to her desk, near the first window and the Christmas tree.
The matronly teacher had arched eyebrows above brown eyes in a round face time had graced. She wore a long-sleeved green blouse, dark-brown skirt, and sensible brown shoes. A brown cardigan draped across firm shoulders. “Leonard, I thought I saw you near Remy’s desk when I walked in and out of the bookroom,” she said, squaring hands on sturdy hips. “Were you near Remy’s desk?” At the question, curious students turned in Leonard’s direction.
Bobby Lee, who sat in front of Remy, half-shielded his mouth and angled his head into the aisle. “Did you see Leonard near Remy’s desk?” he asked.
“No,” Maurice said, hunching forward. He sat to Remy’s right, where the fourth grade began. “I was busy with the division problems. What’s going on?”
Bobby Lee scrunched his freckled nose. “I don’t know,” he said, brushing a shock of chestnut hair out of his eyes. “As big as Leonard is, he moves like a cat. Maybe he snuck up on Remy.”
“I think he did,” the athletic-looking fourth-grader said. “Remy’s curled in his chair, what he does when Leonard scares him.” Maurice’s chocolate-brown eyes appraised the aisles. “The empty desks behind Remy and in the second row would’ve been an open field for Leonard. If the twins had come to school, the boys would know what happened.”
“I heard the school bus driver tell the teacher Mike and Ike went to New Orleans this morning with their parents for the Christmas holidays. Mr. Langlois said their grandma got sick.”
Maurice made the Catholic sign of the cross. “I’ll pray she gets better.” His eyes returned to the empty desks. “I don’t understand why Mrs. Guidry moved students near Remy.”
“And left us here.”
“Shhh!” Maurice cautioned. “The teacher is walking down Leonard’s aisle.”
“Leonard, did you talk to Remy?”
“No, ma’am. I never left my desk.”
“When was the last time you talked to Remy?”
“I don’t know. Not for a long time.”
“When?”
“I don’t remember,” Leonard replied, rolling his shoulders. He ignored the murmur of disbelief rising in the classroom.
The teacher’s intelligent eyes narrowed. She pointed to the portrait-like image of George Washington above the blackboard at the front of the room. America’s first president watched students with stern eyes and compressed lips. “The truth earns respect,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. I know. George Washington admitted he chopped down a cherry tree. But,” he continued, smirking at his teacher, “I didn’t chop down a cherry tree.”
She raised a hand to quiet gasps and hisses. “Remember instructions not to visit classmates or talk until 10:00.” She checked her wristwatch. “The time is 9:40. The Christmas party starts at 11:00. Follow instructions, Leonard.”
“Yes, ma’am.” A smile curled on his lips.
As Mrs. Guidry crossed to the fourth grade, Remy uncurled and sat up. His eyes traveled to the six-foot Christmas tree. A tear rolled down his cheek and splashed onto his jacket. “Don’t cry,” he said, shaking his head free of the holiday lights. Blank eyes stared past the vacant desk to his left, over the heads of students near the middle window, and into the flat horizon. The morning train to Memphis shrieked through a stubborn rain in the heart of Cajun Louisiana and roared alongside the three-room schoolhouse with two grades in each room.
“Memphis,” Remy breathed, as the train’s whistle floated, long and empty in the dreary morning. Henri, his father’s first cousin, had bolted Mr. Landry’s farm for the big city the year before, in 1951. Along with a sheriff’s deputy, Mr. Landry had pounded on the door to Remy’s shar
ecropper shack, demanding information from David and Arlette Broussard about Henri, even though Henri had left the month’s rent in an envelope on a stool opposite the wood-burning stove.
David and Arlette Broussard’s refusal to cooperate had generated threats of reprisal, but the couple had remained silent. A month later, a one-page letter from Henri, with no return address, promised money from his first paycheck, an unexplained job on Beale Street.
The money, or another letter, never arrived. David and Arlette Broussard returned to the reality of a sharecropper’s life: ramshackle housing without electricity or plumbing; dawn-to-dusk work in the fields for little money; exorbitant prices and usurious interest for subsistence goods in the landowner’s store; and the toll of hunger, disease, and memories of dead babies.
Remy pulled his denim jacket tighter. The oversized jacket, a birthday gift from Father Lorio, the Catholic priest new to the bayou-laced community, swallowed black hair at the nape and bunched upward, around hollow cheeks in a thin face. As the train’s whistle faded into the drum of rain on the roof, Remy stole a peek at Leonard. The rich farmer’s son hunched over worksheets, a slab of granite in a leather jacket. When Remy faced forward, fear radiated from his eyes, as if the devil stalked his soul.
Remy exhaled. The breath’s white cloud drifted into nothingness. “I wish Leonard would disappear,” he said, closing his eyes and gripping the desk’s edge. “I don’t understand why Leonard hates me.” His fingers reached for his left wrist, inched the jacket’s sleeve upward, and massaged a bruise.
“Remy, are you all right?” Mrs. Guidry asked. She stood in the left aisle. Concern filled her plump face.
“Y—Yes, ma’am,” he stammered, wrapping his hand around the bruise.
“Your face is pale.”
“I’m fine,” he said. Without averting his eyes from Mrs. Guidry’s face, his fingers worked to pull the jacket’s sleeve into place.
“What happened? Your bottom lip is cut.”
Panic raced across his eyes. “I—I thought too hard and bit my lip.” He dropped his gaze and froze. A frayed cuff covered his hand. He gave Mrs. Guidry a plaintive look. “I borrowed daddy’s shirt. The red and green colors look like Christmas. Christmas is the prettiest time of the year.”
Mrs. Guidry pulled a folded white handkerchief from her skirt’s divided right pocket. “Did you eat breakfast?” she asked, wiping perspiration from his brow.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What did you eat for breakfast?”
“Grits and eggs and toast.”
“How many eggs?”
“Two. Mama always fries two eggs for me.”
“Was butter on the toast?”
“Yes, ma’am. Lots of butter, with strawberry jam on top.”
“I see,” Mrs. Guidry said, wiping the drop of blood. After she slipped the handkerchief into the pocket’s compartment for soiled linen, she removed a cookie wrapped in waxed paper from the skirt’s left pocket. “Even if you enjoyed a big breakfast, you should eat a cookie before the Christmas party begins.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Guidry, but I’m not hungry.”
“Please, Remy. Don’t be stubborn.”
“I’m not hungry. I’m all right.”
“Water? Pitchers of water are in the bookroom.”
“No, thank you.”
“A glass of milk? Pitchers of milk are in the bookroom. You don’t have to wait until the party. You can drink a glass of milk now. You’d feel better.”
He glanced at the clock above the blackboard. “Mrs. Guidry, I—I want to finish the multiplication problems.” He reached for the No. 2 yellow pencil in the desk’s well.
“Remy?”
His eyes raced between his teacher’s face and the worksheets on his desk, then to Maurice and Bobby Lee. Neither paid attention to him. “I’m fine,” he said, bending over the worksheets.
“All right. I can’t make you do what you don’t want to do,” she said and returned to her desk, angled left to accommodate the Christmas tree. Before sitting down, she adjusted a string of holiday lights. A branch laden with ornaments students had made brushed the window. Her head followed the sound. Holiday lights shimmered on the windowpanes.
“Christmas,” Mrs. Guidry said, as she eased her chair into a desk stacked high with books. She opened the roll book to the seating chart for the combined classes. Forty-two students filled six rows, with seven students to a row. Workstations, from which two chairs had been removed, spread across the back of the classroom. A basket centered the left workstation, with tablets on the other.
Two doors stood to the left of the first workstation: The first opened into a narrow hall with doors to two bathrooms and a door at the end of the hall; the second led outside, to an earthen walkway flanked by two classrooms: first- and second-grades on the left; fifth- and sixth grades on the right.
After checking the block for Luke’s desk behind Remy, Mrs. Guidry drew an arrow to where she’d moved the third-grader the previous week, to the second desk in front of Leonard. She then checked Joey’s block, to Remy’s left, and drew an arrow to the end of the second row, where she’d moved him three days earlier. She circled Leonard’s block at the end of the first row and tapped blocks for Mike and Ike on the second and third rows. “If only the twins hadn’t gone to New Orleans; if only Joey hadn’t gotten sick. Still,” she said, leaning forward, “the plan could work.”
Through an opening between stacks of books, Mrs. Guidry scanned the classroom. “Good. Everyone’s busy,” she said, and then grimaced, as thunder rumbled and rain slanted against windows. “I hope the weather doesn’t destroy his chance.” She smiled at Remy through the opening. Warmth filled life’s lines at the corners of her eyes. “He’s a math genius,” she said, brushing back grey-streaked brown curls, “but the child is in trouble.” Her expression tightened.
CHAPTER TWO
Christmas Tree
Remy brushed flecks of eraser off of the worksheets. “What a dumb mistake!” he said, slipping into Cajun French, the language he spoke at home and on the playground. “If Leonard knew, he’d pull my ear.”
After a checkmark near the last problem, he penciled the hour, 10:00, near the starting time. “Yay! I beat yesterday’s record by two seconds.” He squeezed his eyes shut and punched the air. His tousled head bobbed with each hook and jab.
A petite girl with eyes black as night tapped his desk. “Remy, you look silly, jumping like a frog. What’s wrong with you?”
At the question, his eyes flew open. His jaw dropped. Madeleine, who sat at the front of his row, stood in the right aisle. The doll-like student had dimpled cheeks, pouty lips, and a porcelain complexion. A pink bow crowned cascading curls.
She tilted her head and said, “Stop staring at me like a puppy dog.”
His hand flew to his mouth. “Why are you standing in this aisle?” he mumbled.
“What difference does it make which aisle I stand in?” she countered and peered closer. “Did I see blood on your bottom lip, like you had a few weeks ago? What happened?”
Remy dropped his hand. “Nothing happened, Miss Nosey. Sometimes I bite my lip when I think.”
“Ick! Blood makes my tummy wiggle. Lick your lip,” she said, stooping down. Her strawberry-pink party dress fluffed into the aisle. White netting peeked below the hem. “Don’t talk in Cajun French,” she whispered. “Mrs. Guidry wants English in the classroom. Besides, the teacher’s a Cajun, like us, and understands every word.” With a warning look, Madeleine stood and re-tied the pink bow at her neck. “You don’t have to get mad. I only wanted to know what was wrong.”
He threw his head back and arms up. “Nothing’s wrong. Don’t look for trouble.”
“Normal people don’t jump like a frog in the bayou,” she said, ignoring the rebuke. As she inched closer, along the desk’s edge, Remy’s eyes darted to the naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. “Why do your eyes run away from me?” she asked. “Look at me, Rem
y!” When he stared at the wood-plank floor instead, she shook a pointed finger and said, “Today’s the Friday before the Christmas holidays. The classes can’t wait to eat cookies and cake at the Christmas party. But you’re either jumping like a frog or staring like a tadpole dreaming about being a frog. Christmas comes next week. If you don’t start acting happy about Jesus’ birthday, I’m going to tell your mama.”
Madeleine’s family lived in the middle of three sharecropper shacks on a cotton farm owned by Bertrand Laurent, Maurice’s father. Remy and Bobby Lee lived on either side. A sloping porch fronted two-room shacks with a galley kitchen and lined behind a thicket of pine trees, half a mile from Maurice’s plantation house with a wrap-around verandah.
“Remy! Stop daydreaming! Did you hear what I said about telling your mama?”
“You’re talking foolishness, Madeleine. Don’t pester mama with stupid stuff in your head.” He pointed to the bathroom pass she held. “You never go to the bathroom until recess. Why are you going now? You want to gossip with Antoinette at the back of the room, that’s why. You talk too much!”
“What is wrong with you, Remy Emile Broussard? Didn’t you hear Mrs. Guidry during first period? She cancelled recess because the Christmas party starts at 11:00.” Madeleine tossed her black curls. The bow wobbled. “And Mrs. Guidry said we can talk and visit friends after 10:00. So, there!”
Remy stuck out his chin and stretched his neck. “You’re like a gnat that won’t stop buzzing. Go away, Madeleine! Stop pestering me! Go to the bathroom before Mrs. Guidry fusses at you for hogging the pass.”
“Well! I’ll be!” Madeleine protested, storming off. The taffeta dress rustled down the aisle.
Maurice rolled his eyes. Dressed in crisp slacks, a white shirt, and crested blazer, the fourth-grader sat tall in the desk next to Remy. “Madeleine’s sweet on you and was being nice. What’s with the lousy attitude?” By way of reply, Remy thumbed the worksheets.
“Hey! Don’t pretend you can’t hear, like you do when classmates say ‘Merry Christmas,’ and your eyes get as empty as two kicked buckets. You should be happy about Jesus’ birthday.” Remy shrugged his right shoulder. “Come on! It’s me, Maurice, your friend. I’m worried about how you’ve changed because I care.” Unlike most rich kids who role-modeled after parents and avoided sharecroppers, Maurice, Bobby Lee, Madeleine, and Remy played together at school and were inseparable on weekends.