Marie lifted her foot and stomped on the handle of the frying pan that had been lying facedown on the floor since falling from the ceiling. In one motion too quick for the eye, the skillet flipped over, and inside dozens of spiced crayfish sizzled and popped.
“Crawdaddies!” Jane exclaimed. “I’m starving.” She reached into the pan and pulled out a crayfish, twisted and peeled back the shell with the nail of her thumb, and gobbled it down to the tail in two bites. “Oh, she is a good cook. Help yourself, girls.”
Dolly dug in, and soon the two of them were hooting with joy over the delicious explosions in their mouths. Off to the side, Alice demurred. “I’m nursing, and I wouldn’t want to give the little boy a tummyache.” Her friends continued eating without care. “Oh, what the hell,” Alice said. “Maybe just one.” Taking two bright red crayfish, she gave one to me, and it tasted of sweetness and fire.
Still on his knees, the old man ignored our gluttony. He read on.
? ? ?
“Every other day, I would cook for him and thus became so skilled that no one could tell the difference between my pot and Hachard’s. Just as well, for in seven years—about the time of the Americans’ revolt against the English king—Hachard had earned enough to execute her contract. Of course, I had known for a long time that her savings had grown, but the day came when she showed me the money, the last piastres earned for a midsummer banquet, and the finality seemed sudden. Tomorrow, she said, I will go to the Master. Listen to me, tomorrow he will no longer be Master, just M. Foiegras. We laughed a little, but the melancholy swept over me like a late summer storm. Hachard had been a mother to me ever since my own mother and sisters were so violently taken away, and my emotions mixed the two events till I was fourteen again and alone on the docks of Saint-Domingue. Yet I was happy for her as well, for she had endured a long servitude and could now rest her bones and find some ease from care. With her thumb, she wiped the tears from my face. Ma chérie, she said, do not cry. We shall always be friends, and I will visit as long as the Goose and his wife allow. We will not be far. The Big Fella has a place near Pointe Coupée, and you will go now to the dances in the square on Sundays and meet us there. Look at you, all grown into a woman. Time for a little love, shake your tail feathers, and let the good times roll. And you will have your freedom yet. Who knows, maybe the Big Fella and I will get rich, and then we can buy you from the old Goose.
“Promises made in passion are the most difficult to keep. After she left, Hachard became a stranger, though I missed her as much as my own mother. We met maybe five times that first year, four the second, two the third, and then not at all. A bend in the river separated us but it may as well have been an ocean. We did not see each other for years. A few months after the Good Friday fire in ’88, when it seemed like all of New Orleans burned, I brought little Clothide with me to the Perseverance Benevolent and Mutual Aid Society, for all of my money had gone up in flames, and there was Hachard, old and gray and sunken into herself. Like a dying tree, but a few lonesome leaves. She wept when I kissed her.
“Maman Hachard, I asked, what has happened to you? The spark had left her eyes. Even the child in my arms failed to interest her. I have nothing, she croaked, not a tooth in her mouth. Not one peso. All gone. Nothing to be done. Setting the baby on the bench next to her, I fetched a scupper of water. Drink, maman, your lips are cracked from thirst and it is hot enough to fry the Devil.”