Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2009 - (Page 68) both go to hell or Sunset for all I care.” T-Red looked at Black condescendingly through the screen door. “That ho’ done broke hell loose against this family. She lie, she steal, she mess with them women in town mens. She put Maymay in Pineville, and almost gave her a stroke. Maymay be always having to run after them no good children of hine. The women in Belle Place would be happy to get rid of that freak.” As T-Red described Tut, he turned his head left, rolled his eyes, and sucked his teeth at her. He then commenced to staring at her with a mean, cold look of disgust. “Look at ma back teef,” T-Red said as he pushed the screen door towards Black to get his attention and smiled a huge exaggerated smile, “They all been knocked out fighting behind Tut and all of her mess.” T-Red now stared at Black again without saying anything. He her nerves.” The rocking chair reverberated in a slow melodious ticking as if it were a clock. Never would she let Black, a field hand whom Tut had never formally introduced to her, enter her peaceful home, peaceful because she didn’t let nobody bring mess in her house. “No, no matter what they say in the streets, this is ma house; and dat’s why me et T-man had a good life in our nice peaceful place back ya. I don’t let no petains or field hands in my house,” Maymay would often tell her children as she rocked back and forth in her chair.. She just stared long and hard through the busted screen door. Failing to acknowledge Black by looking at him, she just rocked, looked at the floor, and listened. Formality was not important at this point. Tut had four children whose fathers remained anonymous. Four different men! She had continued to smile the huge Sambo-like smile. Five feet from the living room porch, Maymay sat in a black-leather rocking chair. Rocking back and forth and admiring her unlit pipe in her long wiry fingers. She refused to acknowledge Black with the faintest glance in his direction; she continued to rock in her chair which had worn holes in the white linoleum with green diamond designs. Everyone knew that that was Maymay’s chair, and the only people who sat in it were her and fussy babies with colic. She must have rocked in that chair a million and one times talking to herself, praying the rosary, and “calming 68 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Spring 2009 a reputation of sleeping with married men, exchanging merchandise for “tiddy taps” at the local corner store, and many other infamous atrocities for a young 28-year-old woman living in the small town of Belle Place, Louisiana. T-Red held the door shut by holding it through one of the holes in the screen. Wearing a wife-beater and his navy blue work uniform pants from the mill, his curly locks of hair were wet with sweat from working outside slopping the hogs. The living room smelled like slop mud and the 10 o’clock dinner: baked chicken stuffed with garlic, smothered okra with shrimp and sausage, and pigs feet. It was a custom to
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