Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2009 - (Page 70) out though!” Maymay’s sadness turned into much anger as she thought, “I’m not going to let them make me cry.” She gave the rocking chair one strong pound and grip as she stopped its routine rocking motion. “After T-Man started treating people, Cushma start riding me and the girls mo’ and Tut start getting pregnant.” Maymay took another long, intense smoke from her pipe. Savoring the warm taste and dazing into the green and white linoleum as in a deep daydream, she paused in a moment of deep thought. Exhaling the pungent aroma of tobacco from her black wooden pipe, she blew a huge bellowing cloud of smoke in Black’s direction. Now borrowing T-Red’s fixed, angry stare that sought out the audacity of the current day’s news, Maymay set her eyes on Black for the first time. Her gaze was long and deliberate. “Hurry up and get off my property. The only reason you standing by my door is cause T-Red told me you want to make an honest woman out of Tut. You said it to the field hands. Any man who is saying something good about Tut around Belle Place deserve my high time,” she mumbled. She was mean and angry now and the gentle spirit that had emerged from so much hurt drifted away. Maymay’s true spirit sprang up again like a maelstrom. Maymay looked at her television and the clock to her left. She pointed to the television with her black pipe. “At this time I could be watching One Life to Live, and the rest of my stories, or I could be stirring ma pot over yonder on the stove. So don’t start talking stupid, non.” Maymay crossed her lean legs and bowed her head into the pipe so that she could get another good, long smoke. the pipe. “I’m really happy for you, girrrl.” “Mais dat’s good.” She settled her head back into her chair and relaxed for a moment. Leaning her head back and rolling her eyes and pursing her lips, she began to stare at the ceiling as she paused and thought for a while. Bending forward and turning to Tut again, she continued in her piercingly loud full-volume speech, “It’s a miracle that this young handsome black man want to shack up with you. I always told y’all try to find people your own color, but you all go out and marry these chocolat femmes et hommes.” Maymay smiled and laughed at her own joke. “I’m the only one of the Plaisance sisters left with black nappy-headed grandbabies,” Maymay yelled in amusement as she looked at the children sitting on the floor. Normally she would tell them, “Y’all go outside and play. This is grown folk’s business.” On this day she was savoring this liberating moment. Maymay wanted to school the girls, with Tut being the subject of her first lesson. She forgot that she and T-Red were using bad language in front of the well-behaved attentive little ones because she was too caught up in the moment. “He is willing to forgive all of your nasty ways. Mais, that’s a miracle.” Maymay now turned her attention to TRed who was embroiled in Maymay’s words. “T-Red, you ought not tell that gal we not gon be yonder for her. She still your family, petain and all; her name Tut Bastille. The Bastille family will always be there for one another. No matter what! We don’t turn our back on our family, non. Jamais! What you said about messing up. Let me explain that to her a little mo’.” How could this beautiful, angelic Creole girl, with the cutest dimples and red ribbons tied at the bottom of her hair like a nice little Catholic schoolgirl, have the worst reputation in Belle Place? She squirmed in the chair after taking the smoke. Feeling uncomfortable with the stranger looking at her from her door, she couldn’t sit in her informal manner as she did when only the children and grandchildren were in the house. Her legs were open for the longest before she realized that Black was looking at her while she was in such a conspicuous position. She wore two pink dirty house slippers only because she didn’t want the company to see how muddy and ashy her feet were from working in her garden. Normally, she would be barefoot. She looked at everyone in the room. “Mais what was I talking about? I’m getting Ophonse, yeah. Oh yeah, you said you want to take Tut over yonder to Sunset.” Maymay took another long puff from her black pipe. She savored the taste of the tobacco and blew out the smoke. She made little O’s with the smoke which intrigued the children. They looked at her in amazement and wonderment as they sat legs crossed on the floor around her quietly watching the dancing family of mama and papa O’s. Maymay halted the rocking, and held the pipe away from her lean body. Leaning forward in the chair she said slowly and clearly in her best English-speaking voice as she now looked in Tut’s light brown eyes, “If you mess this one up, I’m going to walk. Wait a minute, let me put this high tobacco down to let you know I mean business.” She gingerly placed the pipe on the table next to her chair. Grabbing Tut’s tiny frame by the shoulders and shaking her as if she were a Raggedy Ann doll, she gave Tut a long intense look. Calmly she muttered, “I’m going to walk to Sunset in all of this hot sun and shoot you with the .45 me and T-Man keep in the filing cabinet if you mess up your one last chance of happiness for something stupid.” Tut smiled at Maymay as she did this, but Maymay was very serious and did not smile. “Don’t you crack a smile Tut. I’m serious,” Maymay scolded as she calmly allowed Tut to resume her seat on the sofa. Maymay showed that she meant business. Everyone knew that this was a humorous hyperbole. Maymay always looked out for her family no matter the mistake. Although she told Tut, “That’s your ass, you gon raise this one on ya own” when she brought her third child into the world, Maymay still took care of her baby and the next one to follow under the condition that Tut drop out of school and help around the house. “You won’t be happy ‘till I drop Maymay then began a loud conversation with Tut as if no one else were listening. “Well, Tut, now you gonna have your pretty clothes you see in the window in town and your double-wide trailer. After all of these years, you are going to have the things in all of them magazines you carry all the time. Ummm-humm.” She winked at Tut and bit into 70 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Spring 2009
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