Confessions of a Want-to-be Quilter©
Memoirs of Carol S. Jackson, Evans, GA
Printed by the author
The Family
Episode #2 Aunt Sue
While my mother was scrubbing floors in her new temporary home, her sister Adelle was on the other side of New Orleans. She recalled that she was emptying her pillow slip, which was the only form of luggage the girls had. Her new care giver fetched her to the kitchen. Boudreaux had just returned with a full, smelly, game bag. She Boudreaux flipped a table cloth onto the center of the floor, and Boudreaux emptied the game bag. Ducks, sweet doves, and squirrels were what she saw, all dead. Boudreaux pulled a knife from his boot and looked the new arrival in the eye. He plucked up a duck by the feet and held it upside down over the tablecloth. “Ya cutz er here, n here, n here, den ya grab er here n den ya yank back da skin n fedhers like dis.” In less than a moment, the duck had been skinned. He picked up the next duck, made the three cuts and thrust it in front of Adelle. ”Nau Yu”, the gruff man said. He took her hand and placed it on the tail end of the duck. She pulled. She pulled harder. The skin didn’t budge. Everyone laughed. Boudreaux finished the job. Without a word, least none that she understood, the men and women in the room all began cutting and skinning, and removing some parts from the insides of the animals and placing them into bowls. Someone stroked her under the chin, and pointed to her room. She washed, and returned to her task of finding a place for her few articles of clothing and her doll.
There was singing, and what sounded like dancing, coming from the kitchen. She emerged from the little room to see the most amazingly happy people. They were going in and out of the screen door, making a big fuss over a witches pot on a backyard fire. More people had gathered and there were many small pots around the big one. She Boudreaux would step behind the open door and dip a long wooden spoon into the biggest tin of lard she had ever seen, then back to the cauldron to stir.
There were children too. One straggly girl made eye contact, and they approached each other. From under her apron, she reached into a skirt pocket and removed what Adelle described as one ugly, rag doll. They were both talking, but she didn’t understand word the girl was saying. Adelle, deciding that the idea was to share dolls, took the straggly girl and her rag doll to her new bedroom to see her doll. She clutched her blond-haired baby doll with painted blue eyes, and straggly began to cry and left the room. Adelle sat on her bed, buttoning the dress on the doll, when She Boudreaux, the straggly girl and another woman came in. “Her MomMa made da doll, n yu hur t her feelin’s” she was told. “Cum bac out n play.” She doesn’t know what happened to that doll. She really didn’t miss it. That night everyone in the neighborhood turned out to meet the new girl. She was the center of attention. Adelle made many stays to that home. She learned the art of Cajan cooking, and a good bit of the language. She was also placed in temporary homes of Italians and French, all excellent cooks who shared their skills.
In her teens, she became Sue to my mother, but remained Adelle to everyone else. She married a smooth French-Itallian man named Maurice Ducarpe. Uncle Morris eeked out a meager living as a New Orleans Cabbie. They had four children, and lived in the public housing projects area of the city. We often visited them on Sundays for dinner. On the holidays when we didn’t go to Meridian, where Dads people lived, we went to Aunt Sues’. The meals were always plentiful and delicious. There were usually big crowds of people. Aunt Sue compared the gatherings to her temporary homes with the Cajuns, French, and Italians. Dad often wondered aloud where they got the money to feed all those people. He surmised that Morris wasn’t reporting all of his tips.
. . . to be continued . . .
To read the previous 11 episodes, search for Confessions of a Want to be Quilter