INTRODUCTION

I was eight when my mother went off to live with her boyfriend. My grandmother promised me she’d come back as soon as the “old man” threw her out. I turned ten and she still wasn’t back. I didn’t care because my mother’s parents, Gustave and Philomene Soublet, took better care of me than she ever could. I never wanted to be at her mercy ever again.

I called my grandparents Big Mama and Big Papa. I don’t remember knowing why they, like other grandparents, were called those names nor did I ever ask. Eventually I used my own interpretation as to how the names might have originated. The words seemed to literally translate from the French, grandmère and grandpère, to big or maybe older mother and father.

Mr. Joe, my mother’s boyfriend, was an old man - as old as Big Papa - and he didn’t like kids. I wasn’t allowed to visit my mother at his house; she always came to my grandparents’ home to see me. I called her by her first name, Iris, because she never acted like a mother to me. She was more like an older sister.

Mr. Joe and Iris drank a lot, mostly beer. When somebody else was buying, they drank whiskey. They hung out in a notorious bar on St. Bernard Avenue where my mother had met Mr. Joe. The bar was in the heart of my neighborhood, the Seventh Ward in downtown New Orleans, where most of the Creoles of color lived. Everybody knew everybody, and everybody knew everybody else’s business. And due to segregation in the 1940s, you did most of whatever it was you did in the Seventh Ward. So there was no place to hide; someone always saw you.

I often wondered why Iris had chosen such an old man. One night when Big Mama thought I’d fallen asleep on the sofa, I heard her whispering to Big Papa, “Gustave, Iris will never meet anybody decent right now. There aren’t any young men her age left in town. They’ve all gone to war.”

“Well, Philly,” Big Papa told her, “New Orleans is a port city; it’s always gonna be a wide-open town. There’s a war in the Pacific and one in the Atlantic, so boocoo soldiers and sailors from all the bases nearby are flockin to the city night and day lookin for some real bazah. And you know what bazah I’m talkin about. You oughta be glad she’s latched on to Mr. Joe, cuz if not, she might be draggin the street all night foolin around with some of those troops passin through. Some of them are real no-count and down-right mean. You know what, bay, I heard they beat up a lot of the women they fool around with and then hightail it out of town.”
My grandmother reluctantly agreed Mr. Joe was the better choice, but she said she thought he, as well as all the others, might be dangerous.
“I pray every night for Iris, Gustave. I ask God to straighten her out and keep her safe while He’s doing it,” Big Mama cried. She stumbled out of the front room with her shoulders heaving. Big Papa shook me. “Claire,” he said, “it’s time to go to bed.”

What seemed strange to me was in spite of all the gossip that floated around, we never found out what Mr. Joe did for a living. My grandfather thought he might be a gambler or a dope dealer because he always seemed to have money and was usually at home during the day. Whatever he did, he hid it well…and so did Iris. He rarely came to our house, and when he did, he stayed only a few minutes.

Sometimes when Mr. Joe got drunk, he’d put a handful of paper money in my mother’s hand and tell her to buy something special for her little girl. She never did. She’d tell me about the money, but I never saw a cent of it, nor did she ever buy me anything, let alone something special. I guess she drank up all the money because she didn’t spend any of it on clothes for herself. Iris seemed to have only two outfits, and as Big Mama put it, they were always crotay. We went to Sunday Mass together a few times and I always walked into church with my head down. I was ashamed to be seen with her.

My grandparents and I lived across the street from an old three-story, brick building. It took up one square block and was surrounded by a lacy, cast-iron fence. It looked as if it had been plucked right out of France and dropped down into the center of New Orleans. A nursing home for elderly Whites, it was owned and operated by The Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Catholic nuns.

On our side of the street there were three houses; we lived in one side of the last house, a double-shotgun that sat in the middle of the block. From our house to the corner, there was a beautiful garden shaped like an obtuse triangle. It was bordered by giant, sycamore trees. All year long the garden was filled with vegetables and flowers. It, too, belonged to The Little Sisters of the Poor. My grandparents were the garden’s caretakers. Big Papa built a gate so that we could enter it from our yard.

My grandfather was a first-class carpenter and a boat builder until he suffered a heart attack and could no longer do strenuous work. He did light, odd jobs to make ends meet and somehow we managed to squeak by. He even found a way to make sure I went to a Catholic elementary school within walking distance from our house. Big Mama always waited for me on the front porch swing when I’d come home from school, and when I’d come home for lunch, she’d have my favorite meal waiting: a bowl of vegetable soup and a ham sandwich.