#FamilyMemories – Sittin' Ugly Sistahs

This story is based on my memories of sharing my wisdom with my younger sisters in the 1960s.

When I was seven years old I tried my hand at what would become my future profession. On a late summer afternoon, I smoothed the front of a stiff red and white church dress, brought my tanned bare feet together, repositioned my white plastic headband, and looked my class over from the white brick fireplace hearth that raised me three inches above those I’d be instructing. Kelly, age three, wearing light blue shorts and a sleeveless white cotton crop top sat crosslegged on the living room carpet. She held a Big Chief tablet and a red crayon. Gayle, age five, wore a faded Tweety bird t-shirt with a never-worn navy school uniform skirt and sat erect on a small wooden chair. She tapped her brand new letter-practicing book with a fat pencil and wriggled her toes as she stretched her feet to touch the legs of a red and yellow plastic chalk board that came with my surprise birthday gift that year: a Suzy Smart Deluxe Doll Set!

Suzy Smart, dressed in a white blouse under a red plaid jumper and standing two feet tall, completed the class and sat stiffly in her own red and yellow plastic desk. I smiled down at my class of three and held up a piece of chalk to draw a large capital letter “A” on the chalk board.

“Today we practice our A’s.” I established eye-contact with each student and added, “Y’all gotta draw ten A’s for me. On your mark, get set… go!”

Gayle took to the assignment like a Cajun to hot boudin. Having to use her lap was all that kept her from making uniform A’s. Kelly tried her first A, but the slanted lines were uneven and her letter did not look like the one on the chalk board.

“I’m gonna make little ‘l’s’,” she said and started covering her first page with a letter she liked.

I focused on the obedient ones. “Good job, Gayle,” I said. Suzy gave me her straight-forward stare. “Nice listening, Suzy.”

Then I knelt down next to Kelly. “Your ‘l’s’ are good, good, but we’re doing ‘A’s.’ Here. Let me show you how.” I put my hand over her fist and guided the red crayon through a perfect A formation. “Like this.”

Kelly pushed aside a stray strand from a pigtail and said, “OK,” and continued to drew more l’s.

“You already made like fifty l’s . You need to learn your A’s.”

“No A’s in my name.”

“Good! You know how to spell your name, but I’m teaching ALL the letters today.”

“ ‘A’ is the very first letter,” said Gayle as she completed her tenth “A” and nodded proudly to each of us, including Suzy. She wrapped a long strand of jet black hair behind right her ear and waited for further instructions.

“How many letters?” asked Kelly.

Getting a bit of teacher inspiration, I said, “We should sing the A-B-C song!”

The human students stood up to belt out “A,B,C,D,E,F,G…” Susie listened. As Kelly screamed out the final Z, she grabbed Gayle’s hands, and led her in circles for the “Now I know my ABC’s” part.

The dancing pupils added impromptu hip-shaking for their song’s end.

I was losing control of my class. I erased the “A” and drew a “B” on the chalk board. “Good job, y’all! Now let’s practice the second letter – B.” My sisters then snapped to like tiny soldiers and for some weird reason saluted.

“Ok, class. Sit down now,” I said. Both obeyed, but first Kelly snatched Gayle’s new pencil gave her the red crayon.

“Hey. Give it back,” said Gayle.

“Just let me borrow it.”

“You suppose to ask.”

“Can I use your pencil?”

“Please.”

“Pleeeease.”

“Say pretty please.”

“Pretty please, ya dumb sneeze.”

“She called me ‘dumb,’ Teacher!”

Kelly stuck her tongue out at the snitch. I clapped my hands together. “Class! Y’all gotta listen.” Gayle grabbed her pencil back and bounced the crayon off Kelly’s pert pug nose.

Kelly picked up Gayle’s letter practice book and ran behind me. “I’m agonna rip this up,” she said.

Gayle could not wait for help from an inept teacher. She knocked over both Susie’s and her desk as she rushed after Kelly.

I tried keeping the girls apart as Kelly danced behind me and moved the book in circles around her face.

“Na! Na! Na! You can’t get me,” she chanted right before Gayle got ahold of her right pigtail. The letter book fell, the chalk board collapsed, and Kelly sprang into fight mode. Both girls got fistfuls of hair. For several seconds the hair-pulling tug-of-war was a stalemate. Gayle’s longer arms gave her an advantage, but Kelly’s spicy temper made it a fair fight.

“Stop it! Y’all are wrong, wrong! Stop!” I said as I pushed my way between them.
Kelly was biting her stuck-out tongue to concentrate. Gayle had both of her sister’s pigtails when Kelly dropped her sister’s hair strands. Her smaller stature lacked the force she needed to make Gayle release the pigtails, so Kelly leaned back and kicked her left foot high enough to get her foe right in her tee-heinie. The taller girl let go of the shorter one’s hair and fell to the carpet. She put both hands over the place of pain and let loose the “OWWWWW’s”

“That’s what you get,” said Kelly.

Gayle moaned like a dying opossum.

I sat on Gayle’s chair in defeat. Kelly tapped a line of dots on the fallen chalkboard as her sister made herself into a ball on the floor. I straightened the bow on the Suzy doll’s ponytail and sighed as if I’d dropped the last bite of the last slice of watermelon into a pile of fire ants.

Being used to sister fights and being relieved that I was above this current argument, I went to the den’s plaid couch and looked out our huge picture window. Our dog Lady was taking her mid-morning nap in the shade of our cement patio. I focused past our yard on the rice fields that surrounded our home. The sun winked at me between oak tree branches. With a sigh that reflected on and accepted my big sister wisdom, I decided that teaching was not for me.

Champagne’s grocery store in Eunice, Louisiana keeps the fresh crawfish tails in a special cooler in the back that customers don’t have access to. At the check-out you tell the cashier how many pounds of crawfish you want and they go to the “vault” in the back and return with your treasure. Before they ring up the pricey seafood, they count each of the crawfish packets in front of you.

Boiled Crawfish from Slim’s Spoon in Austin, Texas at Thicket Food Park

“You wanted four pounds: one, two, three, four.”

And they bag them as if you’re at a bank where the teller counts your stack of twenty dollar bills.

(I dramatically imagine this is what a big drug deal is like. “Three kilos of cocaine: one, two, three.”)

When I first witnessed this transaction, I asked the cashier why they did it this way.

“Had to,” she said. “Folks would get home with their crawfish and call us and claim they’d paid for four pounds, but we gave ‘em only three.”

I nodded and thought, “Fresh crawfish tails are like gold or diamonds – precious, expensive, and hard to get.” They’re only available a few months a year and are mostly found in south Louisiana.

Crawfish, like small lobsters, have a rich sweetness that reminds me of being eight-years-old, barefoot on a May afternoon when I felt at home with myself and my family. My biggest worries involved sister fights and what sins I’d need to own up to once a week at school when the nuns led our class to that week’s Confession session. (Was it a sin when I made up a few extra sins because all I could think of was ‘I talked back to my mom’ or ‘I lied to my sisters’?)

I had not become fully aware of my cerebral palsy yet, and I didn’t realize the embarrassment of my left-leg limp or my left-arm crookedness. I played freeze tag with my friends and cousins. I bossed around my little sisters, and I believed my parents had more admirable traits than bad ones. Life was good! I took rice and gravy dinners and Friday fried catfish for granted.

However, I knew crawfish was special! Our huge Good Friday boil was one of the year’s biggest Keller family events. And crawfish etouffee was reserved for company from out-of-state or a wedding rehearsal’s supper or St Edmund’s Spring Fair.

I grew up around great Cajun cooks: my momma, Grandma’s hired help – Lee Ester Anderson and later Vivian Hill, my Uncle Jake, and a long list of Eunice ladies I knew. They cooked the Cajun Country way. “First you make a roux…” “Use the Holy Trinity: onions, bell pepper, and celery.” “Add green onions and parsley at the end.” “Cook until done.”

I didn’t start cooking like a Cajun until I moved to Texas and missed the gumbos and sauce piquantes. I had Mercedes Vidrine’s Louisiana Lagniappe cookbook that was really four combined books ( Beaucoup Bon, Quelque Chose Piquante, Quelque Chose de Douce, and Joyeux Noel). I practiced and used the best ingredients: LeJuene’s garlic pork sausage and crawfish tails from south Louisiana when I could get them.

My favorite crawfish etouffee recipe was read to me over the phone by Momma. A friend from her bouree card games had shared it with her.

I like it because the crawfish tails are boss and do all the talking in that recipe. There’s not a roux or fancy veggies like mushrooms or asparagus trying to steal some of the attention. The recipe begins with the holy trinity cooked in a half stick of butter, and later you add a bit of white wine, the crawfish, some parsley and “C’est tout!” Of course, you use your favorite spice mix. I use Slap Ya’ Momma, partly because it’s made in Ville Platte and that’s where Momma’s from, but it also has the right amount of cayenne pepper. I have made this recipe for birthdays, Easter brunch, and special guests who visit us.

This past week our good friend Della was in the hospital and going through scary procedures and tests, and when I asked her what she needed, she answered, “Some of your crawfish etouffee.” I was thrilled to see her eat two servings from her hospital bed when we were allowed to visit.

Cooking good food for the best people I know brings me true joy. And when that food is part of my Cajun upbringing, the joy doubles and does backflips. Our Louisiana motto is, “Lassiez les bon temps rouler!” and that advice usually involves people dancing, laughing, and drinking. It also involves a big Magnalite pot simmering on a stove.

My best memories are times spent in my grandma’s kitchen (which later became my momma and dad’s kitchen) where people of all ages crowded together to tell Thibodeaux & Boudreaux jokes and exaggerated stories while they ate good food. Whether we had Louisiana gold like fresh crawfish or strong coffee and hot bouldin, it all tasted better because we shared it with those we loved.