Gumbo

 

Gumbo

Mama’s gumbo just wasn’t as good as Mee-maws, no matter how hard she tried. Everyone agreed about this, though nobody would dare say it to Mama’s eager face, slick with sweat from the kitchen. She’d tried Mee-maws recipe and a couple of hundred variations, but it never turned out quite as good.

It wasn’t that Mama couldn’t cook. Her gumbos were delicious in their own right (‘cept that one that called for peanut butter to ‘thicken it up’.) But they weren’t Mee-maws gumbo.

Meemaw made her gumbo in the biggest stock pot I’d ever seen, and even then, me and all the cousins would be throwing elbows trying to get the last bowl. The whole family showed up when Meemaw was cooking, and folks at church would subtly try to extort an invitation to the next batch.

Mama had tried a few times to invite the family round for a pot, but each time there were fewer showers than had been invited. Me and Daddy tried to eat more to make up the difference, but there’d still be leftovers, even though Mama’s pot wasn’t half as big as Meemaws. Mama’s face as she set to find bowls to store them in was enough to make you wanna disappear.

 

That summer, Mama had picked up a new job at the grocery, and I’d get dropped off the bus at Meemaws. Meemaws house was least as old as Daddy, who’d been born there, and it was off deep in the woods, wobbling on stilts that a bunch of her boys (my uncles and Daddy) had put on for her after the last hurricane left the whole wood flooded. They were a handy bunch and kept it in good repair, but every year it seemed to return more and more to the swamp.

It was a half mile’s walk through overgrown woods back to where the house squatted in the trees like an overgrown spider, and all the way up the unfinished, green stained stairs, I could smell Meemaws cooking.

She had a big old stool that she used to get high enough to see into her pot, which was blackened from the bottom up from the flames of the gas stove. Leaning over it in the mourning black that she’d been wearing since Pawpaw got in his wreck, with teeth stained dark from chewing tobacco, she looked nothing short of a witch. A swamp witch, luring children with the smell of gumbo, and a big old jar of candied pecans.

Meemaw was, in Mama’s words “A difficult woman.” She said it with respect, but also exasperation. Meemaw had raised 7 boys while her husband had lived on the road. They were “fine boys”, but she said “The secret is to be as mean as a snake. Boys will start disrespecting they mama if ya not stern nuff with em. You gotta nip that right in the bud.” And she’d strike out, quick as a whip, with a thin, long arm, and pinch me with impossibly bony fingers. Then she’d cackle while I winced and rubbed the sore spot.

Her eyes were bloodshot, watery blue, cataracts swimming across them like clouds. Despite her fading vision, she refused to wear glasses and was still sharp as a tack when the cousins were round, pulling ears and smacking bottoms, but on those long, sticky summer afternoons, she’d go a bit off.

It was how quiet I was; I suppose. I’d go and sit on the screened-in porch with my books and homework, and Meemaw would bring me an iced tea, already dripping sweat, and a plate full of beignets. She’d sit in her rocking chair and start talking, while I sat quiet, letting her voice blend with the creak of the chair and the croak of the frogs, and all the music of the bayou.

She’d tell me stories about Pawpaw and her boys when they were “youngins” in a voice thick with Cajun and the past. After a while, I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me at all, and a short while after that I’d know for sure, when, in a dozy voice she’d start talking to Bill, my Daddy’s Pa, who’d died in a trucking accident before I was born. She’d tell him how the boys were doing in school, and describe what she was cooking for dinner, and right before she nodded off, she’d ask in a voice that was too young, and too sad, when he was finally coming home.

When she woke, she’d look around, disoriented, and when her eyes fell on me, she’d look half scared, then sad. “Where all the years gone, chile?” Her laugh was rueful. “I look at you and think my soul done left my body.” Then she’d go in and serve us up some dinner. By the time Daddy got there to pick me up, she was all herself again.

I asked Daddy about it once, on the long, bumpy truck ride back to our house. He scratched his head with nails already black with dirt. “Your meemaw’s just getting a bit older,” he said. “She do be forgettin’ things since Pa passed. But she’s still sharp ‘nuff to take care of herself.” His voice was confident enough, but I wondered enough that I brought it up with Ma too.

“I do be telling them she shouldn’t be living out there alone. But she won’t hear it and none of them boys gonna fight her over it.” She was a whirl, practically dancing as she made her way around our little kitchen, all shiny new appliances, and specialized racks for organization. It was a far cry from Meemaws kitchen, where everything was wood, and any extra shelves had been put in raw by Pawpaw. “Well, the way she goes on about it, chances are she’ll outlive us all. And take that good gumbo recipe with her to the grave, tch.” She finished under her breath, looking sideways out through the kitchen doorway to where Daddy sat snoring with his feet up in the haggard leather monstrosity that took up most of our living room.

That was Mama’s newest theory, that grandma must be keeping the real gumbo as a secret family recipe. “Ain’t I family?” Mama asked, shaking her head, and there was more hurt in the words than anger.

Mama was an orphan of sorts, having left home before she even finished school. Her parents had both died later, but she’d had to hear that from an old friend of hers, who was the closest she had to blood anymore. She had a brother out there somewhere, but she didn’t talk to him either, and she didn’t talk about the why of none of it.

Well, the uncles and their wives were good enough to her, when they came round, but at family gatherings, Mama was the one who was at Meemaws elbow, steadying her if she stumbled, carrying what was too heavy, picking up what she dropped. Helping was just how Mama was, but there was more to it with Meemaw for sure.

Meemaw, who had raised 7 sons and no daughters, and was prolly the proudest woman I’d ever seen, didn’t like it one bit. I reckon it reminded her that she was getting old, and maybe she’d never forgiven Mama for being the one to steal away her last baby, but more so than any of her daughter-in-laws, she’d snap and scold at Mama, and turn her nose up at anything Mama cooked. None of the other aunts much bothered, Meemaw had made it clear she could handle cooking for the whole tribe and clan, but Mama, who came from a long line of women who made it their business to ensure nobody left their house with their pants buckled, just couldn’t help herself. 

 

That summer was hotter than Hades, everybodies hair was on end, ready to crackle with the electricity of the coming storm. On those long, heavy afternoons, Meemaw would sniff the air, her head tilted, and eyes squinted like a ragged old raven, an say “Gonna be a bad one, fo sho,” and “Any day now, mhm,” while fingers that were dead to the needle stabbed through socks Pawpaw wasn’t gonna be needing anytime soon.

When she’d go inside to cook, I’d come with her and sit at the long, roughhewn table that served as much for dining as cutting and chopping, and I’d watch her. I was probably the only one she’d let watch her, cus if any of the rest of ‘em was around, she’d herd us all out, muttering and cussing. “I don’t need no help, ya’ll be chopping my carrots like they’re tree stumps. No, I don’t need no chitlins runnin’ ‘round ‘neath my feet trippin’ me up. Lordy Jesus ya’ll do be asking the stupidest questions, get on out of here!” And heaven forbid anybody thought they were gonna nick a bite before dinner was served, cus Meemaw’d have that spoon of hers after ‘em in a heartbeat, and you wouldn’t believe a woman of her years could move like that.

But if it were just me and her, I’d just sit real quiet there, my books spread out in front of me, and Meemaw would talk and seem to forget I was ever there. I watched her fry chicken, and okra and catfish and pickles, and tomatoes so green they coulda soured lemonade. My favorite was her hushpuppies, but that wasn’t saying much since I loved em all. She’d cook some red beans and rice, and jambalaya, and once even a gator stew, with meat that some old man had brought her. He’d been a funny fella, all dressed up with the shiniest watch I’d ever seen. He’d taken his hat off and scuffed his shoes real clean before coming in the house. But Meemaw had talked an awful lot about Ole Pawpaw Bill that day, and the man had gone away with the promise of some stew and nothing else he mighta wanted.

I watched her make her stock, the base of all her stews and “the secret ingredient” to that famous gumbo of hers. It had taken everything in me not to say SOMETHING when I’d watched her throw in old, twisted carrot ends, and onion peels, and lordy Jesus that was chicken’s feet. It cooked the whole Sunday while we were off at church, and when it set up, it got thick as Jell-O, and looked nothing like the stock Mama made, which was golden and clear.

Coming back from church, kissing, and hollering and sending all her babies and grandbabies away, Grandma looked as spicy as ever. Once they left though, I saw her as tired as she ever had been. Tireder than she’d ever been sawing bones and carrots in the kitchen. She sat down hard in her rocking chair and took a dip of the baccy. “I like the quiet,” she told me after a while when the sounds of wheels and laughter had faded into the hum of the trees. She loved her babies, and she loved my Pawpaw, but she hadn’t moved out into the woods for nothing, and “A body got used to the bayou.”

 

At the end of the summer, the storm Meemaw had predicted was rolling up Louisiana like a freight train, and there was nothing to do but get out of its way. The days before it hit were a blur of preparations and frustrations, Daddy cursing that people were hoarding gas, and Mama grimly bringing home a stack of newspapers instead of toilet paper. One by one, the uncles and cousins came up to Meemaws and argued and cajoled her, but she wouldn’t speak a word about the storm, nor budge to go nowhere. She seemed in half a dream, calmer and quieter than she’d ever been, and she was speaking to Pawpaw Bill more often than me.

That day when Daddy came to pick me up, Mama was riding shotgun, and her jaw was clenched so tight I thought it would take Daddy’s crowbar to pry it open. Daddy himself had the helpless, haggard look of a rooster who’d just been thrown out the coop.

I packed up my schoolbooks while Mama marched up the stairs like a general, trailing one reluctant soldier. Meemaw smiled distantly off into the bayou, her fingers working on Pawpaw’s socks.

Mama didn’t waste no time with pleasantries. “Come on then.”

“Hmm?”

“I said come on then, Mama, we’re leaving.”

“Tain’t Sunday.” Meemaw stabbed the needle through.

“I know tain’t Sunday. By Sunday this whole swamp is gonna be under water.” When Meemaw didn’t say nothing, Mama knelt down by her chair, and stopped it’s rocking with her hand. “Big Mama, we’re evacuating tonight.”

“I ain’t never evacuated.” Meemaw sniffed.

“Well, there’s a first time for everything, ain’t there?”

Meemaw didn’t say a word.

“Meemaw, you’re coming with us.”

“Why’s that?”

“This hurricane ain’t no joke. It’s gonna be blowing right through here in lessen a day.”

Meemaw let out a little laugh. “I’ve seen worse. Don’t you worry ‘bout me.” She stood, her knees shaking ever so slightly before she steadied them.

“Meemaw, you ain’t a kid no more. You ain’t got Pawpaw Bill to help you.”

“Don’t you be talking about my Bill now! He’s a good man! You better skedaddle fore he gets home!”

“Pawpaw Bill’s dead Mama, don’t you remember?”

Meemaw was trying to push past Mama into the house now, and I think for the first time Daddy was seeing her as she was, not as an indomitable force of nature, but as a withered old woman with time slipping through her fingers. Daddy looked like a referee who didn’t know what to do. Every so often during the exchange, he’d open his mouth, or raise his hands, like he meant to do something, but never did.

In the end, despite Meemaws kicking and cursing and cries for Bill, Mama put her up on her shoulder and carried her down the stairs. Meemaw looked like an angry cat in a black sack, spitting and cussing at her. Mama got her as gently as she could off into the truck, and her and daddy got in on either side, trapping her. I threw my bag of books into the bed, but right before I clambered up, I ran back up into the house and came out carrying a laundry basket full of Meemaws clothes and a few other odds and ends I thought she might appreciate. Nestled amongst the clothes were a couple of jars of Meemaws good stock.

All the way down the driveway, Meemaw screamed bloody murder, and the screen door of the house, left unhitched, clattered open as we drove away, a big black mouth. The house swayed in the moaning wind, and for a split second, it looked like the big black spider was about to pull up its legs, and give chase.

There wasn’t much left of Meemaws house when we could finally return to it a few weeks later. The swamp, high and wet, seemed to have swallowed it whole. Meemaws stockpot was all that was sitting in the clearing where the house had stood, half-buried in mud, with wooden posts all round it like a henge. Odds and ends bloomed from bushes and trees like strange fairy plants, and I found one of PawPaws socks, more holes than not, tangled in a bush. Daddy told me to leave it, but I washed it carefully myself, and when I handed it to Meemaw that night, along with Mamas little emergency sewing kit, I thought she almost smiled.

Meemaw wasn’t “A difficult woman” now, but Mama wasn’t happy about it. She let Mama help her up, and feed her without complaint, and put her to bed like a child. We all watched it with worry, and the thought crossed my mind that Meemaws soul must have gone with the house, and all Mama had saved as a husk of a woman.

The weather started to cool, and the big old stockpot, rescued from and cleaned of all the mud, sat squat and dark in the corner of the kitchen, too big to be put away in any of the cabinets. Meemaw never went into the kitchen and took her meals in the new rocking chair that Daddy had bought her, next to the window that she never looked out of.

The uncles came ‘round, big, awkward men with forced, pained smiles, kneeling by their Mama’s chair and asking when she was gonna make them a pot of gumbo. Her responses were, by turn, vague or confused, or nonexistent. She muttered about her boys, and Bill, and going home, and the uncles left, looking older than they’d come.

The jars of Meemaws good stock were carefully sealed up in the freezer, but they were awkward and took up too much room. Mama saved them, hoping Meemaw would get the urge to cook, but eventually she set her jaw and set to work on a roux.

The smells of sausage and chicken and shrimp started drifting through the house, and I watched Meemaw snort in her sleep, and wake with a jolt, sniffing the air. Her eyes landed on me, and she flinched, then looked around the room like a scared child who’d woken up from a nightmare.

From the kitchen, Mama called me to chop up the veggies, and when I turned from the knife block, Meemaw was standing where I had, framed in the kitchen doorway, the fluffy bathrobe that Mama had given her only highlighting her fragile frame.

“What are you doing?” her voice was so sudden and sharp that Mama jerked up from where she was browning the sausage, and nearly spilled the whole pan on the floor. “Look at that mess, ain’t nobody told you to touch my…” Meemaw’s voice faded into uncertainty. “That ain’t my pot.” She swayed uncertainly.

“Big Mama!” Mama was halfway across the kitchen already, but Meemaw was flinching back from her helping hands. Mama saw, and stopped, taking a step back. “Don’t worry, we saved your pot.” She nodded her head towards it, and Meemaw followed her gaze.

“What’s it doing over there?” she demanded. “You can’t be making good gumbo in a fry pot like that!”

The stock pot was put up on the stove, and a chair was found for Meemaw to stand on and see into. Another was added shortly after, so Mama could see in as well. Daddy was called and told to bring home some more sausage and shrimp, and he must have called his brothers because within half an hour, the cousins were trickling in. Meemaw was suddenly a general, waving her spoon up on the chair, and me and Mama were her soldiers, fighting off the hordes of helpful and greedy hands alike, chopping veggies and fetching spices. Even Daddy wasn’t allowed in for more than a peck on the cheek and a swat on the behind, but he left grinning so wide it could have split his face.

When Granny went to season to the batch, Mama had a moment where she almost stepped into say something, but I caught her hand and grinned. “Meemaw knows what she’s doing.” And we held hands, watching Granny carefully measure out the garlic, onion, garlic, onion, paprika, cayenne, onion, salt, pepper, garlic, paprika. She was following her own recipe but couldn’t seem to remember if she’d put this or that spice in yet. In the end, she tasted it straight out the pot, and smacked her lips, and declared it just right. Mama shook her head in bemusement. “No wonder I couldn’t get it right.”

Meemaws gumbo was the best. Everyone agreed. Daddy and the uncles and aunts and cousins were all spilling out the dining room and into the living room, bowls in their hands and grins on their faces. Meemaw sat at the head of the table, and Mama sat at her side, and served everybody. Meemaw didn’t seem to mind. She might have even smiled at her. It felt like the storm had finally passed, and when Daddy asked, “How do you do it Ma?” Meemaw smiled over all her children and grandchildren.

“The secret is good stock.”