“‘Sister, what is your point, exactly?’
“‘Do not speak to me in disrespect, Mrs. Walker.’
“I was starting to want a cigarette at this point. In fact, I was dying for a cigarette at this point. ‘Sister, you don’t mind if I smoke in here, do you?’ I asked her. ‘I would kill for a Lucky Strike.’
“‘I discourage smoking in my classroom.’
“‘We can crack a window,’ I told her, and I started to get up from the desk.
“‘Sit back down!’ she said. ‘Those windows do not open.’
“‘They don’t open?’ I was horrified. My baby sits entombed in this room with this woman all day, and the windows do not open. ‘Why don’t the windows open, Sister?’
“‘I do not believe in open windows in my classroom. The noise is too great from the schoolyard, causing distractions. And it is unsafe to have windows that open. The children could crawl up on the ledge and fall out of them.’
“‘But we are on the first floor.’
“‘If you continue to contradict everything I say, Mrs. Walker, then I will have to ask our principal Sister Mary Paul to come in and help with this discussion.’
“I put my cigarette back in my purse, then decided to take it out again and just hold it between my fingers. If I couldn’t smoke it, I could at least hold it. By this point, I wanted that cigarette so bad I could eat it.
“Then she said, ‘I hope you know that exposing God’s innocents to the near temptations of sin is as grave a sin as one can commit, especially as a Catholic mother.’
“‘Sister,’ I said, trying to remain calm, ‘I handed my son one of my garter belts at the last minute as he was rushing out the door. He didn’t have anything else to take to Show and Tell. It was simply the first thing that I picked up in my hand.’
“‘Mrs. Walker!’ she said sternly. ‘That is quite enough!’
“Caro, by this point I wanted to haul off and sock her so hard those moles would fly off her bulldog face. But I was shaking too hard and trying not to cry. She would not let up, Caro. I mean, the woman kept digging, kept turning the knife.
“‘This is your fourth child to come through Our Lady of Divine Compassion,’ that woman said. ‘You have repeatedly exposed your children to impurity. You are married to a non-Catholic. There was the time you allowed your oldest daughter to wear a pair of suede boots with fringe with her school uniform. You show up on school grounds yourself wearing outfits that no Catholic mother should be seen in. Stretch pants. Sweaters that befit a woman of the night more than a Catholic wife and mother. Oh, I have been watching you, Mrs. Walker.’
“I didn’t tell her to shut up. But I told her to mind her own business.
“‘It is not your mission to give me fashion tips, thank you very much. It is your job to teach my children how to read and write,’ I said. ‘It is certainly not your job to tell me how to raise them.’
“‘Oh, you are wrong, Mrs. Walker,’ Sister Howard Regina said to me, like I was some hideous creature from the lower rungs of hell. ‘It is indeed my job to tell you how to raise your children. You have entrusted your children to me not just as a teacher of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also as trainer of their souls, as a shaper of their spiritual lives, so that they will grow up to live as true Catholics in a world too often threatened by the kinds of things that garter belts represent.’”
Vivi starts to laugh. Caro joins in, but Vivi switches from laughing to crying so quick that it is dizzying. She is both crying and laughing at the same time.
Then Vivi stands up and stretches. “Soaring Hawk,” she says, using Caro’s Indian name bestowed upon her during their Ya-Ya tribal naming ceremony in 1937. “Hit me with a bourbon and branch this time, Caro.”
“Absolument!” Caro says, and crosses over to the bar, which is shaped like a boomerang with a little round sink in it. The bar is on the other side of the gravel pit near the stereo console.
Vivi reaches into her purse and pulls out her lipstick. It’s a good sign if she’s putting on more lipstick, Caro thinks. Vivi never goes long without fresh lipstick unless she is really far gone. Vivi always wears lipstick. When she goes to Communion and the priest puts the host on her tongue, just for an instant you can see the imprint of her lipstick on the white wafer, like she is kissing the body of Jesus.
Vivi looks at Baylor and Sidda, noticing for the first time that they are there in the room. “What are yall doing, spooks?”
Baylor and Sidda smile at her. “Nothing, Mama,” Sidda says.
“It’s funny, huh, Mama?” Baylor says.
Vivi looks at Baylor for a moment. She puts her lipstick back in her purse, and smiles back. “Yes, it’s funny,” she says. “It is hysterical.”
“Can I sit in your lap, Mama?” Baylor asks.
“Yes, Cotton-top Bay-Boy, you sure can.” Baylor crawls into her lap, and she rubs his head. Baylor is always getting his head rubbed. People love to feel his soft white-blond hair against their hands.
Caro hands Vivi her drink, and she puts a plate of maraschino cherries on the coffee table for Baylor and Sidda. Sidda plops a cherry in her mouth. The cherry is so sickly sweet on her empty stomach that it makes her mouth pucker, and she spits it out into her hand. But she likes the way it turns her lips red like Vivi’s.
“So!” Caro says to Vivi, “don’t stop now! What did you do next?”
Vivi takes a sip of the drink, and when she starts to talk, her whole tone has changed. She acts like she’s telling one of her funny stories rather than what really happened. She uses her hands a lot and acts out the different voices.
“I told that Howard Regina woman never to embarrass one of my children again, or she would be sorry. I said, I don’t care what you think of me. But you shame my little boy in front of a class again, and I will report you to Monsignor Bergeron so fast that your head will spin out of that headdress and you will be transferred to Timbuktu! And then I got up to walk out, but before I could get out of the door, the bitch says, real soft, like she is praying: ‘Holy Mary, Mother of Divine Compassion, please look down upon the innocent Walker children and protect them from the ways of their evil mother. Lift their eyes unto the purity of thy gaze, and keep them safe under your most chaste protection.’”
Then Vivi begins to cry again. At first she cries without sound, staring down at her hands. She tries to catch her breath, but she can’t.
“Why couldn’t that nun leave the Holy Mother out of this? Don’t drag the Virgin into this! THE VIRGIN IS THE ONE I PRAY TO! SHE IS THE ONLY ONE I TRUST! WHY DO THEY KEEP TRYING TO RUIN HER!”
Vivi becomes so agitated that she knocks her drink on the floor, and the glass breaks. Baylor and Sidda stare at the brown liquid spreading across the zebra-striped carpet.
Caro picks up the broken glass and blots the carpet with a couple of paper napkins. Caro is not upset; she has known Vivi for a long time. At the bar, Caro mixes another drink, holding the bottle of bourbon up to the light to admire its color. Caro does things like that when you least expect it.
“Is that when you climbed into the T-Bird and backed into the Infant Jesus of Prague?” Caro asks.
Vivi is still crying. “Yes, that is when I did it.”
“So it was an accident,” Caro says.
Vivi hesitates. “Well, yes,” she says softly. “It was an accident.”
“I give you absolution, Vivi,” Caro says, making the sign of the cross over Vivi and handing her the fresh drink.
“Oh, bless you, Dahlin,” Vivi says, and takes a sip.
“Did anyone see you?” Caro asks.
“No, they couldn’t have. There wasn’t anybody there. All the school buses were gone. The lot was empty except for me. The only one who saw was the statue itself.”
“And He’s not talking,” Caro says, and winks at Vivi.
Vivi reaches into her purse for a Kleenex. She blows her nose, and then opens her compact to check her makeup.
“I never did muc
h care for that statue,” Caro says. “The kid was snippy-looking. Snotty.”
“Me neither,” Vivi agrees. “I mean, those fancy robes on a little wooden infant statue! And that tiara! A baby boy wearing a tiara. The way he raised that right hand like he was something hot, like he didn’t even need a mother. And standing on a globe. Please. This is the kind of statue that makes people think Catholics are nutcases.”
Sidda is afraid to speak but wants to show off how much she knows. She finally says, “Mama, if you think His robes are show-offy, you should hear about his life.”
“Oh, my God,” says Vivi, “this is what the penguins teach my children: the life of statues.”
“Tell us about it,” Caro says.
“Well, an old Spanish monk got a vision from the Christ child and made the statue. Then it passed into the hands of Saint Teresa of Avila. She gave it to a Bohemian nobleman named Lord Vratislav of Pernstejn when he married Dona Maria Maximiliana Manriguez de Lara. This was all in Spain.”
Vivi and Caro are cracking up. The rest of the kids who are still around the fireplace are giggling, not sure whether Sidda is making this up or not.
“Sidda,” Vivi says, “you astonish me. Trust me, you will end up in the theater yet.”
Sidda is so proud. She has faithfully, compulsively memorized every story the nuns tell her at Divine Compassion. And now she is distracting Vivi from being so upset. She is listening to me like TV or something, Sidda thinks. “Then,” she continues, “the statue passed into the hands of their beautiful daughter, Polyxema.”
“Jesus,” Caro says, “sounds like a name for an acne cream.”
Vivi lets out a snort of laughter. “Sidda, you are wonderful! Polyxema! I love it. Caro, do you see what I mean when I tell you that if I have done nothing else, I have raised children with imagination!”
Sidda clears her throat. “Okay, then Madam Polyxema de Lobkowisz, who had been married twice—”
“Aha,” Vivi says, “a sinner.”
“Unless her husband died,” Sidda says. She does not like that they are interrupting her recitation. Once she starts something, she likes to finish it. “May I finish about the Infant Jesus of Prague, please?” she asks.
“Certainly. Absolutely. I had no idea he’d gotten around so goddamn much.” Vivi’s voice is starting to slur slightly.
“Well, Madam Polyxema de Lobkowisz gave her most precious possession in the world—the statue—to the Church of Our Lady Victorious, which belonged to the barefooted Carmelites of Prague. Since that time, many miracles have been attributed to praying to the Infant Jesus of Prague. He healed a woman who was paralyzed. And He was always dressed up in aristocratic outfits because he was so royal.”
“There you have it,” Caro says. “And now the statue is lying on its butt in Garnet Parish, Louisiana, in the rain.”
“It’s not the same statue,” Sidda responds. “This is a replica.”
“Sidd-o,” Caro says, “don’t take this so seriously. Okay, Pal?”
“Yes ma’am,” Sidda says. She waits and watches to see what her mother will do next.
Vivi takes out a cigarette, taps it on the coffee table, and lights it with her monogrammed Zippo. “Who knows how much it’ll take to repair the T-Bird? My dream car. Fun, fast, and powerful, that’s why I wanted it. Three-ninety engine. God, it was the perfect get-the-hell-out-of-Dodge car. And now it’s all hurt.” Vivi sighs. “Probably cost eighty-four thousand dollars to repair. I don’t know. I don’t care. As much as Shep hates the Catholic Church, he might be downright glad to spend money since I tore into the fancy statue that one of those old Chauvin farts donated. He can’t stand that country club snob clan.”
“Well,” Caro said, “you have been wanting a paint job on the T-Bird.”
Vivi looks at Caro like she’s been given a gift. “Fabulosa-osa! I’m sick of that Garden Turquoise! I’ll have my baby painted that lickable Monte Carlo Red color. Oh, look out! Whaddaya say?!”
“Red Bird,” Caro says, and comes back to the sofa. “Yeah, baby, call her ‘Red Bird.’”
“Glorious. Just take it to the body shop, have the damage repaired, and have them slap that coat of red on it that I adore. Oh, I am starting to like this.”
“It’s a blessing in disguise,” Caro says.
Vivi stands up and walks over to Caro’s modern fireplace. You can’t stand there and warm your backside the way you can with our old-fashioned kind at home, Vivi thinks. It’s a black funnel-shaped design that hangs suspended from the ceiling with a gravel pit underneath it. The kids love the way that fireplace just floats above the black gravel. It scares Lulu, though. She says it looks like something Hansel and Gretel might get burned up in.
Vivi tries to warm herself anyway. She has on a wool pleated skirt and a pair of hose with penny loafers. On this cold November evening, she wears a pullover sweater, the kind that she usually doesn’t wear because she says they make her itch. She looks like she is trying to figure something out.
“How Catholic do you want to be about this?” Caro asks her.
“Not very,” Vivi says. She looks at Sidda and Baylor and says, “Dahlins, yall go in the back and play with the other kids for a while.”
“Oh, Mama,” Sidda says. “I don’t want to go.”
“No whining, Siddalee,” Vivi says. “Do what I say, and do it now.” Sidda takes Baylor’s hand, and they obey their mother.
Caro goes to the door and peeks down the hall to make sure the kids are gone.
When she comes back, she gazes straight into Vivi’s eyes. “Well, then don’t pay for repairing that damn statue. Just don’t say one damn word about it.”
“The thing was too close to the parking lot in the first place,” Vivi says.
“Exactly,” Caro agrees.
“It’s a miracle no one has backed into it before.”
“A miracle.”
“I’ve always secretly hated that statue anyway,” Vivi says.
“And His face was dirty,” Caro says. “God knows what kinds of insects had crawled up in those garments.”
“Insects probably crawled up his nose. Not to mention mice. Mice droppings in the folds of those ridiculous garments. When you get right down to it, I did the parish a favor.”
“My thoughts precisely,” Caro says.
“Nobody but you and I know,” Vivi says.
“And the kids, of course,” Caro reminds her.
“Of course,” Vivi says. “The kids.”
“Speaking of the little monsters,” Caro says, “they must be starved. I know I am.”
Caro heads to the back and calls out: “Any hungry little children back there? ‘Chili con Caro’ coming up! Come and get it!”
They all gather in the kitchen, where Caro has had chili simmering so long it’s ever so slightly burned on the bottom of the big cast iron pot, but the chili is so well seasoned, no one can tell. She ladles out hot steaming chili into bowls for each child, and hands them the bowls on plates with pieces of cornbread that her maid cooked and left after cleaning earlier in the day. Vivi hands them napkins and soup spoons, and pours glasses of orange juice.
Once everyone has their food, they gather back around the fire, say the blessing real fast, and dig in.
“Spooks,” Caro says, “just try not to drop chili on the zebra rug, or my husband will think a Mexican tried to shoot it.”
For a while, all is quiet except the clink of spoons against the bowls and the happy sounds of hungry children eating good food. About halfway through the meal, Vivi says, “Kids, listen up, okay?”
They all look at her, not knowing what to expect after all they’ve witnessed today.
“Do yall like secrets?” Vivi says in her best Wicked Witch of the West voice.
“Yes ma’am!” they all say, their mouths filled with chili.
“Oh, never mind,” Vivi says. “Yall could never keep this secret.”
“Yes, we could!” all seven kids call out.
?
??We can keep a secret better than anyone in the world!” Little Shep says. “What is it?”
“Should we trust them?” Vivi asks Caro.
“Naw, I wouldn’t,” Caro says. “They’re a bunch of little sneaks.”
“Please tell us!” Lulu begs. “Yall can trust us. I promise. We’ll never tell. Hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye.”
“If yall really know how to keep a secret, there may be a reward involved,” Caro says.
“Yeah? Like what?” Turner asks.
“Like trips to Fred’s Hamburger Drive-In for root beer floats. We can bundle up and sip away and pretend it’s summertime at Spring Creek,” Vivi says.
“Exactly,” Caro nods.
“When?” Little Shep asks.
“Soon,” Vivi replies.
“I’m not keeping a secret unless yall get us root beer floats tomorrow,” Little Shep says.
Vivi throws Caro a look.
“Kid drives a hard bargain,” Vivi says.
“Takes after his mother,” Caro says, and takes the last piece of garlic bread before Lulu can grab it.
“What’s the secret, Mama?” Baylor asks. He has hardly eaten anything. Baylor does not eat when he is upset, and today has upset him.
“The secret is this,” Vivi says, like she is originally from Transylvania. “I sideswiped the Infant Jesus of Prague today. And no one must ever know but us. The Prague Nine.”
“You didn’t sideswipe Him,” Little Shep says, “you knocked Him down and called him Shorty.”
Caro lets out a laugh. Vivi tries to keep a grown-up face.
“Well, that is the secret. Can yall keep it till the day you die?”
They all gasp. They love this. It is a spicy new ingredient stirred into the thick soup of secrets they already live in.
“You want us to lie?” Lulu asks, excited.
“Of course I don’t want you to lie!” Vivi protests, laughing like the idea is preposterous. “Lying is a sin against the Ten Commandments. I simply want you to forget. Forget we ever drove by Divine Compassion today. Forget you ever laid eyes on that Infant Jesus of Prague.”