“Something got into you girls, but sure as God made the blue Lakes of Killarney, it was not the Holy Spirit.”
“It was Coco Robichaux!” Teensy said, then clasped her hand over her mouth.
“What did you say, child?” Father asked.
Teensy looked at her mother, who almost imperceptibly shook her head no.
Teensy gave Father O’Donohue the biggest smile she had. “I said, ‘Merci, Père.’ ”
“And how did you girls get away from your parents? Do you really crawl under the pews? You’re little gophers, to be sure. Tell me how you manage it—so I can prevent other little heathens from doing it the self-same.”
“You have to be smart,” Vivi said.
“And real little,” Teensy said.
“All right,” Father said, standing and shaking his head again. “I have Benediction to say in twenty minutes at the church. I want you mothers and daughters to stay in this office and not leave until every bit of those sweets has been eaten and that good strong iced tea is gone.”
He got up to leave, but stopped at the door and turned back to them.
“And try to contemplate that God sent us here to love Him and worship Him and venerate the mother of his Blessed Son. Also keep in mind that He is a generous God who does not expect perfection, but does expect reverence. God needs good little girls. But sometimes He also needs busy little gophers.”
With that, Father O’Donohue walked out of the room and closed the door.
“Chers,” Genevieve said, getting up and crossing to the table with the refreshments. “It seems we got the matter settled, non?”
Buggy leaned forward and asked, “But don’t you think some kind of punishment is in order for Viviane, if not all the girls? I wonder if Father was not too lenient in the matter.”
Genevieve smiled. She looked at Buggy and then at Mrs. Kelleher. “What do you think, Mrs. Kelleher?” Genevieve asked.
“Punishment, I think,” Rose Kelleher said, “is not a good way for friendships to start.”
Buggy was silent for a moment. She looked at the beautiful flower arrangements on the flower stand in Father’s office. She looked at her daughter Viviane. For a moment, she forgot about upholding Holy Mother Church and how important it was for her daughter to behave like a good daughter of Mary.
“Now, Madame Abbott,” Genevieve said, “will you help us follow Father’s orders? We’ve got plenty of delectable sweets to enjoy here.”
At that, Mrs. Rose Kelleher stood to help Genevieve distribute the refreshments. She handed Buggy a glass of iced tea and a plate of lemon bars.
“Thank you, Mrs. Kelleher,” Buggy said.
“Won’t you please call me ‘Rose’? If our daughters are going to be friends, I hope we will, too.”
“Mais oui!” Genevieve said, raising her glass of tea in a toast.
Necie swallowed almost the entire glass of tea she had been holding, before daintily wiping the sides of her mouth with a napkin. Then she ate two lemon bars one after the other.
“Moms, can I have another lemon bar?”
“Of course, Necie, help yourself.”
For the first time since she entered the room, Necie rose and crossed to the table, where she helped herself to another sweet.
“Necie?!” Vivi squealed. “Is that your real name?”
“I love that name!” Teensy said. “C’est bon!”
Necie smiled. “It’s my nickname. I like it better than ‘Denise.’ My friends call me ‘Necie.’”
Buggy rose from the love seat and walked over to admire the flowers and chat with Mrs. Kelleher. She thought of telling them her real name, too. But she did not.
The three girls took over the love seat, their legs dangling in rhythm.
Necie took another long sip of tea. Then, out of the blue, she let out a burp. A very loud, nonladylike, non-good-girl burp. Vivi and Teensy sat beside her and began to crack up. Necie hid her face in her hands. Each mother was still for a moment, unsure of the situation.
“Necie, Sweetie,” Mrs. Kelleher said, reaching for Necie’s hands. “Are you all right? You aren’t crying, are you?”
Necie removed her hands from her face. She had not been crying. She had been trying to hide how hard she was laughing. Once her hands dropped from her face, little-girl laughter ripped through her body like it had been pushing to get out. She started laughing harder than she ever had in her short life. Laughing at a burp. Something she never thought she would ever do. Burps were to be hidden.
But not from her new friends.
Burps were just one more thing in the wide world to laugh at. And Necie was starting to see how funny it was to be a little girl alive in this life. She had nine brothers and sisters and dozens of cousins. But now she had two friends who turned church into an adventure. Now she had two real friends who had not found Coco Robichaux but would keep looking for her the rest of their lives. That didn’t matter now, though. Nothing mattered except that they had found one another. In the whole wide world, they had found true sister-friends. They would crawl on the ground to reach each other. They would not let one another get away. They would create their own original liturgy, if that’s what it took to stay together.
HOBNOBBIN’ AT THE BOB
December 1930
One Saturday evening in December, Genevieve brought little Vivi Abbott and Necie Kelleher along with Teensy to see a show at The Bob Theater. She’d had her dressmaker, Mrs. Boyette, make them little red velvet frocks, each slightly different, but with matching white lacy collars. In tiny stitching on the collar in the back was a sprig of mistletoe, hand-stitched so that only the most astute eye could even see it. But the girls knew it was there, and they felt like walking Christmas gifts!
There was a magic show on tour: “Master Giovanni and His Miraculous Galaxy of Mystery.” In order to ensure the girls’ attendance, Genevieve had creatively explained to Buggy that the magician anonymously donated three-quarters of all the money he made to the Catholic Church. In Buggy’s mind, that turned Master Giovanni from a devil magician to a man who, sinful though his profession was, paid Mother Church for every magic trick he pulled in front of all those innocent eyes. Buggy then explained this to Mrs. Kelleher, and now all three girls were headed for a night of non-Catholic magic.
Vivi was over the moon at spending this cold December Saturday night with the divine Genevieve and her sassy little daughter Teensy and her new friend, Necie. Genevieve Whitman was the kindest and most beautiful lady Vivi could imagine walking the Louisiana earth. She was beautiful with flashing eyes and jet-black hair, and you got the feeling that life was more exciting when you were with her, that the world was bigger. She sang a lot, and she often suggested that they dance instead of walk. She’d say even about the most regular everyday things: “Faire une danse, filles!” Throw a dance, girls, throw a dance!
Genevieve had become friendly with Mister and Mrs. Bob Brewer, who owned The Bob in Thornton, along with several other theaters, their flagship theater being The Robert down in New Orleans. The first time the Brewers met her in their theater, they thought Genevieve was part of the touring act that had just arrived from playing in Shreveport. Given her gypsy skirt and huge gold hoop earrings and a bright orange turban on her head, this was understandable. Vaudeville players still came through town occasionally, offering temptation to souls like Genevieve to run away with the circus. Genevieve loved the smell of greasepaint and popcorn; she loved the singers and dancers and piano players; she loved the men who hauled sets and transformed The Bob into another world. She always arrived at the theater early to get the best seats.
“Welcome to our town,” Mister Bob had said when Genevieve walked in long before any other customers arrived. “We look forward to your show being a big hit.”
“Oh, non, non, chers,” she had said, thrilled to be mistaken for a performer. “I wish I were a player! I am a wife and mother. This is my daughter Teensy, and sometime you will soon meet my boy, Jacques. We go to
Divine Compassion. You’ve seen us there.”
“Well,” said Mister Bob, nodding, “welcome to our theater. We hope you and your family will find a happy home away from home here.”
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Bob said. “And your daughter must meet our daughter, Caro. They’ll get along gangbusters. Caro loves other little moving picture nuts.”
“Well, my Teensy is a nut, I guarantee,” Genevieve said, laughing. “She didn’t fall far from the tree!”
Not everyone in Thornton thought so highly of Genevieve Aimee St. Clair Whitman. She was married to one of the richest men in town, Newton S. Whitman III, the president of Garnet Savings and Loan. They met when she was going to the Ursulines Academy in New Orleans, compliments of a rich friend of her bayou trapper father. Her patron thought such a smart girl should have a first-rate education. Newton Whitman was confident that he was just the man to tame the wildly beautiful and willful Genevieve. Any woman that ravishing could be turned into a refined southern lady who would make the perfect wife and mother of his children. Or so he thought. It was like wild fillies. You break them, that’s all. He was wrong. Mr. Whitman could pinch Genevieve’s spirit like a tight girdle to the point of pain. But he could never tame her.
Genevieve did not want to be a “lady” in the same way that Mr. Whitman and most Thorntonians expected. Her language was still peppered with Cajun French, and she dressed in her own distinctive fashion. She wore turbans when she felt like it, and she wore earrings that didn’t match because it was fun, and her lipstick was always a little more siren-colored than most good Catholic ladies wore in the little river town of Thornton, Louisiana. Some were offended by Genevieve’s hairdos and hats, and claimed that the way she wrapped a scarf around her head made her look more like a Negress in a head rag than the wife of a respectable banker. Genevieve decided to take this as a compliment. When she thought of the other Anglo ladies her age in that town, she said, she’d rather be a Negress than a half-dead proper white woman.
Genevieve loved the vaudeville acts, and she adored the moving pictures. Entering The Bob took her to different worlds, even though it was only a fifteen-minute walk from her house. Genevieve took Teensy, and often Jack, with her to every single function ever held at The Bob, unless one of them was seriously ill. Genevieve always said, “Nothing picks me up quicker than a movie, a Coca-Cola, and a box of popcorn. I could walk in feeling like I didn’t want to live anymore, and walk out on cloud nine.”
She didn’t know the difference between a first-rate show and a third-rate show, and she didn’t care. It was all entertainment. It was razzle and dazzle, and that was enough for her. She went to almost every performance of any live act that came to town, and she saw each movie at least three times.
Over time Genevieve had become more than just a regular. The theater and the Bobs themselves became en famille. If the ticket taker, Miss Lelia, was sick, Genevieve took her place. If the concessionaire Gerald Giroux’s wife was sick—and she was often poorly—Genevieve would sell Mars Bars and Jujubes and Coca-Colas from the soda fountain. This drove Mr. Whitman half-mad with shame and embarrassment. The thought of the wife of the president of Garnet Savings and Loan selling candy in public caused him to threaten her more than once. He forbade her to work at that theater like a common shopgirl. Genevieve would just nod, smile, and say, “Oui, yessir.” Then when one of the usherettes came down with a bad case of pneumonia, Genevieve donned the usherette uniform, complete with crisp cap and flashlight, and took her place.
Genevieve was an uppity woman, one that her husband did not seem to be able to control. This made her both mysterious and glamorous to the little girls. She looked like an imported exotic visiting Thornton. As for the Brewers, they cherished Genevieve. They became close in the way you only do when you work with someone.
As Genevieve and her three Christmas elves approached the theater, the red light from the huge neon B, O, and B letters (stacked one on top of the other above the marquee) cast a warm rosy glow down on the four of them. It made Vivi, Teensy, and Necie’s velvet dresses look even redder and gave them a magical, dreamlike softness as the three little girls twirled around in the cold air. The girls were captivated by the Christmas lights that rimmed The Bob’s curved, modern ticket booth. The wide shiny metal trim of the booth wrapped above and below the windows, and the golden light from inside spilled over the woman who talked through the small metal circle set in the glass. For the holidays, Mister and Mrs. Bob had also decorated the booth with swags of pine boughs and red holly berries below the ticket taker’s window, and the pine needles smelled so good in the cold air. On the front doors of the theater there were two big wreaths decorated with pinecones. Shimmering through the carefully ironed red ribbon reused from the year before were seedpods from sweet gum trees that had been dipped in white glue and rolled in gold and red glitter—all handmade by the Brewer family in their big kitchen. When glitter fell to the linoleum, Mrs. Bob would say, “Don’t yall worry. Glitter on a kitchen floor is the sign of a good life!”
The Bobs greeted Genevieve and the girls warmly as they arrived in the lobby. Few people knew Mrs. Bob’s first name. Genevieve did. But she never told. Mrs. Bob hated her first name. “Being called Mrs. Bob suits me swell,” she’d say when asked. She would also answer to “Bob” in a pinch. The fact that it was her husband’s name didn’t bother her a bit.
To Vivi, Teensy, and Necie, the high-vaulted lobby always felt so exotic, with its burgundy and red floral carpeting and rose walls. But it was even more exciting than usual with the garlands of holly strung above the doors. The moldings and trim work were painted to look like bronze, and there was a large bronze and red glass light fixture that surely came from the Orient. In the middle of the lobby stood a Christmas tree strung with popcorn, with lots of little wrapped gifts underneath.
“Cold enough for you?” Mister Bob asked.
“Temps froid, oui, oui!” Genevieve said, taking off her hat of red fox fur, bedecked on the side with a rhinestone pin.
The little girls stomped their feet to warm up. “Good evening, Mister Bob,” they said.
Mrs. Bob came out from one of the storerooms, wiping her hands on her apron, which she promptly removed. “Good evening,” she said, giving Genevieve and the three girls a big smile. Vivi and Teensy and Necie were about to wish her the same when they heard barking from somewhere in the corner of the lobby.
“Le Joyeaux Noël decorations are so charming,” said Genevieve.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Bob said. “The holly is from that big old holly tree in our backyard. We wanted the outside decorations too, so everyone can have a little Christmas cheer, even those who can’t afford the price of a movie. Hello, little girls, how pretty you look!”
Vivi, Teensy, and Necie were about to thank her when they heard the barking again.
“Do you have a doggie here?” Necie asked, hiding behind Genevieve. “I’m scared of dogs.”
Mrs. Bob rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes, we have a little doggie, don’t we, Mister Bob?”
Taking Necie by the hand, Mrs. Bob helped her with her coat and hat. “You don’t need to be afraid of this dog, Denise.”
“This dog is only half-wild,” Mister Bob said. “We know her parents.”
“I bet I know who it is!” Teensy said.
“We do have a doggie here,” Mrs. Bob said, giving Necie’s shoulder a squeeze, and gathering the coats and hats of the others to hang inside the coat-check room. “A doggie we named ‘Caroline,’ but who is calling herself ‘Rin-Tin-Tin’ tonight.”
At this, Caro crawled out on all fours from behind the concession counter with a Baby Ruth hanging out of her mouth.
“Hi-ho, Teensy,” she said. “Hi-ho, Necie Scaredy Cat.” Then she glared at Vivi. “Who the foreigner?”
Necie shyly started to speak. “This is our friend, Vivi—”
Putting her fingers at her forehead and wiggling them as though she were trying to hypnotize Necie, Caro said, “I will find out
myself.”
Caro gave several more barks, then stood straight up and stared down at Vivi, who was three inches shorter than she was. Caro looked Vivi up and down, as if to assess whether Vivi should belong to the gang at The Bob.
“Who sailed the seven seas?” Caro demanded.
“Sinbad?” Vivi said.
“What is the name of the elephant in the Ringling Brothers Circus, the one that leads the parade when they come to town?”
“I don’t know,” Vivi said.
Caro smiled, evil in her eyes. “What do you know?”
Vivi walked over to Caro and rubbed her hands all over Caro’s head.
“You’re a brave dog, Rinty,” Vivi said.
Caro allowed her head to be rubbed, and moved her head around just like a dog does when getting such strokes.
Then Vivi said, “Your hair looks like a Yubangi.”
“I am Yubangi!” Caro said, pulling her head away from Vivi’s hands. “I am wild. I grew up with Tarzan.”
“Me too,” Vivi said.
“Then we’re sisters,” Caro said.
“Sisters of the jungle!” Beating her chest, Vivi gave out what she imagined was the best Tarzan cry at the top of her voice.
“Okay. Jungle sister like Baby Ruth?”
“Yuh, me like Baby Ruth,” Vivi said.
Caro put the candy bar back in her mouth and leaned over to Vivi. Vivi, without missing a beat, took a bite out of it straight out of Caro’s mouth.
“You good native girl,” Caro said, and stuck out her hand.
Vivi stared at her hand for a moment. She had never shook hands with anyone before. But she was not about to be thrown by this barking crazy-haired little girl. She put out her hand.
Caro gave it a shake. Then she gave Vivi the A-OK sign and said, like Spanky in The Little Rascals, “Okey-rokey.”
Caroline Eliza Brewer, known to all as Caro, made The Bob her own personal playground, and she enjoyed it like Heloise loved the Ritz. Caro was the towheaded terror of The Bob. She knew all of its best hiding places. She slid down the banisters, and barreled down the aisles fast as she could. She became the mascot for every vaudeville troupe that came to town. She bugged everyone who worked there to explain their jobs to her and to tell her stories—the more exotic and scary the better. She watched every movie so many times she could recite the lines along with Myrna Loy or Edward G. Robinson. When she got tired, she flung herself on one of the plush maroon velvet chairs in the mezzanine lounge and read anything she could get her hands on. She was learning to read faster than any of her siblings had, and her mother was quite proud of it. Caro’s brother Lowell was three years older than she, and wanted only to play baseball. He was rarely at The Bob. Her big sister, Mary (named for the Blessed Virgin Mary and Mary Pickford) was already thirteen, and she had better things to do. Baby Will was still an infant, and he was left at home with Lavonia, their maid, most of the time. Caro was not cute, and she was not “spoilt rotted.” She was spoiled just enough to be confident. Her legs were long, and she wore overalls everywhere she went, except to Mass. She had cut her hair herself so that it stuck out like a young primate in the wild, which broke her mother’s heart. There was something untamed about Caro. Genevieve recognized this in her own daughter and in Vivi and Caro, and it made her fierce for them. She knew that Necie would always find her way in polite society, but she feared for the other three.