“But there’s also going to be so much happiness! You’re going to bring each other more happiness than you ever knew!”
Next we found the sweetest little house that was in our price range on the other side of St. Charles. It would take a fair amount of work, but that was okay with us. And I’d have a flower garden!
Then I got my wedding dress. Its overall look was kind of 1920s, and it was all ivory and cream. Aunt Helen made it partly out of M’Dear’s wedding dress, which had been made out of her own mama’s wedding dress. It had a drop waist like Grandmama’s, decorated with a lace band and a rosette from the lace of M’Dear’s dress. The same lace trimmed the wonderful boatneck collar, threaded through with M’Dear’s wedding ribbon. So I was going into my marriage embraced by both Grandmama and M’Dear.
When I told Sukey I was getting married, she said, “Now, don’t you dare make me wear one of those peach-colored bridesmaid’s gowns that cost a fortune, need eighteen fittings, and then you can never wear them again!”
“Sukey,” I said, “I’m not even going to try! You are my maid of honor, so you can wear whatever you want.”
I knew that was a dangerous thing to say, but I thought, This is Sukey we’re talking about.
We rented the Jasmine Inn for the reception, a bed-and-breakfast on St. Charles Street. I guess you could call it “shabby genteel.” It had big verandas on two floors: the beautiful Victorian Lounge, with its antique fireplaces, huge mahogany doors and bar, and stained glass chandeliers; and the peaceful Alberta’s Tea Room, which was full of French stained glass. All the rooms had antique beds and furniture.
And there was a ballroom with room for a band and a bar.
Almost all the La Luna gang came for the wedding and stayed at the Jasmine Inn: Papa, Sonny Boy and Will and their wives, Aunt Helen, Renée and Eddie with Calla Rose and Little Eddie, Miz Lizbeth and Uncle Tucker, Nelle, Olivia and Pana LaVergne, and Mister and Mrs. Melonçon from the café, along with other friends from La Luna.
Then there was all of Sweet’s family and friends from Donaldsonville. They wouldn’t fit into the Jasmine Inn, so we put them at the Corn Stalk, down in the Quarter. It was an old Louisiana-plantation-style home with a grand front hall, gorgeous bedrooms with vaulted ceilings, and that famous wrought-iron fence around it, with bars shaped like cornstalks. Sweet would stay there too, until we were married.
The night before the wedding, I went out on the upstairs porch of the Jasmine Inn. I breathed in the night air and looked up at the sky. There was the moon, and in it I saw the face of the Moon Lady. “M’Dear,” I prayed, “please come to me tonight. I need you! I need you to tell me how to be married, how to be a wife, how to be happy and to make Sweet happy, like you did with Papa. On my wedding day, I need you by my side.”
I waited, and I could swear, just for a moment, that I saw a cloud pass over the moon. It was like a wink.
I felt that M’Dear was blessing my wedding.
The next day, all of us girls got dressed together. Sweet, in the old tradition, was not allowed to see me. When we gathered in my room at the Jasmine Inn, Sukey brought an ice chest with three bottles of champagne and a couple of Cokes for herself. I like champagne, but I mean, really! I had to get dressed!
For posterity, we took a picture of Renée, who had been drinking little plastic glasses of champagne poured by Sukey, sitting on the commode. Her beautiful pink gown’s huge skirt was thrown up in the back behind her, making her look like a little flower coming up out of the toilet.
As for Sukey, well, Sukey was not going to be caught dead wearing pink, but she at least managed a deep lavender that somewhat blended in. And of course the bottom half was a miniskirt.
Somehow we managed to all pile into cars on time and head to the church. The drivers were honking the entire way. As soon as I got out of the car, I got a fanfare! Brass instruments just started blowing. I had no idea what was going to happen when I told Sweet, “You can just take care of the music.” And it couldn’t have been more beautiful. Everybody was already hugging and kissing and crying before we even got into the church.
We’d asked Father Gerard to give us a Nuptial Blessing, not a High Nuptial Mass, but our service was still Catholic enough to please everybody. Father Gerard’s talk got right to the point: “Okay, Calla Lily Ponder, and you, Joseph DeVillierre Chalon, y’all are here to get hooked up forever. And I’m here to bless you. I want to say that there’s going to be sadness in your life together, there are going to be tears, and you need to be ready to reach for that Kleenex and cry. Go ahead, cry out the tears. Let the real tears flow—but no fake alligator tears, trying to make the other person feel bad. If you slam the door and call the other one an ignoramus, do your darnedest to come back in and make up and smooch before the day is over. That’s where forgiveness comes in.
“And then there’s going to be joy. Because just from talking to y’all, I can say that the two of you are about the funniest folks I’ve ever met. You also have a great capacity to understand each other and for listening. So I say, keep on listening. Because if you want to be together forever, that’s going to take a lot of listening. That’s why the good Lord gave us ears.
“You will receive the body and blood of Christ. It comes from a broken body. And how appropriate—because we are human. Because we hurt each other and have to ask forgiveness. And there is no better place to learn about forgiveness than in the vessel of marriage. Now, let your love go forth and heal each other and those around you.”
Then Father Gerard said, “Do I have a ring-bearer here?”
Then one of Sweet’s nephews stepped out of the pew, cute as could be. With his black hair slicked all the way back, he looked like a baby seal. He brought up the ring on a little pillow to Sweet’s best man, Antoine, who took the ring and handed it to Sweet. Sweet held the ring while Father Gerard said the vows, which were partly traditional and partly our own.
We exchanged rings, then Father Gerard gave us both the host. “Now, take this body and blood of Christ,” he said.
At the end of Mass, Father Gerard said, “Okay, laissez les bons temps rouler!”
Antoine’s Cajun band kicked in—fiddle, cello, and the horns that had announced our arrival at the church. They played the Mamou Cajun two-step as Sweet and I marched together down the aisle. The whole church broke out in applause and whistling.
We held the reception in the Victorian Room at the Jasmine Inn. Antoine and his combo kicked off the dancing with that sweet Cajun waltz “Little Black Eyes,” a slow fiddle melody. Sweet twirled me out onto the dance floor. He held me, and we just moved together, lightly, like we were floating on air, circling the room past our families and all our friends. I thought, Never have I felt such complete and pure joy.
Renée kicked off her high heels and was dancing barefoot with her baby, that sweet little boy, on her shoulders. And Eddie, her husband, didn’t seem the least bit concerned that the child would fall. He’d torn off his tie and was doing the Twist with Olivia! Papa was dancing with Nelle, who wore a red satin cowgirl shirt and a pleated skirt. At one point Sonny Boy and Will lifted me up on their shoulders and carried me around the room while everyone cheered them on.
The party was still going strong at midnight, when Sweet and I stole away for our first night together as husband and wife.
People always want to go far away for their honeymoons, like Panama Beach or Cancún, Mexico. But I was lucky. I lived right where I wanted to be.
When we left the reception, Sweet brought me to our new home. I’d seen it in different stages of remodeling and had helped pick the colors and curtains and light switches. We decided to keep as much of the original house as we could, including the yellow claw-foot tub and the old gas range, which worked just fine.
Of course, we had to get a new washer and dryer from Sears, since the ones in the house were old and stinky. I got the kind with a glass front, so I could watch the way the clothes swished around. I’ve always loved just staring
into the front of those washers to see clothes swimming, sudsing, and turning, with the water beating against the glass.
When we got to our house, I was so surprised. The porch was all decorated with twinkly lights. Then, when we opened the door so Sweet could carry me over the threshold, rose petals came sprinkling down on us!
Who in the world would do this?
Later, I found out that with Ricky and Sukey’s help, Sweet had gotten all our furniture moved in, unpacked, and placed right where it belonged. Even the dishes and silverware were put away. I didn’t have to lift a finger.
“Thank you, Sweet,” I said. “Thank you, my husband, the man I will love all my life.”
And then Sweet carried me in his strong arms to our bedroom, where we made love, deeply and tenderly, for the first time.
When I lay there with Sweet, together in our wedding bed, it was not as though the bed were a rocket ship—like they sing about in the songs—but rather a round bowl of light.
I didn’t have a lot of experience, but those girls in high school were right when they named him Sweet. He touched me in places I’d never been touched, hidden places I didn’t even know about myself.
“How do you know to touch me there? Like that?” I asked.
“I just know,” he said.
Then he kissed my neck and all the way down my spine.
“How did you know to do that?”
“I just took a guess,” he said, and then he gently rolled me over. I began to feel my legs relax of their own accord. And somehow I felt myself become larger, my hips become wider.
Ohhh! As we started to rock back and forth, it was as though I could smell the La Luna River, the Mississippi River, and then on out to the ocean. All of that, and Sweet—oh, he is a wave. He is a wave that I can hold on to and ride. And we are out to sea and the waves are floating, they are flowing us back and forth and back and forth, coming into us and then back out into the water, and everything that ever held us back is going out to the ocean. Out to the ocean, which M’Dear said can hold anything, and it does hold anything. And I am holding on to my husband and he is holding onto me, until finally, we each break onto shore like a huge wave. And we land on the beach. And by that time, it has been so good and so full that we both start laughing.
We locked and unlocked one another for hours—until we fell asleep in each other’s arms, husband and wife. So this is what lovemaking can be. I see what Renée means when she says, “Calla, sometimes I just feel so wide open, you know, it feels like there’s room for anything.”
Afterward, I watched my husband sleep. And I knew why marriage is a sacrament. Why it’s sacred. That night our love was sacred, and I vowed that it always would be. At least one thing in life has to remain sacred, or this whole world will fall apart.
At dawn, I woke up and realized: I’m married! I’m a wife! Oh, it was terrifying to have said that big, fat, holy yes to Sweet! Marriage is not an escape hatch, not something to escape into so you can run and hide from the world. In fact, I thought that my commitment to loving Sweet was a commitment to loving the world more than ever before.
Oh, I hoped not just that I could let Sweet be a gift to me, but that through our love he would be a better gift to the world and to the people in his life. That I might be a blessing to him. That I might help him find out more about the kind of man he wanted to be. I knew that I’d married a man who had less fear than anyone I’d ever met. I wanted to see the good in Sweet, to keep on seeing it, no matter what happened, and to accept him for who he was, and for who he might become.
And I wanted to heal him, if he needed it. Because I was certainly in need of healing myself. Every time I thought that I was “put together,” I realized that we’re always putting ourselves together, gathering the world in, letting it sift down and form us.
So I prayed, Moon Lady, M’Dear, let me love Sweet, that he might be healed and be strong. May your purpose for him and for me in the world be helped along in this marriage. May any ghosts in my past be removed. Moon Lady, who wants to give us the Kingdom of Heaven right here, right now, help me so that Sweet can find the Kingdom of Heaven through the love that we’ve declared to each other, in the sight of God and everyone we know. Moon Lady, M’Dear, thank you for giving me the gift of my husband Sweet.
Now, please help me stop trembling, so I can get up and make my husband some cinnamon rolls.
Sukey called me late that afternoon. “Good morning!” she said. “We partied until six a.m.! The Jasmine Inn kicked us out on our butts! I stayed sober the whole night, and was the designated driver for at least fourteen of Sweet’s relatives.” She laughed and was silent for a moment. “And how are you?”
I said, “I’m married. I’m a wife. I’m a very happy wife.”
Chapter 29
1975
After I was married, I started to go to La Luna more often. Many times Sweet went with me. One weekend, Sweet and I arrived late in La Luna on a Friday night. We had breakfast with Papa, then I walked over to Renée and Eddie’s while Sweet went fishing with Papa.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her over coffee and cinnamon rolls. “You’re hiding something from me. You haven’t met my eyes all morning.”
“Nothing,” Renée said. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“I’ve known you all my life, Renée. You can’t hide from me.”
She finally met my eyes. “Tuck got married, Calla. In San Francisco. His wife is from there. That’s where they’re going to live.”
I turned away. Tears started to form in my eyes. Renée handed me a tissue. I brushed her away.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Oh, of course, I’m okay,” I said.
“I’ve known you all your life, Calla. You can’t hide from me.”
“It was a long time ago,” I said.
“I know,” Renée said, and stepped toward me. I stepped forward, and we hugged without speaking.
It was moments like these that M’Dear called “girlfriend moments.” When I’d asked her how she came up with that phrase, she’d answered, “Because I witness it all day long. And because I get to have them with Miz Lizbeth and with Renée’s mother. ‘Girlfriend moments,’” M’Dear had said. “They’re a little like ‘mama and daughter’ moments.”
Yesterday was the most beautiful blue-sky Sunday. Sweet made coffee, and then I sat in his lap in my kimono from JoAnn’s Vintage Palace, just one of the many clothing items that JoAnn decided I needed. We had our Sunday breakfast of coffee and cheese biscuits.
Then we got dressed and just started out walking. Most everything was in bloom, and there was that spring excitement in the air that just seemed to jump from the flowers right into you. I swore I could smell flowers in my hair and on my skin.
Sweet liked to take things in like I do and not talk too much. But when he did talk, it was to point out things that I would have never even noticed. That day he took me out on his boat, and he just turned off the motor and let us drift. “Feel the river,” he told me. And I felt so embraced by her and how her strong, steady current moved us along.
“Everything changed for me when I realized that the La Luna River flowed into the Mississippi,” I told Sweet. “If I moved to New Orleans, I would always have a ribbon of connection to home.” And oh, I really felt it in my body on the boat with Sweet.
Seeing New Orleans from a boat makes you realize, from a different perspective, that when you live in this city, you are living underwater—the water of the enormous Mississippi River is above you. In La Luna we just took for granted that the La Luna River was below us, but here I sometimes feel like I’m living in an exposed place that could get washed away at the drop of a hat. Don’t get me wrong, I love New Orleans. But sometimes I worried that we were living in the river’s place, and someday she might want it back.
It’s part of why, when I thought about making a baby with Sweet, I thought of being back in La Luna.
That evening after our trip on the river, we climb
ed into bed and made a new and different kind of love. Baby-making love. And afterward, I lay on top of Sweet and fell asleep. We were on the sleeping porch with air cooling our bodies, and it had started to rain. When I woke up, I started to think that something was cooking inside me. Just maybe. In fact, I invited a baby to come on down any time it was ready.
Renée and Eddie had hardly any married time together before they had Calla Rose. I wondered, if I got pregnant, would I still have the same fun and joy and high times making love with Sweet? I hoped so! Renée told me that I should get ready for a happiness that I could never imagine, if I had a baby inside me.
Summer arrived, and it was hot in New Orleans—I mean burning up, I mean scalding. I am talking high nineties with 98 percent humidity, and none of those sweet rains that usually come along in the afternoons to cool everything off. Everybody was running their air conditioners on high blow. All we did was slip from our air-conditioned houses to our air-conditioned cars to our air-conditioned work. Sometimes I had to tell the ladies on their way out of the shop, “Y’all, close that door! You’re going to let all our cool air out!”
One night Sweet and I woke up from a deep, sweaty sleep. He looked at me, and then got up to check the air-conditioning unit. Sweet told me, “Calla, that thing is deader than a doornail. We’re going to have to open up the windows.”
“Oh,” I said, complaining. “I hate this. I hate sweating. It is so hot.”
Sweet got up to fix us two cold Cokes over ice, and he brought mine to me in bed. He took his glass and held it against my cheeks. “Feel, Calla. Feel good?”
“Yeah,” I said, grouchily. “It feels good for a minute.”
“Okay,” he said. And then I could hear him quietly drinking his Coke. I sipped on mine. Soon I could hear my husband set down his glass, take several deep breaths, and then fall back asleep. I tried the same thing myself but I couldn’t. I was too angry at the air conditioner.