The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder

  Tucker’s voice broke in a sob. He covered his eyes with his hands. For a moment, the whole gathering held its breath.

  He looked back out and continued. “He taught me that true kindness includes the ability to ask for forgiveness, and to forgive.”

  I watched Miz Lizbeth as she ever so slightly touched her short widow’s veil.

  “As a boy growing up, I did my best to listen to Papa. I trusted him. He always wanted the best for me—no matter what it cost.”

  I couldn’t tell if I was imagining it, but it seemed that Tuck was now staring straight at me.

  “It took me a while to understand Papa’s lessons on being a man in the truest sense. He raised loving a woman to an art form. I’m seeing that the way he treated my grandmother—so different from the way my own mother was treated—was gallant, a word Papa Tucker would never have used himself.”

  Olivia, who’d been getting worked up in her seat, called out, “Amen!”

  The attendants, most all of them white, were not used to shouting in church, and a good number of people crooked their heads around. I figured there would be some sore necks in La Luna the next day.

  “Thank you, Olivia,” Tucker said, and smiled.

  “My grandfather knew most everyone, and most everyone knew him. Sitting up here is Will Ponder. While Will is easily twenty years his junior, their friendship was solid and true.

  “The man who Papa Tucker was closest to is sitting in the back—‘Pana,’ Papa Tucker’s name for him when Papa was around four years old. We white people just kept on calling him that. James LaVergne is his given name and he is as fine a man as I’ve been honored to meet. And he’s patient enough with us to let us keep calling him Pana.”

  Tuck looked out at us, and with what sounded like forced cheerfulness, said, “I’ll end by saying that I was lucky to have been loved by Papa Tucker. And by you, Miz Lizbeth. And by you, La Luna.” He smiled. “How about we say a silent prayer, then head on over to the Ponders’, where I hear there is a cochon de lait waiting for us.”

  We bowed our heads in prayer, eyes closed. But I couldn’t resist keeping mine open. I guess I thought I might have a chance to see Tuck when he didn’t know I was looking at him. Opening my eyes, though, I saw his eyes glance quickly at the back door of the church, where a woman in a blue skirt was quickly exiting. The look on his face was one of such pain and longing that it made me feel ill to witness it.

  I knew who it was. I had wondered if she would come. I feel the pull toward your mother. All pulls toward the mother have something in common. I watched him. What could he do? Run down the aisle to try and stop her before she could get away? But he did not run, and instead stood solemnly at the podium.

  The look on Tuck’s face: loss, longing, letting go. I know what these are. These years of good-bye. These times of good-byes. I thought of Sweet’s funeral. It hurts to hold on to anger. And I realized that I could no longer be angry at Tuck. In the presence of his grief, my anger turned back into love.

  After we left the church, when we were all at Uncle Tucker’s grave-side and Father Gerard was commending him to the earth, Tuck kept staring at me. I noticed he was clutching a small, clear vase of irises, and I wondered where he had gotten them. It was well past the season for them, and—

  I stifled a gasp as I suddenly recalled another bouquet of irises at Sweet’s funeral.

  When we all took a handful of dirt and tossed it into Uncle Tucker’s grave, Tuck’s hand brushed against mine. The contact was electrifying. I stared mutely at my hand, and when Tuck removed the irises from the vase and dropped them carefully onto the coffin, it sent a shiver through my whole body.

  I told myself, “We’re celebrating Uncle Tucker, as Tuck well knows. We cannot be thinking about each other.”

  When the ceremony was done, I got into my old Mustang with Sukey and her mother. Sukey, as usual, asked, “Okay, Calla, what’s up?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Come on, I could feel the vibrations between you and Tuck.”

  “That’s just your imagination.”

  “Bull,” Sukey started. But thankfully, her mother told her, “Sukey, have some respect and leave the girl alone.”

  When we got home, I changed out of my black funeral dress and into the charcoal gray outfit that Sukey had bought me back in New Orleans.

  And I began to pray, this time to Sweet. Sweet, my beloved, my husband, my heart is going out to this man who I no longer know. Oh, Sweet, give me guidance if you can.

  I keep seeing you and me eating leftover gumbo and laughing. You, in your clean brown pants and your sleeves rolled up, with your face all tanned and kind. Bless your sweet soul, bless how you told me, “I’ll love you, Calla Lily Ponder, in each and every way, each and every day, until the day I die.” You did that, my love. So how can I open up my heart to the past?

  Then I felt a sense of peace flow through me, like a blessing. Dear Sweet had always filled me with calm and certainty, along with passionate desire. Never with the wild adolescent confusion that I’d felt with Tuck. I had never doubted that Sweet deserved love and trust. But Tuck had betrayed me—how much, I wasn’t sure—and in some ways that were profound.

  The sense of peace faded, and I took it as a sign that my Sweet, my beloved riverboat pilot, was telling me to chart my own course.

  In most of the United States, roasting a pig outdoors on a spit is not your usual approach for cooking funeral food. Where I come from in Louisiana, a cochon de lait, a pig roast gathering , is expected. M’Dear and Miz Lizbeth weren’t born in La Luna, but Papa Tucker was. He could never rest in peace without the traditional farewell.

  My papa said he would host it at our family’s home. Since it was my house now, I was more or less expected to help out, so I did. Besides, it had been years since I’d been part of a cochon de lait.

  Pana slaughtered the pig, something he rarely ever did anymore. Butchering was hard work, and he was in his eighties. Besides, the older he got, the less he liked to see blood. He no longer even raised chickens to eat, he just raised them for the eggs. But on the day that Uncle Tucker passed, Pana let it be known that he would honor his oldest friend by personally slaughtering the pig.

  Two days before Uncle Tucker’s funeral, Pana and my papa sat in lawn chairs out behind the house and helped coach Pana’s grandsons and Sonny Boy and Will through all the steps of the old-time ritual. Pana was very specific about how things should be done. My father, who had learned from Pana, followed the old ways to the letter.

  After Pana slaughtered the hundred-pound pig, they prepared it for seasoning. Inside and out were salt and pepper, and dozens of cloves of garlic that had been dipped in a seasoning, the recipe for which had been passed down in Pana’s family for ages. Then the marinade took some cooking up, with no shortcuts. Finally, they shot the secret marinade into the pig before it was packed on ice. No one knew what was in that marinade, but one major ingredient was hot sauce—and not one you could buy at the store.

  The day before the funeral, they dug a big fire pit in my backyard, filling it with pecan wood and sugarcane. They drove the heavy spit supports into the ground and stuck the spit through the pig to roast.

  At three in the morning, the smell of smoke from the fire pit woke me up. By then the coals were ready, and soon the aroma of roasting pig came drifting in. I wondered if Tuck was sleeping, or if he too was awakened by the smell. He was just next door, and if the bedroom window was even slightly cracked, he must be breathing in the tantalizing aroma, a Louisiana scent that he’d never smell in San Francisco, no matter how many fine chefs might cook in that city.

  By the time we got back from the cemetery, the smell of that pig tickling your nose was so good that your mouth couldn’t stop watering, even in our sadness.

  Everyone was told to gather at my place at three. Pana and Olivia’s daughter, Bertha, had stayed at the house to receive dropped-off food.

  Coleslaw and potato salad; green-bean-and-onio
n and spinach casseroles; succotash; carrot and raisin and three-bean salads; different Jell-O molds made with mandarin oranges, cottage cheese, and pineapple; plus good, crusty French bread with cheese.

  Then there were the desserts—all kinds of pies, including pecan, banana, and coconut cream; and carrot, lemon, poppy seed, and sour cream pound cakes.

  What a feast!

  My stomach had felt a bit churned up, but when Papa made me up a plate of pork, the tantalizing aroma woke up my appetite. The skin of the pig was perfectly crisp, and the inside well done and spiced.

  “Papa,” I said, “never in my life have I eaten anything so wonderful.”

  “Well,” Papa said with tears in his eyes, “there’s nothing like the true old ways.”

  Cochon de lait is just one of the old ways of my homeland, Louisiana, which makes us a world unto ourselves, and maybe not like the rest of America—and maybe not like the modern world. I sometimes feel that way myself.

  Chapter 42

  NOVEMBER 1984

  The postfuneral cochon de lait was filled with good food, good drink, old friends, and lots of stories about Uncle Tucker. Underneath one of the old live oaks, Miz Lizbeth sat in a chair made of old cypress that Uncle Tucker had made for her. The chair was outfitted with the most comfortable of cushions, and it was from there that she received condolences and hugs. What always touched me about her generation is how often they hold one another’s hands. I watched as that happened all afternoon and into the evening, to the soft music that Will played on his fiddle, then on his guitar.

  When the last of the pork had been wrapped in aluminum foil and put in paper sacks for people to take home, along with pieces of pie and leftover casserole put in containers that circulated around town over and over till nobody knew whose was whose, and nobody cared; when the old folks had already been seen to their cars or driven home; when Bertha, Sally, and Aunt Helen had all but swept the rug clean from under us to turn my home back into shape; there were just a few of us left.

  One was Tuck.

  And one was me.

  I would have preferred that the crowd had stayed a little longer. I didn’t know if I was ready to face him. Or if I’d even have to.

  Sonny Boy had already taken our father to his house. It had been a hard day for Papa. But no matter how tired he and Pana were, they wanted to make sure that their old friend had been celebrated properly.

  As people started to drift away, there was less and less of a buffer between Tuck and me. Finally, it was just Renée and Eddie.

  “Would it be okay if I stayed just a little longer?” Tuck asked.

  “Sure,” I said, in a voice that was a couple of notes too high.

  Renée, who was rounding up her kids to leave, shot me another one-eyed stare. This one definitely meant, “Watch yourself.” She gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, “We love you,” then she, Eddie, and their kids went out to the car.

  Then it was just Tuck and me.

  My heart was beating so loudly that I could almost hear it. I had to force myself to take deep breaths. I wondered if Tuck knew how nervous I was.

  He looked at me. I thought I could feel the heat coming off his body.

  “Well,” I said, looking around. “Good night. I have to finish up some dishes.” I turned in the direction of the kitchen.

  “Can I stay and help?” he asked and stepped toward me.

  “No, no,” I said, backing up, wishing I had a tray or something to hold between us, and wishing I were in his arms. “Thank you for your offer, but no, no, but thank you very, very much.” How much more idiotic could I sound?

  “Okay. Well,” he said, “thank you for being so gracious with the cochon de lait.”

  I looked at him and thought how I saw some of his grandfather’s face in his.

  “You’re welcome. It’s the way things are still done here. One of the old ways that still makes the community.”

  “Well, ’bye, Calla,” he said, and it sounded old-fashioned or something and made me want to kiss him. He turned, went out, and closed the door behind him.

  I stood in the kitchen and beat myself on the head with a dish towel. Was I really that scared? Was I really that scarred? Couldn’t I just wash dishes with the man, for goodness sake!

  My mind was an arcade of thoughts and emotions. With all these memories flooding back, I realized the only thing that could possibly console me now was Golden Princess.

  Running up the stairs to my room felt good. My body needed to move. In a second, I ripped off the funeral pantyhose, pulled on some jeans and a sweatshirt, and ran down the stairs and out the back door. But not before putting my hair back in a braid. I didn’t like my hair flying all around my face, especially when I was in the barn.

  Ah, it felt good to be outdoors.

  I felt invigorated by the comfortable air of the unseasonably warm November night. One of the things that I loved about returning to La Luna after those years in New Orleans was how easy it was to see stars. Lots of them.

  I walked into the barn and was immediately struck by that intoxicating smell of the horses, the sweet hay—and even the manure, sweet in its own way from the grass and feed. The smell of horses is one I love so much, and a comfort to me in so many ways. It was Nelle who taught me to ride, and thoughts of us riding together always came with caring for the horses. This old wooden barn was full of these scents, and I filled my lungs. I closed my eyes the way I do when I smell something good, and let it fill me up. I went over and stroked Golden Princess’s mane. “Hey Golden Princess, hey girlfriend,” I whispered as I nuzzled my face into the soft folds of her neck. I breathed in again, and immediately sensed another presence. Not Sable Star. And not Mister Chaz, Nelle’s gelding.

  This smell was human. Tuck. I didn’t know if I had thought his name or whispered it or shouted it, but it could have been anything because I was just so shocked.

  There Tuck was in the shadows, down by the dark brown gelding’s stall, talking to him softly, feeding him sugar cubes from his blue jean pocket. Tuck had changed clothes since the party, and was now wearing almost the same outfit he used to wear when we were teenagers. In fact, it looked as though he might have just reached back into his old closet and put on the rumpled white oxford cloth shirt and jeans, his look that I’d always loved. Both still fit him perfectly.

  Had I not noticed him when he came in? Was he already there, and I hadn’t been aware?

  I walked over and touched his horse’s mane, and my hand brushed his.

  “Calla,” he said.

  I took a step into him.

  “Tuck.”

  We each knew the other remembered that day in the hot morning sun, two teenagers drenched by sweat and rain and something that could have been love—that kiss, that morning, that touching.

  We kissed in the near dark this time, the horses’ smell all around us, the same horses making their own tired sounds as they shuffled and sighed in their stalls. Our bodies remembered that summer. And now, the same horses bore witness as we kissed. The inside of my mouth became the inside of his, until we didn’t know the difference.

  I pulled back, in shock. The moment was over. I tried to breathe.

  “We just seem to do that in here, don’t we?” I joked, stepping away nervously.

  “Yeah, Calla,” he said, and looked at my jeans. “Those the same ones you had on a few years back?”

  “You trying to talk like a La Luna boy?”

  “I am a La Luna boy.”

  “’Scuse me, I have to go finish cleaning up.” I needed to get out of there. I patted my horse, then flicked off the light.

  “It’s getting late,” Tuck said, following me out. “How about I give you a hand?”

  I knew my way back home with my eyes closed. Tuck stumbled twice. I didn’t reach out to help him.

  “I can clean up by myself,” I said.

  “Why don’t you just treat me nice?”

  “Who says I have to treat you nice?”

>   I walked up the kitchen steps, opened the door, then let it slam. He followed me in anyway.

  “Well, help if you want,” I said, and turned to the sink. I filled the sink with soapy water and started washing the dishes. Tuck grabbed a towel, and pretty soon, we had a rhythm going. I’d wash the plates, the silverware, and glasses, then hand them one by one to Tuck, who dipped them in the rinse water and dried them. Whenever my hand brushed Tuck’s, I couldn’t help but shiver. I didn’t trust myself to say a word.

  I washed the dishes in silence, feeling the hot soapy water, the soft scent of the mild detergent wafting up. We worked side by side without talking. The sound of the water splashing, the light clinking of silverware, the swoosh of the rinsing, the placing of the dishes in the drainboard rack.

  Then, without looking at me, Tuck said softly, “Calla, I’m sorry.”

  At first I thought I’d imagined it. I waited a while, kept washing. “’Scuse me, did you—did you just say something?”

  Tuck stopped rinsing dishes. “I’m sorry, Calla.”

  “Could you please look me in the face and say that again?”

  Tuck closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, tears were gathering.

  “I’m sorry for hurting you, Calla Lily Ponder,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m sorry I left.”

  Our eyes locked on each other.

  “It was a bad decision, Calla,” he said. “I never stopped loving you. I was young, I was stupid, and I was scared.”

  We were both silent for a moment.

  “Can you forgive me?” he asked.

  I turned. It was his eyes. The words were important. But it was his eyes.

  My hands were shaking. I kept on scrubbing at some crust stuck on a pie plate. Words were running around my head: honey, peaches, white flour, sugar…Run, run, danger, danger!

  I wanted to touch his cheek and assure him that I forgave him everything. I wanted to make him crawl across the desert on his knees.

  Could I forgive him? Had I already forgiven him? I must have, on some level, or I wouldn’t be standing there next to him washing the dishes after his grandfather’s funeral.