Chapter One
If you want to visit Boutin, Louisiana, you drive south until the road runs out. My grandma Nonnie says that road gets shorter every year, so if you’re coming, you’d better hurry.
You’re running out of time.
And you want to visit Boutin. We have live oak trees that are older than the state itself. Most of them are draped with Spanish moss, which is like nature’s version of lace. Sunsets over the marsh set the sky on fire and turn the water a real pretty shade of pink.
My best friend, Maddie, who’s also my cousin, liked to point out that we had humidity and mosquitoes too, but that was because she wanted to move to a big city without either.
But I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. I fished whenever I wanted, or shrimped with Mama and Nonnie, or just sat on the back porch and listened to the cicadas.
At the moment I was pretending to listen to Mrs. Hebert review the formula for the area of a circle. Mostly I was staring out the window and praying it would stop raining already. It had been raining since yesterday, and Nonnie and I were supposed to go fishing after school today. She’d said she’d let me drive the boat.
“Jillian Robichaux?”
I snapped my head to the front. A couple of students giggled.
“If the radius is seven, what is the area?” Mrs. Hebert’s tone made it clear she’d asked this question already. “A equals pi r squared, remember?”
The only pie I was really concerned about at that moment was the pecan pie in our fridge. I was not going to spend the rest of my life sitting in a room working math problems. Being inside all day made me jumpy—made my head hurt and my skin crawl. I breathed better outside, thought better on the move. I wanted a breeze on my face and the wide-open sky.
Maddie mumbled what was probably the answer under her breath, but I couldn’t hear over the sound of the sudden downpour. Everyone turned to stare out the window.
“Eyes up here, please. You’ve all seen rain before.”
“Yeah, and we’ve all seen Mrs. Pitre down at Dell’s in her bathrobe,” Derek Cannella said. “But if she was in her bathrobe and curlers outside this window, we’d still all look.”
I snorted. Maddie looked shocked.
Mrs. Hebert did not get angry. She’d been dealing with seventh graders since God was a boy. She’d taught my mama and Derek’s mama. If our parents came through Boutin schools, odds were she’d at least attempted to teach them the area of a circle. She said our parents were responsible for her first gray hairs and we were going to be responsible for her last.
“I’m sure you’re right,” she told Derek. “Now why don’t you tell me what the area is?”
“C’mon, Mrs. Hebert, I can’t think when I’m this hungry.”
“That’s worrisome, since you’re always hungry,” she said.
“Somebody get that boy a granola bar or something,” I said. “Otherwise we’ll all go hungry.”
The class laughed, including Derek. “Man, that was way back in third grade.”
He’d disappeared during spelling and our teacher had found him hiding in a closet, eating out of everyone’s lunchboxes. “Yeah, but my nonnie had packed me a couple of pralines that day, so I’m still holding a grudge.”
“If anyone should be holding a grudge, it’s me,” Mrs. Hebert said. “Stop hijacking my lesson.”
The intercom rang throughout the school. Mrs. Hebert threw up her hands and we all slid to the edges of our seats. “Attention students,” said our principal, Mrs. Melancon. “Due to the rain, we are letting out early.”
My shout of joy came flying right out of my mouth. Joy was quick like that sometimes.
Mrs. Melancon paused long enough to let us express our approval before continuing. “School will also be canceled tomorrow.”
I whooped again and gave Maddie a high five. Sometimes life was good. Sometimes it gave you days off instead of math quizzes.
“Stay tuned to the local news for updates, though at this time we anticipate returning to school on Friday. If you ride the bus, you need to get to the front on the bell, as the bus is already here.”
I swept everything on my desk into my bag. Maybe Nonnie would take me fishing all day tomorrow. Surely this rain would be over by then.
The bell rang.
“Tomorrow’s quiz will be on Friday instead!” Mrs. Hebert shouted as we practically sprinted out of the classroom. I couldn’t bother worrying about that quiz now. I was going to spend the rest of the day eating pecan pie and trying to beat Nonnie at cards.
We all poured into the high school side of the building like the Mississippi dumping into the Gulf. The walls between our two sides of the building were filled with group pictures of every graduating class since 1942—my grandparents were on that wall, and my parents, and all my aunts and uncles and cousins. Maddie and I shoved our way through bigger kids to get in the bus line. There was no cover, so even though we were both wearing rain jackets, we were going to get wet.
Soaking wet, as it turned out.
The bus was right outside the building, but it still felt like I’d been caught in the washing machine. I dripped the entire way down the aisle. Dripped all over my seat. Realized I would be sitting in a puddle all the way home.
“I can’t believe they canceled school over rain!” I said.
The rain seemed to take offense at that. It fell harder.
Ms. Shelby, our bus driver, didn’t even bother trying to keep us quiet. The younger kids were bouncing in their seats, and it sounded like the high school kids behind me were planning a party.
“Are you going to your dad’s this weekend?” Maddie asked. Her dark hair was plastered to the back of her neck.
“Nope.” Dad hadn’t asked me to come stay in months. He lived about two hours north and, according to his occasional phone call, spent most of his time working. I spent most of those phone calls pretending I didn’t care that he was too busy to see me.
“I’ll ask my mom if you can spend the night on Saturday. I think my dad’s cooking a jambalaya for the LSU game.”
Sometimes Maddie tried to replace my dad with her dad. But she didn’t have to do that. Besides the fact that her dad was already my parrain, I had Mama and Nonnie loving me more than fifty fathers (or godfathers) ever could.
But I sure wouldn’t turn down her dad’s jambalaya.
The bus rumbled through town. It didn’t matter that the rain blurred almost everything outside the bus windows. I’d lived in Boutin my whole life and knew this place with my whole heart. I knew that the gas station was packed, most people getting bread, beer, and fuel for their generators. Mama called that the Louisiana storm kit. Velma Washington, who ran the gas station, probably had two pens in her hair and was looking for her glasses. I knew that the old men who stood outside the Shrimp Shed and gossiped would have moved just underneath its front porch, barely out of the weather and absolutely complaining about it. I knew that most of the buildings needed painting, that nothing new had been built in the last five years, and that, for some reason, all of those things combined comforted me and made me feel safe.
Maddie got off at her house. Like most in Boutin, hers was built on stilts. When you couldn’t control the water, you had to outsmart it. The narrow stilts holding up her house were the gray of the sky and almost disappeared into it, making it look like her house was floating. Reed, her little brother, stomped in every puddle on the way up the gravel driveway. Maddie fussed him as the bus pulled away.
The bus was mostly empty by the time we crossed Low-Water Bridge. It was flat and wide open here, past hurricanes having taken the trees and some of the houses. Every once in a while, lonely poles rose out of the ground, reminders of a house that hadn’t been rebuilt. Beyond that, it was all marsh grass and canals. And in between the two was home.
The bus stopped at the end of my driveway. I pulled on my hood, gave Ms. Shelby a thumbs-up, and sprinted to the house. There were too many puddles to dodge, and my shoes and socks were soaking wet by the time I made it to the front porch. I shook off like a dog and yanked open the screen door.
Nonnie stepped out of the kitchen. Her pants had been rolled a few times at the ankles, but the edges were still frayed where they dragged on the ground. I’d always wondered how God crammed all of Nonnie’s grit and grump into her. Papa had always said Nonnie had a gallon’s worth of tough in a pint-sized container. But he’d only said that when he was sure she wasn’t listening. “You look like a drowned possum.”
“I am a very hungry drowned possum.” And I’d managed to bring a lot of the rain in with me.
Nonnie kissed me and gave me a little push. “Go get out of those wet clothes and come on in the kitchen. I made a gumbo.”
Nonnie said I love you with food.
I peeled out of my clothes and tossed them into a soggy mess in the bathtub. I slid on thick socks and sweatpants and a sweatshirt and padded into the kitchen.
Nonnie already had my gumbo on the table.
I filled my spoon, blew on it a few times, and shoveled in several mouthfuls. We’d caught the shrimp and crab ourselves, and Nonnie made her roux extra dark and smoky, just the way I liked it. She’d also been extremely generous with the Tony’s—it was salty and spicy and perfect. If home had a taste, it would be my nonnie’s seafood gumbo.
The wind blew. Rain splattered against the kitchen window. I shivered.
“Have you heard from Mama?” She worked forty minutes away in Carolton. I wished she didn’t have to. I didn’t like the fact that she was there when we were here. What if the road went underwater and she was caught on the other side? I didn’t want her to have to stay the night in Carolton. I wanted her home.
“I have not.”
I tapped my fingers on the table. Reminded myself that this was south Louisiana and Mama drove in the rain all the time. She’d be fine. But it felt like I had my own rainstorm going on inside, and I’d only really feel steady once we were all sitting around the kitchen table.
Nonnie frowned at my antsy fingers and poured herself a cup of coffee. “Have I ever told you about the time I saw the roux-ga-roux?”
“Many times.” Other people’s grandmas told stories. Mine told yarns.
“Hmph. Then maybe you should tell it to me.”
I shook my head. Nobody could weave a tale like Nonnie. She made the impossible seem possible.
“Somebody is going to have to tell the Robichaux stories after I’m gone,” she said.
I stared at the scarred table. Papa had built it out of cypress when he and Nonnie had gotten married. They’d eaten all their meals here. Mama had done her homework here. They’d paid bills and played cards and prayed at this table.
Cypress was a soft wood. If I looked really hard, I could see loops and swirls of letters and numbers. Knife marks. Stains. If this table could talk, it would have as many stories as my nonnie.
So she must have really believed in me if she was putting me in charge of the family stories. Not that I couldn’t do it. I was a Cajun, like my nonnie, and a Robichaux. It was just that I didn’t think I had fully inherited her story magic.
The rain eased up enough that I could hear tires on gravel. I stopped drumming my fingers and took another bite of gumbo. Its warmth filled my belly.
The front door opened. I heard Mama hang up her raincoat, and Nonnie gave me a quick wink as I relaxed back into my chair.
“They closed the office early,” Mama said as she came into the kitchen. “Bayou Lafourche is over its banks in some places.”
I got up and gave her a quick squeeze. “I’m glad you’re home.”
She squeezed back. “Me too.” She fixed herself a bowl of gumbo and sat at the table with us.
My insides didn’t feel so swampy anymore.
“I stopped and got gas on the way home,” Mama said, “but I only had the one gas can in the trunk, so it isn’t much.”
“I don’t think we’ll need the generator,” said Nonnie.
Because this wasn’t a hurricane or some kind of major storm. This was just rain.
Until it wasn’t.
Copyright © 2022 by Sarah Guillory
Copyright © 2022 by Alisha Monnin
