Creole Love Song

by NATHANIEL LAMAR

A STORY

I USED to work for the LaBotte family. That’s how I know what I’m going to tell you about Jemmie LaBotte. They lived up on Bayou Street in one of those big pink stucco houses with a wide tile porch and tall windows with fancy, yellow frosty-looking windowpanes.

Old man LaBotte was a doctor. He was queer in a way. I used to hear some of the white people around town say he was nothing but a “ham-fat” doctor. I never could quite get the straight of it. I do know one thing, though. He didn’t go around like the other white doctors in New Orleans did. I mean he never went around to highfalutin people like the kind of fine ladies his wife was always playing bridge with. As far as I know, he didn’t treat anybody but the Creoles down in the Quarter. Some people said it was because Dr. LaBotte was a Creole himself. They said that about Mrs. LaBotte too; but I didn’t believe it. He used to come down to the Quarter whenever somebody got hurt on their job or beat up in a fight. He had a smart way about him; he could always get money out of his patients. I know a lot of people that didn’t pay their house rent or their electric bills, but Dr. LaBotte got money out of them. He had a shiny green car, and whenever he came driving through the Quarter everybody would get in their windows and doorways and start yelling and waving at him; even old people.

I’d shout just like the rest of them. “Hey! Hey! There go Doctor. Doctor! Doctor! Hey there, Dr. LaBotte!!!”

That’s the way we’d go on. Sometimes he’d have his son Jemmie in the car with him. That was before Jemmie went off to medical school. Jemmie was almost grown, but he’d hang out of the car window and laugh when we’d shout.

Dr. LaBotte used to come to see my Aunt Albertine sometimes. My parents went to Chicago when I was little, and they didn’t come back. So I lived with Aunt Albertine. She was young and pretty — had a lot of men always hanging around our house after her. She had yellow skin and long brown hair; and she had a fine shape. She used to drink a lot. But the thing about her was that she knew it was bad for her. So she’d make me go out to a pay-station phone and call up Dr. LaBotte to come see her. I don’t know what he’d do for her because she wasn’t really sick. He talked to her; that was about all. But he could get her out of her drinking moods and she’d be all right for a while.

One day in the springtime Dr. LaBotte came to see us when Aunt Albertine was coming out of one of her moods. I was surprised, because he came to talk about me. “Why don’t you let Emory come see if he’d like to work for us up at our house, ‘Tine/ Light work— kind of helping around the house — you know. He could save, maybe — go back and finish high school in a little bit.”

At first Aunt Albertine didn’t say anything. Finally she sized me up and said, “He fifteen. Let him do what he want to. I don’t care. It ain’t like he was going far off.” She could tell I wanted to go by the way I was looking at her.

So I began working up at the LaBottes’. I think it was March when l started, and Jemmie LaBotte came home from medical school that June. He was a lot like his daddy; he laughed like him and acted just about like him. He was glad to be back home. Some days he’d roam through the house just smiling, like he’d never seen it before. And every evening he’d go walking down in the Quarter. Maybe he was hunting for somebody to cure, people said. I guess Dr, LaBotte was glad Jemmie was home too. He laughed more than I’d heard him laugh when Jemmie wasn’t there.

Jemmie LaBotte didn’t pay me much attention. I’d pass by him in the house and he always looked like he was thinking to himself, or sometimes he’d be talking to his mother and daddy. Sometimes he sat in the living room and read all the morning. I knew they were medical books; most of them were old and had pages as flimsy as tissue paper — they were full of fine print. Jemmie LaBotte seemed like a fool to me, reading like that in the summertime. Especially since he was supposed to have just graduated. One day I asked him, “You remember all you read."”

“Yeah. I sure do.” He laughed when he said it; he was a friendly somebody after all. “They make you — in a medical school.”

“But you’re not going back, are you? Your mother says you’re a doctor now.”

“I want to do what Daddy’s doing — doctor up people down there where you live.” He looked at me like he wanted me to believe he really meant it. I could see he meant it.

I wondered why Jemmie LaBotte didn’t have any friends. Once in a while somebody would call him on the phone and he’d talk a little while to whoever it was, but he never went anywhere much.

2

IT GOT so Jemmie and his daddy argued. They’d sit out on the front porch late in the afternoon. I could hear them through the screen door. The old man’s voice would be squeaky and high like he was afraid of something. “You sure you want to stay in New Orleans and practice?” he’d say. “You could always go back up there and study another year, if you wanted. You could be a specialist!” They’d talk a long time, and Jemmie would get worked up and keep telling Dr. LaBotte how much he wanted to be just like him. Jemmie LaBotte was always so serious about everything. “I don’t want you to quit, Daddy,” he’d say. “I’m not trying to make you quit. I just want to go down there with you.”

“You don’t know how they live — it’s hard to get to know. I understand every one of ‘em down there.” Dr. LaBotte’s voice sounded so old. I don’t think I’d ever thought he was old before. It was almost pitiful the way he kept trying so hard to get Jemmie’s mind off staying in New Orleans; like there was something in New Orleans he was ashamed of.

Mrs. LaBotte took Jemmie’s side. She must have thought old man LaBotte was jealous of Jemmie’s being young and right out of school. Most of the time Dr. LaBotte wouldn’t say anything to her when she started talking, because he knew what she was leading up to. “You know good and well you ought to let Jemmie make some of your calls for you — ‘specially those late calls. It’d be better for him to go down there in the Quarter at night when you’re tired.”

It got so when somebody from the Quarter called up old man LaBotte he’d get his bag and leave the house before Mrs. LaBotte and Jemmie had a chance to ask him where he was going. And when he was home he stayed shut up in the little office room and acted crabbed.

Mrs. LaBotte was the one who finally did it. One morning Dr. LaBotte didn’t come out of his bedroom early like he usually did. And Mrs. LaBotte tiptoed around, because she said he needed rest. That bedroom door stayed closed even when the phone started ringing. It was an old man called David calling up from a grocery store. I knew who he was because he stayed about two blocks from where me and Aunt Albertine live. The children in the Quarter named him “that l’il man with the great big head.” He wanted to tell Dr. LaBotte he had the “choky-feeling” in his chest again and he couldn’t lie down and sleep. So Mrs. LaBotte went in the bedroom. But there wasn’t any fussing between them. All Dr. LaBotte said was “Tell Jemmie he can go down there— he wants to go.” I think Mrs. LaBotte had worn him down to nothing. His voice sounded so tired. “Let Jemmie go down there—”

I went down to the Quarter with Jemmie LaBotte because I knew where David’s house was. It’s hard to find a place you’re looking for in the Quarter because the house numbers are all faded off. I’m telling you the truth, it felt good riding through the Quarter in old man LaBotte’s shiny car, because everybody really did look when they saw it was me in there. Jemmie was nervous.

David’s house was like the rest of the houses down there; the weatherboards were old and needed some paint. And it had fancy rusty iron banisters around the front porch, with iron flowers and curls. The room old David was in had the shades down and it was black-dark, except David had a little candle sitting in a piece of saucer on his chiffonier. Jemmie LaBotte didn’t, know what that little candle was for. He didn’t pay it much attention at first; but I knew. You see old folks always burning a candle when they’re afraid they’re going to die, or afraid somebody in their family is going to die. Sometimes you’re supposed to put pepper on the candle because everybody says it’ll keep the worms from eating you after you’re dead. David was propped up on a pillow. I sat down on a little stool by the door. Jemmie said, “You know good and well you ought to have some air in here, hot as it is.” And then he went over to the window to let up the shade.

But old David screwed up his face at Jemmie LaBotte. “I wish you wouldn’t be messin’ wid that window shade, ‘cause that air out there got things in it bad for my feeling right here.” He hit his chest with his wrinkled-up little hand. I could see he didn’t like Jemmie LaBotte.

“Air never did hurt anybody’s heart trouble.” Jemmie LaBotte pulled up the shade a little.

“Your daddy don’t never make me keep no air in here if I don’t want none.” I think that was the first thing that got Jemmie. And then old David wouldn’t let Jemmie touch him with the needle, He held out those skinny old arms like he was scared to death. “Naw! Naw! You ain’t going to put that thing in me. I don’t want to have that thing sticking in my arm. And your daddy don’t never stick me with none, either!”

I felt sorry for Jemmie LaBotte. He stood there like he didn’t know what to do. Old David kept on hollering, “Oh Jesus! Oh Jesus! You going to stick me with that thing. Your daddy don’t never do nothing like that!” Finally Jemmie LaBotte just took a good hold on his arm and jabbed him very quick; and you’d have thought David was having a baby by the way he was taking on. But after that I started feeling good toward Jemmie LaBotte, because I liked the way he just went on and stuck the needle in anyhow. And he tried to be nice to old David after he gave him that shot: he told him to be quiet because he was through and ready to go, and he said he hoped he’d rest easier.

But old David wasn’t ready for Jemmie LaBotte to go away. “You ain’t going to give me nothing like what your daddy give me when he come?”

“What’d my daddy give you?”

“Some kind of stuff — ”

“What stuff does he give you?”

“That stuff what make me sleep a lot. You know, Mr. Jemmie LaBotte.” He kept smiling a sly, hateful smile. “Your daddy always give me a piece of paper that I can get it with at the drugstore-man’s. Your daddy say it’s codeine.”

“ My daddy didn’t give you any codeine. Where’d you get that, talking about codeine? Don’t you know your heart’s too bad for you to be taking anything like that?”

“Well, that’s what your daddy say it was. Codeine. Make me sleep.” He winked at Jemmie LaBotte like he expected him to understand something. “Your daddy give me that stuff instead of all that sticking me with that goddam old needle.”

I don’t know what made me think I had to say something; because it wasn’t my business. But Jemmie LaBotte had such a funny look on his face all of a sudden I said, “Don’t pay attention to old man big-head David. They say he don’t never tell the truth about nothing.” And we went out of the house with David still begging for some of the “sleepy stuff.”

Jemmie LaBotte just asked me one thing while we were going back to Bayou Street. “ Why’d old David have that little candle? How come he didn’t have the electric light on?”

“That’s the way a lot of folks do when they’re scared of sickness. You smell how that candle was making that stink in there?”

“I’d have made him put it out if I’d known that was what it was.”

“A lots of people keep a sick candle,” I said. “I bet your daddy never did try to make anybody put out their sick candle. They wouldn’t do it anyhow — for him or nobody else.” He didn’t say anything after that.

The day after we went down to old David’s, Mrs. LaBotte called me out on the porch and she tried to make me think she just wanted me to sit out there and rock back and forth in the rocker and talk to keep her company. But she kept on trying to get it out of me about what happened when we went down to the Quarter. I didn’t, tell her a thing, though. It wasn’t my business.

But I did tell Aunt Albertine how Mrs. LaBotte tried to pick me and Aunt Albertine said, “You better be careful — that’s all I can say.” She’d seen old man David that clay at the grocery up on Ogechee Street and he was telling everybody Jemmie LaBotte was a good-for-nothing doctor; and then he’d roll up his sleeve and show the little place the needle made. Aunt Albertine said he was clowning and telling everybody Jemmie LaBotte was nothing but “ca-ca.”

3

ABOUT a week went by and old man LaBotte didn’t seem to be getting better of whatever was wrong with him; at least he didn’t come out of his room. And Mrs. LaBotte kept saying all he needed was rest and for people to let him alone and not worry him. There was something wrong between him and Jemmie ever since the day Jemmie went down to David’s. But as far as I know, Jemmie hadn’t even seen him since then; so I didn’t understand what it could be. Then one Sunday morning early a lady named Mrs. Clara called up the house to ask for Dr. LaBotte because her little girl was having a fit. It was so early Jemmie and Mrs. LaBotte didn’t even bother to tell Dr. LaBotte.

Jemmie LaBotte took me with him again, and we went driving fast through those gray little snakylooking streets in the Quarter. We saw a lot of people walking the sidewalks; some of them were still drunk from Saturday night. When we got to Mrs. Clara’s house she was out in a funny kind of silk dress washing the steps to her front porch with a jar full of pepper-water. She was real fat and she had her behind turned up to us because she was down on her knees scrubbing the steps; and at first it looked funny. But she turned around and it was pitiful because her big fat face was screwed up and she was crying. The pepper-water had the front stops smelling loud like grease and vinegar. So Jemmie LaBotte asked her what that stuff was and why she wasn’t in the house with her little girl. Mrs. Clara said, “I ain’t in there ‘cause I got to wash with this old pepper-water. Keeps off bad things from coming in the house — keep ‘um way from my baby.” Jemmie LaBotte told her she had no business believing in such things and he made her put down the jar with the pepperwater in it. But she kept on saying, “Your own daddy — your flesh-and-blood daddy — your daddy — he say it’s fine if I want to wash off them front steps with my pepper-water!”

I sat on the porch while Jemmie LaBotte was inside. I’d seen that little girl lots of times with Mrs. Clara when they’d be walking up Ogechee Street. Her name was Monica and she was about eight years old, and she was pretty because she had a round face with a funny kind of purple eyes and light, hay-colored hair. But you could tell something was wrong with her because she walked so slow and funny and held her head like her neck was made out of rubber.

When Mrs. Clara came to the screen door with Jemmie LaBotte she was saying, “Ain’t you going to give her none of them pink pills what make her sleep? Your daddy say them be good for her — they make her lay real quiet so she don’t have no more of them fits. She don’t roll her eyes or nothing if she have them pink pills.”

Jemmie LaBotte kept looking at the little thing around Mrs. Clara’s neck. It was hanging on a greasy string. I don’t think he knew what it was, but I did, because my Aunt Albertine always has one so she’ll be sure to have good luck. It was a little ball of hair; only this was a ball of hay-colored hair. Mrs. Clara and Jemmie LaBotte were both acting upset.

“I’m not going to give her anything to make her sleep, because it wouldn’t be good for her. She had a fit! It’s not good for her to go to sleep on medicine, I don’t care what my daddy told you.” So we left, and Mrs. Clara stood on her front porch; and she was crying and sprinkling pepper-water because she said Jemmie LaBotte must be evil and she didn’t even want the smell of him around her house. “You ain’t no good kind of a man like Doctor” was the last thing we heard her say.

Then Jemmie LaBotte told his mother. They sat in the living room on that big settee and he told her how old David asked him for codeine and said Dr. LaBotte always gave it to him. And he told her how he didn’t want to believe a thing like that on his daddy; but he told her what happened with Mrs. Clara. “That little girl’s name is Monica, and the whites of her eyes are all dulled over. Like she’s been asleep a long time! She’s had a lot of codeine — I can tell she has.”

Once Mrs. LaBotte looked up and saw me standing in the doorway, but she turned her head away. Dr. LaBotte came in the living room; I don’t know whether he heard them or what. But Jemmie didn’t act like he was there. “I thought my daddy was something.” He said it just like the old man wasn’t there at all.

And Dr. LaBotte said, “They do magic down there, Juanita!” When he called her name Mrs. LaBotte put her little handkerchief up to her mouth. She made a choking noise. And you should’ve seen Dr. LaBotte — the way he blazed his eyes. “Real magic — real!” he said. “And they won’t stop. They wouldn’t stop it for me. What in the world makes you think I could make them stop?”

“You’ve got them so all they want is codeine. You think codeine can do an epileptic fit any good, Daddy?”

“I told you—you don’t know how they are. You think they’ll take medicine, don’t you?”

“You’re bad as they are. You put them all to sleep. You can put them to sleep all right!”

Dr. LaBotte said, “You get so you’ll do anything for them if you can just get ‘em to love you.” And then he went out of the living room and left Mrs. LaBotte and Jemmie still sitting there on the settee. He walked away slow, like he was so old.

From then on strange things started going on. Jemmie LaBotte could hardly wait until some more of the old man’s patients called up so he could go back down to the Quarter. It got so the main thing for Jemmie LaBotte was his big idea about making them like him down there.

4

BUT Jemmie LaBotte didn’t know the word had got around about him. It just takes one mouth to spread things in the Quarter, and David and Mrs. Clara ran their mouths a plenty. Everybody down there was whispering old man LaBotte was sick and going to die and his boy didn’t know a thing to do for him or anybody. His boy wasn’t nothing but “ca-ca” and a good-for-nothing. That’s what they said about Jemmie LaBotte. David told everybody he could feel funny things crawling in his arm where Jemmie LaBotte stuck him with that needle. And Mrs. Clara said her Monica was bloody-eyed and always screaming with fits, because Jemmie LaBotte didn’t give her sleepy-stuff to quiet her down.

Then one day Jemmie LaBotte got tired of waiting. He must’ve known what was wrong by that time. So he went down to the Quarter. That evening when I got home Aunt Albertine told me, “Jemmie LaBotte come driving down here today. Folks say he was trying to see old David and when David found out he locked up his door on him. Yeah — I hear he was even begging old man David to let him talk to him.”

“Begging him do any good?” “Didn’t do a low-more bit of good!” Aunt Albertine laughed about Jemmie LaBotte because she was just like the rest of them; she didn’t think he was anything.

But I give him credit. He tried hard in the Quarter. He tried to get David and Mrs. Clara to believe he wanted to do them some good. But David would always lock his door, and Mrs. Clara wouldn’t even let him come up on her front porch. It got so bad people would sit in their windows and laugh whenever they’d see him coming. But he kept on going down there.

Then one day he did get a phone call. It was August then, and that day was rainy. The house was quiet like somebody was dead or going to die. And it was so hot all the windows and doors were open and you could hear the rain hitting the gardenia bushes out in the front yard. Whoever it was calling sounded like they were crying. All they said was for somebody to come down to Mama Callie’s house quick. So Jemmie went down there by himself. I could sec he wasn’t thinking about taking me down there with him that day. But I wouldn’t have gone anyhow, because I didn’t like that old Mama Callie.

When I was little I used to go over to her house with Aunt Albertine. Aunt Albertine never has stopped going to Mama Callie’s because Mama Callie knew her when she was just knee-high. In the first place I didn’t like Mama Callie because she was always coughing. Everybody knew she had t.b., and she was sleepy-looking and slow-talking because she stayed all doped up on codeine to case her coughing spells. She must have been about seventy-five years old, and she had a sister named Alena who was somewhere around fifty. She and Alena spent all day making little charms and things; and they sold them to a lot of people. Like if Mrs. Clara wanted a hair ball out of little Monica’s hair she’d cut off a snip of hair and take it to Mama Callie, and Mama Callie would do things like dip it in hot chicken fat and tie it on a string and wrap it up for a week in senna leaves. Then she’d give it back to Mrs. Clara when it was ready to do some good.

Sometimes on a hot day you’d walk past their house and you’d see Mama Callie and Alena sitting in the open window and Mama Callie would always be singing something in French. She said that song was a Creole song her father taught her when she was a little girl. They say she was real proud of that, because her and Alena’s father was a Frenchman. Anyway, whenever she and Alena sat in the window Mama Callie would hold her old sleepylooking face out the window to see who was walking up and down the street. Alena, who liked men, would be just sitting there beside Mama Callie brushing her hair. She had hair that came down to her shoulders and she always brushed it with a brush soaked in strong tea to keep it from getting gray.

When Jemmie LaBotte came back from Mama Callie’s he looked discouraged, and he didn’t say a thing. But that evening Alena was going around telling everybody in the Quarter about how when Jemmie LaBotte got to Mama Callie she’d had a hemorrhage and blood was coming out of her nose and mouth all over the bed sheets. Alena said, “He come bringing his fancy bag with them bottles in it. He thought he was going to give Callie one of them needles of his, but me and Callie wouldn’t even let him get near the bed. I told him he wasn’t going to touch my Callie!” Alena was bragging about how she told Jemmie LaBotte right to his face they’d just called him so he could give Mama Callie some codeine. But he wouldn’t give her any, and he started telling Alena how much Mama Callie needed a hospital, or at least some medicine. Alena laughed. “That Jemmie LaBotte wanted to pay me money to let him stick Callie with one of them shiny needles — low-more wanted to pay me money! Callie and me told him if he couldn’t put her to sleep there wasn’t nothing he could do. We fixed him. Callie, bad off as she was, she couldn’t help but laugh at him. We fixed him all right!”

Alena said she warmed up some pig oil with mustard seeds and went to work on Mama Callie and started rubbing her all over with it right there in front of Jemmie LaBotte. “He was just standing there looking. And he looked like he couldn’t take his eyes off. He couldn’t even stop looking for nothing. Like a young’un watching his daddy in the bed with his ma.” Everybody laughed at Alena’s saying that. “I could see he didn’t like it for nothing, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about me rubbing up Callie with that hog grease. Callie was warm, and shiny as she could be when I got through with her. He just stood up there like he had that hog grease on his brain — stood there just looking ‘cause that’s all he could do — look.”

Alena almost bragged herself to death talking about it. She said before he left their house Jemmie LaBotte cursed her and Mama Callie out and told them there wasn’t anything he could do for anybody like them. “But you know what I say to that Jemmie LaBotte? I told him we can make him do anything we God-a-mighty please.” Alena kept rolling her eyes and giggling. “I say to him we can low-more make him come right straight back down here anytime we want to. We going to show him better’n we can tell him.”

5

ABOUT a week after all that happened Jemmie LaBotte asked me if I knew Mama Callie and Alena, and I told him yes. Then he started talking about how queer they were. He talked so fast; like he couldn’t tell me quick enough. I didn’t see why he was acting so worried. “That old Mama Callie — you know what she did? She wouldn’t even let me put a stethoscope on her. Yon ever see all the little baskets in there — in her bedroom? They were all full of leaves!”

I knew the little baskets he was talking about. “Yeah. They’re willow leaves.”

“You know what she does with them?”

“Naw,” I said, “I never did know.”

I knew what those willow leaves were for, but I didn’t tell him because I didn’t see what dillerence it made to him.

One evening Mama Callie called up again; Jemmie LaBotte didn’t seem to want to go down there. But his mother couldn’t see why. “’t ou ought to go on if they called you, Jemmie,”she kept saying. She was so proud of him because she thought he was everything old man LaBotte newer had been. “You have to go right on down there, even if that old lady won’t let you attend to her — she called you.”

Mama Callie and Alena must have known he’d come, because they told Aunt Albertine and a lot of other people to be on the lookout if they wanted to see the car when it drove up. Mama Callie was feeling weak and puny, but she was sitting in the window singing that little French song, and Alena was sitting beside her brushing her hair with that brush she kept wetting in a bowl of tea. Sure enough, Jemmie LaBotte did come. And Mama Callie told Aunt Albertine he tried to give her some medicine. She said he tried to talk big and tell her she was sure to get worse if she didn’t let him give her a needle. But she and Alena wouldn’t let him, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

The way they talked about it you’d have thought Jemmie LaBotte was like a little dog or something they’d taken some kind of fancy to. Alena got rid of all her men friends, and even when it made Mama Callie cough and spit up blood she burned a little basket full of dried-up willow leaves every day. Alena said, “We burn them leaves ‘cause it make him get us on the brain and pretty soon he be coming right on down here all the time.”

Sure enough, Jemmie LaBotte did start going down to Mama Callie’s. He told Mrs. LaBotte he went down there so he could leave medicines for Mama Callie and try to make her take them. But Mrs. LaBotte noticed how much he was going down there. She even told old man LaBotte. And he used to lie in his bed and call Jemmie. “Jemmie, come tell your daddy what’s going on down there at Mama Callie’s. Come tell me! How come you’re down to Mama Callie’s so much, Jemmie?" But Jemmie stopped going in his daddy’s room. Even Mrs. LaBotte couldn’t make him go in any more. And that hurt Dr. LaBotte. He began to fall off a lot. You could tell because his hands and face got so thin. But still he’d lie in his bed and call in that nagging voice, like there was something he knew about Jemmie.

Mama Callie and Alena got so they bragged and said they were going to have Jemmie LaBotte pretty soon. Alena tied up her hair every day in a lot of silk rags because she wanted to look fine when he came. And Mama Callie claimed they could get him down to the Quarter whenever they wanted to. Alena was always telling everybody, “All I got to do is heat up that hog oil and start rubbing on Callie with it. That Jemmie LaBotte look like his eyes going to pop out. When I do that he look like he don’t want to do nothing but just look at me and Callie; and he know we ain’t going to let him touch her. But he just keep on looking. Sometimes he look right pitiful.”

I didn’t think Jemmie still cared anything about his daddy. He did though. Because when old man LaBotte had that heart attack you could see it did something to Jemmie. They had a lot of fine specialists with Dr. LaBotte, but it didn’t do him any good. He lingered, and he got weaker every day. They said he was “in coma” so nobody could go in there to see him. Jemmie and Mrs. LaBotte would just sit in that big living room all day long with the shades down; and two or three nurses were always coming and going and walking soft on those big thick rugs. They made me think of white rabbits, the way they were always streaking through the house. I didn’t like them because they wouldn’t let Jemmie LaBotte see his daddy, and he wanted to a lot. He kept saying he had something he wanted to say to his daddy.

6

ALENA and Mama Callie told Aunt Albertine Jemmie LaBotte had stopped trying to make Mama Callie lake his medicines. They said he came to their house just to see them and they called him sweet-boy-Jemmie. “He just like a baby,”Mama Callie was always saying. “He come and just sit there and watch Alena swing hair-plaits around in the air. Sometime Alena hand him one of them hair-plaits and he hold it and he just laugh. Just like a young’un with a sugar-tit.”Alena swore Mama Callie was telling it like it was. “Callie telling the honest-to-God truth! That Jemmie LaBotte done changed a heap.” Then they’d both laugh. Mama Callie would laugh so hard she’d start coughing.

It got around that Jemmie LaBotte had started writing prescriptions for Mama Callie to get codeine with. Somebody even said they saw him go in the drugstore to get it for her one day; but I still thought it was just meanness making them all tell lies on him. All that time Dr. LaBotte was sinking. Mrs. LaBotte couldn t understand why Jemmie was staying away more and more. She didn’t think it hurt him that his daddy was dying, but she was wrong. He never did mention Dr. LaBotte much, but you could see he cared about the old man, just by some of the other things he’d say. Like one day he told me, “Mama loves this house, but I want to get out of here. I can’t stand it any more.”

My Aunt Albertine was there at Mama Callie’s one day when Jemmie LaBotte came to see her. She said Mama Callie had a pretty bad coughing spell and her mouth started running blood, but Jemmie LaBotte didn’t do a thing except just get down on his knees by Mama Callie’s bed. And when she’d stopped coughing Mama Callie took a little ball of hair from under her pillow and gave it to him. Mama Callie told him that little ball had some of her and Alena’s hair in it. She gave it to Jemmie LaBotte because he’d kept asking her to give him something to help his daddy in his misery. I’ll tell you the truth, I didn’t even believe my own flesh-and-blood aunt. For one thing I couldn’t see Jemmie LaBotte doing all they said. I didn’t even believe the willow leaves I’d found meant anything.

In the end I saw for my own self, though. One night. Dr. LaBotte had been real low all that day, and they’d put him under an oxygen tent. And Mrs. LaBotte had been calling up her friends telling them she didn’t understand why Jemmie was off down in the Quarter. I think she must have known Dr, LaBotte was going to die. Anyway, that night after I’d got off I was walking up Bourbon Street on my way over to the show field to see if the carnival had come; and so I passed by Mama Callie’s. Even when I was still way up the street I heard that singing. Mama Callie was singing lhat little French song, but it went so slow I could tell she was weak; she was so feeble her voice sounded high like a chicken squawking.

All the lights were on real bright in the room where she was. And she was sitting right up in the w indow with some kind of a shawl on that had long fringes that kept blowing around her arms. I couldn’t help but look in there when I went by, but Mama Callie didn’t see me because she had her eyes shut. I told you how the light was on in the room; I could see good. Alena was sitting there a little way behind Mama Callie. She was in a straight chair and she had silk rags tied all through her hair: red and blue and green and yellow; all kinds of colors. Jemmie LaBotte must have been down on his knees or almost on his knees, anyway, because all I could see was his head. Alena had Jemmie LaBotte’s head, holding it tight in her arms. Just as tight as she could. It was so queer, because it looked like she might have cut off his head from his body and was just holding nothing but that head in her arms. She had her eyes closed and he had his closed too. Only in the light I could see shining streaks on his face, like he was crying. He looked pretty: like a young girl. Maybe it was because Mama Callie and Alena were so wrinkled and ugly. His skin was so smooth, and his hair was shiny and very thick; like purple and black mixed together.

When I got back home that night I told Aunt Alberline how I saw the three of them. And she said, “I been thinking about it a while. I don’t like all that funny stuff that’s going on.” She told me she wanted me to quit working for the LaBottes.

Only the next day when I went up there a lot of people were at the house. Women in fine clothes with feathery hats and little white handkerchiefs. They were answering the telephone and talking loud all over the house and wiping their eyes because old man LaBotte had died the night before. I didn’t even get a chance to see Mrs. LaBotte, because a nurse was keeping her quiet. But everybody was whispering about Jemmie. They said they thought he must be crazy because half an hour after the old man died he went driving off down to the Quarter.

It seems like it’s been longer than two years since all that was going on, but it’s just been about that long. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think Jemmie LaBotte even went to his daddy’s funeral. I do know one thing for sure though; he doesn’t stay home much. I see him every time I go past Mama Callie’s house because he’s always over there. He always waves his hand to me when he sees me. Alena still makes those little hair balls for people and she burns her willow leaves every day. They say Mama Callie sleeps most of the time because she’s only hanging by a thread. And when she’s not sleeping she’s coughing. But Jemmie LaBotte keeps her full of codeine so she doesn’t feel anything. He doesn’t just only get that codeine for Mama Callie, though; he lets a lot of them have it.

And they’ve all stopped talking mean about Jemmie LaBotte in the Quarter now. That’s not something that’s just happened either; they slopped long ago. Even Mrs. Clara and old big-head David don’t put the bad-mouth on him any more. You wouldn’t believe how everybody changed up. Jemmie LaBotte never has to beg to get his money out of anybody. And that goes to prove what I was just saying.

You ought to hear the way some of them call his name now whenever he comes walking up Bourbon Street. When he comes at night people lean out their windows and all you can see in the dark is fire from cigarettes, but you can hear the laughing and talking. And you can hear that laugh of his above everybody else’s. Nobody can tell me all that fuss they make doesn’t give him a good feeling, after the way they used to act when he first started coming down here. You can tell it makes him feel good. You ought to see the way his eyes flash, and the way he talks to everybody. Just the way he talks makes you know he’ll do anything in the world for them.