Page 55 of Lulu’s Recipe for Cajun Sass

Charmaine came down the steps and hugged Louise. “You look wonderful today, auntie,” she said.

Rusty and Luc looked at her like she must be blind, or was seeing something they didn’t.

But then, Charmaine was dressed in a strapless little hot pink sundress that molded her body on top and swirled out in a bunch of pleats to mid-thigh. On her feet were high-heeled wedgie sandals, which, combined with her already tall frame, made her about six feet tall. Her hair was a mass of spiral curls. Her make-up was perfect. And huge chandelier earrings dangled all the way to her shoulders. Since she’d begun nursing her baby and still did occasionally, her breasts, already a buxom 34C, had blossomed out to porno fullness. In her strapless dress made of some light cotton material, the shape of the enlarged nipples was clearly visible.

“Girl, be careful we doan get any breezes t’day, or yer gonna get old and new-monia in that outfit. Tee, hee, hee,” Louise said.

Rusty gaped as Charmaine approached him and said, clear as a bell, “Mercy!”

Luc, who was Charmaine’s half-brother, said, “I am not looking. I am not looking.”

Honestly, Charmaine had Cajun Sass down to an art form. It still puzzled Louise why Mary Lou went to someone as old as her and not to Charmaine for advice. But then, she recalled that Mary Lou had mentioned how embarrassing it would be to confide in her mother.

Which reminded Louise…it was her goal today to see just how well Mary Lou was doing in her Cajun Sass lessons. Looking for her, she looped arms with Charmaine and walked around the side of the house to the back yard, then came to a screeching halt.

There had to be at least seventy-five people standing around the firepit, sitting on folding chairs on the grass and at umbrella tables on the flagstone patio. A bunch of toddlers and young’uns had been plopped inside a twenty-foot wide portable fence, which pretty much amounted to an outdoor playpen. Laughter and splashing noises came from the other side of the house where there was an in-ground swimming pool.

“Lawdy, lawdy, didja invite everyone in the parish?”

Charmaine laughed. “Nope. You gotta realize, auntie, that we have more than fifty in our immediate family alone. No thanks to you.”

“I keep tellin’ you, I had nothin’ to do with all you gals getting’ preggers las’ year. All I did was say that I wished there were more babies around.”

“Yeah, well, don’t be doin’ any wishin’ t’day.”

Louise just grinned. Let them all think she had that kind of power.

Someone came from behind and put hands over her eyes. “Guess who?”

She smelled coconut sunscreen and recognized the voice. “Lak I wouldn’t know you anywhere, Etienne LeDeux,” she said, turning around and straightening her hat to give Tee-John’s oldest a fake glare.

He gave her cheek a quick kiss and danced away from her as she attempted to swat him on the arm with her St. Jude fan. What a rascal, just like his Papa was. He was only fourteen years old, but his thin body, already almost six foot tall, in a wet bathing suit and nothing else, showed promise of a hunkiness that would have the girls buzzin’ around him like bees to honey.

“I tol’ ya, Tante Lulu, that I changed mah name ta Steve,” the boy, who was fourteen going on forty, said and grinned at her. “My name’s too hard fer mah friends ta pronounce.”

Steven was the English translation of Etienne.

“Why’s it so hard ta say Ay-T-en? Yer friends mus’ be dumb as stumps.”

Etienne just laughed and hugged her to his side. Never mind that he was wet. She didn’t care. She loved the boy, almost as much as she did his daddy.

René came up to them then, on his way to a small wooden platform that had been set up over near the barbecue pits. He wore a black tank top, khaki shorts, flip-flops and a baseball cap on his head with the logo “Swamp Rats,” which was the name of the band he played with on weekends when he wasn’t teaching school. He had a frottir, or washboard, hung over his shoulders.

“Oh, goody, we’re gonna have music,” she said, clapping her hands. “This party is lookin’ kinda…boring.” Her eyes widened with surprise as she hit on that word. Maybe Mary Lou isn’t the only one needing sassed up with Cajuness.

“Would it be a fais do do, a party on the bayou, if there was no music? René asked.

“Speakin’ of boring…it occurs ta me, René, that we haven’t done our Cajun Village People act in ages. Isn’t it time to resurrect our group?” Louise asked.

René let out a little hoot of laughter and several men standing nearby, who’d overheard their conversation—Luc, Remy, and Rusty—gave her dirty looks and said, as one, “No way!” One of them even added, “No frickin’ way!”

“What’s the Village People?” Etienne wanted to know.

“The Village People were a campy type of disco music group in the 1970s, all men, known for their costumes…cowboy, cop, construction worker, soldier, biker, that kind of thing,” René explained.

“And they did a sexy kind of dance while they sang,” Louise contributed, “sort of like the Chippendudes.” She fanned herself as if she got hot just thinking about them.

“Eew!” René said.