Louisiana Lament

with—uh…” Her throat closed on the words; Miz Lura didn’t make her say them.
    “I know who you mean, child. I know who you mean. You come in, won’t you? I’ll pour us a nice glass of iced tea.” Miz Lura lived in a funny, countrified section of the Ninth Ward, where the houses, unlike Miz Clara’s, had little pockets of dirt where you could grow flowers. They were as small as hers, though, and this was a Victorian-era shotgun that dolls could have lived in. It was painted plain white, rather out of keeping with its gingerbread. Miz Lura probably had a no-nonsense son or grandson who helped her keep it up. Talba would have been shocked if it hadn’t been neat as the lady herself, and she wasn’t disappointed.
    There wasn’t much furniture, and what there was looked like items the son or grandson had passed on when his family could afford something better. The plaid sofa just didn’t seem like the kind of thing Miz Lura would pick—particularly to go with the fake Oriental rug and gold brocade chair she’d probably inherited from her own mother; or maybe from a lady she’d worked for.
    A nice picture of Dr. King hung over a table with a little Virgin Mary statue on it, though to Talba’s knowledge, Baptists didn’t go in much for Mary. Perhaps somebody’d given it to her. There were votive candles on the table, too, set on an embroidered white starched cloth—something you’d never see in Miz Clara’s house.
    Miz Lura saw Talba looking at her altar. She said, “My friend down the street’s a Catholic—says when she asks the blessed Virgin for something, she gets results. She give me that when my grandson was sick last year—nearly died of the sugar.”
    Diabetes.
    Talba smiled. “Bet he got better, didn’t he?” If he hadn’t, she figured Mary’d have gotten the boot.
    “He’s as fine today as this fine weather. I promised Miz Mary I’d keep her in candles long as I lived if she’d do me that favor. I’m going to keep my promise, and I don’t care if you tell ya mama.”
    Talba had to smile again. Miz Clara probably would be scandalized. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
    “How is Miz Clara?”
    Talba said she was mean as ever and they went on like that for awhile, till finally Talba said, “Reverend Scruggs says I ought to go find out whatever happened to my baby sister.” Miz Lura squeezed some lemon in her tea and stirred it, trying to decide what to make of that. Finally, she said, “That sounds like a mighty Christian notion.”
    “Well, I don’t know about that.” Statements like that made Talba distinctly uncomfortable. “But he did make me curious.”
    “I should think so.”
    “He couldn’t remember her name, though. Or her mama’s.”
    “Don’t tell me he thought I would!”
    “Well, no, ma’am, I don’t think so. I think he thought you know where the baptismal records were.”
    Ms. Lura pursed her lips and sucked a little bit. “Let me see. Let me see—1983, was it?”
    “Somewhere around there.”
    “Well, you know, we had that fire in ’eighty-nine.”
    “Fire?” Talba asked. Ever since her mama stopped making her go to Sunday school and church every week, she hadn’t kept up with church history.
    “Lightning struck our steeple—wasn’t the first time, either.”
    Don’t giggle,
Talba said to herself.
Wrong audience for any of your jokes.
    But Miz Lura collapsed laughing herself, her body folding, her small brown hand slapping her skinny leg, which she simultaneously used to stomp the floor. (In ladylike fashion, of course.) “Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Yes, Lord, we must have had some sinners among us
that
year. Not much damage, but it did destroy the storeroom.”
    “Where the files were,” Talba said. She’d already figured it out. “You wouldn’t remember…”
    Miz Lura was already shaking her head. “I never even knew that baby name. The mama, though. I remember
her
name.”
    “You do? How on earth can you remember something like that?”
    Miz Lura nearly died laughing again. “I’m ninety-two years old, Sandra. Some folks say I’m losing my memory, but I can sho’ tell you one thing—Miz Lura Blanchard know her own name. Yes, ma’aaaam. Sho’ do.”
    “Miz Lura, you were not my daddy’s paramour—I know that for a fact.”
    “No, ma’am. I shore wasn’t. But that don’t mean I don’t know my own name.” She fell to cackling again, really enjoying this, whatever it was. “That woman name was