Thrown-away Child

the late Alderman Giradoux and his silent partner in the business of real estate speculation and murder, Minister Tilton—who was of course to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. They pledged a crash program of racial sensitivity training for New Orleans’ finest— now cleansed by the removal of Sergeant LeMay and Detectives Mueller and Eckles—as a demonstration of their outrage upon discovering intolerable police practices that of course have no place in the city.
    Political hacks use strong words like appalled and scurrilous and full extent of the law and outrage and intolerable and somehow make it all sound like elevator music. Mama’s vocabulary has considerably more vitality, as she was to demonstrate.
    “Come out here, Hock,” Ruby called again. “Mama, you come, too.”
    And so we did. A gaggle of reporters had trapped the mayor in the front yard of his Garden District home—among them Janice, who had enjoyed her own fifteen minutes of fame on Tuesday when the Times-Picayune proclaimed her a “woman on the move” on the television page. Mama and I entered the parlor just in time to see Janice ask the mayor, “Sir, when will you be replacing the police commissioner with someone more alert to wrongdoers under his command?”
    “Well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” the mayor said.
    Mama said, “Liar means he going to double-cross that bridge if he ever come to it.”
    “And now let me take this opportunity,” the mayor gassed on to the TV cameras, “to wish each and every citizen of New Orleans a happy holiday as we pause to give thanks for the great and gracious bounty that God has seen fit...”
    Mama flicked off the TV set. “They start jabbering about God, that’s it!” Uncle Bud and several others groaned so loud that Perry managed to slip in through the front door, resplendent in new gentleman’s clothes, and it was at least two minutes before anybody noticed.
    “La, you come back!” Mama finally said, a floured hand thumping over her apron-covered heart. She looked her nephew up and down, from the charcoal gray fedora that matched his flannel suit to the gleaming black of his cap-toe brogans. “Where you grab your fine things?”
    Instead of answering, Perry reached inside the breast pocket of his suitcoat and brought out a wallet. He took a hundred dollars in twenties from the wallet and handed the money over to Mama, whose mouth naturally fell open. “I stole this money from you, Aunt Vi. That and more. I’m going to pay you a hundred every week from now on, principal and interest. So now you don’t have to be cleaning that Ava LaRue’s house anymore.”
    “You best tell me where this come from.” Mama fanned the handful of twenties in Perry’s face.
    “Well, I’m collecting Zeb’s salary, you know. I took me a little advance for the clothes, which anybody in my position’s going to need. That’s in my pay-back budget. The clothes and what I figure I owe everybody.”
    “Money s’posed to make things all different with you?”
    “To some degree. Actions from now on going to change me more. I’m changing in a big way, too, Aunt Vi. Going to make a good mark by it.”
    Perry took off his hat. There was a pomade sheen in wavy hair. He crossed the room to where I stood, took my hand, and shook it. It was not hard for him to pick out my face in the crowd. “I want to tha nk you, man, for being the one who strung it all together.”
    “Your taking over the church, it wasn’t part of my plan,” I said. “You were supposed to impersonate Willis Flagg and scare Tilton and Hassie Pinkney into revealing themselves—which I guess you sure did - but the rest of the show, that was your private idea.“
    “Think I’m doing badly?”
    “You’re moving fast, Perry. Don’t make it fast and loose.”
    “I’m in a hurry to do right for all concerned.“
    “How you doing that, Perry?” Mama asked.
    “All that property in the lane where my Uncle Willis got stole out of his cottage? I got lawyers working to deed the whole place over to the tenants. We’re looking at other properties that way, too.”
    “What about Constance Ritchie?” Ruby asked.
    “I got a counselor and a lawyer working her affairs. So far she want to stay at the church and generally take care of things. That’d be fine, I think. And we going to have a real church...” Perry made a little turn, addressing everybody in the room. “Something that support and give back to