Thrown-away Child

my dreams, Violet’s kitchen was filling up with pungent Louisiana cooking smells, which ended any further rest. I left Ruby where she was and went downstairs.
    As pleasant as her parlor had been, save for the intrusion of New Orleans’ worst, the kitchen was clearly the sweet, warm heart of Mama’s house. I watched her for a moment, wielding a long wooden spoon and tending her crowd of steaming pots and pans atop a massive four-burner Magic Chef range. She wore a terry cloth band around her perspiring forehead.
    Violet dipped the spoon into the largest of the boiling pots and agitated a school of screaming crustaceans. At least I imagined them screaming. There was besides this a pot full of red beans and rice, redolent of cumin and peppery hot sauce, a skillet overflowing with onions and Creole sausage, chicken jambalaya, and a filé gumbo. Mama had stocked the adjacent sink with the refrigerator’s overflow of sodas for the children and Dixie beer for their parents, the bottles hedged into place with plastic bags of ice.
    ‘Whoa!” Violet yelped in surprise at my entrance.
    “I’m sorry, Neil. Am I making it too hot down here for you to sleep up there?”
    “Too fragrant actually.” I helped myself to a paper towel from a rack on the counter wall and daubed at my face. “But don’t worry about it.”
    “How’s my child?”
    “Ruby’s getting the sleep she needs.”
    “That’s good. Sit down at the table. Want a beer?” God, that sounded good.
    I took an armless side chair at the long table set beneath a double window that looked out onto a back stoop, a tiny grass yard with a clothesline and a bed of roses and sunflowers, and the alley beyond. A window fan big enough to chill a shop floor gave out an ocean of coolness at the table, near as it was to the busy stove. Except for an empty coffee cup, a pencil, and a copy of the Times-Picayune folded open to the crossword puzzle, the table was thickly covered in newspapers anchored at the edges with adhesive tape. I started to ask about this but decided instead to deal with the question of my drinking sooner rather than later.
    “Mama, I can’t drink.”
    “Yeah, I know that.” She nodded her head. “It’s what Ruby say about you.”
    “Then how come you offered me a beer?”
    “Just testing the deviltry in you, son.” Mama turned and laughed at me. She made me like it, the same as when Ruby laughed at me. “I know lots of mens have no business drinking, but don’t they just guzzle anyhow? Soon’s a good lady’s back is turned, that is.“
    “Not my style.”
    “Glad to hear.”
    Mama walked slowly across the kitchen toward a tall antique cabinet of painted pine and tin. Next to this was the refrigerator. She opened it and took out a pitcher of lemonade, then took a tumbler down from a cabinet shelf, and poured me a glass. I had the feeling during all this that Mama was considering how best to ask me about my old drinking life.
    There are not too many available euphemisms in inquiring about such an unsubtle thing as drunkenness. Mama eventually concluded as much. She set down the glass of lemonade in front of me, and straight out asked, “Why’d you finally decide to quit your nasty drinking style?”
    “It came to me that I couldn’t drown my problems in drink. Which wasn’t so hard to figure, since I noticed my problems knew how to swim.”
    “You all right, Neil. That’s about as good and true as a tough answer gets.”
    “Thanks.” I emptied half my glass.
    There was a knock at the kitchen door. Through the heavy screen, I saw the outline of a figure on the stoop, somebody the size of a Buick in a dress, with a boxy purse dangling off one arm. I smelled a cigar and figured my nose was having a little fun with me.
    “Vi, you there?” The figure on the stoop called through the screen. The voice sounded like the bass section of a church choir. “Am I the first to drop by?“
    “No, it’s just like all the damn time—you the second thing attracted to all this food I cooked up,” Violet answered. She crossed over to the door and unlatched it. “First thing’s the flies.”
    About the cigar, it turned out I was right. The smoky cheroot rode into the kitchen clamped between dark brown lips that looked like a horizontal pair of roasted kielbasas nestled below a curly black mustache, which patched a headful of close-cropped hair. Also I was right about the dress, a dark blue cotton number sheathed in pale blue organdy. What