Page 5 of Lulu’s Recipe for Cajun Sass

“Not that he wasn’t attracted to you and all,” her aunt added quickly. “More like he was lookin’ fer a little lagniappe, along with the sex.” In Cajun land, lagniappe was the little something extra a merchant threw in with a customer’s purchase. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a little hanky panky. I never did go for that, ‘Why buy the cow when you kin get the milk fer free?’ To me, it’s jist as easy to say, ‘Why buy sausage when steak is on the menu?’ What’s good fer the goose and all that!”

“Tante Lulu!” Mary Lou exclaimed again. You couldn’t say the old lady wasn’t blunt…and possibly right. And wasn’t it odd how her language fluctuated from almost illiterate to highly intelligent, practically from sentence to sentence? Did she do it on purpose, to give the wrong impression, so she could then zap a person with some wisdom? Probably.

“I’m too old to waste time on pretendin’ I doan know what you young folks do. Old folks, too, fer that matter. But thass beside the point. Did you tell yer mother about Derek bustin’ up with you? Betcha she’d have some good advice, specially since she was a Miss Louisiana at one time and broke more hearts than the shredding machine at Whitman’s Sampler the day after Valentine’s.”

Mary Lou just blinked at that long spiel, but then she said, “I’m not that crazy…or desperate. If I told Mom, she’d blab to Dad, and you know what he’d do? He’d go after Derek with a cattle prod. I overheard him telling Uncle Luc one time that if any guy hurt his little girl, meaning me, he’d shoot his balls off.” Uncle Luc had three daughters, and was always complaining about how they were giving him premature gray hairs, but he’d agreed with her father.

“Yep. You are yer daddy’s girl. Allus have been, from the moment he first saw you in the hospital. He cried when he held you fer the first time. Did you know that?”

Mary Lou did know that. Tante Lulu had told her about it at least a hundred times. “I never get tired of hearing about Daddy’s love for me, and Mom, and the brat,” which was the affectionate name she’d given the new baby, Timmy. It was embarrassing to see how her father looked at her mother sometimes, his heart in his eyes, as old as they both were…almost fifty, for heaven’s sake!. But that’s the kind of love she’d been looking for, hoping for, with Derek. And that wasn’t so unreasonable, dammit! She and Derek had been a couple for years now, and he said he loved her. They’d even talked about marriage sometime in the future…the far future, after graduation, but still…

“So, what do you want now? To get Derek back, or to move on? I got advice that could go both ways.”

“I’m not sure. I do love him. On the other hand, I’d like to show him that I can do better.”

Tante Lulu nodded.

“You really could help me?”

“For sure, darlin’.”

“How?”

“Well, it’s obvious,” Tante Lulu shook her head sadly, causing the Farrah Fawcett wig to go a bit lopsided, “you’ve lost something important, and I don’t mean the schmuck.”

Mary Lou tried to laugh, but it came out as a choke. “What?”

“The thing all bayou gals are born with.”

“What?” she repeated dumbly.

“Cajun sass.”

* * *

In Tante Lulu’s world, there’s a recipe for everything…

Some folks would discount Mary Lou’s heartache as young love that would soon pass, like wind in the bowels, or a bad hair day. They would pat her on the back in a patronizing way and say, “It’s not like you have cancer or polio or a bad case of the swamp runs, honey chile.” Then there were those dimwits that would say, “Time, the great healer, is your friend; you’ll forget that loser quick as spit.” Or Louise’s favorite: “Men are like buses. You miss one, and another will be along in five minutes, sure as Bourbon Street sin.”

Louise didn’t say any of those things. After all, she’d been the same age as Mary Lou when she’d fallen in love with Phillipe Prudhomme, then lost him the next year in the big war. More than fifty years later, and her heart still ached for him every single day.

“Oh, auntie!” Mary Lou said with a laugh and reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “You are such a treasure!”

“’Course I am.” She preened.

“Where do you come up with this stuff?”

She stopped preening. “Stuff? This ain’t stuff. It’s pure, guar-an-teed bayou wisdom.”

“There’s no such thing as Cajun baby girls having a gene for sass,” Mary Lou said in a gentle tone, so as not to offend.

Hah! It would take a lot more than that to offend her.

“Genes, smenes! Thass all you know, girl. They’re there, all right. The lucky females let it shine right outta their skin, practically from the time they leave the crib. Those are the ones that bat their flirty little eyelashes and turn their daddies into butter. But some gals hold it in. Like constipation. Others jist need a jolt to trigger it loose, like you and me.”

“You?”

“Yep. For a long time, years after my Phillipe was gone, I jist wallowed in my miseries. Dint care ’bout my appearance. Heck, I never went out anywhere to be seen.”