BOUCHERIE BABY SLAYS THE FOOL
THIS ESSAY IS AN UNEDITED WORK IN PROGRESS…
It was a very early spring day in south Louisiana, the air was still a little chilly and damp from the thawing of the southern winter. The mold and funguses were ripe all over the place and the pollens were starting to come out. We pulled up to a huge park with a large enclosed baseball field. To my delight, the entire park was right by a cemetery and there was a very small rodeo and horseback rides planned for that day. A large park pavilion was already full of activity before we arrived. The whole pig was already on the post, roasting over an open flame. Several men from my stepdad’s company were helping to tend to the pig.
I only remember the season because it was a boucherie. In Louisiana sometimes winters feel like spring and springs feel like fall, but boucheries were usually were during Mardi Gras Season, the time after Epiphany and before Ash Wednesday. It didn’t seem like the season of flowers and new beginnings, instead it seemed like season that was creeping into darkness and death, rotting foliage under a dusty covering. It was an overcast day featured in the setting of spring sunlight and company games on a grassy lawn. Long tables had been set up and every time some one new arrived, they placed their “pot luck” tray of food on one of the tables. The food was ordered from appetizers to salads to side dishes to desserts. Potato salad, crab dip, Pickapepper sauce over cream cheese, hogshead cheese, jambalaya, gumbos light and dark, chitterlins, cracklins, and every dessert you can imagine from banana pudding and pecan pie to Mississippi mud and brandied bread pudding. I was starving and wanted to eat SO bad!
“Go run off,” Said one of my stepdads coworkers. Everyone is playing over in the ball field and cemetery. We ain’t eatin’ till the rest of dem pigs are ready.”
“Unless you want to eat the heart,” said my stepdad as he passed by me walking toward the pig.
“Ewww,” I said, “no thank you.”
“I wasn’t going to give it to you anyway, I’m the heart eater,” he said as he stuffed a bite of pig heart into his mouth.
He continued “If the pig tongue is on my tongue, aren’t we really just kissing each other,” he proudly chimed before he walked away. He had a way with cringe worthy jokes. That one was pretty mild and a favorite of his. Other favorite jokes of his were covert insult. My mom was usually the brunt of such jokes that made everyone uncomfortable wondering whether the “joke” was disturbingly serious or indeed “just a joke.” Most of his jokes were in a nutshell the tone of, “oh stupid, inept, forgetful mom did this SILLY thing again, EYEROLL, this is why I’M IN CHARGE – ohhhh geeeez that MOM, just can’t even function in life.” My mother, being both a clown and completely trauma bonded with my stepdad would affirm his “jokes” saying things like, “oh yeah silly me, that’s why I’m the clown.”
I guess I was staring into space, waiting to see if I was suppose to leave or to watch his performance because he yelled, “GO ON,” and then he clapped loudly commanding me like a disobedient puppy.
“Yes, Sir,” I said as I looked over toward the baseball field. The rodeo was over and my stepfather walked over to boucherie pig and I ran off to find the other kids who were playing near the cemetery.
“Whatchyall doin?” I asked.
“Playing hide and seek and stuff. My mom gave me a brownie,” said my friend Ollie.
“Aww dang you are so lucky,” I said. “Its like 3PM – are we going to have lunch for dinner?”
“Maybe my mom will sneak ya something,” he said.
“Naw, I already tried,” I said.
“So ya gonna play a round. We’re going over the fence. The whole cemetery! Its fun!” He said.
“Well, ok, yeah!” I replied. I was pretty nervous about playing so far from the park pavilion. I really didn’t want to get in trouble with my stepdad, but since everyone else was doing it I figured it must be ok. I wasn’t about to go all the way back to the pavilion and interrupt my stepdad in front of his employees to ask permission after he had already shooed me off.
A group of about ten kids, all got ready for the hide and seek round. I was a hider. The seeker started counting and we dispersed to hide. I was looking for a good spot to hide and didn’t want to hide by the cemetery graves out of respect for the dead. Running around the sides of the cemetery near the woods, I found a small storage shed with tools in it. I opened the door and slipped in as quietly as I could. It was probably a pretty obvious place to hide, but it was comfy and I could look though a tiny hole to see if other players were lurking to find me. It must have been only about 10 minutes later that Ollie went to use the portapotty next to the little shed and found my hiding place.
“Hey, this thing is unlocked? ” He whispered after opening the door to the shed and seeing me. “This is a good spot, everyone else is on the other side of the field, some of them are in the woods all the way behind the baseball field.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah, since there are bathrooms in the pavilion, I don’t think anyone even knows about that portapotty,” he paused, “I mean except us that is.”
We laughed and then shrugged our shoulders together.
Ollie assumed the position of peep hole watchman and I stared at the corner of the shed, lost myself in my own train of thoughts. “How is it that even the fun parts of my life amount to hiding?” I thought to myself, “how is it that all of my hiding places are next door to shit?” At night in my dreams, I ran and hid…never feeling completely safe, searching for a place that feels safe. Staring at the corner, I disassociated myself, thinking of the big ghost mansion I would often dream of, running from ghouls and ghosts, Dracula and Frankenstein. Daydreaming of myself hiding in coffins, staring at wood, huddled in a ball, recalling nightmares, my life and my dreams blended together.
“HEY!” Ollie said loudly, snapping me out of my head. It must have been the second time he said it.
“So I got this cookie; want some?” he smiled pulling out a praline sandie.
“Oh wow! Yes! Thank you so much.” I said bringing myself out of my thoughts, focusing on hiding WITH someone, “But how did you get it?” I asked.
“Oh easy,” Ollie said, “I just snuck under the table and grabbed it from under, all the parents are dealing with the pigs. “I grabbed it and then I ran off fast as the dickens down the side of the fence where wouldn’t pay no attention to me. And I then I found you, by chance?”
“That’s so cool!” I said. My initial shyness and foggy headedness dissipated like fog drying up under the hot southern sun as a big smile peered from my anxious lips stripping coaxing me into fellowship.
We were ten years old and in the fifth grade. We still played with all of the little kids. In that moment, we didn’t know yet how weighty the pubescence expectations of the South were. It hadn’t even hit us yet. We were both in elementary school, still waiting to be assigned to our new middle schools. We chatted for a very long time about stuff like our favorite foods and what we wanted to do in the summertime. I talked about dreams of going to Paris, and he talked about duck hunting with his dad, who was a radiology tech. It really didn’t seem like a long time, but it was apparently long enough for the adults to hunt for us.
“Does this mean we won hide and seek?” he asked with a side eyed smile.
“Won or lost.” I said as I could see a heard of parents charging at the little storage hut like Pomplonian bulls.
“Get out here you two, almost everyone’s on desert!” said a lady co worker of my parents. Run back up there and so yalls Daddies.
The Daddies stood in a semi-circle, not just ours but all of the office dads. From across the cemetery, I saw my stepfather was laughing and cutting up until we got closer in which their faces changed completely.
Ollie’s dad said, “What were y’all doin’ boy?”
“Talkin’ and playing hide and seek.” He said. “Um, we shared a cookie.”
“Shared a cookie?” said my stepdad, “I bet you did.” He said and the other men began to laugh.
“Well, you know what we think y’all were doin’ is nailin,’’ not get on and go eat,” said his dad to Ollie.
The group of men burst out laughing except for my stepdad. Ollie made a quick 180 and ran toward the food and filled up a plate, sitting by the other boys eating dessert.
I looked down at my feet wishing I could somehow melt into the clay beneath me. I knew better than to move an inch as my stepdad stared with laser eyes right into my chest. My heart may have stopped when I realized what was going on around. At first, when his dad said nailin’ I thought he meant they thought we were fooling with the tools in the shed, like actually nailing wood as both nails and wood were in the shed. But between the laughing and the shaming stare of my stepdad, the mortifying realization that he meant that they thought we had sex washed over me.
Ollie’s dad said, “Should we go while you discipline?”
“No, STAY,” he said to his co-workers, his underlings. He was their boss, so it wasn’t like they were going to oppose him.
“She needs to learn not to be a little slut,” he sneered to his audience as they let out slivery sighs and under their breath chuckles.
He turned back toward me, with is coworkers behind him, all of them staring at me, reveling in every micro-movement of my face as my stepdad’s monologue began…
“You see what you have caused? You made me, their boss, look like a fool because now they all see YOU as a little SLUT. It doesn’t even matter if you did or didn’t sleep with that boy; you THE laughing stock of the ENTIRE workplace. If you didn’t sleep with that boy, you might as well have, because they will never stop talking about you and laughing at you…which means they are also laughing at me…which means that you are making me look like a fool as their boss. Are you too stupid to realize that you are older now, and you can’t lock yourself in tool sheds with boys? You will forever be the Center Slut kid to ALL of them, he said with is arm waving toward the group of men. Now go on and eat and no dessert for you. You are going to be going to your room straight when we get home and you’re gonna stay there for a looooooong time. Now GOOOOO, he roared, “And keep your mouth shut….SLUT.”
I was crushed. I was sickened. I was violated by his tongue, lashing out at me. I would rather have been the roasted pig than the Center Slut. The last few childhood pleasures…playground games and image of a sugary sweet little girl in the eyes of my parents’ friends and coworkers…all of that was robbed from me in a strike of a heartbeat and the roar of one man. My head spun. I felt his words in my throat, suffocating me. I lugged my lead legs to the pavilion out of fear. I had just gotten out of a year long punishment, confined to a spot on the carpet in my room so I wondered how long I was going to have endure his punishments for this time.
At the pavilion, my mom handed me a plate. Her own shame beamed out of her eyes demanding both of our silence in response. As I ate, I stared at the pig carcasses, torn to shreds by the heard of Center workers. The ripped pieces of flesh hanging form the bones felt relatable as I forced myself to eat…no longer hungry. Even the desserts looked like a massacre, swimming piles of formerly molded Jellos and oozing pudding with puffy floating cookie wafers.
Silently sinking into my seat, I cleaned my plate, all except the dessert my mom had scooped onto the plate, that, I left so as to not disobey my stepdad. I tried to prepare my mind for my fate after we got home. The ride home was a blur. It was like watching a train ride on television, scenes passing by, disassociated scenes. I wished became increasingly more anxious the closer we got to the house.
That night, he made me stand and listen to his lashings for hours, until about two in the morning. He demanded a logical explanation from me for a crime I never committed. He asked me what the boy’s penis looked like and if I enjoyed the whole thing. His eye glimmered with delight as he looked at me and said, “You know, all those guys are still talking about you. They are going to sleep right now, chuckling themselves to sleep, and probably MORE” He went on to describe grown men fantasizing about “the boy” and I having sex, pleasing themselves with the idea. He spoke into existence visions of sugar babies dancing in their heads. I knew he had placed the vision there himself and he lauded in it.
I was mortified. I’m not sure why I tried to defend myself but I became obsessed with trying to clear my name in the moment. My mind war racing about ways to disprove him as if that would somehow erase what had happened. I felt removed from my body, I felt like I was watching myself. My mind knew that my efforts were futile but almost involuntarily I heard myself say things like “we were just playing a game with everyone else” and “we mostly talked about Ollie’s hunting trip,” repeating the details of stories as if that would ever be a satisfactory alibi.
Defensiveness rushed over me. When my stepdad acted this way there was only so much standing there and taking the verbal lashings that one can withstand in a matter of hours. Eventually there wee only two outcomes, groveling for forgiveness which meant admitting to guilt even if there was none…just to make the verbal abuse stop OR continued defensiveness. No matter how I retold the facts of the matter, my stepfather insisted I was lying, that I FULLY deserved the Scarlet SLUT Letter that was placed on me. I became instantly self conscious that now I would start middle school with a reputation of a being a slut. My stepfather’s hate campaign had ballooned beyond our private home life. Like a water balloon filled with vile contempt, it pushed itself into our public life and burst its contents on everything. I think I always thought that there was a boundary that he would not cross. I was caught off guard that he openly presented mefor slaughter to his co-workers, just like the boucherie pigs. And just as the balloon burst its pussy noxious rumors that day, my intuition also burst open as I realized to my horror that HE had whispered slanderous stories ABOUT ME ALL ALONG to anyone that would listen. I realized that the battle started so many years before that day. As I lay in my bed, exhausted and battered, my mind was still racing. For the life of me, I could not understand why were my parents so intent on destroying me when all I ever did was just exist. I imagined myself as a mother and I tried to analyze a situation in which I would treat my kids the way I was being treated and I just could not bring myself to find any reasonable excuse for their behavior. I went over and over the events of the day, searching in my mind for something I had done wrong to deserve his berating and I could think of none. I was thought of the men and their thoughts. I thought of what tomorrow would bring for me, more surprised, more betrayal, more punishment. I knew that the boucherie was a foreshadowing of what was to come. I knew that when my stepfather gave me the “I wanna kill you” look, I believed it. I knew that my heart and body were no more protected than a pig fed to be fat. I realized that he had groomed me just as an outlet for his rage and malevolence. At only ten, I was shell shocked and worn down.
I drew my blanket over my head, making a little room under the covers that felt more protected than my own. I said to myself, “Just eight more years and I will be free…if I survive, just eight more years…maybe seven.” I was determined to endure it. I decided that if this was a war, my stepdad didn’t deserve “to win.” Winning was surviving and thriving without them. I wanted my own family. I longed to be grown up and with my own kids. I dreamed in giving the love I should have received. I calmed my thoughts with dreams of a future that was mine. If the boucherie was my funeral then the second line was my parade of thoughts of being an adult, in control of my own destiny, and a rebirth.
I extinguished the anxious flames my stepfather lit beneath me with a gush of love for people who deserved it, people like my Grandma. I thought of the tight hug and warmth of my grandma’s love as I held my pillow under the covers, the daylight began shining through my window. A spark of love for myself, for my own survival was lit and I emerged the next day ready for the battle ahead, expecting danger around every corner. My nightmares had prepared me for this moment, but the running and hiding was over. I was instead ready to fight. I would not give into him any longer. I was determined to only say what I thought. I was done fawning and I was done being his pawn. I was ready to fight the battles I needed to fight with the Beast that was my stepdad, and I was prepared to win them. He thought he had ruined me, but he fortified me. With gloves of determination and my Grandmother love as a protective helmet, I stepped into the ring and readied myself for the upcoming rounds. He thought he could roast the boucherie baby by playing the fool. He thought he made me a scorned woman, but instead I emerged a cosmic warrior, ready to fight for all the possibilities the universe had to offer me.