Three years passed before Daddy finally got his divorce. It felt bittersweet; not the dramatic, fiery ending Mama had dragged out with all her delays, but a quiet, tired closing of a chapter that had already ended long before the papers were signed. Mama gave Daddy full custody of me. They worked out an agreement that I’d visit her for holidays and school breaks, but Daddy made sure it was my choice whether I went to Mississippi or not.
Truth be told, I didn’t know if I wanted to go. Mama’s silence had carved a hollow place in me, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to reopen it.
With Mama gone, there was no one left to keep me from learnin’ from Odette. Every day after school, I sat at her knee, listenin’ to her stories; not just about our family, but about Louisiana itself. She’d sort herbs while she talked, her fingers movin’ with the ease of someone who’d done it her whole life. I’d help her separate mint from basil, rosemary from sage, all while she wove history into my hands.
As a Black child, I had the basic understanding of African and Black American history; the kind they teach you in school, the kind Mama approved of. But hearin’ Odette speak on the things she lived through was somethin’ else entirely.
She told me about the 1953 Baton Rouge Bus Boycott, how folks walked miles in the heat rather than sit in the back of a bus. She told me about Ruby Bridges, how a little girl had to be escorted by federal marshals just to learn her ABCs. She told me about the KKK, how their shadows stretched long across the South when she was a child, how she learned early to listen for danger in the wind.
I’d sit there wide‑eyed, wonderin’ how she survived all that. I didn’t know if I could’ve lived in those times. But to Odette, those experiences were trial; stepping stones that shaped who she became.
She told me that what I was goin’ through was a trial too.
One afternoon, while she finished braidin’ my hair, she said, “Right now, baby, you can’t see the whole picture ’cause you distracted by the hurt. But soon you’ll see how much you needed to go through it to see the light.”
Her fingers were gentle, but her words were firm.
“You, Anaïs… I see somethin’ special in you. Bein’ who you meant to be gon’ require losin’ folks you love. Let go of what scare you. Let go of that voice that is your mama’s anger; the one tellin’ you you wicked.”
She tied off the braid and rested her hands on my shoulders.
“Dreams are messages, baby. From ancestors, deities, nature spirits. They offer guidance, warnin’s, blessings, revelations. They seek no harm. Accept the blessings you been given.”
That night, I lay in bed listenin’ to the frogs’ croak and the spring peepers chirp. Somewhere close, a barred owl called out into the dark. Louisiana nights always felt alive; like the land itself was breathin’.
I thought hard on Odette’s words.
It wasn’t like I’d stopped dreamin’ or feelin’ things. I’d just gotten better at hidin’ it; the way Mama conditioned me. Denial had become second nature. The church taught me to reject that part of myself, to fear it, to bury it.
I wanted Mama to love me. I wanted her to stay. I wanted us to be the family we were before Louisiana.
But I see now. No matter how much I tried to change, Mama was never gonna stay. Not for me. Not for Daddy. Not for herself.
Now that I’m thirteen, I understand somethin’ I couldn’t see before: Mama’s love was conditional.
She loved Daddy wholeheartedly, but me? Her daughter? She had expectations, heavy ones, and when I didn’t fit into the mold she carved, she broke away instead of bendin’.
Sometimes I wonder, as Mama sat in that courtroom, if she had any regrets. If she thought about the little girl she left behind. If she remembered the nights she prayed over me, callin’ me wicked. If she realized how deep her words cut.
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never know.
But sittin’ at Odette’s knee, learnin’ the history of our people, our land, our blood; I started to understand somethin’ important:
I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t cursed. I wasn’t wicked.
I was part of a lineage. A long line of women who dreamed, who saw, who survived.
And for the first time, I felt proud of that.
