When the Trouble Started

I always been different. Even back in Mississippi, Mama used to say I had “too much imagination for my own good.” But it wasn’t imagination. I knew things other folks didn’t. Felt things inside the walls of old buildings, sensed when somebody was lyin’ even if they smiled right in my face. Mama called it childish nonsense. Daddy called it “a gift you ain’t grown into yet.”

But once we moved to St. Martin Parish, that “nonsense” turned into somethin’ Mama couldn’t ignore.

It started small little things Grandma Odette would show me. How to listen to the wind. How to tell when the bayou water was restless. How to rub herbs between my fingers and smell their stories. She’d sit me on her porch, braid swingin’ down her back, and say, “Anaïs, baby, you got the sight. Same as me. Same as Eulalie. Don’t let nobody shame you outta what’s yours.”

Mama hated that.

Every time I came back from the main house, I’d find Mama and Daddy in the kitchen, voices low at first, then sharp enough to cut through the walls.

One evenin’, I walked in just as Mama slammed a pot on the stove.

“Get yo mama, Elias,” she snapped, eyes flashin’. “She teachin’ our girl all that spiritual nonsense. I won’t have my baby dabblin’ in devilish foolishness.”

Daddy sighed, long and tired. He loved Mama deep, but he loved his mama too. And he loved me most of all. But he wasn’t the kind of man to raise his voice at Marlene Sinclair‑Edmond. Mama, before Daddy, had been a spoiled thing; the only girl out of four children, Grandpa Charles’s pride and joy. She was used to gettin’ her way, used to folks bendin’ to her moods.

But she met her match with Grandma Odette.

Odette didn’t bend for nobody. Not for the church. Not for the town. And certainly not for Marlene.

She’d walk right into the kitchen, calm as a Sunday mornin’, and say, “Marlene, chile, I ain’t corruptin’ nobody. I’m teachin’ her what’s in her blood.”

Mama’s jaw would tighten so hard I thought her teeth might crack. “Her blood is covered by Jesus, Odette. Not spirits. Not dreams. Not herbs.”

Odette would just smile that slow, knowing smile. “Jesus ain’t scared of herbs, baby.”

That line alone could send Mama stormin’ out the room.

The arguments kept comin’, louder each time. Mama didn’t want me near Odette’s garden, didn’t want me touchin’ her jars of herbs, didn’t want me hearin’ her stories ’bout Eulalie and the women who dreamed before her. She said it was dangerous, said it was sinful, said it would “lead me astray.”

But I couldn’t stay away. Odette made me feel seen. Mama made me feel wrong.

One night, the fight got so bad Mama threatened to leave.

She stood in the doorway, bag half‑packed, breathin’ hard like she’d run a mile. “I can’t raise my child in a place where folks teach her to listen to ghosts,” she said.

Daddy’s voice cracked. “Marlene… you gon’ leave me? Leave us?”

Mama didn’t answer. She just stared at the floor like she was lookin’ for somethin’ she lost.

Odette stepped forward, slow and steady. “You think leavin’ gon’ fix the hurt? You think runnin’ from what scares you gon’ make it disappear? Child, you can’t run from your own blood.”

Mama jerked back like Odette had slapped her. “Don’t you tell me ’bout blood.”

She left the bag on the table and walked out into the night, screen door slammin’ behind her.

The house went quiet. Too quiet.

Odette came to me, sat me on her knee, and smoothed my hair. “Listen, baby. Folks gon’ call what you got a sin ’cause they scared. They’ll try to make it small so they don’t have to face it. But you remember this our women saw. They listened. They healed. Ain’t no shame in that.”

I didn’t understand everything she meant. But I understood enough.

Mama feared what she couldn’t control. Odette feared nothin’. And I was caught between the two, between faith and sight, between silence and truth, between a mother who prayed my gift away and a grandmother who called it sacred.

That was when the trouble started. And it never really stopped.