They Gave Me a Check at Twelfth Night, So I Took Their Mardi Gras novel · Chapter 23 of 32
Chapter 23: The River Doesn't Care
I said the grace with my hands flat on my grandmother's platter, and I did not need a card.
My grandmother had said it in the Arabi kitchen on every Lundi Gras of my childhood.
The Krewe of Thalassa had borrowed it from the women of the parish in 1911 without ever saying so.
"For the water that carries us, and the bread that holds us," I said.
"For the ones who cooked, and the ones who carried, and the ones who stood at the back."
"Bless the ones who are in this room and the ones who are not."
"Let no one go hungry on the morning, and no one be turned away at the door."
A hundred and fifty voices said amen.
It was not a polite amen.
It rolled up from the long tables like the sound of a church, and my mother put her apron over her face.
Hortense sat down.
She sat very slowly, with the blank card in her fist.
Nobody looked at her.
That was the worst of it, I think.
Not one head turned her way for the rest of the supper.
She left before the coffee, alone, on the arm of her driver.
At midnight the hall was empty, and the women had gone with their pots.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of They Gave Me a Check at Twelfth Night, So I Took Their Mardi Gras are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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