Chapter 4: The Oldest Queen

The oldest queen of Thalassa arrived in Arabi on Sunday morning in a black town car with a driver who had to help her out of it.

I watched from the kitchen window with a dish towel in my hands.

She stood at the bottom of Mama's porch steps and looked at the paint, the gutters and the plastic Virgin in the flower bed.

Then she climbed the steps without taking the driver's arm.

"I have not been below the Industrial Canal since 1974," she said at the screen door. "Someone get me a chair that doesn't wobble."

Mama gave her the good chair, the one with the arms.

She sat with the ebony cane across her knees and accepted a cup of coffee with chicory in it.

She tasted it, and her mouth moved a little.

"Your mother makes it the way mine did," she said to me. "Black enough to stand a spoon in."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Don't ma'am me. I am ninety-one. I have earned the right to be called by my title, and nobody remembers it."

"What is your title?"

"The oldest queen." She smiled. "It's the only one left."

Gaspard had been fixing the back step since seven.

He came in wiping his hands on a rag, saw her, and stopped in the doorway like a boy who'd been caught on a roof.

"Ravenel," she said. "Your grandfather piloted the Captain's yacht in the Fifties. He drank."

"Yes, ma'am. He did."

"Sit. You're going to hear this too. She'll need somebody who can drive."

He sat on the stool by the icebox, as far from me as the room allowed.

It was not far.

The oldest queen set her cup down.

"I'm going to tell you the rules of the baby," she said, "because Hortense will tell you wrong."

I took the chair across from her.

"The keeper sits at the Queen's table."

"Not near it, at it."

"Every event of the krewe from now to Mardi Gras, the Tea, the Presentation, the Bal Masque, the Ball."

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