Arrière-Grand-Mère

Marisa P. Clark

1.     The Simbis

Years ago at a brule zin, a mambo greeted me
as Simbi. A frisson rippled my skin: each rib turned
serpent stirring from long sleep. My ancestors
whose names are lost slithered up from the swamp
and laced themselves together as my ribcage, protectors
of my viscera, my vital organs. When their tongues flicker,
they whisper in Cajun patois. They say my spine is the rattle
of a rattlesnake’s tail, poised to warn. They say these bones
of mine are made of snakes whose skeletons are made
of ribs and vertebrae, which in turn are made of snakes
made of ribs and so on, without end. They say I contain
what they contain: ancestors upon ancestors
who knew to bend and never break. 

2.     Arrière-Grand-Mère

Most recently, Olympe moved in. Great-grandmother
via matrilineage, she resides in my left femur,
with the chrysanthemums she’s grown to sell
for All Souls Day—this livelihood among flowers
far preferable to her early years harvesting sugar cane
or catching newborns in gentle, callused hands,
the first those bloody babies knew of touch.
Yes, a cemetery shaded by ancient live oak trees
draped with Spanish moss provides an address
for her mortal remains, a set of weary bones
laid out beside Antoine’s—the no-good husband
she kicked out, who lived his last decades
in an abandoned caboose. My coccyx may be
where he ends up. But Olympe makes her home
in a long, strong bone that carries me everywhere—
and how she got here is a journey all its own.
 

3.     The Journey

I drove in search of gravesites, took photos
of the names of relatives from generations long ago
engraved upon the crumbling crypts behind
St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church in Abbeville,
oh motherland. I took fistfuls of graveyard dirt
to sprinkle on my altar. I traced my grandfather’s line
to St. Malo, France, and Joseph Beausoleil—
but Olympe’s line was lost, the records run out:
the story of the poor who couldn’t sign their names
or dodged the census takers. I drove farther south,
toward Avery Island, through lush swampland
and fertile fields of cane. The sun glared down
through humidity-drenched air. I saw a snake
take to the sky, its long body thick as my wrist
and writhing high above. True, it was gripped
in a raptor’s talons, but I prefer to think
that snake was still alive and flying, surprised
to be looking down at the marshy green earth
it threaded itself through. How beautiful
this view! It continued its flight and I my quest.
The roadside was skirted with all that sugar cane,
the same fields young Olympe reaped. I knew her
only as an old woman in a grim gray dress,
her white bun gossamer-spun—smiling
and so quiet, except to speak a language
I didn’t know. Just now I could picture her
sneaking a break. With her machete she strips
and scores a green stem the length of a legbone,
then lifts it to chapped lips and chews and slurps
till her chin is sticky from its marrow drippings.
It’s a hard life, hers, just beginning—and she
deserves the taste of something sweet.

Marisa P. Clark is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection Bird (Unicorn Press, 2024). Her prose and poetry appear in Shenandoah, Cream City Review, Nimrod, Epiphany, Foglifter, Prairie Fire, Rust + Moth, Sundog Lit, Texas Review, and elsewhere. Best American Essays 2011 recognized her creative nonfiction among its Notable Essays. A queer writer, she grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, came out in Atlanta, Georgia, and lives in New Mexico with three parrots, two dogs, and whatever wildlife and strays chance to visit.