Underline It Like You Mean It
As a source of beliefs, myths, and narratives, the family has always been central to Southern culture. So it can be frustrating for those Southerners who either do not fully embrace their family’s traditions or who know little about their family. This essay takes us to Louisiana, where the writer is searching for information and insights about their family.
Underline It Like You Mean It
by Rhienna Guedry
The last time I was back home in Louisiana, I planned on spending time in the small town my father grew up in. My cajun family had been in Ascension Parish since Donaldsonville was the capital of Louisiana in the early 1800s. I had started working on their ancestral story, down a rabbit hole of Google Image searches and genealogy sites. However, I had limited success: my ancestors held no passports, no property, no businesses. Public records and the US Census told me birth, marriage, death, and household details, but I wanted more than just milestones.
The place that represented hundreds of years of my family staying put was a drive and two flights away from where I called home. I had moved away from Louisiana in the summer of 1992, but always felt connected to the landscape in intense ways. The smell of magnolias or a breeze rustling Spanish moss were memories and often as they were the landscape of my dreams. My ancestral curiosities stemmed from a desire to make sense of that feeling of homesickness that never left me. Maybe I wanted answers to those questions: why did they stay, and why didn’t I?
I learned that my aunts had been living in the family house after my grandparents had passed away. My grandfather’s obituary was full of beautiful names of people I never met: Sylvania and Anastase (his parents, my great grandparents), Orellion, Orelia, Ophelia, and Leontine (his siblings). We weren’t close, but I regret not seeing him one last time before he died. The truth was that I hadn’t seen most of that side of my family since I was a teenager.
I’d left a message for one of my aunts at their old number, a landline that hadn’t changed since the ’80s, except for the addition of an area code. My Aunt Lisa was the one who returned my call, assuring me that yes, her and Aunt Colinda would be around if I wanted to stop by and look through photographs. I never knew my Aunt Lisa well, but I remembered two things about Aunt Colinda. First, that she was the one who took family photographs. Second, that she was the one who sent holiday and birthday cards and she underlined everything. Those (sometimes multiple) underlines gave the manic sense that everything was urgent and critical. I wondered whether this tick came from a desire for emphasis, or a lack of discretion for what was important. Colinda was the designated family scribe, since my grandfather didn’t know how to read or write, and my grandmother’s ability was extremely limited. Cards and letters were a kind of transcription: Paw-Paw sends All of his Love. Underlined, because he meant it.
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The home had been in the family since the 1930s, perched on cinder blocks a few feet above ground due to rampant flooding. Aside from the house’s age, wear and tear told the story of Louisiana weather: a blue tarp covered one corner of the roof, and masking tape marked Xs over all the windows. There was a homemade wooden ramp for wheelchair access, held down by two distressed sandbags. I parked my rental car in the oyster-shell driveway and saw the rusted screen door crack open, as one of my aunt’s hands extended a wave. I couldn’t help feeling self-conscious: my jewel-toned curls thriving in the humidity, my smart phone, my shiny rental car, my sunglasses.
The land was bookended with live oaks, and the occasional pecan tree. I remember being fascinated with the webworms that nested there seasonally, spooky tangles around the leaves and drupe. When I was a kid, a vegetable garden full of tomatoes and okra sat between their house and the neighbor’s. Now, the garden was replaced with sod and had the remnants of a controlled fire: coils of a small mattress still visible among wood, fabric, and the charcoal-tinted scraps of mystery items.
Crossing the threshold of a place last traversed as a child, the scale of the thing was almost dreamlike. I towered into the living room where both of my aunts were waiting for me. Aunt Lisa looked different but familiar- her face had morphed into what I remembered my grandmother’s looking like. Our family face was a gendered blueprint: strong-browed women with small features on wide faces with weak chins; bird-like men full of sharp angles, large ears, and impressive heads of hair. Aunt Colinda was the most changed as one who was missing things: many teeth, most of one leg, and all of the other. I had assumed the ramp in the driveway was a holdover for my grandparents, but it was for her wheelchair.
The living room was framed with the honey-colored wood paneling and the floral-patterned couch that I remembered from my youth. In fact, most of what was on the walls hadn’t changed in decades: a wooden clock in the shape of Louisiana, the temperature gauge with Audubon Society bird illustrations. I remembered how my grandfather had loved both birds and dragonflies, and I flashed back to a memory of his brown, calloused hands capturing a dragonfly by the wings to show us iridescence up close.
As I situated myself on the couch, my aunts got down to business. Lisa grabbed boxes from what I remembered as “the game closet” from my youth and set them near me, while Colinda gave the occasional context of when, where, or whom. They agreed to loan one particular album full of the oldest images, so that I could properly digitize them. I asked my aunts a few questions as they occurred to me, and they answered with an equal measure of efficiency and openness. I was struck by how happy everyone looked, and all of the nuance in photographs of gatherings and family meals. Aunt Lisa and Aunt Colinda watched me take photographs of photographs.
There wasn’t much in the way of small talk; it was a friendly but utilitarian visit. Once I’d exhausted the boxes of photographs, we said our goodbyes. I was surprised at the ease of it all as I hugged them both. My visit wasn’t a reconciliation, because none of us seemed to need it to be one. It was good to put my eyes on them.
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These days, whenever I try to dig back into my lineage, I hit a wall. I have the names and dates; I know where folks are buried; I have a family tree. But how can I know the stories of people who, on paper, didn’t do much of anything? Why does it take a written record to know who my ancestors were? Hundreds of years of cajun folks living and dying in the same five towns: it was like the ancestral trauma of being kicked out of Acadia ran so deep that nobody wanted to upset the balance once they made the new place home. They had survived expulsion, poverty, and the wickedness of Louisiana weather. My ancestors withstood and endured, and maybe that was enough.
Years have passed, as has Colinda. I’ve had some of those family photographs printed and framed. They show moments of celebration more nuanced than what had appeared in public records: my uncle’s first bicycle, my dad’s first marriage, a day trip into New Orleans for Mardi Gras. I’m coming to terms with what I will never know, but can imagine: the meals and songs, the romances and heartbreak. I’ll never know their depths, but I can imagine them. Their collective memories and secrets were buried beside them. And in the end, perhaps it’s more interesting to wonder than it is to know.
Rhienna Renée Guedry (she/they) is a writer, illustrator, and producer whose favorite geographic locations all have something to do with their proximity to water. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and 2022 Tin House Workshop alum, her work has appeared in Muzzle, Salvation South, Gigantic Sequins, and elsewhere. She is currently working on her first novel.
Note: Credit to Variety Pack (Issue №3, October 2020), where a version of this piece was previously published.
Originally published at http://modernsouthernfolklore.com on August 18, 2023.
