The Red-Hot Cajun by Sandra Hill

have helped. No... no, it wouldn’t have. It would have just angered her mother and made her take better care to hide her actions. Nothing would have changed, really.
    “My mother never hit me,” she said. “It was never really abuse.” I cannot believe I am defending the witch.
    “Hah!”
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means, iffen ya step in somethin’ soft, ya cain’t go callin’ it pudding.”
    “That makes absolutely no sense.” The scary thing was that it did make some kind of warped sense to her. “I don’t want to talk about my mother anymore. And I don’t want to talk about having babies, either.”
    “So what should we talk about?” Tante Lulu asked.
    How about nothing?
    “I know. We kin talk about sex.”
    “No thanks.” That’s all I need. Sex advice from a Grandma Moses.
    “I know stuff.”
    Ican’t imagine what. “No thanks.”
    “Betcha doan know the best way to make a man get down on his knees and beg.”
    Oh—my—God!
    Playing possum . . .
    It was just past dawn when Rene saw Val walking toward him, a piece of toast in one hand, coffee in the other, and a wild glint in her dark eyes. Sharing a bed with Tante Lulu would do that to a person, he supposed.
    Or more likely, the glint was for him. He braced himself for the onslaught.
    The air was a little cooler this early in the morning, but the swirling clouds in a clear blue sky above and the steam rising on the water presaged another scorcher. The willows and cypresses that lined the banks provided little relief from the unrelenting sun. But the black and orange Monarch butterflies that flitted among the butterweed blossoms were having a field day.
    He was sitting cross-legged near the bank, shirtless and shoeless, wearing the black boxers he’d slept in last night— a Christmas gift from his half-sister Charmaine. They were imprinted with red lips, but in the dark the lips glowed and became tongues. A real kidder, that Charmaine was.
    For a second, he wondered if his boxers were decent attire, then shrugged, deciding that they were no more indecent than his running shorts on Vial’s curvy body.
    Rene had been up for an hour. It was his favorite time of the day, watching the jet-black night explode suddenly, bayou style, with the brightness of a new day. All the wading birds came out then—herons, egrets, ibises— leaving their roosts to find food for their young. Laid out on the grass next to him were a green trout and several sac-a-lait, or crappies, which Tante Lulu would put to good use.
    “You’re up early,” he remarked, trying to be friendly.
    “You would be, too, if you shared a bed with a senior citizen version of Dear Abby.”
    Uh-oh! He arched his eyebrows at her.
    “She wants to tell me stuff about sex.”
    “Uh-oh!” he said aloud.
    “Stuff that would, and I quote, ‘make a man get down on his knees and beg’.”
    He had to smile at that image, him down on his knees begging Val the Ice Princess for God-only-knows-what. On the other hand, he had a really good imagination. Two years.
    “It’s not funny.”
    “I beg to differ.”
    “Nice undies,” she said, eyeballing his shorts. “But I think I prefer your superhero ones.”
    “They don’t fit anymore.” In more ways than one, baby.
    She made a snorting sound of disgust, then she jerked backward as she got a closer look at him.
    “What is that in your lap?” she demanded to know, scrunching up her nose with distaste as she sank down to the ground next to him.
    Oh, good Lord, am I having a morning hard-on? Son-of-a-bitch! I can’t take me anywhere, he thought, his face heating with embarrassment. But then he realized that she referred to the baby possum all curled up and sleeping on his upper thigh.
    “That has got to be the ugliest creature on the face of the earth. And, eeew, what a long tail! Is it a rat?”
    “No, it’s a possum. Chester has a broken hind leg— probably the reason his mother tossed him out of her pouch. Possums are only