Since I’ve known Nanette, and my mama tells me that I’ve known her pretty much my whole life, I’ve never admired anyone more. Nan was born in Natchitoches at the tail end of the war. She’s Creole through and through. Her mama Lizzie was a free slave from Shreveport, and her daddy was Aleje, a Mexican. How they got together was a mystery to everyone but them. Nan tells me that she’s got her theories, but she’s not too keen on any one of them. Aleje left Lizzie four months after Nan was born. Nan never did ask her mama why exactly they had gotten together, or why Aleje left, but she figures it had something to do with the war. She never did see him again.

Lizzie remarried fast, to a man named Paulie Eggars. Paulie was a big, strong, black man. He was the protection Lizzie needed, but he was not a protective fellow. He had a mean temper, which he tended to take out on Lizzie or Nan. One different thing about him is he had a keen sense of respect for pregnancy. It was his offspring, he figured. So when Lizzie was pregnant, which seemed to be every nine months, he treated her as if she were a glass ballerina figurine. He figured that if Lizzie was fragile, Nan would do. So Nan got the brunt of it. 

In the last few years of her life, Lizzie got real sick, although no one could really figure why. It was like a bleak fog came over her, to the point where she wouldn’t want to get out of bed for anything or anyone. Paulie, of course, didn’t see it as his responsibility to take care of her or anything else. After all, he had an outstanding reservation at the local craps game. So it fell to Nanette. From sunup to sundown Nan would run round like a chicken with her head chopped to bits trying to wrangle up her seven siblings and tend her ma and do the washing and dust the stoop. It was a real bad scene, and she could barely keep up. It was even worse after her mama passed.

After that, Nan was on her own. She once told me that after Lizzie passed, Paulie got drunk and wandered off. So, it was up to her to rear her siblings.

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There were seven Eggars: four boys, three girls. 

* Cecil who’s a year and a half younger than Nan. He was a typical firstborn son in that he had been told all his life that he could do no wrong, and he believed it. He got married three times because his wives couldn’t understand his orders.

* Amanda, A.K.A Granny. Granny got the nickname Granny when she was a kid because she looked like an old woman. The name stuck, and to this day her grandkids call her Granny.

* Billy. He was actually named William Paul Eggar, but they thought that was too hoity toity richie rich so they called him Billy P. Billy P. died at the age of 26 a millionaire thanks to tax fraud. To this day, Nan is stumped on how Billy managed to wrangle out a million out of Uncle Sam.

*  Jean. Jean’s real name was Ellise Jean, but Jean was nicer because Ellise was a white girl’s name at that time. Jean was a quiet girl. She liked to sew and paint, and she eventually got to be a real smart teacher. She had to quit when she was raped by a student. She probably led the saddest life of them all. She was lonely, and never married.

* Elizabeth. Named after her mother, Eliza Joan was a firecracker from the day she was born. She’s actually Jean’s identical twin, and the whole family reckons that Eliza stole every ounce of passion and character from Jean in the womb. But for all the passion Eliza had, she died the latest of them all, in a plane crash. She never married, but legends say that she had an affair with every married man in Natchitoches. 

* Daniel. Daniel was a pure psychopath if there ever was one. Nan said he liked to kill squirrels and eat them alive, but I’m pretty sure she just said that to scare Stevie. 

* Steve. He was the baby, and everyone knew it. Even the dogs. He was beloved, though, and Nan loved him so much she named her only son after him. 

When I come to Nan’s after school, she tells me stories about her growing up time. Mostly the happy stories nowadays. She likes to pretend that she’s fit as a feather, but truth be told, she can’t handle the bad stories on her bad days. And almost every day is a bad one for her. 

She’s a firecracker, that Nanette.