The Daughters

Parish

Chapter 6: The Daughters

Margaux was born in 2000, two years into the practice. Colette was born in 2003, five years into the practice. The births are the practice's timeline, the timeline that Clem measures not in years but in the events that the years contained — Margaux born the year the levee seepage appeared on the south end and the Corps came to investigate and the investigation lasted three months and the seepage was declared manageable, the word manageable being the engineer's version of the vet's word watchful, both words meaning: It is not an emergency, but do not stop looking. Colette born the year the August flood crested three inches below the levee top and the parish held its breath for six days, the year the holding was the fact, the holding being the levee's answer to the river's question, the answer being: Not yet.

Margaux was the first. The first child of a veterinarian is the child who learns the practice the way a first language is learned, not through instruction but through immersion, the immersion being total, the practice entering the child's world the way the river enters the floodplain, by filling every available space, by being the thing that is everywhere, the thing that cannot be avoided, the thing that is the household's ambient condition. Margaux learned the practice the way she learned to breathe, which is to say: without knowing she was learning, without knowing that other children's fathers did not smell like cattle and iodine, without knowing that other children's fathers did not leave at 2 AM and return at 4 AM with their arms wet to the shoulder, without knowing that other children's fathers did not keep a veterinary box in the bed of a truck that was parked in the driveway with the engine warm and the refrigerated unit humming.

She rode in the truck. This is the fact. This is the fact that contains the childhood. Margaux rode in the truck from the time she was old enough to ride in the truck, which was the time she was old enough to sit in a car seat strapped to the bench seat of the F-250, the car seat being the accommodation that the practice made for the child, the child being the thing that the practice had not anticipated but that the practice absorbed, the absorbing being the practice's nature, the practice absorbing everything — the animals, the confessions, the weather, the daughters — the absorbing being the capacity, the capacity being infinite, or if not infinite then sufficient, sufficient being the word that the practice uses for the things that are not perfect but that work, the things that are good enough, the good-enough being the standard by which a rural veterinary practice and a rural marriage and a rural childhood are measured.

Margaux in the truck at three years old, the car seat facing forward, her eyes at the level of the dashboard, her view being the view of the parish from the height of a child in a car seat, which is the view of the sky and the tops of the soybeans and the electrical wires and the birds on the wires and the clouds, the clouds being the thing she watched while Clem drove, the clouds being the child's cinema, the entertainment that the parish provides for free, the entertainment that requires only the looking and the looking was the riding and the riding was the practice, the practice including the child because the child was there and the child being there was the fact and the fact was Margaux in the truck.

She went on calls. Not the emergency calls, not the 2 AM calls, but the morning calls, the routine calls, the calls that were the practice's daily work — the pregnancy checks and the vaccinations and the hoof trims and the health certificates and the work that the work is, the work that fills the truck and the roads and the morning. She sat in the truck while Clem worked. She sat with the windows down and the radio on the country station out of Natchez, the station playing the songs that would become the soundtrack of her childhood, the songs about trucks and roads and small towns and love and loss, the songs that were the parish set to music, the parish's themes played in three chords and a steel guitar.

She watched her father through the windshield. She watched him walk to the chute. She watched him pull on the sleeve. She watched him reach into the cow, the reaching being the act she watched most often, the act that was the practice's central gesture, the hand entering the body, the hand finding the thing, the hand emerging with the knowledge, the knowledge being the diagnosis or the pregnancy or the absence of the pregnancy, the hand carrying the information from the dark to the light.

She watched. She watched the way Clem had watched Dr. Landry. She watched from the truck the way Clem had watched from beside the chute. The watching was the same. The watching was the education. But the education produced a different result in Margaux than it had produced in Clem, because the thing that Margaux saw when she watched her father's hands inside the cow was not the vocation she wanted but the vocation she understood, the understanding being the daughter's version of the vocation, the version that says: I see what you do. I see how you do it. I see the care. I will carry the care into a different form, a different practice, a different pair of hands doing different work but the same care, the care being the thing that is inherited, the care being the gene that passes from the father to the daughter not through the blood but through the watching.

Colette was different. Colette was the second child, and the second child of a veterinarian is the child who learns the practice's costs before the practice's rewards, the costs being the 2 AM phone calls and the missed dinners and the Saturday mornings when the father is not at the soccer game but at a ranch outside Clayton where a cow is down and the down is the emergency and the emergency is the priority and the priority is the practice and the practice is the thing that takes the father from the daughter, the taking being the cost, the cost being the thing that the second child learns, the second child who was three when the first learning happened, three when she woke at 2 AM and heard the truck start and heard the driveway gravel crunch and heard the absence that the truck's departure produced, the absence being the sound of the father leaving, the sound that Colette learned to hear the way Renee learned to sleep through the phone, by repetition, by the daily encounter with the fact, the fact being: He leaves. He comes back. The leaving and the coming-back are the practice. The practice is the thing he does. The thing he does takes him away. The away is temporary. The temporary is the promise.

But temporary is long when you are three. Temporary is long when you are five. Temporary is long when you are eight and you wake in the dark and the truck is gone and the driveway is empty and the absence is the fact, the fact that you carry to school the next morning, the fact that sits beside you in the car when Renee drives you to school because Clem is on a call, the fact that is the small weight that the daughter carries, the small weight that is not heavy but that is present, the present-weight being the practice's imposition on the childhood, the imposition that is not cruelty and is not neglect but is the vocation's demand, the demand that says: The animal comes first, the animal's need comes first, and the first is the first, and the daughter is not first, the daughter is loved but the daughter is not first, the first being the animal in the dark, the animal in the parish, the animal whose need produced the call that produced the leaving.

Colette did not ride in the truck. Not often. Not the way Margaux did. Colette rode in the truck when the riding was unavoidable, when Renee was at the library and Clem had calls and the calls could not wait and the daughter could not be left and the daughter went, the going being the accommodation, the practice accommodating the child the way it had accommodated Margaux but with less joy, with less of the discovery, with more of the endurance, the endurance being the second child's relationship to the practice, the relationship that says: I will sit in the truck. I will wait. The waiting is my part. The waiting is the thing the practice asks of me, and the thing the practice asks of me is not the same as the thing the practice asks of him, and the difference is the waiting, and the waiting is the cost.

But Colette watched too. Colette watched from the truck the way Margaux watched from the truck, and what Colette saw was not the hands inside the cow but the face of the farmer standing beside the cow, the face that Clem stood beside, the face that Colette read from the truck the way Clem read the cow's body, by the signs, by the posture, by the expression that the face carried, the expression being the farmer's interior made visible, the grief or the worry or the relief or the gratitude made visible on the face the way the pregnancy was made visible by the hand, and Colette saw the faces, and the seeing of the faces was the watching, and the watching was the education, and the education produced the vocation, the vocation that was not veterinary medicine but social work, not the care of the animal but the care of the person, not the hand inside the cow but the hand on the shoulder, the hand that says: I see you, I see the face, I see the thing the face is carrying, and the seeing is the care, and the care is the practice.

They grew up. The growing-up is the thing that parents measure in the increments that the calendar provides — the birthdays and the school years and the first days and the last days — but that parents experience as a continuous motion, the motion being the child moving away from the parent the way the river moves away from the headwaters, the distance increasing daily, the increasing being the nature of the thing, the nature of the child being: to leave. And the leaving is the evidence that the raising worked, the raising being the preparation for the leaving, the preparation that says: I will give you the tools. I will give you the watching. I will give you the truck and the roads and the mornings and the evenings and the porch and the rice and the sweet tea and the practice's example, the example being: Care. Care for the thing in your charge. Care the way the vet cares for the animal, the way the librarian cares for the book, the way the levee cares for the parish, by holding, by standing between the thing and the thing that would damage it, by being the structure that the dependence requires.

Margaux left for LSU. The same university. The same campus on the bluff above the river. The same river, the river that ran past Vidalia and past Baton Rouge and past New Orleans and into the Gulf, the river connecting the daughter to the father the way it connects everything in Louisiana to everything else, the river being the state's thread, the thread that runs through the parishes and the cities and the lives.

She did not study animal science. She studied political science. She studied the structures of governance, the systems by which people organize their collective life, the constitutions and the statutes and the regulations and the policies, the structures being the infrastructure of care at the scale of the state, the scale that is larger than the parish, larger than the practice, the scale at which the care becomes the policy and the policy becomes the law and the law becomes the thing that either serves the people or does not serve the people, and Margaux wanted the law to serve.

She graduated. She went to work for the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services in Baton Rouge. She is twenty-six now, nearly the age Clem was when he crossed the bridge with Renee and the Rubbermaid bins, and Margaux's twenty-six is different from Clem's twenty-seven the way the city is different from the parish, the difference being the scale and the density and the anonymity, but the care is the same. The care is the same because the care was learned in the truck, learned from the watching, learned from the father's hands inside the cow and the father's voice on the phone at 2 AM and the father's boots on the porch at 4 AM, the boots wet, the boots being removed, the boots being the evidence of the care, the evidence that the care was delivered, the evidence that someone went out in the dark and did the thing that needed doing.

Margaux does the thing that needs doing. She works with families. She works with children. She works with the cases that are the state's version of the cruelty cases, the cases where the neglect is not of the horse but of the child, the cases where the grief or the addiction or the poverty or the violence has produced the not-caring, the not-caring being visible in the child's body the way it was visible in Leon Daigle's horse, the ribs showing, the eyes dull, the posture of endurance. Margaux sees the children the way Clem sees the animals — through the signs, through the body's language, through the things that the body says when the person cannot say them, and the seeing is the practice, and the practice is the care.

She calls Clem on Sundays. The call is the thread. The call is the river. The call is the connection between the parish and the city, between the daughter and the father, between the two vocations that are the same vocation in different clothes. She tells him about the cases she can tell him about, the cases that the confidentiality allows, the cases that she describes in the general terms that protect the families but that convey the weight, the weight being the thing that Margaux carries the way Clem carries the confessions, in the body, in the space that the body makes for the things it receives, the space that is never large enough and that expands to hold what it must hold.

Clem listens. He listens the way he listens to the farmers, with the attention that does not interrupt, with the silence that is the space, the space that allows the telling, the telling being the daughter's version of the confession, the confession that comes not over a hoof stand or a squeeze chute but over the phone on Sunday afternoon, the phone being the chute, the phone being the space where the daughter brings the weight and the father holds it, the holding being the practice, the practice being the love.

"How do you carry it," Margaux said once. "How do you carry what they tell you. The farmers. The things they say while you're working on the animals. How do you carry it."

Clem was on the porch. The green rocking chair. The Sunday afternoon. The sweet tea sweating on the arm of the chair. The parish spread out before him in the October light, the soybeans yellowing, the river low behind the levee.

"You just carry it," he said.

The answer that is not an answer. The answer that is the only answer. The answer that says: The carrying is not a technique. The carrying is not a skill. The carrying is the vocation's weight, and the weight is carried the way the levee carries the river, not by strategy but by structure, the structure being the body and the body being the practice and the practice being the daily driving and treating and listening and holding, the daily work being the structure that carries the weight, the work distributing the weight across the days the way the levee distributes the water's pressure across the soil, the distribution being the engineering, the engineering being the practice.

Margaux was silent on the phone. She was silent the way Clem was silent, the way the Boudreaux silence works, which is: The silence holds what the words cannot. The silence is not empty. The silence is the space where the understanding lives, the understanding that does not require articulation, the understanding that passes from the father to the daughter through the silence that is the family's shared language, the language that says: I know. I know because I watched. I know because I rode in the truck. I know because I smelled the cattle and the iodine on your hands when you came home. I know because the knowing is the inheritance, the inheritance that is not the practice but the care, the care being the thing that I took from the truck and carried to Baton Rouge and carry in my body through the offices and the courtrooms and the homes where the children are, the children who need what the animals need, which is: someone to come, someone to see, someone whose hands know what to do.

Colette went to New Orleans. Tulane. She studied psychology and then she studied social work and then she went to work for a community mental health center in the Seventh Ward, the center being the practice in a different form, the practice being the office with the chairs and the appointments and the people who come because the people have the thing that the people cannot carry, the thing that the people bring to the office the way the farmers bring the thing to the chute, the thing being the weight, the weight being the grief or the anxiety or the depression or the trauma, the weight that the person has been carrying alone and that the person is now sharing, the sharing being the social worker's practice, the practice of receiving the weight, the practice of holding the weight while the person rests.

Colette does not call on Sundays. Colette texts. This is the difference between the first daughter and the second daughter, the difference being the mode of communication, the mode reflecting the person, Margaux calling because Margaux is the caller, the voice, the one who speaks across the distance the way Clem speaks across the chute, and Colette texting because Colette is the writer, the one who puts the words on the screen the way Renee puts the books on the shelf, with precision, with order, with the care that the written word requires, the written word being the form that Colette uses because the written word gives the space, the space that the phone call does not give, the space to compose, the space to arrange, the space that is the social worker's space, the space between the receiving and the responding.

The texts are short. The texts say: Rough day. The texts say: Good session today. The texts say: Miss you. The texts say: How's Daddy. The texts do not say: I love you, because the texts do not need to say it, the love being in the texting, the love being in the asking, the love being in the Daddy, the word that Colette still uses at twenty-three, the word that is the childhood's residue, the residue of the three-year-old who heard the truck start in the dark and the residue of the eight-year-old who watched the farmer's face from the truck and the residue of the thirteen-year-old who came home from school to find her father in the kitchen washing blood from his arms at the sink, the blood being from a surgery, the blood being the practice's evidence, the evidence that the work was done, and the evidence was on his arms and the evidence was in his face and the evidence was the tiredness that the face showed and that the thirteen-year-old saw and that the seeing was the moment when Colette understood what the practice cost, the cost being the tiredness, the cost being the blood on the arms, the cost being the leaving at 2 AM and the returning at 4 AM and the day beginning at 4:30 and the day not ending, the not-ending being the practice's nature, the nature being: The work does not end. The need does not end. The animals do not stop needing. The parish does not stop calling. The calling is the vocation and the vocation is the life and the life is the thing that the father gives to the parish and the giving is the cost and the cost is paid by the family, the family being the ones who wait, the ones who sit in the truck, the ones who hear the phone and the truck and the absence, the absence being the cost's form, the cost's shape, the cost's weight.

Colette understood the cost. Colette became a social worker. Colette went to the place where the cost is carried by the people who cannot carry it, the place where the cost has produced the damage and the damage has produced the need and the need is the thing that Colette answers, the answering being the vocation, the vocation being the care, the care being the thing she learned from the truck, from the watching, from the father who left at 2 AM and came back with blood on his arms and tiredness on his face and the practice in his hands.

Neither daughter became a vet. This is the fact that people in the parish sometimes note, the noting being the parish's version of the question, the question that is: Why didn't your girls go into the practice? The question that expects the answer that says: The practice is too hard, or: The money is too little, or: The girls didn't want it. But the answer is none of those answers. The answer is: They became the practice. They became the practice in different clothes. They became the care in different forms. They became the reaching-in and the finding and the holding in different bodies, different hands, different offices, different cities.

Margaux's hands are small, like Renee's. Margaux's hands hold the case files and the court documents and the children's drawings that the children make in the supervised visitation rooms, the drawings that are the children's version of the confession, the drawings that say what the children cannot say in words, the crayon on the paper being the child's language, the language that Margaux reads the way Clem reads the cow's body, by the signs, by the colors, by the shapes that the child draws and that the shapes reveal.

Colette's hands are like Clem's. Large for a woman. Long fingers. The hands that hold the tissue box and the pen and the notepad and the client's silence, the silence being the thing that the social worker holds while the client finds the words, the finding of the words being the client's version of the calf's emergence, the words coming from the dark into the light, from the inside to the outside, from the stuck to the free, and the social worker's hands hold the space while the emergence happens, the hands being the practice, the practice being the care.

They come home for Thanksgiving. They come home for Christmas. They come home for the weekends that the calendar provides and that the drive allows — Margaux two hours from Baton Rouge, Colette three hours from New Orleans — and the coming-home is the return, the return to the parish that raised them, the parish that they left because the leaving was the evidence that the raising worked, the parish that holds their childhood the way the levee holds the river, by structure, by the engineering of the daily life that the parents built, the life of the truck and the library and the porch and the chairs and the rice and the sweet tea and the mornings and the evenings and the practice.

They sit on the porch. The four of them. Clem and Renee and Margaux and Colette. The four chairs. The evening. The ceiling fan turning. The parish settling into the dark the way the parish settles every evening, the dark coming from the east, from across the river, the dark carrying the night, the night carrying the quiet, the quiet being the sound that the parish makes when the day is done and the work is done and the family is together on the porch and the being-together is the thing.

Clem looks at his daughters. He looks at them the way he looks at everything, which is with the attention of a man whose attention is his primary instrument, the attention that notices the small things — Margaux's posture, the way she sits with her spine straight and her shoulders back, the posture of a woman who stands in courtrooms and must project the authority that the court requires; Colette's hands, the way she wraps them around her glass the way she wraps them around the silences in her office, holding, always holding.

He does not tell them he is proud. He does not tell them because the telling is not his language, the language being the silence and the presence and the porch and the evening, the language being the being-there, the being-there being the love, the love's form being: I am here. You are here. We are here. The being-here is the thing.

But he is proud. He is proud the way the levee is proud when the river is high and the levee holds, which is to say: The levee does not know it is proud, the levee does not feel the pride, the levee simply holds, and the holding is the pride, the pride being the structural thing, the thing that is in the engineering, in the building, in the years of construction that produced the structure that holds.

He built them. He and Renee built them. They built them in the truck and in the library and on the porch and in the kitchen and in the mornings and in the evenings and in the 2 AM departures and the 4 AM returns and in the smell of cattle and iodine and in the books and the cards and the Dewey Decimal System and in the care, the care that was the construction material, the care being the soil and the clay and the concrete that the levee is built from, the care being the thing that holds.

Margaux in Baton Rouge, caring for the children. Colette in New Orleans, caring for the adults. Clem in Concordia Parish, caring for the animals. Renee in the library, caring for the books and the people who need the books. The four of them, the four vocations, the four forms of the same thing, the same thing being: Hold the thing in your charge. Care for the thing that depends on you. Be the hands that reach in and find the thing and bring it from the dark into the light.

The daughters are the practice.

The practice is the daughters.

The evening settles. The porch holds them. The parish holds them. The four chairs. The four vocations. The ceiling fan turning in the warm air, the air that is the parish's air, the air that carries the smell of the soybeans and the river and the cattle and the dust, the air that the daughters breathe when they come home, the air that is the home, the home being the air and the porch and the chairs and the parents and the parish.

The parish that raised them. The parish that they carry. The parish that they serve, each in her own way, each in her own city, each with her own hands, the hands that learned what hands learn when the hands grow up in a house where the father's hands smell like cattle and iodine and the mother's hands smell like books and the smelling is the learning and the learning is the care.