Breaux - Refined

Refined is a work of nonfiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed.

Copyright 2022 by Tracie Breaux

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Deacon & Roth, New York.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

NAMES: Breaux, Tracie, author.

TITLE: Refined: a memoir / Tracie Breaux.

DESCRIPTION: New York : Deacon & Roth, [2022]

IDENTIFIERS: ISBN 9781737713708 |

ISBN 9781737713222 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022901232.

SUBJECTS: LCSH: Breaux, TracieFamily. | WomenLouisianaBiography. |

Family ViolenceLouisianaBiography. | Child AbuseLouisianaAnecdotes. |

Women entrepreneursUnited StatesBiography. |

traciebreaux.com

Book design by Patrick Svensson, adapted for ebook

Cover illustration: Patrik Svensson

Contents

Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.

LEWIS B. SMEDES

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.

HELEN KELLER

___

This is not a religious book. Various religions are used throughout to continue the story. The author believes that each person is responsible for his or her walk in life, whether affiliated with a religious organization or not. The author does not believe that any religion is better or worse than the other. At the end of the day, each of us is responsible for who we are.

Identifying details have been changed in the book for living persons. Pseudonyms have been used for all living individuals. The names Avis, Travis, and Carol are real names. All three persons are deceased.

___

I was running through a black forest.

A great rush of wind whipped my hair behind me as I flew down the trail lit by a full moon. Limbs brushed against me, as if the trees themselves were patting my arms. Behind me, the footpath was intense, and thundering, as two men pursued me.

Blood pulsed through my head so fast it was like a wrecking ball banging around in my skull. Moments before, Id been huddled in a small clearing, folding myself against a tree when twigs snapped.

Quiet! Shes going to hear us, a voice said. Then, Do you have the rope?

I grabbed my bag and bolted.

I was a fifteen-year-old runaway, but I wasnt just running from the men whod seen me enter the trees earlier. For the last few years, I had been running from everyone and everything, but mostly I was running from my father, Frankie. Every year of my life, I watched in horror as he folded and snapped my mothers bones and I gagged as she spit streams of blood into the sink. Most report card days, he put crimson stripes, speckled like a robins egg, on my younger brother Bubbas thighs. He smashed Bubba into drywall when he was ten years old. Dad kept us in an around-the-clock state of terror, waiting for a trigger to click and set him off. Because he was unhappy with himself, we suffered.

Id starting scheming how to leave home about a year before, after I watched a movie on television starring Steve McQueen. The Great Escape became the name of my plan. The night before, my idea had been set into motion when Dad charged into my room threatening me. I got up the next morning and left for good. Left the beatings and screams. Left the fear and hopelessness. Leaving home felt like the weight of the world had floated off my shoulders. However, just before dusk, two men shifted their truck in reverse and watched me walk a worn path into the black forest. I dont know if they left and came back or waited in the shadows until the sun disappeared on the other side of the planet. All I know is after the light was gone, they were chasing me. With a rope.

It was while I was running in the forest, I believed I wouldnt make it out, that my fate was sealed inside its blackness, and the fire in my bones that had kept me surviving all my years would ebb out like the last flicker of a candle. No one would ever know what happened to me.

Trailing me, one of the men shouted, Grab her!

I spied a narrow bayou ahead. Beams of moonlight shone down from the inky sky and illuminated the water, which gleamed like a chalky ribbon weaving across the ground. As I ran toward it, I studied the eight-foot-wide chasm.

I wasnt sure if I could make it across. Twigs cracked and popped behind me. They were gaining on me. A scream from one of the men echoed, like the bloodcurdling screech of a barn owl. The other man shouted, SNAKE! as I neared the water. I can do this, I chanted, and without looking back, I arched my body and leapt.

Watch Mom at Work

___

My book of memories is not an actual book. Its something that came about when I asked my moms aunt Carol how she remembered everything in such detail, even passages and their page numbers from books shed read decades earlier. She was the smartest person I knew.

Aunt Carol was about six-feet tall with auburn hair and glasses so thick the lenses looked like the bottoms of soda pop bottles. Her eyesight was bad; if she wasnt wearing the glasses, she couldnt tell the difference between a bus and a person dressed in yellow. Numerous books were displayed in different areas of the home she and Grandma Avis shared. A book could usually be found splayed between the spindly fingers on her left hand, a glass of iced tea in her right.

She slid a plate of cookies on the table and poured me a glass of milk, then sat on the chair next to me. As I stuffed cookies into my mouth, she told me a story of her brother, Travis, my grandmothers twin. I could hear Grandma Avis behind me shifting on a stool. Because she had polio as a child, she had trouble sitting on anything else. She always got quiet when his name was brought up.

Aunt Carol told me most days, when Travis was a teenager, hed stomp out the door with either a baseball bat slung over his shoulder, or a football tucked under his arm. But boxing was his first love. Hed gone out of town for a match during his junior year of high school when she saw him last.

I was fourteen years old, she continued. Travis was seventeen. I wasnt there to tell him bye. The next time I saw him, he was in a wood box.

Her German shepherd, Butch, nudged her. She slipped him a cookie, then continued.

A few years later, I thought about what my last words were to him, but as hard as I tried, I couldnt remember.

Id once seen a black-and-white photograph of Travis. He was lean and muscular, like an athlete. I imagined him loping out the door, boxing gloves tucked under his arm, for the final time. I pictured my great-aunt Carol beating herself up because she couldnt remember the last words she said to him. She told me ever since his death, she had tried to focus on an object, then recited, I want to remember this moment for the rest of my life.

Did you make a memory today? I asked.

Yes, I did. She took a long sip of iced tea and stared at Butch, who was nudging her for another cookie.

Im going to make a memory too, I said, staring hard into the empty plate. Ill remember this for the rest of my life.

After Aunt Carol taught me how to make memories, I jammed my brain with them. Soon after, my parents packed all our things and moved us from north Louisiana.