And there under the pecan tree, as she did countless times, that day my mother told me stories of the mothers and daughters that went before me. The house of Derouen, her maiden name, a matrilineal line as worthy of memorization as the bloodlines of the mythological Greek gods I would learn later. I am the daughter of Agnes, who was Odilia’s daughter, who was Célestine’s, who was Rosalie’s. My mom did not have the details found in the records of modern historians and genealogists. She had what had been passed down to her, which was, above all, the knowledge that these mothers held on to their
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