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Hexes And Religious Allegories 4.12.98
"Who are all these new children on Dumaine," I asked Mandy.
"I know some of them," she said, "they're from two blocks up Dumaine that way."
She's pointing up Dumaine away from Broad, Dorgenois is the first block and Rocheblave is the second. Rocheblave--that's Miss Liddy's corner, I'm thinking. I used to stop by her store on the way home from work when I was renovating the house over two years ago. Her "store" is just one room of a
big old house and her stock is limited to chips and candy on a couple of shelves, pickled pig parts in a couple of jars, and a refrigerator with a case and a half of beer, usually Bud and Coors. At that time, one of her teenage daughters had recently committed suicide, strung out on bad life and bad
drugs. She left a daughter behind whom Miss Liddy takes care of along with countless other children who seem to belong to her.
"You have children?" she ask me once.
"I most certainly do not, Miss Liddy."
"If a vine is growing but producing no fruit, what good is it? The Lord say cut that vine down."
She was charging 85 cents for a can of beer back then, sometimes having change and sometimes not. I had gotten into the habit of just leaving her a dollar for each can purchased. On this day I gave her two dollars and walked out.
There was a hex on me now, I knew that.
It was about three months later when I found out that for the previous two months Mandy had been sneaking those young boys from the neighborhood into the house while I was at work. It was summertime and those boys would be lounging
on the front porch when I came home. I did not know there names yet and they pretended they did not know mine. And then there came full disclosure and the floodgates broke and for awhile kids and adults streamed through this house at
will. Drug dealers had to stay outside though, on the porch. I will not lie. I never really liked the idea and sometimes still don't, but our efforts to shoo these children away has been in vain.
"Come the school year ya'll won't be hangin' around here drawing pictures and playing games. You will do school work or you won't come in at all." Speaking the words of a full grown adult was the surest way to repel children, I thought. But come the school year I was proven wrong, again.
And then I might have made the mistake of taking the boys to the park to play football one weekend and they began to expect it every weekend. And when they started whining I would lose my temper and yell at them: "You want something
you gotta earn it, (another adult impersonation) by cleaning this street or something." I was really certain that particular mandate would free up my weekends. Wrong again. Wrong every Sunday for over a year now.
I'm hoping Miss Liddy understands that while we're not into production here at 2646, we are looking after the harvest and trying to make a little wine from the fallen fruit. Unhex me now.
Miss Noemi 4.12.98
I haven't mentioned this but the house on the side of us that is not a burnt shell of a pre-Civil War two story structure, is a one story four-plex in which resides one 87 year old white woman. Mrs. Noemi Rodriguez has lived next door to this house for over 40 years. Her people and an occasional nurse look in on her from time to time but essentially she is
alone. Sometimes I selfishly worry what things will be like next door when Miss Noemi dies and the four-plex next door, instead of housing one frail and very quiet old woman, might become the habitat of 12-20 new and exciting Dumaine players.
I have not seen Miss Noemi in her back yard picking bay leaves from her tree in over a year. On Mondays and Thursdays she will begin the momentous trek from her raised porch to the sidewalk to put out her one very small bag of
trash. More often than not she will be intercepted by Shelton who will accept the quarter she keeps in the pocket of her worn house dress and puts the trash by the street so that Miss Noemi does not have to leave the confines of her
fenced property.
I was frightened of her at first, assuming that anyone whose body formed so many right angles to itself, must be in severe pain, and therefore must be mean, and cranky, and cantankerous. I was in my postage stamp back yard one
day pulling weeds and Miss Noemi came out to pick leaves for a soup. I had never really seen her face because her torso bends at the waist and head at neck so that her face is always at the ground or into her own bosom.
So when she straightened up that day, first from the waist, and then the neck, to greet me with the most gleefully youthful smile, I was once again confronted with that annoying sensation of feeling that everything I know and
everything I think, is wrong.
I was relieved when last week the ambulance left out of here without Miss Noemi.
Synchronicity And The Jaded Warrior Boy 4.6.98
Yesterday, on our way out of the hood heading for the swamp and driving down Ursulines through the sixth ward, Shelton spots his mom, Myrna, and yells for me to stop because Myrna waved to him and that means she might give him some
money. I pull over after about a block and Shelton scrambles out of the back seat (Fermin is riding shotgun on the way out, Shelton will ride on the way back) and starts running back up Ursulines. In the rearview mirror I watch him run as Myrna runs from the opposite direction to meet him. On the radio
is playing this rather soulful, full of lament, love song about "how I used to love you," and I can almost imagine the field of daisies which in fact they are not running through. Glynn in the backseat says,
"Look at Shelton and his ma running like that with that music on the radio, its like..."
"Yeah, I was just thinking that myself, like this commercial I remember..."
"I know," Glynn says, "its just like that." And Jacque, next to Glynn, says, "what are ya'll taking about?"
As we approach the swamp in Laffite (as in Jean, the pirate) Shelton is really put out with this surprise location and in his best 'Mississippi gee golly shucks' voice starts up with,
"Wowww, there'll be trees and water and wierd plants, wowww, and maybe we'll see an alligator or sumthin.'"
Shelton is almost always the dissenting voice and has voiced displeasure at virtually every new place to which I take them. When we get out of the car and find our way to the beginning of the trail Shelton really can't get it.
"What are we doing here?"
"We're going to look around."
"Why?"
"Look Shelton," I say, "on Dumaine I gave you the choice of coming or going and you came, when I parked the car I gave you the choice of coming or going and you came. Now that you're here with us it would be nice if you could try not to ruin things for the rest of us."
But June Cleaver doesn't always make sense to Shelton so he says, "But really, I'm just asking, what are we doing here?"
So I hit him with Hendrix and say, "Existing Shelton, nothing but existing."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean much of the the time we are simply existing, without a clue or a plan or a future. Today is one of those days Shelton. But one of the small things we have control over is where we exist. Today, it will be in a swamp. Unless of course you would rather exist in the car.
Later he gets into running a head on the path and hiding behind cypress trees so he can scare us when we pass.
Mardi Gras Day Five 2.18.98
Day Four was an off day so after all that weather on Sunday and then no Monday parades, Tuesday was much anticipated by all us masses.
I ain't taking ya'll to all the parades this year I had warned the boys two months previous as we drove through McDonald's.
So tonight I took Mandy, Marqin (you can insert a U there after the Q if you want), Fermin, Glynn, Kizzy, Greta (Mooses sister from California), and LuLu, the honor student, and brought back Shelton, Moose, Mandy, Glynn, Fermin, and Marqin.
Kizzy is pregnant again, number three in her nineteenth year.
"Feels like gunfire in the air," I said to Mandy.
"You think so huh?" Mandy said
"Yep, I'm using Marqin (8) as my barometer. He seems a little too keyed up. Not a good sign."
"Hmm." Mandy said.
So when a minor panic stampede started and the young girl next to me asked where her baby was and no one seemed to know and people began running up St. Mary's away from St. Charles and the four policemen who had heretofore been loitering in our area stood shoulder to shoulder in the middle of St. Charles waiting for the worst, I had to boast that damn yes, I'm good. But similar to the last time we witnessed
a panic stampede, which was at a second line parade, it all turned out to be an emotional mistake, or someone showed someone else the gun they were carrying and one witness panicked and then...
Shelton and Moose showed up towards the end of the parade with a big garbage sack full of stuff.
Shelton started counting his cups.
"Fifty six," he said.
"If you expect me to hold this stuff, it will cost you twenty percent," I said.
"What's that," he said
"Well, ten percent would be 5.6 cups so twenty percent will double that--11.2 cups."
"I can do that," Shelton said.
Back on Dumaine everyone piled out of the car, Moose thanked both Mandy and I, wow, and Marqin remained curled up into a ball in the back seat.
"Time to go home Marqin," I said as I picked him up still in a ball and plopped him on the street.
Mardi Gras Day Seven 2.21.98
Day six got eaten or pissed on. Computer magic. I'm a little bit bleary-eyed. I think day six was about three teenage girls (Heather, Julia, and KK) being told to get on the "fucking" ground by over zealous New Orleans policemen (with guns drawn) who considered the girls' flight as possible culpability in a crime that had occurred in the Iberville Projects as they were walking home from the parade. Translation: they
saw a boy with a gun being chased by cops so they ran. Cops let them go. Could have slapped them around a little for being curfew violators, but didn't.
We got Evelyn situated in a metal folding chair on the St. Charles neutral ground Thursday night for the Babylon parade. With the red plaid blanket wrapped around her legs and the blue bandanna covering her head, and the plastic straw of the 32 ounce beer filled go bottle clenched between her teeth, she did look a bit like aunt Jemima's evil step-sister, which may be why people were covertly staring at her this night. Or it could be because of her enthusiastic directions to the passing drill team squads.
"Come on now girls, smile, that's right, let me see that smile, you know you wanna smile, there you go, you got a pretty smile, you." And when the bands started playing and the young scantily dressed girls began to shimmy towards sensuality:
"There you go now baby, shake what you got, ooh yeah, looking good like that, ya'll keep a straight line now girls, there you go, that's very good."
Evelyn has been suffering from some as yet undiagnosed medical problems so the wobbly legged stagger was not completely beer induced as I took her by the arm up Phillip street into the Garden District so she could pee in a dark corner of someone's grass driveway.
Mandy was catching beads and cups and keeping an eye on the fat couple (from Ohio?) who were constantly popping peanuts into their mouths but never seemed to restock their hands from any mother lode peanut source.
After the parade passed we decided to race ahead and catch it again.
At the corner of Camp and Canal I was realizing a great navigational mistake as Evelyn ranted on about something.
"Evelyn, I have to concentrate here so I'm going to ask you to shut up," I said.
And the world was suddenly silent.
Across Canal I'm into the French Quarter and I take a left on St. Louis. When the three cars in front of me stopped at Bourbon street begin to inch forward, easing their way through the throngs of revelers, I stay bumper to bumper, and sigh relief as I begin moving again at normal speed up St. Louis. After circling the blocks several times I find a spot on
Rampart that only a Festiva would fit into (using both front and rear bumpers several times, at that) and we walk over to Basin, near Iberville. Before that, I was standing behind the car working my zipper as Evelyn peed on the curb and Mandy into a cup in the back seat, and a cop cruising the other side of Rampart, stopped, and shining his spotlight on me, yelled out, "put it back in your pants." I nodded. I didn't need to pee anyway, I was just checking the equipment.
A cop on Basin very politely tells Evelyn that she needs to move her chair a little ways back from the street. This is near the end of the parade route, in a neighborhood that photographs from the turn of the century show as being completely lined with elaborate two and three story whore houses. They all gone now, though.
It would seem that other than Mandy and I and the cop and the float riders, few white people see this part of the parade route as a viable area to catch beads and live to tell about it. But it's all good. The krewe members were unloading their beads and trinkets with reckless abandon as they prepared to disembark from their floats and have their ball at the Performing Arts Center in Armstrong Park.
We walked back to the car with light heads and heavily laden bags of treasure.
Mardi Gras Day Eleven 2.26.98
The Orpheus parade on Monday evening featured Tommy Tune, Forest Whitaker, and, as it does every year, Harry Connick Jr., this year looking particularly bored. One of the women (maybe his wife, recognizing my NY Mets cap) threw me a nice pair of beads though. None of the celebrities
actually perform, they just stand up on the lead floats and wave. One year, however, Junior's dad, the New Orleans District Attorney, Harry Connick, sang some pretty swell Sinatra-type crap.
Jacque Lewis (aka, alligator boy) and Shelton Jackson came with Mandy and I. Instead of parking on the Garden District side of St. Charles, I found myself in the neighborhood on the other side of St. Charles, at Third and Dryades, which is one of the many N.O. killing zones. I don't know if its extraordinarily dangerous now but '94 and '95 news reports
made this corner one to remember. Remember to stay away from, that is.
"You can park there if you want," the man said after Mandy rolled down her window in response to his tapping, "but I can't guarantee your car will be all right. Now for five bucks you can park in this yard over here and I'll be right here watching it till the parade's over." Mandy became impatient with the huckstering and started walking up Third to St. Charles. I asked Shelton his opinion and when he shrugged I asked
him if he would cough up some money. He gave me his last two dollars and we pulled into the man's yard, behind the only other car, a Ford Bronco. "Don't let me get blocked in here, Ok?" He assured me no such thingwould happen, and it didn't.
Jacque and Shelton disappeared as soon as we got to the front lines but shortly Jacque reappeared and, despite Shelton's wishes to the contrary, stayed with us throughout the whole parade. Shelton would go away for awhile and then show up with two or three unopened (and intercepted) bags
of beads. But he didn't stray as far as he usually would, and
occasionally we would look up to see him lifting some other family's small child up on his shoulder for the passing floats.
Orpheus is one of the moneyed parades and some of the floats were truly a marvelous sight to behold as we gazed up from our playing field on the St. Charles neutral ground.
At no time did we see Jacque boot up pure cane sugar but his energy becomes so frantic at times that one does wonder. Jacque is impressively creative and imaginative and can hit you with a wry comeback that's enough to make you jealous, wishing you could be so clever. And then
he's an eleven-year-old boy again and we're having a knife fight with miniature plastic swords while a passing group of gang bangers exhales pot smoke into the air we breathe. And a rubber band becomes a device of torture and I taunt, "hey Jacque, look at this. You know what I use to
do with these when I was a kid?" And he's off and running, darting behind a light pole which doesn't hide him but does offer good deflection possibilities from dangerous projectiles, rubber, and otherwise. Clever alligator home boy.
The Seven Per Cent Solution
I'll admit I felt kind of cowardly, on the battlefield, in my living room, doing nothing. The day after I heard six or eight small caliber gunshots pierce the silence of my quiet Rocheblave neighborhood the new head cop and the new mayor admonished all of us to get involved in reporting criminal activity. The murder rate is spiking again, it's August, the month of greatest desperation.
Fuck it, I thought, supine on the couch catching up on unread New Yorkers which have laid on the floor unattended while I have read light fiction over the last month or two. I was reading about the ex-Dallas mayor, Democrat Ron Kirk, running for the Senate seat vacated by retiring Republican, Phil Graham. Anyhow, the gunshots had the feel of the air murderer, angst released skyward. Also, I don't have a phone, let someone else report it. The boys and girls at the NOPD internal affairs office are as close as I am to it. Let them report it. Is there a dead body on the corner, I wonder?
Ron Kirk has the plain speaking ability to sum things up--his success, he says, is reliant on whether or not the white voters of Texas will vote for a black man. And then he has to be the careful, calculating politician, glad-handing West Coast liberals and the most recent Democratic President without actually appearing to be of that ilk. That is a difficult position. His election to the Senate by the people of a state that worship that lame brain in the White House is essential to the Balance.
Today I watched four youths on bicycles steal a tiny kid's bicycle from my neighbor's yard, while Watchdog barked her head off. Poor Watchdog. She must think, what's the use? I do my job, nobody does nothing. Whiteboy just watches. I tried like hell last month to save him his extension ladder but he doesn't respond to my warnings, nobody does. I'm just a barking dog in the city that care forgot.
To round out a month in which two preachers got shot dead, a woman is brought home from church to a neighborhood she had lamented to her friend, was going to hell. She was embarrassed by the gangs of youth who congregated near her corner and expressed this to her church friend. Seconds after they passed a group of boys in the street, a shot rang out, the rear window of the van exploded, and the woman slumped over dead from the bullet in the back of her head. A sixteen year old boy had mistaken the van for that of an enemy.
Another sixteen year old boy, last known address the 1400 block of Rocheblave, is wanted in last month's shooting of the eleven year old girl in Eastern New Orleans.
Murder is up seven per cent for the month. Later, say a month from now, when there are only 22 murders instead of 30, they will bounce off that figure to show that crime is down, rest easy.
Last week a man in Eastern New Orleans witnessed from the balcony of his apartment another man stealing his car down below. From up on the balcony he shot and killed the man. Public sentiment, on talk radio, and around the water coolers, was adamantly in favor of this death penalty for the car thief. People are so fed up and scared they are now condoning the killing of unarmed men. With my co-workers I argued against this particular death penalty, but I have a very good feel for the context from which sprouts this violent reaction to the overall crime in our city, and more sympathy for the shooter than I have for the victim. The shooter, a grown man with children, has very likely been exposed to unspeakable crime in his lifetime here. If you live in this small city, and your head is not buried deep in the sand, it is hard to express how palpable the threat of violence can be, even as we dance in the streets. The shooter's justification in the paper that he was worried about the safety of his family, as words, factored against our common sense, and the awareness of proximity of shooter to unarmed car thief, do not ring true. But in the balance, in this city, how can we doubt a man who says he is worried about the safety of his family.
I've been thinking about the words of that stoic, Epictetus, and how his thoughts might relate to any of this or perhaps even provide a bit of consolation. He seems to differ from the "bell tolls for thee, no man is an island" school, by suggesting that we not sweat that which we have no control over. Why let that which has nothing to do with you, concern you? he seems to say. I guess it's the idea that if you can't change a thing, why even think about it? And that's, I think, why I can't get over this inner city murder and mayhem as a theme. Because we don't really, I mean really, think it is something we could not change if we chose to change it, do we? Slim?