The Strawberry Blog

November 30, 2005

Stable sleeping patterns of New Orleanians are relative at best these days. If the Katrina Tickle hasn’t already sought refuge in your throat, the mold spores have. Once again, I can’t sleep. So I shall take the Tour of Death and Destruction—the one I’ve avoided for two weeks—in a few hours, once curfew has ended. Curfew. It’s anathema to New Orleans, to a city steeped in such independent concoction—at once the edge of North America and straddling the Third World.

I’ve avoided the Tour not because I don’t want to see it with my own eyes (and not CNN’s), but because I’ve had very good, solid excuses: Don’t want to do it alone. It’s the anniversary of my mother’s death. I’m packing the house today. It’s Monday. Well, perhaps that last one is more pathetic than grounded. Today is The Big Day for this reason: I leave Thursday and won’t return until Christmas. Therefore, it follows that Wednesday is the last possible chance to see It for myself. I hadn’t thought of doing it at the crack of dawn, but what better time? Metaphorically at least, it might signal something positive. And although he had no idea when he said it tonight, I’m prepared for the worst only because my friend Stephen told me, “We’ve lost everything; I have no shame in Red Cross lunches; and I’m looking forward to my Christmas FEMA trailer.”

All with a smile in his voice. Now if that kind of hope doesn’t infect you then you ought to crawl back into bed and dream a little dream of faith.

November 16, 2005

The whirlwind of Saturday night’s return home—barbeque at the neighbors’, the Brothers French at Donna’s, and a post curfew Mid-City bacchanal—has given way to the ungentle fact that we now live in a cow town. Well, not quite a cow town; just a small town in a hand me down geography. Too big for our britches yet not big enough to fill them. My friends were right: fuses are a little short, eyes a bit glassy, there is endless repartée of repair.

You know you’re in the transitional New Orleans when John Boutté closes his emotional, spiritually uplifting evening with, “Thank you very much. Good night. Now, go clean y’alls houses!” Which brings me to this: how many ways can you say, “I’m cleaning.” Because when you’re sharing a drink with friends you haven’t seen in three months, that is what’s on your mind.

“Hey, what are doing, what you been up to?”

“Oh, you know, I’m just moving stuff around.”

“Really? Yeah, me, too.”

Riveting. You may be working on a book of essays or composing music; perhaps you’re defending the preservation of your city from salivating developers or painting pictures of its storied past. At the end of the day, we’re all engaged in some manner of debris removal, bleach scouring, sheetrock installing, organization of things shifted. In a word, cleaning. How do I clean thee? Construction, destruction, demo. Brushing, sweeping, moving. Face it: we are all our grandmothers now. Our names are Gladys, Bernice, Ethel Mae, Sophia, Big Molly.

A logical deduction to all of this industriousness is that we have created numerous trash piles that previously would have been collected twice weekly. One of my friends—a scientist—finds herself, post-Katrina, wracked by a littering disorder. And there are enough trash heaps around to sustain her habit, to prevent her from thinking that she’s a shadow of her former, ecologically concerned self. She tells herself and anyone who has physically stopped her from this peculiar torment, that she’s just “adding to the pile around her.”

Just yesterday a friend, finishing an oil canvas depicting a mob running a notorious mistress out of 19th century New Orleans, said: “Gone are the days of ‘Mr. Good Guy.’ From now on, no more nice pictures.”

These are odd, odd times, indeed. But, as an elderly evacuee to Indiana recently said, “I’d rather be smelling the sewer in New Orleans than the roses in Indianapolis.”

Those sewers will be smelling like roses soon enough.

November 11, 2005

On the night of August 27th I stood outside the gate of my house on the corner, waiting for my ride, listening to the quieter than usual Saturday night. Not even a bus. I listened intently, inhaled deeply for the sweet olive tree. I should have known I’d smell nothing: it wasn’t cool yet; no tiny white flowers. I wanted to take the two stray brother cats that chaperoned me to the gate, but it was a pick-up truck I waited for and I had no carriers. I processed the quiet.

Not even a mouse.

It was dark. 9:00. I saw a small boy riding around on his bicycle, encumbered by a mass in his t-shirt—a puppy. He rode in aimless circles. I knew that aimless circle rider! We’ll call him Leo. We hadn’t played ball for a few weeks, not since a goofy Catahoula became too closely attached to my cheap football and proclaimed our game over.

Neighborhood fixture, staple of the park, lone rider. I called Leo over and after warm and happy greetings and Where have you been all month? I reminded him of all the things he must tire of hearing, as all children do: You’re not supposed to be outside alone. It’s dark. Where are you going? Go home right now. Why are you alone? I reminded him of these things because crime was getting worse—which he knew. It didn’t matter who you were—which he also knew. We stood at the corner looking at each other. Uneasy silences never plagued us before.

He asked if I had a carrier for his puppy.

Now that Leo was here, I didn’t want my ride to show up. Disquiet settled on the corner, in our skin; threaded the night stickiness. I was heading to higher ground, to Natchez. The plan was to first meet a friend at a bar where he would chastise me for leaving and I’d make him buy me a drink. If he ever showed up.

He did not.
Leo said he was going to a friend’s, that I shouldn’t worry, “she’ll protect me.” She was the two month old puppy.

Go there now. Be careful. Why are you out here alone anyway? How many times do we have to say it?

The pick up truck arrived and with it sped up questions—of fairness, of privilege, of opportunity, of puppy protecting, of where is he really going?…of primal fear. Thirty seconds to say I love you, I miss you, and tell me you’ll be safe, that your mother will get you out. Tell me I’ll see you in three days to pick up that game with my new football, to run around at dusk—to hell with West Nile!—just to run around at dusk, eating cookies at the Night Out Against Crime neighborhood association party. I’ll see you then. And by the way, how are your grades?

Like the Catahoula, time was not on our side. We knew but didn’t know. We felt but didn’t say. To say “it” would be the string of inequities dancing in my head. The questions. The no answers. The nausea. Leo had to be thinking the same things—or did you feel them first, then think about how not to feel them again. Or why. Or how. It was so quiet for Saturday night. He was so small for his age…but resourceful, I kept thinking. Leo is one resourceful little cat.
•••

When I return home to New Orleans Saturday, it will have been thirteen weeks since I waited on my corner. The stray cats are living indoors somewhere in Illinois; it’s cooler now and with most of the street animals gone, the mice will be back. Friends and neighbors all echo the same thing: Be Prepared. “People have that glassy-eyed crazy with short fuses,” one says. Others remain optimistic: “Every time I go back it gets a little better,” says one. She has faith.

I’m prepared for hot tempers, for discussions of mold and toxicity; even bracing myself for the Tour of Death that my Quarter resident friend is willing to drive for me. My neighborhood lost buildings but not entire blocks. Waveland, Mississippi doesn’t even have rubble left.

Leo is somewhere in Texas, in a school system that probably cares about him. To that end, we’re thrilled. One man said he should never come back, that he deserves a chance to prove himself, to be cared for. But we have lost our running back—our small, quick, resourceful little cat. And doesn’t that count for caring?