Saturday, September 3, 2005

New Orleans in the Fall

I am equally unable to fathom what has happened to my favorite city and unable to express how I feel about its descent into hell. Thank you for all the calls and emails; we do have several friends that we are worried about. I read and listen to the news every day, and I don’t know whether to vomit or cry. I reel with chains of thought associations every time I turn my attention Southward.

Where are my old coworkers?

Rob told me he’d never leave. His only trip out of the South had been to Africa. He was going to start an import business connected to his roots. I hope he was there last week, or maybe with his friends in Atlanta. He lived with his family in a neighborhood that is now rife with violence and floating corpses. Like Ani and I, he didn’t leave for Hurricane Andrew. I can only hope that a little maturity and love for his young daughter changed him. I haven’t spoken to him since my last visit to the city, before Ani was pregnant; we don’t keep in touch. I regret that now. We were partners managing a restaurant together, and if one of us had a moment of peace to be with friends and family or to have some fun, it was because the other was slogging away in the trenches of work. Whenever I was the one who had finagled some time off, he’d always snarl and grin at me and wink, saying in his perfect New Orleans accent: “Don’t worry ‘bout it; I love ya like a brotha… Cain.”

I wish I could “work” a little bit for him now and give him some of my peace. Just this once Rob, let me be Abel.

Cherie and her family got out. Her mother, who was known to everyone only as Miss Joan, not Joan mind you, definitely Miss Joan, barely ever left her neighborhood, let alone New Orleans. I know it took some fighting to get her to leave, and I’m so glad they are safe.

Maggie had no car and might have stayed to take care of her numerous cats. Her house is still under fifteen feet of water.

Hacksaw had a house by the lake, and he would have left. What about his ex-wife and their two sons in Chalmette?

What about the crazy street musician and his dog that used to play outside our balcony? Ruthie the Duck Lady who lived on some conglomeration of charity and government stipends, what became of her and her duck? The old man who worked at Royal Street Grocery? Mr. Sydney who charged me too much for a pack of cigarettes and a paper, but would throw me one for free every once in a while must have left, but the store that was his family’s income is surely now destroyed and looted… “looted” by people who needed water and candy bars to survive and liquor to numb the onslaught of chaos.

Horst Pfeifer was my boss and a mentor of sorts. Was he crazy enough to stay and try to keep his restaurant from being pilfered? Everything that I have read states that the Quarter is fine structurally, but there are reports of bands of people with automatic weapons scavenging the area for things of value. The phone at his restaurant rings on indefinitely.

Now the troops are beginning to arrive. Too little too late, it would appear. Thousands are dead, children have been raped, and an entire city has had its humanity pushed and beaten aside.

Rob, who had an amazing ability to find poignancy in clichés, repeatedly told me during the weeks before I moved back out West, “You’re gonna know what it means to miss New Orleans.”

You were right Rob. I do.

I wish I could come back and help. If anyone from those days reads this and has heard from the old Bella Luna crowd, please let me know. For now I’ll just send some money, some love, and some hope for better times.

Mojo was a delta dog: a gift from a friend who left New Orleans soon after we did. These pictures are from our Decatur Street Balcony and from the River Walk just on the other side of the levee.