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DONL 5
I was taking a little nap early Friday evening when I was awakened by the shadow and heat of Erica Lewis, who was in the flesh standing alongside my bed. "Hi Erica," I said, bonking her cool forehead with the open palm of my all purpose "be-healed" healing power.
Six-year-old Erica was living across the street prior to the death last September of Mama D. She was then shipped off, along with her fifteen-year-old Uncle Shelton, to South Central LA for awhile to live with her Aunt Stephanie. And then Erica and Shelton were brought back, Shelton to live with Mandy and (for the short term) I, and Erica was captured by the stable but slightly scary, Aunt Gwynn. And then I didn't see her for a long while, during which period her birth mom, Tesa, came back from her visit in California (following the arrest of her and Shelton's father, who was hiding in the Compton area to avoid a New Orleans arrest warrant). Tesa is very likeable and intelligent, but perhaps the definition of unstable. Still, she recaptured Erica, and now they live on Claiborne with Ba(y) Ba(y) and Glynn's (out of jail) mom, Nettie, and (out of jail) Aunt Yacqui, who used to spend nights smoking crack in the 55 Chevy pickup parked in front of this house four years ago.
With Erica it was love at first sight but somewhere in the middle of that last paragraph's reality there came an emotion that won't situate itself on the charts. It is a mixture of admiration, fear for her future, and a resigned but respectful hatred of those who would besmirch her race, her culture, her being.
Timmy has begun trimming the next house we will do at English Turn and since he is by himself he will come to the job we are all on and eat lunch with us. He starts with,
" When times got hard last year I had to do a little job in New Orleans, installing some cabinets, over on Roman, I don't know which projects I was near..."
"The Lafitte," I said. "That's where Mama D came from." And did not add that frequent guests in this house, Jacque Lewis, and sisters Antoinette, Tiesha, and Roshona Lewis still live in the Lafitte.
"Yeah, I think it was those. Anyway, the fuckin' niggers, I mean none of them have jobs, so they sleep late, you wouldn't see them in the morning, but the afternoon and those porch monkeys would be out in numbers. Even in the morning when I couldn't see them I would only unload the tools I could carry, then lock the truck, carry them up, come back, unlock the truck, get some more tools, lock the truck, and so on."
Apparently, Timmy feels the need to distance himself from the accusation made by his mother earlier in the week, that he and his wife arguing and fighting like they do, "are no better than niggers." And I think he's doing a really super job.