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This Car Going Up
Thursday I got off early from work and went down to City Hall to get that building permit that one needs to do any serious house renovating. They did not ask and I did not volunteer that I have been renovating already for two months, albeit at a lollygagging pace, and lately, frankly, not at all. I have heard a lot of criticisms from contractors about the way they run things down at Morial's City Hall and that combined with my own really very impressive lack of ability at dealing with power structures had me in a mood that could best be described as--tense. If I were still a cigarette smoker I would have been through half a pack just getting out of this house.
But everyone down there was very nice to me, even the old man behind the information desk who must have thought me a complete ninny for asking--"do the elevators only go down?" Well, there were two buttons and all, one on top of the other, but when you look above the doors there is a plastic arrow above each one that lights up when the elevators arrive, and they all point down. There is not an up arrow. I had pushed the up button and had waited a pretty fair length of time during which I witnessed all six or eight elevators arrive, and go down. And so I walked over to the information desk and asked my question.
The grey afro-headed man behind the desk did not yell out--as he had every right to--"son, I've been working here forty years and that is by far the stupidest question anyone has ever asked me, 'do the elevators only go down?' What turnip truck did you just fall out of?" he could have asked me, but didn't. He tried his best to answer a question that had never before been asked, which is not easy, and finally had to resort to familiar strategy by asking me to which floor was I headed. I told him seven and he said--now back within the realm of his expertise--"oh, that's Permits and Conveyances," or something like that is what he said, and I rushed back to the elevators to avoid a possible change of heart wherein the old man cried out--"hey everybody, check this out, this little hayseed cracker just ask me do the elevators only go down..."
Twice or four times as big as the down arrows is a square plastic box that lights up and reads--This Car Going Up.
Up on seven I was politely told to fill out a form and then give it back when I was finished, and wait for my name to be called. I went over to the little table with forms and sat down feeling pretty smug as I looked at several strings attached to the table which serve the purpose of keeping people from stealing the pens or pencils but the strategy had not worked for the pens or pencils were all gone. I had brought my own pen knowing there would be none readily available and that asking for one could result in dire consequences, even punishment.
And then there was a fortuitous convergence which had me finishing my form at just the moment a permit agent became available and me and her went through a Q&A session where at one point she asked was I licensed to do the renovation (uh oh, the guy I called yesterday said I didn't have to be if this was a renovation of my personal home), but instead of panicking I tried to bluff by leaning towards her a bit and whispering, "no, but I'm capable." Even at the time I had to ask, who is this nimrod? Are you hitting on this woman, or what? Luckily she paid me no mind and continued to tell me what I had to be if...but I interrupted her to clarify that this was my personal home, and yes, that did change things, so we were back to cooking with gas, and then just as she's about to lead me into the inner sanctum of permit inspectors, where I will be grilled by some guys with white shirts and colorful patches and silver engraved name tags, this more bigger nimrod than me starts whining about how he was here first. I aim to placate and immediately do a languid side step towards the couch but miss my mark and so find myself kind of leaning over when my butt does eventually find the cushion, but I recover nicely and if not for the German judge, my score would have been good, very good.
This guy, for lack of a better thesaurus, is a real pussy. He's going on and on about his pitiful existence and at one point even mentions how just asking for a pen had been a huge ordeal. Now let me tell you, if I was feeling smug before, I am now pure uncut, unadulterated, in your face, smuggier than thou. I glance over at the professional looking gentleman to my left and we share a smug chuckle that shows us to be guys who know about the necessity of a good pen in your pocket. As it turns out the guy needed a drawing of what he was trying to do so he had to go back to that table, And he had to ask for another pen.
As if we were lovers who had been interrupted by a telepone solicitor, me and the permit agent quickly got back to our business, and this time, as if on cue, an inspector walks in and she hands him my paperwork and he leads me through the doors to his desk. Things were not completely in order with my request but wink, wink, nudge, nudge, we're gonna get you a permit. And when he said I need a check for $130 made out to the City of New Orleans I was ready. I'd brought checks, cash, credit cards, even a bag of quarters for the parking meter. Sometimes its all about preparedness.
A Dumaine Day4.23.99
It's no big secret me not being all that finely tuned so it didn't strike me
as unusual that my mom considered it a possibility that my phone call to her
on April 21st was blatantly coincidental instead of an intentional
commemoration of my father's death.
"Do you know what today is," she asked, and I answered in the affirmative.
She said, "I went to the cemetary this morning." And I asked, "so how is
he?" and she said, "he's fine, ornery as ever."
Conversation was somewhat stilted at first, with me never knowing exactly
which of life's informational tidbits are appropriate, and there was some
brief panic as Clifford Louis' depression era sensibilities about waste
(long distance phone calls and such) kicked in. But we pulled out of that
conversational nosedive beautifully and soon enough were talking the basics,
about Mrs. Arista (she never leaves the house), Mr. Walden (first year he
hasn't been able to mow his own lawn), Nephew Ben (hit a double, stole third,
and scored the winning run in highschool baseball game), my brother, Paul,
(and the plans to disinherit him), neighborhood children, and politics
(Clinton's just a man and she wishes people would stop talking about his sex
life). I told her I thought people were talking about other things now.
Right now is a perfect example of how it goes. One minute I'm sitting here
hogging the six hundred square feet of space that includes two rooms, a
foyer, and half the kitchen, and the next minute I'm sharing it with (almost)
two-year-old Clifford Lewis, (almost) six-year-old Erica Lewis, who seems
very much the grown up by comparison, and fourteen-year-old Lance Price who
is being tutored by Mandy in Algebra. Clifford the two-year-old gets kicked
out by Lance the serious student because he was batting a plastic bowling
ball across the wood floor with a badminton racket. A few minutes later
there is banging on the door, and feeling quite the permissive paternal
lord, I get up to answer it. Clifford blows by me, glancing off my knees as
he picks up the bowling ball first thing, and staggers about the room
deliriously, looking for the badminton racket. Fourteen-year-old KaKa
McCormick takes advantage of the open door to ask can she speak to Miss
Amanda. While she's here (getting a piece of fruit) she punishes Clifford
and throws him outside again.
And out on the street it can be just the same. Throughout an average day
there is little to distinguish this block from any other (blighted inner city
block). It is often quiet, with only the normal flow of extra foot traffic
that you would expect from having a corner store in the neighborhood. And
then a couple of guys show up with pit bulls.
I have been in and out of the house talking to my mom, going inside with the
passing of each loudly vibrating, rapping sedan. I'm standing in the foyer
with the door open when the one man just briefly looses his grip on the
leash, and we have instant fido on fido, and in a matter of seconds there are
twelve to fourteen people circling the dogs, cheering.
"What's that noise," Mrs. Louis wanted to know.
"Some fighting dogs, pit bulls, and people cheering," I said.
"Are they fighting?"
"It looked like they were going to but I think this is another false alarm."
"This goes on all the time?"
"I wouldn't say all the time, or even frequently, but this isn't the first
time I've looked out the window and seen such a thing. I'll shut the door."
"Oh, you don't have to. You don't have a lot of dull moments there, do you?"
"It does get dull here, but patience is always rewarded."
And then in a matter of ninety minutes the rooms are mine again and I feel
the faintest remorse as I suffer through the quiet, an empty nester, longing
for the company of a gangster's son, and the sound of a plastic bowling ball
bouncing on a wood floor.
Where'yat
Back in '95 a well known area renovator/activist/realtor--while showing Mandy and I around this area--known as Treme--and her area, across Broad towards the Bayou--known as Fabourg St. John--told us she loved this house too and would look into the procurement of it for us but later reneged because this block was uncharted territory for young white renovators and as she so caringly put--"I don't want ya'll to get killed."
I love life pretty much, sometimes a lot, other times just a little, but it seems to me an inescapable part of life is that eventually it does kill you, so the concerns of Jeanne Tidy did not weigh all that heavily in the decision making process which eventually (after six months of looking, rather quickly actually) led to the owner financed purchase of this 1600 sq. ft. 103 year old double bayed Victorian cottage, with wood floors, twelve foot ceilings, two (of four original) fireplaces, a claw foot tub, 7.5 foot doorways above which are workable transom windows, and a front porch that was at the time, and now five years later continues to be, somewhat of a community property for neighborhood children, current and former grown-up neighbors, and area gangsters (the modern day inner-city variety who sell crack and powdered cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, and occasionally kill each other for wrongs real or imagined).
The purchase price was $22,000. The house was, and to large degree still is, a wreck. At the time we survived on my 9 dollar an hour job and our good credit ratings. We made the $5000 down payment with a cash advance from a credit card, and then shuffled that balance from one low rate introductory offer to another for the couple of years that passed before Mandy became employed and we were able to erase our high interest debts. Originally, $3000 (mostly saved cash from our days in North Carolina) was spent to get the front three rooms, kitchen, and one (of two) bathroom(s) livable/usable, although not really "finished" by a long shot. We did the work ourselves. The back two rooms consist of a 14X18 bayed bedroom w/ small bath, and a door leading out to 10X25 raised deck. The last room which connects by doorway to the bedroom is 12X25 and has a (somewhat leaning) fireplace freestanding in the middle. And the floor in this last room is half wood, half tile. These back rooms are completely unfinished and as wrecked, cracked, and unusable as they were five years ago.
The owner-financed mortgage on this house is 250 dollars a month for a term of ten years, of which five remain.
As chief executive officer in charge of finances during this period, the idea was to live as comfortably as possible in the unfinished primitive state until such time that we were able to pay the accumulated credit card debts (which we did) and then continue to live primitively (well, we have hot and cold running water, a flushing toilet, and new stove and fridge, and a new washing machine, and used dryer) until we saved an amount in cash ( 8--10K) that would finish the renovation and make this house, although not richly appointed, a pretty kick ass little $35,000 soon-to-be-paid-for crib.
And we did that. The saving part anyway. However, after thirteen years of all being said and done, Mandy and I did not desire to live together anymore. So we split the cash and put the division of property decision on hold while I started looking for another ghetto property to renovate. I found one half as big, in worse shape, for exactly the same price as this one cost five years ago. Had to have it. A good friend who also knows how to save money is doing the financing on this new blighted property so to erase for me what can at times be an almost insurmountable difficulty in dealing with power structures, i.e., banks, and bureaucracies, and whatnot.
So that's where I'm at: the beginning stages of another dance with Shiva. Am I going to take you along with me through the destruction, and scraping, and cutting, and hammering? I don't know, but its an idea.
Human Shields
March on Mamas, I support you.
But would not Rosie O'Donnel be more effective as a human shield in some war torn area like...
I have at 7:30 am finished my ablutions in the bathroom which is in Mandy's bedroom when the doorbell rings and Mandy squints open one eye toward the bedside clock and says--7:30?
It is 17-year-old, KaKa, at my door with my newspaper in hand and unwrapped from its protective plastic. The Metro section has been separated.
"There is something you wanted to read?"
"Oh, yeah, Ima put it back, Mr. Jim, I uh just came to get my flags," and she enters the foyer and picks up what must be some sort of drill team practice flags. I take the paper from her and she leaves.
The front page announces 55% of Orleans Parish fourth graders, and 63% of eight graders failed the state mandated LEAP tests and will therefore not be passing to the next grade.
Kids don't read enough but yesterday about the same time I was screaming about broken eggs, two blocks closer to the Bayou, and one over, on St. Ann, two boys made the ultimate sacrifice to change all that. Because kids will read the Metro section to see which of their friends and acquaintances got murdered the day before. It is pertinent to their lives. That's what I knew when I saw KaKa reading the Metro this morning at 7:30. She could not give a rat's ass that Morial wants friends as judges, or, Bus that got stuck in Quarter is fined. But, 2 men gunned down on a corner at midday, hits her where she lives, or actually dead smack between where she lives, and where she hangs out much of the time.
So March on Mothers, there is much work to be done.
Chill Pill
Awhile back there was a drive-by attempt by someone I hold dear against someone I hold less dear. It was a failed attempt which kept the potentially grieving family from fighting over who would get those gold teeth, because there ain't no way that boy will get buried with those teeth. They are at this point in time the only thing that defines his value. My rant goes like this: You HAVE to have some value to the world around you, otherwise...
Evil courts me. At English Turn this morning I swear to God I passed address number 66 just as my truck odometer read 666666. Shortly after that I was made to pause for the three prominent gentlemen who walked abreast blocking the incoming side of the narrow English Turn Blvd. Is this some sort of revolution of the affluent, a taking back of the streets from those ubiquitous and tiresome construction workers, none of whom by the way wish to be working inside this uptight gated community? Or are these salt-and-pepper-haired stooges my own little Father, Son, and Holy Ghost representation? I've never in my years working the Turn seen such blatant disregard for progress. Am I to make a choice now? Is this yet another crossroads?
For now I choose to not run them over, I creep behind them while I wait for some outgoing traffic to pass.
The vacant lots surrounding the jobsite are abundant with color from these miniature flowers which are everywhere sprouted from the stems of a succulent weed.
...what good are you, who needs you?
And I don't know about all that mystical shit really, I really don't, yet at the same time (exactly the same time), I believe wholeheartedly, and I mean I have no doubt that a piece of Mama D inhabits my vessel for the purpose of eternal retribution against those who helped her to that early grave.
"You motherfuckin' egg throwin' bitch," I introduce myself to he with the gold teeth. This is me after returning home early from English Turn on a Friday, as has been our recent habit and who am I to complain getting full pay? Before my tirade, which doesn't include much variety of wording other than the above, I had spent an hour cleaning dried broken eggs off the front of this house. Several direct hits on the wire mesh of the security door made for an especially gratifying chore after a half day at the Turn.
The dime had been dropped by a neighbor, not on Gold Teeth specifically but on--those boys that sit the porches (this one), and stoops (all the ones across the street). This egg throwing I am told is a game they've been playing since last night.
He just happened to be sitting there, on my clean porch, at the wrong time.
"Get the fuck off my porch, Get the fuck off my porch, you fuckin' bitch."
"Man, Ina get off this porch but you need to quit calling me that."
"Quit calling you what you worthless piece of shit. Get the fuck away, I'm calling the cops."
"Thas all right calla cop."
He's ready to go back, that motherfucker, it's no threat, his destiny awaits. He won't fight it.
Me either, I'm not fightin' any of it. There's other stories than these and I'm trying to retrieve them, but these are what it is for now. This is me and my life, and I cannot even conceive of another way I would have it (because I'm stupid). Although, I think it should be pretty obvious, I probably need to get laid sometime, anytime. Chill, Slim.
Which Is Which
There is something I've been wanting to get out of the way for some time, can never really find the exact wording in example, so now I would just like to put it into so many words: I am an evil son-of-a-bitch.
Back when we had conversations, and I acted in ways that were playfully sinister, Mandy used to call me evil with a mirthlessness that would cause me to look a little harder and say, yeah, might have a point, I think I see what you mean.
Over the years, and especially during my years here in New Orleans (and then especially during the summer), when my fantasy life starts running darkly, and I imagine and whisper, and chant into that well-occupied dominion of maleficence all the dank thoughts of my secret self, I have for the most part not been challenged with a solitary object at which to direct my hatefulness.
But a bad hop at second base, a planetary misalignment, or a fluttering of wind during the coin toss has me now living with that child I agreed to abort twenty years ago, or one of the seeds accepted, not rejected, at that gate of tied tubes. My whipping boy, Shelton Ray Jackson, son of imprisoned Myrna, and imprisoned Shelton Sr; the boy quite literally no one wants. He is the bully you feared in school; the boy who's behavior helped you to understand first hand the term--bi-polar disorder; the boy who devours the helpful hand like a Lays potato chip; the boy segregated from decent children by concerned mothers.
He is the embodiment of tragedy and is too intelligent to trade that away cheaply.
He was a cool kid when he lived across the street and at night you could shut your door to the ghetto he came from and fly as far away as your mind would allow. He is now approaching sixteen and can bring home no (short term) friend who is scarier than he is. The neighborhood toughs are all wimps compared to him. His life has been one of few compliments, but many insults; a life whose daily hardships would fill up a treasure chest. His father is being a man in some cell in California, and does not communicate; his mother calls frequently from her cell (and the machine says, if you will pay for this call, press 3), in central Louisiana, asking for money. His happiness at her efforts to communicate are short lived when he hips up to the motivaton behind her calls. His self-image is a shattered piece of obscure glass, and to this last observation I can add--and I helped.
A little mouse of a boy outside my front door, up on my porch, and I am towering over him in all my freakish glory, asking him gently are you the boy she is talking about? He nods, and I look down to the sidewalk where his young mother is ranting loudly, and apparently, into the face of Big Mike (aka. Chicken). Mike has a great smile, and a sense of irony about him, and it doesn't fit anything I know to have him involved in the harming of a child.
Stink, and another gangster boy are loitering nearby, and it appears they have been sitting on this porch but are in the preparatory stages of high tailing it. And she has her cell-phone in hand and is calling 911 to inform them of an incident at 2646 Dumaine, and without missing a beat Mike (mis) corrects her, saying--St. Philip. And she says St.Philip into the phone right after him and I have to turn around and look into the house, and smile. I look back down at Mike and he is mouthing something to me but I can't read it so I just shake my head and look off down Dumaine to the corner of Dorgenois, where none of this is happening.
The little boy now interrupts my staring by saying, does a boy named Shelton live here? I answer affirmatively and the little (9-year-old) boy says, well he punched me in the nose, demonstrating by pushing his own index finger into the tip of his nose, just in case I was unsure of the area in question. This is the kind of accusation that none of us who know Shelton would doubt for a second, however, Shelton is not a little boy anymore and if he had punched someone in the nose, even half-heartedly, there would be more damage than the little boy is exhibiting. The young woman did see something (that Shelton is culpable of some wrongful act, I have no doubt), and it is this and a long list of other suppressed sins against herself and her son she is now relaying to the emergency operator.
I don't mean to be rude but as she has not addressed me personally, and her lament is one I have seen and heard many, many times on Dumaine, I turn around, go inside, and shut the door. The little boy will be safe for awhile as the Demon of Dumaine was last seen running off in the direction of Esplanade.
Mandy all this time is sitting at the front table reading, perhaps glancing out occasionally. When I come in we discuss the event, and the eventual arrival of police, as if we're talking about the weather.
The police who arrive are that fric and frac couple I have seen around here recently, first district rookies, no doubt, being given the ripest territories for domestic disturbance calls. Dumaine was a haven for it during the Mama D years, but not so much anymore. They ring the bell and then follow with two loud raps. (Man, stop that stupid shit, you want me bangin' on your door that way?). He's tall, white, red headed burr cut; she's short, white, and overweight, but you know those vests add a few pounds. She immediately looks down at my bare feet and John Schwarz says (whaddayou lookin at). I, however, have better sense than that and begin a polite discussion with Mr. Cop about my "son." I assure him, man to man, that Shelton will be punished, and briefly explain the circumstances which might contribute to his misbehavior. The cops leave out saying they will look for him off towards Esplanade. Do they think he's white or black or what, I don't know, but there's a Dunkin Donuts at Esplanade and Broad so...
I don't say anything to Shelton when he comes home that night, but yesterday as he comes in I glanced up from this high quality 900 page novel I'm reading, and make what appears to be direct eye contact with him standing there in the foyer. I am lost in a fictional world of schizophrenia and brotherly love and to be honest not really looking at Shelton at all. Shelton also is not quite connected to the world he has just entered and wearing that stupid looking Hulk Hogan do-rag he queries me thusly--"what are you looking at?" When my eyes focus on him all Rasputiny-like he starts back-stuttering, "no, I mean, I just..."
I've been trying lamely to accept the defeatist stance of if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all, because I don't like that dude who yells at Shelton when he fucks up, he's a scary, weird motherfucker, and I never signed on to share this body with him. Oh but look, there he is. Shelton sees him too.
"First thing, I look at any goddamned thing in front of me, which in this case is the BOY who brought the police to my front door, FOR HITTING A NINE-YEAR-OLD CHILD, congratulations son, you've made me real proud."
And I have been meaner to him than that. I can't forgive him for being a bully to others. I'm practicing the art of evil on someone who is for all practical purposes, mentally retarded. Congratulations Slim, I'm proud of you too.
Wrong again (JimB), I guess this wasn't one of the amusing ones.
It Is Funny
It was two days after I had been let out of the San Jose County Jail on my own recognizance (instead of extradited back to Texas on a felony drug warrant) that I was visiting a girl named Kerry in Santa Cruz. I remember being in a booth at a restaurant having pizza when Kerry commented, while picking some invisible matter off her tongue, that she thought maybe she had some of my hair in her mouth. There was a pause while we both thought about what she had just said, and then we broke out laughing. It felt good to laugh after spending two weeks in jail with a bunch of guys who didn't do much laughing, and although it would have been even more joyous if we had been laughing at the reality of what we were purportedly both laughing at, it was still a good thing going on for me, this laughing. Kerry had hours before cut my hair (hence the possibilities in her mouth), in a fashion so short that a few days later in San Franciso, another friend, Patti, said it made me look gay, which, if I had been in hiding would of been a good thing, according to the B. Kliban philosophy of "always hide where there are a lot of the same things." Still later after driving back cross country to Huntsville, TX. to visit my brother who was studying Criminology at SHSU--and lived pretty close to the penitentiary at which I would be getting butt-fucked if things with my lawyer didn't work out--a neighbor of his quietly asked him did his brother just get out of the penitentiary, on account of that haircut and all. But things with the lawyer did work out because there is right now a picture of me in a desk drawer in my boyhood bedroom in Dallas TX. taken in Tomkins Square Park in NYC some months, maybe a year, after the arrest and haircut, and the hair grew out nicely, so that sometimes while I'm visiting my mom there in Dallas who lives alone with the curvature of her 82-year-old spine, and I look at that picture in the drawer, I think--that was the best haircut I ever got. It did for awhile bother me that Kerry had confided to a mutual friend that she felt guilty about all the laughing she had done with me because it reminded her of laughing with her father in an effort to please him, and she was, you know, trying to be a woman in this world independent of the need to please men. But it doesn't bother me anymore, that, because I'm just looking for a laugh wherever I can find it--back then, up ahead, wherever.
Bloody April
I say this first part to tack on a little vicarious value to a people who apparently have little value to anyone, including sometimes, themselves.
New Orleans is a small town, and the housing projects--which sprang up in the forties with those good intentions leading to hell--are spaced pretty evenly throughout, and there is no neighborhood here, rich or poor, very far from a project. They are inhabited at this point in time mostly by black people, but that was not always the case. When Marlon Brando as Stanley K in Streetcar Named Desire bellowed with angst for the lost love of STELLAHHH!!!, he was doing so at the Desire projects.
So it is with great sadness that I bring you the news that Marlon Brando was shot dead last night outside his apartment at the Desire. No motives, no suspects.
Also, this in the first weekend of the two weekend event known as JazzFest which is a musical (and food eating) event held at the Fairgrounds race track. Each year it draws approximately a half million predominately white people. This is a number equal to the (predominately black) population of Orleans Parish.
So it is with great sadness that I bring you the news that yesterday 220 white people were gunned down in random acts of violence in and around the Fairgrounds. There is a palpable sadness in the air today and enraged citizens marched on City Hall demanding measures be taken to stop all this killing. JazzFest promoters say the event will go on, remarking that as tragic as this number may be it is still considerably less than have been gunned down in random acts of violence during previous JazzFests, citing the 1994 and 1995 numbers when 420, and 360 white people were killed.
That was the first part. The second part goes like this...
To close out the month of April I have to tell you that yesterday an 11-year-old boy was shot in the stomach near his home and is in critical condition at Charity hospital. Police were in the area to break up an altercation between two groups of youths at the nearby Magnolia project, and think the shooting might be related. The critical boy's name is not being released, because as he lays nearly dead, gut shot, with his internal organs a shredded mess,there remains the possibility that the shooter, or a minion thereof, will come into his hospital room and slit his fucking 11-year-old throat.
I have to start working on the Rocheblave house again, soon. That should shut me up, thank God.
Punctuation Bitches8.29.97
Oh those pesky drug dealers. It seems that the beginning of the school
year may be a time of reminiscing for all the Dumaine based dealers as
there has been a swarming of comraderie lately.
Note: KaKa (KK) is Kenosha, LuLu is Keyana, BaBa is Keshonika. Also
Kizzie is Kizzy. Kizzy's daughter Ritisha (3) is Raticia and neither
grandma Barbara nor Mama Kizzy know how to spell Shadrica (18 months).
Shelton doesn't like to see me sitting on the porch alone so he comes
over about nine last night (which is one hour after curfew) and keeps me
company, sitting real close, throwing off heat, asking questions and
telling tales.
"What are you thinking when you sit over here by yourself?" Shelton asks.
"I'm thinking about things that make me happy, and things that don't."
"I had a parent/teacher conference today," he tells me.
"Did you get kicked out of school?" I ask.
"No, I just had to have someone (other than his mother, Myrna, who is
back in jail) come talk to the teacher and they let me back in. Do you
know what happened?"
"The other kid started it," I say.
"How'd you know that?," he says, smiling, obviously flattered that I'm
paying attention to his life.
Heather and KaKa got kicked out of school today.
But I ignore his question and ask, "What really happened, Shelton?"
"I can tell you for real, what I said and all that?"
"Of course."
"Well, this boy, he come up to me and he say, 'fuck you, man,' and I say
right back to him, 'fuck yo' mama, bitch.'"
"So Shelton, when you said 'fuck yo' mama, bitch,' you were using 'bitch'
as like a punctuation mark, huh?"
Nobody around here really appreciates my sense of humor, especially the
children.
But I don't care and I go on and elaborate a bit more with the 'bitch' as
punctuation theme. Shelton has learned to be patient and polite during
these episodes and is clearly willing to wait me out on this one. When
he feels that I am pretty much finished, he says,
"Mr. Jim, when you get ready to go inside, to go to the bathroom or
something, would you ask Miss Amanda if she is coming out on the porch
tonight?"
If the children had to choose between me as a father figure or Mandy as a
mother, they would choose Mandy every time, which is a good choice.
Unsupervised9.19.98
Listening out the back door, you can hear the emergency vehicles coming from all parts of the city to arrive at the construction site of the new sports arena next to the superdome, part of which just collapsed. Construction workers hurt, unknown.
And thirty minutes later the topdrop of fast moving puffy whites against bright blue sunshine has turned angry black again, with wind and rain.
And we've been told to anticipate the worst, so that's what we do.
Sometimes we adults conspire to be thoroughly disgusted with certain children all at once, a blast of dissatisfaction--bad boy, bad boy, what we gonna do. There's too many unsupervised children running around here, way too many, an unacceptable many.
Mama D came over yesterday to tell me Shelton's school (McDonough 28) called and say he kicked out for touching a girl's butt and he know he ain't supposed to do that and I find myself nodding contritely as she scolds me in Shelton's place, replaying her words to me--"You know you can't just go around grabbing a girls' butt, it's not right and they won't put up with it at the school." I feel pretty bad by the time she's done and I didn't even get to touch no butt, dammit.
But I agree with her and sympathize with how difficult it must be for her to have those children misbehaving around her all the time instead of just the part time that I spend with them, and yes, Shelton will have to learn he pissin' off too many people too much of the time, and Fermin too, and even Jacque steps from his good boy role today by walking away from me when I tell him it's time to leave the bayou and go home. Hunter can stay if he wants but Jacque is a part timer at Mama D's and they tricked me down here by saying Mama D say they can't fish down there unless they with an adult. It had crossed my mind while driving the seven blocks there that--"ya'll didn't trick me down here just because ya'll too lazy to walk, did you?" No Indeed, they assured me. So anyway Jacque, I'm not that good at this, and in case you haven't noticed, I'm really not that fond of kids in general, and I'm not going to make a scene on the Dumaine bridge over this, so, bye bye, stay dry.
A little later when the sky gets prematurely black Mandy asks me where I left him and I tell her, and offer the advice, "let him get wet," but she ignores me and goes out to do what's right. I'll say this--them children are lucky Mandy got over being disgusted with them because right now she the only friend they got..
Fourth Of July7.6.97
Yesterday, after our trip to the Toys R' Us, where Glynn got a ball and
bat, (Barry Bonds signature) and to the WalMart where he got a batting
glove, I came inside for awhile and psyched up for a trip to Greg and
Sharon's back yard barbeque. Sharon is my age, pretty, about a hundred
pounds overweight. Greg has the shaved head, intense stare, and physique
of a light heavyweight boxer. The barbecued chicken, and ribs, the
macaroni and cheese, and jambalaya were all very good, but the two ice-cold
budweisers in the ninety-five degree (sixty percent humidified) heat hit
me hard and I found myself slipping away to lie in front of the AC at my
house. I woke a couple of hours later, groggy, so I slurped a pint of
XXX strength iced tea. Now I'm wired and groggy.
Its about 8pm now and I go outside and cross the street to Mama D's where Evelyn is sitting on the steps. Evelyn is Mama D's thirty-one year old daughter. A slightly
mannish appearance, and an apparent sexual attraction to both Mandy and
I has not completely precluded all of us from being friends. I ask
Evelyn if she wanted to go around the corner to her front porch on
Orleans and watch the fireworks that would be going off on the other side
of the Quarter by the river. She wanted to go down to the river and hear
the music and see it all up close. I'm not up to it this year, I say,
and besides, I don't want to go off having too much fun while Mandy is
suffering under the weight of a bad monthly. Evelyn doesn't want kids
going either and I remind her that it is Glynn's birthday and then she tells
me she has been fighting with her neighbor, Gambino, but what the hell,
let's go, and Glynn can come with us. Evelyn's children are Julia, 12, and Fermin, 11.
Evelyn wants me to drop her at the Joy on Canal after
the fireworks and so we drive instead of walk around the corner. Its
almost nine o'clock now and the heat still feels like little lead weights
resting on every individual pore of your body. The air is completely
still and has a density that resists you as you move through it. And the
evening sky, black, starless, and thick, rests heavily on your head.
Gambino and Evelyn have been the greatest of friends in the past,
Gambino barbecuing weekly on the little strip of side walk in front of
their double shotgun, sharing regularly with Evelyn. But a dispute over
fish cleaning and a missing porch light has escalated into a run of the
mill neighborly squabble or...
As we turn left on N. Broad the night is lit with flashing red lights.
Police cars coming from all directions, approaching what appears to be a
pretty hairy scene up by the pumping station on St. Louis. We see a
Crime Lab truck and our minds bring up visions of blood on the streets,
again. Another dot on the murder map perhaps. The Saturday Metro
section informs us it was a bad accident. Six men in the back of a
pickup with two cases of beer and a clothes dryer spilled onto the road.
All hurt, two in critical.
Evelyn, Glynn, and I, park on Orleans in front of her house. Gambino and
his wife are out on their side of the porch. Gambino pleads with Evelyn
to stop calling the police and their landlord on him. She had a box
cutter in her hand the other night when the police came. She says they
told her she had a right to defend herself. I'm not really listening.
Gambino makes a gesture of taking the bulb from his porch light and
putting it in Evelyn's. Glynn is eager to get into the bag of fireworks
I brought with me. Gambino's wife is explaining to her husband that
Evelyn is a frustrated woman. "She just loose job, she got two children
to take care of." But these words sound a little bit sinister to me.
Evelyn is not too sure so she just shakes her head and says, "yes I am
frustrated." And it is much too hot for all this. Something is not
right tonight and the hairs on my arms are bristling. Little lasers of
refracted street light bounce off the sweat pouring from Glynn's
forehead. And the voices are getting louder. This thing is escalating
too fast. Evelyn goes inside and calls the police. When she comes back
out I see this rather wicked looking filet knife inserted, blade down, in
her back pocket. I start to tell Glynn something but no words come out.
He seems to understand and goes to sit in the car. I look up and Evelyn
is standing up with her shoulders arched slightly back. The blade is in
her hand, in the sneak position--unvarnished wood handle in her clenched
fist, blade point running backwards towards her elbow and pressed tight
up against the inside of her wrist. She is standing two inches shy of
the imaginary line which separates the two porches. If she steps over it
first, its attempted murder. He steps over and she can plead
self-defense. I really don't believe Gambino or his wife ever saw the
knife. I step onto the sidewalk and cross the line so I am standing in
front of Gambino's. The porch is elevated about two and half feet from
the sidewalk. There is a wrought iron railing between us. My voice
doesn't carry that well but I yell anyway and tell Gambino that he needs
to leave my friend alone. The look of shock which comes over his face is
disproportionate to the threat. I can only guess he realized he had been
flanked, a strategic disadvantage to say the least. He mumbles some
obscenities in Spanish and quickly steps inside his front door. Surely
to get his gun my mind informs me. This night was made for it. Fifteen
police cars and two or three ambulances a block and a half away and I'm
about to become pulp. Over a light bulb and some fish guts. Gambino
comes back out and walks off towards the Shell station at Broad and
Orleans ( twenty-four hour beer and liquor).
Fermin and Julia show up about ten minutes later and Evelyn tells them to
stay home for the night. I leave them some fireworks and Glynn decides
to stay with them. I drop Evelyn at the Joy for the ten o'clock showing
of Men in Black. I pick her up at midnight and drop her at her house.
All is well.
A Warm Fuzzy Blanket
"Allegedly," I said.
"What's that?" Glynn said.
"Means he's been charged with the crime, but it hasn't been proven yet."
"Oh. Can I ask you a question? Glynn said.
"As many as you like, however, answers are a dollar a piece."
"If my grandma say it all right I can spend the weekend over here?"
"You're staying with your grandma now?"
"Yes."
"Since when?"
"Since a week and a half ago, and until my mama get out." Nettie's in jail again? And when she get's out its just a matter of time before she going back. Glynn's thinking he staying with her is a sort of "pipe dream," because she has never taken care of those kids.
After the death of Mama D one of the better shuffles of the deck landed KaKa (16), and Glynn (13), with their actual father, Eric, and his wife. 'Lil Eric (aka., Stink, or Stank, 20), when not in jail, would live wherever he could. But for Glynn I thought this was a wonderful deal; a black boy of the inner city to be with his actual father is a rare thing indeed. What went wrong? What happened? Why were you kicked out? Why doesn't anybody love you?, I wanted to ask.
I said, "Where does she stay?"
"On the other side of the Bayou, on Roosevelt. That's why I'm over here a lot lately, 'cause them boys over there, mmm, something wrong with 'em."
"You can stay."
"Thank you."
"Does it surprise you about X. I mean, if he really did it," I said.
"No," Glynn said.
"Really? Why?"
"'Cause he would always hang with them kind."
X lives around here and for a good while before Shelton went off to California, and after he got back, X and he would pal around, and fight, and be pals, then enemies, often fighting over the attentions of the same girl. X is bigger than Shelton (although Shelton has beat him up), and a year older, and is much more polite, well mannered, and mature. And for awhile he was spending a lot of time over here, sometimes I think just to piss Shelton off, but he is always very quiet sitting at the computer playing solitaire or some other simple game. Rarely will he be engrossed in the more lively computer games offered here. There was a brief period where he discovered the Internet, and pornography. I let it slide for a few days but then I started worrying about the implications for all involved and came in one day, and said, "X, you cannot look at pornography on these computers." He went into a denial so thorough that I began to question his version of reality. But he did not surf the Internet anymore. He and Shelton will still play dominoes on occasion, the winner gloating loudly over victory. And X will still play solitaire.
Earlier this week a boy said to me, "Mr. Jim, you aren't going to believe this but they got X locked up for that shootin.'"
I did not respond to that.
"You wanna know how they found it out?"
I nodded.
"X be walkin' around after sayin' 'I got me one, I got me one, I kill a man.'"
I'm shaking my head.
"That's so stupid, huh, Mr. Jim, if you kill a man you don't go around after braggin' about it."
I have to respond to that with agreement, and although I want to explain that you don't go around killing people over trivial matters, I don't; the words in my head sound weak.
There are some things that need to happen for all this killing to stop and I'm afraid, I believe, they are not going to happen. The comfort we take in the temporary downturning of crime trends is all we're going to get, is all we have. And that's so we don't get too scared or despondent about what it is that's really going on here. For true, it is a good thing we blanket ourselves with the fuzzy comfort of denial. Clarity of vision is not in our best interests. It is important that we forget, and smile a bit.
One evening after he left the house, picking up a pear on his way out, saying, "all right Mr. Jim," X got into an argument with a young man by the name of Arthur Brown. When X removed the gun from his pocket, Arthur Brown ran around a car, and X shot him. The first bullet likely entered one of Arthur's legs, bluntly ripping his flesh, and tearing through muscle, tendons, arteries, and veins, maybe chipping some bone too. Six bullets were fired in less time than it took for X to pick up his pear in this kitchen and walk out this front door. Three more bullets were fired into Arthur Brown's legs, but it was the first bullet shot into his neck that had blood pooling blackly in the street on top of the spilt oil of so many Chevys. The second bullet in Arthur Brown's neck was put there because X knew he was supposed to go for the head, but in my mind I'm imagining him too polite, and well mannered, and at this point, even realizing its too late for that, regretful, so he puts another bullet in Arthur Brown's neck. X kill a man.
Arthur's obit is in this morning's paper; they put in a real nice picture; he got a good smile.
The Cross 2
It may have been Big Arthur come looking, marching up and down Dumaine yesterday, asking "who know where it is 'lil Arthur got shot?" Now this was only ten or twelve hours after the shooting took place and six-year-old Erica Lewis, just visiting the neighborhood, offered--not quite within hearing distance of Big Arthur--"I know, it was 'roun that corner." Shelton Jackson, standing nearby, said, "shut your mouth, Erica."
I was reading the Metro section this morning while Shelton, Lance, and Hunter took baths and put on their new easter outfits. I had just started the article about the two shootings, was reading about the 18-year-old girl shot for her bicycle (Evelyn just stopped by, said there's more to that story), by some men in a Dodge truck with extended cab and tinted windows, over around 1900 N. Johnson, and Shelton walked by seeing the obits on the back page and said, "they got all the pictures in there?"
I assumed he was referring to the shooting that everyone was hinting at yesterday, which was likely the second shooting in the article I was reading, so I said, "no, that picture will come out later," and added, "hey did you hear about that girl who got killed for her bicycle?" He asked where and I told him, Seventh Ward, seven blocks on the other side of Esplanade. He offered a general lament for the sad state of things, which did not exactly fit him, and sounded somewhat scripted.
"They got the story 'bout Arthur in there?" Shelton asked, and I looked down the column, seeing Arthur Brown, 22, shot in the 2600 block of St. Philip (one block over from here). "He tried to jack a dude for his crack and the dude chased him down and unloaded his clip." And I read, and translate, "shot two times in the neck, four times in his legs." And I think if he emptied his clip then it was half empty (full?) to begin with, or, in fact, his weapon was a revolver. Either way, Arthur Brown is dead.
Shelton said, "he jacked Mike outa his money a while back."
"Michael?"
"No, not that Mike, and not Big Mike, another Mike."
"So he wasn't really a friend to anyone around here?"
"No, I wouldn't say he was," Shelton said.
The Cross
Its Easter and I'm up early, having heard the rain ping against my air conditioner. There is no newspaper on the porch, so I look around. My efforts as the Barbara Bush of Dumaine have never really amounted to much: trash is strewn far and wide; everday like Mardi Gras. I'm trying to start the day in a productive manner and this is all I know how to do that lets me feel I'm not just wasting my space on the planet. However, the egocentric investment does not always pay the best dividend. What to do?
Kids are out of school for Easter break and along with Shelton, Lance and Hunter have been spending the night here for the last three nights. Today is a big day. Everyone will have new outfits, new Nikes, new hairdos. The ghetto will vibrate with pride.
When those three get up and leave the house, there is a brief pause before the doorbell rings and the house begins to fill up with others. Yesterday Glynn, Jacque, Marqin, Erica, Ritcia, Shadrica, Kizzy, Heather, Julia, KaKa, Eddie Green, and a few others I can't put names to were in and out (in mostly) all day.
Jermaine mentioned it on the porch, and later I heard Heather talking about it on the phone--another friend got shot this weekend.
I did a little work at Rocheblave but am still distracted by the weight of planetary alignments, and cannot string together an overwhelmingly producitve day.
Around six I called my mom, told her what she probably already knew--that Mandy and I are splitting up--but did not in so many words (or any at all) say that its hard to believe seven years have passed since the death of my father.
At 9:45 last night I announced that I would like to have my fifteen minutes of peace and quiet, so whatever has to happen for me to get that, needs to happen now.
Crazy White Renovator
One thing about doing a gut renovation in your spare time is that it taxes your energy and patience levels to such an extent that you often fly off the handle and utter weird, or even mean shit to people who normally would not be victims of your wrath.
A couple of weeks ago I was sweeping the kitchen floor over at Rocheblave (it was a day during which I felt great ambivalence about the fate of nesting pigeons) and I observed through the broken glass panes of the back door--which is in the kitchen--a man lurking directly below me. The house is pier and beam and sits three cinder blocks high. And this man is fiddling with the screen door which I have wedged so tight it can't be open, and the door itself is nailed or painted shut, so I'm feeling almost mirthful standing off to the side watching this man's attempts which will end in failure.
Now the side door and front door of this house do not exist (as well as any steps up to them), so they have been replaced with plywood sheets which I screw (with cordless screw gun) on and off as needed. I have the bottom panel of plywood--there are three stacked panels--off the side entrance and when I see the man head that way I too head that way, leaving the kitchen and entering the hallway. The man does not even hesitate before making his initial leap into the house (even for the most athletic it is a two step process) and before he can follow through with the motion which will have us sharing the same space, I jump, so to speak, all over his shit.
"No uh uh, this shit gotta stop, no more visitors, the house is closed, you have just met the new owner and he is an asshole."
"I heard noises over here so I came to check it out," he responded.
That response did stop me for a minute, causing me to make a more careful inspection of this man: Medium height, medium brown skin, bright (blue/grey) eyes, fiftyish, some facial hair with slight greying, overall a good looking man, but the clothes and shoes register on the homeless meter, and so I start up again.
"Well the noises you heard are me working in here, and I'm going to be living here, and I'm not looking to make any new friends, and if you're the one who was living here before and are responsible for the fire then I'm especially not happy to see you..."
"Naw uh uh," he interupted me, "this house too wide open for me, I stay back there," pointing towards the not very well boarded up Iberville dance hall. And then he further disarms me by introducing himself and offering up (as he is still standing below me, outside the house) his hand. "My name is Joseph, but they call me Pigman."
I shake his hand and offer that I don't have any problem with his general existence but that any intrusion of this property will not be smiled upon. He shakes my hand again as if to say, "that's not too much to ask you uptight whiteboy," and we part company.
There are a couple of churches nearby that offer help to the downtrodden, so there is in the area a pretty fair population of needy, on top of the general population which in many cases wishes not to be classified as such. Also, Rocheblave is somewhat of a highway for scrap collectors, being that it carries not a great deal of automobile traffic and is the most direct path to the recycling plant a few blocks away, closer to the Lafitte projects. Which is to say I'm meeting a lot of transients pushing grocery carts full of treasure and therefore am carefully cultivating my reputation as "that crazy white boy," not a hard thing for a white man to sell to a black man, as our history shows us not always on best behavior.
On another day I was sweeping the cracked pavement of my driveway when a fellow walked right up to me and apoligized for not being better prepared as he tried to hold the sixteen ounce Red Dog in his armpit while seaching for the prop in his wallet. The beer on his breath was ripe and implied that the one under his arm was not his first of the day, even as this was only eight in the morning. He then produced a handwritten list with a heading that was some young girl's name and various signatures with dollar amounts by them. He told me how this young girl was his niece and she had recently been shot dead and the family had no insurance so could I help. A great con. If indeed it is a con. But how can one be sure? I act as if I have no money but would like to contribute if he could give me more information. I ask about the MacDonalds where she worked, because KaKa used to work there and maybe she knew the dead girl. A good con artist does not give up easily and will dance to the steps of his mark. But this mark tires easily and after I make an especially dimwitted response the man touches me on the shoulder, and says, "you don't seem to understand, this girl dead." And his touch and words inject me with more truth than I can bare and his con has become transparent before me and I am immediately furious, going through a transformation like the Hulk, only I'm still rail thin afterwards. And I call him a motherfucker and a bunch of other things and suggest rather harshly that he not bring anymore stupid bullshit by me, and in response to his apology I tell him its too late for that, get the hell away from me. I was relating this incident to my new neighbor, Charles, somewhat of a hustler himself, and he said, "Aw man, that's an old hustle. He should'na tried to run that around here."
All that being said, Rocheblave is a considerably more relaxed neighborhood compared to Dumaine, at least before I got there.
The Slim Dandy Renovation
This doesn't have to be a metaphor, it could simply be the way things are. On the other hand it does make a dandy metaphor: the pigeon poop inside my new kitchen.
I know pigeons ain't nothing but rats with wings but in the wake of recent local teenage killings, and the disappearance of one of our inside cats, and at the same time the disappearance of the newborn outside kittens (great-great grandchildren of Point Blank) from the Point Blank clan, I just could not kick that pregnant pigeon out of her nest above one of my still glassless kitchen windows. I either am a heartless bastard or, for sure, on occasion can be a heartless bastard, but I did not have what it took to do that deed. I feel like I'm being punked by the PETA people, or am suffering from an ingrown conscience, or am paying the balloon on my Karmic debts for shooting those moles with Jeff Franzen's BB gun out near Lake O' the Pines in East Texas thirty years ago.
I've avoided the kitchen for weeks now, instead working on the outside, breaking out the old broken glass window panes so the neighborhood kids won't be so tempted to vandalize (which has me thinking again of my own childhood and yet more Karmic debt). And I have been scraping the windows down to their cypress beginning, all as part of preliminary efforts in what will be the replacing and reglazing of 112 panes of glass.
So yesterday I'm outside on a small scaffold working on the miniature double set of windows above what will be the kitchen sink, and I can see across the kitchen to the other window, above which, on the now exposed framing header, sits the nest. And the grown pigeon is in her nest acting in a way that I will only describe as "unladylike." But soon she leaves the nest unattended, which from my recent observations is an unheard of thing because previously she would only leave after another pigeon (the male?) came to take her place (to sit on the egg, I guess). The settng sun is working against my vision but after some correctional squinting I can see that in the nest is indeed a newborn. A glorious thing, this new birth, but also, I wish I were a geek (or more of one) so I could go in there and bite its little head off. But it's not going to happen that way so I'm left pondering how many days now till this young bird will leave the nest? And who's going to clean up that cumulative pile of poop on the floor?
Pre-Postal
People, all of us, we don't know why we feel the weight of it but we do, like a ton of bricks, or a washing machine balanced on your chin, the pain of it, the endurance.
For the record: I believe in the death penalty. By my way of thinking the only problem with the death penalty is that we don't use it enough. Those people in the toll tag lane who know goddamn well their tag is expired, or who don't have it affixed to their windshields and idiotically wave the tag in front of the sensor and are therefore wasting those precious few seconds of my time, under my regime would die, in fact instantly. It could be done. My brother and I figured out the way to do it years ago, over twenty I think. Death ray devices installed atop every light pole in the world. Be smart or die could be a motto.
This month the lunatic menstruators [sic] of the world are joined by a far greater number, and some of us know who we are.
Asked to comment on the full moon this month, he replied, "it was very heavy."
And the planets are lining up as they should and everyone, please, just take a number.