Katie McInnis-Dittrich (absolutely related to editor Aileen) lives in Boston, MA and went on to eventually become a professor at the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work years after her stint in New Orleans. I still have a strand of Mardi Gras beads she caught off a float in the 1970's that she eventually gave me. Here's a bittersweet story of memories gone by.
"Where did you get this?" I said with shock, eyeing a gold sequined
gown amidst the tattered old cotton dresses and ragged sweaters in the big
cardboard box that served as her closet. The whole thing smelled musty and
dusty and just plain old.
"It's
not mine, it's Nikki's," Lily mumbled, choking on her response. "She
wore it when she was Zulu Queen five years ago. She was mighty fine. She looked
like an African queen."
Lily
started to cry, softly and silently. Lily was 61 years old and looked 100. She
was a proud but worn-out old woman whose body had been battered by the birth of
eight children (only two of whom were still alive) and the toll of hard
domestic servitude to an Uptown family, with low pay and long hours. I
suspected she had been slapped around for a lifetime by lovers and boyfriends.
She didn't bring it up and I didn't ask.
"I
wish I could have buried her in it but you know…" she blurted out.
Yes, I
knew. Nikki, Lily's daughter, was murdered by her pimp three years ago and by
the time anyone noticed she was gone, reported it to the New Orleans police and
the body was found, there wasn't enough of her left for the sartorial splendor
of the gold sequined gown. Even in the Pre-Katrina years, New Orleans was not
easy on the living or the dead. How could the Queen of the Zulu Krewe go from
gold sequins to a body bag in three years? From a brief shining moment to …
Lily was
my client when I was a social work student at Tulane University 30 years ago
and worked in the St. Thomas and Central City Housing Projects in New Orleans.
Lily taught me a lot about social work and being old and how the streets claim
the young and innocent. She also taught me how to eat a king cake
without swallowing the plastic baby (but not before I had ripped up the inside
of my mouth and chipped a tooth). And how to tell if it was worth smacking a
little kid for a pair of cheap beads thrown off a float (very specific
criteria). And how to ease a rum hangover (so we didn't know how bad the
hangover would be when we drank all night at Pat O'Brien's and a kind stranger
paid the $90 bar bill). And why cross-dressers have a strange opening in the
back of their gorgeous gowns for the French Quarter Parade (ok, I figured that
out by myself). I am not sure what, if anything, I could teach her.
"Lily,
would it be better if we boxed up Nikki's dress and put it away?" I asked
one day. "Better yet, do you want me to try to sell it at one of the
consignment shops in the quarter? It probably could get some great money. Or
contact the Zulu Krewe and see if they want it for some museum or
something?"
I was
painfully aware of how difficult it was for Lily to survive on a small general
assistance check and a handful of food stamps. It is my greatest asset as a
social worker to suggest a million ways to take care of people and then get
angry when someone refuses to take my advice. Nikki's dress reminded me of the
excess and debauchery of Mardi Gras that seemed to ignore the city's other
painful problems, especially the poverty, drug abuse, and crime issues I saw
every day in the projects. On this particular day, I had stepped on some
crushed beads with one foot and a discarded hypodermic needle with the other.
The millions spent on floats and balls seemed to be a flagrant and flippant
message from the haves to the have-nots. The cost of liquor consumed on any
given float far exceeded the yearly income of much of New Orleans' poor.
Don't get
me wrong. I had a fabulous time at Mardi Gras as a student and several times
since. It's just that after all the hoopla is over, Mardi Gras feels like the
post-fight Lola in Barry Manilow's song Copa Cabana. Jim Metcalf, the
late Louisiana poet and journalist, referred to New Orleans as an "aging
whore, a tired and fading beauty but with a suggestion of its past
finery." No one who sticks around after Mardi Gras would wonder how he
came up with that metaphor.
"Girl,
what ever are you saying? I ain't sad about that dress." She responded
with absolute confusion in her eyes. "Why do you want to take it away from
me?"
"I
don't want to take it away from you. I just thought it might be less painful
for you if it wasn't always there to look at, reminding you of Nikki's death.
Grief can be very painful and encumbering; robbing us of the energy we need for
other things." I blurted out. Geez, did I ever really talk like that?
"It
don't remind me of Nikki's passing." Lily stated with a big smile on her
face. "It reminds me of a day when Nikki was more beautiful than any girl
in the parade; when there were no devil boyfriends or drugs or whorin'. When
I'm cryin', I ain't sad."
For a
moment, (and only a moment, mind you), I was silent. Didn't she see the tragedy
of a young, beautiful woman decked in the splendor of the glitz and glamour of
Mardi Gras one minute and dead from the drugs, violence, and poverty that is
New Orleans much of the year the next? She must have read the look on my face.
"Carnival
was a good time when Nikki was queen. But it is a good time all the time.
People are happy. People ain't happy much here anymore," she said.
"It's the only time when other troubles don't seem to be so bad."
"But
don't you get angry when the city seems to find the money for extra police on
duty to protect the tourists but not for decent housing? Doesn't all the excess
of glitz make you crazy when it is hard to find money for medicine? Don't you
hate all the tourists coming into town in-costume to get drunk and get crazy,
then leave?" I stammered in disbelief. I was at my best fighting social
injustice and inequality. After all that is why I was going into social work.
"They
ain't costumes. They are masquerades. Costumes make you look like somebody or
something else but you are still you. Masquerades let you look and be someone
else even for a few hours. Pitiful people can be pretty. Old people can be
young. Even that old Miss Elway with all them burn marks on her face from her
old man can be beautiful. Ain't no medicine can make you feel that good."
The defiance in her voice was clear. "And we are all happy when the
tourists leave and the extra police as well. All the police really do is keep
'us' away from 'them.' And they all be too busy to cruise the projects looking
for some kid to beat up and arrest."
She was
angry. Her eyes were burning with the hatred I saw too often when the
black-white issue in New Orleans came up. She continued. "You know how the
Bible says that in heaven there won't be no cripples or crooks or cryin'? Ain't
none of that during Carnival either. Ok, maybe some crooks still working but
black ain't black, poor ain't poor, old ain't old. It gives me a glimpse of
heaven. And there ain't nobody walking down the street looking at me and others
in the project thinking how sad we are and trying to fix us."
I am not
sure she intended that last comment for me as the do-good social worker but I
got the message. Of course by now, I was sure I had rendered permanent damage
to the "therapeutic relationship" with Lily and she would never let
me in her apartment again. I was about ready to cast off graduate school and go
back to the idea of being a travel agent.
"You
don't know no better, you're a Yankee. You all have some crazy ideas." She
smiled at me with a kind, knowing look-I swear it was pity or at least that is
how I remember it. She reached under her bed and brought out a box, tattered
and dusty. It was a spectacular Mardi Gras mask adorned with gold sequins and
green, yellow, and purple feathers. She put it on. She was beautiful. She lay
down on the bed and asked me to leave her alone for awhile. I quietly left her
apartment, humbled as well as humiliated.
I would
see Lily many more times after that day and the conversation was never mentioned
again. I didn't leave social work. Lily never got well and died some years
later of natural causes: old and tired. And I found out later Nikki was never
queen of the Zulu Krewe. I shudder to think what Nikki really got that dress
for but it doesn't matter-didn't matter then, doesn't matter now. Lily believed
what she needed to believe.
But she
taught me a lot about social work and being old that I still teach my own
students these years later. And she taught me why I should not hate Mardi Gras
because of its garish, manic chaos that feels tawdry and sparkly and fake. And
why an old woman kept a gold sequined dress to remind her of the splendor of
Mardi Gras. And why old, poor, and sick people probably love Mardi Gras the
best of all. A brief shining moment…
No comments:
Post a Comment