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Spirits
of New Orleans We’d
piled up in the back of the old white Escort, wearing as little clothes as we
could get away with without looking obscene and traveled the worn interstate
that was not surprised to carry our adventure, our tire treads falling into
place along with the millions of other tire treads that had taken people just
like us here. We’d
fallen into the same path as many other women before us, the wind blowing
against our faces as the spirit of Thelma and Louise drive us on from behind. It’s
late morning when we finally descend into the parking lot, a slab of broken
concrete with a chain wrapped around the perimeter to keep thieves from breaking
into your car.
I look at the rusted links in disgust and then remind myself that this is
New Orleans and nothing is free, especially your security. It’s
a hot summer day, and even though there’s a threatening band of clouds to our
backs, we don’t care, and I squeeze in to walk beside my aunt and cousin
toward the French Quarter.
Our cameras are swinging from our fingers as we discuss Anne Rice, and I
begin to wonder if we’ll see any vampires. “I
just love New Orleans,” my Aunt says, and I look at the distance in her eyes
as she stares forward, looking at nothing in particular.
“I hated it when we had to leave.
I always wanted to move back here.”
She pauses to take a picture and then moves on, suddenly becoming anxious
to be farther inside the city.
She is our tour guide, walking with a graceful stride, her bracelets
making a delicate jingle of a song that pierces through the chaos of a crowd
that seems to have magically appeared from out of nowhere.
Her reddish hair is cut short but is full of soft curls that frame her
face, and she’s wearing a dress of gauzy material that flows around her
ankles. I fall behind her with my cousin whose face is alive with make-up,
applied just right to bring out every gorgeous feature in her face, including
her high cheekbones which glow from some inner light every time she smiles.
One strand of black hair is tucked purposely behind her ear, and she’s
wearing a pair of black flip-flops that taps out her footsteps.
She’s silent, her lips drawn in a straight line that a passer-by might
mistake as anger, but I know it’s a struck awe as her gaze sweeps across the
view, drinking it in until it rests on a tree the shape of an umbrella. “I
want to take pictures under there,” she says, her voice barely a mumble and
the words drift away as soon as their spoken.
She works to take her camera out of the bag just big enough to hold it,
and then we take turns taking pictures and standing under the tree, its branches
filled with wispy leaves that bow down as though they’re trying to wrap around
our shoulders.
We snap pictures until we feel that we’ve reached that invisible line
of taking too many and hide the camera back in its bag to save the film for more
important pictures. “Let’s
go on to the flea market,” my aunt says, the threatening clouds having become
thicker and swollen with rain.
A gust of wind tears through the trees, threatening to carry the branches
along with it as it moves out to the Gulf.
“We should go on to the flea market,” she says with a nod to confirm
this to herself. The
flea market, so it seems, is a tent that is placed in the middle of the street,
the booths and tables crammed inside form some semblance of linear order and are
filled with paintings, sculptures, and jewels that twinkle even in the dull
yellow light coming from some unseen source.
We step inside just as a clap of thunder rips through the sky, splitting
open the clouds and allowing the raindrops as fat as dumplings to splatter to
the ground. The
air becomes animated with the shrieks of people how hurry to get under the
market’s flimsy cover, holding newspapers and purses over their heads as they
huddle in a line just out of the rain’s reach.
Just for a moment, the boundaries of strangers are broken as the flea
market is filled with nervous laughter and excited talking over the event, their
voices a little too loud. We
don’t linger among them, our attention already diverted by the goodies that
lay out on table waiting for us.
Without a word, we go our separate ways, each of us engrossed with our
own ideas of how to spend the money that burning in our purses, and I head off
to the nearest jewelry booth and become lost within a sea of silver as the storm
raged on outside. “Would
you like a bracelet with your name engraved on it?”
A deep voice brings me out my pondering, and I look up to see a man with
dark skin and a head full of dreadlocks sitting on a high chair with a lapful of
beads. He’s
wearing a pair of dark glasses that obscure his eyes.
“I can engrave your name on any of these bracelets for you for only
fifteen dollars.
Look at these.
Genuine silver.
It’s a bargain.”
He sweeps his hand across a display of ID bracelets tacked against a
board of blue velvet.
They’re quite ugly to me, and I politely decline. He
laughs, a deep throaty kind of chuckle that combines with the thunder, and I am
wondering if he was born and raised here.
“Alright then.
But I can engrave whatever you like.
However many letters you want.
It doesn’t matter.
It’s all fifteen dollars.”
He smiles at me.
“What’s your name.” I
search through my memory for a fake name.
“Mary,” I say. He
nods, half-closing his eyes.
“Where are you from?” “Mississippi.” “Mississippi,
huh? Where
is that?” He
laughs again and leans across the table closer to me, winking, but I’m not
amused. I
try to examine the rings he had for sale that looked more promising with no
luck. “What
do you? Do
you work?” “No,
I’m a student,” I say. “Ah,
yes, a student.
I remember when I was a student.”
He leans back in his chair and interlocks his fingers, and I wonder if
he’s about to tell me his life story.
“I tell you what, just for you, I’ll sell you one for fourteen
dollars. What
do you say? You
won’t find a better deal anywhere else in the market.” I
nod as though I believe this and try to remember every action I’d made since I
came to the booth, trying to figure out what it was I did to give this man the
impression that I was interested in his bracelets so I won’t do it again. “So,
which one would you like?” I’m
irritated and wish I could disappear.
I put on my sweetest smile and say, “No thank you.” The
man rolls his eyes, and I bend down to look at the rings.
When I look up again, the chair is empty, and I look at it in disgust.
But then I remember this is New Orleans and nothing is free, especially
friendliness. The
rain has slowed to a soft tapping, and I rush off to find my cousin standing
before a glass case filled with lighters.
I pick out one in the shape of my dragon for my father, and then we’re
off to find my aunt who is standing in front of an African mask carved out of
wood. Her
hand is at her throat, fingering the strands of silver around her neck. “It’s
so beautiful, isn’t it?”
She asks, and her voice is breathless.
“I want it so bad, but I can’t afford it.” We
stand, admiring the slender face that slopes to a point at the chin with two
half-moons of eyes across its center.
We stare, trying to freeze the image in our minds as my aunt mentally
balances her checkbook, but there’s no amount of juggling that will allow her
to take the mask home.
It’s with great sadness that we reluctantly leave it where it hangs. “It’s
hot,” I say.
The rain had ended, and the tent is catching the humidity, obscurity the
air with a sweaty mist.
We head outside where the humidity is not much better, but the air is
less stuffy, and we find ourselves wandering away from the crowds and into the
streets leading deeper into New Orleans. It’s
two o’clock in the afternoon, and we don’t realize that we’ve stumbled
onto Bourbon Street until we look up and see the street sign.
It either too early or too late, depending on your point of view, and
everyone is still recovering from the night, the street filled with only ghosts
of memories that swirl around our feet and into the alleyways.
An
bar open to the street on the corner is nearly empty except for a few men who
sit hunched over the counter, holding their glasses just above it.
They neither raise the glasses to their lips to drink or put the glasses
down, only let them hover as if either action would be too much trouble.
They turn their heads to look at us over their shoulders as we pass,
their eyelids heavy and wanting to close, but a spark of interest as we pass has
jolted them half-awake again. There’s
a fortune-teller behind every other door, the smell of incense is thick and
makes me dizzy.
My aunt holds out a hand heavy with rings and points to the nearest one.
“Let’s go in there,” she says, and my cousin agrees, but the smell
makes me nauseated.
I want to sit down on the curb, but the sidewalk is glistening with rain,
and I don’t want to get wet.
They move toward the fortune teller’s door which is nothing more than
strands of purple beads hanging in front of black darkness, while my eyes fix on
the building across the street.
It has iron bars across its entrance and the windows are cloudy with fog
in frames of peeling white pain.
As I watch, its spirits begin to drift toward me, thin wisps of barely
white that twirl out of the cracks and the half-open front door. They whisper
their unpleasant history, and the longer I stare, I can see gargoyles taking
their place on the roof while werewolves begin to emerge from the mossy brick. I
hadn’t noticed that I’d crossed the street until I heard my aunt’s voice
and turned to see them waving for me to come back.
I walk across the deserted street where my aunt puts a warm arm around my
shoulders. “Let’s
go a little farther,” she says and gives me a nudge to lead me along.
I look back at the building, which now seems just as dead as all the
other ones. I
look at it in disbelief until a voice whispers in my ear that this is New
Orleans, and it’s driven by spirits that cannot be seen, only felt. We
stop at a costume shop where I immediately latch onto a pink boa hanging below a
picture of Marilyn Monroe and rip it down from its display, wrapping it around
my shoulders. The
faux fur tickles my chin and I turn to my cousin and purse my lips.
“What do you think?”
I ask. She
giggles. “You
look fabulous,” she says and picks up a green one and does the same.
We each try to out Vogue each other until we’ve grown tired of the game
and move on to look at snow globes filled with gold glitter and have New Orleans
stamped on the bottom of them.
We pick them up one and by and shake them until the entire rack with
alive with floating gold glitter, and my aunt comes up behind us and says that
we need to head back toward the car. “It
looks like it’s going to rain again,” she says and points to the sky where
the clouds, which had become thin and lighter, are now starting to become dark
and swollen again.
With regret, I place the boa that is still wrapped around my neck back on
its peg, and then we’re off again, stopping in the heart of the French Quarter
for something to eat. The
restaurant, like the flea market, seems to have been placed in the middle of the
street and, while it has no walls, it has a constructed roof, thankfully,
because as soon as we sit down, the clouds open again and the rain starts to
splatter against the street once more. There’s
a jazz band in the corner, the musicians wearing matching purple coats while
their story is told alternatively between the saxophone and trumpet.
The sound is loud but full while we wait for our waiter to come, an
overeager college-age boy with blonde hair that bounces when he moves.
In the two minutes that he takes our order, we discover that he’s a
student at UNO studying business but would rather be doing something else that
he hasn’t quite figured out yet.
He wants to go to LSU but can’t afford it yet and would quit his job
right at that moment if he didn’t need the money for tuition.
He likes my aunt rings and then becomes distracted by a girl who calls
his name, and he moves on, his pen still poised as though he’s prepared for a
customer to spontaneously pop up and give an order. We
watch the rain and say nothing, each of us absorbed in our own thoughts and
feeling drained from the humidity, until our food is brought out and the smell
wakes us up again.
My aunt and cousin eat with earnest zeal, but my tongue cannot adjust to
the sharp Cajun flavor that makes me think of colors such as red and orange, and
I leave half my food on my plate. We
sit long after we’ve stopped eating, watching the late sun light the slick
street on fire while the jazz band plays on, never breaking their tune as though
they are a part of the restaurant and will play on through the night.
If we are to come back tomorrow, they will still be playing in the same
purple jackets to a new sea of faces that watch with detached amusement over
their po-boys and gumbo.
The sun dips below the roofs of buildings and begins to turn everything
black as the wind whistles through the restaurant, stealing a few napkins off
the tables and send them dancing across the floor. It’s
with heavy hearts that we finally lift ourselves with tired legs from our chairs
and walk back to our car, past the flea market and the umbrella tree. “I
wish we didn’t have to go,” my cousin says, but the spirits are rushing us
out, whispering in our ears that it’s for our own good.
I’m sad, but then I remember that this is New Orleans, and I’m much
to naïve to survive without the guidance of the sun. © EXCEL
Now what do you want to do?
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