Krewe du Review |
Links & Lagniappe |
Calendar of Events |
Back To Current Issue |
Volume 1, Issue 2. January 16, 2007. |
|
NIKKI'S DRESSBy Katie McInnis-Dittrich, Boston, MassachusettsKatie McInnis-Dittrich (absolutely related to editor Aileen) lives in Boston, MA because she is too much of a weather wimp to live in Alaska and doesn't want to live in New York but wants to be close. She teaches at the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work, enjoys sailing on the Charles River and is nurturing a budding career as an esteemed watercolor artist (ok, not past the vegetable stage yet).
"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.
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…
© 2007 Katie McInnis-Dittrich Bayou Bourbon (and Beer)By Ken Waldman
© 1995 Ken Waldman. Used with Permission. |
|||
|
|
|||
|
"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.