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floats illuminated her face. I recognized her as Tyra Treadway. Her
husband was my wife's boss. The last time we'd seen her was at his
funeral.
Between floats, Tyra walked across the street. Up close, we
could see that her face was filled with tears. "This is my first pa-
rade," she said. She fluttered her hand in the air and faded back
into the crowd.
Past Arm Future
Being caught alone in modern-day New Orleans can be a crush
ing experience. Your eyes start to trail the water lines that still
stain houses in most neighborhoods; you stare at the same old
search-and-rescue markings that you've seen a hundred times be
fore, trying to find a new wrinkle to the familiar narrative about
cats and dogs and bodies found or not found; you look at the
splintered heap of a boat resting near the Circle Food Store on St.
Bernard Avenue, where bodies once floated.
The Mardi Gras season brings new scenes. On Claiborne Avenue,
I passed a group of men coming out of a warehouse. They were
dressed in suits and ties and had large medallions hanging around
their necks on purple, gold and green ribbons. They went to the
back of a Ford Explorer and extracted large bags of beads to
carry into the warehouse. Inside, I could make out a float with
a Raggedy Ann statue. Not too far from the warehouse, the B.W.
Cooper housing project sat silently, windows shattered and doors
open. Brick houses were empty, unclaimed since the storm. The
water line drew around each building like a noose.
The neighborhoods are still being killed off.
You can follow these lines of thoughts for only so long. In
New Orleans, keeping sane means drawing close to people who are
part of the solution. So on Monday, I drove to Oretha Castle Haley
Boulevard, a strip of progressive storefronts that includes a soul-
food restaurant/ jobs program center called Cafe Reconcile, the
Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, and the Ashe Cultural Arts
Center. Most stores were closed on the day before Fat Tuesday, but
Ashe's windows advertised something called the Mardi Gras Service
Corps.
The room was quiet, with stacks of literature and a half-eaten
king cake on a folding table. Ashe director Carol Bebelle heard the
door open and emerged to say she'd just seen off that morning’s
The Ninth Ward Marching Band was started by rock musician Quinlron.
contingent of Mardi Gras Service Corps volunteers, who were
helping families clean their homes and neighborhoods. About 10
people had set out today. Sunday had 74 volunteers.
We sat down on metal chairs, surrounded by pictures from New
Orleans' past, of street parades and brass bands and working men
dressed in frilly tuxedos. The Corps was started to answer public
doubts about this year's holiday, Carol said: "Mardi Gras doesn't
work as well for us outside New Orleans as it does inside. The most
eloquent of speakers cannot craft a response to the question, "Why
are you having Mardi Gras in such a disaster?"
The Corps includes painters and sheetrockers, but Carol said
the most useful project right now is just cleaning up. She talked
about how difficult it is to come back to your home for the first
time since the flood, only to find the streets looking just like they
did in October. The Corps collaborates with neighborhood groups
in places like Central City, Gert Town, Gentilly and the Ninth Ward,
and gets funding from Tulane University, the Ford Foundation and
the Patrick Taylor Foundation, among others. Volunteers come from
across the country. "It's not people who are coming to fee' sorry
for us," she said. "It's people who are rolling up their sleeves to
become vulnerable to an un-neat part of life."
I told Carol, who is black, that white friends of mine say that
racists are more emboldened in post-Katrina New Orleans. They're
dropping the codes and throwing around the n-word more freely,
talking openly about how the city is better off now that the demo
graphics have shifted. Even Oliver Thomas, a popular city council
man who is African American, is saying that the housing projects
A woman paints herself as the hurricane.
shouldn't be open to people
who want to come back and
watch soap operas all day—as
if the real problem in New
Orleans is people who don't
want to work.
"My sense is that we're
as separate as we've ever
been," she said. "Maybe more
so—because now we're really
separated into different places.
But I think there's also a new
willingness to grapple with
what separates us, maybe more
so than anytime since the Civil
. Rights era. There's a conversa
tion going on now."
Carol grew up in New
Orleans. For her, for everyone
I know in this city, Mardi Gras
is about families and neighbor
hoods. At 56, she remembers the day in 1967 when the all-black
St. Augustine Marching 100 first joined the all-white Rex parade,
marching proudly as some whites on the sidelines taunted them.
This is one of those landmark years, too.
"There's plenty of greed left in this city," she said. "But we
can't even consider the possibility that it will take over the re
building. If we do that, it's over."
LAUGHinG AT DISASTER^
Mardi Gras dawned, warm and sunny. At Jackson Avenue, we
joined the crowds lunging toward the floats, dodging chunks of
concrete on the pocked sidewalk. Behind us, charred skeletons of
burned houses were roped off by police tape; no search-and-rescue
markings told the story of what had happened there, or to whom.
Yet this stretch of road was as mixed as our section of Napoleon
Avenue was all white. Somehow, people had found their way here.
After gathering our treasures from Zulu, we walked through the
once-flooded neighborhood back to our house. Along the way, the
spirit drained from us. By the time we reached home, we could
barely function. Yet we somehow got the devil and the lion in the
car, belted the lion in, and drove toward the French Quarter. At
one point, our red wagon bounced out from the trunk; I got out
and threw it back in the car. Even though nobody felt like it, we
pressed on until we found a parking place.
Around us. a Carnival spirit seemed to
have taken hold. The Zulu parade was dis
banding into smaller second lines, which
were strutting through the city in acts of
reclamation. Gangs of Mardi Gras Indians
were taking over their sections of New
Orleans. One Big Chief would explain that
his costume was blood-red this year, to
help everyone remember.
Near the Iberville housing projects,
grills were propped up in the backs of
trucks. Under the Claiborne Avenue over
pass, there were more grills and picnics,
just blocks away from rows of flooded
cars that are still waiting to be removed.
Looking around, I thought about how
this was not an easy day for any of us. My
own family had driven 16 hours to get to
Mardi Gras, but had almost turned back
before the final celebration began.
We kept walking, pulling the devil and
the lion in the wagon. The kids started
tossing beads. I saw that New Orleanians
were using the materials of the past six
months for their costumes. There were
blue-tarp suits, blue-tarp dresses, blue-
tarp pants and blue-tarp shirts. Suits
made from Meals Ready to Eat (MRE)
boxes. Clothes made from envelopes, held
together by yellow forwarded-mail stick
ers. Naked people were literally tied up
in red tape. A man had a small tent for a
hat and a sign that read, "My head is my
only house."
On Bourbon Street, a chef with a food
cart showed off his "Katrina Deli," pass
ing out menus that included "Mold Mold"
as a starter, "Chicken Shit au Fema" as an
entree, and "Creamed Maison du Jour" as
a side. A line of blind men wearing FEMA
suits announced that they were search
ing for the Superdome. Some costumes
were elaborate—none more so than the
man in a rescue basket, with a wired-up
helicopter overhead. Others just donned
the same white jumpsuits they'd been wearing to gut their houses,
and hit the streets.
In the months before Mardi Gras, some of us had wished that
the city could mobilize itself in some other fashion. But attempts
to establish a national Mardi Gras, a moment of silence, a display
of upside-down flags of distress, all failed. Instead, New Orleanians
did what they always do. They turned themselves inside out. Mardi
Gras was a parade of misery, and everywhere you looked, people
were laughing.
FTIovinG On
We left town on Mar. 1, Ash Wednesday. Driving north from the
city, we passed other cars with new beads hanging from their mir
rors. How many were people like us, whose homes are somewhere
between where we're now living and where we're no longer living?
When does an evacuee stop being an evacuee?
Back in Chicago. I went to my insurance agent to transfer my
automobile coverage. The woman who was handling our account
saw my address and told me that her ex-husband does forensic
dentistry. He'd been in New Orleans to help identify bodies.
Immediately following Mardi Gras, the feds announced that
they were sending dogs and bulldozers to the Lower Ninth Ward to
make one last search for human remains, before large-scale demoli
tions start to turn some neighborhoods to powder.
Death still shrouds the city and shadows our conversations.
Living in a relative's attic, my own family is still piecing itself back
together, still learning to make our home where we find it. And
absent of federal leadership. New Orleans still has to claw for every
scrap of funding it needs. Mardi Gras didn't change any of this. But
New Orleans culture is never about escapism. It's about digging
deep into your worries ard then laughing, even dancing.
In the weeks after the flood, a pale ash blanketed the city,
making everything appear sepia-toned. The color had been drained
out of New Orleans, as if it was a city in shock. Six months after
the flood. New Orleans is still in shock. Its dead are still waiting
to be honored. In the meantime, some of us gathered to honor the
living. That, and to celebrate our future.
Michael Tisserand michaellissefand@yahoo.com
MARCH 15.2006 • FLAGPOLE.COM 9