She Ain't Heavy, She's My Mother (23 page)

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ETURNING TO A DEVASTATED
yet still beloved New Orleans just seven weeks after Katrina, Gayle was weary, but not broken. She knew she had to be strong for her family. Vilma’s Broadmoor home, their childhood home, had been flooded. Uncle Donny and Aunt Irene’s Uptown home was also flooded. My cousin Donna-Gayle’s home in the east was washed away. Like the entire city, seventy-five percent of Mom’s family’s homes were flooded. But worst of all, Jay and Andree’s Lakeview home had been inundated with eight feet of standing toxic stew that completely defiled the once lush, green neighborhood. The area now looked and smelled like death. Miraculously, Mom’s town house and my carriage house were virtually untouched. At first, many who resided on higher ground and sustained little or no damage to their homes expressed what was called “Katrina guilt” because they had been spared. I’ve never really bought into guilt, by any name. It’s a useless emotion, unless you’ve actually done something wrong.
But as time went on, this regional sentiment waned, and the dry “Sliver by the River” was soon being called “the Isle of Denial.”

We returned to a city with practically no services and amenities. Sheets of plywood still covered the shops on Magazine Street and homes’ windows all over. The neutral grounds were strewn with rotten debris and rancid refrigerators. Anything that the waters touched or the creeping mold infected had to go. In Lakeview, on the great promenade of West End Avenue, there were massive three-story mountains of the discarded fabric of decimated lives—not just furniture, drapes, and rugs, but everything that forms a home and a life, the very fiber of memory. These monoliths of despair stretched for what seemed like miles. And this was just one area. Throughout the city, muddied lines, like dirty bathtub rings, covered everything in sight, marking how high the vicious waters had raged.

Restoring normalcy was impossible, for nothing ever was nor ever will be considered normal about our city or her unique children ever again. Progress, as usual, advanced at a snail’s pace, but little by little services came back, groups formed to aid with the clean-up, and Americans came from everywhere to help, as our “leaders” fumbled and passed blame. Those in the community who could do so rallied and did all in their power to assist with what continues to be the arduous process of rebuilding.

We opened Hazelnut as soon as we could, not knowing if there ever would be a need now for a home-accessories and fine gift shop. We soon learned there was. Even during tragedies, wars, and every kind of disaster, people still
have birthdays and get married, and Christmas arrives on December 25th just the same.

We organized Magazine Street Retail Relief, complete with wine and Bobby McIntyre’s Dixieland jazz ensemble The Last Straws, to encourage other businesses to open, and stimulate commerce. Bobby returned home days early from evacuation, with drum set and straw boater in tow, so that he could “be in that number.” The crestfallen yet buoyant returnees came in droves, embracing friends and family they hadn’t seen since the storm, telling their stories. They were smiling, crying, laughing, sharing, and, as New Orleanians always somehow find a way to do, celebrating. Celebrating life and death, joy and pain, survival and fear. In New Orleans, all emotions are embraced with a celebration, a dance, a parade. Between fundraisers and benefits for every charity and organization imaginable, I proudly worked in Hazelnut alongside Tom and Katy, our manager, friend, confidante, and recent evacuation sister.

The newspapers and the media were vigilant about covering the enormous tragedy, but so many stories were left untold or deemed not newsworthy. So often we were given, and accepted, sensationalism disguised as “the news.” Just one or two stories of the numerous heroes would have eased some pain, not much but some.

As we neared the holiday season, our shop became a bustling hub. Occasionally we served wine at sundown, but even without the grape, a pub sensibility reigned. Anytime we were behind the counter or register, people found it easy to tell their tales of loss, evacuation, and returning home—or of their hopes of returning home.

Family by family, friend by friend, everyone’s road home was different, all fraught with anxiety, pathos, and miraculous glimmers of humor. Aunt Vilma’s journey was particularly difficult, having to evacuate to Paula’s home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, while in the middle of heavy-duty chemotherapy for a recurrence of lung cancer. After years of smoking, the tumors had returned and a frail yet vigilant soul pressed on. Mother and she wanted to do something special for all of the family at Christmas. A needed healing.

Traditionally, from birth until I flew the coop, on Christmas Eve we all congregated at Moozie’s, complete with Santa and a multitude of gifts. As she aged, we took turns decorating her signature tree with white doves and the pinkish mauve satin balls that coordinated perfectly with her defining décor hue of dusty rose. Since her death and for years prior to it, as her children’s families grew, other holiday traditions emerged, but it wasn’t the same, so different from the rich, inclusive familial traditions she had created.

Whenever I would see my cousins on trips home for the holidays, we all would recall sentimentally how magical those holidays had been for us as children, and wish they could be re-created. Jay would remind us of the day that he realized that Santa was Mr. Gerhardt from Pontchartrain Beach. The missing thumb, knuckle tattoo, stench of cheap bourbon, and a voice that rivaled Harvey Fierstein’s might have given him away instantly, but Jay was too shocked to put the pieces together immediately. Moments before, Donna’s brother Ricky had told him Santa
was a capitalist myth perpetrated by the establishment. I recalled the time my younger cousins Kevin, Jennifer, and I were body-blocked from seeing out Moozie’s front door by our older teenage cousins, while they claimed to see Rudolph’s nose leading Saint Nick’s sleigh.

So, in honor and in memory of our Christmas celebrations past, the sisters gave birth to a new tradition, the “Christmas Adam Party,” which was to take place the day before Christmas Eve, on December 23. Adam came before Eve, hence the name. Every relative was invited, and gifts were to be brought for all of the children under eighteen. Each family would continue our tradition by wrapping its gifts in a specific holiday paper and placing them together in a specified area for distribution later in the evening. Mom contacted “Uncle Wayne,” no relation, a wonderful comic actor/musician and sort of a Shecky Green of a Santa, who agreed to lead the family in carols and draw caricatures of the children. Everyone sang carols, and the adults enjoyed Santa’s risqué double entendres, which sailed over the innocent little ones’ heads. Mom’s home was alive with infectious excitement and joy, and the cacophonous laughter of all. It was a magical evening unlike any our family had experienced in years. We vowed to keep this new tradition alive.

A
S OFTEN HAPPENS,
such great joy was followed by sorrow. Two days later Vilma passed, and one month later Mom’s brother Uncle Donny did too, both from lung cancer. Three months later Mom was diagnosed with it as
well. Tragedy following upon tragedy would decimate a weaker soul, but not Mother. She faced the grueling surgery with optimism, faith, and humor, as she had done so many times before.
Surrender
was a word foreign to her vocabulary; survival with grace was all she knew.

Mom underwent a lengthy operation to remove nearly an entire lobe of her lung. Cracked open like an egg, the incision tore across her chest, reaching halfway to her spine. Awaiting an encouraging report from the doctor, her family and a multitude of friends endured hours in the waiting room. His news was unsettling at best. The procedure had been more invasive than he had originally thought it would need to be, and given her age and other medical conditions, the next few hours would be quite difficult.

Dread came over me.
This might be it
, I thought. Her body and spirit had endured so much over the years, and maybe now it was time. A gentle nurse escorted Jay and me to the recovery room, warning us that Mother would be unable to speak due to the breathing tube. It might be there for days, she explained somberly. It wasn’t a good sign. We prepared ourselves for the worst, anticipating the same kind of grim scene of pain and suffering that we witnessed on our way to recovery.

There she was. No makeup, no silk, no pearls—and no breathing tube. She smiled gently and wheezed, “Oh, my boys.”

Worried, I asked the attending nurse where the tube was, and she grinned as she replied, “Miss Gayle can breathe on her own already; you boys got one tough mama.”

She improved slowly, finally returning home after two weeks. On one of my many visits, I couldn’t help noticing a strange addition to the numerous framed photos of family and friends decorating her lacy feminine bedroom, which I had decorated. Scattered about were a rather odd and unfamiliar array of medals bearing the relief images of saints, as well as vials of water, statuettes of saints, a loaf of bread, and a silver goblet. This was out of character and seemed a tad fundamentalist, so I asked, “Mom, what is all this stuff? Is this holy water?”

“Pumpkin, that is Lourdes water that Aunt Carol brought, and it’s blessed and has healing powers, and that over there is the body and blood of Christ.”

A soft but solid “Amen, sister” was heard from Miss Yvonne, Mother’s Amazonian born-again and bejeweled sitter.

“Mother, who is this?” I asked, picking up a small medallion.

“That happens to be the blessed Father Silos. He watches over the sick. Miss Alma brought that medal, his picture, and everyone’s favorite priest, Father Bouterie, did a blessing.”

“Mother, we are not Catholic, we are Methodist, I think. Now that you are trying new religions, have you called the Dalai Lama or Rabbi Cohen?”

“If you must know, mister smarty pants, Mrs. Katz and her friends are saying prayers for me at Temple Sinai, and if I knew any Hindus, or Buddhists for that matter, I’d welcome their prayers or chants. You can say what you want, Bryanny boy, but I like it, it makes me feel
better. You’re the one that’s always saying there are many roads—well, who knows? Father Silos needs only one more miracle to become a saint, and it could be with me. Just what New Orleans needs, a real saint.”

Yvonne chimed in, “Amen, sister.”

I have my issues with organized religion and cafeteriastyle religion, picking and choosing certain dogmas that apply or seem ethical while ignoring the oppressive, non-inclusive, and outdated ones as if they don’t exist. The trouble began a long time ago when we tried to bring God indoors. Leave it to mankind to screw it up and to Christians to turn heaven into an exclusive country club. But today was not the time to engage in a debate.

Just as with Moozie and Dad, the grim accountrement of the invalid (what a horrible word,
in-valid)
—the hospital bed, walker, bed pan, oxygen tank, breathing apparatus—filled the room. These foreign contraptions no longer frightened me, but saddened me profoundly, because for the first time I saw my special friend, this darling enigma of a mother, seriously confronting her mortality. In her seventy-five years she had undergone over two dozen surgeries, and now her body was weak, depressed, and heartbroken. The worst part was that I saw sadness that was so foreign to her in her eyes—eyes that had always danced. We stared at each other briefly and intuitively.

I kissed her gently on the forehead so as not to cause any unnecessary pain. Though slightly more wheezy, she uttered in a lilt that could charm the husk right off an ear of corn, “Baby dear, Miss Margaret, Mr. Albert’s sister, is
coming to do my hair today—can you believe he broke his teasing hand? Thank the Lord, because I look like a wet rat.”

My cousin Donna-Gayle, who now had become my mother’s caretaker, secretary, bookkeeper, and confidante, gave a slight chuckle.

“Now, doodlebug, could you help me make it look presentable before she comes, just get my teasing comb off the vanity and try to fix it, please?”

I barely recall the last time I saw my mother’s hair actually move. Since our emotional meeting at my birth many years ago, her ’do had consistently resembled a cotton-candy confection, strategically coiffed and lacquered. It has never been seen wet, or experienced the slightest hint of kinetic activity. Briefly in the late seventies there was a period when bejeweled or floral combs held back a few locks, but before the slightest breeze was allowed to disturb the creation, an ample coating of All Set was applied.

Every word my mother spoke took effort, and if she moved ever so slightly, she felt shocks of stabbing pain that brought tears to both our eyes. Having had some experience with character makeup and hair in various plays and musicals, I thought for a moment there was a chance, but it would definitely take a miracle of Father Silos to transform that mop of straw to its former glory. But try I would. During the teasing, spraying, and virtual molding of her tresses, we chatted about family, memories, and all that we’d been through. A gentle ease came over us with each brushstroke of blush, and as I was helping her put on
her eyeliner, Mom looked up at me and whispered somberly, “Did I do this, pumpkin-eater boy? Did I help make you this way?”

“What way?”

“Sweet.”

“Let’s just say I had a wonderful teacher.”

She smiled and started to well up, so I quickly joked, “I thought you meant gay. Oh, you can’t take credit for that, it’s all mine.”

She started to smile, then to laugh, but the pain from her surgery stifled any outward expression of humor except in her eyes, those generous, knowing, always loving eyes.

“Oh pet, I think I may have to … Donna, Yvonne, I need some help to the loo, this is what we have been praying for!”

As Yvonne helped Mother to her failing feet, Donna, in a hushed voice, quickly and stealthily explained that she had not made “number two” in almost a week, and that per the suggestion of Yvonne, a potty vigil had become part of the daily ritual. Donna reassured Mom that she was on her way.