The child runs behind a shed, then returns with a tattered white baby doll. He holds it out proudly with a bigger smile.
“Qui ce ça?” I ask.
“Bébé Blanc. Ça mon couzain,” he says with certainty.
“Eh, Coon! Come see!”
He runs into the house with wet pants and a white baby doll in his hand.
The singing red cicada takes flight through an opening in the sylvan ceiling toward the sun. I’m riding the red cicada—Icarus reborn as a light-skinned nigga boy making good luck with the assistance of the gods, wings melded to the body magnificent with sugarcane juice and wet prayers. The red cicada insists that we won’t fall nor burn but shine in the mighty red circle that Jesus secretly scorned for forty days. I look below and see them pointing at me—the dead—all standing in a pockmarked field of burnt cane stalk.
The red cicada stops singing, but its song becomes my heartbeat. My feet are on the ground electric. I don’t wince. I don’t itch. I just feel the thoughts and prayers of those before me. I am not alone.
Burning grease is in the air. More people are arriving by horse and wagon for meat. Bois Sec Ardoin arrives with an accordion and joins Paul in a tribute to his late cousin Amédé.
I am in a field of tall sugarcane. Muddy ground. The cane looks down on me.
“Bon soir, Couzaine,” they say.
The night sky is hot orange. Fire everywhere. Closer.
“Don’t run, Ti’ John.”
“Daddy?”
Dark faces between the stalks. Eyes moving closer.
“Don’t run, Nephew.”
“Nonc?”
Five. I’ma ’bout to roll a five.
Orange walls of flame surround me. Breathe it in. “Take that boy to church.” I close my eyes. The cicadas scream.
Then, silence.
. . . And on the third day, He rose again, in fulfillment of the Scriptures . . .
* * *
1. Couche-couche et caillé: similar to curds and whey or corn bread and milk. It’s cooked cornmeal and curdled or clabber milk.
2. “Who are you?”
3. “Don’t be scared.”
twenty-seven
the first noelle
Houston, Texas, c. 1989
Seven in the A.M. by Bellfort and Scott. Crack rock with toast. Twelve P.M. riding by Yates for second lunch, eat at Frenchy’s with a red bone. Three P.M. for the re-up, the afternoon crowd. Six P.M. at the car wash on MLK by Jones. Forty ounces so cold that malt liquor taste sweet. Buy a pack of Kools, a MoonPie, and a Big Red. Ten P.M. re-up. The late-hour desperate walks like a Star Wars action figure—stiff, blank, removed. $6,425. Not a bad day. Hard selling. Soft on slow motion. HPD patrolling. Don’t run, might drop something. And it wouldn’t matter nohow ’cause I’m getting slow.
Sitting at the light on the corner of Bellfort and MLK, I imagine that’s what he thought, following the hours like ants up the evergreen, avoiding obstacles and flying to the moon. I wondered if he ever thought about our childhood, if he reflected. If he remembered that he was the one whom we all wanted to be.
I hadn’t seen any of them in about a year. After a full season of toiling in the food-services section of AstroWorld, I had managed to purchase my first car—a Volkswagen Rabbit—but at the cost of AstroWorld losing its fanciful charm. Once enchanted by its lights and sounds, I now despised the place, knew its secrets, had soiled its mainstay status in my childhood memories.
I turned to see the Median Man run forward as the light changed to generous green and I moved along.
He must have thought this, I considered, having a temporary obsession with the presumed thoughts of my old friend. We never talked much after the night of that dance at St. Francis. And somewhere between that night in the old world, the old way of seeing things, and the winter of 1989, my beloved Raymond Earl had become a stone-cold dope man—midlevel, eighties style with all the accoutrements.
Before I reached Reed Road, I saw what looked like Cookie Green and little Anthony Turner setting up Christmas decorations in somebody’s yard. Black angels made of cardboard with a plywood backing, mouths open in song, on display for all of South Park to see. They weren’t there, the dead—I confirmed from the rearview mirror. But the black angels held their note. The first Noël . . .
The angels did sing. I heard them, all of them, even the one that was a little flat. It sounded glorious nonetheless.
I had been sixteen years old for exactly one month and I still hadn’t gotten any pussy. The opportunities were there, but I just didn’t do it—a lot of heavy petting, though, whatever the fuck that meant. Mike and Russell teased me for admitting to cunnilingus, yet I was the only one of my friends who hadn’t taken the glorious journey. It wasn’t by design, I promise. Some moments in life require poetry—a sequence of defined opportunity, happenstance, and a bit of magic that fall in place with eerie precision. You never know it’s supposed to be like that until it happens and then you know. But you have to be open to magic for those poetic moments to take shape. That’s what Sonnier told me. Oh yeah, he came back but in an advisory capacity—sometimes as an annoyance, other times as a savior. It didn’t feel weird anymore.
Father and I spent less time treating the ill on Saturday mornings. In fact, we spent less time doing anything together. Neither of us really seemed interested. Besides, people in Houston were more likely to turn to health insurance than to my secret prayers. I didn’t much mind anyhow.
“Remember when you stepped on that nail?” I said, breaking the silence in the car.
Mike and I were headed to Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Third Ward for his father’s campaign event. By now, I had firmly put myself on a trajectory of what I believed would be a successful high school career. My friendship with Mike had thoroughly exposed me to the Jack and Jill crowd, the crowd of the haves, and there was one common denominator among all of their parents—a solid education at a reputable university. So I began aping the behavior of my Jack and Jill friends—the clothes, the conversation, the activities, et cetera. And although I never got into that group, I made sure I was involved in every leadership-developing activity at school with the belief that it would improve my profile when I’d apply to college next year. Young Professionals of Houston, NAACP, National Honor Society, Student Council, and the like. My dress was based on the preppy Kappa fraternity guys I saw at the University of Houston—khaki pants, button-down shirts, and penny loafers. Everything about my manner suggested I was older and ambitious. That was my intention. I had the grades, I just needed to polish off the South Park, purge the ghetto, and let go of Sonnier’s archaic practices.
Thirty minutes later in the back of the church, as I was listening to Big Mike make pledges from the pulpit, Sonnier walked in wearing a police uniform.
“Nice outfit,” I whispered to him.
“You’re the one getting fancy, ’tit négrite,” he said while staring straight ahead.
He meant to insult me, so I walked outside, and that’s where I found her sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette with a holder and gloves, legs crossed and looking around like she was at an imaginary parade and she didn’t have a reason to stand up and watch.
“Not in the mood for politics?” I asked.
“Not really. I’m here with my mom.”
“At least you’re dressed for the occasion.”
“Trying to be funny?”
“Not really. I’m just saying, you have a nice outfit.”
“I’m a movie star, darling. Couldn’t you tell?” she said while whipping her long dark hair off her shoulders in dramatic fashion. She was wearing a strapless black dress, matching pumps, and long white gloves. She was beautiful.
She stood up and did a few spins, then posed—
“How was that?”
“Exceptional.”
“Thank you, darling. You’re too kind.”
Enjoying her playful theatrics, I approached ceremoniously and bowed—
&n
bsp; “Johnny Boudreaux at your service.”
She giggled, then held out a gloved hand for me to kiss.
“Enchanted, darling. Simply enchanted. Noelle Auzenne, darling of the silver screen,” she replied.
Auzenne. A Creole girl.
“Parlez-vous français, mademoiselle? Ou Creole?”
“Aah, français seulement.”
“Formidable.”
“A gentleman. Well, I declare,” she said, then walked off into the streets. She wasn’t waiting on her mother. Noelle Auzenne didn’t wait on anybody. It wasn’t in her constitution.
Noelle Auzenne was a few years older than me. Her mother was a beautiful artist from Caracas, Venezuela, eclectic by Houston standards. Her father was a black ’Nam vet from Dallas, by way of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, who sold life insurance door-to-door. Together they were postmodern hippies with huge personalities, competing with each other for God’s attention and anyone who happened to be around. Their daughter, Noelle, was an absolute by-product, a tragic fabrication. She was beautiful and witty. The sun always shone on her even when she was sad. She wasn’t bourgeois. She was artsy. When girls her age were being introduced to Judy Blume, she was finishing Simone de Beauvoir.
“You know she’s crazy. You can see it. That look on her face. Cookin’ crazy vittles in that little kitchenette in her head,” Mike offered as I drove him home.
“Crazy or not, she’s fine and weird.”
“You like that, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“You probably’ll fuck. She fucked a whole bunch of guys.”
“Why you gotta rain on my parade, Mike?”
“I’m just letting you know.”
“Man, I don’t care.”
“You get her number?”
“Nawh.”
“She lives by my house. You want me to hook it up?” Mike asked.
“Yeah. Do that.”
I didn’t care what Mike said, she couldn’t have been crazier than me. I was the one who had an active relationship with a dead cousin and a ghettoized messiah. Who was I to call anybody crazy?
Later that night, headed back home, I stopped by Timmy Chan’s for a wing dinner. I pulled into the little parking lot that reeked of spoiled chicken and grease. Local rap favorite K-Rino was selling tapes from the back of a Regal. He had come a long way from that lanky kid at the St. Philip’s bazaar. From rap battles at St. Philip’s bazaars to the talent shows at Sterling High School, K-Rino had earned the title of South Park’s greatest, and he treated anybody he ran into in the hood as family. Guys would see him on the street and say, “My man K-Rino, that’s a trill-ass1 nigga,” and they meant it.
“Say, Johnny. Check out the new album,” he offered, hand gripping his notebook of rhymes. That was his calling card no matter where you saw him, notebook in hand—a testament to his dedication as a Southern rhyme sayer. I walked over to the car and looked in the trunk filled with cassettes.
“I’m performing at Spud’s tonight, you should come through, Johnny,” said K-Rino.
“Man, I don’t get paid until next Friday. I can either buy a wing dinner or your tape, and I can’t eat the tape.”
“It’s cool, Johnny. Go ’head and take it and get me the next time,” he said, then offered his album.
I entered the wing joint and approached the dirty counter.
“Wing dinner, rice with gravy, please,” I said.
“Two seventy-five!”
The cashier handed back five nickels, so much for the Dig Dug game in the corner, then I noticed him. It was hard to make him out at first because his face lay on a dirty booth table. He was asleep—Booger.
“Wake up, we’re going to the rodeo in McBeth,” I said, shaking his shoulder, but he was knocked out. In the past year he had become a dedicated primo smoker, joining his late father in the ranks of South Park’s addicted. He smelled awful, more awful than when we were younger. He smelled adult awful. I threw his arm over my shoulder and carried him to my car.
In the car he finally opened his eyes.
“Hey, Johnny.”
“ ’Sup, Booger. You aight?”
“Whatta you think?”
“I got you a wing dinner with fries.”
“Yeah, dawg, with fries. Don’t know what they puttin’ in that gravy.”
Then he went back to sleep.
I pulled into his driveway. The house looked abandoned and the front door was wide open. I carried him into the house. There was no electricity, and the place was a mess. A streetlight cast a piece of light through a busted window. I spotted a couch, where I laid him carefully. He came to again.
“Ain’t got no lights, Johnny, but light one of those candles.”
I found several seven-day votives strategically placed throughout the house, along with drawing after drawing on every imaginable medium—cereal boxes, cardboard, construction paper, soiled bedsheets, wood, the walls, and the floor.
He propped himself up when I handed him the food and ate ravenously.
“When was the last time you ate?”
“What’s today?”
“Saturday.”
“Holiday.”
“Yeah.”
He stopped eating, then looked at me. His big eyes were red with dark circles fencing off everything that meant to harm the remnants of his soul. The redhead guy had killed his father a few months after the incident at the teen dance at St. Francis and his mother was living comfortably in a Harris County psychiatric facility selling encyclopedias and subscriptions to Jet magazine. Nobody remembered that Booger was still at home. Ms. Bunky had passed a year after that, and with his mother in the nuthouse, the checks stopped coming in. Booger was alone, forgotten. I had to do something.
“You want me to help you? You know, with my thing I do?” I offered.
“You can’t help me, Johnny, ’less you gonna conjure up some dope,” he answered, then returned to his food.
He was right. There really wasn’t anything I could do for him. I couldn’t get his momma out of the nuthouse, clear her mind, and make her a good mother. And I couldn’t bring his father back from the dead and beat down his drug demons so he could be the father that Booger deserved. I couldn’t. And if I happened to work up some money for Booger, he’d smoke it up by the end of the week. He had already dug up all the money he hid from his father in pickle jars. And if I did help him with his drug demon, then what? He couldn’t even read. That’s it!
“How about I help you with your reading?” I asked.
“ ’Tha fuck I wanna read for, Johnny? Huh? What tha fuck did anybody ever write down that meant anything to me? You tell me. I can count, add, subtract, divide a lil’, and multiply by two, five, and ten. Besides that, I draw. You know me, nigga,” he said.
He wasn’t embarrassed. He was honest.
“That reminds me. I got something for you, Johnny,” he said suddenly with a hint of excitement. He rushed to the floor and milled through drawing after drawing. I examined the room more closely, discerning the fanciful drawings. This was all he had left.
“Here it is,” he said, then handed me a drawing on manila paper—three little boys throwing rocks at a dragon.
“That’s me, you, and Raymond Earl having a rock fight with a water dragon, and see here, we have gun holsters but we got rocks in the slots for bullets. See?” he said.
“We winning?” I asked.
He put his hand over the drawing and stared directly at me with extreme gravitas—
“We never win, Johnny. Never. Even when we think we winnin’, we ain’t,” he said.
“It ain’t all that bad, dawg. I mean, we try.”
“Gotta keep trying, Johnny. Some of us, at least. Gotta keep trying. You gotta keep trying. Aight? Promise me that. Promise me you gonna keep trying. Try for me,” he asked.
“Nawh, dawg, don’t say that. You can do anything if you put your mind to it,” I offered.
“That’s what the grown folks say to p
eople like me. They say that shit to keep people like me from robbing their ass or hittin’ ’em upside their head, but it ain’t true. They wish I was dead.”
“Don’t say that, dawg.”
“Nawh, maan. Even out here when I be walkin’ around, I see people and they don’t say nuthin’. They just look past me like I’m invisible, like I got invisible powers and shit. I ain’t do nuthin’ to them. When we was little, they would speak, let you drink out their water hose and tell you not to get hit by a car. But now, shit, when I see them same people, the same muthafuckin’ people, it be like I know they wishin’ I just get hit by a car and die so they won’t have to look at me. What I do to them, Johnny?”
“You ain’t do nuthin’, dawg. People just fucked-up, that’s all.”
He looked at the drawings on the floor, then looked up—
“I’m sorry about your bike back in the day, Johnny. Remember?”
“I ain’t trippin’.”
“Nawh. I shouldna’ done that. I just figured you and your daddy would build another one.”
He started collecting all the drawings into a pile. “I worry ’bout dying, Johnny.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Nawh, dawg, I worry ’bout that shit. I don’t think God want a nigga like me up there, you know?”
“Quit talkin’ crazy.”
“I’m serious, Johnny. Think about it. Look at how my life done played out. I didn’t want any of this shit to happen and look what happened. And then they say God controls all this shit and I’m like ‘Damn, God. What the fuck?’ Man, what I do to God?”
“You ain’t do nuthin’ to Him, Booger.”
“Damn right I didn’t do nuthin’ to ’im. So how I’m supposed to believe He gonna look out for me up there? I don’t wanna be no ghost.”
Amen to that, I thought.
“I’m going away, Johnny, ’cause I’m tired of these muthafuckas lookin’ at me crazy.”
“Where you gonna go?”
“You know where I’m going.”
Red Now And Laters Page 26
