A boy's perspective before Katrina

Pass Christian the summer before Katrina, a 15 year old boy’s perspective from his diary as I imagine being back there.

The house is as empty as my thoughts

I’m walking toward the mansion with Clifford the chauffeur. It’s so hot that even moving my lips seems too much trouble. Beads of sweat over my lip. Sweat dripping down my eyelid. He’s in a three-piece chauffeur’s suit and doesn’t seem to be sweating. How can he stand it? He pulls his brimmed visor over his head. 

I run back to let my German shepherd out the car. I’m afraid the heat will kill her.  Clifford takes the dog lead. He is tall, good look like Sidney Poitier but we rarely talk. Has someone told him not to speak to me? Clifford always lets me walk a little in front of him and there’s a robin red breast on the ground and I recall grandma said that the breast is red because it tried to pick the thorns out of Jesus hands on the cross and the blood ran down.

Sweat on the back of my neck. And stiff grass under my feet. God I don’t want to go inside. How can I possibly survive here for 3 months without my friends?  The click of Clifford’s black polished shoes on the ground.  He passes me a stick of spearmint gum and I take it. I feel a crucifixion is about to occur. If grandma has gotten my report card. No point in defending myself I know it’s all F’s.

Mama used to say the first act of war is self-defense. Don’t speak. Yes that’s what she did when dad attacked. Took on this serene expression and let him reel away. Was she listening to him? Grandma says Emily Post says a good conversationalist is a listener. God I think I’m going to pass out. The dog barks and the robin flies off.   The house up ahead seems to get father and farther. I pause and look up at the parapet. That white railing. Must be 30 feet over the front door. This house seems bleak empty. No one there.

What to talk about for 90 days with Grandma. I hold my breath. Yes if I could pass out that would be wonderful. Clifford clears his voice, looks up; he wants me to keep walking. He starts talking about the lunch he thinks we are going to have.  Roast beef and gravy and mashed potatoes or stuffed crabs; real shells with the stuffing flesh made with okra and celery; Grandma always lets him eat with us but in the kitchen. Putting him in that lower class status is so natural to her. 

Her grandmother rode in a carriage she said and the driver was always outside and in the full air so there was never a thought about conversation.  I burp. Oh thank god I didn’t do that inside with Grandma.  Maybe what’s that I look over. God it’s a snake crawling across the dry grass. It’s seems to wrinkled and parched to leap over at me.

Clifford grabs a stick and hits it off. Good maybe by the time we get to the house grandma will have already eaten and be taking a nap.

Naps were regular for her like desert. She swore that was why she never saw a doctor or needed one though she came from a family of doctors. I can’t rememb3er her sneezing or coughing or with fever even. She believed if you didn’t notice a cold it wasn’t there.

Oh whoops I’m in the house now and she’s in front of me. How did I get here? Did I pass out? Have I gotten some way to speak to her I don’t “Yes Grandma. So nice to see you. Do you think I might have a friend over for the summer?”

Ah yes I don’t know if my mother had any girl friends before college. Grandma made her study fifteen minutes after she came home from school. That’s all she got. Fifteen minutes with the help maybe milk and a cookie. And then study and come first no matter what it took. 

Mama said she thinks she had a stroke one summer. She slept for 3 weeks straight on a cruise with her mother she was so exhausted. But Mama was valedictorian. She got the prize for perfect attendance for 14 years. Even went to school with 104 fever so she wouldn’t miss that attendance award. Grandma powdered her face and sent her off.

In Grandma’s house the sweetest one’s are the help.  They don’t expect good grades. Cook can write but not punctuate.  But Mama’s nanny can’t read.

I’m upstairs now with Grandma. She’s got a square envelope in her hand. Sure that’s the report card.  But maybe not.

I drink some water nonstop brought to me on a silver tray with lots of ice and a slice of lemon. Oh it feels good down my parched throat. I don’t think it’s good for a kid to say too much. Do you? Like Mama left this spring and grandpa died and I’m feeling kind of blue. Who cares if a child feels blue if you lose your mind?

So I’m there with Grandma saying nothing looking at her feet in the pumps she always wore. Two sizes too small (She pushed her feet into a size five not a seven) and the top puffs up over the shoe. She talk about the face that Chinese girls used to bind their feet to keep them small.

She is worried that my feet are too small like a girl’s and that if they don’t grow I’ll be short (although I’m already five foot nine) Apparently her father stopped at that height although he prayed nightly to become six feet tall. On her mother’s side of the family the men were tall. Oh please let me keep getting taller and let my feet keep getting bigger.

Grandma feels totally comfortable saying nothing, “How’s school?” is the only comment.  She pats her stomach (she always wears a light girdle though she calls it spanks): she always wears dark colors, navy, blue usually. She says after a certain age women of style should give up pastels.  She is proud of her complexion, her figure, her face.

I’d like to just get out of here. Run down to the beach. Take Uncle’s Sailboat out for a spin. Go fishing with Clifford if she would let me. Why do kids have to be the entertainment?

The house has a haunted feeling with Mom gone. Each room seems to have expanded.  The air-conditioned rooms hotter.  Now that Grandma and Ma have both gone, will I be expected to lighten the load for everyone. Create stupid jokes. Become the family clown.

I want to go to the movies. I want to watch TV—the shows I like. I want to go back to New Orleans. This heat is crawling down my throat. They say the beach is polluted. In New Orleans I could have a friend over. But then I forget. The house my parents raised me in has been sold. Oh yes. Mama’s gone and the house is gone. I can’t walk back it so naturally like I used to, up the front porch, through the foyer with its antique brass chandeliers and marble mantle and through the big dining room with table set for Dad Mom and me and whatever friends I want. Could be four or five.

That house was Mama’s everything sweet and beautiful in it was Mama’s. And with one ax the thing divorce crashes in and then something you count on like naptime at nursery school. Boob it’s gone. Someone else’s Mama is answering the door. Someone else’s Dad is driving up the drive way in back. The house that was there for you from beginning times. Is there for somebody else.  Your things that you don’t absolutely have to have right now are put in storage and sent to a new elsewhere place.

My dog Greta barks from another room. And Grandma shrieks to bring the dog downstairs.

Oh she’s had pity on me because my throat is hot, and my face seems sunburnt. I burp and she looks horrified. I burp again. Maybe if I’m lucky she’ll send me off to the help’s quarters.

I’m hoping for a hurricane this summer if I can’t have friends over (because of the punishment—sooner or later the report card violation will surface.

Last summer there were more hurricanes than normal. And it seems that with global warming we are getting more. So there’s a good chance a big storm will hit and grandma will be too frightened to stay on the Gulf Coast.

I don’t know how Grandma can take it here. You can’t go out it’s so hot unless you go down to the water. She doesn’t like the beach. She doesn’t trust friends. Just wants the family at dinner. She suspects new people may be there to steal from her.

Grandma’s whole focus is her family even though she doesn’t get along with Mama or Uncle or Dad. She wants these close relatives about her to fill up this huge house that is run for them and them alone.  Grandma amused herself by planning fantastic meals with the appropriate china and silverware to match, cheese forks, and pearl handled butter knives, and tall bone chine coffee cups for crème brulee.

Grandpa was the sportsman liked to go yachting, deep-sea fishing, hunting. But now he’s gone.  For whom will these lavish home coming meals be prepared. Will grandma begin to drill me for perfect grades like she drilled Mama and Uncle, both of whom became sterling students and confused companions?

Clifford brings me an iced brown cow from the kitchen: ice cream, coke, chocolate. Oh how I love to eat. The ice cream is so soothing and his dark brown eyes look at me with a grief of understanding.