Twenty Years Ago Today
February
Twenty years ago today, I was probably flush with cash, fresh off working through Mardi Gras. Superior Grill, the place where I had been slinging tacos for the last few months, was right on Saint Charles, in the heart of the parade route, and I had worked through it all, giving the people the melted cheese and crunchy tacos they needed in between parades.
We would be five deep at the bar in the wait between krewes, in total chaos, navigating the crowd with a tray of steaming fajitas held high above their heads, the strength and adrenaline of the Mardi Gras gods coursing through our veins. But then it would clear out at the first piercing note of a Drum Major’s whistle—a high schooler commanding attention, demanding everyone abandon their chimichangas and report to the route to see what their classmates could do, to hear what they had to say. Which everyone willingly did.
When it died down, I would go stand on the front steps, under the oaks dripping with pearls, and wave my hands in the air, lightly bouncing up and down to the beat of the passing music, hoping to catch a bead, performing the New Orleanian intergenerational ritual of connecting palm to plastic, yelling thank you after the rider for seeing you, recognizing your joy, and throwing you a token of appreciation. Community on wheels. Fleeting and recurring. One float after another.
I had been hitting up that stretch of Saint Charles for as long as I could remember. As kids, Maw Maw had taken us down every year for the parades. She would find a parking spot half a mile away, walk her gaggle of grandkids all the way to the neutral ground, and somehow manage to get the best spot, just like she had done every year with her own kids when Paw Paw was at work or at the bar. She would bring a big blanket and a box of fried chicken, and we would run up and down the street, chasing after floats in our matching tie dye, yelling for pearls.
Sometimes, she would buy us a little box of poppers each. I would sit on the curb of St. Charles and carefully open my box and take out one at a time, carefully disentangling it from the shreds of paper they were nestled in, and inspecting it. I would hold the long, twisted end and rub it between my thumb and middle finger, picking the fattest one to throw first. Sometimes, I would throw it at my sister’s feet, like Maw Maw threw it at ours, but mostly, I would just throw it in the street right in front of me. That one little box would engross me for what seemed like hours until all of a sudden, there would be a horse hoof right next to my little sneaker, and I would look up, and the cops would be there ushering in the next parade. And then it would be time to stand up and scream my little heart out for pearls again. That anticipation, that swell of excitement, that moment of peace in the middle of a pulsating crowd has always been my first love.
In high school, we terrorized that stretch of Saint Charles with our underage drinking and entitled adolescent yattage. Peeing and vomiting where we could. Flirting with the Catholic schoolboys, lounging on the sofas we had brought out and stretched across the neutral ground, sucking down strawberry colada daiquiris with extra shots. The nexus of our universe was situated firmly between Seventh and Eighth Street, set to the backdrop of the sacred marching band, occasionally heard over our wilding shrieks. That lone Drum Major whistle occasionally able to pierce through our teenage armor, straight through to the inner child beneath, luring out that involuntary light bounce in the midst of the debauchery.
That stretch of Saint Charles is where I first confused the thrum of a drum with my heartbeat. That stretch of Saint Charles is where I first realized it was one and the same. It’s where I, a yatty little Catholic schoolgirl from Jefferson Parish who had always claimed New Orleans, actually became a New Orleanian. My Maw Maw made sure of that.
Twenty years ago today, I still hadn’t figured out my place in the world, much less the city I loved so much, but for the first time ever, I felt like I was part of the landscape. If I zoomed out and looked down at the scene on St. Charles—the parades passing, the colors swirling, the crowds dancing, the trees holding it all down—I could see myself in my black and white uniform, installed there on the Avenue, clipped into the Crescent City Legoland. I could see myself belonging, playing a crucial role, even. A person who provided food and drink and shelter to her people. A person who helped curate this joy, this counterbalance of grief I still knew nothing about. It felt like a contribution, and it felt important.
I got my first taste of community amongst a family full of strangers on that stretch of St. Charles, and it would become my guiding light, my inner pulse. That beat to the low bounce. It would become my first teacher in how to care for others. My first lesson in the definition of a family as ever-expanding as the universe. It would fuse with my love for New Orleans and become sharpened by Katrina. Bonded by trauma, it would become a survival skill that would vacillate between smother and sustain, but none of that mattered twenty years ago today, because Mardi Gras is not a time of complication. It is clarification in simplicity and joy. All you need is the street and a drumbeat. A beating heart, sometimes bleeding.
Twenty years ago today, I felt satisfied. I didn’t know where my life was heading, but I had direction: the beginnings of a contribution born on that stretch of Saint Charles and a sense of community that would anchor me time and again. I had some cash in my pocket, probably a slight hangover, and a few precious moments every day where I would step away from my tables and stand in the front room of Superior Grill as the sun went down so I could bask in the golden light and watch it hit my stretch of Saint Charles.
Twenty years later today, I’m still satisfied. I have pre-scheduled this post to go out because today, I will be in the streets. Costumed and wild. Kneeling at the altar of Mardi Gras, humbly offering up my contribution, now fully sustained. Heart still bleeding, surrounded by community, lightly bouncing to the beat.
