My Bayou: New Orleans through the Eyes of a Lover

Awash in Grief

135 aWash in grief In the unspoken negotiation that occurs in all relationships , Sean and I established, somewhere along the line between our first meeting in the yoga studio to our evacuation from Katrina on I-10 West, that on long car trips he would do the driving and I’d be in charge of reading maps. I’d spell him on the driving when he got tired, but mostly my job was to scan the unfamiliar landscape; recognize something that corresponded to information on the map; quickly divine if we were heading east, west, north, or south; and tell Sean to take either a left, right, or complete u-turn. I hate to brag, but I am good at this. I am a natural-born navigator with an extraordinary sense of direction to start with. But our exile from New orleans refined my skill as a map reader to such an exquisite point that I am confident you could set me down anywhere in the world—the Sahara Desert; Cleveland, ohio—and I’d be able to find a visitor’s center or a gas station, get my hands on a map, and tell someone which turns to make. My duties as the map reader expanded to include anything that required written or specific information, such as an address or a telephone number, as well as the preservation of creature comforts. It was my job to find places to eat and sleep. These tasks fell under the general heading of “gathering,” while Sean maintained authority over anything that involved the driving force of the engine: getting us there, filling the tank, checking the oil and Constance Adler 136 tire pressure, following my directions. you might see these duties under the “hunting” rubric. It was a crude separation of powers, but it worked for us. So on the way to austin, I worked the phone while Sean drove. I found rooms for us at an extended-stay Motel 6. These rooms were a notch above regular Motel 6 rooms in that they lacked mildew but included a kitchenette . If we were going to be stuck in austin for a week, we might as well have a fridge to keep the beer cold. We drove around the city, looking for a coffee shop with WiFi access, and wondered when we could go home. The truth of what was happening at home came to us piece by piece, in the same way the chunks of the floodwalls fell into those waiting backyards in Lakeview. The problem was that no one in New orleans could see what was happening. It took a while for the winds to subside before anyone could go out and look. The only people who knew were the people whom the rising water had pushed into their attics, and who were hacking through their roofs with axes. We spent a day thinking it was not good, but not the worst either. But then on Tuesday morning, Wolf Blitzer only had bad news for us. New orleans East was flooded, and the water was creeping into other neighborhoods . The governor begged us not to return to the city. We stayed in our room and watched the news, looking for streets we could recognize. “There’s Claiborne!” I shouted. Water lapped halfway up a street sign near the Mother-in-Law Lounge, Ernie K-Doe’s bar. I had witnessed one of his unique performances there. It’s the kind of thing you need to do at least once, if only to confirm that the stories you had heard about his singing and his long curly wig were true. “I’m cocky, but I’m good,” Ernie would announce to his audience. In 1961, Ernie had recorded a hit called “Mother-in-Law”—written by allen Toussaint, who wrote everything—hence the name of Ernie’s bar. (In a few months, allen Toussaint would report from his flooded Gentilly home that the next time, he was going to put his piano on the second floor.) Ernie, who often reminded people he was a “Charity Hospital baby,” coasted on that song and his own chutzpah for the rest of his life. In The Mother-in-Law Lounge, there was a life-sized mannequin of Ernie, which he had commissioned himself, dressed in the purple raiment of My Bayou 137 royalty. He had anointed himself “Emperor of the World.” Really, Ernie...