She Ain't Heavy, She's My Mother Read online

  “Sweet thing, what took you so long? We’re just about to get up on the float. These are Lisa and Eugenie, my two little attendants, and girls, this is my little cousin Bryan. He’s gonna be my special page tonight. So y’all be sweet and play nice.”

  I grinned, but I don’t think the little ruffled girls relished the idea of sharing the Queen’s float with anyone else, much less a pink-suited boy. Quiet fell over the room, and all eyes turned to the grand doors, in front of which stood Miss Le Blanc, a portly woman dressed from head to toe in poufs of deep purple silk taffeta, which caused a nearly deafening rustle when she wobbled or gestured. An eggplant of a woman, there was no discerning where her waist resided or if she actually had one. Her noteworthy girth raised the question of whether she wore a hoop skirt or whether this was her actual form. Around her jowly neck was a mammoth cameo on a black velvet ribbon that threatened to get lost in the folds, and in her hand was a tall, ornately carved walking stick festooned with iris and lilacs, which she used to pound on the wooden floor in order to elicit silence. With each hammering thump, some of the tiny petals would tinkle delicately to the ground. She cleared her raspy throat and warbled grandly, “The grand promenade of the Spring Fiesta will soon commence, but before it does, I want to say a few words. Eh-hem, young ladies, please remember that you are just that, ladies, daughters of ladies, granddaughters of ladies, and great-granddaughters of ladies, and so forth. Therefore there will be absolutely no smoking or drinking of any kind, always wear your white gloves, and most important, mind your hoops when you sit so that they don’t pop up over your pretty heads, exposing your Southern pride. Now smile your beautiful smiles and enjoy your magical night in old New Orleans. Dammit, Mary-Grace Bienvenue, spit out that gum, you look like a cow chewing its cud, that is just plain backwater trash tacky.”

  Both of the tall paneled doors of the Pontalba Building opened wide and the procession began, each demoiselle was met by a handsome midshipman in formal white dress, and I trailed dutifully behind LeeLee making sure her diaphanous train was properly flowing and never stepped upon. At first I was nervous, but Jackson Square was ablaze with light, as was the old St. Louis Cathedral, and in an instant we were high atop the tractor-drawn papier-mâché Queen’s float. Moozie was right. The pink of my suit was a perfect match to the girls’ sashes as well as to the boughs of gargantuan paper roses draping the royal vessel, and I was sure not to disappear against the night sky, for I was placed front and center, like a ship’s figurehead. With LeeLee now secure upon her throne, we all basked in the glow of small chasing lights that outlined the perimeter of the float, lending a slight vaudeville quality to the picture.

  The marching band struck up a jazzy rendition of “Dixie,” and the drums and brass reverberated against the crumbling historic walls of the decadent old quarter, as the rickety procession ambled down St. Peter Street. Smiling, waving furiously, and tossing countless stems of mini-carnations to the sparse crowd, we were on our way. Within moments we passed my fabulous aunts Mid and Vie’s wrought-iron balcony on the corner of Royal and St. Peter. They were nurses and wore white uniforms and drank scotch with my parents, and although not related to them by blood, I loved them most. Theirs was my favorite location for Mardi Gras parade grandstanding. Upon first sight, just the height of the antique third-story apartment provoked a dare for float-riding maskers, almost goading them to attempt to reach the lofty balcony with their tossed beads, doubloons, and trinkets. I also loved the fact that for pranks, time and gravity were on my brother’s and my side. We could release things overboard from the terrace like grapefruit, shoes, or dog droppings upon unsuspecting pedestrians, and dash inside before detonation.

  When I glanced up, there were Moozie, my aunts, Oralea, Dad, and Jay all waving, all smiling, and calling my name. I saw the challenge before me, and I tried with all my tiny might to hurl the carnations, but to no avail. Numerous underhand and overhand attempts were made, but the blooms were not structurally designed to be thrown, rather for cheap corsages and juvenile floral arrangements formed in the shapes of poodles.

  Then I heard my brother scream out, “BRYAN! THROW IT LIKE A SPEAR! THROW … IT … LIKE … A … SPEAR!”

  I heeded my brother’s advice, and with all the power I could muster, I closed my eyes and javelined a handful of the stalks into the lamplit sky. I was not athletic by any means, but I felt instantly transformed into Super Spring Fiesta Page Boy, able to fling countless boughs of carnations, notwithstanding my slicked hair, satin suit, pink cape, and all. My eyes opened to the sad sight of my empty-handed family. Although initially disappointed, they smiled and waved, and the ladies blew kisses just the same as we forged onward.

  Bourbon Street is internationally infamous and synonymous with debauchery. That is fact. Nevertheless, our pretty little pageant turned onto this boulevard of delightful depravity, and I beheld the wanton wonders of such night spots and brothels as Club My Oh My! and The House of the Rising Sun. As we proceeded virtually unnoticed by the drunks, streetwalkers, and drag queens, now at an understandably more accelerated pace than before, my eyes widened and burned with the indelible images of G-string-clad strip-tease dancers bumping and grinding on bar tops as the bouncers tantalized onlookers by flinging the swinging doors open and shut. Each gesture, from every lug on the block, released a different vision, each with its own appropriate deafening musical accompaniment. Above one of the dives was a mechanical swing on which sat a pair of high-heeled, fishnet-hosed mannequin legs, and to the beat of the jazz they would swing out through a hole in the structure over the street revelers. One of the attendants whimpered, covering her eyes, LeeLee was laughing hysterically, and I stood at the center, mouth agape, trying to take in every last marvelous detail of this divine degeneracy, until the procession came to an abrupt halt. Due to the glare from the lights, I couldn’t tell if our tractor had stalled or its driver had slunk into a bar to quench his thirst.

  Little by little we were now getting noticed by the tawdry onlookers, who, attracted to the float like mice to cheese, asked what was going on or slurred requests for a carnation. From the back of the growing crowd emerged a swirling band of tripping hippies. They were poster children for the Flower Power era; they actually made Janis Joplin look sober. The leader of the group, complete with a beaded headband and a painted peace sign on his cheek, raised a big gallon jug of Boone’s Farm wine and shouted, “Long live the Queen, long live the Queen, a toast to the Queenie.”

  With that, he downed a huge swig of the wine, and his cohorts cheered him on,

  “Now, Queenie baby, it’s your turn to drink, we drank to you, you drink to us, it’s only fittin’, it’s only right, it’s democratic, baby!”

  Remembering Miss Le Blanc’s stern regulations, LeeLee tried every excuse under the sun to graciously avoid the invitation. She had a cold that she didn’t want them to catch. She was allergic to red wine. But the Mamas and the Papas would have none of it.

  “Come on, Queenie, don’t be all stuck-up like that. You think you’re better than us, just cuz you’re wearin’ a crown up there on that float and all? DRINK, DRINK, DRINK!”

  Now the rest of the expanding mob started to chant along, rocking the float, escalating our fears. I was praying that the float would start to move, but no such luck. The chanting grew louder and louder, then LeeLee stood.

  “Bryanny boy, be a dear and hand me the wine.”

  In shock I stepped toward the lip of the float to get the decanter. The head hippie handed it to me, saying, “Here you go, Pinky boy. Ooh, fancy-ass cape, man!”

  Handing her the oversized jug, I asked frantically, “LeeLee, what are you doing? Miss Le Blanc said absolutely no drinking!”

  She stared at me as if to say, Silly six-year-old, I’ll take my chances. And that is precisely what she did. LeeLee leaned forward to me and confided, “We don’t know what these drugged-up crazy kooks might do if I don’t take a little sip of their hooch, and I’d rather take a teeny sip than run the r
isk of them throwing the wine at me and staining my lovely gown and having to deal with your Nan-Nan or big Miss L.B.”

  That being said, she raised the jug up into the sky, and proceeded to chug what seemed to be the remaining vino. To the ecstatic applause of the crowd, she plopped back down onto her throne and her hoop flew straight up into the sky, revealing her rows upon rows of lace-trimmed pantaloons. Now the cheers were deafening.

  After returning the wine, LeeLee swore us all to secrecy just as I’d been sworn to silence before, and I wondered for a brief moment who would really give a damn, the parade was almost over, and she was the Queen, for God’s sake. This time the dirty words came to mind, but not out of my mouth. It made sense to remain silent in order to avoid the remote possibility of scandal or the wrath of the eggplant woman. The tractor jolted, almost throwing us from the float, as we continued on what had become a tiring journey.

  The remainder of the festival was a blur of half-smiling, waving strangers in the wonderland that is our French Quarter, and by the time we returned to Jackson Square, the glamorous floodlights and bunting-draped grandstands were gone. A sole saxophonist wailed a sorrowful refrain. A gentle, misty rain began to fall. Dad met us with an umbrella and a plastic go-cup from the corner bar, still looking as dashing as when I last saw him on Aunt Mid and Aunt Vie’s balcony, and assisted the royal party with our disembarkment. He bowed and gestured with astounding poise and charm, considering the overwhelming amount of scotch he’d ingested so that he could withstand the evening’s silliness. LeeLee kissed me farewell, and the others were met by their parents and escorts for the ongoing festivities. Mom was en route to the midnight supper dance where Dad would reunite with her after delivering me to my aunts’ apartment for the night.

  An exhausted little monkey, I staggered and swayed much more than my father did as we tried to make our way down the dark, glistening street, and at one point he was forced to steady me from toppling over with his strong guiding hand. When we finally reached the archaic Spanish-arched doorway, he ever so gently turned me to face him, and our eyes met as they had before, although mine were now weary, his glossy and patent-leather black. Laying his large hands upon my slim shoulders, he just stared at the ludicrous sight of his rose-caped son, shook his head, and sighed a deep, long breath of scotch, just as before. Hugging me, he whispered softly in a hushed tone I’d never heard before, “Son, I have got to take you fishing.”

  Hoop Skirt Doctor

  VERY NEAR MY seventh birthday, my secret hoop-skirt fascination was exposed, surprisingly with no fireworks, embarrassment, or shame. At one of my parents’ cocktail parties, during an audible lull in the conversation and Herb Alpert, I waltzed wistfully into the smoke-filled Danish Modern living room to the center of the white Flokati rug, wearing the hoop skirt, my favorite blanket fashioned into a waist-cinching sash. Strategically clipped atop my moppish head was mother’s Jezebel-inspired sausage-curls fall. Clearly I had a thing for hoop skirts. My parents had already begun to suspect something.

  First, I did not partake in rough-and-tumble play. In fact, to avoid sports entirely, I frequently spent gym class on a cot in the school nurse’s office, complaining of a headache, tummy ache, or arthritis. It wasn’t that I completely loathed football; I just thought it ridiculous for seven-year-olds to emulate mammoth men who savagely tackled each other and hurled oddly shaped balls at each other in a game that fitfully started and stopped. But to this day, my brother is convinced that my issues with football stem from an early Saints half-time show at the old Sugar Bowl stadium on Tulane’s campus. The tableau was a re-enactment of the War of 1812, complete with historic costumes and real cannons, muskets, the whole nine yards. At one point an antique cannon malfunctioned and blew off the left hand of one of Jean Laffite’s aiding pirates, right in front of my eyes. From then on the only part about football that remotely interested me was the miniskirted cheerleaders, but unfortunately they didn’t attend the first-grade scrimmages.

  Second, I was enthralled with musical comedy. I’d yet to witness a Broadway, national tour, regional, stock, community, or even dinner-theatre production, but I had discovered my mother’s collection of original-cast recordings in our den and would play them on the hi-fi at full volume and sing and dance along to Ethel Merman belting out “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy, a sight I’m sure would have disturbed its creators, Arthur Laurents and Jule Styne. I am convinced that there is a gene that is triggered in some of us upon hearing the first few notes of any tune by Rodgers and Hammerstein or Lerner and Loewe, causing an irreversible rapture with all things Broadway. The same gene must exist for the sporting sort, and is triggered upon witnessing a first touchdown or home run; it’s just much less theatrical. I have to admit there is something wonderfully disconcerting about a prepubescent boy lip-synching with full emotion, tears streaming down his face, the Sondheim lyrics “Mama’s gotta move, Mama, mmmmama … Mama … Mama’s gotta let go,” or even better any song from “Judy at the Palace.”

  Third, I had asked Santa for an Easy Bake Oven. That, plus my cocktail-party performance, pushed the envelope to Cleveland. Off to the child psychiatrist I went. My mother sweetly explained, “Sweet pea, now when you meet Dr. Sugar, just talk to him like you would to me or any of your friends, and he will be able to help you, and remember, there’s nothing you can’t tell him, there’s no reason to be embarrassed or ashamed, but you must be strictly honest with him or it doesn’t work.”

  “What doesn’t work, Mom? Why do I have to go see Dr. Sugar? I don’t feel sick.”

  “No, of course you’re not sick, peanut. Dr. Sugar is a psychiatrist, that’s a doctor for the brain and emotions. He will help so you won’t have bad dreams anymore.”

  “But I haven’t had a bad dream in weeks.”

  “Now, pumpkin-eater boy, just go in and talk with him, he’s a nice man, I believe that psychiatrists are like God’s little angels here on earth, sent to help us with our problems so we don’t have to worry Him so much, being that He is so busy with integration and the war and all. I would never ask you to do something that I did not believe was best for you. In fact, can you keep a secret?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, your brother went to one a few times, and I still do. Now how about them apples?”

  “What about Daddy?” I asked.

  “Never you mind about him, he wants you to go, too.” She bent down and took me into her gentle arms, cupped my face in her polished hands, and looked deeply and lovingly into my eyes and said, “Okey-dokey?”

  “Okey-dokey!” And I went every Monday for the next three years, until I was “fixed.”

  DR. SUGAR’S OFFICE, which was to become my Monday after-school stop, was a modified whitewashed shotgun-style structure with forest-green shutters. Like many of the old homes on the river side of Magazine Street, they were called shotguns because if you fired a shotgun through the front door, the shot would pass through every room before it exited through the back door. In other parts of the country, similar constructions were simply dubbed “railroad flats.”

  An unassuming faux-wood name plate on the last door toward the rear read DR. MAX SUGAR. The waiting area was a long hallway with Naugahyde sofas from Sears, low-pile brown industrial carpeting, and back issues of Highlights and Time. At the far left was the door that led to the adults’ therapy room, and on the far right was the one for children, and after a few minutes the latter opened to release a grumpy blond boy who shot me a hateful stare to which I returned my signature silly grin. As he exited, he glowered back at me and snarled, “Asshole.”

  Missing the interaction, Dr. Sugar ushered me into the dull children’s room. Against the dingy beige back wall were waist-high shelves with worn games and ravaged books; on the opposite end was a large roll of drawing paper. In the corner were a box of costumes and an open-floor-plan doll house equipped with pliable rubber dolls obviously representing mommies, daddies, brothers, and so on. These did not remotely resemble the glamour of
Barbie or Madame Alexander. I wondered what these sad dolls did to deserve such an existence, torn clothes, misshapen bodies, and no roof over their dented heads. Obviously they were all visitors from the Island of Misfit Toys. Unfamiliar with the surroundings and the custom of child therapy, I timidly took a seat across from Dr. Sugar at the only table in the room.

  “Well, Bryan, what we do here is play and draw, but mainly we talk. Is there anything that you’d like to say or do?”

  My eyes wandered for a moment, glanced across the room, and were magnetically drawn in the direction of a large costume box. The radiant glimmer of tarnished sequins whispered to me, “Put me on, wear me now, you know you want to, you know you want it!”

  Before I knew it, a tutu was around my waist, and shimmery fairy-princess wings were pinned to the back of my striped knit shirt; the tattered daddy doll was sitting on the table in front of me as Dr. Sugar set up the checkerboard. After one or two games, I would rip a piece of the paper from the big roll and draw, draw, draw. That was to be the basic scenario over the course of the next few months; the costumes would vary depending upon my whimsy and mood. Some days a clown; others, Maria von Trappe. The constant, however, was the drawing and the checkers. The good doctor never let me win; he played a fair game and taught me well the rules and strategies of checkers. Although I had no clue why I was dressing up, drawing, and playing checkers with this man, I actually enjoyed our visits. He was a calming influence, an even-keeled person with a soft but gravelly voice, without an overly masculine bravura, just a man.