Aftermath - Writers Forum

Angelmusic234 · 06-06-2007, 01:04 PM

For a project I did last month in school we had to choose a topic in American history to do a research report about. We also had to include a creative narrative from the point of view of someone who was related to our topic. According to the grade sheet I did alright, but I'd like to get some more feedback on this. I'm worried that it's a little vague, as we were allotted only a few pages to make our point, while at the same time I don't want to mar it with unnecessary additions.

I had a dream last night about New Orleans. Not New Orleans now, but New Orleans then- New Orleans before the hurricane. For my brother, it was a time when ‘responsibility’ was still a foreign word that adults liked to hold over his head-his fellow adults. Twenty-four years on this Earth couldn’t make him a grown-up, but the events in August of 2005 did.

I never lived in the city myself. I still don’t. It‘s not out of distaste, or even the logical fear that many visitors suffer from with the prospect of entering a dying city. My fear is of another sort, and it’s a fear that my brother, Paul, felt even more deeply- a fear of miraculous things becoming commonplace, and losing their shine.

Mississippi is where we were born. Our hometown is a little over a hundred miles north of New Orleans, but growing up in this close proximity did not make the city any less of a wonder to us. No matter how many times we visited-from the earliest years of our childhoods and on- it still remained foreign. Because New Orleans isn’t like anywhere else in America. It’s another world within a country.

While I slept last night, my subconscious extracted a familiar story from my mind- familiar because it reminded me of a conversation I had with my brother very shortly after the hurricane struck. It felt very much like déjà vu- but the experience was so morphed in my dream state that it took a long time to make sense of it.

In my dream, I was standing in the middle of my bedroom. Scattered light was coming through my window (in my dream it was made of stained glass) and when I went to peer through it, the glass folded to my skin and became a mask. I touched it with my fingers and it felt smooth and cold, with feathers poking out of the top.

There wasn’t even a knock on the door, and then a mime was standing beside me, his face white and unsmiling. There was nothing funny about it at all.

“No cake for you, miss.” he said, swinging a tray of colorful braided dough beneath my nose.

“You can’t speak,” I pointed out, shocked, and then he smiled. It was an odd, unfriendly smile.

“There’s no baby in this cake, so Paul said it’s alright.” I didn’t understand his words. I assumed he was referring to the Mardis Gras tradition of the King’s Cake, in which there is hidden a small plastic baby whose finding decides who will host the next party.

“But Paul won‘t come to visit without a party,” I argued. The mime didn’t reply. “Paul really likes parties,” I added stupidly.

“Paul really likes parties,” the mime mimicked, still smiling that malicious smile. “He likes masquerades best.” That wasn’t true, I thought, but I stayed silent. And the mime stayed silent. Then he left, leaving the cake on the ground at my feet.

I knew I could never eat the whole cake myself. But there had to be a party, or else Paul wouldn’t come home and see me. The next thing I knew, I was kneeling on the ground, my hands moving from the cake to my mouth in a whirl of color- purple, green, gold, purple, green gold, purple, green, gold. And then the cake was gone, and the mime was at my side again, laughing and shaking his head.

“I told you there was no baby,” he said, and I was angry that I’d forgotten his words so soon. “Now tip me. I did a good show, didn’t I? How about you give me your mask, before you break it.” I agreed- it was a very good show. But when I tried to remove the mask, it slipped from my fingers and shattered on the floor. The mime looked at the mess, then lifted his eyes up to mine. His expression was blank. “Will you fix it?”
I blinked. “It’s in a million pieces.”

The mime repeated, “Will you fix it?”

And then I woke up.

In February of 2006, I was one of 700,000 people who attended Mardis Gras. Many people called it a success. The food was delicious, the music cheering, the people smiling from ear to ear. But my heart was not in it, because I celebrated it alone.

And I wasn’t the only one. Many of the people I met there had suffered losses. Some had lost property, and some had lost loved ones like I did. Others lost their spirits, and I had something in common with them as well.

The ones who were hurting, they were the easiest to pick out of the crowd. They were the ones who smiled the most, who laughed the hardest, who walked with a skip. They were the ones whose masks were the most tightly fixed, who would do anything to keep it from slipping.

I no longer feel the same awe I once did upon entering the city. Sometime between its collapse and my brother’s suicide a month afterward, the exotic quality I used to associate with it was replaced with one of uncomfortable familiarity that I never wanted, and that I wish now I could disown. The New Orleans people and I, we are bound by loss. Their pain is my pain. Their struggles are mine. And the mystery behind their eyes, the element that made the city so alluring to me once, is now fully illuminated for me, just as it was illuminated for Paul.

I feel now, more than ever, that these people are my kinsmen. And, being such, I am obligated to carry on with them. New Orleans is in a million little pieces, but I’ll pick every little piece up and stick them together for as long as I believe that it will anyone any good.