TragiComic
I was thinking that next year I’d like to have Carnival masks to hang outside for Mardi Gras. You know the kind that look like jesters and one is frowning and one is smiling. A friend told me that she went to the Quarter alone with her toddler and saw a woman standing on the corner of Royal and Esplanade, with two children in a wagon, and one in her arms and she and the child in her arms were balling their eyes out. She said she felt horrible not stopping to help and she noticed no one else did either. She offered, “Maybe she was overwhelmed. Or maybe she was loaded.”
I told her that as I approached Royal with Tin on my back and Tatjana on my side, St. Anne was pulling up the rear and we found ourselves right in the thick of the marching band. We were all marching when the only black man in the band poked me on the shoulder and said, “Hey you, you can’t march with the band!” We moved to the sidewalk dutifully.” Before that we had been by the Brasserie Marigny with friends; as Tin was having a sugar low, we stopped to give him some food and I sat him on the trunk of a car parked right at the corner of Frenchman.
People were parading up and down the street in costumes of all kinds, a mini float went by, someone dropped a whole cup of beer and a guy came up to me and said, “Hey, that’s my car, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t touch it.” I just stared at him blinking my eyes because I could not fathom that he was serious.
I was lying in bed alone night before last and suddenly had this pause where I thought just a few days ago we were all out on the streets wearing costumes we spent a good deal of time and money and energy creating so that we could parade with our neighbors and friends and fellow NOLAns up and down the street. It’s absurd, I thought, as I lay there with this endless parade of thoughts marching through my mind one by one.
So next year I am going to get some Carnival masks to hang outside. The kind that look like jesters where one is smiling and one is frowning. I have no idea what my costume will be. Tatjana wants to be rastafarans.