HELLO FRIENDS,
I WROTE THIS STORY TWENTY YEARS AGO AFTER THE HORROR OF HURRICANE KATRINA. IN THIS STORY I IMAGINE I AM TAKING A PEEK INTO A LIFE ONCE FILLED WITH SOME OF THE THINGS LIFE IS FILLED WITH, BEFORE IT IS FILLED WITH THE WATERS OF THIS DEADLY STORM.
AS AN AUDIENCE MEMBER ONCE SAID OF ME, "SHE WRITES WITH A KNIFE," SO BE READY FOR THE REAL AND THE SURREAL.
"PARTY LIGHTS" HAS BEEN PUBLISHED A COUPLE OF TIMES AND YOU WILL FIND AN UPDATED VERSION IN MY UPCOMING NOVELLA, "THE BURDEN KEEPER'S REPORTS." WHY THE UPDATE? BECAUSE I CAN'T FORGET ABOUT THE PEOPLE OF NEW ORLEANS DURING THAT TIME, AND I CAN'T/WON'T LET IT GO.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, HERE IS "PARTY LIGHTS."
PARTY LIGHTS
Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte
©2005 Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte
I didn’t think I would ever be able to raise my head from the floor.
I don’t know how I got here.
I know where I am, yet I am lost.
The floorboards are soaking wet and smell like the birth of rot. Did I spill something and fall? That would be just like me. Getting old and still trying to do things I have no business doing like trying to mop and wax these hardwood floors. As I struggle to get up, my arms and legs come up cleanly, but my head feels like a two-ton boulder. Finally, after I don’t how long, I am able to rise and move about the house. I want to find my niece and ask her why she did not help me when I fell and why she did not come when I called out to her. I distinctly remember calling her name as soon as I saw the rush of water that caused me to tumble. My feet are sloshing in rising mop bucket dirty water and as I push my heavy legs down the dark hallways, I can hear the voice of that rapper 25-cent, or whatever his name is, getting louder and louder. I can hear the screams inside the wind as it haphazardly steers the unrelenting rain.
My niece by marriage, Cyndra, is a disrespectful little heifer. Since she has been here, I have asked her no less than a hundred times to turn down that music. I like some of that hippity hop and the rap as much as the next person, but does she have to play the same song over and over at maximum volume? I mean how many times does the boy have to tell everybody they are just shopping in the window? I just don’t get it. The water is up to her doorknob now and I am yelling her name at the top of my voice and knocking on her bedroom door, but she keeps acting like she doesn’t hear me. No doubt with all that noise. I guess I will just have to go get in her face.
I have had just about enough. She was sent here by her parents to go to the nearby University and has been in my house wreaking havoc in my life for the last three years, or is it five? I have somehow lost track of time. I have not had the heart to tell my sister-in-law, her mother, how badly Cyndra behaves. Right now I am feeling like being supportive is highly overrated. She may not last long enough to finish her senior year under my roof if she does not get her act together.
This is not working. I am still on the wrong side of her door. The water is everywhere, and I need her to come out and help me clean this mess up before it ruins all of my beautiful floors. One more knock; one more yell. Ok that’s it, I am going in.
I can’t believe she is on the phone talking to one of her friends about how she has the house all to herself and yes, the party is on for tonight. Absolutely, she says, we will put up the party lights.
She has some nerve. She didn’t ask me about a party. This is my house. My somewhat dear departed husband Stanley had this house built as my wedding present. He never got tired of reminding me and anyone else who would listen about how he built it from the ground up all by himself plank by plank, brick by brick, blah by blah. How he laid and polished all of the wood floors, interior trim and windows without a ruler; just his “eye.” Until he passed away, I always felt like I was an interloper; just the “wifey” who completed his fake portrait of a good man. Just another fixture in his beautiful house. And beautiful it is. Now with him gone from the picture, it is finally all mine. All mine except for the fact that Cyndra is here, supposedly to “look after my favorite auntie,” with her newest plan being throwing a party without even asking me.
Yelling her name and knocking on her bedroom door, the music and her party-planning confab seem to meld together in one big blast of sound. Knocking, knocking, knocking. Yelling, yelling. Finally she opens the door floating above a rush of water and looks quizzically into the hallway. Although the water is now up to her chest, she moves through it easily and slams the door in my face!
There will be no party and no more loud music in my house. Anyway, I have plane tickets for an around the world trip next year. But before I can even think about doing that, I have to clean out all of this water.
Why is the light in the hallway so bright? My electric bill is going to be crazy again. I swear Cyndra never turns off a light. But this is so bright I swear I can see my skeleton. Costing me money and time. I can’t wait to be rid of her ungrateful money and time wasting behind.
I am slowly making my way down the hall through this rising wetness. I see Stanley sitting in his favorite chair, in his favorite blue suit, in his favorite place at the end of the hallway. I am not startled or afraid; instead I am annoyed that he is immersed in the things he loved most in his selfish life while I am left, as usual, to clean up this mess. There is an even brighter light surrounding him that makes the hallway lights darken in surrender. We seem to be suspended by vapor in this luminous alcove. There is no water here. No sound of storm. Looking young and handsome with that perfect, too-white teeth smile of his; Stanley tells me there is nothing I can do about Cyndra. She is what she is he says, his teeth getting brighter and brighter in the unforgiving light.
I stare at Stanley for a minute wondering how, after all these years, he still has those perfect teeth. And how all those women just fell in love with that shimmery mouth of his and the bullshit that fell from it. I remember I don’t like him all that much. I think he just wants me to leave so Cyndra can take over the house. I am finally in charge of it all and I am not falling for that. No not me. Not today.
“Come on baby”, he says, “let’s go to lunch.” Looking closer I can see the wounds on his face and neck beginning to open from where that last prostitute slashed him with the box cutter.
“I don’t have time to go to lunch with you, Stanley. I have to get the water out of my house. MY HOUSE!”
Stanley’s smile turns into a snarl of snakes and one by one, each of those beautiful teeth of his fall into the rapidly dimming abyss beneath us. I watch as all of his colors turn to liquid and begin to leave him one by one. I watch while the blue of his suit, the brown of his skin, the red of his blood and the white of his bone all fall away. I turn away only after every spec of him has disappeared and bright hallway light has returned.
I turn again and am suddenly weightless and in a softer light prism of ambers and greens. In the shadowy distance I can hear my friend Barbara’s voice, “You have to go, everyone is leaving. Follow the water.”
Outside the wind begins to howl more urgently, this time it sounds like a dying animal. The water is coming back in waves, circling and swirling.
“I can’t leave, I whisper. I have to save the wood. I have to save the wood.”
I am suddenly propelled upward. I see the nails, tacks and tape destroying my beautiful woods. Cyndra has put up the party lights. The wood screams and creaks from the wounds she has inflicted, begging for my intervention. I reach out to soothe it, but the distance is too far. I am slipping backwards, speechless, my tongue ruined by the taste of rancid water.
I look down and see that Stanley’s house, no longer mine, is now below my feet.
I see Cyndra in her room, still on the phone. She looks happy. Tacked to the windowsills, nailed to the rafters, wrapped around the trees, the party lights are everywhere. The water is beginning to rise above the house. The wood begins to break away and float in the murky wetness. The lights continue to twinkle until the house is sucked into the swirling drain of brackish drench.
As the last light flickers to shade, I begin to tumble. I tumble so fast that there is no left or right, no up or down until I land. Ever so softly I land, face up on the living room hardwood floor.
I am so happy that I did not leave. They were all wrong. It wasn’t that bad, and I am still here.
My satisfaction fades when I hear the water slowly building up outside to rush in again. The screeching wind, the frantic gurgle of many voices, and the unbearable heaviness of hope lost have replaced the music and shut the lights.
The water is on my face now. I am so tired; I cannot lift my hand to wipe it away.
I am so tired.
“You should have gone, you should have gone”, Barbara’s voice is so faint and far away now. I have no energy to answer.
I close my eyes and slowly sink until the wood, the water, and I become one.
This was written in the memory of the victims of hurricane Katrina.
