Father took long but careful steps toward his green Ford parked against the grassy rise of the overpass at the 610 Loop. I was quiet and held on. By now we were both drenched.
• • •
“We almost there, Sonny,” he offered, comforting his child, the piercing wails of the young childless mother waning, felt by all who heard or witnessed, causing most to grip their own children tighter. Holding on to life. We’ll get through this, man. The floods’ll go down, watch. Ain’t nuthin’ but a thang. These things we grew up saying. And grew up believing.
Yet the real dangers were the things that bite. Water moccasins hove into view, their eely undulations guided by the buzz of hungry mosquitoes and horseflies. Raccoons and possums could be seen performing the breaststroke with nests of foraging red ants camped out on their backs saving room for dessert and sherry. I had ten bites already and that’s only because that was as high as I could count at the time. I scratched.
“Don’t scratch. You gonna make it worse,” my protector barked. Worse than this? I thought.
One time I fell into an ant bed and Father picked me up and turned the water hose on me after stripping off all of my clothes. I was too busy crying to notice that I was in the front yard, and damn near everybody on Clearway Drive was watching. I spent the next two hours soaking in the tub and sobbing while Mother sat on the bathroom floor next to the tub. She cried with me. Cher bon Dieu! Then she spotted me with calamine lotion like cheetah spots. Naturally, I ran around the house for the next hour playing jungle boy, butt-naked. Somehow the bites didn’t hurt anymore.
As we neared his truck, I noticed that the afternoon had suddenly grown dark purple—the effect of lights reflecting a bloated, toxic sky. The brown murky murk had transformed into a black oil slick that reflected light from faulty, blinking streetlights and neon bulbs of storefronts. People were now more restless. Murmurs and prayers gently recited in the daylight became loud, exacerbated curses and fevered threats in the evening’s shadow. Gunshots rang out sporadically. Sirens howled, echoing off the black water into the purple sky. Night had arrived. And niggas act up at night.
I peeked at Father’s chest where the raincoat opened—a leather holster with a gun. He wasn’t taking any chances and didn’t have time for threats, real or imagined. I felt safer.
The rain halted but the thick air remained. Fuckin’ humidity.
Houston was a sauna on a cold day. Low pressure and warm Gulf waters equaled humidity most days of the year. AC was a must as humidity lay in wait on every corner.
We sweat in Houston. And when we’re not sweating, it’s raining. Water. Water. All the time, fuckin’ water. Needless to say, growing up in Houston meant growing up wet. Sweat stains. Wet shirts. Hand towels tucked in your shorts like a football player to keep your face dry. AC. Window units. Bank loans taken out for a central air unit with as much collateral as the mortgage. Fans in the windows. Box fans. Rotating fans. Ceiling fans. All of this in a futile attempt to stay dry, stay smelling like cologne, soap, or baby powder. And it never worked unless you stayed locked in the house with the AC at full blast.
So we accept it. The wetness.
We accept the humidity. We accept the rain. We accept the floods and the hurricanes. We accept the infant called by the gully, figuring that’s what the Lord wanted. It didn’t matter if we liked it. We had to accept it in order to get through it. Father knew that. I was learning.
We reached his truck and I learned that the adventure was about to begin. Mother was stuck in Fifth Ward, on the other side of town, and we had to go get her. Water had crested at the top of the bench seat that I was standing on. I started crying again as more black water seeped in around the crevices of the doorframe. The water was coming to get me. Gunshots. Two gunshots nearby. Gunshots louder than the small siren timidly whistling in the distance, scared away by the big bad gunshots, scared away from black water and black people. Where are the cops? Where is Superman? Where is the bathroom? I peed on myself, warm urine salving my little legs, and I was comforted by this for some reason. It felt familiar.
“Daddy. I pee-peed,” I reported.
“Quiet down, I’m tryin’ to hear this engine,” he said.
Father struggled to get the wet engine to turn over. Water in the truck? Somehow I felt safer outside. Father said he had to get under the hood and take off the fan belt. I didn’t want him to leave so I protested. He ignored me and quickly opened the door. More water rushed in.
I screamed.
The hood rose, blocking my view of Father, leaving me alone with the black water. I quieted and listened. He was talking to someone but I didn’t remember anybody wading over to help us before the hood went up. I listened. He was arguing.
“Who you talkin’ to, Daddy?”
“Quiet down, Sonny.”
Then I heard him for the first time, but it would be years before we met. A strange voice slightly deeper than Father’s—
“Ça c’est ton garçon?”1 the voice asked.
“Yeah,” Father gruffed, then returned quickly behind the steering wheel. He took a deep breath, then looked at me.
“Who was that?” I insisted.
His eyes glazed with purpose. He looked in the rearview mirror. My eyes followed him. Here was a man who set out to get his family.
He turned the ignition.
The green Ford yelled defiantly and Father winked at me without changing his expression, then—
“It ain’t nuthin’ but water, Ti’ John.”
He must’ve forgotten that I couldn’t swim. And with the excitement and relief of a roaring engine and the possibility of making it home to watch The Electric Company, I forgot about my question. I forgot to ask him who he was talking to. I forgot to ask him what language was spoken. He probably wouldn’t have told me anyway, and besides, I wasn’t ready for the answer.
Weeks later, after the water subsided and the dead were counted in various high school gymnasiums, the city fathers made amends for poor drainage and renamed South Park Boulevard to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, acknowledging that South Park was indeed a black community. That would arguably be the last time the city of Houston would ever give a fuck about South Park, Houston, Texas. We were officially on our own.
* * *
1. “Is that your son?” In Creole, we use garçon or fil for “son.”
two
ricky street and other known dangers
Four years after the Great Flood of 1977 and I still couldn’t swim. Mother signed me up for classes in the nice, white part of town with the indoor pool. The classes were small. The instructors were nice and gentle. I never missed a class but gotdammit I couldn’t figure it out. Rumor has it that at some point I was actually swimming. I don’t remember swimming but I’ve been told that I did. Then I stopped for no apparent reason. And I wasn’t scared. I just wasn’t able. Fuck! Years later, I would rake my memory trying to find that moment where the water and I were one. Never could find it. And Mother didn’t really press it because she couldn’t swim either, although her inability was based more on fear.
Patrice Boudreaux (née Malveaux). Mother. It would be kind to say she was a cautious woman. She maintained a very intimate relationship with fear and my entire childhood would be littered with her speeches on safety and danger. Certainly that’s what most mothers do. But me? John Paul Boudreaux, Jr.? Danger had recently started hanging around me like funk. I could either ignore it or embrace it. And at eight years old I would have to make a decision about fear because I was really starting to understand the concept of being away from home. School. Playing outside. Sleepovers with friends. None of this under the supervision of Mother. Danger would present itself sooner or later. Her magical protection spell wouldn’t last long, but her immediate fear was the very neighborhood we lived in. Too much going on. And me? I had to stay on Clearway Drive. One fuckin’ block. That was her rule. One block for all of my imagination. Well, I soon decided that I’d have to change that.
/> Third graders don’t normally piss on themselves. Not normally. But Anthony Goodey wasn’t normal. In fact, for the longest time we thought he was retarded, realizing only later that he was just spastic as hell. But this particular morning he had deposited a huge wet patch in his all-too-noticeable green Toughskins. Of course, we all laughed. And now we were in line.
There were sixteen other third graders in front of me but I wasn’t scared. We formed a line against the wall of the classroom, right along the blackboard next to pictures of famous explorers and the Founding Fathers. The windows were raised, allowing humidity to circulate around the room by way of a noisy industrial fan hoisted next to the Stars and Stripes, which sent the flag into stately, perpetual undulation like when a TV channel signs off.
The room had its time-honored rancid Pine-Sol aroma with a subtle hint of Goodey’s piss—the aromatic blend promoted by the fan. The whole place stunk. A few girls were crying. Others said they were going to tell their parents. But Albert Thibodeaux and I had our eyes dead set on Goodey, who sat at his desk, in piss, still sobbing quietly. What a crybaby. After school, his ass was going to be grass.
This was St. Philip Neri Catholic Church and School, a predominately black parish in South Park where Louisiana expatriates and proud black Texans came to worship and send their little ones for learning. My teacher, Sister Marie Thérèse, was the same nun whom Father had cursed out decades before at St. Paul’s in Lafayette. Now, she had been magically transferred by the diocese educational wizard to continue her passion for harassing Boudreaux boys. A kind, gentle woman with a heart of gold, she’d come from rural Mamou, Louisiana, to the convent after arguing with her parents about their chosen identity. White. Or more accurately, passé blanche. She couldn’t accept it. She was a black woman of lighter hue with deep Creole roots. Not wanting to disrupt the social order her family assumed, she was sent to the convent in Lafayette with hopes that God would convince her that she was white.
After several years in meditation and the habit, it didn’t work. She knew God meant for her to be a black woman and, consequently, was assigned to the black-only St. Paul Catholic Church and School in Lafayette to teach little black Catholic faces.
She was harsh, adhering to strict discipline and sacrifice as a means to salvation. She believed that education was the only way for secular blacks to progress in the Jim Crow South and imposed her philosophy on her students. But she was also a bit of an elitist with affinities for city folks. Consider this was the 1940s in Lafayette, Louisiana. Many of the students were children of farmers, people of the earth. And although she genuinely meant well, she couldn’t help but chastise Father for speaking Creole rather than English. Nor could she get him to sit down and learn his lessons. Nor would she stop other students from teasing him, particularly regarding his clothes. See, Father shared his clothes with two of his brothers, Alfred and Pa-June, both of whom attended St. Paul’s as well. Kids would tease them and Sister Marie Thérèse wouldn’t say a thing. Besides, Father would rather be chasing fireflies or riding horses than discovering the mysteries of geometry. So one rather unexceptional day in 1949 after a particular ribbing from Sister Marie Thérèse, he stood up, cursed her out in Creole, and walked out. He never returned to any school again.
And lucky me. Thirty years later I was standing in line in Sister Marie Thérèse’s classroom awaiting her fury.
The sound of aged wood against clothed bottoms didn’t echo but hovered, floated, moved around the humid room, keeping time in between the shuffle of children’s reluctant feet on dirty Catholic school linoleum. The whole class was lined up for pops from Sister Marie Thérèse’s paddle because we’d laughed at Anthony Goodey for pissing on himself. I wasn’t the least bit scared for some reason. I just wanted it to be over.
So when my turn came, I looked at old Sister Marie Thérèse with her loving gray eyes and thought, What a fuckin’ hypocrite. In CCE class she talked of Jesus’ capacity for forgiveness, turn the other cheek, let he who is without sin and all that shit, but we’re getting a spanking for laughing. Not cursing or drawing naked pictures, which was fast becoming my forte, no, we were getting a spanking for finding humor in Goodey’s lack of toilet training at age eight. If anything, he should’ve been getting a spanking. And given the events of the past few weeks, I thought it fairly reasonable to allow a group of third graders some fuckin’ comic relief to lighten the mood. But damn if Sister Marie Thérèse saw it that way. So I had an attitude.
“John Boudreaux, Junior.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Your turn.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Everybody has to.”
“So? I don’t want to.”
“Come on, boy, you’re holding up the line and we got to get back to our lessons.”
“It ain’t right.”
“Ti’ John. Watch your mouth.”
“It’s not right.”
“John Boudreaux, Junior.”
“Jesus wouldn’t spank us.”
Some of the kids agreed. Sister Marie Thérèse took quick note and winced, sensing that she was losing control, but she was clever.
“Jesus wouldn’t have laughed at Anthony. Would he?”
She had a point but I had eaten candy all morning and I was alert.
“Jesus woulda gave Anthony a bathroom pass.”
“JOHN BOUDREAUX, JUNIOR! DON’T YOU SASS!”
“I’m not sassin’. It’s true.”
Some of the kids started laughing. I was in big trouble, but Anthony had asked for a bathroom pass. He always asked for a bathroom pass, every hour.
“What am I supposed to do with you?” she asked, pursing her lips, gripping the wooden paddle. She was pissed off. I had to think on my feet.
“We should pray for Anthony so that he won’t pee-pee on himself no mo’,” I offered.
I even smiled a bit as the class guffawed. Oh, I thought I was clever. And an hour later, when everybody’s knees had turned to Silly Putty after a hundred billion Rosaries on hard linoleum, I realized that the smart move would have been just to take the two pops. But who gave a shit? Half of the time we mumbled the prayers until each of us had developed a nice Catholic hum like Buddhist chants. And Sister Marie Thérèse didn’t even say them with us. She just walked around the room correcting us and announcing the different parts of the Rosary. She didn’t care to pray for young Anthony and his bladder. I told you she was a hypocrite.
Yet despite the eventual paddle pops from Sister Marie Thérèse and the brutal Rosary session on the floor, no amount of dread could measure up to everything that had happened in the past few weeks.
Weeks Before . . .
“Ti’ John. If I come home and see you playing on Ricky Street, I’ma get out my car and whip your ass back home to Clearway. You can’t go on Ricky Street,” Mother warned.
“Why?” I asked.
“They got different type of people over there. Hoodlums!”
Hoodlums. What exactly was a hoodlum? I wasn’t sure. My routine had worn down Mother like the dirty, hand-stained section of the living room curtains that I’d pull back to watch kids my age rushing jubilantly to Ricky Street—smiling, shouting, carrying balls or toys, carefully handling cool cups or snow cones while sprinting to the great festivities that awaited on the next block. I didn’t have to peek to know that something special was happening around the corner. I could hear it in my house. It was a loud street. Residents sat on the porch drinking from plastic cups and bottles, blasting music and talking loud. You could hear them. Laughing. Cursing. Crying. Yelling. Signifying. Testifying. Lying. Heeeey, Darrell! Boo! Get me an ice cream sandwich! Nigga, where my money! Say, Dwayne, you saw that game last night! Ta-sha, your momma say you need to come home! All of this was yelled, of course. Faircroft and Clearway Drives got to participate in the goings-on of Ricky Street by mere earshot. I mean, they yelled everything. There were no secrets on Ricky Street. Or so I thought. And my only interaction had been when r
iding with my parents, turning off MLK Boulevard and driving down Ricky Street to witness. We had to go past Ricky Street to get to my house. And every time we’d pass, the kids would stop, clear the street and stare at me. I didn’t really know them because they never played on Clearway Drive, even though some of them lived there. I had heard some of the names: Joe Boy, Pork Chop, Booger, Raymond Earl, Maurice, Ronnie, Boobie, Dwayne, Curtis. But I knew none of them personally. Only stares. An occasional wave. What were they thinking? Was I too good to play with them? Did they have the cooties? Did I have the cooties?
“Leave them hoodlums alone, Ti’ John,” Mother reaffirmed as she spirited me away from the soiled living room curtains. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she thought. They had saved enough money for the down payment on the house on North MacGregor Drive, the one right across the street from the black state senator, the one with the big yard that sat on Braes Bayou for all to admire. She returned to her dishes. Make it clean to be dirtied. No more pretty bubbles. No more lemon scent. Brackish water and wrinkled skin remained. A prayer denied.
After shuffling between apartments in Third Ward, my parents settled on a small, three-bedroom house in South Park on Clearway Drive. It wasn’t across the street from a state senator but it was theirs. Front yard. Backyard. Trees to climb. Bugs to smush. Birds and wood rats to shoot with pellet guns and slingshots. Yeah, wood rats. Behind our street was a large, undeveloped forest owned by Henry Taub, who maintained cattle and every imaginable kind of wildlife, but that wasn’t uncommon in Houston.
As a city, its oddity was its lack of zoning laws coupled with farm-oriented residents. Horse pastures stood next to grocery stores and minimalls. So while Houston was definitely a modern city, remnants of its rustic past clung to its identity like the famed Texas drawl. And everybody loved horses. In fact, the city of Houston pauses for horses (that should be its motto). You’re driving along a major city street and lo and behold, somebody is riding a horse down the median as natural as the streetlight turning from red to green. Amateur rodeos on Sundays found every highway speckled with pickup trucks carrying horses in trailers. And in late February every year, the entire city celebrated the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in the Astrodome by costuming at work and school with Western attire. Various factions of trail riders moseyed into the city in a well-planned, well-televised parade that went right to the heart of Downtown Houston for all to see because, of course, school and work were canceled for the horse parade. Again, Houston pauses for horses.
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