Local

Moved here at age four. Local? Maybe.

In the summer of 2001, my husband's eighty-seven-year-old grandmother, Momoo, took my husband and I out for a special meal at Galatoire's, one of New Orleans oldest "standards," right on Bourbon Street. You used to have to wait in a long line for a table, but Momoo had special powers.  She "knew a waiter."  On the way there, she told us about going to Galatoire's through the years.  Waiting in line was part of the experience, chatting with the people in front or behind you, meeting strangers.  I loved hearing her stories.

She told us about New Orleans before air conditioning.  On the weekend, she and her husband and another couple would ride the streetcar downtown.  The movement of the air on the streetcar, which today seems impossibly hot during the summer, cooled them down.  Once they arrived downtown, they would go for drinks in one of the few air-conditioned hotel lobbies.

Momoo also matter-of-factly told us about meeting her first cross-dresser.  In the 1950s, she was shopping at a fancy women's boutique.  She was in the back, trying on clothes, which a shop girl was bringing to her. A different shop girl was bringing dresses to another customer, a quiet patron, uttering a few words at a time, who was trying on big sizes and remained out of sight.  The discretion of the situation made her curious, and she kept a keen eye out, wondering if the other shopper was well-known. "Finally, I saw it was a man.  That was the first time I saw that." I am sure it was not the last.  Anyone who lives in New Orleans for seventy years sees a few drag queens.

Another time she told us about an encounter with David Duke at her local hardware store.  He lived in Momoo's parish, and she'd campaigned against him, standing on the neutral ground waving signs, saying something like, "Vote for the crook, it's important." Years later, she saw Duke loading a bunch of lumber at Ace Hardware.  At first she thought it was strange that he was doing it himself. She looked over and saw several black men, employees of Ace, watching Duke struggle.  Their refusal to help him touched Momoo. She made eye contact with these men and she said they seemed like "brothers" in that moment.

On the afternoon we bypassed the line at Galatoire's, Momoo ran into someone she knew. I'll call her Miss Martha.  Miss Martha was also an octogenarian, also Jewish, and she was lunching with a friend. Momoo and Miss Martha seemed so alike at first. Momoo stopped for a second to say hello, introduced us, and took a moment to brag about Philip's recent accomplishments.  Phil and I noticed Momoo was a bit deferential, taking a moment to remind Miss Martha how they met. In the first years after Momoo had emigrated from Germany, she sewed seer-sucker suits for Miss Martha's husband. These ladies nodded and smiled at one another and then we moved along to our table.

This interaction stunned me. Momoo built her life in New Orleans. Her children and grandchildren were born here. She remembered a time before air-conditioning, was the only elderly person I knew who was comfortable with transvestites, fought to keep the KKK out of politics, and could get a reservation instead of waiting in line. Her first apartment was on Exposition Boulevard on Audubon Park and she told us she used to skate around the park with a dachshund who had immigrated with her. Brocato's spumoni was in her freezer and a banana tree was in her backyard. She loved to entertain and it seemed she knew most of New Orleans, certainly all of Jewish New Orleans.  To me, she embodied New Orleans.

Still, in her interaction with Miss Martha, it was clear that she was not from here. She could never really be a local. I asked Phil, "Does your family tree have to extend to pre-Civil War New Orleans to really be "from" here?"

I have often wondered how long I will have to live in New Orleans to be a local. How many children born in Orleans Parish legitimizes me? How many books do I need to read to understand the complexity of its people and its pain? How many costumes do I have to hoard to make myself a real parader? Why do I want to be rightful citizen? Can't I accept being naturalized by marriage? Will my Northern brashness every go away? I just don't know.

I've come to the conclusion that I want to be a real New Orleanian because with that title comes a rich understanding of the city. I don't have that yet.

Through the wonders of Facebook, I saw (after I began writing this post) Miss Martha turned 100. In order to fact check this story, I checked in with my native mother-in-law. I didn't want to get it wrong. Miss Martha is wonderful, warm, philanthropic. My mother-in-law told me was that Miss Martha wasn't "from" New Orleans either. She was from a small town in another part of Louisiana. She probably had only lived a few more years in New Orleans than Momoo. So, maybe I had misread the scene.

Or maybe Momoo's deference was just her posture, the way she was. She was humble and respectful, confident and keen, but not showy. That sort of gentility is very New Orleans. Local New Orleans. I'm still working on that.