New Orleans
blue popsicles and lizards
NEW ORLEANS
The first thing I remember about living in New Orleans is buying blue popsicles with my allowance every Saturday. Then I got sick with nephritis and wasn’t supposed to get up for for months, but I didn’t feel sick. I read all of Grimm’s fairy Tales but after a while it got boring. Somebody, I forget who, put a folded-up card table on my bed. That changed everything. I used to sit on it, peering over the edge, pretending I was on a magic carpet flying over mountains made of wrinkled sheets.That was wonderful. I remember when my parents decided to paint the living room dark green and then they did. I remember our street was made of broken shells, but we went barefoot anyway. Our feet got tough. I remember crawling out my window to play with my friends when I was sick, and how it felt landing in back of the hedge, like I was a secret, until I popped out. I don’t know how I got back in with nobody knowing. There was a stand of very tall bamboos next to a big building and I planned get up on the roof by clutching a bamboo and putting my feet on the side of the building and walking up there but it didn’t work.
Our address was 51A Macalester Place. There were kumquat trees on the way to school but kumquats were sour. My teacher didn’t like me, she pulled my hair, and I whispered that she was a big fat potato. I don’t remember ever being hot. I almost forgot the lizards, they were my favorite things. They were mostly green and when they were scared or angry their throats swelled up and turned red. I learned not to catch one by the tail, because after patiently sneaking close enough to grab, you wound up with just a tail. They came off. The rest of the lizard skittered away and grew a new one. Once I kissed a lizard on the head and it bit me. There’s got to be a parable in here somewhere. After three years, we moved to Minnesota.
I had gerbils when I was about nine. I used to clean the cage once a week, and I’d take them out (Lucy and Ethel, but it turned out to be Lucy and Desi, that’s another story, though) and let them run around the perimeter of my bathroom sink while I cleaned.
One day when I went to put them back in the cage, Lucy was not making it easy to catch her, so I put my finger down on her tail AND SHE KEPT RUNNING AND I STOOD THERE SCREAMING with just her tail underneath my finger. She left a bloody trail behind her, my mother came running into the bathroom and said this is why she hated these “goddamn rodents” as she scooped her up and put her back in the cage, and that is why my children never had gerbils. Just a dog. Lucy was okay, by the way. Her tail healed into a stump. I had not thought about this in years, so thank you, Abby. I loved this piece so much. Felt like I got to meet child-Abby. Your teacher probably was a big fat potato.
Love this. If only I could learn to be so open and honest in my memoir pieces! I have too many layers of academia and journalism - my personal pieces always turn out too slick and not quite right. What’s your secret? How do you do it?? You bring the reader right in - and there being no artifice, every word, every sentence rings so true! I envy your skill. And I was a fan of blue popsicles too. And the yellow (banana) ones. Do they even make those things anymore??