Nawlins

I am just now realizing how many useless things I have accumulated over the years. I’ve been sorting things into piles for me to pack away, and I can’t figure out why I still have half of the stuff. Everything I picked up had a familiarity to it, a feeling more than anything, one that reminded me of how I felt when I decided to keep whatever it was. Having to get rid of anything wasn’t an option, and still I could not pinpoint exactly why these things meant something to me. If I had to put it in words, to me, life was in those little possessions. Throwing things away would be to discard a part of my story, a chapter of my life novel. I guess I’m afraid that one day when I want to talk about my life, I will be missing the mug I won at Dave and Busters, and then my story will be incomplete because of it. I’m probably going to keep the mug, but honestly, I’m going to need more garbage bags than I anticipated.

My lease was up at my apartment, and after several weeks of discussions with my landlord, he told me that he wouldn’t be able to lower my rent so that I could afford to live there. Great guy, I honestly saw the pain in his eyes when he told me.

“Its okay Mario,” I had told him after he had delivered the news. He gave me a weak pat on the back, and told me to take my time because nobody would be renting any apartments soon. That was the reality of 2020. The way the world worked had changed, and it affected Mario just as much as it did me. One more rent that he couldn’t count on, and nothing on the horizon. I lost my job about 3 months ago so I could empathize with the lack of income coming in. Having to live without having any income is like living in a desert, and having a large tank of water that you scooped a glass out of each time you needed. The water was there, but you knew that it was limited, so you cherished every drop. It was a different type of anxiety from anything I had felt before. Before long, I was parched. Having savings had always been a security for me. Now my new reality is that automated payments are a privilege and nothing depressed me more than canceling my Hulu subscription. It was a very small price to pay considering everything that was going on, and still to me it was symbolic for what I would be experiencing in the future. I had to let go of a lot of things recently.

In March when the pandemic had first ravaged the city, I was the assistant executive chef at a great restaurant. I had worked there since I was 16, with a few years before that off of the books. I knew Maurice the owner and head chef for years. He was one of the meanest, cheapest, impatient old men I had ever met, and also one of the best cooks. I loved that man.

“I’m tired, I’m tired and old, and tired that I am old,” He said. He spoke in an accent that never left him despite how long it had been since he had left his native country. I honestly forget which island he was from, because he never mentioned it. He was from New Orleans as he said. He said that home was where you was most happy, and where the food is good. He cooked so well that he could make anywhere his home.

“If you want it, you can have it. I don’t think you do. You are good enough to cook anything” He continued, “You have all of that white folk cooking school learning and you have your mamas’ blood. People would kill to have a talent like you and here you are wasting your time, and taking up space here,” He always spoke roughly and straight to the point. Maurice was one of my fathers’ sisters’ old boyfriends. They dated for only a few years, but him and my father had always been close after that. They joked that talking about my aunt helped them to see how much they had in common beyond thinking she was the worst. My father would joke that he only hung around Maurice because he could cook, and he was good with the ladies. One day when he was drinking in the back of the restaurant, something he often did when we were closed, Maurice told me that my father saved his life. He said their friendship gave him something to live for when he had no light in his darkness. Its funny how differently they described their friendship. They never spoke more about it, it was just one of those things that was easy to accept like the sun rising every day.

Maurice never wanted me to work for him. He was adamant about it from the time that I left my father to come stay with him. I was young enough to not understand what was going on but still pretty broken up after losing everything in the hurricane. I was acting up pretty much every day from the time that I got to Atlanta, and he wasn’t too happy to deal with me. Maurice worked every day for majority of the day, so it’s not like he had to deal with it. One day, after one of those long days at work, he came back from working at the restaurant, and found me crying on the floor. Maurice never had kids, he never wanted kids from what he told me. He tried everything, but he could not get me to stop crying. Eventually he gave up and he carried me to the kitchen, to make me something to eat. He loved to tell the story, he explained that he never appreciated silence more so than when he turned around from the stove and realized that I stopped crying. After that, any time I would get into one of my moods he would take me to the kitchen with him. He told me he did it because he didn’t want me crying and scaring the neighbors. I don’t think that was true, just his way of doing something nice. He never wanted you to know how nice he was, but it never mattered: I love that man.

Now that It was time to leave the city, the restaurant, and everything I loved behind, I was stuck toiling over the small things. It was less about the things that I owned, than how I felt about them. It didn’t matter to me that I was going backwards. I don’t know how things would look in the future, but I would never lose my cooking skills. It didn’t help to think that far because I really didn’t know what the country would be like in a few months. I was going back to New Orleans to stay with my father and he was happy to have me, and I didn’t mind staying with him. It wasn’t a hard decision at all. He called me to extend the invitation himself ; him, and Maurice had been talking, and I guess closing the restaurant came into the conversation. My father drew the right conclusion that I was soon going to be running on fumes, thus his offer of housing.

My phone rang somewhere and startled me out of my reverie. I was laying in a pile of clothes, with two large boxes on either side that I was supposed to be filling, for the last hour. I was more than happy to have an excuse to do something besides agonize over this move. The phone vibration was strong enough that I knew my phone was close, but I couldn’t find it. Long after it had stopped ringing, and only after I swiped everything off of my bed in one sweeping motion, undoing all the “work” of the last hour, did I find my phone. Picking it up off of the floor where it fell, I saw that an unknown number called. I didn’t rush to call it back. Random phone calls gave me anxiety. Instead I scrolled through some of my texts. I answered a few texts from friends, people who wanted to hang before I left the city, and then I opened up an email from Maurice. He was extremely old school in some ways, insisting on me perfecting the old school methods of cooking, but one thing he loved: he loved his iphone. It took a lot of instruction from me, but soon he could use it like a master. He still perferred email no matter what I told him. The email had no subject line, I opened it and read:

Diri Djon Djon recipe by Mo the Second Coming.

I laughed when I read the title. It was a basic recipe for Haitian black rice, something I could make in my sleep usually, but from looking at the recipe I could see Maurice made a few of his own changes. It was the distraction I had been looking for, so I immediately hopped up to check to see if I had the ingredients in the kitchen. My kitchen was untouched because it was my favorite room in the house. I couldn’t bear to put anything away from it yet. I didn’t know how fresh my thyme was but almost all of the rest of the ingredients I had, so I just started cooking. Cooking to me was my therapy. I never was able to see a therapist in my life, but I would imagine they wouldn’t bring the same feeling that I got from stepping in front of the stove.

While the food was on the stove I called my father. It was a pandemic routine for me to call him some time in the afternoon every couple of days, and today I was curious about how the travel bans were working back in New Orleans. I didn’t want to go there and be surprised. Everything felt like a surprise nowadays with the pandemic. He was still teaching school virtually so sometimes he would be occupied, but today he picked up on the second ring.

“Playa Playa,” My father said when he picked up. That wasn’t a nickname, just an old school phrase he still used. My father was as old school as Mo, but a different old school. The type of guy that let you know what generation he was from during the first couple of seconds of your conversation. “When are you going to be here. I haven’t cleaned anything. I just been working.”

“Not for a few weeks Dad, I’m still packing,” I told him rolling my eyes. He asked me this every time we spoke.

“Oh dang, I’m hungry man,” He said dejectedly, and I laughed out loud. He loved his little joke routines, and I didn’t mind it as much as I did when I was younger. My mother would usually always protect me from the more cringey ones.

“Funny thing is, I’m cooking right now,” I told him. I stirred the pot slowly, watching the water boil. “Your best friend sent me this recipe, I think it’s his last one. He keeps telling me I took everything from him, and now I use it to make white people dishes.”

He laughed loudly, ignoring the fact that my ear was on the phone. “Who Mo? I was talking to him last night. He is entirely too old to be working still. I’m honestly glad that he is going to close the restaurant. Any alternatives to keep his business open would be too expensive while the pandemic is going on. He will be fine though. They have been trying to buy that property from him for years, and you know he never spends a cent.” I laughed after that last part because it was true. I learned all my penny pinching ways from Mo the second coming.

“You’re old too,” I pointed out. He laughed after that part because it was true.

“Ahh, the young don’t stay young. Be aware of old age, it is undefeated young man. What are ya making chef, ” He said in response.

“ Diri Djon Djon, one of Maurice’s recipes from Haiti. You know I picked up a thing or two from him in these years so I’m pretty sure I said that right”

“Picked things up? That’s your real father, It’s in your blood” He said laughing loudly. He never took anything too seriously. “That’s funny because we was just talking about that though, and that part of you doesn’t come from your second father.”

“I know, I know. You married a Haitian woman, fell in love with her, and then fell in love with her food,” My father told the story often enough that it was ingrained in my memory. In my deepest dreams my mother would be there, more specter than anything. And she would always be in the kitchen, always with a smile in her face. Its weird what you remember. I wonder if that was even a memory or I imagined it after so many years of my father telling me.

“Yeah sure, but its important to who you are. That’s rare ya know. Many people go their entire life trying to piece together themselves.” He spoke this last part softly, in a tone that I wouldn’t recognize from him. It only came up every once in a while, like a shooting star, or a cow born with a second head. My father never mentioned my mother but when he did he always spoke in the same tone.

I looked around at the mess of my room. The boxes that were overflowing with things that I could never imagine throwing away. I have been piecing myself together for years, and this was what it looked like. I thought I understood what my father was saying, but it sure didn’t resonate as I sat in a cluster of my own hoard. Even as I struggled to understand this, something magical was smelling from the kitchen though, and I reminded myself that I wasn’t just everything I owned. I could make that lovely smell happen wherever I went; a lot of who I was could never leave me even if I moved a thousand times.

“And you don’t understand,” He continued surprising me out of my thoughts, “That’s more than a part of you. You was basically raised on that. Maurice told me that after momma died the only thing he could do to stop you from crying was to cook some black rice.”

I froze and looked at the phone. Its funny how life works in ways that we can never understand. He spoke his words and it was just then that another waft of flavor came floating in from the kitchen, practically dragging out the memory.

It was years ago. When I first arrived to Maurice, he worked at the restaurant until late. I would stay in his apartment until he would get home. He would cook for me, and then he would go right to sleep because that’s all the energy he had left. I was a young kid who wanted his mother to read him to sleep every night, and I hated that I did and she wasn’t there. I hated everything about my new life. Maurice did not have a television in any of the rooms, and I couldn’t sleep at night because he did not let me sleep with the lights on. My father barely called because he was busy taking care of my mother. My mother had been sick before the hurricane had destroyed everything we owned. She was lucky to make it to a hospital in Oklahoma, but she would never leave it. My father loved her more than anything in the world. He didn’t want to leave me, but he had to follow my mother. He made sure I made it to the only person he trusted enough with his precious son. I think he loved me so much because I reminded him of my mother. I did not blame him for that, she was an amazing person.

One night, I was sleeping, waiting for Maurice to come back home. If there was one thing that I enjoyed, it was his cooking. Even after slaving in the kitchen all day, he still would take the time to come home and make me a hot meal. I really did appreciate this, I just thought he was a little old, and mean. He talked all the time about making the best of your situation. That was when he was around, so I didn’t mind when he left for work every morning. But when he came back I always knew I was in for a treat. Before long, the naps before he came home was excitement for me. On this day I was alone after staying with him for almost a month. He owned one of those old school voice recording machines that would start up after the phone rang. I didn’t know anything about it until that night. I guess my father had called, but no one had picked up. I don’t know if I woke up in time to hear the entire message, but when I woke up I heard a sound that I would never forget; my father crying. I could live for eighty more years, and hear everything that the world had to offer, play some music, make some music, and then go back and hear it again a second time, and still not forget what I heard that night. There is no sound that could help me to forget the sound of my father broken. He was calling for Maurice, and not me. I don’t think that he ever expected me to be listening to the voicemail.

“She Died Mo. My angel is gone.” He whispered in the phone. Those were the only words I heard him say before he started crying. He cried and I don’t know if he thought he disconnected the call but he hadn’t. Eventually I started crying as well. We cried in concert without knowing it, synchronized in love, and grief. My mother had been the entire world for both of us. She was the best thing I known in my short life up to that point. I didn’t fully understand what it meant for her to be gone, but that didn’t stop me from feeling as if my heart had been ripped out. The voicemail must have gotten full eventually, or maybe he realized he hadn’t hung up the phone because soon I could no longer hear him and I was alone with my tears, exactly how I felt. That’s how Maurice found me that night, crying my eyes out. He took me in the kitchen, and cooked for me, and I stopped crying. I would cry every day, every time I thought about my mother, and if he was around he would always bring me into the kitchen and teach me how to cook away my sadness. I cried a lot those first couple of years. I cried a lot the next year.

* * “Boy you still there,” my father said. He said it softly, as if he realized that I was deep in thought and he didn’t want to disturb me.

“Yeah Dad”

“You okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you think about your momma like that. I can’t not think about her. She was my everything son, and I never forgave myself for leaving you like that……I didn’t know who I was anymore…..and you and Mo….I…I didn’t mean to,” He fumbled to find the words. “That’s why I’m so glad you coming now. I mean I’m not happy you are losing your place, but hey”

Back than, I decided to stay with Maurice, and continue to go to school in Georgia after my mother died. I didn’t attend my mother’s funeral. A lot of her family was from New Orleans. There weren’t many people around at the time to bury her. She has a plot near the hospital in Oklahoma. I went to see it after I graduated culinary school, and I go back every year on that day. Maurice told me that my mother was the best cook he ever met until he had raised her son. I love that man. I love my father too, and I told him to relax. I thanked him for the place to sleep, and I promised to cook all of his meals when I got there. I finished cooking while we were on the phone. Something about packing didn’t seem so hard anymore. I made a mental note to email Maurice back, and thank him for the recipe. I memorized it while making it, something I could keep forever.

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