Neighborhood Story Project Writing Workshop Anthology
David’s house on Saint Peter St.
from “Corner Stories”
The house is located on any street in New Orleans–any street because the neighborhood is like many in the city. In fact, one person told us that people who live in other neighborhoods think that this house is in theirs. Even though that doesn’t seem unusual, to think that there would be two houses in the same city that look alike, this particular house is unique, one-of-a kind, singularly unusual. This house has a story and you know it as soon as you come upon it.
The first impression it gives is life, vibrancy, an intense creativity. Color explodes from every inch, covering everything in its path: from the sidewalk, up the stairs, around the columns, on the doors, to the walls, and even the porch swing. I say colors, but it is more than many solid colors together. It is art, art on every surface–so much of it that individually you could study each column as its own painting. Flowers growing from their bases, intermingling purples, yellows, blues vining upward, reaching to the roof. Or the stairs, twirling, swirling patterns of white lines, interconnected, leading you up to the porch, with sparkles of glitter reflecting in the sunlight. Colors escape from every board on the front of the house.
A mural? A picture out of its frame? There is no frame that could contain all of this expression, that could hold it between straight lines for us to peer at and comment. There is no framework for a person to rationalize and contain what is happening here. I say happening because this creation is still growing, like a child, always changing, the future is unknown. It’s ironic that this creation can be compared to a child, because the very reason it exists is because of a mother’s love for her only son, David.
David never would have asked his mother to paint the house like this. He probably wouldn’t want to live in a house that was so “loud,” which is funny, you see, because David was a DJ. He made music, mixed sounds, scratched records. His music was always turned up so you could not only hear, but feel, the bass. Yes, it was loud.
Both creative, mother and son. They were so much the same in the way they lived life, breaking barriers, giving voice to those who are silent, stretching boundaries until they break and creating new possibilities in this world. David’s music breaks barriers. His mixes blend rhythm and melody that shouldn’t fit together, moving seamlessly through odd and even time signatures. He blends hardcore gangsta rap with beautiful, graceful melodies– speaking the harsh reality of the streets and at the same time reaching for the hope and beauty of life.
A friend of his said that David didn’t glorify the gangsta life in his music, but he did tell the truth about it. You see, David knew the reality of the mean streets of New Orleans. He was born and grew up in this city of blendings.
He himself was a mixture. Not one thing or another. Not one color or another. His mother tells the story of driving him and two girls in the car, and one of them asked, “What color is David?” She asked them a question in return, “What color do you think he is?” The child who was white said, “White.” The child who was black said, “Black.” David lived as a young black man in New Orleans. His friends, peer group and girlfriends were all black.
They are endangered here, young black men, the targets of so much violence and harassment. Either they’re looking out for police who will harass them for hanging out together in public, or they have to be watching their backs for someone with hatred or greed in their heart, a gun in their hand, and the unbelievable desire to kill them. I say unbelievable because that’s the way it feels to me, and feels to any mother who ever lost a child to murder.
When I met David’s mother, I had just moved here from a small quiet town that was mostly white. I grew up safe and isolated from the drama of life in the city. Even though I understood prejudice because I am a lesbian, I never had the experience of that prejudice turning into hate and violence.
I assumed from my place of white safety, that David was a teenager with the usual adolescent concerns–girlfriends, school, what happens after high school and what’s for dinner. I’m sure he also had to deal with others’ opinions of his mother’s partner being a woman. Does David have two mothers, or am I his stepfather? But it never occurred to me that he would be concerned with life and death as part of what is daily reality for him and his friends.
David knew this reality. He would look through the obituaries when he was only a teenager, looking for people he knew who had been killed.
Then one hot night in July, it happened. The unthinkable. David was murdered in front of his door. He opened the door to someone who came to kill him–an assassination. He answered the door with his socks on and a bowl of cereal, for his girlfriend, in his hand. I could tell you all the bloody details, the screams in the air, the crowd that gathered, and the sounds of sirens that yielded nothing but a body bag. The neighborhood children ask questions, “How did he die? Where did they shoot him? Why was he killed? Who did it?”
His mother responds in these moments saying, “What does it matter? He’s still dead. I will not freeze that one moment and forget his whole life. His life was about more than just the night of his death.” In fact, even on the night of his death she was more concerned about him than herself. She never felt his love end, and she knew her love for her son still existed–that he still existed, his soul, his essence. She knew he went on.
She had a vision of colors streaming down her arms and hands, across the pavement and all around her in the air. She knew it was because of David. She vowed to make this place the most beautiful place in the world. It is a threshold, a bridge between two worlds. No one would ever pass this place and not know that someone lived and died here. It would become a memorial, a monument, a reminder and tribute–not only to David but to all the other young black men who lose their lives the same way.
A mother grieves hard for the loss of her only child. It is horrific, a nightmare you can’t wake from. When David’s mother was missing her son and couldn’t get peace, she could hear her son tell her “Go paint something, Momma.” And that’s just what she did. She painted.
She often says the only way to counter destruction is with creation. And her creativity is aggressive, painting everything as fast as a thought, putting color everywhere. She said she didn’t want to live in a world where children are murdered, so she was creating another one: a vibrant, life-loving, intensely beautiful, peaceful world.
We live in this painting, this world within a world, this bridge to the other side of life, where you feel something so strong. Some people get dizzy when they come into this place. Some people feel something spiritual that can’t be defined. One child said, “I know I’m in New Orleans, but it doesn’t feel like I’m in New Orleans.”
It is comforting to be here even though the explosion of color took me by surprise. I was living in a black and white world and this color everywhere called me to awaken to a fuller spectrum of living. I never knew that death could bring one to such vibrant life. And it is growing, this creation, this loving memorial, this garden of Eden. It is growing like a child getting stronger, the love between mother and son. Never ending. Forever. The beginning.
