The world is a lusty and ravenous whore. Her chewing us up and spitting us out can't be prevented. Nothing can keep her from sticking her fangs into the ripest of us and sucking us dry. She fattens us for her slaughter; enriches us, lets us drink heartily from her breast until we are so full enough of happiness and contentment, that, when she comes to finally show us her gaping inescapable maw, we accuse her of betrayal, as if we'd never had any prosperity, success or love to show for our lives.
Living; is being set up for ultimate failure. So; why try? We try because that is the construct; to grow from the known, to venture, to create, experiment, mold, synthesize, postulate, establish, fortify, secure, illuminate, perpetuate, preserve, prolong and extend.
These are all viable methods of waiting, of killing time. Because who can really die; without living first?
It was on Saint John's Eve, a week after her eighteenth birthday, in New Orleans, two years after Katrina's deluge, where Victria found herself facing the fire. Its flames rose high, but was otherwise constricted for the sake of jumpers. Such is the tradition, for over two hundred years now, that bonfires are lit on the evening before the 24th of June, so that any person, devotee or drunkard, might leap the flames to celebrate the birth of the Saint that prepared the way for Christ's coming, to dare the city's devils or to ward off the demons in their own troubled hearts. So had Victria been told by an old Octoroon woman selling purses on a street side table. Alone then, she wandered; drawing ever closer to the steady beacon like a moth to an ever fleeting moon.
Once she'd arrived at the east bank of Bayou Saint John, Victria's path became wrought with singing and dancing revelers and devotees; drunken with their own natural happiness or happiness induced by libation. She too would be drunk, but not until she'd jumped the fire. Victria had walked its perimeter as sweating men, their bare chests and backs gleaming black or gold, built it up. Slowly she walked, deliberately; studying the bomb fire to find its shallow spots, its faults, its weaknesses.
The men fueling the fire, arrogant and playful, flirted with her, taunting her to jump. We'll tell you when to go, they'd said. We'll catch you on the other side, they'd assured. So they'd spoken until Victria had made her seventh pass, when suddenly she'd become transfixed by the sight of a young black woman. She stopped, blocked by the creature in her path; the bright black and white enigma in her eyes, and the glowing dark brown skin of her face, neck and bear arms. She wore a sleeveless blue dress; simple, tailored, by her mother, an aunt or perhaps by her own hand.
"Where are your friends?" the young woman had boldly yet pleasantly inquired, "Tourists always have their friends or some; companion."
"I didn't bring anyone." Victria had answered, "I'm just; me."
The pretty black woman, matronly yet alluring, assessed Victria in her tight white jeans, sleeveless white shirt and yellow discount store flip flops.
"Hmm. You have no one to care for you after you jump through the fire?"
Victria turned to glance at the dancing flames, writhing like spellbound phantoms, and then brought her gaze back to the woman.
"Well; I'm not sure I'll be jumping through that fire." Confessed Victria.
"But you want to."
Victria paused to study the woman. She was of a maternal yet sensual port in air; her figure slim, her back straight, her neck slender and inviting, a necklace of simple black cord arrayed with a variety of dried leaves and twigs covering the clef of her breasts. From her ears she'd hung a variety of gold loops, and her long hair was tied back with a blue silk scarf, the rich wiry black weight of it, thick and long as a horse's tail.
"I'd like to; yes." Victria finally answered.
"Well alright then;" smiled the handsome New Orleanian, "So let's get you wet."
Victria became suddenly flushed and was so caught off guard by the woman that she'd realized too late that she'd been seized. Eyes wide and mouth verging on uttering some protest, the tourist looked around her to see that her arms were being held by two men she recognized as the keepers of the fire. Then a third, a Creole man, came round the front of her, carrying a five gallon pale of what looked to be fairly murky water. Victria's objections came in nervous laughter and high pitched screams as the man hoisted the pail over her head and dumped its contents.
Victria screamed with raging laughter as the briny water drenched her hair and saturated her clothes. Then, the men laughing and letting her loose, Victria regarded herself. She looked down, aghast; her white clothes pasted to her skin, the pink and pride of her nipples visible through her shirt as was the dark patch of hair between her legs. Her arms still out stretched, as if poised for flight or crucifixion, Victria raised her eyes to the woman smiling before her. She had been uttering something in a language Victria didn't recognize, her long fingers intertwined in a single fist, the knuckles held beneath her chin.
"What name do you go by?" asked the woman; dropping her hands and then folding them again behind her back.
Water beaded and dripped from the tip of Victria's nose as she glared at the woman.
"My name is Victria." She said.
"I am Francisca Botchwey." Said the other, "And I say go on now! Jump! Show these lambs! Send those demons back to where they belong Victria, mighty Victria!"
Seething with anger and sensual zeal, her wet hair clinging to her cheeks, Victria regarded Francisca Botchwey. The woman stared defiantly back. Then, in a sudden burst, Victria sprinted toward the fire, leaped into its center, and boldly lingered inside the controlled inferno.
Its flames licked her body as her vision became obscured with the steam of her baptism. Then, before fear could take its hold, Victria catapulted herself out from the blaze and landed on the other side. She fell just short of slamming her knees against the paved walk, crouched, hands out, the sudden sting of asphalt scraping the skin from her palms.
Quickly, she rose again and turned to look over her shoulder at the conquered fire. Her senses were suddenly keen as her heart beat wildly in her chest and a storm of jubilant applause rang in her ears.
Victria prepared to move. But, realizing that she was rooted to the spot, she looked down and saw that her flip flops had melted to the pavement. Gasping, Victria laughed, slipped her feet from them, and then searched the crowd for Francisca.
As the delighted Creole men settled another log onto the fire, the woman suddenly appeared at Victria's side. She looked down and raised a quizzical eye brow as she probed Victria's melted flip flops with her own sandaled feet. Then, turning her gaze back up to meet Victria's, the radiant black woman said:
"You are born again this night brave Victria. Shall we find you new shoes to commemorate the occasion?"
As they whiled their way back through the French Quarter, the two women exchanged brief histories, though Francisca spoke long to answer the many questions Victria had about New Orleans, its people and how they were getting along after Katrina's floods receded.
Francisca's accent was West African in nature. She'd emigrated from Ghana, where English was as native as the language, Twi, that she'd spoken in her mother's house. Arriving in New Orleans, three years before the storm, Francisca stayed with relatives, worked at odd jobs throughout the city and saved her money.
Then, over those fateful twelve hours in August of 2005, Francisca watched the sheets of rain fall, the bayous rise, the levies break, homes crumble and the dead float by on flooded streets like so many rolling logs of fallen timber.
Her uncle's home had floated away. Along with countless others, he was lost. Francisca had only time enough to gather her six little nieces and nephews and herd them up to the older part of the city. Her intended destination was the great Cathedral Saint Louis.
Together they ran, hands linked, avoiding piles of bricks in the road that were chimneys hours before. Francisca and her charges just put Burgundy Street behind them when a two-story brick and mortar structure, a former slave quarters, collapsed and shook the ground.
Screaming, crying, blinded by the plummeting rain, Francisca called for the children to run to the Cathedral Saint Louis. They'd scurried up the steps to the two hundred and eighty year old church and banged their fists against the door, but no one came.
Then they hurried around the back, looking for another way in, but that too was closed. In that instant, sheltered enough under the church's awning, Francisca gathered the children around her. Whirling her head, her attention was drawn by two sharp cracks.
Peering into the courtyard behind the cathedral, where the great marble statue of Christ stood, his left hand outstretched, Francisca watched in terror as two large oaks, at opposite ends of the courtyard, pulled up earth and nearly thirty feet of wrought iron fencing as they plummeted, in crisscrossed paths, down upon the statue.
As the huge trees shook the ground and settled against the earth, Francisca stared incredulously at the great stone Christ that still stood, unscathed but for the index finger and the thumb of its extended left hand.
"Why do you look at me so Victria?" asked Francisca.
The two young women sat across from one another at one of the tables set outside Vieux Carre on Bourbon Street. Victria lazily stirred her gin and tonic as she studied Botchwey nursing her glass of wine.
"I'm sorry," she said, "It's just that I'm frankly astounded; by you, your experiences."
Francisca slowly closed her eyes and shook her head.
"I am nothing." She said, "I am a creature seeking comfort, trying to keep the peace in my heart, to survive in a city I came to love, was broken, and still love."
Francisca gazed off toward the canal. Passersby had become numerous; the French Quarter at its liveliest at the witching hour.
"And your nieces and nephews," asked Victria, "Where are they now?"
"With the money I'd had earned up until then," Francisca answered, "I sent them to our extended family north, in Chicago. I had been; overwhelmed. I; broke down gradually, over the course of the following days, as the flood waters rose and then receded."
