The Harajuku Girl of New Orleans

Prologue

Enter: Tatiana

            New Orleans is my city. It was my city before Katrina, it was my city while I was staying in Texas, and It’s my city now. I was born in the flower district on April 2^nd 1990 in my Nana’s bathroom, on a rainy day. My mom was 18 and lived with Nana Agnes (my great grandmother and her grandmother) who didn’t believe in doctors. ‘Doctors don’t know what they be talking about; we been doing it this way for longer than they been doing it their way.’ She used to say. She said it when I got a bee sting and she put a mixture of cornstarch and water on it, and she had said it when my mother was giving birth to me. I lived in that house with my mother and my Nana until I was 11. Then my life got turned topsy turvey for the first time. It was a bright and sunny morning, in contrast to the morning of my birth. I was in the bathroom holding my mothers sweaty hand, and she was holding mine. George Marshal Swan was on his way. My excitement over getting a little brother was drowned out by fear for my mom. It was the first birth I had ever witnessed, but Nana Agnes said it was high time I ‘learned how it all worked’. But after a while, after hours of screaming and no baby, even I knew something was wrong. Instead of having a new addition to the family, we lost two. I lost my mother and my baby brother, that sunny morning.

            Years later, in the great flood of Katrina, I lost Nana Agnes too. I stayed with Uncle Swan in Texas, but I learned all to soon that he didn’t like kids. As soon as he could he dumped me back in New Orleans. Alone with no where to go. ‘As soon as he could’ Was two weeks ago.