If you’ve ever found yourself in Tremé on Mardi Gras Day, you know what it’s like to be caught up in a wash of colors, horns, feathers, beads, banners, and beats. A stiff cocktail of music, dance, and good times.
Twenty years ago you’d have enjoyed the same drink, albeit with a more generous pour. Had you done so on one particular block of Claiborne, and had you looked up to one of the windows above, you may have seen a young girl staring right back watching the people on the street go by.
Tenaj Jackson was a little girl who dreamt of adventure in lands far beyond her block, beyond N. Claiborne, and far from New Orleans. Today that little girl is 30 years old. She is still a dreamer. Still interested in people, places, things.
She sits across from me at CC’s on Esplanade. Her manicured hand hugs the cardboard sleeve of her hot tea. She wears a long, casual, and stylish dress. Her hair is piled politely on top of her head. Her manner is relaxed, even bubbly, undisrupted by the loud noises from the espresso machine behind her. Her smile is engaging and eager.
We chat about being raised in 1990s Tremé, the importance of community, a need for adventure, and the great divide that is Canal Street.
“Most people who grew up on this side of Canal don’t venture to the other side unless they have to,” she shares, “and you almost never really have to.”
Tenaj identifies as Creole. She appreciates the community mentality of New Orleans. How family is a term that runs both deep and wide. How change happens slowly and all at once at the same time. She has experienced life in all corners of the U.S. and as far as Bahrain, yet she finds her center in the historic Creole corridors of New Orleans.
This is her story…
The Treme Community
Tenaj's story begins with her mother, Debra Jackson. In the 1990's Ms. Debra started an afterschool program called "Kid's House." It was run out of the annex of St Augustine Catholic Church, the Catholic Church the family attended where Tenaj would become an altar girl.
As the operation grew, it needed a new home. Ms. Debra appealed to her father, who opened up a house on Claiborne. The house which would become Tenaj’s home.
“People needed a neutral place. Some people may have been put off by the center being in a church. So Mom made it happen… in the house.”
Tenaj and her family lived in the house on Claiborne rent-free while Ms. Debra continued her good works.
“My mother was always saying, you can’t do anything in life if you’re hungry. People need to eat!”
Ms. Debra realized such a big space could serve even more people and soon she partnered with Second Harvest and opened the food bank as well. She poured over grants and reached out to donors for funding.
“Don’t get me wrong, my mother can be crazy. And, she was crazy passionate about this. She was a trailblazer.”
Ms. Debra was a true trailblazer and received awards from the city as such. She didn’t believe in children sitting at home alone after school. She believed in keeping the neighborhood history going. She wanted to pass on pride of heritage. She believed in making people feel at home. And, she did so through activity, song, study groups, and of course... food.
“There was this one kid who loved beets. He didn’t know what they were so he called them red pickles. You can bet regardless of what she was cooking, she always kept a can of red pickles around for him.”
Can You Tell Me How To Get, How To Get To Orleans St?.. (OK, Ave).
The house on Claiborne sat in the Seventh Ward near the former Lafitte Projects on a block of cupped by the Orleans I-10 ramp. But, Tenaj does not describe the street of her childhood home with the cold industrial tone one might assume from the property description.
Instead, she fondly describes a street tiled with historic, family-run and operated businesses. Many owned by her grandfather including a game room, liquor store, and a two-story building she called home.
Her home, a former brothel, included the community center and food bank and this supplied Tenaj with a steady stream of people to observe. She describes them in the same way some people describe extended family.
“Anyone who came in from the street (you know, homeless people or addicts, or whoever) they knew me. They watched out for me. They watched out for my sister. They watched out for my sister's car. Things like that.”
This conjured an image for me of a sort of upside-down, Sesame Street. If it were, Tenaj was the Elmo of the block. Happy, optimistic, and on good terms with everyone from the property managers to Oscar the Grouch.
This turned out handy as disputes settled by gunfire were not an uncommon occurrence. Tenaj brings them up as happenstance; part of the fabric. The way a transplant might talk about earthquakes or tornados in their hometown. They happened. They were scary. Life went on.
“We’d hear gunshots at night, usually from out front of one of the clubs. I’d roll onto the floor, grab my pillow and keep sleeping.”
I wondered if she ever envisioned her environment being different. What would she change if she could?
“There were so many clubs opening, closing, opening again. I remember thinking, ‘why another club? Why not a Pottery Barn or something?!”
Tenaj’s sister looked at things a little different. She was a do-er, and she found comfort in God. Tenaj recalls an instance where a man was gunned down in his car outside of her home.
“My sister woke all of us up. Told us all that we needed to pray.”
I asked who her sister was praying for? The person who got shot? Perhaps for the soul of the shooter.
Tenaj smiles an adds, " I don't know. Both?"
Running Away... to Gentilly
In 2003, Mardi Gras was gearing up and so were the parties that went with it. Hundreds if not thousands celebrated in the Claiborne underpass, right in front of the house. By age 14, Tenaj wanted nothing more than to not participate. Instead, she boarded a cruise ship.
“Dad and I had both had it with Mardi Gras. My sister offered to take us on a ‘Mardi Gras Cruise.’”
The cruise was not Mardi Gras themed at all. Quite the opposite. It provided relief from the revelry on Claiborne, and so it became an annual tradition. Upon returning, from their third cruise in 2005, Tenaj began to pack her bags.
“I was never going to run away. I just liked thinking about it.”
Her sister witnessed this and did something. She told Mom and Dad. They packed up the house and moved to an apartment on Chef Menteur and began thinking about a new place to call home. A few months later, a friend helped find a cute little detached house in Gentilly. They packed up for good and got settled... or so they thought.
“My Mom had just gotten all the new furnishings when Katrina hit. Lucky for us, my sister made us get up and out of town.”
Lucky indeed. Tenaj explained that had they stayed in Tremé they would not have evacuated. The house was two-stories tall, with very tall ceilings. Ceilings that a loose billboard would crash through during the storm.
“Part of it’s still there. A tiny little shack that I think is a snowball place or something. It’s hard to see. It’s like ‘that is my house! That was our lives!”
I checked. The lot Tenaj once called home is now occupied by the highly popular Sidney's Snowballs shown above.
I can relate to the feeling of driving by somewhere you can't truly go back to. The recognition that the world kept spinning with out a thought to your history or your opinion. It's a feeling that only those who have been through can understand. One that far too many New Orleanians share.
"Nothing against progress or snowballs it's just that those were homes..." she trails off.
Travel Bug Takes Flight
Tenaj may have always had the travel bug, but Katrina helped it flourish. She was no longer dreaming out a window or watching people on her block. Her sister helped find shelter in Long Beach, California. Tenaj joined her high school’s Diversity Club.
“I thought this is what it’s like to not live Creole.”
Her world in New Orleans was comprised mostly of white and black people. She knew New Orleans had a Vietnamese and Hispanic population she just never really saw it.
“I had my first Asian friends. We went on hikes. We talked about our feelings… it was crazy and I loved it.”
Tenaj loved it. Ms. Debra, not so much, she missed home badly. The Jackson family rebuilt their lives and their homes in Gentilly but not before Tenaj would experience six high schools and not before the travel bug bit hard.
Post-graduation Tenaj went to theatre school at Manhattan’s Neighborhood Playhouse where she learned from a woman trained by Martha Graham. She joined Americorps. She followed her sweetheart to Bahrain and then to South Dakota.
“South Dakota was the biggest culture shock by far,” she assures me. "I searched the world over and found so many wonderful things. But I also learned what I was taking for granted. There's a sense of community in New Orleans that you can search the world over and not find anywhere else."
That and the weather?
"That and the weather!"
New Job. New Man. New Outlook. In New Orleans.
One winter in South Dakota was plenty enough to send Tenaj packing. Tenaj packed up for her sister’s house in Slidell and never looked back. She soon found a new job, a new man, and a new home in Mid City.
"Being away made me appreciate the city more. So many of my friends have moved away, and the city has changed. But, there's a spirit here I couldn't find anywhere else."
A spirit it would seem that Tenaj takes inspiration from. Like her mother, she’s currently engaged with the community. She is working with kids and pursuing her passion as an instructor of competitive gymnastics, and she loves it. She works with kids performing at just under the Junior Olympic level.
“Kids are so resilient they don’t even know what resilience is.”
Her new man has been bitten by the New Orleans bug as well. He’s a barber and performer. And he loves Mardi Gras.
“I love Mardi Gras, and I appreciate it, but I don’t need it. But he does. So we are gonna have to trip... a lot!”
I asked. There are no Mardi Gras cruises on their horizon, and her bags aren’t packed, yet. She loves Mid City but, if she could live anywhere, it would be Tremé.
“It’s not just that it’s historically important. It was very family-oriented!... I think people like to tell the story of the violence. It is after all named after Claude Tremé, a slave owner and murderer. But it's the community that made it special.”
Today she says she still strolls through Tremé reminiscing. Most of her friend’s family homes are Airbnbs. That said, Tenaj would still gladly take up residence. She may have flown far but, she's still the same girl at heart.
“I can picture myself in Tremé, living somewhere near the church. A street with big trees. I’d sit and just watch."
Watch who?
"All the people on the street go by.”
Ms. Debra is still in Gentilly and regularly volunteers at St. Augustine.
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