The Heavens Rise

FROM THE JOURNALS OF NIQUETTE DELONGPRE

Anthem Landry came to us in the middle of sophomore year, a transfer student from an all-boys’ Catholic high school in Jefferson Parish, where he’d been required to wear a khaki uniform to class each day. That’s why he showed up for his first day of class at Herschel B. Cannon in acid-washed blue jeans and a black T-shirt with the phrase PAIN IS WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY printed on the back in paint-splatter font. Obviously he thought the absence of an official dress code meant he could attend his new school looking like he was about to go fishing with his brothers.

If he hadn’t been almost six feet tall, there might have been a few snickers as he made his way to the nearest empty desk. But the other students in our English class that day registered his size and his outfit with the same stunned silence.

What I remember even more vividly is the look he gave me once he took a seat and sensed me staring holes in the back of his thick, olive-skinned neck; a look of such unguarded fear that my breath caught in my throat. At first, I was filled with pity for him—there’s nothing worse than being the new kid. If Ben and I hadn’t had each other the year before, I’m not sure what we would have done. But then I found myself dizzy from a strange combination of desire and opportunity. I wasn’t used to seeing that kind of vulnerability in a boy of his size and good looks, and I couldn’t help but see it as an invitation.

That afternoon, Ben and I found him sitting alone in the central courtyard, a few yards away from the giant oak tree where most of the freshmen and sophomores gathered during lunch, inhaling a plate of turkey tetrazzini as if it were the first meal he’d consumed in months.

I think I was the first one to speak. So your name’s Anthem, huh? That’s kinda cool.

And Anthem said something like. My mom’s got a thing with names. My brotha says she likes tuh name her kids like we all celebrities or royalty or something.

Ben and I exchanged a look as we heard the guy speak. The accent was way too Jefferson Parish, that was for sure: 100% yat. (And yat, by the way, is a derogatory nickname for working-class folk who live along the lakefront, folks who see crawfish boils and hair spray as a religion, folks who dress their toddlers in Saints gear every game day and speak with what is essentially a Cajun accent deprived of its French lilt and turned into something you might hear in the South Bronx.) We could fix the clothes with a few trips to Perlis or the Lakeside Mall. But the accent might be hopeless. Or so we thought. At the time, we underestimated how several years surrounded by genteel Uptown drawls would soften the edges of it dramatically.

Anthem went on to explain how his older brother Charlie had really been named for King Charlemagne, and Merit, his next oldest brother—he had five in all, a figure that astonished Ben and me into deeper silence—thought he’d been named for good character but the rumor in the family was that his mother had just been a fan of Merit Ultra Light cigarettes before the doctors had told her not to smoke during her many pregnancies.

They were a family of riverboat pilots—the men were, at least—and most of them lived within several blocks of one another near the spot where Avron Drive dead-ended with the Lake Pontchartrain levy. Anthem’s dream was to join the ranks of the New Orleans–Baton Rouge Steamship Pilots Association just like most of his brothers had done, pulling down $300,000 a year piloting massive cargo ships and container vessels up and down the treacherous curves of the Mississippi.

His father, also a pilot, had died the year before in a car accident and the payout from his life insurance policy had allowed Anthem to transfer to what was arguably the most prestigious private school in all of Louisiana. When Ben revealed that his father was also dead, I could practically feel every muscle in Anthem’s body relax a bit, and the moment of silence we all shared seemed strangely comfortable given the subject of Ben’s admission. The confines of adolescence excused any of us from coming up with some empty, comforting platitude to soothe the pain of a lost parent. Shared pain, unresolved and beating inside each of us like a second heart, formed our initial bond with the strikingly handsome new kid from the wrong part of town.

After what felt like an appropriate amount of silence, I brought up the idea of a shopping excursion after school, as if it would be as spontaneous and innocuous as a trip to CC’s Coffee House. I can’t remember exactly how I phrased it, but I tried to be diplomatic. Something about getting him some stuff to wear that would make him feel more comfortable. He played dumb; he admitted as much later. But I took the bait.

Comfortable? Did he look like he was uncomfortable? The jeans fit pretty nice, didn’t they?

Finally I blurted out something like, You’re not going to win over a bunch of new friends with that shirt, okay?

He gave us both a big grin and said, Looks like it won you two over just fine.

It seems inevitable now, that Anthem and I would end up together. But when I remember those first few weeks after we became a trio, I can still feel the constant fear that he would leave us, that his imposing physical form would demand that he turn into one of the brutish jocks Ben and I so despised.

He fell in love with me instead.

Our first kiss was at a Mardi Gras parade. Several nights before Fat Tuesday, the Krewe of Ares rolled through Uptown, and Ben and I invited Anthem to join us at our regular parade watching spot at Third and St. Charles Avenue, in front of an old florist shop and surrounded by Greek Revival mansions, their front porches crowded with other drunken revelers.

Ben had stolen a bottle of scotch from his mother’s liquor cabinet and the three of us had been sharing sips out of his secret flask. Anthem took every opportunity to get closer to me as we were jostled by the crowd of parade-goers, their arms shooting skyward as papier-mâché floats rolled past us belching diesel fumes. The masked riders on board tossed handfuls of glittering doubloons and plastic beads into the night and the giant heads of Greek gods and goddesses at the head of each float just missed scraping the thick oak branches overhead. Once he’d found the courage to press his chest up against my back, and once both of our arms were raised at the same time, Anthem Landry wrapped his fingers around both of my wrists, turned me as if we were going to dance, and kissed me with a gentle determination that made me lose my balance and fall against him.

I had known the bonds of friendship before that night. I had known loyalty and unshakable commitment of a certain chaste kind. And while there had been a few fumbling experiences where I’d let boys get to second base, pure romantic affection had been unknown to me until that very moment. Until Anthem Landry took me in his powerful arms and kissed me, I had never known what it was like to become briefly lost in someone else’s desire to know your smell and your taste. And that’s what I became; blissfully, irretrievably lost.

Bloodred plastic beads bearing the Krewe of Ares logo—a spear and Spartan helmet—slammed to the pavement all around us, some of them snapping upon impact. From a few yards away, Ben watched, slack-jawed with amazement. But I was lost to everything except the scotch-sharpened breath of my first and only real lover.

Ironic, I guess, that I experienced this kind of intimacy for the first time at a Mardi Gras parade named for an ancient god of violence and war. Or perhaps not, considering everything that came later.