When we were last with Gerald on the streets of New Orleans, he was catching up with his long-time friend, Greg, who was fresh out of prison for the first time in a while…
We was young. We just wild, man.
Greg’s brother was named Tony. He had a brother named Kenny, and a brother named Michael.
His aunt was funny. She look like she got pregnant every month. She had so many kids, she had ‘em back to back.
His daddy, Jimmy, used to drive boats in the Mississippi River. And Brett was his mother.
This is how close me and Greg were. Greg mother used to tell him, “Where Baby Elephant at?”
They used to call me ‘Baby Gerald’, but she always say “Baby Elephant.”
“Where Baby Elephant at?”
He say, “He gone home.”
All of a sudden, she hear something in the closet. She come in to get something, I fall right out the closet.
I say, “Oh!”
“You ain’t need to be sleeping in this closet!”
She work at Charity Hospital. I never forget the Third Floor. There was the crazy people up there on the Third Floor. Me and Greg used to go up there on the Third Floor when I was a young boy and mess with the crazy people.
When I say “crazy”, they send them in cages up there.
The funny thing about being in the hospital, on the Tenth Floor, oh my God, you might see anything. It’s like the movie “It’s Alive” on the Tenth Floor. That’s how funny…
Charity Hospital is a good hospital. It’s like a hospital you can sit in the Emergency Room and just watch people. I used to see so much crazy stuff come in there. Me and Greg used to see people in there.
Then sometime we go sit up in the Veteran hospital. Man, we see some guys from WWI had wires hanging out of ‘em.
I’m like, “Damn.”
We just wild. Wild.
To be continued. Anderson’s first book, “Still Standing: How an Ex-Con Found Salvation in the Floodwaters of Katrina,” is available on Amazon.com.
