House of Blues

known thirteen-year-old crack dealers who had
to hide their stashes from their mothers—and not because they
feared punishment.
    Treme was itself falling down in places, but it still
had dignity; its residents didn't have the beaten-down feel of people
from the projects, still seemed to take joy in life. The Municipal
Auditorium was here, historically the site of the two biggest Mardi
Gras balls and now the site of the city's temporary casino.
    The auditorium was on the edge of the neighborhood,
just across Rampart Street from the French Quarter, and the real
estate agents all predicted the casino would vastly alter the
character of the Quarter near Rampart. It already had, to some
extent. Even without it, merely in anticipation, property values had
shot through the roof. A healthy Hollywood community had settled in,
and almost none of the old Creole town houses were still on the
market, having been snapped up by investors and speculators. On one
side of the street prosperity had already arrived.
    But no one thought the Treme would change. Broken
windows were common here. Paint peeled. Wood rotted. Formosan
termites chewed.
    On another case, Skip had met a prostitute who lived
in the French Quarter at the time, had since moved to the Iberville
Project to be with a man, and now lived in Treme. She was a sometime
informant; though, if the truth were told, she didn't really know
much.
    But she had a daughter, and Skip felt sorry for her,
gave her little cash gifts now and then. She hadn't heard from her in
six or eight months, had simply one day found a note with the
prostitute's new address on her desk—Jeweldean kept in touch. She
might not know how to find Delavon the dealer, but she was a
perfectly good place to start.
    Skip found her building, a once-proud Italianate town
house that didn't look too bad now—a ten-thousand-dollar paint job,
a few little repairs, and new plumbing would probably have made it
close to livable.
    She rang the bell and a woman came out on the
balcony.
    " Who's down there?"
    "Hey, Jeweldean. It's Skip Langdon."
    " Langdon. What you want, girl?"
    "Let me in, would you?" Skip was starting
to feel conspicuous—as if she had on one of those jackets with
Ponca in two-foot yellow letters on the back.
    Jeweldean's little girl was lying on the living room
sofa, watching television, covered with a cotton blanket and looking
far too sad for a child not yet in school. Skip hadn't actually met
her before, her dealings with Jeweldean usually taking place on the
phone or after the girl was asleep.
    "This is Tynette," Jeweldean said. "Say
hello, baby."
    The child complied, seeming barely able to get the
word out.
    "Le's go in the kitchen." When they were
out of earshot, she said, "We went over by my mama's for Easter
and Tynette got shot."
    "Shot? That little girl?" Skip knew it
happened all the time, but this girl was so small it shocked
her—small and the child of someone she knew.
    "We moved out of the projects 'cause of all that
mess, but we had to go see my mama. She live over in St.
Thomas"—another project—"and Tynette was playin'
jump-rope. The shootin' started and she didn't know what to do. The
other kids run away, but Tynette too scared. Poor little baby, you
should have seen her lyin' in the courtyard, still wearin' her Easter
dress, blood all over that pretty yellow skirt, on her white shoes,
little legs and everything. Her grandrnama bought her that dress."
Jeweldean's face was stoic, her voice steady.
    Her life is so different from mine. She's been
living with this for so long, she can't even cry anymore.
    "How badly was she hurt?"
    "Bad." Jeweldean nodded, as if trying to
convince herself. "Pretty bad. She's gon' be okay though."
She nodded some more. "She can walk, and tha's more than my
cousin's baby can. He was shot when he was twelve years old; he
seventeen now and he ain' never walked another step. Tynette can
walk. She be fine."
    "How do you get her to the doctor?"
    "Biggie take us sometime. Man I been seein'. We
manage." She flung her head back, proud; not wanting to say
more. Holding something back.
    But that was what Skip wanted. It gave her an
opening. "You might need to take a taxi sometime," she
said, and pulled a couple of twenties out of her purse, half of what
she had at the moment. "Better be prepared."
    " I sure do thank you," Jeweldean said.
    Skip thought she heard a slight sigh behind the
words, which came out low and slow, not the way Jeweldean talked at
all.