ENCW 205: Art & Identity in New Orleans

Throughout my twenty-two years of life, I have lived in a myriad of houses across multiple states. I was born in a small town in Texas thirty-five miles from any city of importance and lived there for roughly the first three years of my life; between then and my tenth birthday my mother and I moved to North Carolina, back to Texas, back to North Carolina with a half-brother and step-father in tow, then Florida, and for the third and final time, back to North Carolina. I celebrated my tenth birthday one week after moving, friendless and in a house that was not mine.

***

Located on the corner of a lively intersection in Forest, Virginia is a little green house. Compared to the vibrant houses that surround it on both Thomas Jefferson and Waterlick Road, this house is quite bleak; however, there is something peculiar about it. Despite the plywood boarding the two windows to the left of the porch urging onlookers to keep out, there is still something inviting in the front of the house. Perhaps it is the white awning perched before the front porch; the pale green siding of the house, fading ever so slightly as each year passes; or the forgotten window to the right, beckoning the curious to peek inside.

There is a neatness to the front of the house that is unlike the back. Overgrown trees force themselves upon the railing of the back porch; the porch itself is slathered in dark red paint, contrasting against the soft green of the house. To the left of the porch is a rusted steel drum, tilting slightly beneath the weight of the decaying wood placed against it. Serpents lurk beneath the rot of the porch, slithering through the dead grass and fallen tree branches that reside in what was once a backyard. Cooperatively, this sinister image of nature reclaiming itself encapsulates the slightly open back door – a hidden entrance for those who seek it.

***

We lived with a family friend on the outskirts of Southport, North Carolina before the house on Coastal Drive, the four of us sharing a single bedroom with their pet snake. I was halfway through the fifth grade before we moved into our house – my home. I have seen the house on Coastal Drive ravaged from the inside out and turned anew. It did not take long after settling in for my parents to start renovating, something they would never finish before leaving for Virginia. I was upset over losing the rugged burgundy carpet covering the floor of my bedroom at the time, but I can no longer imagine anything but the eggshell-colored carpet that I left behind and the steel blue paint of the walls, hiding the sage green underneath. The attached bathroom received little appreciation with one wall tackily painted yellow and the others a teal blue, both colors splattered carelessly across the sink basin.

I left North Carolina one month before my nineteenth birthday. I did not realize then that I was leaving a house unfinished; a house covered in splotches of spackling paste, painted in a various amount of unmatching colors, with a room in the back left completely untouched.

***

Pieces of a past life are discarded across the soiled carpet inside. Bulky multicolored Christmas lights lie beneath a once-elegant vanity chair. Blocking the doorway of the bathroom is a black sun hat, the pink of the silk fabric around it barely recognizable amidst the dull color of the carpet and peeled wallpaper. To the right, a single red Christmas ornament recoils against the chaos.

In a separate room, mold has begun to overtake the beautiful Carolina blue border around the tarnished mint green double doors. A large portion of the deep silver wallpaper has peeled, revealing the bare, water-stained wall behind. Covering the stained, presumably burgundy colored carpet are pieces of the crumbling ceiling above. Thrown atop the clutter is a teddy bear, a Christmas present forgotten; the bright red of its polka-dotted blouse prominent against the green and blue of the wall behind it.

***

Today, I hardly recognize the house I once lived in. The cracked pieces of kitchen tile have been replaced with hardwood flooring, the eggshell-colored carpet now an espresso brown. The house on Coastal Drive is a hollow shell of the house I once knew, a house that is no longer mine.

***

This little green house, resting on the corner of a bustling intersection, is decomposing from the inside out. Yet, despite the mold-covered walls and carpet, the collapsing ceiling above and the four feet of stagnant water flooding the basement below, life persists. A fairly new box of saltwater taffy sits atop a hollow counter alongside a can of Hot Shot insecticide and a paper plate of molded food; discolored socks hang from a makeshift clothesline near the back of the house. All of which suggesting that this abandoned house may not be entirely forgotten, that life still exists within.