Arnethia... A Heartwarming Tale in New Orleans

By Dr. Sarah Allen

When you love a place, and really, really love it, so much you feel it in your soul, that place will love you back. New Orleans took me in, wrapped its arms around me and embraced me, rooting its deep, deep soul straight into my heart.

Arthenia…My final day in NOLA.

Walking back to my airbnb with my lunch in hand from Parkcity the home of the original po’boy, I passed by two older black ladies chatting. I smiled at them and said, “Hi there”. They smiled back, “Hey baby. I like your hair," one called out from her doorstep.

I stopped and looked back, “What?” I asked.

“Your hair... I like the color. It’s jazzy.”

"Thank you," I said. I asked about their day and joined their conversation. Pat, was ill and had an oxygen tank, her hair put up in a hair net.

Arnethia was wearing her bathrobe and had slippers. We chatted awhile and Arthenia told me so much she wanted to give me a poem. “I write poems, hundreds of them, and give them out for free.” She told me she even made books with the Saints. I said, “Oh, really? I’m Catholic. I would love that.”

She and her friend laughed and laughed, “Oh no, honey,” she laughed, “the football team.”

Pat held out her hand to show me the beautiful little poetry books given to her by her friend. “Oh my dad would love this,” I said, “He is a haiku poet.”

“She said, Awe, I wish I had one ready.” I told her I would love that. “I would keep it forever,” I said.

Pat said, “Now that is really sweet.”

Arthenia looked inside, "I really wanna give me one, but shoot, I’m all out. Can you come back?”

I did as I was told and knocked at her door one hour later. She opened her door and her face lit up into a smile and she pulled me in by the arm. “Come in precious," and she led me to her table filled with hundreds of little poetry books she had made by hand. She handed me my little book of the New York Saints and gave me two others. “One for your mammy, and the other for your daddy,” she said.

Above the booklets were shelves lined with pictures of her family. She told me about each one of them, her daughter who was a runway model. Her grandson Rico Paris, who was a professional dancer, boxer, and fashion model. She told me she herself was a professional dancer and martial artist in her younger years. And her son, Troy Laza, a professional musician who played music in New Orleans and around the world and his beautiful wife who lost her life to cancer.

She sat next to me on the sofa and I was awe at the walls filled with African and African American art and history and her house lined with used shoes she sold. She she showed me pictures of her gorgeous family and we listened to song after song sung by her son Troy. She even tried calling him and her daughter to see how we could listen to his music and her favorite song, “Change Gonna Come,” by Sam Cooke (I will play in the link below). We sat for over an hour and listened to his songs. We talked about our families and I showed her my family’s farm in Wisconsin. She asked me about nutrition and asked for advice. She told me she did not trust doctors and explained how she had difficulty getting quality care or even a follow-up to labwork she had done.

In our conversation I discovered she knew more than I did and showed me the stacks of books on her staircase about nutrition. She quoted doctors and research from Harvard and said she was sitting on a sofa filled with magazines about nutrition.

She said she was sad that I had to leave and that I had made her day. I told her she made my whole trip. She said, “It is amazing how the universe and God can bring two people together.” We exchanged addresses and phone numbers and she included the numbers of all her children as well. As I got ready to leave she offered me a bottle of alkaline water and opened a tiny door on her wall that opened into a chic beauty shop on the other side and told me that is where she gets her hair done. and told me to look inside and told me it was her niece’s.

This woman had taken me back to a time and place I did not know, then brought me back to the future. I could not imagine a better way to end my time in New Orleans. I feel so culturally enlivened by this city, and it brought to life that my soul cannot breathe without diversity or realness and it has been starving for air for a LONG while! Thank you, New Orleans for setting it free.