October 2005 - Sister Mary Bordelon
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Vivid memories remain of my visit to Arnaudville, Louisiana in 1992, when I visited Catholic-Extension subsidized missionary Sister Mary Bordelon.
Talk about hidden poor. In this Cajun town of about 1,400 people less than 50 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico, dwelled the "River Rats." On a sunny day 13 years ago I met them, and still shudder that some locals likened fellow townsfolk to rodents.
So-called "River Rats" rented shacks along Bayou Teche, a spot romanticized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem "Evangeline." The reality I saw was three- or four-room homes weathered gray and roofed with corrugated tin, elbowing each other in a wobbly row, along a curbless, cinder road.
"You want anything fixed, you do it yourself!" one resident told me, about how her landlord seldom dropped by. "But when rent's due, you can bet he's here!"
Outside, two children rode double on a bike. A teenager lounged against a doorway. A middle-aged man hunched on a lawn chair, nowhere to go and no way to get there.
Then I met a "hidden hero." Amidst gray boards, cinders and bayou green, one screen door creaked open and Cytina Levier beckoned warmly, scarlet and blue ribbons flashing joyfully in her hair.
Sister Mary and I stepped inside, and three was quickly a crowd in the shoebox-sized living room. Sweat beaded our foreheads as we chatted. Furnishings were spare: a sagging couch, a table, an old dresser against one wall.
Nearby hung pictures of three brothers who died fighting for America in Okinawa, Korea and Germany.
From a side bedroom came gentle murmuring. There lay Cytina's elderly mother, suffering after a stroke. She prayed constantly, statues of the Blessed Mother and Sacred Heart nearby.
At 28, Cytina was like a glowing ember amidst a spent campfire. She leaned forward eagerly when Sister Bordelon told her a new choir was forming at church. She clutched a novena book and spoke of getting more involved at the parish. Her eyes were deep and expressive. Her smile enlivened her pretty face.
When she was a girl, doctors told her she had sickle cell anemia and might never live to be 21. Then a "walkin' man" visited town, peddling "blood-building" tonics to poor African-Americans. Cytina was convinced his tonic cured her.
She blinked away tears and said, "Here I am at 28! God must want me here. Now I want to be a nurse to help others."
It seemed a pipe-dream. After losing three babies and the break-up of her marriage, Cytina had returned to the poverty of her childhood home. Now her address made her an undesirable. In fact, a "River Rat."
People in town ask why these people don't work, Sister Mary told me in her gentle voice. "But they have no cars and no way to get anywhere." Today I recall those words as hurricanes rampage through the Gulf Coast. Evacuate? For the poor, mobility is a luxury.
"With how the world's going, I am praying more," Cytina told me thirteen years ago. "I want to help make things better." At 41, does this bright-eyed woman still dream of helping others? Or have cruel winds of circumstance and nature dimmed the light in those eyes?
"With how the world's going..." Sometimes it keeps me up at night...all the Cytinas hidden along all the bayous and cinder roads of the Gulf Coast. Countless hidden heroes are struggling to weather yet another misery, in already stressed lives.
People are strangers until you're introduced. Sister Mary introduced me and now a piece of my heart has been buffeted by the winds of the 2005 hurricane season.
At night in my comfortable bed in suburban Chicago I wonder, where is Cytina now? Dear God, where and how are all the Cytinas?
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