Helen Marie Carmel Ladmarault was born in May 1946, in the sweltering regions of New Orleans, Louisiana. "Carmel" was her confirmation name, which advertised the fact that she was raised a Roman Catholic. The "Marie" portion might have come from her grandmother, Mrs. Maria Paltron, whom Helen invariably referred to as "Mom." With good reason.
For you see, Helen was raised by her grandmother, a large, heavy-set woman many years her senior. Everyone called her Mrs. Paltron, including myself. It was purely out of respect for her position as an elder in the family chain of command that one addressed her in that manner.
I met Mrs. Paltron on several occasions. One of the last times occurred when I introduced her to my wife Regina and our one-year-old daughter Thais. Helen was present at Thais' baptism, ergo she was her godmother. My father, Annibal, had also accompanied us (at Helen's invitation) to their Woodlawn residence. This took place in mid-1989. While there, I was surprised to find Mrs. Paltron to be quite the charming hostess and not at all intimidating as one might have expected. Unfortunately, she was bedridden at the time. But the way my friend Helen took extra special care of her, how she fussed about and catered to her grandmother's needs struck a deep chord in me. Although she never married, Helen had inherited that same inbred, unmistakable maternal instinct and motherly concern for others that Mrs. Paltron had shown.
Helen was an only child. She was named after her aunt Helen, her natural mother's only sister. I never learned her mother's name. Maybe because Helen never mentioned it, not once, not ever. Her only memento was a portrait Helen carried, in her purse, of her mother and aunt Helen: an old black-and-white snapshot which she showed me when the occasion moved her. The two sisters were quite young and very attractive, smiling their hundred-watt smiles at the camera. And they looked remarkably alike.
"Oh, they're twins!" I insisted, but Helen denied that. They were her mother and her aunt Helen, that was all. Beauty obviously ran in their family.
Despite that observation, one could tell this was a sore subject with her. There must have been some altercation, some issue or family dispute, or irreconcilable point of contention, that forced Helen to never discuss her natural mother, as well as leave her native New Orleans at a tender age; to go seek greener (and far colder) pastures, all the way up to Manhattan's Harlem area. Her grandmother, Mrs. Paltron, must have gone with her.
To her credit, Helen rarely, if ever, talked about personal matters. They remained personal to the end. Whatever problems she may have had, whatever difficulties she or her family may have experienced or challenges she may have encountered, were buried along with her.
If anything, the surname "Ladmarault" told you a lot about Helen's ethnic background. Technically speaking, she was of French Creole origin, which meant that Helen had been born to parents of colonial French, African American and possibly Native American ancestry. In view of these facts (and to most observers, she could easily have passed for a Latina), Helen always thought of herself as Black. She was proud of that fact, and that's all there was to it.
I was 22 when I first met Helen, or Ms. "Lad" as she was called by customers and coworkers alike. I had gotten my first full-time job as a collector for Household Finance Corp. Helen was my senior by eight years. She started at Household as a clerk typist, a good decade or more before I set foot in an office environment (it might have been thirteen years earlier, but don't quote me on that). Yet, in spite of that lowly position Helen managed to work her way up the ladder to lead clerk typist, then on to MQP, i.e., the company's Management Qualifying Program.
To all eyes, Helen was on the managerial career path - a rarity for a woman of color at that time. The year was 1977. By then, the Women's Liberation movement had been well underway. But you would never know it, not where Ms. Helen Marie Ladmarault was concerned. She was already liberated and on her own. She went on to become my manager. And my closest friend.
I knew little about Helen's personal life. She was noticeably mum on the subject - a very private person, even to her closest friends. I did hear from her own lips that she had been engaged to a Latino many years before, while she was still in high school. In her time, that was the "in thing" to do, to get married early and raise a family before you were twenty. Goodness knows how naïve they all were! And how deeply ignorant of life's problems as well. Whatever differences had come between Helen's romance with her Latino beau and their respective families led to their eventual splitting up. Together one day, gone the next. That's how it was, and that's how it would be.
When I met Helen, she had been dating a fellow named Sandy. A handsome, broad-shouldered, light-skinned, sandy-eyed gentleman (as his name implied), Sandy was the image of smooth-toned singer-songwriter Smokey Robinson. Imagine that! My recollection of him was that he had the most perfectly manicured cuticles I had ever seen. He and Helen had been "going steady" for several years. Seriously steady, so I had gathered. The problem, as I came to understand it, was that Sandy hesitated to take the final plunge. Who knows! It may have had something to do with his own mother. It may have been a misunderstanding of his intentions. Again, Helen never went into specifics. She didn't need to: It was her life to lead, and she sure as hell was going to lead it in the way she deemed best. That's all there was to it.
As a businessperson, Helen was the most professional individual I had ever come into contact with. She treated everyone equally, no exceptions. She made it a point to be respectful of a customer's rights, as well as their problems and predicaments. I never heard her say a harsh word to a delinquent borrower, nor raise her voice, nor speak ill of anyone - although she had reason enough to do so! Unlike some individuals I knew, Helen relied on patience and tact to get her through the hardest parts of her day. She never got angry, not while talking to customers, and not while dealing with her fellow employees. Whatever the case may be, one could still feel her indignation in other, subtler ways.
One time, I was sounding off about something that bothered me, some pointless argument or other concerning collection matters. All I know is that I went on and on about it, interminably as was my wont. After I had reached the peak of my tirade, Helen looked up at me and commented, in her calm, determined mode: "Joe, shut up and sit down." All I could say was, "Yes, Helen."
Another time, an irate borrower called me on the phone (the notorious "inside line," which happened to be an unlisted number). I had no clue as to what this irate borrower was going on about. But whatever it was, he wound up calling me a liar. In fact, he shouted at me: "Mr. Lopes, you're a liar! A f--ing liar!" And just as abruptly, he hung up the phone in my ear. Well, that did it. I was so furious that I slammed the receiver onto the desk phone itself. This impulsive behavior broke the company telephone. Great, just great!
Where was Helen? Well, she was soaking it all in, listening to and observing my childish behavior. When I told her that the phone had stopped working, she gave me that dreaded "Now you did it" look. Only then did she decide to speak up:
"The next time you do something like that," she growled under her breath, staring directly at me, "you're going to pay for that phone."
"Yes, Helen," was my only response. I was guilty as charged. There would not be a next time. And there was nothing more to say about it.
In a world dominated by alpha males, Helen managed to hold her own against the competition, chiefly due to her competence. She was, without a doubt, the fastest typist I had ever seen. Why, she could answer the telephone, cash a customer's check, pay out a loan, take a late payment, deal with a borrower's queries, and type a letter - all without batting an eye. Because of her administrative abilities, Helen became one of the first women branch managers in the company's history.
Helen's first office was the one I had started in, at 130 Delancey Street in Lower Manhattan. Her second office was at Fresh Meadows in Queens. I once visited her there, after I had left Household Finance. It was a small, satellite office, with just her and a clerk typist. Later, we took a Saturday day trip together to Atlantic City, New Jersey. At that time, there was hardly anything there, except those noisy, notorious gambling casinos. As usual, Helen wanted someone to accompany her. So I volunteered for the assignment, mostly by default.
Her next branch office was located near the Paramus Shopping Mall, also in New Jersey. One weekend, Helen needed to drive out there, but she didn't want to go by herself, and be alone in the office. Well, then, guess who accompanied her? You got it. It didn't matter to me, though. Since I had never been to Paramus myself, I welcomed this little excursion. I even got a paid lunch out of it for my efforts. That was Helen.
At other, less hectic times, we bar-hopped together. Helen loved to dance and sing and smoke and crowd gaze, enjoying herself to the hilt. Anything to let the stress out. She felt comfortable in my presence, which I tried never to betray. We had even vacationed together (to San Francisco and Washington, D.C.), but stayed in separate rooms. She trusted me. Better still, her grandmother, Mrs. Paltron, trusted me. That's saying a lot. Helen would comment to me that when she told "Mom" that I was the one who was going to accompany her to some Godforsaken place, Mrs. Paltron would invariably respond: "Oh, that's good." She was comfortable with the fact that her only granddaughter would be in safe hands - my own, in fact. Thankfully, I stayed true to my words. And knowing Mrs. Paltron (and Helen) as well as I did, I could not live with myself if I let anything happen to her. It's what we do for our friends.
After all that I have described above, don't think for a moment that things have always gone smoothly between us. We had our differences of opinion, in particular about her constant smoking. But the worst of it, the absolute rockiest our relationship had ever been, came in 1989. It was the time that I called Helen to task for not visiting her godchild as often as I felt she needed to visit. It was the first serious falling-out Helen and I ever had, one that lasted a good number of years. There's no point in repeating the sordid details of our rift. Suffice it to say that I acted as poorly - and as ungratefully - as that irate borrower had with me earlier. I had even hung up the phone on her. Imagine! Doing that to my best friend and former boss! What force possessed me to do such a thing? Well, I did it. And regretted doing it the minute I slammed the phone down.
To her credit, Helen, good Samaritan that she was, visited our apartment that very weekend to celebrate Thais' one-year anniversary of her baptism. And true to her nature, Helen had brought her friend Claire with her from work (she had left Household Finance to work at Citibank). Never unaccompanied, that was Helen's modus operandi. My wife and I were astonished that she came, especially after my phone call, but Helen remained true to her word. I tried sheepishly to apologize, but she waived my words away with a curt "That's okay, Joe."
Yes, I knew I had hurt her. But more than that, I had offended her. Helen even bought my daughter a gift, which was more than I could have expected under the circumstances. She stayed a while to play with my daughter and talk with my wife. But my sense of the situation was that I had overplayed my hand; I botched what was supposed to have been a happy affair. It felt more like a "Funeral for a Friend," to paraphrase an old Elton John song. But whose funeral was it, mine or hers? I already knew the answer.
I did not see Helen again until a few weeks into August 1996. It may have been less than a month before my family and I would leave New York City for a change of career as an English language instructor in Brazil. As fate would have it, I accidently ran into her in Lower Manhattan, near New York City's Police Headquarters where I had gone to get some official business taken care of prior to my leaving for Brazil.
When I spotted her, I immediately embraced her. Helen looked well, a tad heavier than I had remembered, but smiling and cheerful. She went on to tell me a sad tale of her having been run over by one of those private buses, the ones that took passengers from the Bronx into midtown. Run by Liberty Lines, as I recalled it. Helen elaborated on what happened: She had just gotten off at her destination on Woodlawn Avenue, in the Bronx (she moved there after "Mom" had passed away). "Oh, I'm so sorry, Helen. I didn't know." Of course, I didn't know. Stupid me, I hadn't bothered to reach out to her. Something, or some force, had brought us together at that moment. Only I didn't know it at the time.
"Joe, I was run over," she continued. "I had walked behind the bus to get to the sidewalk. But the bus driver couldn't see me. Then, he backed the bus up and ran me over."
"Oh, my goodness!" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Poor Helen! And poor me for not being there for her. Helen told me she had blacked out for a while, that her memory had been impaired because of the accident. That she was on her way to see a lawyer about her situation.
"Where's the lawyer's office?" I asked.
"It's right over there," she pointed.
"I'll go with you," I volunteered. It would be like old times. Only it wouldn't. Not really. Still, it was the least I could do to accompany her, to be with her, to comfort her.
"Are you sure? I'm not taking you out of your way," she replied.
"Of course not. I did what I had to do. So I'm free to accompany you." On the way to the lawyer's office, I filled Helen in on what I was going to do and where I was going to live. She understood. She sympathized with our position. Family comes first. You have to do what's best for them. And for oneself.
I was happy for the opportunity to have talked with her. It might have been the last time we would ever see each other. We parted ways after that, said our mutual goodbyes. I said nothing about past mishaps, and neither did she. It's possible she may have forgotten. Wishful thinking on my part. She did say that her memory was bad, but you never know. Thoughts have a way of coming back to us when we least expect them to. That was my hope.
Years later, I came back to the U.S. But instead of returning to the Bronx, we settled on Raleigh, North Carolina, where my brother and his wife resided. The same went for Helen. In fact she had moved further north, to the Riverdale section. I knew the area as the one where conductor Arturo Toscanini used to live. It was the ideal spot for her as well.
It was only in September 2011, after the tenth anniversary of 9/11, that I hooked up with Helen once again. Our meeting took place in Lincoln Center, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater where the play War Horse was being presented. I was in town for a few days and felt the urge to call her, to see how she was doing. Was she free that afternoon?
"I'm on jury duty," she told me on the phone. "But I can join you later today for the play."
"Good. I'll get the tickets and you can reimburse me later."
"You're on!" she replied. We hooked up at the prearranged location, except that I kept missing her. Where is she? Why isn't she here? I told her to meet me in front of the Vivian Beaumont Theater. Oh, wait! There she is! Helen! Helen! This way! It's me, Joe!
There she was. Same wide smile, same hair flying in the wind. Still heavier in build, but the same old Helen. Hmm, wait a minute...her teeth looked different.
"Oh, I had them fixed," she told me, sensing my reaction to her looks. For eons, Helen had wanted to do something about her front teeth. It became an obsession with her. Well, she finally had the funds to do so. And the funds to purchase a place up in Riverdale. Good for you, Helen! And the new look suited her well.
We took our assigned seats inside the theater. As we waited for the play to begin, I wanted to tell her that I had gone "whole hog" into Catholicism. That I finally took the plunge with my first communion as a bona fide, practicing Catholic. Next, I tried to convey to her my mea culpas for past transgressions. This was something I had committed to doing with as many people that I had mistreated in the past. At first, she misunderstood my intentions.
"You want me to apologize?" Helen queried. She had a bemused look on her face, one of puzzlement and curiosity.
"No, Helen. I'm trying to tell you...that it's me who needs to apologize."
She looked up at me for a second. Then, Helen took my left hand and gave it a squeeze. No words were needed. Her actions said it all.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I called Helen on the phone. Several times, in fact. Just to see how she was getting along. She had left Citibank a long time ago, she said, and was now working for a cardiologist, one she had been working for first at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in Washington Heights, and currently at Montefiore Hospital in the North Bronx.
"Oh, that's great, Helen," I told her. "I'm glad to hear it." We had a long talk. She told me about her caring for a neighbor's dog. Miss Lulu was the doggie's name, a cute little white Shih Tzu, with dark eyes and long, fluffy ears. I saw a photo of Miss Lulu online. What a dear little fella!
Helen herself never had a pet - she didn't have the patience, not to my knowledge anyway. It was the same with kids: No patience. But she sure enjoyed taking care of Miss Lulu. She would talk to it, scold it, pat its tiny head. Of course, the neighbor's pet couldn't possibly have taken Mrs. Paltron's place in her mind and heart. But, I mused, it was the next best thing.
Helen Marie Carmel Ladmarault passed away on May 21, 2023, from cancer. I was told that she had developed shingles about a month or more before. Just as Helen was getting over the shingles, she passed - only a few days away from her 77 th birthday. I like to think that she left this world in honor of the year that we first met, back in 1977. Yes, that would be nice.
May she be given eternal rest. †
Copyright © 2023 by Josmar F. Lopes
