45

A new day. A new life continues.

"Rosie wants to say hi," Belle/Xena held her cell in front of the terrier.

Rosie barked three times and not only wagged her tail, but wagged her whole body.  Belle was talking with our friends back in Kansas.  Tyler and his sister Jessie.  She'd been talking for the last half hour, ever since she'd come back from spending the day at the accelerated middle and high school here in New Orleans.

"Now Rosie wants to smile at you," she held the phone in front of Rosie, who smiled, and Belle took her picture and sent it to them.

"Now Rosie wants to spin and roll over and kiss you."  Rosie spinned, rolled over and put her nose against the phone and Belle took her picture.

I was amused and stopped reading the latest vampire book set in New Orleans, which Belle had given me with instructions to read and discuss at dinner this night.  It seemed that there were a lot of vampire, voodoo, ghost, witch, demon, and on and on and on..... all set in New Orleans and the swamp/bayous in the adjacent areas.  On and on and on.  I guess people like these stories.  Xena/Belle certainly liked them, coming home with at least one new every night.

"I'm not Xena anymore," she told them.  She listened to their response and laughed, then held it up to Rosie's ear and she laughed also (barked).  I smiled.

"It seems," she continued, "that I was really born here in Nar'leens and kidnapped by a nefarious traveling conservative/reactionary/imperialist/white slavers/misogynist woman hating minutemen who took me to the mountains around the Daniel Boone Forest to serve their hateful ends to make me one of them, to be their slave and dress in 19th century clothes and breed stock for their never-ending search for the overthrow of the sane people."  She took a breath.  I continued to smile.  I liked to listen to her stories.

"For surrr," she drawled.  "I'm rally a Cajun princess back in my rightful section of the country."

Cool.  A princess!  I wondered what I was but didn't dare interrupt her story.  She sat and Rosie climbed up on her lap.

"My maman loved me with all her heart, as did ma pere, but the swamp took them when they tried to keep  me safe away from those slavers.  They only knew me for a few weeks and they loved me because I was the dawning sun in the morning and new moon in the evening. Then they died on that bayou, died and those bad people took me far away."  She paused and looked at Rosie.

She listened to whomever was on the other end.  She nodded yes but didn't say anything for a minute.

"That's why I'm not Xena anymore, my father looked at me when I was born and called me his Belle Bonnie Babee, his sweetheart."

"Bonnie Belle!" I said.

"Non, my petite," she said to the phone and to me at the same time.

"When they registered me at the local hospital my father said my name was Belle," she nodded her head up and down, thinking to herself, "but he wasn't good in English, he wasn't good at writing and reading although he was very smart out in the bayou, out in the swamps, out in the land and water, so for my last name he just put an X.  So my real name, my real me, is Belle X."

"Meet Belle X," she shook Rosie's paw. 

Rosie barked of course, and turned a yellow and orange like a calico.

"Talk to you all tomorrow," she said to Tyler and Jessie.  She'd tell me what they talked about later on after she digested the conversation.  She wrote on an envelop sitting on the table.

Bellex