TRANSFER STUDENT.(The Talk of the Town)(shool enrollment)

Last week's coverage of Hurricane Katrina

Continuing coverage of Hurricane Katrina

Jon Lee Anderson on rescue and recovery in New Orleans

The process of enrolling in public school in New York City can be onerous enough to deter anyone but a future hall monitor. Yet, whether by decree of law or out of a will to learn, thousands of students showed up last week at the city's fourteen registration centers. One of these newcomers was Jahia Montana-Forbes, who had been living in Bedford-Stuyvesant for exactly four days. Jahia was looking for a place to finish twelfth grade, which she had begun on August 18th, at Marion Abramson Senior High School, in New Orleans.

When Jahia and her mother, Gina Montana, arrived, early Wednesday morning, at the former Family Court Building in downtown Brooklyn, they came equipped with none of the required documents: proof of identification (birth certificate, passport, or baptismal certificate), proof of address (utility bill, deed to a house, medical or insurance card, for example), proof of past diligence (immunization record, latest report card)--proof of existence, really. "All we have is our State of Louisiana I.D. cards," Montana said. "I don't have any transcripts," Jahia said. She was wearing jeans, a hot-pink pique polo shirt, and dangly earrings embossed with maps of the Gulf States. "They don't know if I'm lying."

Paperwork or not, Jahia and her mother knew who they were. "I am a citizen and resident of New Orleans," Montana said. She is forty-four, and has a broad, avid face dotted with moles. "My great-grandmother was originally from Pointe a la Hache. Her mama was a LaFrance. It's a very old family. On my daddy's side are the Montanas--we are Mardi Gras Indians. Our tribe was called the Yellow Pocahontas Mardi Gras Indians. I mask as the Big Queen. That's our family tradition." (Earlier this summer, when Montana's cousin Allison "Tootie" Montana, the Big Chief of the troupe, died--he had a heart attack at City Hall while testifying about police brutality against African-American Mardi Gras krewes--a Times-Picayune editorial noted, "Montana was to the Mardi Gras Indians what Louis Armstrong was to jazz.")

As part of the city's cultural aristocracy, the Montanas also count among them accomplished duck carvers, quiltmakers, and cooks; the last thing Montana did before Katrina hit was to make a Sunday dinner of jasmine rice, steamed broccoli, and shrimp creole, using a recipe that goes back generations. Jahia, who attended a pre-professional arts academy in New Orleans, wants to be an actress. "I was just starting to get a little pep, trying to get into college, making sure I had the right kind of portfolio, stuff like that," she said.