He was in Mid-City. Papa had painted a mural at Krescent City Kids day care, which was just around the corner on South Dorgenois Street.
Zavion was hungry. He unzipped his backpack and pulled out his loaf of bread. He ripped off a piece. It tasted like honey.
As he ate, he oriented himself. Gentilly was northeast. Home. Treme was closer. Northeast too. The convention center was southeast. Tulane Avenue would take him close to it.
It was strange. He knew every street and neighborhood like the back of his hand. He knew where he was. But at the same time, everything was different. Upside down. Like that purple car.
Zavion’s stomach felt weighed down with the bread he had made. He liked that feeling. Grounded. He needed it because a part of him felt like he was still hurtling through space.
He swallowed his fear with his last bite of bread and took a step into the intersection. He crossed North Broad Street and began to walk down Tulane Avenue. He put his hand in his pocket and closed his fingers around the marble. He imagined its roundness. He suddenly had a thought. The marble had no upside or downside. It was facing the right direction no matter which way it landed. Its feet were on the ground all the time.
Zavion liked this thought. He held on to it and on to the marble as his feet continued down the street.
chapter 32
HENRY
Fueled by peanut-butter-chocolate-cinnamon cake, Henry was now on a full-fledged mission. He was going to find that marble. It wasn’t in this Salvation Army, he was sure of it. But there must be more than one Salvation Army in New Orleans.
Jake and Cora were outside getting more boxes. Henry could slip out now. He opened the door and turned to walk down the block.
“And just where do you think you’re going?” said Jake. He dropped a stack of boxes on the ground.
“Nowhere.” All of a sudden, the center of Henry’s stomach, where the cake sat, began to get warm. Like he was baking it all over again.
“Hey, I’m teasing,” said Jake.
“Oh, uh—” Henry took a few steps backward.
“We could use your help here.” Jake reached out and punched Henry lightly in the arm. “Strong kid like you.”
“I don’t know….” Henry’s belly was getting warmer.
Cora came up from behind Jake. “I promise another treat after you grab a few boxes,” she said. “I’ve got plenty of cake experiments in the kitchen.”
“A bunch of garbage bags are sitting right at the edge of the trailer. Go on and get those, Henry,” said Jake. “Okay?”
“No.” Henry’s belly was hot now. Oh man! Why wouldn’t Jake just let him go?
“No?”
“No!” Like a match striking the side of a box, the no ignited him.
“Henry.” Jake reached out to touch Henry’s arm. “I can’t let you wander around without me.”
“Let go of me!”
“What’s going on?” Jake tightened his grip. His eyes looked into Henry’s. They darted back and forth, searching for something.
Henry couldn’t look at him. Henry turned from Jake to Cora. Cora’s eyes were wide and deep. Henry thought he saw understanding swimming in them, but he couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that the fire inside him flickered.
“Henry?” Jake said gently.
Henry wanted to try to explain the fire to Jake. He really wanted to—
“What is it, Henry?” Jake asked.
No! He couldn’t tell him. Before he knew it, he’d yanked his arm away from Jake and pushed him, with both hands, in the chest.
The spot in his belly blazed.
“What are you doing, Henry?” said Jake.
“What am I doing?” he yelled.
“Yeah, what was that you just did?”
“What am I doing?” Henry yelled again. “What am I doing here?” He flashed on Mount Mansfield. Its hulking body ripping itself from the earth and somersaulting, upside down, right-side up, chasing him. He shook his head like a dog. He didn’t know how he would ever get the mountain to release him. “What am I doing here?” he said again. “I’m…I’m not being there!”
And then he ran, ran as fast as he could, ran to get away from Jake, ran like Jake and Cora were the ones burning him, ran to push the aching feeling from his heart into his legs. But no matter how much he ran, or how much he stayed, he couldn’t seem to get rid of it.
chapter 33
ZAVION
Tulane Avenue was empty except for a group of people huddled together on the stoop of one yellow house. Their heads were below a brown waterline that cut across the front of the house, slashing the red front door right in half.
Zavion raised his hand in some sort of greeting. One person waved back. A woman. A baby sat on her lap, so maybe she was a mother. No one else even acknowledged Zavion. It was like they didn’t see him.
He crossed South Rampart Street. The Mississippi River was only a few blocks away. The convention center was even closer.
Zavion gripped his backpack tighter.
He bit down on his back teeth so hard a pain shot through his jaw all the way to his ears.
It was awful being back in New Orleans. It made Zavion’s pulse beat faster. He could feel it at the side of his head. With each thump an image pumped through his body.
Thump. The cross from St. Mary’s Church.
Thump. The seat of a playground swing.
Thump. A lamp. Thump. A keyboard. Thump. A clear suitcase filled with Matchbox cars.
A parade of objects knocked and darted and careened through him. He hadn’t remembered seeing them, but he was sure, now, that he had. They had rushed by as he and Papa had made their way through the flooded streets.
He wondered if Joe the photojournalist had taken pictures of them.
Zavion needed to slow down his pulse. If he could slow it down, if he could grab hold of the images flooding his body, if he could line them up like his lunch sandwiches in the refrigerator, neat and organized in a row, he knew he would feel better. He rubbed the side of his head.
Lamp, next to—
Keyboard, next to—
Matchbox suitcase, next to—
Boot.
But it didn’t work. How could it? At the intersection, where he had stopped, a group of refrigerators stood together on the corner. With all these broken refrigerators littering the street, there was no hope for keeping sandwiches lined up straight and fresh.
Still, he tried again.
Boot, next to—
Teddy bear, next to—
Soup pot, next to—
Kite—
—
The memory hit Zavion like a bucketful of marbles.
An orange kite.
A blue sky.
A long white string.
Little hands.
Zavion’s hands.
Big hands.
Mama’s hands.
A gorgeous fall day, just the right amount of wind, not too hot and not too cold. Zavion and Mama in Pontchartrain Park, flying the brand-new kite he got for his birthday. He begged to fly it alone and immediately snagged it on a branch and ripped it.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—” He said it over and over again until Mama’s arms had opened wide.
“It was a kite,” she said. “And you were you. Now it is a torn kite”—she put her hands on Zavion’s cheeks—“and you are still you.” She hugged him so hard they fell over, laughing. They lay on their backs and watched the kite dance against the clouds.
It wasn’t the first time she told him about Grandmother Mountain, but it was the time he remembered.
“Grandmother Mountain was only a small pile of rocks and some dirt and a few red spruce trees at first,” Mama said, waving her hand slowly from side to side as she guided the kite in the air. “Every time she stopped wandering, she grew. In the valley, she found more dirt. By the river, she found more rocks. By the time she came upon Grandfather Mountain, she was a gran
d mountain. But she still found something when she put down her roots to be near him.” Mama squeezed Zavion’s arm with her free hand. “Just like I did with your papa. I wandered into New Orleans, all grown up like a mountain, but I found the one last thing I was missing—someone to be connected to”—she stood up, reaching out her hand to Zavion—“and then I found you—someone to love more than anything in the whole entire world….”
—
Zavion squeezed the marble for luck, for luck and to quell the fear that was uncurled and loose and roaming through his body.
Zavion had to find Luna Market.
He began to run.
chapter 34
HENRY
Henry ran and ran and ran—
chapter 35
ZAVION
Zavion ran and ran and ran—
chapter 36
HENRY
A boy turned onto the block. Henry caught him out of the corner of his eye. He had long legs, and a backpack bounced against his shoulder. The boy caught up to Henry. They ran side by side for ten strides or so—
Henry was back on the mountain—
Racing Wayne—
The boy sprinted ahead.
The boy tried to jump over a tree that had fallen across the sidewalk.
His jeans got caught on a branch and he pitched forward, falling on his hands.
Henry watched him wrench himself free and keep on running.
He looked like he was running for his life.
chapter 37
ZAVION
Zavion saw the concrete sidewalk.
It looked like the moon close up.
Small craters and drifts of gray-brown mud.
He smelled it too.
He had to. It was half an inch from his nose.
Musty, old water.
He scrambled to his feet and kept running. A stride and a burn in his lungs and thighs that he knew so well.
At the next corner he looked up.
Canal Street and Camp Street.
He was getting close to Luna Market.
As he crossed the intersection, he had the strange feeling he was being followed.
Was it fear, uncurling its long, cold body, following him down the street?
He looked back over his shoulder.
A boy was running behind him.
He looked like he was running for his life.
chapter 38
HENRY
Henry ran until his legs gave out. He didn’t know if Jake and Cora were following him, but his calves cramped up and he couldn’t run another inch. He leaned over his knees, breathing in gulps like he was drinking water from the river. He walked like that, bent over, down a short walkway to a house and sat, without ever straightening up, on its porch step.
Henry leaned back on his elbows and looked up at the sky. It matched the ground, the houses, the street, the few trees, and, mostly, the garbage.
Gray.
All of it was gray.
And flat.
Henry heard a rumbling sound. He sat up and looked down the street. Three boys were skateboarding. The boy in the front—a short kid wearing a black t-shirt and black jeans—jumped onto the sidewalk and skated toward the fallen tree. Henry watched him bend his knees, grab the front of his board, and jump the tree. The other two followed him. Then they skated back onto the street, picked up speed, and were gone.
Did they race on their skateboards? Did they have a fourth friend? Where was he?
Henry wondered what their story was.
chapter 39
ZAVION
Help—
A thousand voices calling for help flooded through Zavion.
He couldn’t tell if the sounds were coming from inside him or out on the street. He stopped running, stopped walking, and then stood still.
Help—
He looked around but didn’t see anyone on the street.
Fear was back. He knew it had been waiting for him, curled up in a tight ball. Zavion couldn’t tell if it had been hiding in the rubble of New Orleans, camouflaged in mud and trash, or if it had been lodged in his own body, tucked small and hard at the corner of his lower rib.
But it was back. Long and cold. It stretched from Zavion, to the stop sign on the corner, and wound around back to his body.
Zavion stared at the gray street. At the gray neighborhood. He listened to the silence, now that his heart had stopped blasting. Please let there be some sound, he thought. Please let there be some movement. But there was nothing. Only the fierce sun pushing down on a city ripped open, top to bottom, organs and veins and muscles torn away, with its bones exposed to the harsh light.
And what did that make Zavion? A lone cell, flung far, gasping for breath, lost, lost, lost.
Fear was definitely back.
But Zavion had made it to Luna Market.
Its window was taped up with a piece of cardboard and half the space was dark, but the lights were on in the front and Zavion could see a woman carrying a box down an aisle.
Okay, then.
They would walk in together.
He and Fear.
He reached into his pocket and touched his marble.
He would stand here for a few minutes, until he could walk in as a trio.
Zavion, Fear, and a Magic.
chapter 40
HENRY
“Help—”
A muffled voice called from somewhere.
Henry’s heart froze, and what was already quiet became silent.
He instinctively reached his hand into his pocket to touch the marble. But of course it wasn’t there.
“Help—”
The voice sounded louder.
Henry leaned forward and peered into the street. Had one of the skateboard boys called out?
“Help— Hello—”
The voice was coming from inside the house.
A switch flipped in Henry’s heart, and he felt the rush of blood pumping through his body all the way down to his feet, which began to move without Henry even thinking about it. He walked up the porch steps and into the house.
Jeezum Crow!
Water had pushed up through the subfloor in the entryway. And the subfloor had pushed up the tiles above it so they were frozen in wavelike shapes, some up and some down. A long narrow rug that lined the hall just past the entryway was covered with a thick brown sludge.
Henry stumbled over the tiles and sank into the muck on the rug. The living room was just past the hall. Or he thought it was the living room. He couldn’t quite tell. A desk and a bookcase and a—was it a washing machine?—had risen up from their spots on the floor and floated across the room. Dropped back down somewhere strange and new. Chairs were on their sides, broken in half. A table was turned upside down and looked like a turtle, its legs stuck helplessly in the air. Henry thought of Nopie on his back, silver boots flailing. The shelves from the bookcase were scattered around the room and the books were almost disintegrated, globs of white mush, like snow.
Henry walked around the rest of the downstairs. There was a coffee table in the kitchen. Another bookcase laid across the bathroom door. A lamp on the stairs, a rug on the couch, a toaster in the hall. A big armchair, a trunk, a piano, fans, French doors. All strewn across the house like a giant hand had scooped them up and tossed them back down without caring where they landed.
A brown watermark ran in a horizontal line around the entire first floor. After he had checked everywhere for the voice, Henry began to climb the stairs. He imagined the water rising. The water climbing the stairs one by one. He followed the watermark.
He slipped. There was so much mud.
In the corners of the stairs, the mud was thick with pieces of rock and grass and garbage. Henry stepped over what he thought might be part of a dead snake. He stood quietly for a moment when he reached the second floor.
“Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello—”
Henry found the room the voice was coming from and opened the door.
He
scanned the room. A dresser on its side. A broken window. A closet door off of its hinges. A chair. A bed.
No one.
But clothes were laid out on the bed for work, or school.
Henry got down on his knees and looked under the bed.
No one.
He walked over to the closet and picked up a pile of clothes.
No one.
He scanned the room again. The dresser. The window. The closet door. The chair. The bed—
“Hello—”
—a birdcage.
A birdcage with a cloth thrown over it sat on the floor next to the foot of the bed.
Henry lifted the cloth. Underneath was the most beautiful bird he had ever seen. A parrot. With a brown head the color of the woods behind his house, twelve shades of brown, and a bright yellow band around his neck, a lime-green chest, and stripes along his back. Stripes. A tiger parrot. He had never seen a live one before. It stared right at Henry, its deep brown eyes piercing his.
“Hello,” he said again. “Help, would’ja? You wash the dishes and I’ll sweep the floor.”
Henry hadn’t realized he was holding his breath. It tumbled out with laughter. “Okay, okay, I’m here to help you, buddy,” he said.
To Henry’s left, a blanket lay on the floor. Two glasses and an empty bottle were tipped over on top of it. Two plates sat empty at either end. Henry scanned the rest of the room. Mud, watermarks, furniture in strange places. All things he had already come to expect. But the bed looked weird. He leaned against it. There were pieces of paper taped onto each back bedpost.
“What are those?” asked Henry.
The bird didn’t answer.
He untaped them and sat down on the bed to read.
“They look like wishes,” said Henry. He talked to the bird. “What your people wanted their family to know. They had some money in the bank. Ooooh, and some under the mattress.” He lifted it. “They must have taken their stash.” He scanned the papers. “Tiger was supposed to go to their daughter.”
Another Kind of Hurricane Page 11