Southern Ruby

by Belinda Alexandra

  Trying to discern what was the truth and what was media hype was difficult. Okay, I thought, breathing more calmly. It sounds like New Orleans is one of the possible places the hurricane could hit, but it’s not confirmed.

  I turned the television off and went to bed, waking a few hours later to another beautiful sunny day and the humming of lawnmowers. Surely people wouldn’t be doing their gardens now if they feared we were barrelling towards Armageddon? It was already hot and humid, and the air was completely still. If I hadn’t watched the news report, I’d have no idea a dangerous storm was lurking out there in the Gulf.

  I showered and dressed, and made breakfast using the last of the peaches, grapes, blueberries and coconut yoghurt in the refrigerator. Afterwards, I found two overnight bags in the closet under the stairs. I packed a couple of changes of clothes in the smaller of the two, along with my toothbrush, toothpaste, skin moisturiser and sunblock. As I shuffled through my suitcase for my passport, my hand touched something hard and smooth. It was Nan’s pendant with the pink rose. I’d forgotten that I’d put it away when I went to listen to my father’s music at Elliot’s place.

  ‘Nan,’ I said, putting the necklace on, ‘please keep us safe.’

  Then I picked up my digital camera and felt compelled to take pictures of my parents’ room as if I was never going to see it again.

  Grandma Ruby was sitting up in bed when I went to check on her, but looked weak and sweaty. ‘Do you have a fever?’ I asked, touching her forehead.

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m sure it’s that warfarin. Do you think I should take the lower-dose tablets I had before?’

  I shook my head. Grandma Ruby’s doctor had been specific that it was dangerous to take the drug any way other than instructed. ‘Stick with it until Doctor Wilson is back on Monday,’ I said. ‘He should have the blood results by then.’

  I put the other overnight bag I’d found on top of the blanket box at the end of her bed. ‘Pack a couple of changes of clothing,’ I instructed. ‘But leave some room on top so I can put your medications inside — in case we have to evacuate.’

  ‘We don’t have to do anything,’ she replied irritably. ‘They can’t make you leave if you don’t want to.’

  A smile danced on my lips. I remembered Uncle Jonathan telling me that if something was forbidden it attracted Grandma Ruby all the more. She didn’t like being told what to do. Was that really only eleven days ago? My life had so completely changed that I didn’t feel like the same person. On the other hand, I felt as if I had just arrived in New Orleans and had come to love it. Now we might have to leave.

  I left Grandma Ruby to pack her bag while I returned to the kitchen and put some supplies in a cooler box, including titbits for Flambeau who never seemed to eat anything as common as chicken feed.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked him while he perched on a stool and watched me. ‘Should we go or should we stay? Aren’t birds supposed to be able to sense danger?’

  Elliot arrived with some beignets.

  ‘Firstly, how did you know that Grandma Ruby eats beignets in the morning?’ I asked him. ‘And secondly, how did you find a bakery that was open?’

  ‘The Quarter looks surprisingly normal,’ he answered. ‘There are tourists walking up and down Bourbon Street and many of the shops are open.’

  ‘Where’s Duke?’

  ‘My neighbour was leaving for Baton Rouge this morning. He took Duke and his portable cage with him to drop off at my sister’s place. I thought that would give us more room in the car.’

  Grandma Ruby came downstairs, and Elliot propped her legs up on an ottoman before serving her the beignets and a cup of hot water with lemon.

  ‘I usually have coffee for breakfast,’ she told him. ‘And strong.’

  ‘Not if your stomach is upset,’ he said.

  She rolled her eyes but drank the hot water and lemon obediently. I smiled. She would never have listened to me.

  Elliot turned the television on and we watched the weather broadcasts in between stowing valuables away in the safe and wrapping up breakables and storing them in the cupboard under the stairs or in the bathrooms.

  As I was sealing up one box I heard a male reporter say, ‘“Gassing up and getting out” is the catchphrase in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama today as residents await confirmation of Katrina’s dangerous track.’

  I walked into the sitting room and stared at the image on the television screen. It showed a technicoloured swirl brewing in the Gulf of Mexico. The orange eye of the hurricane seemed to be growing bigger by the second.

  The image switched to a diagram of New Orleans, which showed how the shape of the land and the levees did indeed form what looked like a soup bowl.

  ‘The worst-case scenario of this hurricane if it heads towards us or slightly west of us,’ continued the reporter’s voiceover, ‘is that the Downtown area of New Orleans could be covered in ten to fifteen feet of water. Of course, this is what many residents have been worrying about for several years now . . .’

  ‘A lot of people talking and not a lot of action,’ said Elliot, coming up behind me. ‘That’s why so many people are cynical about leaving. They can’t believe there can be any real danger if the authorities haven’t done anything to prevent the city being flooded.’

  I thought of Terence and went to check my mobile to see if he’d rung. He hadn’t. The low-charge signal was flashing. Because of the different power voltage between the United States and Australia, it took ages to charge my phone. I connected it to the charger on the kitchen bench, next to my bag so I wouldn’t forget it.

  By evening, the weather reports were becoming more dire. Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center was being quoted by a reporter as having said: ‘This is the worst storm I’ve seen in my thirty-three-year history as a meteorologist. The conditions are the worst I’ve seen. The storm is the worst I’ve seen. This is the one that we have all been dreading.’

  My stomach tightened. This wasn’t some news anchor trying to improve ratings. It was the opinion of an experienced meteorologist.

  Elliot noticed my concern. ‘Landfall won’t be until Monday,’ he said. ‘We’ve prepared everything we can prepare. We’ll set off first thing in the morning. Hopefully Ruby will be feeling better by then. If not, we’ll go to the hospital on our way out of town and get a doctor to check her before we go on to Baton Rouge.’

  That night I sat with Grandma Ruby reading to her from a book I’d found on the shelf in the parlour, The Bonfire of the Vanities. Although I’d read it years before, it was only now that its racial themes hit home. Gradually Grandma Ruby’s eyes began to droop and she fell asleep. I watched her chest rise and fall for a few minutes before turning out the light.

  I made my way down the hallway to my room. Elliot had made himself a bed from cushions spread out on the floor and was fast asleep, sprawled on his stomach. I kneeled down and kissed his cheek. ‘We could have shared the bed,’ I whispered. He stirred and smiled but continued on sleeping.

  The air in the room was motionless and a chorus of frogs was croaking in the garden. Sweat was dripping down my back from the humidity. I stood under the shower for a full ten minutes, letting the cold water stream over my burning skin. After going up and down the stairs so many times, I was dead on my feet and wasn’t sure I even had the energy to reach the bed. When I climbed on top of it, I lay down on the bedspread — still too hot to get under the covers. I closed my eyes then opened them again. Every nerve in my body seemed to have switched itself to high alert. ‘Oh no!’ I said.

  ‘You all right?’ Elliot asked.

  I looked over the side of the bed to see that he was awake and watching me.

  ‘I was exhausted a moment ago but now I can’t sleep.’

  He propped himself up on his elbow. ‘That’s called adrenal exhaustion. I get that sometimes when I’m marking final examination papers. I find a packet of Fig Newtons and a cup of herb tea usually does the trick.’


  ‘Damn!’ I said, tongue-in-cheek. ‘We don’t have any Fig Newtons.’

  Elliot stood up and came to the bed, nudging me to move over and let him lie down next to me.

  He smelled delicious, like coconut and lime. A warm thrill ran through me when he smoothed his hands over my hair and gazed into my face. ‘You’re getting the full menu of what New Orleans has to offer, aren’t you?’ he said, running his hand down my side then back again to my shoulder. ‘This beautiful home in the Garden District, jazz, evacuating for a hurricane . . . but I think you’ve missed out on a very important thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  He kissed me softly on the lips then reached for the hem of my nightdress and drew it up over my stomach. Waves of desire stirred in my belly when he pressed his body against mine. ‘The exquisite pleasure of making love in a four-poster bed that’s going to creak like crazy,’ he said. I laughed and lifted my arms as he pulled my nightdress over my head and dropped it to the floor. He brushed his fingers over the curves of my breasts and I quivered. ‘Do you think you might like to experience that?’

  I slipped my hand around his back and nuzzled into his neck, then whispered in his ear: ‘Why don’t you try me?’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Amanda

  When I awoke the next morning, Elliot was already up. I lay back on the pillows and smiled when I recalled the pleasure of our love making. Then I heard him closing and lashing the shutters downstairs and remembered the impending hurricane. I went to the bedroom window and saw a stream of cars heading down Prytania Street. People were getting out.

  The house was gloomy with the shutters closed. I searched for Elliot and found him outside nailing plywood boards to the parlour windows, which didn’t have shutters.

  He had his shirt off and for the first time I noticed the tattoo on his left shoulder, a treble clef and musical notes. I hummed the melody. It was the refrain from Louis Armstrong’s ‘It’s a Wonderful World’. I sneaked up behind him and kissed it.

  ‘I didn’t notice that last night,’ I said.

  He turned around and smiled. ‘I didn’t think you noticed too much of anything,’ he replied, kissing me on the lips. Then his face turned serious.

  ‘I got up early and listened to the broadcasts,’ he said. ‘The Mayor has ordered a mandatory evacuation. It’s the first time in the history of New Orleans that an evacuation has been mandatory. I’m not even sure if he can legally do it.’ He finished securing the plywood then looked me straight in the eye. ‘He wouldn’t be doing that unless he was certain the storm was going to hit us and it was going to be a category five.’

  While Elliot locked up the potting shed, I went to the kitchen and turned on the television. The station was replaying the Mayor’s evacuation order: ‘Hurricane Katrina will likely affect the Louisiana Coast with tropical force winds and heavy rainfall by this evening. Governor Blanco and I, Mayor C. Ray Nagin, have each declared a state of emergency. Every person is hereby ordered to immediately evacuate the City of New Orleans . . .’

  I rushed upstairs and told Grandma Ruby that we had to leave and she’d better have a shower. I took her overnight bag downstairs. It was heavier than mine, but she was a snappy dresser so I assumed she’d included at least one pair of dress shoes. I unzipped the bag and placed her medicines on top of a couple of scarves she’d packed, checking and rechecking that I had included all four of them. I tucked the script Doctor Wilson had written in my own bag next to my passport.

  Elliot took one of the cardboard boxes I’d got from Blaine’s assistant and punched holes in it with a screwdriver. He went to the kitchen and returned with Flambeau, opening the box flaps to put him inside.

  ‘He won’t like that,’ I told him. ‘He’s used to sitting on Grandma Ruby’s lap.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Elliot. ‘But we can’t risk him getting a fright and flapping off.’ He put Flambeau in the box, took a permanent marker from his pocket and wrote my mobile number on the bird’s wing.

  ‘You think of everything,’ I said.

  Grandma Ruby came downstairs and rolled her eyes while Elliot and I did the final checks on the house. ‘I’m only going along with this because of all your theatricality in making an evacuation,’ she said. ‘This house and its stories will outlast all of us. It’s not going to blow away in any storm.’

  Because Grandma Ruby’s stomach was still upset, Elliot and I decided to go to the hospital before we left the city. We hadn’t expected it to be so crowded. All the private clinics that were closing for the hurricane had sent their patients there and, as many of the doctors had left town, anyone who was sick had come too.

  We found Grandma Ruby a seat in the waiting area, but Elliot and I had to sit on the floor. We hadn’t wanted to leave Flambeau in the car because of the heat, but we knew there was no way he’d be let into the hospital, so I’d emptied the contents of my overnight bag into a shopping tote and put Flambeau inside with the zipper open at the edge for air. I’d expected him to protest about his captivity, but he seemed to sense something serious was at stake and kept quiet.

  Storm updates were flashing on the television in the waiting room and were growing more ominous by the minute. ‘A powerful hurricane is now predicted to directly hit New Orleans within twelve to twenty-four hours,’ said one newsreader. ‘At least one half of well-constructed homes will have roof and wall failure. All gabled roofs will fail, leaving those homes severely damaged or destroyed. There is potential for great loss of life.’

  A convoy of ambulances arrived with elderly patients from a care facility. Some of them were on ventilators. A couple of nurses rushed past us towards the new arrivals.

  ‘If it floods, we are in deep trouble,’ one nurse said to the other. ‘Our back-up generators are below ground-floor level. If they get water in them, they’ll fail and we’ll lose our capacity for life support.’

  I wondered what was going to happen to all the people who couldn’t evacuate the city: terminally ill patients, women in labour, paraplegics, premature babies, the homeless and the mentally ill. I slipped my hand into my bag and patted Flambeau to calm myself, but then started thinking about all the animal shelters and the pounds. What about the zoo? Were they going to get the animals out? And what about those Australian tourists? The airport would be closed now. Could they rent a bus and get away?

  Panic seized me as the scale of the impending catastrophe grew in my imagination. This wasn’t some tiny coastal town that was facing annihilation; it was a major American city!

  The woman next to me must have been thinking similar things because she turned to her husband and asked, ‘What do you suppose they’ll do at the prison if it floods?’ I assumed she was concerned about the welfare of the prisoners who would be trapped there, until she added, ‘I guess the guards will leave them to drown, or shoot them if they try to escape. And good riddance too. It will save taxpayers’ money.’

  I turned to Elliot for comfort, but he was watching the elderly patients being wheeled into the hospital on gurneys and in wheelchairs.

  ‘My grandparents used to shelter at the hospital during hurricanes in the 1940s and 1950s,’ he told me. ‘My grandfather was a doctor and my grandmother was a nurse. They’d bring sandwiches, flasks of coffee and their pet dogs and stay here the night helping with the patients until the storm passed over.’ He nodded towards the nurses I’d overheard earlier, who were now directing the flow of patients towards the elevators. ‘It sounds like they’re worried how the hospital will hold up to this hurricane though.’

  News bulletins continued to race across the television screen. I saw that the Mayor had informed residents that the Superdome would be a shelter of last resort for those who had no means to leave town. I thought of Terence, and took out my mobile to see if there were any messages, but the battery was flat.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Elliot asked.

  ‘Terence is going to die in his home if he doesn’t get out.’

  El
liot frowned. ‘He’ll go to the Superdome surely.’

  I shook my head. ‘He told me that if his neighbours can’t leave, he won’t either. I left him a message to say he could stay with them in the house in the Garden District, but I haven’t heard back from him.’

  Elliot rubbed his arms and shuddered. ‘After the doctor sees Ruby, we’ll drive down there and persuade him to leave. We can give his neighbours a ride to the Superdome, or they can stay at my place. The French Quarter is on higher ground than the Lower Ninth Ward.’

  I thought Grandma Ruby was dozing, but she must have heard our conversation. She suddenly stood up, looking perky. ‘The other people here are far worse than me,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to waste the doctor’s time. Let’s go, otherwise we’ll be stuck in gridlocked traffic.’

  Although I was still concerned about her, she was right. It would be hours before she could see a doctor, and if we stayed, we’d possibly end up weathering Katrina in the hospital. We could go see a doctor once we’d arrived at Baton Rouge.

  As we drove to the Lower Ninth Ward, I had a sinking feeling that we’d left our escape too late. The traffic making its way to I-10 had slowed to a crawl. Elliot had to periodically turn the air conditioning off so his car wouldn’t overheat.

  We had brought only what was most essential, but some of the cars we passed were packed with not only adults, children and pets but also quilts, books, musical instruments and even paintings. I’d put Flambeau back in his box when we’d returned to the car but he had busted out and was now sitting on top of it, looking out the window. I thought it was cool that we were travelling with a rooster, but we were topped by a driver with his python draped over his shoulders.