Child of the Storm

by R. B. Stewart

  She wiped her nose and her eyes. “I’m older than anyone I know. Older than I think anyone I know ever got to be. I’ve been a foolish old woman to think this could go on forever and not give any more thought to what would become of you if anything happened to me. You’ve asked for nothing all these years while I tied you in to saving me and this place from storm after storm. Maybe I should have moved on and taken you along to somewhere else, somewhere without storms. Somewhere we could just be! Go somewhere and let someone else take up watching over this place.” She caught her breath. Why had she said that? Why think something of the sort? But the words were said and conjured other thoughts and memories that she drifted in and out of until her visitor arrived.

  Ghédé Nébo took a seat on the far edge of the bed and looked at her through that one lens of his glasses while the other eye behind its dark lens looked who-knows-where. Maybe also at her. She couldn’t tell.

  “Looking poorly, Miss Celeste,” he said with that broad, genuine and most unsettling smile of his. “But not so poorly that you should be talking that way. Maybe that chicken soup will help. Makes me hungry just thinking about it, but I’d settle for a drink if you have any. The kind I like. You know?”

  “Aurore said you liked rum with peppers in it. But I don’t have any of that on hand. There’s a little wine in the kitchen and you’re welcome to it.”

  The mystère made a face. “I know what kind you’ve got in there and I’m a bit too particular for that. Still, you need to get your spirits back up where they should be. Stop all this talk of leaving the city to someone else to care for. You know we talked about that before and I don’t fancy that much work coming my way all at once. Give that some thought and we’ll talk later. I’ve got another appointment calling from the other side.”

  “Anyone I know,” Celeste asked.

  “That’s a confidence I can’t share, Miss Celeste.”

  Katrina

  “Is she a big storm?” Celeste asked.

  “She’s getting to be again. Florida took her down a good bit, but they expect her to rebuild what she lost. How are you doing?” Gabrielle asked.

  “I’m out of soup. Had the last this morning and that’s no proper breakfast. I think if I don’t die of this and Katrina doesn’t blow me back to wherever I came from, I mean never to eat another spoonful of chicken soup the rest of my life.”

  “Has it helped?”

  “Maybe it has,” Celeste admitted grudgingly. “Doesn’t mean I have to like my medicine.”

  “Well I brought more.”

  Celeste hung her head to rub her aching neck. “I’ll have some for lunch,” she muttered.

  “Were you able to sleep last night?”

  “I slept. But not a proper sleep.”

  “You sound better.”

  Celeste nodded. She was tired and she was angry and she was sad; all of it together.

  “I’ll check back in this evening if that’s okay. Maybe we’ll know more by then.”

  “Please do,” Celeste said and managed the flicker of a smile. “I’ll be here.”

  With little else to do, and little energy for anything anyway, Celeste dozed through the day, took a call from George and received another visit from the mystère. Most folks of a Voodoo persuasion and of Celeste’s age might have been more concerned about repeated visits from someone of Ghédé Nebo’s reputation and field of specialty, but to her, he was no more ominous now than any other friend-of-a-friend. They had Aurore in common, and she missed her old friend terribly, especially now. Besides, despite what others might say of his raucous behavior, insatiable appetites and bouts of foul language, she found him to be quite the gentleman, even if it was a tilted sort of gentlemanliness.

  “So you’ve heard the news, I guess.” Ghédé Nebo sat at the foot of the bed with his long fingers laced together just above his belly like a preacher.

  “Katrina could be a killer storm,” she said glumly. “Maybe heading this way. A big storm too; not like Camille. Big and broad so she doesn’t have to hit us square on to take us down. When they get that big, it’s best to catch them far out in the Gulf. That’s if you could. But I couldn’t.” She rubbed her fingers together. “Can’t even get a good sense for her, except that she’s big and pressing on everything, high and low as she makes her way here.”

  “You think she’s aiming at New Orleans?”

  “I think she is.”

  “Doesn’t sound good,” he admitted. “This sounds like a lot of cleaning up and guiding on to the other side for me. Don’t get me wrong, I do like my job, but sometimes, when I’m in a reflective frame of mind, it does seem like more of this happens than should, if you know what I mean. It’s the carelessness. The I-could-care-less, and what’s-in-it-for-me about things these days. When you know better, then you ought to do better, if you follow. Feet of clay.” He winked at her with that one eye of his that he used to watch her world.

  “I do follow. I have reason to.” She slapped the mattress weakly. “If I can’t stop her, then I might as well sit right here and let her take me off.”

  “That’s just the weariness talking. Weariness, and more likely a bit of frustration. Never known you to be one for idleness, Miss Celeste. If you ask me, what you need is some activity.”

  “Too weak for dancing about,” she scolded.

  “Oh, we can dance later if you like. Dance when there’s something to dance about. I know you’ve danced up a storm in your day, pardon the expression. No, I was thinking of something more in line with your current level of vitality.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Celeste said with some reluctance.

  “Just doesn’t seem like you to coop yourself up this way. Cooped up in a box – and no, that ain’t what I’m alluding to at all. The situation may be grave, but not that kind of grave.”

  “So you think I need to get myself up and outside. Is that it? Well, maybe you’re right. Better to do something than nothing. Better to go down trying, than just lay about feeling sorry for myself.”

  “You need a hand?”

  “Thank you, no. I can manage, and it’s questionable enough you even being here in my room without a chaperone.” She chuckled as she slipped her legs over the side of the bed.

  “That’s more like it, Miss Celeste. A little humor to take the edge off. Well, if I can’t lend a hand, I’ll be on my way.”

  She was surprised and a little dismayed to find it was already night outside, and she hadn’t sensed it; not until she went into the outer room and found it was dark. “Least Mr. Nebo could have done was leave a light on as he left.” She chuckled as she shuffled across to the front door, familiar enough with the room to walk it in total darkness. “Need to be out in the free air.” She stood behind the screen door before stepping outside, embarrassed she might be seen by anyone passing by, but the darkness gave her the privacy she would need, and she slipped out to her rocking chair.

  Katrina was reaching out from the Gulf, filling the air around Celeste, crowding out every other voice but her own. She was strong, even after stumbling over Florida, but she wasn’t satisfied. The waters were feeding her, and the ocean of air she swam through was making an easy way for her to reach the coast. Celeste listened in on those words between Katrina and the oceans above and below. The tone was clear if the particulars were muddled. With the lingering sickness, she felt like she was hearing it through thick batting. The deeper, slower voice of flowing heat and dropping pressure was more difficult to pick out, big as they were, but the bright voices of the lightning cut through cleanly—the voice of intent. Katrina was building and her eye was growing sharp and wide.

  From midnight through till almost dawn she sat on the porch and listened as best she could. “You’ve found your true path,” Celeste said aloud to the storm as morning approached. “I guess no words of mine can set you on another.”

  Something brushed her leg, and she was startled out of listening to the boastful song Katrina was singing to her. A cat had wande
red up onto the porch, maybe hoping to ingratiate itself and get an invitation inside. But it so startled Celeste that she kicked the cat away without meaning to, and the animal darted off in search of a better welcome.

  “I’ve got to get this down before I lose it,” Celeste said, and went back inside again to gather her paints and brushes.

  “Guess they’ll find this painting floating on the water after it’s all done and Katrina’s had her way with us.” She set aside her brush and looked over the work. “Too strong and too close.” Only then did the weariness settle back into her, and she pulled the quilt tighter around her shoulders, in spite of the heat. She closed her eyes to rest them, just for a moment, but then found them reluctant to open again. “Can’t blame you for that,” she whispered. “Nothing to see but that frightful picture of what’s coming in to scoop us up. Plenty better things to look at than her.”

  Something brushed against her and her mind went at once to the cat, wondering how it might have gotten in, but when she turned her head to check, she was looking down into the eyes of the bear. “You remember me?” asked the bear.

  “I never forgot, but couldn’t find my way. Take us on through to the other side,” Celeste replied. “I won’t dare look away until we’re there.”

  Outside

  On the Outside everything was quiet but the colors flowed like wind and water, swirling like the painting on her table, but now a living thing with bands high and low reaching into the distance, under their feet and above their heads. This was the vital counterpart to her watercolor impression of the storm’s essence as Celeste had gathered it, and built it up from all her senses.

  “It’s not like any of the others,” said the bear.

  “She’s just so horribly strong,” Celeste said weakly. “If only I could have handled her even a day ago. There’s a time for everything, and this just feels too late.” She scanned the flows of cool and warm colors, the pools of light and wells of darkness, and all of this meant something to her. She needed time to understand Katrina, but there simply wasn’t a luxury of time there for her to use.

  Celeste sat at her kitchen table, wrapped in her picturous quilt. Her eyes moved busily behind her closed eyelids but her brush was clean and set off to the side of the angry painting. Her breathing was steady one moment and fast the next. Occasionally a word or two passed her lips—soft, almost unrecognizable words. She sat so through the day. If her stomach rumbled with hunger, she paid it no mind. When the phone rang, she didn’t answer. She was occupied, sensing the changes in the air, and passing the knowledge through to the other side.

  “I can’t move her,” Celeste said as she focused on one relationship between the storm and the sky. One thread of connection between the two. Her eyes drifted along a different thread between the storm and the water below. So many threads that, together, told the short but unique story of the storm.

  “What do you see?” asked the bear.

  “Something like memories, if a storm could have memories—as far back along her path as I’m able to read. Born out of a joining of two waves of flow. One wave that was passing away and another coming up to take its place, taking up that hope of growing into something more. And grow it did, until it was given a name by those who watched it grow and worried what it might be up to—reading the signs and its futures. Fearing it, though it intended no fear. A storm only does what it’s born to do. Only goes where it’s directed by the powers that give rise to it.”

  “She came to land, stepping onto Florida, blind that it was even there, but taking the hurt that comes of a hurricane deprived of heat from the waters. She stumbled about, doing harm without meaning any, until she found her way clear to the warm waters of the Gulf where she could heal herself. Not just healed, but given strength like she hadn’t known before, and a path that would bring her here, or nearly so. She’ll pass us to the east, which is the kindest passing we could hope for apart from passing farther away than she will.”

  “Too late to suggest that more distant path,” said the bear.

  “Too late for that.”

  “And no chance she might calm herself?”

  “It’s beyond me now to ask so much of the waters of the Gulf. To ask for those waters to send their warmth another way, or to bend the great winds above. All the shouting I might manage couldn’t be heard with the path so near its end.”

  “Didn’t know paths ever end,” said the bear. “Like the paths of your Mama or Papa. Or that of your mother’s sister. Paths that just seem to carry on with yours that’s already so long and has no end I can see, or want to see. Stories and memories don’t end, and I know how those stories can bring on a calmness in you. Same for me. Why not offer them up to this storm and see what happens.”

  “You think my memories would be of interest to this storm? You’re giving it credit I’m not sure it warrants.”

  “You’ll know better than me,” said the bear. “Just thought a bit of sharing might not hurt, since learning of its story seemed to have a calming effect on you.”

  Celeste thought that her dear companion had mistaken resignation for calmness. Still, what would be lost by offering up her memories to the storm, on the faint chance they might reach something in it that was hidden to her and all those others that studied her so intently. She reached as far back as she could into her childhood for those best memories that could show the storm something of where she had come from and those who had helped her get this far. She offered up every good memory like some picturous quilt, stitching together all those pieces, significant and momentary, from her parents and Augustin, Odette and Aurore and Beatrice. She included those still present, her family as such; George and Annie, Gabrielle and Jonathon. The ghost, she held back, but of the bear, she did tell, and all of it was about wonders, and love and a need to keep it all whole. She offered up all that was most precious.

  “I feel a change,” said the bear. “Have you offered up a challenge or a gift?”

  “A gift, whether it can know it or not.”

  The Outside might have been filled out to its farthest edges by Katrina. The great storm’s memory and path were there because Celeste had brought them there; invited the essence of it to a common ground. Seen, as in the simple painting on paper that lay before Celeste on the tangible side of her life, this Katrina of the other side now found a whole new wealth of heat in a fortunate flow of the Gulf. Fortunate for the storm but not for New Orleans, or Celeste. Katrina drank in that heat like a thing dying of thirst, and flung her cloudy self ever higher, and her arms wide. A furious light filled her heart as lightning burned like glory. Her eye grew wide and clear. One last heave and surge before the last—before the land she couldn’t see would claim her even as she would stumble, fall on it and surely die.

  “I’d meant to send this hurricane off along a new path,” Celeste said. “But maybe its here to send me off. I can feel her hold on me. I can already feel my memories leaving and following hers. Memories I offered up but not in hopes of loosing them. Maybe the ghost was right and this storm will take me up in its winds and blow me far and far away to Evermore.”

  “If it takes you away, I will find you,” said the bear. “Wherever it may be, I’ll find you if you’re lost.”

  Many had left the city, and many more would leave before it was too late. Others would not leave in time, or at all. Many hadn’t the means to go. When Gabrielle arrived at Celeste’s house, she knocked lightly for courtesy sake and then let herself in using the spare key Celeste had never wanted back. The house was quiet and Celeste was seated at the kitchen table, wrapped in her quilt, her eyes closed. For an awful moment, Gabrielle thought Celeste had died, but as she drew near, first leaning over her, then drawing up a chair to be near, she could see that she was either in a deep sleep or some stupor brought on by her illness. She placed her palm on Celeste’s forehead and it was cool. Had it been anyone else, she might have woken her just to check, but there was something about this sleep that stopped her. Cele
ste’s eyes moved furtively behind her closed lids.

  On the table was a painting, still taped down to the board, and it was unlike anything Gabrielle had ever seen Celeste produce. It was an unsettling work and she turned away from it. “Celeste?” she said, softly, not wanting to startle her.

  As Celeste woke, it was the feel of the quilt wrapped snug around her that she noticed first. The feeling of warmth and security. Then her hearing returned and with it the voice of the outer waves of the storm. The threatening world. Finally, she opened her eyes to see Gabrielle seated beside her at the table.

  “I was afraid to wake you.”

  Celeste tried to reply and only then realized just how weak she was. Her mouth wouldn’t form the words. She couldn’t shake her head. She stared at Gabrielle, thinking she recognized her, but it was only a vague sense without specifics.

  “Katrina will be here by morning,” Gabrielle explained. “I need to get you away from here.” Even as she said it, she wondered if Celeste could travel in time to get away.

  Celeste found her voice, and just enough strength to use it. “No,” she whispered. “I can’t leave.”

  “But it may not be safe here.”

  Celeste looked up at the ceiling and spoke as if confiding a secret. “I’ll be safe up there. The attic.”