Finding Someplace

by Denise Lewis Patrick

  All at once, the radio crackled and a woman’s voice came through clearly. Miss Martine jerked awake, knocking over the cooler.

  “As of this hour, unconfirmed sources report that both the Seventeenth Street Canal and the Industrial Canal have breached. There’s no official word on the extent of flooding so far, but some areas, such as the Lower Ninth Ward, may be experiencing up to four feet of floodwater.… Repeat, may be experiencing four or more feet of flooding from a suspected levee breach.…”

  Reesie dropped her pencil. The edge of her sketch pad trembled against her knees.

  “We’re trapped up here!” she shouted.

  “Dré?” This time Eritrea sounded like a little girl. Dré pushed past her to get to the ladder. Reesie held her breath as first his feet disappeared, then his knees. Just as his face vanished, they heard loud splashing. His head popped up again. When he crawled off the ladder, he was wet from the waist down. Reesie saw his eyes and knew how scared he was. Her heart thumped.

  “We gotta get on the roof,” he said, reaching for the crowbar. “Miss M, I’m sorry, but we have to bust it up.”

  “What?” both girls yelled at once.

  “Calm it down, a’ight? Yeah, the roof. How else are we gonna get out of here?”

  “The roof?” Even Miss Martine sounded uncertain.

  Dré twisted his body to remove his shirt. Reesie stuffed her pad away, reminding herself that she wasn’t a kid anymore. She was thirteen, and she was Sergeant Superman’s daughter.

  “Let me help,” she said.

  Dré looked over his shoulder at her. “Yeah, you right! I’ll start it off.”

  “I’ll hold the flashlight!” Eritrea said. The stream of light was shaking like her hand must have been, but Dré leaned and whispered something to her. The light steadied.

  “Okay. Get back as far as ya’ll can, now!” He tapped at the wood with the hooked end of the crowbar, then drew back and slammed hard. Nothing happened.

  Tap, tap, wham! There was a creaking sound, like what Reesie had heard as Katrina passed over the house taking some of the roof with her.

  “How long do you think it’ll take?” Eritrea asked.

  “Don’t—know—” He panted. Thump, bam! Bam!

  Reesie waited as long as she could before she shouted, “Dré, give it!” He stopped to wipe sweat from his eyes, and she grabbed the crowbar. It was heavy in her hands. She wanted to swing the tool like a baseball bat, but there was no room. She balanced herself evenly on her knees.

  “Close your eyes!” Dré said. “Give it all you got!”

  Reesie rammed the crowbar straight up. Bam! She heard more cracking. She counted: two, four, six hits. Her shoulders ached.

  “I’ll take it, Boone.” Dré gave Reesie a nod. “You did pretty good.”

  He didn’t add for a girl. Reesie’s opinion of Orlando’s brother was undergoing a slow change. He took the same position he’d had before and rammed the crowbar into the shattering rafters.

  Wham! Wham! Bang!

  “Watch out!” he said. Eritrea’s flashlight moved wildly, wood splintered, and a gust of air streamed in. They saw blue sky.

  “We did it, Boone!” Dré wrapped his shirt around his hand and carefully pushed out as many jagged pieces of wood as he could from the edges of the hole they’d made.

  “Let’s pull that trunk over here so I can get a leg up,” he said.

  Reesie obeyed. She watched him flinch as he eased himself out. She wouldn’t forget to tell Orlando that his big brother had turned into a hero.

  “I never seen anything like this!” Dré shouted down at them. “I—whoahhhh!” There was a loud bump, then the sound of sliding, falling.… Reesie held her breath, waiting for an awful splash.

  “André!” Miss Martine moved toward the trunk.

  “Oh my God! Dré?” Eritrea started to climb up. In the light it was obvious she was terrified.

  “I’m good!” He sounded breathless. “I slipped—it’s somethin’ treacherous out here! Y’all gotta be real careful.”

  Eritrea shook her head and gave Reesie a weak smile. “I can’t let anything happen to him. André is all I got.”

  Miss Martine patted Eritrea on the shoulder. “Those Knight boys are hardheaded, child. Don’t you worry. André’s not going anywhere!”

  Eritrea nodded and turned away, but not before Reesie saw her tearing up.

  Dré’s face loomed over them, blocking out the light. “From what I’m looking at, I think we better hurry up!”

  Eritrea got up on the trunk first. “I’m not tall enough!” she said.

  Reesie hurried to look around for something, anything else to use as an extra step. She spotted a plastic milk crate filled with junk, and quickly dumped it. She slapped it on top of the trunk and steadied it while Eritrea climbed up and looked out.

  “What can you see out there?” Miss Martine asked.

  “Oh, it’s…” Eritrea hesitated, like she couldn’t even find the right words. “It’s just bad!” She ducked back in, shaking her head. “Everything is underwater.” She wound her scarf around her waist and tied it. In seconds she was back atop the crate, so that half her body was outside. Pushing up on her elbows, she wiggled up and out.

  “I got it. Next!” Eritrea looked down, her braids swinging.

  “Okay, Miss Martine.” Reesie nodded.

  But Miss Martine gave Reesie a little push. “You go on first.”

  Reesie shook her head. “Oh no, ma’am! If my daddy ever found out that I left this attic before you, I’d be grounded for life!” She gave Miss Martine a little shove back. “You go.”

  Miss Martine slowly climbed onto the trunk. Dré and Eritrea reached down for her arms. They pulled and Reesie pushed until Miss Martine was sitting on the edge of the hole, her legs dangling. For a minute she seemed to be having a hard time catching her breath, but then she eased herself out. While the others got Miss Martine settled, Reesie collected the radio. She took the last meat pies out of the cooler and put them into the grocery bag.

  When Dré finally called, “Ready?” Reesie handed everything up to him. She focused only on avoiding splinters as she lifted herself out. Eritrea caught her arm, and she felt a weird physical sensation when her Chucks touched the shingles, just like the one time she’d been on a skate ramp with Junior.

  Reesie crept carefully toward a short metal pipe sticking out of the roof, eased her arm around it, and slowly looked around. She’d figured that once they were out of the tight house and even more cramped crawl space, she would feel relieved. She’d thought Dré was their rescue. But now, in the open air, in ninety-degree heat, she began to shiver.

  What had happened to her neighborhood? Where were the front yards and the fences and the porches and chairs? Her stomach heaved. She’d lived here all her life, but nothing looked familiar. It was a river of rooftops and treetops. Telephone poles, thick as young trees, leaned every which way, trailing wires.

  And it looked like the water was still coming.

  “This is sure nuff some wicked mess,” Dré said as the entire side of a house floated past.

  Chairs and bicycles and other personal belongings followed, taken by the current of the floodwaters. Reesie could make out a colorful flat thing tangled in tree branches close by, and realized she was looking at the top of an SUV.

  For a few long minutes nobody said another word.

  “What do we do now?” Eritrea said. She and Miss Martine were huddled next to the old brick chimney on the slope of the roof, just below Reesie.

  “We wait.” Dré sighed. He sat with his legs dangling off the edge.

  “My daddy knows where we are. He’s coming,” Reesie said. She’d always believed her father could do anything, but she was worried. It was already afternoon—sooner or later it would be dark. How could he possibly find Miss Martine’s house then? What would happen to them if he didn’t?

  There was no rain. There were no cars, no crickets. No faint voices or pounding be
ats of speakers floated in the air. It felt as if the only life left in New Orleans was there, on top of this little house on Dauphine Street.

  Miss Martine told them stories about New York, and tried to encourage them until her energy faded. Eritrea kept fiddling with the radio, but she couldn’t get it to work again. Reesie had parked herself right at the peak of the roof so she was as far away from the water as she could get. She stared at the changing sky as the afternoon passed and the dusk started on its way.

  “It’s almost night,” Reesie announced to no one in particular, flicking the flashlight on. Her birthday skirt was underwater. And Ma Maw’s sewing machine and all the yards and yards of fabric stashed under the bed. Her lifetime collection of sketchbooks and markers. Junior’s trophies. Her parents’ African masks. Everything. Soaked. Ruined. Gone.

  She kept wanting to hear sounds, sounds of anything—even the awful winds of Katrina would have been better than this, this nothingness. She didn’t even want to close her eyes as exhaustion pulled them shut, because she feared what might happen while she slept.

  Each time she nodded off, she jerked herself awake to stare at the strange shapes below, and at the blackness in the distance that should have been the bright lights of the lively French Quarter.

  “Reesie! Reesie!” Eritrea was whispering. “Miss Simon! Listen!”

  Reesie blinked into the dark, groping for her flashlight. She heard a faint humming.

  “It’s a boat! Turn on the flashlights!” Dré shouted. “Hey!”

  They all started yelling.

  “Help!”

  “Over here!”

  The putt-putting motor grew louder as the boat came closer. Water slapped at the side of the house in its wake. The motor stopped. Reesie aimed her light in the direction of the sound.

  “How many of y’all up there?” a deep voice asked.

  “Four!” Dré answered.

  “We gotcha,” the voice said calmly. “We gotcha.”

  PART TWO

  Lost

  Chapter Thirteen

  AUGUST 30, 2005, 4:00 AM

  “Thanks, man. I don’t know how long we would’ve been stuck up there.” Dré shook hands with the man piloting the wide flat fishing boat.

  Reesie was glad to be off the roof, but held on tightly to the seat. She’d been on ferries before, but this was her first time in a small boat. It took her a minute to stop thinking about whatever might be out in the dark besides the black water.

  “This is like another planet,” Eritrea whispered, sitting beside her. “I hope they’re taking us somewhere high and dry!”

  The words from Miss Martine’s poem popped into Reesie’s head: Everybody wants to find someplace. Reesie leaned around Eritrea.

  “Miss Martine?”

  Miss Martine had been awfully quiet when the men helped her off the roof. Now, as Reesie looked, she saw that Miss M’s face and her whole body seemed to be sagging.

  “Miss Martine!”

  “Mmmm…” Her eyes fluttered before she opened them wide. “I’m feeling a little weak, Teresa,” she said, closing her eyes again.

  “Dré! We have to do something!” Eritrea said.

  Dré moved toward Miss M quickly, and she slumped against him. “Hey! They got doctors where we’re going?” he asked.

  The second man in the boat swung his bright light on them. “We can get you to the Saint Claude Bridge,” he said. “They say the National Guard’s pickin’ up from there.”

  “Stay with me, Miss M.” Dré shook Miss Martine’s shoulder. “Come on now!”

  Eritrea pulled a bottle of water from the bag they’d brought and tried to get Miss M to drink.

  Reesie watched, paralyzed. Why was all this happening? Was it because she’d played with God, like Miss Martine had said? What if she had stopped to help Miss M that morning? Maybe then everything would be different.… She thought about Ma Maw. Her grandmother had suddenly felt faint one day too; Daddy had rushed her to the emergency room. She never came home.

  “Yo! We got a sick lady down here!” Dré was yelling.

  Reesie saw the concrete of the bridge through dozens of dancing flashlight beams. The boat bumped gently against it, and Reesie got ready to climb up. Instead someone grabbed her arm and pulled her out. The water was only a couple of feet below the bridge rail.

  She lay flat out on the hot wet asphalt, panting, and then sat up. Her eyes gradually adjusted to the moving lights, and she could see past the dozens of people standing, sitting, or wandering around. There was a line of stalled cars and trucks down the center of the road. But the strangest, most frightening sight was the people who were still sitting in their boats down on the access ramp, where floodwaters had crept up and swallowed the road.

  Reesie was shaking. The shaking was inside, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it. So she counted to ten the way she did when Junior got on her last nerve. She reminded herself that she’d gotten this far not by herself, but with Dré and Eritrea and Miss Martine … Miss Martine! Reesie rose to her knees to look around. There was a small group of people crowded a few feet away. Among them she spotted Eritrea’s once-white dress. She seemed to be trying to get the people to back off.

  “Hey, give her some air!”

  Reesie made herself get up and walk over. “C’mon, move it, move it!” She used her best bossy voice, the way her father would have.

  Eritrea raised her eyebrows, but smiled. “Your daddy’s a cop, right?”

  Reesie nodded and squatted down. Miss Martine was hardly breathing. There was a sheen of sweat around the edges of her wig. Her eyes fluttered, but stayed shut.

  “What can we do?” Reesie sat back on her heels, feeling her heart racing.

  Eritrea reached into the folds of her scarf and pulled out one more tiny bottle of water. She gently pressed it to Miss Martine’s lips, but the woman wouldn’t drink. She couldn’t.

  “She’s gotta go to a hospital,” Eritrea said, looking up. “Soon.”

  Reesie took a deep breath and looked around. Dré had melted into the pulsing crowd. Reesie craned her neck to look for his wild dreadlocks, but her gaze wandered away, beyond the bridge. The sky was turning pink. Sunrise.

  Then she thought she heard a faint rumbling noise coming from the other end of the bridge. There were so many people crowded together over there, more than she’d thought. Men and women were pacing, some smoking cigarettes and some debating loudly about what their next moves should be. Teenagers hung over the rails, and other women and children were huddled in clumps together. Some were crying, but many of their faces looked blank, like they weren’t feeling anything.

  Someone else noticed the sound and shouted, and all the bodies began to move.

  “Trucks!”

  “It’s the National Guard!”

  “Help!”

  “Get us out of here!”

  Towels and T-shirts and even a few diapers flapped in the air to signal for a rescue. Two huge vehicles rolled up, each with several uniformed soldiers on board. Reesie stood up. The strange trucks looked like something from a movie. The tires were almost as tall as a person. As the engines powered down, the people backed away. Some of the soldiers carried guns.

  One soldier hopped down off the first truck. Just as his feet touched the ground, Reesie heard a familiar voice shout: “Hey! Hey, Mr. National Guard Man!” It was Dré.

  “Sorry, man!” The guardsman motioned with his hands for Dré to move back. He shouted over the noise, “We’re picking up elderly only! Elders only!”

  “Okay, it’s our grandma, man! She’s ’bout to die, or something! You gotta take her outta this madness, please, Mr. National Guard Man!”

  Our grandma? Reesie shot a look at Eritrea.

  “Here! Here she is, see?” Dré rushed to Miss Martine’s side, pulling Reesie along.

  “Work with me here, Reesie Boone,” he said in a low voice. Reesie fixed her face to match Dré’s lie. It wasn’t hard. She was totally whacked out and very wo
rried about Miss Martine.

  The soldier bent to check Miss Martine’s pulse, then he waved back at the trucks.

  “All right. She goes,” he said to Dré.

  “She don’t go nowhere without my sisters!” Dré pushed Reesie and Eritrea forward.

  “Look, fella…” The guardsman sounded threatening. Dré didn’t back down.

  “Times is desperate, man,” he said. “They gotta go with her, else she’ll wake up all confused and take a bad turn!” The soldier tightened his jaw, but he’d made a decision. While other soldiers were moving through the crowd, he took the two-way radio from his hip and barked into it.

  “I’m not going without you,” Eritrea said in a low voice to Dré.

  “Yes, you are, girl. I’ll find you. You know I will!”

  Reesie thought of Orlando. She looked away to give them time to say good-bye or something, when Dré grabbed her by the arm.

  “Boone, you take care of Miss M. And you stick with Tree. I know your daddy is gonna find you, so she’ll be okay too. A’ight?” He stared at her so hard that she blinked.

  “O-okay! Okay.”

  “We’ve got other rescues to make!” the guardsman was yelling. “Then we’re dropping at the Superdome. That’s all I can guarantee!”

  Dré gave a thumbs-up and helped the soldier make a chair with their arms. Reesie and Eritrea helped Miss Martine up. A second guardsman worked with them to lift Miss Martine up and into the chair. When Reesie and Eritrea followed, she was surprised to see that there were already people inside. Eritrea leaned around the green tarp to wave.

  “Bodies inside the truck!” a soldier on the ground ordered.

  “Hold on!” the driver shouted, and the truck began to back up.

  Most of the people inside the truck were old, or mothers with very little kids. One tiny little girl stayed huddled in a ball underneath her mother’s arm, her big eyes wide and unblinking.

  How long before I see my mother again? Reesie wondered. She dropped her gaze to her sneakers. They were scuffed and muddy, and she was ashamed to be wearing them. Then she thought of how the rest of her must look—and smell. The jammed-together bodies around her stank of sweat and funk, food grease and baby oil and fear. So must you, fashion diva wannabe, she told herself.