“Pleeeese! Reesie, pleeeese!” Jazz threw Reesie’s covers off. Reesie moaned. Then she remembered how she used to do the same to Junior, practically dragging him out of bed on Christmas Day.
“Okay, okay.” She blinked her sleepiness away and looked at herself in Jazz’s pink princess mirror. Her hair was wild—she’d been too tired to wrap it with a scarf. Orlando couldn’t see her this way! She grabbed Jazz’s hairbrush.
“Come on!” Jazz was pulling at her. “You’re already pretty!”
“Thanks, Jazzy.” Reesie pulled jeans on with the oversize T-shirt she’d slept in. She could hear little Jason shouting downstairs already, and Uncle Teddy’s good-natured grumbling.
At the foot of the stairs, Jazz caught sight of the tree and forgot all about Reesie. Reesie dropped to sit on the bottom step, taking everything in.
Jimmy, wearing a loud red velour robe, shouted names as he scooped boxes from underneath the Christmas tree, each time causing it to shudder dangerously. Junior was showing Jason how to set up his train set; Mama and Aunt Tish were laughing over how they’d gotten each other the same scarf.
Reesie hugged her knees. She hadn’t expected that everything would be so normal, but she didn’t want it any other way.
“Merry, merry, baby girl!” Daddy ruffled her hair through the stair rail as he came from the kitchen with a mug of strong coffee and chicory. Reesie inhaled deeply. Yes, this was normal.
“Same to you, Daddy!” She jumped up to kiss him on the cheek, and bounced into the living room looking for Orlando.
“Hey, Merry Christmas, Peanut Butter.” He was behind her.
She turned in surprise and grinned, thinking of Dré. She’d never noticed before how much they looked alike. Orlando pushed a clumsily wrapped package at her.
“Wow, thanks!”
“Well, I hope you have a gift for him too!” Daddy raised his eyebrows and passed by them.
Reesie shook herself. “Uh, yes! Course I do, Daddy!”
“Wait. Open yours first,” Orlando said. He leaned against the wall, watching her. She was strangely aware that everyone else was watching her now too.
Reesie tore open the paper with one rip—she’d never been a careful gift opener.
There was a folded length of bright purple cotton fabric. Her mouth dropped open, and she looked up at Orlando as if seeing him for the first time. His face lit up.
“I was thinking, you know, you’re a designer, and all your—what you call it? Your stash was underwater!” He was talking fast. “And—and I know your favorite color is purple. You got purple shirts and a purple backpack and—”
Reesie dropped the fabric and threw her arms around his neck.
“Thank you! Thank you!” she said.
The family clapped as if they were in a TV show audience. Reesie let go of Orlando.
“Okay, y’all. Now you’ve embarrassed me in front of my boyfriend.”
“Oohh! Boyfriend?” Uncle Teddy teased.
“What?” Junior said.
“When did this happen?” Mama asked.
“Somewhere around second grade, I think.” Aunt Tish winked at Reesie, and Reesie wondered how aunts managed to remember every silly little detail you ever told them.
“Jimmy, you’d better keep this boy in line, now,” Daddy said.
Orlando ran his hand over his hair. “Mr. Reesie’s Dad,” he said with a straight face, “is this okay with you?”
“I’m not the one to ask, Mr. Knight. It’s got to be okay with Teresa.”
Orlando blew a sigh of relief, and Reesie picked up her fabric, holding it tight as she went to search for his gift. It wasn’t much, only a New York Yankees shirt, but she knew he’d wear it.
“Do you spell Orlando with an O?” Jazz asked, holding up the right package.
“Yeah, thanks!” Reesie said. And then Uncle Teddy rolled in the bikes, and high-pitched squeals and riding lessons took over.
“Reesie?” Aunt Tish was holding a gift bag. “Here’s another one for you.”
Reesie tipped around toys and stepped over boxes to get across the room. There was something heavy in the bag. Reesie lifted out the yellow tissue paper and saw a book. She looked at her aunt for a moment, then into the bag again.
“Woman Everlasting! Thank you so much!”
Aunt Tish hugged her tightly. “It was out of print, but I lucked out yesterday at that bookstore I know in New York. I thought you’d like to have it.”
“Yes,” Reesie said. “I—this Christmas—is the best I ever had.”
Aunt Tish nodded. “Life can surprise you, kid. Katrina was one of the bad surprises. But then those are the ones that make the good surprises so sweet.”
A few hours later, once the feast was eaten, kids were calmed, and a football game was blasting in surround sound, Reesie and Orlando tried to sneak out of the house. She really wanted him to meet Dadi. Unfortunately, Orlando’s struggle with a pair of Uncle Ted’s snow boots slowed them down, and Reesie’s mother materialized at the top of the stairs before they got to the door.
“Hey!” she said pleasantly. “Where are you two going at this hour on Christmas Day?”
“Mom, it’s only five o’clock!” Reesie tried not to whine. The day had been wonderful so far, and she didn’t want to ruin it.
“It’s already dark, though.”
“We’re only walking up the street. The diner is open. I’m introducing Orlando to Dadi.”
“Ah. The old friend meets the new.” Her mother twisted her wrist to look at her watch. “Be back by seven.”
Orlando straightened up, grinned, and saluted. “Yes, ma’am, Mrs. Sergeant Reesie’s—”
Reesie jerked him out the door. Even after it was shut, they could hear her mother laughing. They held hands while tromping through the snow. It was almost too cold to speak, but Orlando managed. He filled her in on Jimmy’s stubborn search for a new space to open up Blue Moon Two, on who was back in town and who was still MIA. He told her how both Dré and Eritrea had found work and an apartment uptown.
“Okay, so when are you coming back to New Orleans?” he asked.
“Spring break—April.”
“I mean, for good.”
They rounded the corner onto busy Bloomfield Avenue, and the glare of the streetlights and headlights made the new snow so bright that it almost seemed like daytime. Reesie looked over at Orlando and realized that she actually had to look up. He’d grown at least two inches taller since August.
“Depends on my mom,” she said.
They stopped at the traffic light across the street from the Silver Diner. Reesie could see Felicidad watching from inside. She raised her arm to wave furiously. Dadi waved back, and it looked like she was saying, Nice!
“Yeah, you’re right!” Reesie said under her breath as she ran across the wide street with Orlando Knight beside her.
PART FOUR
Finding Someplace
Chapter Twenty-Two
APRIL 14, 2006
Reesie had never liked airplane takeoffs or landings. She closed her eyes, gripped the armrests, and pressed herself back against the seat, waiting for that odd sensation of lifting into the air. This time both her stomach and her knees were shaky, and she wasn’t sure that flying again was the reason.
“Are you all right?” her mother whispered from the next seat.
“I don’t know,” Reesie said, looking out the window instead of at her mother. The plane was still climbing, but the winding ribbons of New Jersey highways were hardly visible anymore through the wispy clouds. In a few hours they’d land in Baton Rouge to spend the night with Parraine and Tee Charmaine. Tomorrow they’d drive into New Orleans.
“I’m not sure either,” Mom said. She took off her reading glasses and dropped them onto the stack of folders in her lap.
Reesie knew the folders held letters and e-mails between her parents and FEMA, the government office that was supposed to help people during disasters. Reesie also knew from listeni
ng in on her parents’ phone conversations that FEMA seemed to want proof of what people owned—before they would help—and every bit of the Boone proof had been snatched at the Superdome.
Reesie swallowed. These days she was getting better at fighting her fears and feelings of responsibility for what happened; still, she shifted uncomfortably. Mom noticed and quickly shoved the papers down into the tote bag between her feet.
“You know, when my parents died in that car accident, I was afraid nothing would ever feel normal again. Nothing would be normal again.”
Reesie wondered what made her mother bring that awful subject up. Aunt Tish had been only seven or eight, her mother thirteen. They were visiting an aunt, and their parents were coming to pick them up. It was the visit that never ended.
“In Miss Martine’s attic I thought some crazy stuff,” Reesie said. “I wondered how anybody could go on if they lost everything.”
Mom nodded.
“And I just realized—you did that, Mom. You went through something huge, something tragic!” Reesie lowered her voice. “It’s like … walking through the world when nothing is real but you, right?”
“Right.” Mom played with the heart necklace, which she hadn’t taken off since Christmas. “But I put one foot in front of the other and made it to nursing school in New Orleans, and met your dad.” She laughed a little. “He made things real, all right! We got married, had Junior, had you. I woke up one day and looked around, and said to myself: ‘This is normal!’”
“That’s what ‘new normal’ means. I get it.”
Mom tilted her head and looked at Reesie hard. “But deep down I lived every day afraid that I would lose everything again.”
Reesie had never known her mother to be timid, or to shy away from anything. She was a surgical nurse! Then the scene at the motel flashed into Reesie’s memory.
“Mom—you thought you wouldn’t find me, didn’t you?”
Her mother took a deep breath. “When I heard about the flooding and the levees breaking? I lost it. I couldn’t find my husband. I didn’t know what happened to my daughter. We had coworkers who disappeared. Every hour I got madder, mad as hell at New Orleans, and at your father for making me love it.”
“Wow.” Reesie had to take a minute to wrap her head around this conversation. This wasn’t kid stuff, hearing what went on between her parents. But then, she hadn’t felt like a kid for the last eight months. Inside her there had been an almost constant tug-of-war between hope and fear about going back.
“Mom?”
“Yes, baby?”
“We’re moving back for good when school is out, right?”
Her mother nodded slowly. “I promised your dad.”
Reesie hoped she might one day be as strong as Jeannie Boone. She turned to the window again. Now the plane was cruising along a thick white carpet of clouds, and as far as she could see, the sky was a bright and perfect blue. But life’s not perfect, she thought.
She put her headphones on and zoned out for the rest of the flight.
* * *
At baggage claim Reesie stood on her toes to scan for Parraine’s shining bald head.
“Hey, girls!” Tee Charmaine’s voice rang from two luggage carousels away. Reesie turned in her direction and ran.
“Yeah!” Parraine crooned. “The Boones are back on home ground!” He caught Reesie first, swinging her into the air like her father always did.
“Well, how much did you grow?” Tee Charmaine was all of about five feet tall, and Reesie had passed that mark before her birthday. She laughed. Tee Charmaine could always make her laugh.
“Didn’t she?” Mom was smiling proudly.
“Did you sew that skirt?” Tee Charmaine asked.
Reesie looked down at the simple wrap skirt she’d made from the fabric Orlando had given her. “Yes.” She smiled. “But I’m still getting used to Aunt Tish’s sewing machine.”
“Nice job!” Tee Charmaine said.
“You still playin’ ball up there in New Jersey?” Parraine asked over his shoulder, lifting one of their ridiculously large suitcases off the revolving rack.
“Softball? Nahh.” Reesie shrugged. She hadn’t thought about softball in a long time. “Things change,” she said. He seemed to skip a beat, staring at her. That’s funny, Reesie thought. Tee Charmaine could see that she’d changed outside, but couldn’t Parraine see that she must’ve changed inside, too?
Reesie’s phone vibrated, and she answered it.
“You landed?” Orlando asked. She had begun to like hearing his voice so often, her cell phone bill was dangerously close to becoming an issue.
“Yeah. We’ll be in New Orleans tomorrow,” she said.
“Let me know when you hit the city, and I’ll come by your house. Remember, I said, ‘It’s not pretty,’ okay?”
“I remember. See you.”
“Later.” When she looked up, her mother and aunt had strolled ahead, but Parraine was looking at her suspiciously.
“What was all that?” he asked. “Who’re you gonna see?”
“It was nothing, Parraine,” she said, clicking up the handle on her rolling bag. “I heard you got a new ride!” Parraine couldn’t resist talking cars. Tee Charmaine hated it, so it was Reesie and Parraine in the front seats of the still new-smelling Chrysler.
Soon they were in familiar territory. The low brick ranch houses and big old trees lining the streets looked exactly the way they had nearly a year ago. Inside, Reesie wandered slowly through the rooms, pausing to look at framed photos of her cousin Angela, grown and moved away; of Ma Maw; of the grandfather she’d never met. A shiver went through her when she picked up one that was a twin to a photo that had been in her own house, frame and all. It was the one of Daddy getting his promotion. She’d had it in the backpack.
Her aunt and uncle’s house smelled of floor wax and spices and Tee Charmaine’s floral perfume. Like always.
Reesie should have felt comfortable. They sat around in the kitchen and laughed and remembered old family times. When exhaustion made her eyelids droop and her entire body feel like lead, she crashed across the bed in Angela’s old room. Like always.
* * *
She was walking down her street on that August day, talking on her cell to Orlando. Waving at Miss Martine. Feeling a drop on her forehead. When she wiped it, sand flung from her fingers. She dropped her phone and looked around. She was surrounded by sand. Bright white sand that shifted and drifted into hot waves. The sun was burning the top of her bare head. She tried to yell for help, but no sounds came out of her throat. She was in a desert, alone.
* * *
Reesie sat upright. It was dark. Her heart was pounding. Tomorrow wouldn’t be like always.
Chapter Twenty-Three
APRIL 15, 2006
“I got a surprise for my goddaughter!” Parraine announced at the breakfast table. Reesie had just eaten a mouthful of hot grits, so she grabbed her glass of juice to wash it down.
“Surprise?” She almost choked. Tee Charmaine had a puzzled expression, and Mom avoided eye contact with her by reading a newspaper. Parraine slid a scrap of yellow notebook paper across the table. Reesie frowned at the scrawled address. She had no idea what—or where—it was. Parraine took a swig of coffee and stood.
“Yeah, surprise. You didn’t get too grown for those up in New Jersey, did you?”
“Nooo…” Reesie was still a little brain-cloudy from her dream, so she couldn’t guess what her uncle had up his sleeve.
“Go on and finish eating, Reesie. We have a stop to make before we get on the road to New Orleans!”
Reesie hurried through the rest of her meal, brushed her teeth, and met her uncle at the car. Mom and Tee Charmaine were whispering and smiling mysteriously on the porch as Parraine drove off.
“Okay, I can’t stand it,” Reesie said, uncrumpling the address. “Where are we going?”
“You can’t figure it out?” Parraine laughed.
Reesie racked
her brain. She hadn’t been to many places in Baton Rouge before, besides her uncle’s house, their church, Angela’s old high school. But they’d left the neighborhood behind and were heading toward some kind of hospital complex.
“Wait!” Reesie slapped the dashboard. “Wait!”
“Yeah?” Parraine said. “You got it?”
Reesie leaned her head back on the seat. “Miss Martine.”
It wasn’t exactly a hospital; it was more like a special apartment building for older people. When they walked in, there was a desk with a security guard, where Parraine had to check in. The guard told them to wait in the lobby, and he motioned to the left, past a bank of elevators.
The large living-room-like space was empty. Through the wall of glass windows at the back Reesie saw people sitting or walking in what looked like a flower garden.
The elevator doors swished open. Reesie jumped up.
“Miss Martine!”
“Well, Teresa!” Miss Martine was a little thinner and moved a little slower, but she had on a curly silver beehive wig, and wore new purple glasses—cat-eye, of course.
“I’m so glad you’re all right!” Reesie couldn’t stop grinning. “I was so worried when we had to leave you—”
Miss Martine settled herself on one of the fluffy couches, and Reesie sat beside her. Miss Martine patted Reesie’s knee.
“You were so brave. I know how that water must have terrified you, after that swimming pool scare you had!”
“How”—Reesie looked at Parraine, but he shook his head—“how did you know?” she finished.
Miss Martine smiled. “Your grandmother and I had many cups of tea together, Teresa. Edith was a wonderful, strong woman. You are her legacy.”
“I am?” Reesie turned the idea over in her mind. Daddy had called their house a legacy in the heated argument. Was this how life worked as you grew up—everything got connected?
“Yeah, you are,” Parraine said so low that Reesie almost didn’t hear. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to.
* * *
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