“Do you know anything about Hip Tran?” I ask.
“Why? Do you like him?”
I give her my Seriously? look. “Do you know anything about his family?”
“Why are you asking me all these weird questions?” She comes and sits on the bed, more interested in me than usual.
“Nothing. I just met his cousin.”
“Is he a football player?”
“I don’t think so. He lives in St. Bernard.”
“Oh, so you’re doing that thing,” she says. “Being interested in someone out of town so people think you have a boyfriend, but you don’t really.”
“I’m not doing anything, Mandy. I just asked a question.”
“Long-distance relationships don’t work, Evangeline,” she warns. “Trust me.”
And so ends another very useful exchange with my sister. Head on pillow. Pebble in shoe. No sleep.
Everyone is glued to the TV at the diner in the morning. Projected landfall is New Orleans, with sustained winds of over 115 miles an hour. There’s a big white swirl on the screen, big enough to fill up the whole Gulf of Mexico. By midmorning they’re calling it Hurricane Katrina. It’s now a Category 5, the weatherman says. What if a Category 5 hurricane hits New Orleans? he asks. Devastation. The levees might not hold. Same things they always say. The things that never happen. Blah, blah, blah.
The announcer ticks down the list of things you should have to prepare for the hurricane: batteries, bottled water, matches, your medicine. So far, evacuation is voluntary. That means most people won’t.
“I heard that it’s supposed to make landfall right here. I mean right here,” says a man at the counter, probably on his way out from the refinery down the road. He taps his finger hard on the counter. “This is ground zero.”
“I heard it was s’posed to hit Mississippi,” says Bill, one of the truckers who’s in here all the time.
Mr. Kovich, the sheriff’s deputy, comes in at around ten, looking serious but with a bit of a swagger. He plants himself at the counter, puts his elbow down, and tips his hat. “Ms. Riley.”
“What’s the word, Tony?” Mama asks.
“Mandatory evacuation. The parish president is about to announce it.”
All the men at the counter look at him. A few groan.
“Oh, come on, Tony. Mandatory?”
“Could be Category Five. Everybody out.”
“They just want to scare us,” says Mr. Porter, who works at the processing plant. It’s his day off, and he always comes for breakfast on Saturday. “It’s because of the lawsuits. If they don’t warn you and somethin’ happens, they’re screwed.”
“At least we’ll get the day off work,” says his wife, Tammy.
“I don’t work, I don’t get paid,” says Mama, sliding a plate of eggs to them across the counter. I hate it when she says stuff like that. It makes her sound so bitter.
“I got nowhere to go. Gotta pay for a hotel. An’ my cats throw up every time I get them in the car,” says Mr. Landry, the mail carrier.
“You could leave them here and leave food for them,” I suggest.
“I done that last time. Didn’t see Puddy again for two months.”
I have to hold in a laugh. It’s funny to see a two-hundred-pound, tough-looking man talk about his cat like that.
Back in the kitchen, Mamere’s got the radio on. Mostly a traffic report. I-10 eastbound is still moving; 1-10 westbound to Baton Rouge is worse. The announcers are joking about it. They’re offering free Saints game tickets to whoever calls in with the best rant about the traffic — a rhyme or a poem or a song, no profanity, please.
After lunch the last of the stragglers are sitting at the counter, eyes glued to the TV. Mama’s in the kitchen cleaning out the fridge and tossing food in the Dumpster out back. “Damn waste,” she mutters.
At three o’clock, I swing the CLOSED sign around on the door of the diner, check the lock, and help Mama, Mandy, and Mamere carry out the coolers of food that we take home.
Everybody here knows the evacuation drill. Pull the cords out of all the electrical outlets. Get everything up off the floor, into the cabinets or on top of a table. Put the generator up in the very top of the closet — that’s what you’ll need the most if the power lines come down and the lights don’t go back on for a week. Throw out anything perishable from the fridge. Board up the windows: I hold the boards; Daddy nails them in. Then we go next door to Mrs. Menil’s house to do hers. She’s sitting out in her chair, as always.
“All this fuss,” she shouts, not realizing how loud she is because she’s hard of hearing now. She bats her hand as if she’s swatting away a fly.
“Is Delbert on his way?” Daddy asks. Delbert is her son, a big fancy lawyer in New Orleans who still comes to see her almost every week and always tries to get her to move up there.
“I told him not to, but he’s on his way. Taking me to Lake Charles, for God’s sake. A lot of fuss, if you ask me. I’ve seen my share of hurricanes in my day. Not but two worth getting up and leaving for. Betsy and Camille.”
“You enjoy your time with Delbert,” says Daddy, patting her on the arm. “Think of it as a vacation.”
“Who goes to Lake Charles on vacation?” Mrs. Menil growls. “If he was taking me on a cruise, that would be something.”
She’s still grumbling as we walk down the porch steps and wave good-bye.
Back home, I use my new phone for the first time to call Danielle. “Hey!” I chirp at her. “I’m calling from my new phone.”
“Great,” she says. “I’m answering from our old landline.”
“So, what are you guys going to do?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Desiree’s at work.”
“You heard it’s mandatory evacuation, right?”
“Yeah,” says Danielle. “But not mandatory, mandatory, right?”
“I think that’s what mandatory means,” I say. “You know, mandatory.”
“But it’s not mandatory up in Bellvoir, is it? I mean, if we leave and the store’s still open, she’s going to lose this job. And she just got it.”
Of course I didn’t think about that. Never mind the fact that they don’t have a car or any money to pay for a hotel. Of course she’s worried about Desiree’s job.
“I’m sure if it’s mandatory, they’ll close,” I say.
“I guess,” she says. She sounds worried.
“We have a hotel room. Do you want me to ask if you guys can come with us?”
“No,” says Danielle. “I don’t want to impose. We wouldn’t fit in the truck anyway.”
“Maybe you could take Claudine.” Claudine is Grandpere’s 1979 Chevy Impala that hasn’t moved from the garage in four years and probably doesn’t even start.
“It’s OK,” she says. “We’ll just stay. It’ll be fine. If it’s not, they’ll come get us.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
When I hang up, I approach Mama cautiously. “Could we wait and leave later so Danielle and Desiree can come with us? Or could they take Claudine because they don’t have a car?” I know she’s going to say no.
Mama gives me a look that’s half guilt and half annoyance. “Claudine’s not a reliable car, sweetie. They couldn’t get past Bellvoir in that thing, never mind cross state lines. Don’t give me that look, Evangeline. You know I’m sorry for Danielle, but I can’t be responsible for her. They’ve got buses that will pick people up and take them to a shelter. She should call the parish office and get scheduled for a pickup.”
I call Danielle back. “There are buses that will pick you up and take you to a shelter,” I tell her.
“OK,” she says. “I guess we’ll just do that.”
“I’ll call you from wherever it is we’re going. On my new phone.”
“Don’t rub it in,” she says.
I call Kendra. On my new phone. She answers on her phone that she has had since she was thirteen.
“Where are you?” I ask.
“You don’t want to know,” she says. “The same place we’ve been for an hour. On I-10 going to Houston to stay by Uncle Cedric.”
“Is that Evangeline?” I hear her mom, Ms. Denise, say in the background. Kendra’s mom is the opposite of Danielle’s mom. She’s a nurse at the navy base up in Bellvoir, and she’s what Mamere calls “a force of nature.” Kendra will be getting a basketball scholarship or those poor college basketball coaches will have to deal with Ms. Denise.
“Yes, it’s her, Mama,” Kendra says. “What do you want?”
“Ask her what they’re doing. Where they’re going,” Ms. Denise shouts in the background.
“Tell her we’re going to Georgia,” I say.
“They’re going to Georgia,” Kendra repeats.
“Tell her to be safe,” says Ms. Denise.
“Mama, do you just want to talk to her yourself?”
We say good-bye and I finish getting ready.
In our family, we have a tradition for those rare occasions when we do evacuate. We’ve each got an old tackle box that we fill with our special things, the things that we’d miss the most, that we couldn’t live without. Mama’s got the birth certificates and insurance documents and legal stuff for the restaurant and junk like that. Daddy has our baby pictures and some things from when he was a kid. Mandy’s is always changing: mostly pictures and jewelry. Mamere has her family Bible, beautiful old rosary beads, jewelry, and pictures. When I open mine, I realize it’s been a while since I’ve added anything. My stuffed dolphin, Sleeky, that I used to always sleep with. My first-place medals from the fishing rodeo and those little newspaper clippings about them. My spelling-bee ribbons. Report cards. A picture of Mamere and Grandpere at their wedding. A response I got when I wrote to the president about protecting the marshes and barrier islands from erosion. I scan my desk and put in a few more things from my bulletin board. The Evangeline book Mamere gave me the other night. I pack a bag with three changes of clothes, my knitting, and a couple more books.
It’s after four when we get in the truck: Mama and Daddy in the front and me, Mamere, and Mandy in the back. There’s a cooler full of po’boys and soda under our feet and ten two-gallon jugs of gas in the flatbed. There’s probably not a station with any gas left between here and Alabama.
The air is still, the way it always is before a hurricane, that thick, thick stillness. The sky is blue, not a cloud in sight. Mamere was right. No birds.
When Mamere comes with us, we always start the trip with Hail Marys and the Act of Contrition on the rosary beads so that if we die, we’ll get into heaven because we’ve already said sorry for anything we did wrong. She asks the Blessed Mother to spare us from the storm.
We sail along Highway 23 for about three miles and then come to a dead stop.
Mama lets out a big sigh. “I knew this would happen. We should have left earlier,” she says.
“What do you mean?” Daddy says. “You said you wanted to stay open until after lunch.”
“I had to open this morning,” she says testily. “It’s not that I wanted to. We can’t do without that income.”
“Then why are you blaming me for not leaving earlier?”
The car goes silent.
The late afternoon passes and we’ve only made it over the causeway, just past Slidell. Daddy switches off the engine and we sit. I knit, read, and look out the window. Some guys are playing football in the median of the highway. A guy sets up a camp stove and starts grilling hot dogs until a highway patrolman comes over and makes him put it away. You can hear music coming from other people’s rolled-down car windows. There’s a steady thump-thump-thump of hip-hop drifting from somewhere far away. Snatches of country music closer by.
“Can I go sit outside?” Mandy whines. “Please. I’m gonna lose my mind in here. I’ll be right here in the grass.”
“Go ahead,” Daddy growls. “I’m getting out, too.”
I watch him walk up to a group of men and start talking. Mama sighs and stretches out her legs onto his part of the seat. Mamere has dozed off.
It seems like hours before we move again. I look into the windows of passing cars to see what other people brought with them: sometimes there are big suitcases and pillows in the backseats, dogs, the occasional TV. This wild-looking tattooed couple with bright blue and red hair and all-black clothes have a parrot that hops around the front seat and a big snake that rests on the woman’s neck. Must be from New Orleans.
There are Jet Skis and small boats on trailers. Some people have written messages on their rear windows, like FOLLOW ME TO TALLAHASSEE! and CATEGORY 3 PAH-TEE!
We snack out of boredom. The sandwiches have gotten soggy and the car smells of fried shrimp. It’s been about six hours when we finally get to the Mississippi border, a journey that usually takes two hours. Mamere sings in French. I skim through my birthday copy of Evangeline, which is, to be honest, a bit dull. My favorite parts are when Longfellow describes coming to “the Bayou of Plaquemine,” which I take to mean the waters around Bayou Perdu. He calls the waters “devious” and “sluggish” and the characters get lost in them, which is one of the reasons Bayou Perdu got its name. But the way he describes the trees, the boughs of the cypress meeting in a “dusky arch,” the moss trailing from the trees like “banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals,” the moonlight gleaming on the water, is so beautiful. It takes me right out of this car and back home for a while.
We move occasionally. I stare at the snake of red blinking lights in front of me, as far as the eye can see. I come to feel like I have never been anywhere else but in this car. By three a.m., we get to the Florida Panhandle. After Pensacola, the traffic thins out a little. The license plates aren’t all from Louisiana, Alabama, or Mississippi anymore. There are fields with big, black cows along the road. It doesn’t feel like we’re anywhere near a coast. My eyes are raw from lack of sleep, and the inside of my mouth is sticky from soda. I wish I was anywhere but in my own skin.
It’s Sunday morning when we roll into the hotel in southern Georgia. It’s one of those chains that are on the side of every highway. It’s been almost sixteen hours since we left home. The parking lot is jammed with cars. Evacuees, I guess. Stepping out of the car, my whole body feels like it’s still moving, like I’m seasick. I fall into the queen-size bed I share with Mamere and Mandy and close my eyes to try to make it stop.
When we wake up, Daddy switches on the TV to the Weather Channel. The beautiful white swirl takes up the whole space between Florida and Louisiana. It’s restless. It’s strengthening. But when I look at it, I still can’t really imagine destruction. It looks peaceful. It’s a gathering of vapors, something you can put your hand right through. When bad things happen, it seems to me, they don’t announce themselves like this. They sneak up on you and catch you by surprise. They slam you from behind, like that truck that killed Danielle’s dad when she was a baby.
A ticker runs across the bottom of the screen. Hurricane Katrina upgraded to Category 4. Winds over 175 miles per hour. Expected to make landfall overnight. They cut to the mayor of New Orleans giving a press conference. “We’re facing the storm most of us have feared,” he says. There’s a mandatory evacuation in place for New Orleans. For the first time, I start to get scared. I step out into the hallway and call Danielle. With my new phone. She picks up.
“You’re still there?”
“Yeah, still here,” she says.
“You really need to leave,” I say. “Aren’t you getting that bus that’s going to evacuate people?”
“I guess so,” she says with only a slight trace of concern in her voice. “Desiree’s still sleeping. I’ll wake her up.”
“Promise me you’ll get the bus. Just call the parish office. I bet they’ll come pick you up.”
“OK. I will.”
There’s something about the way she says it that makes me not believe her.
The hotel lobby is crowded, bustling e
ven. There are all different kinds of people: some families who look working class like us, some who look wealthier. Most look tired and annoyed. There’s a feeling I can’t quite describe. Not excited, but there’s a sense of anticipation in the air. We’re all waiting for the same thing.
“Y’all from the Gulf?” a man in the lobby asks. Daddy nods. It’s strange how it’s “the Gulf” now instead of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
“We’re from Pascagoula. Took us ten hours to get here.”
“Took us sixteen from south Plaquemines.”
People all around us ease into the conversation.
“We’re from Slidell. Shoulda gone west. The traffic couldn’ta been that bad.”
“No, my sister went to Houston and it took nineteen hours,” another woman says.
Traffic is the great equalizer.
After lunch, it’s cloudy and gray. Back in the room, Daddy turns on the Weather Channel again. “Expect devastating damage,” says the reporter, who’s standing in front of a casino in Biloxi wearing a blue jacket. It’s not even raining yet. We can hear muffled voices and the sound of football games on TV through the wall, the smell of smoke seeping in although it’s a nonsmoking hotel. The interesting part that comes with being in a hotel is wearing off. Daddy flicks back and forth between the Weather Channel and CNN all day. The hurricane will make landfall overnight, they say. I sleep well on the cushy hotel-room pillow.
I wake up to the sound of Daddy turning on the TV. A little gray light is coming in through the heavy curtains. Images of trees being whipped by the wind, water surging over a seawall somewhere, flash across the screen. Hurricane Katrina made landfall this morning at 6:10 a.m. just east of Empire, Louisiana. Just east of Empire, Louisiana, is just south of Bayou Perdu.
Thirty-foot storm surge. I try to imagine what that would look like. The ceilings in our house are about eight feet high. So four times that. A sick fear spreads over me. Unprecedented. Levee breach. A second landfall over St. Bernard Parish.
This is bad. This is really bad.
“Why don’t you all take Mamere to breakfast?” Mama says with that voice she uses when she wants to show that she can cope. “Go get something to eat. Daddy and I’ll stay here and watch.” Her eyes look hollow.
Between Two Skies Page 4