I know I am never going to come talk to this woman.
On the way back home, Aunt Cel brings us to the temporary Katrina shelter the Red Cross has set up at the YMCA where refugees like us can fill out paperwork for FEMA and get any updates on federal assistance. It’s the fanciest YMCA you’ve ever seen. It makes the Y in Bayou Perdu look like a dump.
When you walk in the door to the gym part, cots are arranged in rows across the floor. A few people are lying on them, asleep. Others are lying on their backs reading. Some people come in and out of what must be the locker rooms. There’s a row of tables set up on the far wall with laptops on them. The sound of a baby crying echoes through the huge space. It smells like chlorine. There must be a pool around here. I wonder if Danielle is in a place like this somewhere. That wouldn’t be so bad. Not like the endless rows of cots at the Astrodome I’ve seen on TV.
A friendly-looking woman is sitting at the table inside the door. “Welcome. Y’all here from the Gulf?” She’s smiling. She reminds me of Kendra’s aunt Mechelle. She’s the first person who hasn’t made me feel like I’m an object of pity. “Come on in. Do you have some kind of ID?”
Mandy pulls out her license and hands it to her. “Oh, y’all from Plaquemines, huh?” She pronounces it right. Plak-uh-min. “I got people in St. Bernard. They’re stayin’ by my aunt in Opelousas, but I told ’em they could come up here. Now, what can I do for you?”
We fill out forms and she tells us we’re welcome to “shop the boutique” at the back of the gym, full of stuff that people have donated, like old sweats and T-shirts from 5K races that they ran or jackets with shoulder pads and floral blouses. I pick up a few solid-color T-shirts.
“Eww,” says Mandy, holding up a huge bra. “I can’t believe people donate their underwear.”
As we’re leaving, I approach the shelter lady. “Is there any way you can check to see if someone is staying in another shelter somewhere? I’m looking for a friend.”
“You got her number?”
“She doesn’t have a cell phone.”
“Do you have one?”
I nod.
“Give me her name and I’ll see what I can find out for you,” she says, smiling. When I slip her the number, she opens a lockbox to put it in and gestures to me to come closer. She presses a two-hundred-dollar Old Navy gift card into my hand. “Now, I don’t do this for everybody,” she says. “But a girl’s got to look nice. Here’s one for your sister, too.”
I’ve never had two hundred dollars to spend on clothes in my life. It seems such strange compensation for all we’ve lost. “Thank you so much, but this is too much. I couldn’t take this,” I say, embarrassed by her generosity.
The shelter woman smiles with a kind of understanding. “People want to help,” she says. “It’s OK to let them.”
Uncle Jim’s “investment property,” which he usually rents out to college students, might sit empty for a while. He says we’ll be doing him a favor if we live in it and keep it up. It’s a two-bedroom town house at the Village at Pine Ridge Pond. There’s a big sign that proclaims its name stuck to the fake stone wall that surrounds the whole complex. The sign — which is made of something plastic pretending to be wood — is coming unglued, and it’s sagging in one corner. There are little poster-board signs stuck into the grass in front of the flower beds: FIRST MONTH FREE, FITNESS CLUB, WASHER/DRYER CONNECTIONS, FULLY FURNISHED.
I guess you could call the location a ridge; it’s overlooking the expressway with one of those huge concrete-slab walls forming a barrier in between. There are a couple of scraggly pines sticking out of the red clay, some scattered pine needles beneath them. Orange mulch. There is a sad pond with some benches next to it. The two-story, grayish town houses are grouped together with parking spots out front. Since they all look alike, it takes us a while to find ours. The building has a big C on the side.
“Here we are,” says Mama. “Home sweet home.” She turns with a forced cheerful look on her face and meets my eyes, then Mandy’s. The tension in the truck is as thick as the air in southern Louisiana in August.
When we get out, I can hear the distinct whoosh of the cars passing by on the expressway the same way you can hear the ocean when you’re close to the beach. The gray door ahead is ours: 501-C.
Mama turns the key and opens the door into a tiled hallway with a stairway immediately ahead. Off to the side is the living room: gray carpet and one of those sectional sofa sets in gray pleather. There are metal venetian blinds in the window. Mama catches my eyes again. This time, she looks genuinely excited. She gestures to all the furnishings like a model on a game show. “How about this? Can you believe the TV? Saints games are gonna look good on that, huh, John?” Daddy’s face is blank.
She glides into the kitchen, which begins beyond the little bar and bar stools at the back of the room, turns, and gasps, “Would you look at this?” It’s a galley kitchen with stainless-steel appliances, granite countertops. Mama’s face is flush, like a little girl on Christmas morning. She’s already opened the fridge. “Side-by-side,” she almost squeals. “This whole side is a freezer! Mandy, look!”
“Oh, yeah, lots of space,” says Mandy. But I can tell her heart’s not really in it, either.
Upstairs, there’s a bathroom in the hall and two bedrooms. The room Mandy and I will share has what looks like an old-fashioned little girl’s bedroom set. There are twin beds with a nightstand in between. Mama and Daddy’s room has its own bathroom.
“This is nice,” says Mama. “This’ll be just fine.”
“I’ll go get the stuff from the truck,” says Daddy.
“That won’t take long,” says Mandy. She wanders back into our room and plops down on the edge of the bed. “I wish we could have stayed with Aunt Cel,” she says. “This place sucks.”
“It’s only for a little while. Four months maybe.”
Mandy grunts. “You’re dreaming. You really think we’re going to be back in Bayou Perdu by spring?”
“We’re going to have a FEMA trailer,” I say. “We’ll have a trailer by, like, Mardi Gras.”
Mandy throws herself back on the bed. “Right.”
I want to rewind to the day before my sixteenth birthday, when my whole life stretched out before me, sparkling like the sun on the clear water of a back-bayou channel. When my life had a rhythm and I knew my place in it.
Mandy and I roll into the parking lot of Brookdale High School for our first day in the car that an elderly man at Aunt Cel’s church donated because he lost his mind. It is, if not the uncoolest ride in the parking lot, at least in the top ten. I think I see a Ford Taurus parked way over where no one can see the driver getting out of it. We stop and look at each other for a second before opening the front door of the school.
“I want to go by Amanda up here,” Mandy whispers as people sweep past us. “Don’t call me Mandy in front of anyone.”
“OK, Mandy.”
She shoots me the bird and steps inside.
I had been imagining the first day of this new school like one of those bad teen movies: I open the door and everyone turns and stares as I walk down the hall. Some point or whisper behind their hands. But it couldn’t be more different. We are invisible. Everyone rushes by to their classes, talks with their friends. I don’t think anyone would have known that we were new because there are so many people — how could you know them all?
The lady at the front desk gives us a map to our classes. There are different wings, other buildings. I get lost on the way to homeroom and arrive late. No one gives me more than a glance as I walk in. Everyone looks so much older than me. They’re way more dressed up than we would ever be for school at home if we didn’t wear uniforms. They’re in high-heeled boots, tons of accessories, like everyone’s going clubbing in the Quarter. I wish Danielle could see this. Wherever she is. If she is somewhere. The bell rings and I try to check the map inconspicuously in the hall so that I can figure out where my next class is.
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p; I find my political science class as the bell rings. I don’t have the book. The teacher, a plump lady named Mrs. Economou, tells me to look on with the person next to me, a guy who’s wearing the closest thing I’ve seen to what I’d consider normal clothes: jeans, a long-sleeved plain T-shirt, and tennis shoes. He smiles. Seems nice enough. I try to follow along. After about ten minutes, Mrs. Economou tells us to break up into groups to discuss the three questions she wrote on the board. People groan and mutter and metal scrapes the floor as everyone shifts their desks together. I find myself in a group of four with my book partner, this guy who looks like a big jock, and a serious-looking girl dressed all in black.
I have a hard time keeping up. It’s mostly the girl in black talking and the football player responding with wisecracks. The nice guy who shared the book adds the occasional comment, but you can tell he doesn’t want to get caught up in the drama between the other two. His name is Tate. The girl’s name is Ariel. She’s taking all the notes, writing down everything that she herself is saying.
When the bell rings, Tate slides the book to me. “Here. You keep it. My neighbor has one I can borrow if I need it.”
“Are you sure? It may be just a few weeks, but it could be longer,” I protest.
“I’m sure. My number’s written inside the front cover. We can study sometime if you want.”
“Thanks.” There’s something about the way he offers me his number that doesn’t seem like a come-on. I’m grateful for that. For a second, I feel almost like a normal person.
“So, Amanda,” I joke to Mandy when we get in the car after school. “How was your day?”
She shakes her head. “Whatever. Who cares? You said it. We’re only here for a few months.”
“That good, huh?”
“It was fine. There was this guy totally checking me out.”
And so our new life here continues.
Things that we lost seem to remind us of their absence only when we need them.
Almost every day, Mandy stands in front of that big, near-empty closet and says, “I wish I’d brought that belt,” or “Today would be the perfect day for that white shirt.” She stares into the blankness like she can make whatever it was come back if she stays there long enough.
Sometimes it’s the most unexpected thing, like a whiff of a certain laundry detergent or cleaner, that will bring something or someone back into my mind. The librarian at school wears the same perfume as Miss Helen at the Dollar Store in Bayou Perdu. What happened to Miss Helen? I wonder. Is she living in some shelter in Baton Rouge or Houston? Will I ever see her again? It’s not that we were close. She’s another part of my life that was swept away, another missing piece. Checking the message boards on the Times-Picayune website for some sign from Danielle has become a reflex for me. Whenever I’m in the library at school, I’ll log in, knowing I won’t find anything. I’ve even just typed her name into Google to see if anything comes up, but so far I’ve only found a woman named Danielle Watts who lives in Australia, and about three who live in other places but aren’t her. I’ve called that woman at the YMCA shelter three times, but she hasn’t found anything.
When I call Kendra, she says that there’s so many kids from New Orleans in Houston schools that there’s been a backlash. The Houston gangs are harassing New Orleans kids, and New Orleans kids are forming their own gangs. Someone spray-painted GO HOME on a bunch of the New Orleans kids’ lockers, and someone else painted NO right back. No one has messed with Kendra yet. She’s big, you know. But there’s a group of girls who always talk trash about New Orleans when she walks past. “Too stupid to realize it’s a city, not a state,” she grumbles. Ms. Denise’s job at the navy base is waiting for her when they get operational again. They’re going back as soon as they can, Kendra says. She’s not going to let this get her off track from her scholarship hopes.
At home, Daddy is planted constantly in front of the TV, watching Hurricane Katrina coverage. Everyone wants someone to blame. It could be Mayor Nagin for not getting all those old folks and poor folks out of the Ninth Ward where they drowned. Or it could be Governor Blanco for not asking for enough help. Or is it FEMA for their slow response? Or the federal government and President Bush for flying over the coast instead of coming down to earth and showing some real concern? Some people think the dumb southern Louisiana and Mississippi people who were too stubborn to leave got what they deserved. What were they thinking living in Hurricane Alley in the first place? What could they expect? When Daddy hears this, he shakes his head. “Everybody knows better,” he mutters. “But they like their fresh shrimp, don’t they?”
The subject comes up in Political Science. Mrs. Economou is talking about the role of the U.S. government. “What does the government have an obligation to provide for its citizens?” she asks.
One girl raises her hand. “To provide roads, military protection, and Social Security?”
“Public safety,” says another girl. “You know, like the justice system.”
“OK, that’s part of it,” says Mrs. Economou. “But one person’s safety is another’s intrusion into privacy. What are the limits? Who decides? There will always be cases that push the limits and cause us to reexamine what we believe. When something unprecedented happens. Take Hurricane Katrina, for example. We have this perfect example of a conflict, when the role of the government is under discussion. Was the government obliged to get people out of their homes, by force if necessary, in order to save their lives? Was what happened at the Superdome a failure of government? And is the government obliged to rebuild the Gulf Coast when another hurricane could wipe it all out again?”
She turns to me. Here it comes.
“Evangeline,” she says, as if she just remembered I was there. “I’d be curious to know what you think.”
It’s like every eye in the room is on me. I am now the spokesperson for all of Louisiana. For every Katrina refugee.
I want to disappear under the floor. But if I’m going to have to speak for all of us, I’m going to take my time and collect my thoughts. I can almost hear a giant clock ticking in my head.
I start, my voice sounding small. “About making people leave. I think people just don’t understand. There are hurricanes every year. It’s part of life. More people probably die from traffic accidents here every year than have died in hurricanes in Louisiana in a century.” There are a few snickers. “It’s not a place that everyone would choose to live, but it’s our home.”
I am horrified to feel a lump growing in my throat. Please don’t cry. Please don’t cry, I urge myself. I have to think of something else to say. Something smart. But the word home has broken me. In a split second, all the weight of that word washes over me like a massive wave and crushes me. If I open my mouth again, I’m going to sob. So I stare at my desk and the awkward silence envelops me.
“All right, then,” says Mrs. Economou briskly. “Anyone else?”
I look up in time to see Ariel, who is still in black and still sending out that hostile energy, thrusting her hand into the air. I feel a rush of gratitude toward her for taking the focus away from me.
“Yes, Ariel?”
“I don’t understand why it’s even a question that we should rebuild the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. I mean, we are willing to go in and blow up and then rebuild two entire foreign countries that most Americans can’t find on a map, and we can’t get trucks with food and medicine into New Orleans?” Her voice is rising and her face has hardened. She is just getting started. “If the government has any obligation, any purpose, that should be it. To provide for its citizens in the times of greatest need and to bring the power of the collective to bear for the individual.”
I look around the classroom. Most people are not listening to her. Those who are look annoyed with her. I’m in awe of her.
Mrs. Economou uses this opportunity to segue back to the book. “Yes, well, that brings us back to page one hundred seventy-five and the framing of the constitution . . .”
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I don’t know if it’s my breakdown that causes him to pity me, but the next day, Tate invites me to go with the Outdoor Adventure Club on a weekend rafting trip up to the mountains in North Georgia. It’s just as friends, I’m sure, and it’s free. I’m sure Danielle would make a big deal about it and dance around squealing, “He likes you!” But I don’t feel that way at all. He’s just a nice guy. So I go.
“It’s beautiful up there — you’ll love it,” he says, sitting next to me in the van on the way up. I wonder if it’s obvious that living in the city is draining the life out of me.
The countryside rolls by, wooded, with the fall colors coming up. Then the land starts to rise, gradually at first. Rushing creeks border the winding roads, the rocky walls of mountains rising up all around. Beautiful, yes, but I feel almost suffocated. For me, the beauty of Bayou Perdu is all that limitlessness, the water and sky going on and on forever. A place where you are completely free.
I don’t enjoy anything about rafting, bumping along over rapids. Water just isn’t supposed to race. It flows; it sings; it even roars sometimes. But it’s not in a hurry.
After school the next week, I go fishing and canoeing with the club on this man-made lake outside of Atlanta. No one even knows what to do with their rods. They’ve got all the wrong bait. You can see from one end of the lake to the other. When we get out on the water, no one is really serious about fishing. Then again, why would they be? There’s no challenge in it here. All I can think is, I may be some Katrina victim, but at least I know what a proper lake is. These people get so excited about paddling around in this little baby pool stocked with fish they’ve trucked in. I actually feel sorry for them.
I miss the water, the birds, the wind through the marsh grass. I miss the sunset and the sound of that hard, hard rain falling on the roof. I miss the smell of salt in the air, that awful heat rising up from the docks. I feel sore all the time from all the missing. Bruises just beneath the surface. Invisible.
Between Two Skies Page 6