“Jamba-what?” says Chase.
“Chase, you just don’t understand,” says Tru in a mock serious tone. “Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?” Then he gives Derek a quick conspiratorial look.
Derek nods and picks up his trombone.
Tru picks up his guitar and counts off. Then he starts to play and sing “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?” imitating Louis Armstrong’s voice, singing about the lazy Mississippi and the Spanish moss and the Mardi Gras memories.
At this point, Derek joins in smoothly with a trombone solo so beautiful it sends chills through me. They both do the chorus. I close my eyes as I listen, and on this red-clay hill in Georgia, I feel closer to home than I have since I left.
I know it’s not his usual voice, but I can tell that he’s confident, that somewhere in there, Tru’s real voice is strong and deep.
“I can’t compete with that,” says Chase when they’re done. “Nobody writes songs like that about missing Atlanta. People write songs more like ‘Get Me the Hell Out of This Crapbox.’”
“I’m not familiar with that one,” Tru jokes.
“Give me time,” says Chase. “I’m working on it.”
I walk back with Tru into the classroom toward the end of class. The teacher, Mr. Heller, gives me a kind of confused look, then a you’re-not-supposed-to-be-in-this-classroom look before I head out.
“Sorry we really didn’t get to talk,” says Tru as we get to the door. “Will you come back again?”
“Sure.”
“Tomorrow?”
I laugh. I was hoping he’d say that, but I didn’t believe he would. “Sure. Any lunch requests?”
“No, I’m bringing you lunch tomorrow,” he says.
I go back to class with a big goofy grin on my face. In Political Science, Tate is more relaxed with me, trying to catch my eye, making faces when someone says something stupid. I know he thinks something is starting between us. I don’t have the heart to tell him it’s not. I don’t have to do anything just yet. I’ll just ignore it. I’ll just continue to be nice. To be his friend.
The next day, Tru brings us each a banh mi, a Vietnamese po’boy with pickled carrots and pork on a baguette, the perfect combination of crunchy, spicy, and slightly sour. Derek and Tru mess around on their instruments. They try to get me to sing.
“I can only sing in French,” I say. When Grandpere was alive, he used to play music on the porch in the evenings. He taught me so many songs.
“That’s OK. I only play guitar in French. What’cha got for me?”
“Do you know ‘C’est Si Triste Sans Lui’? It’s kind of bluesy, in a Cajun way.”
“Kind of bluesy is my favorite kind. Sing a few lines,” he says. “So I can get the chords.”
The song comes out of me confidently, from so many nights with Grandpere.
Tru picks up the tune easily. “Très bien, mam’zelle, très bien,” he says when we finish.
“Everything sounds good in French,” I say. “By the way, Kaye Pham said you were going on American Idol. What’s up with that?”
Tru’s jaw drops. “She said that? Wow. I did do the auditions last year and I got a callback, but I didn’t get the golden ticket. I was going to go to Austin to try again, but, well, you know what happened. It was on September fifth.”
That’s Derek’s cue to share his Katrina story. “That’s when I was supposed to be starting a new school for kids who are musical geniuses.” He’s making a joke, but his expression is serious. Then he tells the real story. People in his neighborhood in New Orleans East weren’t really leaving. His dad, who is this kind-of-famous trombone player in New Orleans, was planning on staying, but then he got this strange feeling, almost like a premonition. They threw a few things in the car and left. His dad plays a lot of gigs in Atlanta, so they came up to stay with a club owner he knows. They’re living with him now. His grandma was in a nursing home, and the nursing home people were supposed to take her to Baton Rouge on a bus, but they didn’t get her out in time. She died from the heat when the electricity went out. So maybe they won’t ever go back to New Orleans.
Tru’s story doesn’t come out all at one time. His family had a pretty big shrimping operation with their other cousins, not the Trans. They evacuated to Baton Rouge to an uncle’s house because his two older brothers go to LSU. They lost their boat, which was uninsured, so they had to make money fast to get a new one. They came here to live with another uncle who has a business until they can buy another boat. So they are going to go back to St. Bernard. “Could be a while, though,” he says. “Are you going back?”
“As soon as we can,” I say. “Whenever we get a trailer. They’re going to let us go check out the house and get our stuff next week. If there’s anything left.”
“Wait, did you two know each other from back home?” Derek asks, sounding confused.
Tru gives me this smile that makes my stomach flip. “We’ve met,” he says. “She came to my rescue.”
We keep it up throughout the week. I bring them roast beef po’boys au jus, because you really can’t get good seafood here. And so a pattern, a rhythm, is starting to develop.
Whenever we’re not talking or eating, he’s on that guitar. You can hear him working things out. He doesn’t play the same thing over and over again. The chords are like messages, peeks inside him. Sometimes I feel like he is showing them just to me. He shows me he has sadness and fierceness and tenderness. I catch each note in my ear and let it dissolve, and I find that it makes its way down through my chest, my veins, into my heart. Somehow in there it turns into yearning for more, to be closer to whatever part of him holds all that.
It’s so hard to see where this is going without having Danielle to analyze it with. I’m so desperate to know if I’m doing the right thing, I might even ask Kendra. But I’m not desperate enough to mention it to Mandy yet.
There’s a little voice in the back of my head that says: Don’t get swept away. I’m going back to Bayou Perdu. He’ll be here and then in St. Bernard. But if the last couple of months have taught me anything, it’s that there’s no such thing as certainty. There’s only now.
We finally get word that we can go back. Forty-eight hours to get in, inspect your property, collect what you can salvage, and get out again.
The signs of the storm start when we get to Mobile: trees with broken branches, the breaks still looking fresh. Nothing has had enough time to heal. The road signs are torn down and detour signs are in their place. Exits blocked off. Military checkpoints.
Then the destruction starts coming at me fast. The telephone poles are leaning in toward the road as we approach, as if they want us to come closer so they can tell us what they saw. There’s a church in the middle of the road, as though it used all its strength to hoist itself up to beg us to stay. The timing feels off. We shouldn’t have gotten to that church yet. It’s a good mile up the road from where it should be.
There’s an eighteen-wheeler with its back wheels in a tree and the front ones on the ground. A school bus like a crumpled-up soda can. There are cows on top of the levee, alive and dead. The live ones move slowly, grazing under a blue, blue sky.
The storm seems to have been selective: snipped off a roof, but left the body of the house. Curtains flutter in the frame where a window used to be.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” Mandy keeps repeating with each new horror, until Mama snaps, “Will you please shut up!”
But Mandy continues to sob, loudly. She sounds like a wounded animal.
I can’t stand it. “Seriously, Mandy, stop it.”
Daddy doesn’t say anything.
We’re coming close to what must be Bayou Perdu now. Where Bayou Perdu used to be. There’s Ashley Parker’s parents’ drugstore. The top of it is still there, but it looks like a huge claw raked across its bottom, pulling off everything down to the metal-beam skeleton. Kendra’s house: half the roof and the windows, plus a lot of the siding, are g
one. Our Lady of the Sea looks like an inflatable with the air let out. The roof is resting on the foundation, splinters of wood spread all around. There are a few coffins laying here and there, out of place. Like all this was enough to make the dead get up and walk away. Or float away, as the case may be.
Daddy pulls onto Robichaux. Mrs. Menil’s house isn’t there anymore. There are only concrete steps leading to nowhere. Then there is our home. It looks like a dead fish with its guts hanging out, entrails of rubble and appliances spilling onto the lawn.
“Oh, Jesus,” says Mandy.
“Don’t take the name of the Lord in vain,” Mamere barks. She never barks.
We get out of the truck.
There’s an almost indescribable smell of decay in the air. After the smell, the next thing I notice is the silence. The birds haven’t come back yet. For a place that was underwater for weeks, it’s now bone dry. The ground is powdery dirt.
FEMA has been by: there’s a spray-painted symbol on what’s left of the house. A big X with numbers on each side. On the bottom, there’s a zero. No victims.
“Nobody goes in but me,” says Daddy. “It’s not safe.” He goes to the truck to retrieve a crate for our salvage.
We stand at a distance observing our home, as if we’re having an awkward introduction with a stranger. Daddy goes into the house. Mama starts picking around in the yard, pulling up boards and looking under them. She sticks a few things in her pocket.
Mamere walks around the side to look at the orange grove, and I go with her. There it is, Grandpere’s dream, dead, brown, and shriveled from standing under salt water for weeks. I grab onto Mamere’s hand and squeeze it. She nods and says nothing. I see a glint of metal from somewhere back in the grove, and I drop Mamere’s hand and run to it. It’s our pirogue, the little fishing boat, wedged between two trees. I try to push it free. It’s really jammed in there. Soon I’m pushing so hard, I’m grunting and sweating, but I’ve got the back end free and the front loosens up. It falls to the ground. I sit down in it. Mamere comes through the grove to join me. I help her over the side and into the boat. We are sitting in a boat in a dead orange grove.
“Want to go fishing?” she asks. A twinkle comes back into her eye.
“More than anything,” I answer.
When we get back to the front of the house, there’s a wild look on Mandy’s face, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. A mix of pain, fury, and disbelief.
“No!” she screams. The next thing I know, she is on the ground, pounding it with her fist. “No. No. NO. NO.” She screams again at the top of her lungs, the type of scream that you can’t ever get out of your head. She is doubled over, sobs mixed with screams. Nobody moves a muscle until Mamere goes over, kneels down, and puts her arm around her shoulder.
“It’s just things, cherie,” says Mamere, almost cooing, like she would talk to a baby. “It’s just things. We’re here together. We’re all right. We’re all right.”
I go over and put my arm around Mandy and can feel her body shaking. I am as calm as the eye of that storm. I’m floating above all of this. She calms down a little. We help her up, and Mama walks over and hugs her. Mandy starts sobbing all over again.
Daddy comes out of the house with the crate. There are five things in it: the wooden box of Mamere’s silver flatware that she got for her wedding, Mama’s favorite copper pot, his waders, my rubber fishing boots, and Mandy’s mold-covered softball glove.
“That’s it?” says Mama.
He shrugs.
“Any pictures?” she asks.
“They’re all water damaged.”
“Even so.”
He puts down the box and places the items on the ground, then hands her the empty box. “If you want to go look . . .”
She shakes her head.
It takes about two minutes to drive to the diner. To where the diner should have been. All that’s left is a pile of rubble, not a single wall standing. All the booths, the appliances, must have floated away. It’s so hard to believe that for a few minutes, I think we must be in the wrong place. But there are the usual landmarks. Mr. Ray’s gas station is right there, stripped down to the bones. The collapsed post office. The gutted library. I can feel Mama stiffen all the way from the backseat. She gets out of the truck so quickly that by the time I get out, she’s already right in the middle of the rubble. I glance quickly at Mamere, whose face is tight with pain.
From beside the truck, I watch Daddy race over to Mama. He puts his arms around her like he’s picking up a child who fell off her bike. She pushes him away. She walks around the edges of the rubble, wearing her anger like a suit. She picks up a cement block and uses all her effort to throw it back into the center of the pile.
I help Mamere cross the field of debris to reach Mama. Looking down, I see a laminated menu lying on the ground. I pick it up. Mandy comes up on the other side of Mamere and holds on to her arm.
Mama and Daddy are on the far side of the rubble, but I can hear her shouts. “Twenty years!” she screams. She picks up whatever’s lying there — an empty ten-gallon bottle of cooking oil, a napkin dispenser — and hurls it back into the pile. “Twenty years, twenty years,” she repeats over and over.
“All those things you wanted to change. New booths, a better stove. You can make it the way you want it now. You can make it the way you always wanted,” Daddy says.
“I can’t. I can’t start all over. I can’t. I don’t WANT to start all over. I am NOT starting all over again!” she shrieks. She picks up a tray and hurls it across the debris.
“When everything is rebuilt . . .” Daddy keeps trying. “It’s an opportunity. The construction workers need to eat, too. You could hire someone.”
Mama’s face is almost unrecognizable with rage. “You don’t understand. I’m NEVER coming back here.”
I feel like someone has dropped an anchor on my chest. She can’t mean that. This is our life. She can’t turn her back on this place. This place is us. We can be OK. We’ve got the fight in us.
I look at Mamere for reassurance. But her face is drawn and so old.
Mandy and I exchange the same look. She didn’t mean that, right?
No one speaks as we go back to the truck. I notice that Mama isn’t carrying anything from Vangie’s Diner. I have a single laminated menu rolled up in my pocket.
A horse walks slowly down the middle of the road as we drive back to Bayou Perdu.
There’s a huge tent in front of where the fire department used to be. A food buffet and rows of tables are set up under it, and around fifty people are clustered inside. The mood is upbeat. You could almost imagine that you’re at a crawfish boil. All that’s missing is live music.
Sheriff Guidry comes over and shakes Daddy’s hand, then pulls him in for a big hug. “Good to see you back, John. Been over to the house yet?”
Daddy nods. “Our pirogue is still there. Wondering if I can bring it over to you and you’ll keep an eye on it till we get back?”
Sheriff Guidry nods. He turns his attention to Mama. “Been over to the diner?”
Mama nods stiffly.
“Have you heard from Desiree and Danielle yet?” I shove my way into the conversation.
He shakes his head. “We didn’t find them in our airboat rescues, but every home has been searched. They must have gotten out on their own.”
He hands me a brochure with a bunch of numbers to call for information about missing people and pats me on the back. “They’ll turn up,” he says. “People from this community are scattered all over now. Got some in Tennessee. Texas. A lot probably never coming back.” He shakes his head and I see my parents exchange a painfully tense look.
Then Sheriff Guidry gets back to his old self. “We could sure use your cookin’ around here now, Vangie.” He sighs, pointing to the food line. “National Guard was here with the MREs at first. Not as bad as you would think. Then this group came in from a church in Minnesota. Great folks. Just great people.” He leans in clo
ser and lowers his voice. “But they don’t know a damn thing about cookin’. They tried to make boudin last week.” He puts his finger in his mouth as if to gag. “You’ll need an escort to get down to the marina. The road’s blocked — guess you heard about that. I can take you down in the morning. Meet me back here around nine. You know Bechtel got his boat out already. He said the reds are unbelievable!”
That’s a Louisiana fisherman for you. Never let a little thing like the worst natural disaster in history stop you from a good run of reds.
On the way over to sit at one of the tables, I see April Dubcheck, this girl in my grade who I’ve never really liked. She’s boring and prissy and has a really bad accent when she tries to speak French in class. It annoys me to no end. But today she hugs me tight, like I’m her long-lost best friend. She recounts everything she knows about everyone. Trey Halbert, this junior guy, was one of those people the sheriff’s office rescued from the choir loft. His family had to hack their way out of their attic. Some of the oystermen stayed on their boats and it’s a miracle they’re alive. She heard that Amber was in Baton Rouge and Taylor was in Houston. I can’t help but feel a little bit spitefully pleased.
April, Mandy, and I all walk over together to Bayou Perdu High. From a distance, you wouldn’t really know that anything is too wrong with it. The walls and the ceiling are still standing. But when you get closer, it looks like it’s been abandoned for decades. You wouldn’t believe that just over a month ago, it was full of students about to start a new year. Most of the windows are blown out, and there’s police tape up around the whole building. We duck under it and enter through the gym.
The water must have covered the gym floor for weeks — it’s all buckled up, planks of wood rising and falling like waves. I think about Mr. Jerome, the janitor, the hours he spent polishing that floor so it would shine bright enough to see your own reflection. I think about the cheers and clapping, the feet pounding on the bleachers. Me and Danielle sitting up there together. Kendra playing on that court. In another lifetime.
“Hello!” Mandy shouts at the top of her lungs. “Huh. No echo.”
Between Two Skies Page 8