The Yellow House

  The fifteen of them boarded the plane to elsewhere, San Antonio. And that was where he was now.

  CARL

  When Carl arrived at Louis Armstrong International Airport he saw that it had become a hospital, patients on stretchers everywhere on the floor, some rolled around on luggage carts. Some of the infirm had arrived from the Lafon nursing home on Chef Menteur Highway where Mom and her sister, Elaine, spent most of their lives working as nurse’s aides. The evacuated patients were the survivors; twenty-two had already died.

  Carl was miserable watching the old people lying everywhere, the sight of them reminding him to get on with his journey. At the airport, he ate his first solid meal since the barbecue and gin outside the Yellow House, fourteen days before. Full up, he embarked on the final leg of his journey, walking down Airline Highway with Mindy and Tiger still on shoelaces, across the overpass to cousin Earl’s house on the snaking River Road.

  When we come round the bend, Earl and them was out there barbecuing. When they seen me coming they was so happy. I went to telling them the story.

  Carl called my cell phone two days later and related this story. My mother and I were in the parking lot of a grocery store in Vacaville where we had come looking for coffee and chicory. I yelled into the phone, “CUUUUUUUUURRRRLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.”

  After arriving at cousin Earl’s, Carl was dropped off at Grandmother’s house on Mockingbird Lane in St. Rose, the only house in the family saved from the storm’s devastation. It never lost power. Carl was alone in the house, mostly sleeping, until others heard of his good fortune and came to share in it. His longtime friend Black Reg, whose New Orleans East home was still underwater, came, the two of them splitting bills and responsibilities. Carl would return home to St. Rose after work at NASA to cooked food and, sometimes, waiting women. Reg kept the yard clean.

  It rained more than usual those days. From his small room in Grandmother’s house with the row of windows against one wall, Carl imagined the water topping the levees along the River Road. He stayed up all night watching to see what the rain would do. Now he knew: even after it quit, it could still do something.

  He was a forty-year-old man living in his grandmother’s house. He had a room now. And a short hallway to roam.

  His stomach hurt constantly, and he suffered from headaches, but he blamed his physical calamities on the Water. It just needed, he figured, to run through him.

  GRANDMOTHER

  A week after Carl reappeared, my cousin Michelle discovered Grandmother’s name on the internet: Amelia. Briarcliffe Nursing Home, Tyler, Texas. “It is a nice place,” Auntie Elaine said after having gone to see her there. In the scattering, Grandmother had suddenly fallen ill, but it was hard to know exactly how her illness came to be or how it progressed to the point of death rattles, but suddenly her organs were failing and Grandmother had trouble breathing.

  Byron called me in Harlem where I was trying to make a story out of life as it was still unfolding. “Grandmother dead,” he said straight up. He had already told Mom, he said.

  Not an hour later, he called back. Grandmother’s heartbeat was so faint that the doctors only thought she had died. She was, in fact, still alive. I squeezed my eyes closed and pushed my nose up trying to shut off tears.

  A few days after this conversation, Byron called me again in New York City. I was sitting hunched over in my cubicle, at work. “Grandmother has one day left. For real this time.”

  By the time he told me this, Mom was already on a plane to Texas, arriving hours before her mother, my grandmother, Amelia Lolo, would actually die. It was a month to the day that the storm hit. September 29, 2005.

  IV

  Bury

  September 29–October 2, 2005

  St. Rose, Louisiana

  Before the Water, I had six siblings outside of Louisiana and five in or near New Orleans. In the After, there were two siblings in Louisiana; neither resided in New Orleans. Now ten people had to fly back home instead of six. Most all of us came for Grandmother’s funeral, as if on pilgrimage. Grandmother’s burial would be the last time for a long time that this many of us—ten of twelve children—were gathered together in the same room.

  Michael arrived from San Antonio where he had already found work as a life insurance salesman, his days spent driving up and down roads where “it would stop being pavement, start being dirt, and then turn into water,” for US Credit Union, which “wasn’t government, but sounded like it.”

  Byron and Troy and Karen and Herman drove from Vacaville together, thirty-six hours straight. They retrieved Darryl from his home in Southern California along the way. Grandmother’s funeral marked Darryl’s second time back in Louisiana after leaving New Orleans eight years before when I was a senior in high school. It was my second time seeing him and talking to him since, the first time that I could remember meeting and holding his eyes.

  Our eldest brother, Simon Jr., drove the thirteen hours from North Carolina.

  Lynette and I flew in together from New York City.

  All of us children, which is who we adults became in the presence of our mother, stayed together in Grandmother’s house. This was the house that used to receive us regularly on weekends, for holidays and birthdays, for celebrations of all kinds. It was not lost on us that Grandmother’s house, which she had bought and intended as a family home, was the very place that would keep us now.

  Lynette and I were charged with designing a funeral program. Much of New Orleans was still underwater—the funeral homes were overbooked and stretched too thin—but we made a simple tribute to Grandmother using Microsoft Word. To print the programs, Lynette and I drove one hour each way to the nearest working Kinko’s in Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital.

  Michael kept everyone fed. When visitors from the neighborhood stopped by to pay condolences he always asked, “How y’all flied through the storm?”

  We wanted to memorialize Grandmother in the newspaper with an obituary, calling the Times-Picayune frantically, day after day, at every mundane moment, on our way to the grocery store or seconds after pulling into the driveway, just before getting out. But the line stayed busy; no one ever answered.

  Far fewer people came to Grandmother’s funeral than would have if an obituary had run. My mother mentioned this over and over. It felt wrong to me, too, not to have Grandmother’s death in newsprint for someone other than those of us in the family to know or for someone to dig up years later, just as I have found evidence of my father’s having lived—and died.

  The evening before Grandmother’s burial, my brothers gathered in the garage of her house on Mockingbird Lane. I could hear their sounds from the hallway and through the closed door. I opened it to feel less outside. The door, when I pushed it, made a loud grunting noise. My brothers sat around taking turns cutting each other’s hair.

  The boys huddled together in there reminded me of times before, in the Yellow House, when Byron would return home from the Marines—from Okinawa, Japan, where he had been stationed; or from a stint in Operation Desert Storm—how my brothers would meet him in the yard, pushing and fighting. They act like animals, my mother would say. That’s their way of saying hello and I love you. The older boys were reminding Byron of his place in the family as the youngest no matter how big his muscles, no matter how far from home he’d gone.

  Three months before the hurricane, in May, eight of us had gathered, my seven brothers and me, for a photo shoot to accompany an article I had written for O magazine about growing up with so many brothers. The editor had chosen the Riverfront, on the Mississippi, for the scene, just in front of a gazebo, in sight of steamboats passing by. My brothers were dressed alike in blue jeans and loafers and button-down shirts. There are several versions of the same image, but I love best the one with Darryl in front of the group, his mouth open, chanting, “Iko, Iko” like on Mardi Gras day. He had not been home in so long, had not been down to the Riverfront for much longer than that, and was happy to be back. I saw then ho
w Darryl could dance, saw it for the first time. I danced, too, not enough to outdo Darryl, but enough to impress my big brothers. Somehow, I thought then, my ability to dance well would signify that I had turned out all right and was one of them.

  This was the first time I could recall being physically surrounded by every single one of my brothers. In the photograph I leaned against Byron at the edge of the frame, my elbow crooked high to reach his shoulder. The men held small yellow umbrellas, a New York editor’s idea of a second line parade, I guess. We smiled for the camera. Carl wore his trademark wire-framed Duckie sunshades, perfect round circles. The image appeared in O magazine, a full page. Carl took it to NASA to show off.

  Now, four months later, I stood watching my brothers from the hallway of Grandmother’s house. They paid me no mind, or they did not know I was there. Byron pushed against Darryl, his arms making an X across his chest, the movements less brusque, more tender. Michael was drunk and outside the house peering through the glass doors into the garage, my brothers pretending not to see. Carl, already a twig, was gaunt eyed, socks to his kneecaps, his face hiccupped in an ongoing laugh. I can still hear him laughing at everything, Simon Broom’s shadow.

  Suddenly a sound—deep, guttural—rang out through the house.

  UggggghhhhhAhhhhhh.

  The noise seemed to come from someone who had not spoken for a long while. The whole house ran to the back bedroom. Mom was on her knees pulling the sheets down off the side of the bed. None of us children had ever heard her cry.

  Mother wore shock to the funeral. Her hair was black frizz, her normally wet curls, sapped. Her usually red lips, bare. Lynette had drawn black eyeliner on her eyes, which seemed not to connect to the eyes of anyone else. At the funeral at Mount Zion Baptist Church on First Street, Mom sat in the front row before Grandmother’s casket. Auntie Elaine sat on one side of her, Byron on the other, where I knew he would. He was too young a boy, eleven, to do anything when his father died, but he would make up for it now. I stared at the side of Mom from where I was sitting across the aisle, a few rows behind. Her gone look made me cry harder than the gone look of Grandmother in the open casket.

  The preacher spoke in vague terms, as they do, about Grandmother’s goodness, congratulated her on graduating into the arms of her heavenly hosts. I thought about the white van in which her body was transported back to Louisiana from Tyler, Texas. I thought about the yellow school bus on which she was evacuated from Louisiana to Tyler, Texas. Yellow, I thought again, the color of divine clarity.

  I heard my name called, then took the stage to read a letter to Grandmother, a collage of sentiment gathered from my siblings and Joseph, Elaine, and Ivory. “Tennis,” Eddie told me. “That was her thing.” “Grandma was the first person to take me to Texas. Now I’m living there,” Michael had said. “Grandma was,” said Lynette, “beauty combined with elegance, inside and out, your home, the way you dress, your posture, every detail, the way you treat other people, the way you see the world, her jewelry box, tons of hatboxes, that armoire, huge bed with white headboard, red sponge for face powder. Someone you admired and wanted to be like.”

  Her son, Joseph, said his mother taught him to dress, to have impeccable style and taste. Her daughter Elaine said that she was generous, “housing so many people, relations, people married and misplaced.” Ivory Mae wanted it to be known that Lolo was a grand lady, my best friend. These things combined made a woman of Lolo so that she was not only Mother, so that she was not only Grandmother, so that she exceeded her titles and her roles to become a person, and this was honor.

  At the final viewing of the casket, Mom broke all the way: trying to climb into the casket, Lolo, Lolo, Loli. It was the most awful calling out of someone’s name. Then no longer Lolo but Mom, Mom then Mommy, Mommy. Don’t go, she was screaming. Do. Not. Go, Mooooooooommeeeeeee, she dragged the word out, became her younger girl self, stumping out the words. She might as well have pounded her feet on the sanctuary’s plush red carpet. Mommy. Do. Not. Go.

  All of us children stood there watching Byron, her baby boy, the young strapping version of his father, Simon, trying to hold his mother up. She was Jell-O sliding down his black suit. All of her body seemed loosed, each limb disconnected and moving away from the others.

  I was wearing contacts, but if they were glasses, I would have taken them off in order not to see.

  My mother sheltered bad feelings the rest of 2005, seeming immune to those things that generally lifted her—being surrounded by her sons, for instance. She has always loved men, feeling a certain ease and power around them. When one of her sons was especially well dressed and handsome she’d say, You look like your father did when he was trying to woo me. Certain of the boys, Michael and Carl and Byron and Eddie, live for this recognition, having inherited much of Ivory Mae’s looks and vanity.

  Had I gone with her, she had started to say in the days following. I still don’t feel like Lolo is gone. She had gotten to be such a part of my life. I centered everything around going to take care of her.

  I should have taken that bus with her. Maybe Karen could have just went on, her and Troy and them, by themselves. By not seeing me every day or seeing some familiar face she just gave up. You know what I’m saying?

  After retiring from the Lafon nursing home on Chef Menteur Highway, Mom had moved to Grandmother’s house in St. Rose and nearly lived in her mother’s nursing home room, keeping Grandmother’s bag in her car trunk at all times, full of nice-smelling lotions that she loved to run along Grandmother’s arms and hands and legs. I can recall Mom’s hands distinctly, slightly wrinkled, ringless, how she’d grab her mother’s arm with one hand and rub all the way from the shoulder joint down to where their hands interlocked, Mom moving her fingers in and through Grandmother’s.

  She painted her mother’s fingernails red. She braided her hair, two gray plaits hanging back along Grandmother’s neck, the way she had done ours as children but with a new gentleness. Grandmother sucked sugar-free candies while Mom tended to her, moving the hard balls around in her mouth, patting the arm of the chair with one hand.

  At a point in the course of her Alzheimer’s disease, Grandmother forgot how to eat. Ivory Mae showed up to feed her. When she began developing bedsores Ivory Mae showed up to turn her. She could not abide Grandmother lying in bed all day in a gown. She did all the things the nursing staff would not. The nurse’s aides at Chateau Estates were deplorable in Mom’s eyes, unfazed, crowded around their stations, walking, some of them, like they were drugged worse than the patients, their reflexes slow. You yelled for them. They came whenever they pleased. Nothing was ever an emergency.

  She’d get Grandmother into clothes if the staff was short, telling them don’t worry about it, she had it, and she would have it. Grandmother would appear dressed and sitting in a leather armchair by her bed like she was someone with life to live.

  Grandmother’s clothes were labeled by Ivory Mae’s strong hand: “Amelia Lolo” written on everything. And: Do Not Wash. In the nursing home, Mom moved around, packing dirty clothes to take home and wash lest the nursing home fade their colors, speaking with the staff who she reasoned would treat Grandmother better knowing someone was always coming around.

  When Lynette and I came home for Christmas, we’d go along on these visits. Seeing Mom enter the room, you understood how she gained the reputation of being incredible with her patients at Lafon nursing home.

  Loli, Loli …

  And when Grandmother didn’t respond, a sterner voice.

  Lolo!

  This your baby, Ivory.

  Ivory Mae.

  How you feeling today, Lo?

  Grandma would make eye contact.

  You remember Joseph, Lo.

  Grandmother lit up, as if anticipating her son, Joseph, who she had not seen for a time. He said it was too hard to see his mother like this; he rarely visited.

  On these visits, Lynette and I stood back, along the walls of Grandmother’s small room, w
aiting for Mom to tell us what to do and how to behave. We’d bring ice cream, which Grandmother always loved. Mom asked me to feed it to her and I did. Lynette lotioned her hands and then her legs. Mom still told us, her adult children, exactly what to do and we did it.

  There was a certain gentleness necessary when handling Grandmother that I had not yet practiced. On these visits, Mom was teaching us how to touch.

  V

  Trace

  October 3, 2005

  New Orleans East

  Those of us who wanted to see the Yellow House crowded into Byron’s car for the drive to New Orleans East. It felt like an out-of-state trip; there were roadblocks everywhere. But because Carl had returned to work at NASA not long after the storm, his work ID procured us entry. When we arrived at the checkpoint on Chef Menteur, Carl pressed his work badge up against the window. “I got a Michoud badge,” he said to the officer through the closed window. “I’m legal.” Even with windows rolled up, the post-Water smell (chitlins, piss, stale water, lemon juice) forced its way through the air-conditioning vents. We drove on, along Chef Menteur Highway, where instead of working traffic lights there were stop signs planted low to the ground. Like flowers. The actual flowers were now dead. We drove past Lafon nursing home where Mom used to work. The lot was full of abandoned cars, the building empty inside. I don’t remember the rest of the sights on our way to getting there. Remembering is a chair that it is hard to sit still in.

  We arrived at Wilson Avenue and made the right turn.

  Herman jumped out of the car before it made a complete stop. We laughed at this. He disappeared into Ms. Octavia’s house, where the great oak that Alvin and I had climbed as children lay in the front yard, its roots upright. Herman rummaged through soaking-wet dresser drawers for photographs of his dead brother and my childhood friend Alvin. Searched for intact images of his mother, Big Karen, and his grandmother, Ms. Octavia, who had died of old age two years before. Came up short.