Finding Someplace (15 page)

“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 listening 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

A
PRIL 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.

*   *   *

Parraine drove into New Orleans on Interstate 10, the same route he'd tried to take on that August day so long ago. It was midafternoon, and traffic seemed light as they passed through Metairie, a suburb right outside of the city.

Reesie sat in the backseat with her headphones plugged into her ears and her face so close to the window that her nose touched the glass. Over the months she had thought often about coming back, and now that small fear she'd had when she got on the plane had managed to grow.

Being in New Jersey for so long, without her friends or anything familiar, had almost convinced her that Katrina must have happened in some other place, some other New Orleans, in an alternate universe. But Miss Martine had been reality. What Reesie was about to face was reality, and she really wasn't prepared at all. Her hands were clenched so tightly around her iPod that its metal casing dug into her palms. Her heart beat fast right along with the house music.

Everywhere she looked she saw the trail the hurricane had left behind. Many of the warehouses and industrial buildings that lined the highway were stripped down to their wood and metal skeletons. Huge trees lay with their roots clawing the air, some on top of fences and cars—and houses. This damage was clearly caused by wind—hurricane-force winds, not water. She tried to relax.

As I-10 curved into the city, it curled around the Superdome. All their heads turned to take in the beautiful round shape and the tiny specks of the workers on top of it, repairing the holes where Katrina had ripped away the roofing and poured herself inside. Reesie exhaled, and only then realized that she'd been holding her breath.

Parraine got off the highway, first cruising along Canal Street as if they were tourists. Reesie counted store after store with windows boarded, or plastered with big signs saying
CLOSED
. As they neared the French Quarter there were real tourists wandering the sidewalks, and sun glinted off the iron balconies and the clean cobbled streets. But Reesie kept thinking of the purple sneakers that she'd never gotten to wear, of Ayanna and herself eating beignets, laughing at the notion of a killer hurricane. She shivered.

“Too much air conditioning?” Tee Charmaine asked loudly from the front.

“No!” Reesie said in a sharp voice. “I'm fine, thanks,” she quickly added.

Two things stood out from the rest of the strangeness winding across town through the Sixth and Seventh Wards. One, she thought must be her imagination—a shadowy dark line that ran straight across every house, garage, and even some of the stranded cars in sight. She blinked, but as they continued driving, the line still seemed to be there. The other weird thing was a fluorescent orange
X
that was spray-painted prominently on almost all of the houses. There were numbers around the sides of the
X
s. She couldn't figure it out.

“Parraine? What's with those orange
X
s?” she asked, dropping one earbud. He glanced at her in the rearview mirror.

“Means they went in there, checking for people,” he said. “There're numbers for survivors, and zeroes if they didn't find anybody, depends on where the number is.”