Upside Down in the Middle of Nowhere (32 page)

“I let her down when she needed me the most.” His eyes dropped away from mine. “I was passed out drunk when that ol' she-devil Katrina put the Nines under water. I woke up floatin' on the sofa, and my baby girl was
gone.”
He was crying. So was I. “I pray every night that God's lookin' after her—”

All the mad left me right then.

“Uncle Alvin.” I was calling him by his name for the first time that I could remember. “We're gonna find her, I know we will.”

A sob came from him. He slumped so far forward I thought he was gonna tip. His head, covered in gray-black fuzz, went to bobbing up and down.

I slowly wrapped my arms around his middle. At first he just stood there crying, letting me do all the hugging. But then he had his arms around me too. The weight of his head laid up on top of mine.

“I'm sorry,” my uncle whisper-cried.

“Me too,” I said.

“Do you think my baby will ever forgive me?” He pulled back and looked at me.

I wiped my eyes on my shirt sleeve. “TayTay's the nicest person I know. She loves you—she told me so.”

“She said that?”

“Yes, sir, she did.”

He sniffed and nodded, standing a tiny bit straighter.

When Miss Priscilla cleared her throat, we looked and seen her standing there dabbing at her face with a tissue.

“When y'all are ready, we really should get a move on,” she said all soft.

Right before I opened my door and he opened his, Uncle Alvin said, “Thank you, Armani. You're good people. I know your daddy's proud of you.”

I settled into my seat, more tired and wore out than ever. I looked out my window. The moon was gone. I couldn't find it nowhere.

We rode in silence a good while, and slowly the sky changed to dark gray. I sat with my head pressed up against the window watching the shadows of the outside world pass by.

“I'll never forget the day your daddy came to our house.”

I lifted my head off the window and looked at Matthew. “My daddy's been to your house? Why? When?”

“Back when Auntie Mama first got her wheelchair. Georgie told your daddy 'bout how she couldn't get in the house without bein' lifted and he came over that next weekend. He sure did.”

“I didn't know that.”

“Yep. Him an' Georgie showed up with a whole truckload of wood from the old gym floor. Remember when they tore that up? Anyway, it was a cool ramp. Shoot, Filet Gumbo loved it more than anybody.”

“Filet Gumbo?”

“Yeah, our dog.”

“Y'all named your dog after food?” Little Cricket popped in my head.

Matthew laughed, “Lukey thought the pup was the color of gumbo, and the name stuck. We didn't know she was gonna grow up and be all speckled, y'know? It was a good name. She was a good dog.”

“What happened to her?”

“I don't know. Everything happened so fast. The water—”

He didn't have to say nothing else. I knew.

“But anyway,” he said after we sat not talking for a few minutes. “I was so embarrassed when your daddy an' Georgie came inside for a glass of Auntie Mama's lemonade.” He shook his head all slow.

“Why?”

“ 'Cause I didn't want 'em to smell the onions.”

I know my eyes about popped right out of my head when Matthew Boman said that. I had an instant memory of how them kids smelled walking down the aisle on our bus.

“Onions? What're you talkin' about?” I was more than grateful that the boy was busy staring off into space and not looking my way. It was still too dark outside for him to see the color of embarrassed splashed all over my face, but I was worried he might
feel
it—it was that strong.

“Look, I ain't trying to be disrespectful,” he said, “but Auntie Mama, well, she was weird. I mean, she was a real nice lady and all, and she was a good mama to me an' the kids. I think she had a special likin' for Lukey.” He looked over at me. I sat quiet and just listened. “She never took us to church or nothin' like I remember our real mama doin', but she prayed all the time and burned so many candles I thought for sure she was gonna burn the house down someday.”

“Did the candles smell like onions?”

Matthew let out a loud laugh. “Course the candles didn't smell like onions. The
onions
smelled like onions.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Every night after supper, Auntie Mama and Martha cut up four whole onions—one in a bowl for every room in the house.”

“Why? Like some kinda voodoo or somethin'?”

“Naw, it weren't like that. She said it was 'cause the onions would soak up all the germs in the house so us kids wouldn't get sick.”

I wanted to say,
Oh, that's why y'all had that smell!
But I didn't. I just said, “Are you serious?” Of course I knew the boy was serious. I'd smelled the proof with my own nose.

“Yeah. Martha came home from school one day cryin' her eyes out, sayin' her teacher pulled her out in the hall to tell her she needed to bathe more. Told my sister she stunk. Martha cried herself to sleep every night for a week.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat.

“I wanted to pull that teacher into the hall and tell her that Martha took a bath every single day and that she should apologize. But Auntie Mama told me to let the universe take care of that heartless woman.” Matthew's voice took on the sound of remembering. “All I know is, we never got sick—not one time, ever.”

“Matthew . . . ,” I started to say, but then I heard Memaw whisper,
There's no need, child. Let it be
.

“It's all right,” he said. “Some people are just uncaring, ya know what I'm sayin'?”

“Yeah,” I said.

I heard the flip of the mirror and the lower half of Miss Priscilla's face lit up. “How y'all doin'?”

“We're good, Miss P.,” Matthew said.

“How . . .” I cleared my throat. “How much longer till we get there?”

“Oh, it's gonna be a good while yet, honeybee,” Miss Priscilla's lips said up in the mirror. “They've got us takin' alternative routes. Why don't y'all try to get a little rest? Unless you wanna try one of these biscuits we've got in our snack bag.”

“No, thank you,” I said. “I'm not hungry.”

“Me neither,” said Matthew.

Just then I seen Uncle Alvin reach his arm out and over the back of Miss Priscilla's seat, like he was putting his arm around her.

“Well, all right,” Miss Priscilla said. When she reached up to flip the mirror shut, she looked my way and winked. Her eyes were doing some kind of happy dance. I knew that wink and them eyes had everything to do with the arm resting up behind her. She snapped the mirror shut and the light went out.

I scooched down in my seat. I couldn't keep myself from thinking of TayTay and her clover. My eyes were heavy.

Matthew leaned over and put his face right up close to mine. He whispered into my ear, “I think Miss P. has a boyfriend.” His voice-air tickled my ear.

I tried to force a smile, until, finally, slowly, my eyes stayed shut.

“Armani! Hey, wake up.” Matthew wiggled his shoulder—the shoulder my head was lying on. I sat up and scooched over toward the window.
I'd been all but sitting on top of the boy. Matthew smiled just to where that dimple showed. The light shining through the window behind me caught his face so that the morning honey-colored sky filled his eyes.

“It's all right,” Matthew said. He lifted one eyebrow. “I don't mind bein' your pillow.”

I play-smacked him across the chest with the back of my arm. “Shut up.”

He laughed and took a bite of the biscuit he was holding. My stomach growled. “Miss P's fixin' to stop soon for gas,” he said, with his mouth full. “We're gettin' close. You wanna biscuit?”

“Yeah, sure.” I looked out my window while he asked Uncle Alvin to pass one back.

“Here ya go,” Matthew said, pulling my thoughts out of the clouds. “They're dry as August, but Miss P's got waters if you want one.”

“Thanks.” I held the heavy biscuit, but I didn't eat it. I looked out my window admiring how beautiful everything looked. “Whenever we were up early in the mornin' to see a sky soaked in them kinda colors, Mama would say, ‘It's a blessed day, to be sure, when you wake up under a Louisiana sky with a touch of Heaven shining through.' ”

“That's pretty,” Matthew sighed. “That's real pretty.”

“Yeah, it is,” I said in a lazy voice. “Matthew, look!” I pointed over his shoulder to the unsettling sight out his window.

“Aww . . . man.”

Army trucks—tons of them—one right after the other for as far as I could see, clogging up the interstate. They took up a whole lane.

“Where's that dern gas station, y'all?” Miss Priscilla asked.

“I don't know,” Matthew said. “But look at that, Miss P.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Miss Priscilla gasped.

“It's the Dome,” I said, and tried to wrap my brain around the sight I was seeing.

The Dome looked like a bomb had gone off on top of it. The roof was barely there—huge holes of blackness everywhere.
Was it like that when we were there? Was it like that when Danisha and her family were up inside there—when her mama got attacked?

After we slowly passed up the Dome, we started seeing Army soldiers with guns. Walking, riding in trucks, standing alongside the road just staring at whatever—most of them with the look of wanting to be somewhere else.

Helicopters buzzed through the air, taking me back to our terrifying night on the roof. The sounds, the soldiers, the smell—the awful, sickening smell. Everything was making my head woozy. I thought I was gonna throw up.
Where was TayTay and Georgie? Where was Daddy?

We were stuck in a line on the interstate surrounded by Army trucks. The line moved maybe one inch every couple minutes. I closed my eyes and prayed for us to just be there.

The slowness of time made me sick. We crawled along down streets I didn't recognize in a city that sure didn't feel like home.

We were lost. Lost in a place I'd been knowin' my whole life.

Finally we came up on a convenience store that was open—open and all but falling down. A dirt line, taller than me, circled the outside of the building. I didn't have to ask nobody—my good sense told me it was a waterline from where the water had been.

A long row of vehicles, mostly Army ones, sat with us in line for the gas pumps. We stuck out like a zebra in the bayou, sitting up in Miss Priscilla's fancy SUV. There was even people without vehicles in that line, standing around holding gas cans looking wore down and sweaty. I couldn't help but wonder out loud why a person would bother being in a line for gas when they didn't have no car to put it in nohow. Matthew said they were most likely getting it for generators.

“Miss Priscilla,” I said after a good while, “can we get out an' stretch our legs?”

She unbuckled her seatbelt and fiddled with the air vent. Then she turned around in her seat and looked at me for the first time in hours without using the mirror.

“I don't know why you'd want to, but . . .” She looked from me to Matthew then back to me again. “I suppose. But y'all stay together and no wanderin'. Ya hear?”

She might've said more, but I was already out the door.

A blast of thick, disgusting, soupy air slapped me in the face as soon as I hopped down out of the air-conditioned truck. I grabbed hold of Memaw's locket.

A smell flew up my nose that I'll never forget. Me and Matthew covered our noses at the same time. It was the same nasty odor that oozed from Mr. Babineaux's broke-down car the summer before, when a cat had climbed up inside the engine and died.

Two helicopters flew by low enough to stir up dirt and whatever else didn't weigh more than a loaf of bread. I squeezed my eyes shut and stuck half my face down inside the front of my shirt till the noisy things passed us by.