Finding Someplace (8 page)

Tap, tap,
wham!
There was a creaking sound, like what Reesie had heard as Katrina passed over the house taking some of the roof with her.

“How long do you think it'll take?” Eritrea asked.

“Don't—know—” He panted.
Thump, bam! Bam!

Reesie waited as long as she could before she shouted, “Dr
é
, give it!” He stopped to wipe sweat from his eyes, and she grabbed the crowbar. It was heavy in her hands. She wanted to swing the tool like a baseball bat, but there was no room. She balanced herself evenly on her knees.

“Close your eyes!” Dr
é
said. “Give it all you got!”

Reesie rammed the crowbar straight up.
Bam!
She heard more cracking. She counted: two, four, six hits. Her shoulders ached.

“I'll take it, Boone.” Dr
é
gave Reesie a nod. “You did pretty good.”

He didn't add
for a girl.
Reesie's opinion of Orlando's brother was undergoing a slow change. He took the same position he'd had before and rammed the crowbar into the shattering rafters.

Wham! Wham! Bang!

“Watch out!” he said. Eritrea's flashlight moved wildly, wood splintered, and a gust of air streamed in. They saw blue sky.

“We did it, Boone!” Dr
é
wrapped his shirt around his hand and carefully pushed out as many jagged pieces of wood as he could from the edges of the hole they'd made.

“Let's pull that trunk over here so I can get a leg up,” he said.

Reesie obeyed. She watched him flinch as he eased himself out. She wouldn't forget to tell Orlando that his big brother had turned into a hero.

“I never seen
anything
like this!” Dr
é
shouted down at them. “I—whoahhhh!” There was a loud bump, then the sound of sliding, falling.… Reesie held her breath, waiting for an awful splash.

“Andr
é
!” Miss Martine moved toward the trunk.

“Oh my God! Dr
é
?” Eritrea started to climb up. In the light it was obvious she was terrified.

“I'm good!” He sounded breathless. “I slipped—it's somethin' treacherous out here! Y'all gotta be real careful.”

Eritrea shook her head and gave Reesie a weak smile. “I can't let anything happen to him. Andr
é
is all I got.”

Miss Martine patted Eritrea on the shoulder. “Those Knight boys are hardheaded, child. Don't you worry. Andr
é
's not going anywhere!”

Eritrea nodded and turned away, but not before Reesie saw her tearing up.

Dr
é
's face loomed over them, blocking out the light. “From what I'm looking at, I think we better hurry up!”

Eritrea got up on the trunk first. “I'm not tall enough!” she said.

Reesie hurried to look around for something, anything else to use as an extra step. She spotted a plastic milk crate filled with junk, and quickly dumped it. She slapped it on top of the trunk and steadied it while Eritrea climbed up and looked out.

“What can you see out there?” Miss Martine asked.

“Oh, it's…” Eritrea hesitated, like she couldn't even find the right words. “It's just
bad
!” She ducked back in, shaking her head. “Everything is underwater.” She wound her scarf around her waist and tied it. In seconds she was back atop the crate, so that half her body was outside. Pushing up on her elbows, she wiggled up and out.

“I got it. Next!” Eritrea looked down, her braids swinging.

“Okay, Miss Martine.” Reesie nodded.

But Miss Martine gave Reesie a little push. “You go on first.”

Reesie shook her head. “Oh no, ma'am! If my daddy ever found out that I left this attic before you, I'd be grounded for life!” She gave Miss Martine a little shove back. “You go.”

Miss Martine slowly climbed onto the trunk. Dr
é
and Eritrea reached down for her arms. They pulled and Reesie pushed until Miss Martine was sitting on the edge of the hole, her legs dangling. For a minute she seemed to be having a hard time catching her breath, but then she eased herself out. While the others got Miss Martine settled, Reesie collected the radio. She took the last meat pies out of the cooler and put them into the grocery bag.

When Dr
é
finally called, “Ready?” Reesie handed everything up to him. She focused only on avoiding splinters as she lifted herself out. Eritrea caught her arm, and she felt a weird physical sensation when her Chucks touched the shingles, just like the one time she'd been on a skate ramp with Junior.

Reesie crept carefully toward a short metal pipe sticking out of the roof, eased her arm around it, and slowly looked around. She'd figured that once they were out of the tight house and even more cramped crawl space, she would feel relieved. She'd thought Dr
é
was their rescue. But now, in the open air, in ninety-degree heat, she began to shiver.

What had happened to her neighborhood? Where were the front yards and the fences and the porches and chairs? Her stomach heaved. She'd lived here all her life, but nothing looked familiar. It was a river of rooftops and treetops. Telephone poles, thick as young trees, leaned every which way, trailing wires.

And it looked like the water was still coming.

“This is sure nuff some wicked mess,” Dr
é
said as the entire side of a house floated past.

Chairs and bicycles and other personal belongings followed, taken by the current of the floodwaters. Reesie could make out a colorful flat thing tangled in tree branches close by, and realized she was looking at the top of an SUV.

For a few long minutes nobody said another word.

“What do we do now?” Eritrea said. She and Miss Martine were huddled next to the old brick chimney on the slope of the roof, just below Reesie.

“We wait.” Dr
é
sighed. He sat with his legs dangling off the edge.

“My daddy knows where we are. He's coming,” Reesie said. She'd always believed her father could do anything, but she was worried. It was already afternoon—sooner or later it would be dark. How could he possibly find Miss Martine's house then? What would happen to them if he didn't?

There was no rain. There were no cars, no crickets. No faint voices or pounding beats of speakers floated in the air. It felt as if the only life left in New Orleans was there, on top of this little house on Dauphine Street.

Miss Martine told them stories about New York, and tried to encourage them until her energy faded. Eritrea kept fiddling with the radio, but she couldn't get it to work again. Reesie had parked herself right at the peak of the roof so she was as far away from the water as she could get. She stared at the changing sky as the afternoon passed and the dusk started on its way.

“It's almost night,” Reesie announced to no one in particular, flicking the flashlight on. Her birthday skirt was underwater. And Ma Maw's sewing machine and all the yards and yards of fabric stashed under the bed. Her lifetime collection of sketchbooks and markers. Junior's trophies. Her parents' African masks. Everything. Soaked. Ruined. Gone.

She kept wanting to hear sounds, sounds of anything—even the awful winds of Katrina would have been better than this, this nothingness. She didn't even want to close her eyes as exhaustion pulled them shut, because she feared what might happen while she slept.

Each time she nodded off, she jerked herself awake to stare at the strange shapes below, and at the blackness in the distance that should have been the bright lights of the lively French Quarter.

“Reesie! Reesie!” Eritrea was whispering. “Miss Simon! Listen!”

Reesie blinked into the dark, groping for her flashlight. She heard a faint humming.

“It's a boat! Turn on the flashlights!” Dr
é
shouted. “Hey!”

They all started yelling.

“Help!”

“Over here!”

The putt-putting motor grew louder as the boat came closer. Water slapped at the side of the house in its wake. The motor stopped. Reesie aimed her light in the direction of the sound.

“How many of y'all up there?” a deep voice asked.

“Four!” Dr
é
answered.

“We gotcha,” the voice said calmly. “We gotcha.”

 

P
ART
T
WO

Lost

 

Chapter Thirteen

A
UGUST 30, 2005, 4:00 AM

“Thanks, man. I don't know how long we would've been stuck up there.” Dr
é
shook hands with the man piloting the wide flat fishing boat.

Reesie was glad to be off the roof, but held on tightly to the seat. She'd been on ferries before, but this was her first time in a small boat. It took her a minute to stop thinking about whatever might be out in the dark besides the black water.

“This is like another planet,” Eritrea whispered, sitting beside her. “I hope they're taking us somewhere high and dry!”

The words from Miss Martine's poem popped into Reesie's head:
Everybody wants to find someplace
. Reesie leaned around Eritrea.

“Miss Martine?”

Miss Martine had been awfully quiet when the men helped her off the roof. Now, as Reesie looked, she saw that Miss M's face and her whole body seemed to be sagging.

“Miss Martine!”

“Mmmm…” Her eyes fluttered before she opened them wide. “I'm feeling a little weak, Teresa,” she said, closing her eyes again.

“Dr
é
! We have to do something!” Eritrea said.

Dr
é
moved toward Miss M quickly, and she slumped against him. “Hey! They got doctors where we're going?” he asked.

The second man in the boat swung his bright light on them. “We can get you to the Saint Claude Bridge,” he said. “They say the National Guard's pickin' up from there.”

“Stay with me, Miss M.” Dr
é
shook Miss Martine's shoulder. “Come on now!”

Eritrea pulled a bottle of water from the bag they'd brought and tried to get Miss M to drink.

Reesie watched, paralyzed. Why was all this happening? Was it because she'd played with God, like Miss Martine had said? What if she had stopped to help Miss M that morning? Maybe then everything would be different.… She thought about Ma Maw. Her grandmother had suddenly felt faint one day too; Daddy had rushed her to the emergency room. She never came home.

“Yo! We got a sick lady down here!” Dr
é
was yelling.

Reesie saw the concrete of the bridge through dozens of dancing flashlight beams. The boat bumped gently against it, and Reesie got ready to climb up. Instead someone grabbed her arm and pulled her out. The water was only a couple of feet below the bridge rail.

She lay flat out on the hot wet asphalt, panting, and then sat up. Her eyes gradually adjusted to the moving lights, and she could see past the dozens of people standing, sitting, or wandering around. There was a line of stalled cars and trucks down the center of the road. But the strangest, most frightening sight was the people who were still sitting in their boats down on the access ramp, where floodwaters had crept up and swallowed the road.

Reesie was shaking. The shaking was inside, and she couldn't do anything to stop it. So she counted to ten the way she did when Junior got on her last nerve. She reminded herself that she'd gotten this far not by herself, but with Dr
é
and Eritrea and Miss Martine … Miss Martine! Reesie rose to her knees to look around. There was a small group of people crowded a few feet away. Among them she spotted Eritrea's once-white dress. She seemed to be trying to get the people to back off.

“Hey, give her some air!”

Reesie made herself get up and walk over. “C'mon, move it, move it!” She used her best bossy voice, the way her father would have.

Eritrea raised her eyebrows, but smiled. “Your daddy's a cop, right?”

Reesie nodded and squatted down. Miss Martine was hardly breathing. There was a sheen of sweat around the edges of her wig. Her eyes fluttered, but stayed shut.

“What can we do?” Reesie sat back on her heels, feeling her heart racing.

Eritrea reached into the folds of her scarf and pulled out one more tiny bottle of water. She gently pressed it to Miss Martine's lips, but the woman wouldn't drink. She couldn't.

“She's gotta go to a hospital,” Eritrea said, looking up. “Soon.”

Reesie took a deep breath and looked around. Dr
é
had melted into the pulsing crowd. Reesie craned her neck to look for his wild dreadlocks, but her gaze wandered away, beyond the bridge. The sky was turning pink. Sunrise.

Then she thought she heard a faint rumbling noise coming from the other end of the bridge. There were so many people crowded together over there, more than she'd thought. Men and women were pacing, some smoking cigarettes and some debating loudly about what their next moves should be. Teenagers hung over the rails, and other women and children were huddled in clumps together. Some were crying, but many of their faces looked blank, like they weren't feeling anything.

Someone else noticed the sound and shouted, and all the bodies began to move.

“Trucks!”

“It's the National Guard!”

“Help!”

“Get us out of here!”

Towels and T-shirts and even a few diapers flapped in the air to signal for a rescue. Two huge vehicles rolled up, each with several uniformed soldiers on board. Reesie stood up. The strange trucks looked like something from a movie. The tires were almost as tall as a person. As the engines powered down, the people backed away. Some of the soldiers carried guns.

One soldier hopped down off the first truck. Just as his feet touched the ground, Reesie heard a familiar voice shout: “Hey! Hey, Mr. National Guard Man!” It was Dr
é
.