I Survived Hurricane Katrina, 2005

by Lauren Tarshis

  Ten minutes later, they were on the road.

  CHAPTER 6

  They sped through the Lower Nine and crossed the St. Claude Avenue Bridge. They drove past the bakery where Mom had worked before Cleo was born. She’d learned how to make Barry’s favorite caramel cake there. Mom’s dream was to open her own bakery. They didn’t have the money for that now. But one day, Mom always said. One day. She said those words so often they had become the Tucker family motto.

  One day Barry’s dad would have a deal with a record label.

  One day they’d get rid of their dented old Honda and buy a nice new car.

  Maybe even one day Barry wouldn’t be so scared of Abe Mackay and his friends.

  One day.

  They drove a few more blocks, and then Dad pulled up in front of Lightning’s, the club where he and his band played most Thursday nights. The owner, Dave Rivet, was one of Dad’s closest friends. Barry had known him since before he could walk.

  “Why are we stopping?” Barry asked.

  “Dad wants to make sure Uncle Dave is leaving,” Mom said.

  Uncle Dave had spotted their car through the window. He came outside and hustled over to them, his big belly shaking. Uncle Dave had a smile that made you feel like he’d been waiting his whole life to see you.

  Dad stuck his arm out the window. Uncle Dave shook Dad’s hand and blew a kiss to Mom. He peered into the backseat.

  “Hey there, Barry! Hello there, princess!” he boomed, his words stretched out by his thick drawl.

  “Grab your bag,” Dad said. “We’ll make room for you.”

  Uncle Dave peered at the little space between Barry and Cleo and laughed.

  “You gonna tie me to the roof?” he asked.

  But Dad’s expression was serious. “They’re telling everyone to leave,” he said. “That means you too.”

  “Someone needs to keep an eye on our city!” Uncle Dave said. “I’m keeping the club open so folks have a place to go.”

  “I don’t like it,” Dad said.

  “This place will be fine,” Uncle Dave said. “And so will I.”

  Barry could tell that Uncle Dave wasn’t changing his mind.

  Dad grabbed Uncle Dave’s hand again.

  “You take care,” Dad said.

  “And if you change your mind, I’m right here,” Uncle Dave said. “I already told some folks, ‘Don’t go to the Superdome. Just come to Lightning’s.’ I have my generator and about a million hot dogs.”

  “We’ll keep that in mind,” Dad said.

  Uncle Dave put his hands on Dad’s shoulders. “And I better see you this Thursday for the show!”

  Dad laughed and started up the engine. “Let’s hope!”

  “Isn’t it a bad idea for him to stay?” Barry asked once they’d driven away.

  “This neighborhood doesn’t usually get flooded,” Dad said. “It’s a bit higher than the rest of the city.”

  “And let’s face it: If anyone can keep a hurricane away, it’s Dave,” Mom said.

  They sped toward Interstate 10, but the closer they got, the heavier the traffic became. Soon their car was standing still.

  Barry opened his window and stuck his head out. The line of cars and trucks stretched as far as he could see. The hot and sticky air stunk of car exhaust.

  Dad clicked on the radio and punched the buttons until he found a traffic report. The news was terrible: Cars were backed up for hundreds of miles on roads leading out of the city.

  “This will take all day,” Mom said softly, reaching into the cooler and taking out a blueberry muffin.

  Dad patted her leg.

  Cleo fussed, and Barry tried to distract her with one of his stories.

  An hour went by, and the car didn’t budge. Dad had to turn off the air conditioner so the engine wouldn’t overheat.

  Cleo whined and moaned and finally fell asleep.

  Another hour passed. They’d moved just a few feet. Barry’s shirt was soaked with sweat.

  At this rate it would be hours before they even got onto the highway. And then they had more than three hundred miles to drive.

  What if they were stuck in traffic when the storm hit?

  Before Barry could ask that scary question, Cleo woke up and started to wail.

  And then, as Barry was reaching for her favorite stuffed poodle, a wave of warm soup splashed across his lap. What in the …

  Except it wasn’t soup.

  Cleo had thrown up. She threw up again, this time into the front seat. And again, onto the floor.

  There was a moment of shocked silence, and then Cleo burst into tears.

  “Waaaaahhhhhhhhh!” she wailed.

  The awful smell rose in the car. Barry put his hands over his face, which made Cleo scream more.

  Mom unhooked her seat belt and scrambled into the backseat. Dad rummaged in the glove compartment and found a wad of napkins. Mom started to wipe off Cleo’s face.

  “This little girl is burning up!” Mom said.

  Barry reached over to feel Cleo’s forehead. She was boiling!

  “What’s wrong?” Barry asked, his heart racing.

  “I’m sure she just has a bug,” Dad said. “She’ll be all right.”

  Mom gave Cleo a sip of water. “It’s okay, baby,” she said. “Just try to settle down. You’ll feel better soon… .”

  But Cleo threw up again, and again. She screamed so loudly people in the other lanes peered out their car windows.

  Mom and Dad looked at each other, and Barry understood exactly what they were thinking: There was no way they could get on the highway with Cleo that sick.

  Sure enough, Dad pulled out of the line of traffic and pointed the car back toward home.

  CHAPTER 7

  Cleo threw up all day. Barry tried to help keep her calm, but even he couldn’t get her to stop crying. Mom managed to talk to their doctor, who had evacuated to Baton Rouge. He said there was a bad flu going around and Cleo wouldn’t start to feel better for at least another day.

  Mom and Dad talked about going to the Superdome. But the newscaster on TV said there were already ten thousand people at the football stadium, with thousands more lined up around the building.

  “We’re hearing there is not enough food or water at the Dome,” the newscaster said. “And if the power goes off, it’s going to be like an oven in there.”

  Then they showed a man who had been turned away because he wanted to bring his little dog with him.

  “They say no pets,” the man said, holding the dog up to the camera. “But I can’t leave this guy all by himself!”

  Looking at those crowds on television, Barry was relieved when Mom and Dad decided they were better off at home.

  Throughout the afternoon, Barry kept his eyes on the sky. By six o’clock, the wind had kicked up. The sky turned gray with streaks of silver. But the strangest thing was the silence. Their block was deserted. There were no motorcycles vrooming. No kids laughing and shouting. No music playing or basketballs bouncing. Usually the trees were filled with birds, and frogs chirped from the bushes. But there wasn’t a bird in sight, and not a peep was to be heard.

  And then, around ten o’clock that night, the wind and rain started for real.

  Dad and Barry were settled on the living room couch. The baseball playoffs were on, and Dad had set them up with a feast of chips, salsa, and sodas. Mom and Cleo were fast asleep in Mom and Dad’s room.

  The wind moaned at first. Then it started to howl, and finally it was shrieking so loudly Dad had to turn up the TV. Barry moved closer to Dad.

  Soon there were other noises. Pom, pom, pom.

  “That’s just the rain banging against the metal roof on the shed,” Dad said. Ka-bang!

  “Whoops, a gutter came loose.”

  Che-chong!

  “There goes part of someone’s fence.”

  Dad sat there calmly, watching the game, munching on chips. Barry remembered their plane ride to New York the past summer. An hour
into the flight, they had flown into a thunderstorm. How that airplane bounced up and down! It felt like a giant hand was dribbling the plane like a basketball. Flashes of lightning exploded in the sky. A woman sitting across from Barry burst into tears. The pilot made everyone sit down, even the stewardesses. The plane rattled so badly Barry was sure one of the wings would fall off.

  And in all that commotion, Dad had just sat there, reading his book. A few times he’d patted Barry’s leg.

  “Quite a ride,” he’d said, never taking his eyes from the book, never once looking outside at the lightning or craning his neck to see the scared expressions on the stewardesses’ faces.

  So Barry had kept his eyes glued to Dad’s face.

  As long as Dad was calm, he decided, he didn’t have to worry.

  Finally the bouncing stopped. The plane flew out of the clouds and into the clear blue sky.

  Later, when they were in a taxi heading into the city, Barry asked Dad how he had stayed so calm. “What were you thinking about?”

  “‘Blueberry Hill.’”

  Barry gave Dad a funny look.

  “When I get nervous, I play the song ‘Blueberry Hill’ in my mind.”

  Barry knew the song. It was a hit by Fats Domino, the most famous citizen of the Lower Nine. Fats had struck it rich singing songs way before Dad was born. But he never moved out of the neighborhood. Barry and Jay loved to walk by his bright yellow house. Sometimes Fats was out on his porch to wave hello.

  Barry watched Dad now as the wind howled and moaned and shrieked.

  “Hey, Dad,” Barry said, “are you playing ‘Blueberry Hill’ in your mind?” Dad laughed.

  He put his arm around Barry and pulled him close.

  “Nah, I was thinking that wind is making a pretty song.”

  “Sounds like wolves,” Barry said.

  “Nah,” Dad said.

  “Ghosts,” Barry said.

  “Don’t think so,” Dad said, listening more closely, tilting his head and half closing his eyes.

  Dad clicked off the TV. He reached over and grabbed his trumpet, which he always kept nearby.

  The wind shrieked a high note. Dad put his trumpet to his lips and played along.

  The wind shifted lower, and so did Dad.

  He played softly, along with the wind, until after a while that wind didn’t seem so scary, and it actually sounded like a song. Not as pretty as ‘Blueberry Hill,’ but still a song. Barry almost smiled, imagining Cleo’s big fat lady in the sky. Not a vampire, but a pretty singer, belting out her song.

  The house shook and rattled, but as Dad’s music filled the air, Barry started to feel safe. The lights were bright. Mom and Cleo were cozy in bed. He thought of Gramps patting the walls of the house. In a few hours the sky would turn blue again.

  Barry had planned to stay up with Dad, to help him keep an eye out for leaks, to watch over Cleo and Mom. But now he felt tired. All the late nights he’d stayed up working on Akivo … and all today he’d been so worried about Clee… . Maybe he could take a little rest, catnap like Mom did after dinner, before she started her hours of baking.

  Barry closed his eyes … drifting, drifting, drifting …

  And then his eyes popped open.

  It took Barry a minute to understand that he had fallen asleep. The room was dark except for the flickering light of a candle on the corner table. The power must have gone out. He squinted at his watch: 6:35. It was morning! He’d slept for hours.

  And what had woken him up?

  A noise. Not the wind, which was still shrieking and moaning. Not the rain, which hammered down even harder than when Barry had closed his eyes. No. There was a new noise out there. A kind of whooshing sound.

  Barry sat up.

  Dad’s coffee mug, half empty, sat on the floor. Where was Dad? Was Cleo okay? And what was that strange noise that had woken Barry up?

  Barry heard Dad’s footsteps upstairs. He stood up, but before he could take two steps, the front door flew open.

  A wave of water swept into the house. It swirled around Barry’s legs, knocking him off his feet.

  There was a scream, but this time it wasn’t the wind.

  It was Barry.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Barry! Barry!”

  Dad was pounding down the stairs. He splashed through the water, grabbed Barry by the arm, lifting him up, and pulled him toward the staircase. Furniture and other objects floated around them like bath toys — the new couch Mom had saved for a year to buy, the little square lamp table where Gramps used to play chess, framed pictures of Barry and Cleo from school. The water was rising fast! It was up to Barry’s waist by the time they reached the stairs — and it kept getting higher. It was like their house was a bucket being filled up by the biggest hose in the world.

  Where was all this water coming from? The water in Gramps’s stories hadn’t been this wild.

  Mom burst out of her room with Cleo in her arms as Dad and Barry made it to the top of the staircase.

  She looked down the stairs and gasped. She wrapped her free arm around Barry, pulling him close.

  “The levee, Roddy,” she said to Dad.

  “The levee broke?” Barry asked, picturing the Industrial Canal. The canal was five miles long and very deep. Was all that water pouring into their neighborhood?

  Mom and Dad seemed frozen, staring at the rising water.

  Panic boiled up inside Barry.

  “What will happen?” Barry asked. “What will we do? What …” His voice trailed off. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to know the answers to his questions.

  They all stood there, huddled together, watching the water move up the stairs.

  “We need to go up to the attic,” Dad said. “Now.”

  Dad pulled open the hatch in the ceiling and a blast of hot air came down. Barry had been up there only once in his life. It was a tiny space, dark and hot like an oven, with a ceiling that sloped down so you couldn’t stand up straight.

  Cleo started to cry.

  “No!” she yelled. She tried to run away. “No go up!”

  Dad caught her. “Cleo!” he said. She struggled to escape, screaming and squirming. There was no way they could force her up the rickety stairs.

  “It’s all right,” Barry said, taking hold of his sister’s hand.

  “No! No!” she insisted.

  “Clee,” he said, working hard to keep his voice steady, “Akivo might be up there.”

  Cleo sniffed. She let Barry pick her up, and put her arms around his neck. She buried her head in his chest. She still felt feverish. He held her more tightly.

  Dad sent Mom up first. Then Barry put Cleo on the ladder and climbed up right behind her. Dad came up last, and they all sat down together in the darkness. There was barely enough room for the four of them, and they were squashed together. The air was so hot it burned Barry’s lungs. It stunk like mildew and dust.

  He tried not to imagine what was happening just below the attic floor: every single thing they owned — their furniture, Cleo’s toys, Mom’s cookbooks, Dad’s trumpet and all his music — being covered with water.

  And Akivo.

  He was trapped in Barry’s room somewhere.

  Lost.

  For the past few weeks, thinking about Akivo had given Barry the feeling — a secret, happy feeling — that maybe he wasn’t really the scared little kid he saw in the bathroom mirror. He and Jay had created something unique, something special. Somehow, the bright colors of Barry’s drawing seemed to have gotten inside him.

  But now the bright and powerful feeling drained away. With every minute that ticked by, Barry felt more helpless and terrified. Cleo was whimpering again. Mom held her on her lap, rocking back and forth, singing softly to calm her.

  The water was rising past the second floor. They could hear the whooshing and banging of furniture below.

  What would they do? Where could they go?

  Barry’s whole body was shaking.

  His mind
was spinning.

  And then Dad leaned in closer.

  He put one hand on Barry’s shoulder and the other on Mom’s.

  “I want you to listen carefully,” he said softly. “We are all together. And as long as we’re all together, we are going to come through this.”

  Even in the darkness, Barry could see Dad’s eyes blazing.

  “Soon this will be over,” Dad said. “We just have to get through the next few hours.”

  Mom wiped away Barry’s tears.

  “We can’t stay here in the attic,” Dad said. “We’re going up onto the roof.”

  Mom’s eyes got wider. She swallowed. “All right,” she said.

  “But there’s no way out,” Barry said.

  “Yes, there is,” Dad said.

  “How?” Barry asked.

  “Your grandfather.”

  Barry stared at Dad. Gramps had died three years earlier. Dad wasn’t the kind who believed in angels flying around. What was he talking about?

  Dad crawled to the darkest corner of the attic. He started back with what looked like a stick.

  As he got closer, Barry saw what it was: an ax.

  “Gramps always said there’d be another bad storm,” Dad said. “He kept this ax up here for forty years. And he made sure I knew about it.”

  It took Barry a minute to realize what Dad was going to do with that ax.

  “Keep your heads down,” Dad said.

  Mom pulled Barry and Cleo to her.

  Dad heaved the ax over his shoulder. With a mighty swing, he smashed the blade into the ceiling.

  CHAPTER 9

  The water had risen to the attic by the time Dad chopped a hole big enough for them to climb through. The wind screamed and rain poured in.

  “Stay together,” Dad shouted. “We’re going to stay together.”

  Cleo was so stunned that she stopped fussing. She kept her eyes on Barry’s face, and he did his best to look calm, like Dad on the plane.

  Dad dragged a trunk under the hole, stepped onto it, and pulled himself onto the roof.