Southern Ruby

by Belinda Alexandra

  I felt like I had dodged death and took a moment to absorb that I’d ridden out a deadly storm with my grandmother and my newly discovered grandfather in the Lower Ninth Ward. What a story I would have for Tamara once my mobile was recharged!

  Leroy checked the landline. It was dead. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I’ve got enough of everything to keep us going until the utilities come back on.’

  It was still gusty outside when he unscrewed the plywood on the front door and ran across the street to check that Mr and Mrs Williams were all right.

  ‘They’re fine,’ he said, looking relieved when he returned. ‘I’ll check on the other neighbours when the wind dies down.’

  I took Flambeau out of his box. He looked dazed and didn’t make a sound.

  Grandma Ruby fetched a glass from the kitchen and gave him some water to sip. ‘Don’t worry, my love,’ she told him, sitting down and scratching his head. ‘We’ll get you some treats in a moment.’

  ‘I’ll make some coffee on the gas cylinder,’ said Leroy, rising from his seat.

  A boom! sounded in the air, like a massive thunderclap, followed by a terrifying roar. Flambeau flapped to the top of the couch. Leroy knitted his brows. Grandma Ruby grabbed the sides of her chair as she started to move sideways. I wondered why her chair was moving, then I felt the wet around my feet. Water was coming in under the front door. There was a sound of shattering glass and it poured in through the lower windows too.

  ‘Quick,’ shouted Leroy. ‘Upstairs!’

  I lifted Flambeau and held him in the crook of my elbow. Leroy pushed me and Grandma Ruby towards the stairs to the upper floor. Grandma Ruby reached them and scrambled up, but my foot slipped and I fell. I grabbed for the banister but the water was too strong and it pulled me away.

  Leroy had reached the stairs and he yanked me onto them too. I heard Flambeau squawk as he slipped from my grasp. ‘No!’ I cried, trying to reach for him. But the last I saw of him were his terrified eyes as he was swept away on a tide of water.

  Leroy dragged me up the stairs with the superhuman strength that only adrenaline can give. I looked back. The water was less than half a metre from the downstairs ceiling. Curtains, pillows and dishes floated in the river that had filled the lower part of the house. If we’d hesitated even a minute longer we would have been washed away.

  I turned to Leroy, whose teeth were chattering. ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  He peered at the brackish water and shook his head. ‘The levees must have been breached . . . but there’s so much water!’

  Bile rose in my throat. I didn’t think the levees could have been topped and produced a wave of water that fast. They must have collapsed under the pressure of the storm surge. This was the worst-case scenario we’d been warned about.

  The wind started blowing again, whipping the water. The three of us lay huddled together on the bed in the upstairs bedroom. Grandma Ruby wept for Flambeau. I felt sick to my stomach as I relived the moment he’d slipped from my grasp.

  ‘Lord have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, let the house hold,’ Leroy prayed.

  With my architectural knowledge, I couldn’t see how the house could hold against the volume of water that was being thrown against it. I buried my head in a pillow, sure that we were going to drown in the flood. I’d come all the way to New Orleans and now I was going to die in the city where I’d been born. Was this why Nan had done everything she could to stop me coming here? Had she had some premonition of my doom?

  THIRTY

  Amanda

  The three of us stayed huddled on the bed for what seemed like hours, with the humidity stifling and the water lapping downstairs. Finally, Leroy gathered the courage to go and check the lower floor.

  ‘I think it’s slowing,’ he said, staring at the water. ‘I think it’s evening out.’

  Was it really slowing or was he merely hoping it was? I was so stricken with terror I couldn’t even make myself look. Poor Flambeau was gone, and where was Elliot?

  ‘Amandine,’ Leroy said, grabbing my shoulders and speaking firmly. ‘Keep your head. We are going to get through this. But I need you to keep your head.’ He pointed to the water and food supplies. ‘Give your grandmother something to eat and drink.’

  Leroy’s instructions gave me a task to focus on. I remembered Grandma Ruby’s medications. I opened her bag and found only three bottles on top of her clothes. Where was the fourth? My stomach pitched when I realised the missing bottle was the warfarin.

  I shook everything out of her bag and ran my fingers frantically through it, but I couldn’t find the warfarin tablets. When she’d repacked her bag after showing Leroy her Jewel outfit, she must have missed that bottle. I wiped my sweaty palms down my legs and tried to calm myself. I had the script in my bag. As soon as we got out of here, I’d get it filled. Surely it wouldn’t be dangerous if she took the medication only a few hours later than normal?

  I put the other tablets into Grandma Ruby’s cupped hand and she swallowed them in one go with some water without realising there was one missing. I sighed with relief — the last thing I needed was for her to panic as well.

  I sliced some cheese and put it on the multigrain biscuits I’d brought with me. But when I offered them to Grandma Ruby, she shook her head. ‘I don’t have an appetite. How can I eat when Flambeau . . .’

  ‘Ruby, you’d better eat something,’ Leroy told her, with tenderness etched on his face. ‘We don’t know what’s happened to the rest of the city. It might take a while for anyone to come.’

  While I was helping Grandma Ruby, Leroy went to the bedroom window and unhooked the plywood. I expected him to tell us what it was like out there, but he said nothing. He stared for a long time, as if he couldn’t believe what he saw. Finally I couldn’t stand it any more and went to see for myself.

  My head spun at the scene before me. The Lower Ninth Ward had disappeared! It had been replaced by a rippled lake with smashed wood and an assortment of household items from beds to chairs bobbing on its surface. All the houses in Leroy’s street were gone, washed away or crushed together. Further away, the houses that remained had water up to their eaves. Some people were sitting on their roofs looking dazed. But what about the empty roofs? Where were the occupants of those houses? I remembered Elliot instructing me to make sure Leroy had an axe upstairs and I realised those people had been trapped in their homes. They were probably dead.

  My legs gave way beneath me and Leroy grabbed my arms. ‘You’ve got to keep it together, Amandine. You’ve got to stay strong. It’s the only way we’re going to get out alive.’ But even as he said it, his voice wavered and he fought back his own tears.

  He turned back to the view outside the window and I followed his gaze. Mr and Mrs Williams’ house was gone. It had vanished like it had never been there at all.

  ‘That poor sweet couple didn’t stand a chance,’ he said, his chin trembling. ‘I offered them to stay with us, but they said they wanted to sleep in their own bed like they have for the past sixty years.’

  I sat down and rested my head on my knees. Surely this couldn’t be happening? Surely it was a bad dream?

  ‘Come to the window and keep hold of my legs while I write a message on our roof,’ Leroy instructed me.

  I did as he asked while he spray-painted: SOS. Three people here.

  ‘What now?’ I asked when he came back inside.

  ‘We sit tight and wait to be rescued.’ He collapsed onto the bed and Grandma Ruby rested her head on his chest. ‘Never in my life did I expect to see this kind of flooding,’ he added, rubbing his forehead. ‘I can’t take it all in.’

  Later in the afternoon, the wind died down and we heard helicopters, but they were far away. Night fell yet the sounds of the helicopters continued, and I heard flares and shouting in the distance too. From somewhere closer came the haunting sound of weeping.

  Dogs were howling around us, and I wondered if they’d been left behind in the evacuation . . . or wer
e they standing guard over their dead owners? The sound of their misery was unbearable. I covered my ears.

  I didn’t like how Grandma Ruby’s pulse felt under my fingers. I’d been careful to keep her hydrated overnight with frequent sips of water but it seemed to me her pulse was racing. Was it her atrial fibrillation returning? Or was a racing pulse to be expected given that in the last twenty-four hours she had lived through a terrifying hurricane and lost her beloved pet, reconciled with the love of her life who she’d believed to be dead for the last fifty years, and was now trapped with him and her granddaughter in a house that was likely to collapse at any moment?

  I grimaced and made up my mind not to feel her pulse any more. There was nothing I could do until we were rescued, and worrying about it wasn’t going to change a thing. I had to concentrate on our survival, one step at a time.

  It was boiling hot in the bedroom and it became difficult to breathe. Leroy opened the other upstairs windows in an attempt to get some cross-ventilation. The air smelled foul. It wasn’t only the stink of garbage-strewn water now but something more sickening: the pungent stench of death.

  Helicopters were moving through the sky again, but none approached us. I gave Grandma Ruby her medications and wondered how long it might be until we were rescued. Should I be rationing the drinking water? Then I thought of Aunt Louise and Uncle Jonathan. Their trek in the desert would be over now and they must have heard the news about the hurricane. They would be beside themselves with worry, but I had no way of reaching them.

  Leroy lay down on the bed next to Grandma Ruby and cradled her in his arms. ‘“I don’t need to go anywhere else in the world to be happy. All I need is to be near enough so I can hear your heart.” I’ve always remembered those words of yours,’ he told her.

  She smiled. ‘I have a question for you,’ she said.

  He gazed into her eyes as if he couldn’t quite believe he was really holding her. ‘Just one?’

  ‘After Clifford died, why didn’t you come and see me?’

  He brushed his hand down her cheek before answering. ‘I’d hurt you enough and I wasn’t going to do it again. You had your own life, your own family. You didn’t need me reappearing from the past and intruding on all that.’

  She stared at the ceiling thoughtfully. ‘We’ve been apart for half a century and yet it feels like no time has passed at all. You’re exactly the same as you were fifty years ago. The sight of you still sends a tingle down my spine.’

  It was awkward listening in on their reunion, but I had nowhere to go. The only rooms upstairs were this bedroom, an ensuite and a hall cupboard. Then I realised that considering we were in a house surrounded by floodwater, a lack of privacy probably wasn’t their main concern.

  Another day passed with no sign of rescue, and our supplies started to run low. I’d been thankful we’d survived the storm, but now the nauseating truth dawned on me. If we weren’t rescued soon, we’d die of dehydration. The heat was so relentless that I was already suffering spells of delirium and Leroy kept stretching out his legs as if he was getting cramps.

  I touched Nan’s necklace and jolted when I heard her voice in my head. She was ranting against New Orleans: the drugs, the crime, the unhealthy food, the poverty, the racial tension, the lack of preparedness for a full-scale disaster. ‘They can’t even build proper levees like they have in Holland! I can’t understand why anyone would want to live there!’ But in those vicious words I sensed the undercurrent of fear. She’d been terrified I’d return to New Orleans and something bad would happen to me, like it did to my mother. Now, it looked like she might have been right.

  I stood up and went to the landing and stared at the foul-smelling water. Even something as awful as Nan letting me believe my father had been responsible for the car accident paled in light of all that had happened in the last few days. It had taken this experience for me to see beyond Nan’s anger and understand the hurt beneath it.

  ‘I love you, Nan,’ I whispered, and I meant it. Then I made a silent promise to her. If we live through this, I will become the best person I can be. I’ll help others and I’ll make you proud of me.

  I was watching the pre-dawn light slowly penetrate the windows when a sound — something familiar — broke the eerie silence outside. What was it? A squeaking door? A dog that had gone hoarse with barking? A horn?

  I strained my ears and the sound came again — loud, demanding and close by. Cock-a-doodle-doo!

  I jumped from the blankets I was lying on at the foot of Leroy and Grandma Ruby’s bed and peered out the window. I couldn’t see anything, but the crowing came again. I pushed myself further out and searched behind me. Perched on the roof of the camelback extension was a white rooster.

  ‘Flambeau?’ I called.

  The rooster turned and looked at me. Was it Flambeau or not? Could he really have survived that violent rush of water? Then he turned again and I glimpsed the smudged ink on his wing where Elliot had written my mobile number.

  ‘Flambeau!’ I called out happily.

  Leroy and Grandma Ruby joined me at the window.

  ‘Don’t go out,’ Leroy said to me. ‘You might slip.’

  I gave my place to Grandma Ruby, who called to Flambeau. After some clucking and contemplation, he jumped onto the windowsill and she swept him into her arms. ‘Flambeau!’ she wept, burying her face into his feathers. ‘My beautiful Flambeau!’

  Leroy grinned at me. ‘Let’s hope it’s a good omen.’

  Flambeau’s survival lifted Grandma Ruby’s spirits. When I handed her the daily dose of tablets, she noticed the warfarin was missing but remained calm. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Now Flambeau is back I’m certain we will get through this.’

  Indeed, Flambeau’s return did seem to bring us luck. A short while later I heard a voice calling outside the window.

  ‘Amandine!’

  I put my head out and squinted through the bright sun reflecting on the water to see a man in a dented rowboat coming towards us. He was using a weatherboard plank for an oar. His denim shorts and his shirt were torn, his face was unshaved and his hair was wild. He shaded his eyes to better look at me. The skin on the back of his hand was red and blistered.

  ‘Amandine? Is everybody all right?’

  ‘Elliot?’ My heartbeat sped up. Could it really be him? We’d finished the last of our water an hour ago and I wondered if I was hallucinating.

  Leroy poked his head out of the window next to me. ‘Elliot! I’m sure glad to see you! Where did you get the boat?’

  Elliot secured the boat to a drainpipe and climbed in through the window.

  Grandma Ruby embraced him fiercely. ‘Thank God you are all right,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry we don’t have any water to give you.’

  Elliot sat on the bed. ‘The coastguard gave me a bottle this morning. I didn’t ration it though — I was too thirsty.’

  ‘What happened to you after you left here?’ I asked, sitting next to him.

  ‘The wind had picked up too much for me to make it back here so I took shelter in a friend’s house in the Upper Ninth.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘The house split in two when the flood came . . . my friend didn’t make it. I clung to the submerged roof of the neighbour’s house thinking I was a goner until that old boat bobbed past like some kind of miracle. But when I climbed into it I discovered it was occupied by a rattlesnake. I tipped it out pretty fast and it swam away.’

  ‘The water must be full of dangerous snakes,’ observed Leroy.

  ‘It’s full of lots of things,’ Elliot replied grimly. ‘From what I’ve seen, most of the city is underwater. On my way here, I saw the coastguard picking people up. Some police and firemen are out in motor boats, but rescue is difficult because there are cars and other stuff under the water. Wildlife and Fisheries are using their flat-bottom boats to help.’

  ‘The coastguard? Wildlife and Fisheries?’ said Leroy, looking horrified. ‘Is that all there is? They haven’t got the capacity to deal with this
kind of disaster! Where are the goddamn army and the air force? Doesn’t the rest of America know what’s happened here?’

  Elliot shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It took me a while to make my way here.’ He looked up at us and said with a thickening voice: ‘Thank God you’re all alive. From the way things appear here in the Lower Ninth, a lot of people haven’t made it. The rescuers are dropping survivors off at the St Claude Avenue Bridge where they say they’re going to be picked up. I’ll take you there now.’

  Elliot climbed back into the boat, then we each crawled out onto the roof — Leroy’s first so he could help Grandma Ruby. She was more agile than I gave her credit for and manoeuvred herself gracefully into Leroy’s and Elliot’s arms without tipping the weatherbeaten boat. I realised I was going to have to trust in her resilience to get through this.

  The roof was hotter than I’d expected and it burned my chest and stomach when I leaned across it to push the new box I’d made for Flambeau towards Elliot, who put it in the bottom of the boat. Then I passed him our bags. I’d put some of Grandma Ruby’s medications in a bottle in my zippered pocket in case the boat capsized and we lost our supplies. I was learning to have a contingency plan for everything.

  When I got in the boat, I kissed Elliot. His mouth was dry and his lips were burned.

  ‘You’re going to have to be strong for your grandparents,’ he whispered. ‘What’s out there is pretty bad.’

  Leroy plucked a wooden plank out of the water to use as an oar to help Elliot row. He looked over his neighbourhood with eyes clouded with pain. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘It’s all gone.’

  ‘We’ve got to move slowly,’ Elliot warned as he pushed the boat away from the house. ‘I nearly got snagged on a live wire on my way here. One of the Wildlife and Fisheries rescuers said they’ve spotted alligators swimming around. Another guy claimed he saw a bull shark washed in from Lake Pontchartrain.’