I nodded as I thought about it, still a little dazed.
“Please, John,” he said. “We don’t have long. Just see what you can do in the little time we have.”
“What the hell’s goin’ on?” Merrill asked.
I was standing near the front of the retreat center, not far from the highway, cell phone out, wishing I could see the Gulf instead of the enormous concrete hotels and tacky t-shirt shops.
“I’m calling in reinforcements.”
He studied me for a long moment.
We could hear the waves rolling in and pounding what little shore there was after this year’s hurricane season, but we couldn’t see them.
“You sayin’ you think she’s—”
“I’m sayin’ I don’t know what to think,” I said. “She’s a mystery. I’d like to help her if I can.”
He nodded. “I found a kid you need to talk to about her when you get a chance.”
I looked up at him from my phone. He jerked his head back toward the retreat rooms and the people crowding the balconies. I saw one little white face looking back at us.
“Thanks,” I said. “I will.”
“You callin’ Anna?” he asked.
“How’d you know?”
“Knew it was just a matter of time,” he said. “Anyone else?”
“DeLisa Lopez,” I said.
“Two extremely beautiful women,” he said.
“Who can help,” I said. “One with legal questions, the other with a psychological evaluation.”
“Sure,” he said. “And look damn good while they doin’ it.”
“That never hurts,” I said.
“No, it don’t,” he said. “No, it sure as hell don’t.”
Merrill’s bulk made the notebook computer in his lap look like a child’s toy, and his large fingers were too big for the keyboard. We were in the retreat center’s front office, I on a desktop, Merrill on a laptop, each of us searching missing children and Katrina sites in an attempt to locate the little girl’s parents.
We weren’t having any luck.
I hadn’t figured we would, but it was something to do while we awaited the arrival of DeLisa Lopez. I hadn’t been able to get through to Anna, but Lisa was on her way.
The small office was in a room behind the reception area and the paneling-covered check-in counter.
A small TV atop a filing cabinet was tuned to CNN’s coverage of the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast, in particular the submerged New Orleans. Conditions at the Superdome had deteriorated, lawlessness was escalating, and evacuation efforts were being frustrated. Amidst the flooding and fires, there was looting, shooting, and anarchy. The disconnect between what was actually happening and what the politicians were saying during their press conferences went beyond irony into tragedy.
“You know this shit is like this all the time,” Merrill said, nodding toward the TV. “We just don’t usually have reality juxtaposed with it.”
I nodded. He was too angry, and rightly so, for me to kid him about using “juxtaposed.”
“We’re on our own,” he said.
I knew who the “we” was, and it didn’t include me. He was talking about the people, who after all this time, were still strangers in a strange land—a land that forced them to come in chains and now treated them like refugees.
When my phone rang, I knew it was Anna.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Bed,” she said. “I’m sick. Sorry I missed your call.”
She sounded weak and nasally.
“I’m sorry you’re sick,” I said.
“It’s not bad,” she said. “I just didn’t feel up to facing the day. I’m a little blue.”
I smiled. Even our depressions were in sync.
The office was painted pastel pink with green trim, its matching carpet worn and gritty from all the sand that had been tracked in from outside. Even with the air conditioner running, it was humid, and just beneath the industrial orange scent was the faint hint of mildew.
“You feel up to answering a few legal questions?” I asked.
In addition to being a classification officer at Potter Correctional Institution where we worked together, and being all-around brilliant, Anna was in law school.
“Sure,” she said. “What’s up?”
I told her.
“You’re life’s never dull, is it?” she said.
“The thing is, Charles has already called Children and Families,” I said, “and I’m wondering what I can do to stop them from taking her.”
“Why?”
“That’s complicated,” I said.
“You’re not thinking—”
“That she’s who she thinks she is?” I said. “No. But there is something about her.”
“And no one knows anything about her?” she asked. “No idea where her parents might be or—”
“Nothing,” I said.
“You could go to dependency court and ask a judge to grant you temporary custody,” she said, “but without being a foster parent or having any connection to her, I’m not sure you could get it. And once it’s known that she has psychological problems, the judge is going to want her to get treatment.”
“What happens if they show up and she’s not here?”
“John,” she said.
“We could go for a ride or something and lose track of time.”
“It’s called kidnapping,” she said.
We were silent a moment.
“Any friends at Children and Families?”
“Chris might,” she said.
She rarely said her husband’s name to me. It was as if when we were together, he ceased to exist. Of course he didn’t. He was always with us, between us.
“Anybody else?”
She laughed.
“Let me make a few calls and see what I can figure out.”
While DeLisa Lopez met with the little girl to, among other things, perform an informal psych evaluation, I crossed over 98 and walked through the sand down to the water. The Gulf was never more beautiful than following a storm, its green waters sparkling in the midday sun.
The beach was mostly empty, the sunburned tourist it produced long since fled in search of higher ground, returning from whence they had come. Above me, gulls glided on the wind. In front of me, they ran from the incoming tide, leaving tiny prints in the wet sand. Behind me, the empty buildings, monuments to selfishness and shortsightedness, rose out of the sand like remnants of a primitive civilization.
Few places were as inspiriting to me as the Gulf. I always felt more connected, more centered, more myself—or the me I wanted to be. Ordinarily, the warmth of the sun, the sound of the sea, the softness of the sand, the breezy airiness would all conspire to make me pause and somehow take in something I needed, something that was often missing or in short supply.
But today was different.
Even in the midst of all this beauty, that for me had so often been an almost direct conduit to the divine, I still felt depressed, which meant I wasn’t feeling much of anything. It was as if an unseen barrier prevented the warmth, sights, and sounds from penetrating my senses. I felt more like a distant observer than someone having a direct experience.
After a while, because he knew I needed some time to think and do whatever else I was doing, Merrill appeared through the diminishing dunes. He was joined by a pre-teen boy with too-long blond hair and very pale skin.
We walked toward each other, meeting in the middle.
“Junior here got somethin’ to say,” Merrill said.
The boy looked uncomfortable, avoiding eye contact with either of us.
“Tell him what you told me,” Merrill said.
The boy hesitated.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Drew,” he said.
“What’s up?”
“I seen somethin’ he said I should tell you,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You helpin’ that little co
lored girl?”
I looked at Merrill. He smiled and shook his head.
“You know who she is?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Don’t know nothin’ ’bout her,” he said. “But I seen her do somethin’ I ain’t likely to ever forget.”
I waited. Eventually, he continued.
“I don’t know where she come from,” he said, “but a group of us was walking through Elysian Fields and she was with us. I never seen her before. Not sure when she joined the group, but she wasn’t with anybody.”
He paused, but neither Merrill or I said anything.
“There was water everywhere,” he said. “We had just passed this little food store. There was nothing in it. It had been gutted clean, and we was wading in about two to three feet of water up under this interstate overpass and they was this big colored man floating face down in the water. He was like all bloated. They was this yellowish brownish rubber-looking shit all over him, and people was sayin’ it was his skin since he had been rottin’ in the water so long. Must’a been days. The whole group walked around him. It wasn’t the first body we seen. We’s almost gettin’ used to it. When we got good and past him, I looked back and I seen her—the little colored girl everybody’s whisperin’ about—she was back there wit him. She leaned over, put one hand on his back, and took him by the hand with her other. I was thinkin’ ‘what the hell’s she doin’?’ And then I seen it. I think I was the only one what did, but she said somethin’ I couldn’t hear and that dead man got up, lookin’ alive as you and me. I couldn’t believe it. I blinked and shook my head and looked back and I seen the same damn thing. There he was standing up beside the little girl, his big hand completely hiding hers. No more yellow brownish shit on him. He joined our group. He’s up there in a room in the retreat center, just like he never died.”
“Whatta you think about that?” Merrill asked.
We were walking back toward the retreat. Drew had run ahead of us after we crossed 98 to retrieve the man he had told us about.
“I don’t know what to think,” I said. “I really don’t.”
“Mental illness might explain some of this,” he said. “But it can’t explain raising the damn dead.”
I nodded.
“Do you think she could be … you know, who she says she is?”
“There’s certainly some evidence,” I said. “I haven’t even been allowing for the possibility, but maybe I need to.”
“Don’t a whole lot of people believe a lot stranger shit?”
I nodded.
“I mean, why not?” he said. “She look a lot more like Jesus looked than most of the paintings, holy cards, and statues in the world.”
“True that,” I said.
By the time we made it back to the retreat center, Drew was walking toward us with a very large black man, and just behind them, DeLisa Lopez was headed our way.
“Is it true?” Merrill asked.
“She told me not to tell anyone,” he said.
“We tryin’ to help her,” Merrill said.
“Still …”
“Just nod your head or something,” Merrill said. “Were you dead?”
The man nodded.
“Are you sure?”
He nodded again, this time more vigorously, his eyes filling with tears.
“You think she’s—”
“All I know,” he said, “is I was dead, and now I’m alive again.”
Merrill nodded. I did, too. I think we were both speechless.
When Drew led the big man away, Lisa stepped up.
DeLisa Lopez had tea stain-colored skin and tarnished cop-per-colored hair. Her green, gold-flecked eyes were as stunning as they were intense.
“Did I just hear what I thought I heard?” she asked. “She raised someone from the dead?”
“It looks that way,” I said.
She nodded as if that confirmed something for her.
“What can you tell us?”
“Before going in there, just based on what you told me, I figured she was delusional, had an extremely overactive imagination, was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, or some form of schizophrenia, but after talking with her … well, I’m at a loss.”
“You saying you don’t think she’s any of those things?” I asked.
“She’s not schizophrenic,” she said. “I didn’t think she would be—even signs of early onset schizophrenia don’t usually occur until late teens, early twenties. Obviously, it’s not just imagination—the things she’s saying, not to mention what she’s doing—are way beyond her years.”
“Is there anything that can explain … ?”
“I’ve only done a very preliminary evaluation, but I can’t find anything wrong with her,” she said. “Certainly nothing that would explain what she’s saying or what she believes.”
I nodded as I thought about it.
“John, what the hell’s going on here?” she asked. “I’m a good Catholic girl. I can’t buy that I just talked to my God face to face in that little room.”
“Then explain it to me,” I said.
“Obviously, she’s delusional, but she doesn’t seem deluded— I mean she doesn’t act the way a deluded person normally acts. In fact—”
“What about trauma?”
“I would think trauma,” she said. “From Katrina or losing her family. But she doesn’t seem to be traumatized. If we could locate her parents, they might bring her back to reality.”
“We’re trying to find them now,” I said, “but …”
“Of course, what she’s telling us could be reality,” she said. “I mean, she seems so calm and integrated, so much more healthy than most people. And if that’s the case, if she is well-adjusted and completely in touch with reality, what in the world do we do?”
“Would you mind if I took your fingerprints?” I asked.
The little girl shook her head. “But why would you want to?”
“To figure out who you are.”
“I told you who I am,” she said.
“I know you have,” I said. “But who were you before you became him?”
“Is that relevant?” she asked. “Who were you before you became the man you are today?”
I thought about that for a moment. “Someone in the process of becoming who I am now, just as who I am now, is the person in the process of becoming who I will be tomorrow.”
“But when tomorrow comes, will it matter who you were today?”
We were quiet a moment, her question lingering in the air as I thought about it.
“I think so,” I said. “Can’t become one without the other.”
“And if my fingerprints say I’m Jakira Carter, does that mean that’s who I am?”
It was a good question, one I didn’t have an answer for.
“Who decides who we are?” she asked. “Is it up to us? Is it for others to decide?”
More great questions. Who determines who we are? Do we? Do others? Is it some sort of combination of the two? Is it for me to say who she is? Who is this person?
“Who do you say that I am?” she asked.
I didn’t respond at first, just let her question, and the ancient one it echoed, hang in the air between us. Eventually, I said, “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“But you’re going about it the wrong way,” she said. “Fingerprints and files can’t tell you who a person is, not really. We are what we say and what we do. We are our hearts and minds, not our fingertips. Go ahead, take my fingerprints, but don’t expect them to tell you who I am—even if they do.”
“You okay?” Merrill asked.
I shook my head.
We were sitting in the empty dining hall, having just eaten a very late lunch of leftovers. Well, Merrill had. I had mostly stirred my food around while trying to figure out what to do next.
“Noonday demon?” he asked, using a phrase I often did. I had gotten it from a book I read.
I nodded.
He knew I occasionally felt the Saturnine oppression of an inexplicable depression, which in itself was amazing, but to have the awareness and sensitivity to know when it was present, even in such a mild state, was truly remarkable.
Flesh and Blood Page 11
