A long-lasting flash of lightning lit up the room. In the white light that shined on my brother, I caught a glimpse of the way I think Georgie’ll look when he’s a grown man. He looked just like Daddy.
The rain had let up and the lightning and thunder had rolled on out. It didn’t take long to figure out what had caused that first loud cracking sound.
The big oak tree from next door had come up out of the ground, roots and all, and slammed into the top of Daddy’s truck. Ruined. The truck was forever ruined. I couldn’t remember us not having that ol’ truck. It was practically the only thing I’d ever ridden in, except for my school bus.
Daddy kept shaking his head back and forth. A couple times he said, “Thank God no one was killed.”
“Daddy,” Georgie said, “what’re we gonna do?”
“Well, son,” he said, lifting his head and sitting a little taller, “the first thing we’re going to do is make sure your mama knows that everything’s going to be all right.”
“But Daddy . . .” Georgie looked at the broken glass that was still catching light from far-off lightning.
Daddy stood up. I was happy to see him standing. I felt safer with him standing.
He put one hand on Georgie’s shoulder and his other hand on my shoulder. He looked at the two of us with soft eyes. “I need the two of you to help me clean up this mess so it doesn’t upset your mama.”
“Yes, sir,” we both said.
“Good, because it’s going to be a long night. I don’t want your mama to worry more than she has to.”
I don’t remember Daddy ever talking like that to us before—like we were grown. This must be what it’s like when you make ten. I was all grown up. And to think, the day before, I had been just a child.
Mama and her flashlight came around the corner and into the living room. She was toting Kheelin on one hip and Khayla on the other. Mama stopped and looked at the broken window and the mess all over the room. Khayla slid down her leg and went running to Daddy.
Mama’s hand covered her mouth. Fear filled her eyes. “You’re hurt.” She went to Daddy and took his face into her hands.
“I’m fine, Katherine. Are the children all right?” He smoothed her hair with his thumb.
Memaw came into the room. “Well, we might as well hunker down an’ get ready,” she said to no one in particular.
Suddenly, a huge gust of wind came blowing through the broken window.
And just like that, the minute of calm was over.
We all let out a gasp and covered our faces.
“T-Bone,” Daddy hollered over the roar of the wind, “help me find something to cover this window!”
Misty bits of rain moistened my skin.
“Mr. Curtis!” Mama yelled. The panic in her voice caused the hairs on the back of my neck to prickle. “My black-velvet Jesus!”
There, sitting all cockeyed on the wall next to the broke-out window was Mama’s pride and joy. A huge black-velvet painting of brown Jesus Hisself. No matter where you walked in the room, the eyes on black-velvet Jesus followed. Even in the dark, with nothing but a candle and flashlight lighting the room, His shiny gold halo glowed—and His eyes followed.
The picture was about to fall and Mama was about to lose her mind.
For the first time in my whole life, I felt unsafe in a place where I’d always known, no matter what, I was gonna be safe.
Daddy grabbed hold of the picture and took it down from the wall, real careful-like. He sat it up on top of the gym-floor table next to the leftover jambalaya and birthday cake. About fifty bottles of water were standing in a row, like soldiers keeping watch.
Seeing black-velvet Jesus lying there, with Mama’s food all around Him, gave me an unsettling feeling. For years Jesus had been hanging high on the wall, always watching over us—and now He was lying flat on the table with us looking down at Him. I fought the feeling of wanting to pick Him up, and stand Him upright.
I wondered how Jesus would feel about being surrounded by leftovers stuffed into plastic baggies, and a half-eaten blue birthday cake practically sitting on top of His head.
After a while, the constant whipping of the swirling wind and pounding rain caused a quiet calm to fall over the inside of our house. My eyes got heavier and heavier, till I couldn’t keep them open no more.
Howling winds interrupted that peaceful feeling when the nighttime hum turned to shrieking crashes and rattles just past midnight. The house was swaying. Part of the roof was flapping and slapping in the gusty, roaring wind. I thought for sure the roof was gonna let go.
We all sat squished together on the sofa, listening to the wind wail, watching the flicker of a candle make crazy, scary shadows dance across the walls and ceiling. The house shuddered and moaned with noises that made us all shut up, like we was waiting to see if something was fixin’ to fall and bury us alive. I sat there knowing that something was coming. Maybe next time a tree was gonna fall and crush us instead of a truck. I couldn’t help but wonder if the roof got pulled off, would we get sucked out?
Memaw was humming church hymns. The sound made my eyes droopy. It was a nice sound, a familiar sound. Memaw had the best hum this side of the Mississippi River.
With my eyes closed and Cricket breathing heavy on top of my belly, I started to fall asleep with Sealy pressed up against me.
The rain fell from the sky like marbles, and the wind whooshed through the house like the walls were made of cheesecloth instead of drywall.
Minutes felt like hours. Hours felt like days.
Crashing sounds. Popping noises. Something getting crushed. Each time I’d hold my breath, close my eyes, and wait for it to pass. I hugged my knees and rocked myself, trying to ignore the rush of wind and rain slapping everything I knew to bits. Our house never felt smaller.
The darkness slowly changed from black to gray. As the room grew lighter, the more settled and quiet we all got. The only sleep I grabbed was right before the sun came up. I just knew once the sun started shining and we were out of the dark, everything would be all right.
But that feeling of peace came to a quick end.
CHAPTER 13
Monday, August 29, 2005 – 6:14 A.M.
The creak of the front door and the gush of outside coming in had me up and on my feet. Daddy was standing at the open door, looking out into the early gray of the day. He said he wanted to go outside to see if we had any other damage from the storm—besides his smashed-up truck.
“Daddy, can I come with you?” I asked.
He looked over at Mama, who nodded.
“I suppose,” Daddy answered, “but stay close to me, you hear?”
“Yes, sir.” I ran to my room for my shoes. I could only find one. I searched everywhere. I ran back out to the living room. That’s when I seen Cricket all snuggled up, sleeping with Georgie.
“Sealy.” I shook her awake.
“What?” she said, not even opening her eyes.
“Have you seen my other shoe?”
“No,” she said, and rolled over to go back to sleep.
“Armani, if you’re coming with me, you need to come on,” Daddy hollered from the kitchen.
“Oh, no!” Sealy said, sitting straight up. The look on her face had trouble written all over it.
“What?”
“Well, I’m not sure, but I think I saw Cricket playing with it.”
I remembered too. I ran back to our room. Sealy was on my heels.
Sitting over in the corner, where Sealy did all her reading, was a shredded pile of what used to be my new white left tennis shoe with triple blue stripes.
“Cricket, what did you do?” I fell to my knees on the floor. “Mama’s gonna kill me.”
Sealy put her hand on my shoulder. “No, she won’t, Armani. It’s just a shoe.”
“My only shoes, Sealy! Mama just bought these for school.” Tears started to build up in my eyes. “What am I gonna do, wear one shoe?”
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“Don’t be dumb, Sealy. I can’t wear your little-girl shoes.” I stood up and glared at her.
She wasn’t smiling no more. She looked down at the floor with her bottom lip all puffed out.
“What’s wrong with you?” I said, annoyed. “I’m the one who’s gonna be hopping around on one good shoe.” I started picking up the chewed-up pieces of my used-to-be-shoe. Sealy bent down to help me.
Memaw walked in our room. “Your daddy’s waitin’ for you, child.” Her eyes zoomed in on the pieces of white rubber and canvas. “What is goin’ on up in here?”
We explained to her what happened and begged her to pinky-promise not to tell Mama or Daddy.
“The only reason I’m not gonna bother them with this today is because they’ve got enough on their plate already.” She bent down and helped us pick up the chewed pieces. “But,” Memaw grunted as she bent over, “you’re gonna tell your mama first chance you get. Understood?”
“Thanks, Memaw,” I said.
“Now, let’s get somethin’ to put on those feet of yours,” Memaw said, and walked off toward her bedroom. Me and Sealy followed.
The shoes that Memaw gave me to wear weren’t shoes at all. They were boots. The most horrible, ugly rubber boots ever made. They were navy blue with baby-pee-yellow polka dots. Memaw said they used to be her garden boots. I wanted to know why she didn’t bury them in the garden when she’d had the chance.
I clomped into the living room.
Sealy walked behind me, stiflin’ a laugh. Mama must’ve heard me coming, ’cause she looked up, then straight down at my feet.
“I like you boots, Ah-mani,” Khayla said. She bent down and rubbed her chubby hand across the toe part of one of the obnoxious boots.
Mama stopped sweeping. She looked from me to Memaw, then back at the boots.
“Why are you wearing those dirty old boots, Armani?” Mama asked.
“Those boots are not dirty, I’ll have ya know,” Memaw piped up. “I told her to wear ’em. She doesn’t need to be outside sloshin’ around through Lord knows what in her school shoes.”
“Do they fit?” Mama asked, looking at me sideways.
Not really, I wanted to say. I looked away and waved “Hey,” at Kheelin sitting up in a big-person chair.
“They fit good enough,” Memaw said.
That was that. I headed outside to see for myself what kind of damage the storm had caused.
The air. It was thick. Muggy. Heavy when I sucked it into my lungs. The skin on my arms turned wet with humidity. My hair tried to curl, even up inside my braids. Steam seeped off the blacktop of our road.
I looked up at the sky. There were cracks of the bluest blue I’d ever seen. But the clouds surrounding them patches of blue were strange and scary. Some clouds were big white, fluffy puffs and others were dark, almost black. I could tell just by the looks of them that they were filled with trouble. Some clouds moved to the right, and some moved around to the left. It was like I was standing there in the perfect center of a whirlwind.
An unexpected shiver made its way up the middle of my back. I stood there with myself soaking up the beauty of the mesmerizing sky. But then, without no kind of warning, the blue gave up and let the dark, thick clouds move back in. A soft rain started falling.
I seen the tree.
The tree lying across Daddy’s truck was one of Mama’s favorites—the big tree that shed a shadow as big as Texas across our whole front yard, keeping the blistering sun out of the front of the house in the afternoons. Mama wasn’t gonna be happy when she found out. I wondered if the clovers covering the ground under that tree would still be there for me and TayTay to pick through.
A big gust of wind came whooshing by, throwing hard bits of rain into my cheeks and all but knocking me off my own two feet. I threw my arm up and buried my face up in my armpit.
The wind settled back down and I lifted my head.
A bird’s nest.
Up toward the top of that dying tree covering the entire top of my daddy’s truck was a bird’s nest.
The nest was somehow still resting between the branches that surrounded it. But the tiny bluish eggs inside were all cracked and broken. I stared at what had to be the little dead bodies of half-made baby birds poking out through the ruined shells.
The winds picked up again, blowing rain-needles sideways.
A beautiful blue and black bird circled in the dark sky above me. The bird swooped down and landed on the edge of Daddy’s shattered truck mirror. It stood there, chirping and chirping, with its head moving in little jerks from one side to the next. Then it hopped across the scattered branches till it reached the tiny nest.
The bird touched one of the cracked eggs with its pointy beak, then turned and did the same thing to the next lifeless egg. The bird started squawking louder and faster, moving its head from side to side. And then it stopped. It just froze. And it looked straight at me.
Its solid black, watery eyes grabbed hold of my heart and started to pull, causing a heavy feeling up in my chest, like someone reached in there and laid down a cinder block. Then the bird let out one last loud, squeaky caw sound that sent fast prickly bumps down my arms.
The bird leaped into the air and flew away. When I lifted my head to watch it fly off—disappearing into the dark sky—a dreadful feeling came over me.
“Armani!” Daddy hollered.
I about jumped out of them ugly, oversized boots at the sound of his bellowing voice. I wiped the back of my hand across my face, taking one last look at the nest holding the ruined bird family.
“I’m right here, Daddy,” I hollered back, turning away from his truck.
“Armani, I want you to get back in the house! It’s too dangerous out here!”
“But Daddy, I wanna stay out here with you,” I shouted into the falling rain and gusts of wind.
“Go inside, Armani.”
I tilted my head up so I could look at him. Just past Daddy’s shoulder, I seen that the roof on our neighbor’s house was gone. It wasn’t half off, or messed up. It was gone.
Mrs. Tilly, the ol’ lady who lived in that house with her twelve cats, was running around between her yard and the road, crying and waving her arms up and down. Uncle T-Bone and Georgie were over there with a few other people.
I tore my eyes away from the poor lady gone crazy and looked back at Daddy. I noticed for the first time how different he looked without his glasses. The cut across his forehead was bleeding again. The blood was watery and thin on account of mixing with the rain washing over his face.
I was about to tell Daddy he was bleeding when Uncle T-Bone came running over.
My uncle pulled off his soaking wet shirt. He rolled it up, squeezed as tight as he could, wringing out rainwater.
“George,” Uncle T-Bone shouted, “your head’s bleedin’ real bad!”
Daddy took a wobbly step closer and tipped his head a little to the left. He pointed to his ear and stared at Uncle T-Bone.
“What?” Daddy hollered. The rain changed directions. The wind blew harder than ever, making me feel like I could be lifted up any minute and just swooped right off the face of the earth.
In one quick move, Uncle T-Bone ripped the shirt in half, like it was made of paper. He folded one half into a large square and then he used the other half to tie around Daddy’s head.
“Your head,” he pointed, “it needs stitches.” He grabbed Daddy’s hand and made him press it against the T-shirt bandage. “Keep pressure on it, George.”
“Thanks, T,” Daddy said, and did a thumbs-up.
Then everything stopped. It was like the storm had wore its own self out with all that huffing and puffing.
“Armani,” Uncle T-Bone said, taking a big breath, “go inside and tell Shug to come on.”
I turned to run inside. “Hang on, Armani,” Daddy said, and held his hand up. “Where’re you going, T?”
“George, I gotta go home, man.” Uncle T-Bone’s eyes were jumpy.
“I could use your help here, brother,” Daddy said, with sad sitting heavy in his eyes.
“I know.” The sadness was contagious, ’cause it filled my uncle’s eyes too. “Look, I’m gonna go home and check on things. I’ll be right back.”
Steam started rising out of the road again.
Sirens filled the air. They weren’t close, but they were everywhere.
Daddy and Uncle T-Bone gave each other a look, like they were talking without words. I grabbed hold of Daddy’s hand. He squeezed tight. I took hold of Uncle T-Bone’s hand too.
We stood there, not saying a word. The wind, sirens, people shouting, rain dripping, the sight of Daddy’s tore-up truck—right then the only thing for us to do was stand there and hold tight to each other.
A tree cracked somewhere over on the other side of the street. The three of us jumped and turned our heads.
“Georgie!” Daddy hollered. “Come on!”
My brother came running over, almost tripping over a mangled bicycle.
“Be careful, son,” Daddy said. “You need to be careful too,” he said, looking at Uncle T-Bone.
“I will,” my uncle said. “I just gotta go make sure my house is all right, George, but I’ll be back.”
“I know,” Daddy said, giving Uncle T-Bone a handshake-hug.
“C’mon, Georgie,” I said, “let’s go get Miss Shug.”
We turned to run inside when the old oak tree fell with a crraacckk and a thunk smack-dab into the middle of our road with poor Mrs. Tilly up underneath.
CHAPTER 14
“Lord, have mercy,” Memaw said for the hundredth time in five minutes.
Poor Memaw. Her and Mrs. Tilly had been in choir together since before I was born. I sat on the floor next to where Memaw was collapsed in her chair. I hugged her hand, wishing I knew something I could say to help her feel better.
Daddy was outside trying to help move the huge tree. None of us talked about what had happened. But we all knew. I was thankful right then that we couldn’t see through the trash bag covering the window. Upset fluttered around in my belly.
Upside Down in the Middle of Nowhere Page 8
