Upside Down in the Middle of Nowhere

by Julie T. Lamana

  I swallowed the lump in my throat.

  “I wanted to pull that teacher into the hall and tell her that Martha took a bath every single day and that she should apologize. But Auntie Mama told me to let the universe take care of that heartless woman.” Matthew’s voice took on the sound of remembering. “All I know is, we never got sick—not one time, ever.”

  “Matthew . . . ,” I started to say, but then I heard Memaw whisper, There’s no need, child. Let it be.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Some people are just uncaring, ya know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I heard the flip of the mirror and the lower half of Miss Priscilla’s face lit up. “How y’all doin’?”

  “We’re good, Miss P.,” Matthew said.

  “How . . .” I cleared my throat. “How much longer till we get there?”

  “Oh, it’s gonna be a good while yet, honeybee,” Miss Priscilla’s lips said up in the mirror. “They’ve got us takin’ alternative routes. Why don’t y’all try to get a little rest? Unless you wanna try one of these biscuits we’ve got in our snack bag.”

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Me neither,” said Matthew.

  Just then I seen Uncle Alvin reach his arm out and over the back of Miss Priscilla’s seat, like he was putting his arm around her.

  “Well, all right,” Miss Priscilla said. When she reached up to flip the mirror shut, she looked my way and winked. Her eyes were doing some kind of happy dance. I knew that wink and them eyes had everything to do with the arm resting up behind her. She snapped the mirror shut and the light went out.

  I scooched down in my seat. I couldn’t keep myself from thinking of TayTay and her clover. My eyes were heavy.

  Matthew leaned over and put his face right up close to mine. He whispered into my ear, “I think Miss P. has a boyfriend.” His voice-air tickled my ear.

  I tried to force a smile, until, finally, slowly, my eyes stayed shut.

  “Armani! Hey, wake up.” Matthew wiggled his shoulder—the shoulder my head was lying on. I sat up and scooched over toward the window. I’d been all but sitting on top of the boy. Matthew smiled just to where that dimple showed. The light shining through the window behind me caught his face so that the morning honey-colored sky filled his eyes.

  “It’s all right,” Matthew said. He lifted one eyebrow. “I don’t mind bein’ your pillow.”

  I play-smacked him across the chest with the back of my arm. “Shut up.”

  He laughed and took a bite of the biscuit he was holding. My stomach growled. “Miss P’s fixin’ to stop soon for gas,” he said, with his mouth full. “We’re gettin’ close. You wanna biscuit?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I looked out my window while he asked Uncle Alvin to pass one back.

  “Here ya go,” Matthew said, pulling my thoughts out of the clouds. “They’re dry as August, but Miss P’s got waters if you want one.”

  “Thanks.” I held the heavy biscuit, but I didn’t eat it. I looked out my window admiring how beautiful everything looked. “Whenever we were up early in the mornin’ to see a sky soaked in them kinda colors, Mama would say, ‘It’s a blessed day, to be sure, when you wake up under a Louisiana sky with a touch of Heaven shining through.’ ”

  “That’s pretty,” Matthew sighed. “That’s real pretty.”

  “Yeah, it is,” I said in a lazy voice. “Matthew, look!” I pointed over his shoulder to the unsettling sight out his window.

  “Aww . . . man.”

  Army trucks—tons of them—one right after the other for as far as I could see, clogging up the interstate. They took up a whole lane.

  “Where’s that dern gas station, y’all?” Miss Priscilla asked.

  “I don’t know,” Matthew said. “But look at that, Miss P.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Miss Priscilla gasped.

  “It’s the Dome,” I said, and tried to wrap my brain around the sight I was seeing.

  CHAPTER 54

  The Dome looked like a bomb had gone off on top of it. The roof was barely there—huge holes of blackness everywhere. Was it like that when we were there? Was it like that when Danisha and her family were up inside there—when her mama got attacked?

  After we slowly passed up the Dome, we started seeing Army soldiers with guns. Walking, riding in trucks, standing alongside the road just staring at whatever—most of them with the look of wanting to be somewhere else.

  Helicopters buzzed through the air, taking me back to our terrifying night on the roof. The sounds, the soldiers, the smell—the awful, sickening smell. Everything was making my head woozy. I thought I was gonna throw up. Where was TayTay and Georgie? Where was Daddy?

  We were stuck in a line on the interstate surrounded by Army trucks. The line moved maybe one inch every couple minutes. I closed my eyes and prayed for us to just be there.

  The slowness of time made me sick. We crawled along down streets I didn’t recognize in a city that sure didn’t feel like home.

  We were lost. Lost in a place I’d been knowin’ my whole life.

  CHAPTER 55

  Finally we came up on a convenience store that was open—open and all but falling down. A dirt line, taller than me, circled the outside of the building. I didn’t have to ask nobody—my good sense told me it was a waterline from where the water had been.

  A long row of vehicles, mostly Army ones, sat with us in line for the gas pumps. We stuck out like a zebra in the bayou, sitting up in Miss Priscilla’s fancy SUV. There was even people without vehicles in that line, standing around holding gas cans looking wore down and sweaty. I couldn’t help but wonder out loud why a person would bother being in a line for gas when they didn’t have no car to put it in nohow. Matthew said they were most likely getting it for generators.

  “Miss Priscilla,” I said after a good while, “can we get out an’ stretch our legs?”

  She unbuckled her seatbelt and fiddled with the air vent. Then she turned around in her seat and looked at me for the first time in hours without using the mirror.

  “I don’t know why you’d want to, but . . .” She looked from me to Matthew then back to me again. “I suppose. But y’all stay together and no wanderin’. Ya hear?”

  She might’ve said more, but I was already out the door.

  A blast of thick, disgusting, soupy air slapped me in the face as soon as I hopped down out of the air-conditioned truck. I grabbed hold of Memaw’s locket.

  A smell flew up my nose that I’ll never forget. Me and Matthew covered our noses at the same time. It was the same nasty odor that oozed from Mr. Babineaux’s broke-down car the summer before, when a cat had climbed up inside the engine and died.

  Two helicopters flew by low enough to stir up dirt and whatever else didn’t weigh more than a loaf of bread. I squeezed my eyes shut and stuck half my face down inside the front of my shirt till the noisy things passed us by.

  A wave of panic burned through me. I looked around every which way and turned in a slow circle. “Matthew?”

  “What?”

  My heart was up in my throat. “How are we gonna find home when nothin’s where it’s supposed to be?”

  The SUV crawled along like a June bug making its way across concrete. I rubbed the compass-locket between my fingers and stared out the window, trying to recognize where we were. I prayed and waited for that feeling of familiar, but it didn’t come. It seemed like we’d come in from the wrong side or something. I was confused and aggravated. It didn’t feel or look like we were in New Orleans.

  The further we scooched along, the worse the sight was. We passed by a row of leaning shotgun houses with waterlines that looked like the ring left in the tub after the water drains—lines clear up by the tops of the doors. A family with a mama and five or six kids sat there on the ground looking nowhere with that look of nothing on their dirty faces.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Miss Priscilla said again.

  My stoma
ch did a flip-flop.

  Walls of stuff were piled high and out of the way on both sides of the messed-up street. Stuff that used to be people’s lives. That’s when I first knew that we’d lost everything. Everything. Not just the food in Mama’s fridge, and Daddy’s truck. We’d lost everything. How could anyone come out alive on the other side of a storm that had done took away everything? I grabbed hold of Georgie’s glasses that were sitting on the seat between me and Matthew. I held them careful with one hand and kept my other hand on Memaw’s locket.

  “We’re getting close to the Lower Nines—I can feel it,” Uncle Alvin said.

  I could feel it too.

  “My, my, would y’all look at that.” Miss Priscilla all but stopped the SUV.

  Right there, off to the side of the road, mixed in with all the rubble, was ol’ Mr. Jasper Junior Sr. and his saxophone, playing a lonesome jazzy song. A lady sitting on top of a laid-down tree smiled sad and swayed, moving her head this way and that. The teenage boy in the wheelchair beside them was tipped up on his back wheels with the front ones in the air. He moved his chair to the sound of the soulful music, dancing in a way I ain’t never seen no one dance before.

  “That’s the spirit of the Nines right there,” Matthew said.

  He was right. In the middle of all that mess and destruction, the feeling of home was beginning to take over. My heart started thumping a little bit harder and a whole lot faster. I was getting closer and closer to Daddy. It took everything I had to not scream at the top of my lungs for Miss Priscilla to go on and hurry up already and get us to where we were going.

  I was fixin’ to ask if it’d be possible for us to go faster than new grass could grow, when all of a sudden I seen it.

  I knew where we were! Just a little ways off, up higher than any of the piles of rubble, was Mr. Frank’s upside-down school bus still sitting on top of the building—the building that was right next to the doughnut shop. Right where it was the last time I’d seen it. When the water was everywhere. When the water was right where we were driving that second. When the bodies had floated by.

  CHAPTER 56

  Every single house with at least one wall still standing had a big ol’ spray-painted X with numbers scattered around it. Somehow I knew our house would have the number one up on it. There were lots of X’s. And there were lots of numbers.

  We went around a corner, and just like that, the bus was gone. A panic started to take hold when something made me stop and look down at the locket I’d been rubbing on all morning. I opened it. Right away the little needle inside the compass went to moving back and forth before finally stopping with the N situated off to the left.

  I couldn’t stay stuck up inside the SUV for another second. I asked Miss Priscilla if I could please get out and walk, especially since she was moving along at an armadillo pace anyhow. Matthew got out and walked with me. Miss Priscilla and my uncle followed in the truck behind us.

  Where are you, Daddy?

  While I walked with Georgie’s glasses safe in my hand, I tried to ignore the sound of the whop-whopping helicopters, and the far-off hollerin’, and the not-so-far-off gunshot sounds bouncing around in the thick, rotten-canal-smelling air.

  Matthew picked up a long stick and swatted at rocks, making them roll out in front of us. I was watching a rock roll when I noticed the dead fish. Lots of them—scattered around like it had done rained fish or something. All them dead fish eyes, following me while I walked.

  And the smells. The air tasted the way it smelled. I couldn’t help but gag and cough.

  Matthew asked if I was okay and patted my back the way Mama did when one of us swallowed something wrong.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess.” I promised myself not to look at no more fish. “I’ll be all right soon as I see Daddy and Georgie.”

  I checked Memaw’s compass.

  “Armani,” Matthew said, “what if we can’t find ’em?” He slapped the rock with his stick again. “I just wanna make sure you’re prepared in case, well, ya know.”

  “Yeah. I know” is all I said. I wrapped my hand around the compass-locket. Please let us find them, God. Please. Daddy was strong, but that water monster had been even stronger. I knew right then in my heart that no matter what, I’d never hold it against Daddy for not being strong enough to save Georgie—or little Cricket.

  I swiped away a hot tear rolling down my cheek before I caught up with Matthew.

  Concrete steps leading nowhere. The morning of my birthday, them steps most likely led to someone’s porch—attached to someone’s home. That was a sight I’ll carry with me forever. Concrete steps leading nowhere.

  “It’s something, ain’t it?” Matthew said quiet.

  “What?”

  “The way everything looks when it’s gone.”

  I didn’t wanna look no more at the mess the storm had left behind. The trees with nothing but thick trunks, looking all naked without leaves or branches. The layer of swamp mud covering most everything and Miss Priscilla reminding us it wasn’t safe to touch nothing with bare hands. All the things that a person calls home outside of their home. Everything there but gone at the same time.

  We kept on walking. Matthew kept on hitting rocks with his stick. Helicopters kept on flying over our heads. The air kept on stinking. Miss Priscilla kept on following. And my heart kept on growing heavier and heavier.

  I looked down at my brother’s glasses all covered in my fingerprints. “It’s my fault we stayed,” I said, my own words catching me off-guard. “How’s that?” Matthew asked and pushed the rock.

  “ ’Cause I wouldn’t let Georgie tell Daddy that Mr. Babineaux from next door said we should evacuate.” My feet shuffled along. “I didn’t wanna mess up my birthday.” My throat tried to close up. The air got thicker.

  “You had a birthday?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  Matthew about knocked me down when he shoulder-bumped me and flashed me one of his smiles. “Happy birthday!”

  “Thanks.” A wave of guilty washed over me, because I knew I would’ve never invited that boy to my house, especially for my party. But there I was, walking down the middle of what used to be my neighborhood, knowing that if there was ever a day worth celebrating again, it wouldn’t be the same without Matthew and Martha and the boys right there with us.

  “Y’know,” Matthew said, “Auntie Mama told us the night of the storm that stayin’ was an act of hope. What do you think she meant by that?”

  I couldn’t speak. I stopped in my tracks and froze solid when I realized where I was. The flashing blue light was gone. Most of the color was gone. But the red paint chips around the edges of the door were enough for me.

  CHAPTER 57

  “You sure you know this place, honeybee?” Miss Priscilla came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder.

  I could barely breathe. I sure couldn’t talk.

  Uncle Alvin answered for me. “She knows it. Pete’s granddaddy built that shop square and true.”

  I wasn’t expecting the feelings that had took over my whole entire body just from seeing a familiar sight that wasn’t nothing familiar no more.

  “I—I don’t . . . I mean, do you think Mr. Pete might know where Daddy and Georgie . . . ?” My blurry eyes searched the sad, caring faces of Matthew and Miss Priscilla—and Uncle Alvin. Big gator tears rolled down my cheeks. “Georgie didn’t know how to swim. He—”

  Uncle Alvin reached out to me with a shaky hand. I stared into his black, watery eyes. “We’re all storm-tossed children now. Ain’t nothin’ we can do about that.” A tear fell from his eye. “I gotta go find my girl.” He nodded at me, then walked past the SUV and kept going on down the road.

  “Alvin!” Miss Priscilla hollered after him. “I’m comin’ with ya, darlin’. Just hang on.” She looked from me to Matthew with all the lovin’ a mama can when she looks at her children. “Now y’all listen to me. I’m gonna go with Alvin. I don’t think he should be by himself in the state he’s
in.”

  She turned and looked at him getting farther away. She talked faster. “I’m gonna get in my truck and take him where he needs to be, then we’re comin’ right back here.” Miss Priscilla looked at her watch. “It’s a quarter to two. I’ll be back as quick as I can. Don’t y’all go nowhere else. I ain’t in the mood for no shenanigans.” She pointed her finger from Matthew to me. “Do y’all hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” we both said.

  “You can wait for me on that bench over there if y’all want.” She pointed at a bright white bench sitting up by the door to Pete’s. I knew I’d never seen it there before. It sure did look extra bright and white up next to the faded, water-stained building. “Y’all best not move an inch from this location.”

  She squeezed us in one lump of a hug, then she walked backward to her truck, still pointing that finger at the two of us. “I’m just so proud of the two of y’all. Honeybee, you’re stronger than you know, darlin’. Don’t you forget that.”

  “I won’t,” I said more to myself than her. I hoped she’d hurry back.

  “We can do this, Armani. We’ll do it together.” Matthew let out a poof of air that blew his bangs out of his eyes.

  We’d been standing there in the same spot for at least five minutes. I wanted to find out if Mr. Pete knew anything, but I didn’t wanna know all at the same time.

  “Thanks, Matthew. I don’t think I could go in there without you.”

  I held onto the locket and stared at the knob on that half-red door with the waterline almost to the top, and knew it was time. A little flutter started in the bottom of my belly.

  I closed my eyes and imagined the smells that were always waiting on the other side of that door. The thought of warm doughnuts spread through me. I was ready to cross the road. I took hold of Matthew Boman’s hand, hugged my brother’s glasses to my heart, and headed for the door.