A ride that should have taken twenty minutes took over an hour. Every few minutes, Reesie squeezed Miss Martine’s hand and got a weak squeeze back. None of them were talking. The only sound was the swishing of water as the heavy truck lumbered toward downtown, or the shouting of soldiers when they had to stop to clear debris from the road.
Reesie decided to distract herself with her drawing pad. She eased her backpack off and immediately felt lighter, better. One of the kids across from her watched as she took out her pad and pencil. She flipped to a clean page and started to sketch a raincoat.
“Hey, that’s good!” Eritrea said.
Reesie glanced up. The little kid’s eyes were glued on her.
“Want to draw?” Reesie asked the boy. Without waiting for an answer, she carefully tore off several sheets of paper and passed them to him. Then she dug into the backpack, and her fingers touched her markers. For one second she hesitated, then she handed them over.
“Say thank you.” The boy’s mother shook his shoulder. He only grinned.
“It’s okay.” Reesie smiled.
“Yeah,” an old voice said, “troubles bring folks together!”
“Mmm hmm…,” someone agreed.
“Look,” Eritrea whispered, pointing outside. They were in the business district now, and the streets were deserted and dry. Soon they began to pass other National Guard trucks and soldiers on foot. The truck stopped.
“Good morning!” A guardswoman appeared, shouting directions. “This is the Superdome. It has been named an evacuation center by the mayor. All evacuees will get more instructions and help once you’re on the ground. Careful getting out, and good luck to you!”
The passengers who could stumbled out of the truck. Two medics with stethoscopes hopped in. One carried a bag and a clipboard. A man with an oxygen tank got the first medic’s attention. The other turned to Miss Martine, tossing Reesie the clipboard.
“Name? Age?”
Miss Martine couldn’t get words out.
Reesie stuttered, “I—uh—”
“Martine Simon. Miss Martine Simon,” Eritrea answered. “She’s eighty.”
“Write it down,” the medic ordered. Reesie did. The medic looked up. “We’ll take care of her. You can go.”
“But—” Reesie said.
“Come on.” Eritrea pulled her away.
“I told Dré I would watch out for her!”
“They got it. We need to watch out for us. Look at this!”
A week ago these streets had been filled with strolling tourists, busy summer workers, horse-drawn carriages, and lively strains of jazz. Now the scene was like a reporter’s photo taken in some country at war. The plaza outside the dome was strewn with towels and blankets and belongings, and the people those things belonged to. Many people were old, some in wheelchairs. They were every race. There were groups that looked like families, and there were individuals set apart.
There was some kind of pain on every face.
“You think Miss M’s going to be all right?” Reesie took another look back.
“André says she’s a tough old lady. So, yeah.”
Arm in arm, they navigated through the defeated-looking people whom the National Guard soldier had called evacuees. Reesie didn’t like the way the word sounded. It wasn’t a word to describe plain old Americans living in New Orleans.
Her eyes met the eyes of a roundheaded boy wearing a Saints T-shirt. He was clutching the hand of a man who looked just like him: his father, Reesie guessed. But though the little boy’s big eyes followed Reesie and Eritrea as they passed, he didn’t really seem to see them. He looked as if he were lost somewhere inside himself.
It occurred to her that she was lost too. She was an evacuee too.
They walked closer to one of the entrances. Reesie pulled a door open, and the stench made her gasp.
“Ugh! Smells like a bathroom!”
“We’re not going in there.” Eritrea shook her head and pulled Reesie away. They kept going, slowly wandering around the outside of the circular stadium. Nothing seemed to be happening; no one seemed to know what to do next. When a caravan of Red Cross trucks appeared on the street, there was a wave of movement.
“Food! They got food!” a shout rang out.
“They got any water?”
A swarm of people began to flow out of the Superdome. Reesie and Eritrea were suddenly surrounded and swept along with the mass of bodies.
“Maybe we can at least get something to eat,” Eritrea whispered.
Reesie’s stomach growled in agreement, but they were jostled and bumped along without any way to control themselves.
“Catch my hand,” Eritrea said.
Someone shoved Reesie, and she tripped on the heels of the person in front of her. “Hey! Move along, or get outta the way!” someone else shouted.
Eritrea was jerked in the opposite direction. “Reesie!” Her voice was moving away.
“Tree!” Reesie threw her arms up over her head to keep from being trampled, and she tried to scramble to the outer edge of the crowd. Still, she was hustled and pushed even farther, until she was finally right up against the glass doors leading back into the lobby. To get away from the crush, she swung one of them open and stepped inside the building.
The Superdome was huge. Reesie had been here more than once, to football games and a concert or two. The lobby and corridor were brightly lit then, filled with vendors selling souvenirs and hungry people lined up at the concession stands. Now the corridor was littered with trash, and people hung around everywhere: behind the empty food stands, in the tunnels leading to the seats, and in the shadows. She could see their shapes moving, and every now and then there was the flash of a cigarette lighter, or the narrow line of a weak flashlight.
Reesie stayed in the angles of sunshine still coming in from the doors and floor-to-ceiling windows, keeping an eye out for Eritrea when she looked outside. At the entrance to one tunnel, she peeked to get a look at the stadium floor inside. She saw sunlight right over the football field, so she went closer.
People were camped out in the stadium seats, and people were sleeping on cots on the football field. The light was coming from a hole in the Superdome roof—Katrina must have blown part of it away. Reesie was stunned.
“Hey, what you got in that sack?” a rusty man-voice asked from close behind.
She started farther into the stadium, but got snatched back into the tunnel by the strap of her backpack.
“I bet you got something good in there.”
Reesie instinctively began to wiggle out of the pack, trying not to look back.
But a hard hand gripped her shoulder and pulled her around.
“Stop! Stop!” She raised her voice, poking with her elbows as she got tangled in the straps. She saw his full face. It was hard to tell how old he was, but he had a stubbly beard and unkempt locks, and he reeked of beer and cigarettes.
“I bet you got a fancy expensive phone, too,” he said, reaching for her pocket.
“Help! No!” she screamed, trying to throw her knee up against his chin. He’d already gotten ahold of her cell phone and yanked it out. She tried to remember everything Daddy had taught her to do—scream, fight back—but she could only be terrified.
“Hey! Get your hands off her!” It took Reesie a minute to register that the voice was Eritrea’s.
“Mind your business,” the man growled, but Reesie was able to pull away.
“She is my business! You get off her, or I swear—” Eritrea was running into the tunnel.
Reesie never knew where Eritrea reached to pull out the knife. She only remembered the gleaming silver of the open blade, the loud ripping of the backpack as the thief broke the strap, tearing away her sleeve with it, and the squeaking of his sneakers as he ran.
“He’s got my phone!” Reesie cried out, flailing her arms. “He’s got Miss Martine’s book, and my sketches! He—he—he’s … got…” She suddenly lost her voice. All of my mama and daddy’s important papers …
Eritrea wrapped her in a tight hug. “You okay? You’re okay. Just be still for a minute. You’re okay, right?”
Reesie couldn’t have moved even if she wanted to. She wasn’t okay.
“I shouldn’t have come in—you said don’t—”
“Reesie—”
“Please. I was so stupid! D-don’t tell Dré, don’t tell anybody,” she whispered, looking straight at Eritrea.
Eritrea took a deep breath. “It’s yours to tell.”
Reesie nodded slowly. What she wanted to do was forget—forget this, forget Miss Martine getting sick, forget the flood and Katrina.
“Let’s get some air,” Eritrea said, keeping her arm around Reesie’s shoulders.
Reesie felt like she was moving in slow motion while the rest of the world was normal. But none of this is normal, she thought, shaking her head. She kept shaking her head.
“Boone!” From far away, Reesie heard her name. She wasn’t even sure if what she’d heard was real.
“Boone! You here, Teresa Boone? Looking for a Teresa … Arielle … Boone!”
“That cop is calling you, Reesie! Look!” Eritrea tapped Reesie’s arm. Reesie focused on the uniform, but she didn’t recognize the young, curly-haired officer.
“Over here! This is Reesie—she’s Teresa Boone!” Eritrea waved.
“Well! Teresa Boone, your daddy, Officer Lloyd Boone, is lookin’ all over New Orleans for you.”
Superman. Reesie smiled nervously, but she couldn’t let herself believe it, not yet.
“My daddy?”
“Yeah.” The officer pointed over his shoulder. “He’s right over there by that Humvee.” Reesie saw him, talking on a police radio. He looked up at her.
The crowd parted, the clouds parted, and Reesie buried the last two days deep inside. She took one look at Eritrea and then walked as steadily as she could. She was determined to act like the same old Reesie.
“Daddy!” her voice squeaked out. “What took you so long?”
“Reesie Bear!” He lifted her completely off the ground, pressing her to his heart and holding her as if he would never let her go again.
“Daddy,” she whispered, and then sobbed.