chapter 33

ZAVION

Tulane Avenue was empty except for a group of people huddled together on the stoop of one yellow house. Their heads were below a brown waterline that cut across the front of the house, slashing the red front door right in half.

Zavion raised his hand in some sort of greeting. One person waved back. A woman. A baby sat on her lap, so maybe she was a mother. No one else even acknowledged Zavion. It was like they didn’t see him.

He crossed South Rampart Street. The Mississippi River was only a few blocks away. The convention center was even closer.

Zavion gripped his backpack tighter.

He bit down on his back teeth so hard a pain shot through his jaw all the way to his ears.

It was awful being back in New Orleans. It made Zavion’s pulse beat faster. He could feel it at the side of his head. With each thump an image pumped through his body.

Thump. The cross from St. Mary’s Church.

Thump. The seat of a playground swing.

Thump. A lamp. Thump. A keyboard. Thump. A clear suitcase filled with Matchbox cars.

A parade of objects knocked and darted and careened through him. He hadn’t remembered seeing them, but he was sure, now, that he had. They had rushed by as he and Papa had made their way through the flooded streets.

He wondered if Joe the photojournalist had taken pictures of them.

Zavion needed to slow down his pulse. If he could slow it down, if he could grab hold of the images flooding his body, if he could line them up like his lunch sandwiches in the refrigerator, neat and organized in a row, he knew he would feel better. He rubbed the side of his head.

Lamp, next to—

Keyboard, next to—

Matchbox suitcase, next to—

Boot.

But it didn’t work. How could it? At the intersection, where he had stopped, a group of refrigerators stood together on the corner. With all these broken refrigerators littering the street, there was no hope for keeping sandwiches lined up straight and fresh.

Still, he tried again.

Boot, next to—

Teddy bear, next to—

Soup pot, next to—

Kite—

—

The memory hit Zavion like a bucketful of marbles.

An orange kite.

A blue sky.

A long white string.

Little hands.

Zavion’s hands.

Big hands.

Mama’s hands.

A gorgeous fall day, just the right amount of wind, not too hot and not too cold. Zavion and Mama in Pontchartrain Park, flying the brand-new kite he got for his birthday. He begged to fly it alone and immediately snagged it on a branch and ripped it.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—” He said it over and over again until Mama’s arms had opened wide.

“It was a kite,” she said. “And you were you. Now it is a torn kite”—she put her hands on Zavion’s cheeks—“and you are still you.” She hugged him so hard they fell over, laughing. They lay on their backs and watched the kite dance against the clouds.

It wasn’t the first time she told him about Grandmother Mountain, but it was the time he remembered.

“Grandmother Mountain was only a small pile of rocks and some dirt and a few red spruce trees at first,” Mama said, waving her hand slowly from side to side as she guided the kite in the air. “Every time she stopped wandering, she grew. In the valley, she found more dirt. By the river, she found more rocks. By the time she came upon Grandfather Mountain, she was a grand mountain. But she still found something when she put down her roots to be near him.” Mama squeezed Zavion’s arm with her free hand. “Just like I did with your papa. I wandered into New Orleans, all grown up like a mountain, but I found the one last thing I was missing—someone to be connected to”—she stood up, reaching out her hand to Zavion—“and then I found you—someone to love more than anything in the whole entire world….”

—

Zavion squeezed the marble for luck, for luck and to quell the fear that was uncurled and loose and roaming through his body.

Zavion had to find Luna Market.

He began to run.