the seven years of Tino’s life.
I motioned for Tino to come on outside. If I hadn’t done that, if I’d just ignored him, or yelled up to finish watching his show, he’d still be alive. But, I didn’t.
“Line yours up like this, Tino, opposite mine. They’re going to fight each other.”
“Like this?” he asked, placing his army soldiers in a straight line.
I nodded. “We need some rocks they can hide behind,” I said jumping up. “Like in a real war, soldiers gotta have cover, something to protect them from the bullets.”
Tino nodded.
My feet had just hit the grass of our backyard when I heard the squeal of tires making a sharp right, gunning the engine past the fire station, past our house. Then, what sounded like poppers, like those little party poppers Dad would buy for the 4th of July. He’d buy those and sparklers and snakes, black pellets he’d light and we’d watch writhe and twist on the ground.
I got to him first. He was lying on his side and eyes were open real wide. “I didn’t have no cover, Jorge,” he whispered to me.
“I’m gonna go get Mommy, Tino. Everything’s gonna be ok.” But as I ran screaming for them, Mommy, Daddy, Abuelita, my brother, my sisters, I knew it wasn’t going to be. Some people pretend death will never happen. No matter if they’re faced head on with it, they’ll fight it ‘til the end. I saw the blood pooling around Tino’s body and I knew, I knew with every part of my being, I knew as I ran as fast as I could for help that I couldn’t outrun Tino’s death.
16
CNN
“Mama, look,” I pointed to the tv while she was in the making Ramen noodles for dinner. “Ain’t that Auntie Reneta’s house?”
Mama looked over from the stove and her eyes got real wide, real big from disbelief. She pushed the pot off the burner and ran over to the television, turning the volume way up. C.J. was in the living room, cruising around the obstacle course I made him with the odds and ends of furniture Mama and me had picked up. “Trash pickers!” someone had snarled at us when they drove by. Mama and me each had the end of a coffee table we were carrying home. “Don’t pay them no mind, Raven,” Mama had said to me. “What’s trash to one is treasure to another.” We’d furnished our whole apartment that way. And, it looked nice, too. Nothing fancy, but homey. C.J. was making his way around that same coffee table. Then, he’d put his chubby little hand on a chair I’d put in there for him. He’d go around and around, pleased as punch with himself, thinking he was really going somewhere. I guess if you’re a baby, it feels like you really are: going, but never leaving the same place. C.J. was lucky in that way. He didn’t know we wasn’t able to go nowhere. Me and Mama, we’re stuck here.
“In case you’re just joining us, we’re live in Poplarville, out with firefighters who, in the past 24 hours, have been out actively searching for people stranded in their homes in the five days since Katrina hit.
“Fire Officer Wallace, has this recovery operations now shifted from the recovery of live bodies to that of the deceased?”
“Well, there may still be people hiding in their homes. We’ve made a very thorough sweep, myself and fifty other firefighters. We’re announcing our presence through the use of megaphones, just to really make sure we get everyone out. The water now is turning toxic from decaying animals and even people, I’m sad to say, who weren’t so fortunate.”
“What now since there’s a shift in the recovery operations?”
“Now, we’re entering homes and surveying them for possible loss of lives.”
“Is there a removal of the bodies when they’re found?”
“Not immediately,” Fire Officer Wallace said. “We’re not equipped for that. We spray paint a red X on the door so when we do have the means, we’ll know which homes to re-enter.
“Mama, is that Auntie Reneta’s house? I can’t tell with so much water around it.”
“It is, baby. See the house number there above the door? 3801. And the opening of the carport to the right? And there are her two big pecan trees the men are going by. That’s my sister’s house all right. Aw, baby, I’m so scared,” Mama said squeezing my hand again tightly.
“It’s ok, Mama. I’m sure Auntie Reneta left in time. You told her it was going to be bad.”
“But all she kept saying was if they’d survived other hurricanes, they’d survive this one. That Albert had put his guns and their important papers in the waterproof safe down in the cellar, just in case they flooded. But, I don’t know if I got it through her thick head just how bad it was gonna be.”
Two men from the boat that the reporter was in stood at Auntie Reneta’s front door with an axe. They was thigh deep in water, and that door I remember had steps leading up to it.
Mama jumped in her seat, startled, when one man took the axe to the door. The wood split as easily as taking a watermelon and dropping it hard on the ground; it made the same sound, too.
“No, I don’t see anything in here,” the firefighter said, scanning the inside of the house using his flashlight.
Mama exhaled loudly. I think she’d been holding her breath the whole time.
“Wait,” the other fireman said, “I see two bodies in here.”
“No, no,” Mama started wailing. “No, Reneta, no, no!” C.J. started crying in the living room, too, scared by Mama’s sudden sea of tears.
“More in the kitchen,” the first firefighter called out, “I found two more bodies in here.”
Mama lay her head on the table and wept ‘til all that was left were the aftershocks, like the tremors after an earthquake, no sound came out, but her breathing and her body shook and shook with the realization that her little sister, Albert, and the boys were lost.
17
The River
“See now, Davey, this ain’t so bad, is it?” Uncle Eric laughed from the other end of the boat.
When Davey looked at him, the full moon cast long shadows across Eric’s face, making it elongated and sinister. Davey looked away.
“Let’s head over to the dam,” Pat whooped. “Come on, Eric, you’re rowing like an old man.”
“Hell, with you lard asses in here, it must weigh half a ton,” Eric grumbled, taking the left oar and splashing water at Pat, but hitting all of them.
“Damn it, Eric, cut it out!” Vince yelled.
Davey stayed quiet, willing his body to stay motionless, placing his mind back on the ground, inside Uncle Eric’s apartment, grabbing his phone from under the couch and texting Julie to see if Mom could come pick him up after all.
“I’ll come get you anytime, anywhere, Davey, you know that,” Mom has told him a thousand times.
“Why so quiet little nephew?” Eric asked as the boat inched closer and closer to the dam. “What, you afraid of the water?” Eric leered. “Oh, hell yeah, boys, little Davey is afraid of the water, I forgot,” he snickered. “What? After I near drowned you when you was little? You remember that, punk?” Eric splashed water on them again. “It was an accident,” he laughed. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
“Eric, I mean it. Stop doing that,” Vince said again.
“Yeah? What are you going to do about it, Vince? Huh? What about you, Pat? And, Davey? I know Davey aint’ gonna do anything besides sit there like a freakin’ statue.” Eric took the oars and held them by the side of the boat and with his body, began rocking it back and forth hard.
“Eric, what the hell’s the matter with you?” Pat yelled.
“Cut it out, Eric!” Vince screamed.
“Jesus,” Eric stopped. “You three are a bunch of pansies, ripe for the picking. Why the hell did I want to hang out with a bunch of little kids?”
“You just gotta go along with what Uncle Eric says, Davey,” Mom had explained before. “He’s got the devil in him sometimes. He gets that from Granddad. I learned when I was little just to keep quiet, let Granddad have all the power, which he did. That’s th
e way to deal with Eric, too. You can curse him out all you want in your head, but when he’s mean like he can get, just go along with what he says.” Davey thought about what Mom had told him. He was doing everything right. He hadn’t said no to going out in the boat, hadn’t said no to drinking, he hadn’t even said no to sleeping over. Still, the fear inside him he couldn’t contain for much longer. More than anything, he wanted to scream. Scream for being so helpless, scream for being dependent on Eric to get him back safe and not knowing, now that he was so far away from land, if Eric would.
“Eric, I want to go back,” Davey said quietly.
“What’s that? What’s that you say, little buddy?” Eric asked.
“I want to go back,” Davey said again. “I don’t want to see the dam tonight.”
“Tough shit, Davey,” Eric growled. “We’re going and there’s nothing you can do about it. Especially since you can’t swim. Ain’t that right, Davey? You can’t swim, can you?”
Davey shook his head no.
“Seems to me like you better keep your trap shut then.”
“Hey, Eric,” Vince said suddenly alarmed. “Either all that water you kept splashing on us filled the bottom of this boat, or its taking on water.”
“What are you talking about?” Eric said reaching his foot out and tapping it on the floor. His foot met with a resounding splash. He tried again, and again water sprayed from the impact.
“Shit,” Eric mumbled. “I told you you guys are a bunch of lard asses. I didn’t