FOUR

FOUR

Delta flight 2504

En route to Louis Armstrong International Airport

AFTER THE CAB RIDE, Jeannine was barely able to make the Delta lounge before breaking down with a sob. A fellow flier took pity on her and bought her a martini. Jeannine should have said no, but she was shaking so hard all she could do was nod her head.

She should have said no to the next three martinis, as well.

Jeannine had been sober since college—no booze, no pills. She had to give it to Stanley. With his help she had learned to deal with the horrors of her past without self-medicating.

Stanley would be so disappointed in her right now. She felt that old familiar shame rising as bile in her throat.

She made the ladies room in time to empty the contents of her stomach. When her flight was called, she staggered out of the stall, only to have another woman look at her sideways and tut loudly.

Jeannine ignored her.

She washed her face, rinsed her mouth, and stumbled onto the concourse. She didn’t remember going through security, yet here she was fifty yards from her gate. She bought a pack of gum from the nearest Hudson News and made the last call for her flight to New Orleans.

The young white woman at the gate watched Jeannine’s impaired approach. The attendant’s body language said everything about her—uptight and judgmental, ready to tussle with a woman of color. How many times had she dealt with that attitude in the past? She’d lost count.

Jeannine was gearing herself for an argument when a black man wearing a Delta uniform, a nice smile, and sunglasses gently put his hand on the Delta bitch’s shoulder, and then addressed Jeannine.

“Ah, Ms. LaRue,” he said. “We were about to close the doors. Let me help you down the jetway.”

Normally, she would have protested against an act of male bullshit chivalry. But she’d had way too much to drink. I’m really fucking drunk. Instead of protesting, she gratefully let the man take her by the elbow. He helped her to her first-class seat.

“Thank you,” she slurred to the man.

“Glad to help, ma’am. That’s what I’m here for, you dig?”

He gave her another big, bright smile after strapping her in and left the cabin, whistling a blues riff.

Why is he so familiar? Damn booze . . . can’t think . . .

Jeannine fell asleep in the middle of the flight attendants’ safety lecture.

J

The miniature ghost stood defiant, hands on hips, with a fire in the deep brown eyes peering through the sheet holes that would have given most larger beings pause. But where the frayed sheet ended, a pair of long, gangly legs wearing pink “Hello Kitty” socks and blue thrift-shop sneakers comically softened the spirit’s fierce glare.

“I wore this at Halloween when I was, like, ten,” sulked the irate specter.

An elderly black woman with close-cropped curly white hair sighed in response as she looked down at her adopted granddaughter. “Jeannine LaRue, you’re the one who begged me to have a costume party for your birthday in the middle of summer, Lord have mercy.”

“Nana! I’m fourteen now, and the sheet don’t—”

“Not for another two days you ain’t, young lady. Dinner is nearly ready; go wash your hands.” Nana shook her head, a smile twitching on her lips. “And set the table, Mademoiselle Fantôme. As the young specter sped toward the washroom, Nana called. “I’ll tell you another Voodoo story about your ma, if you’re good!”

“Cassandra!” shouted the costumed Jeannine, sheet billowing behind her as she headed toward the tiniest bedroom. “Nana wants us to set the table! And we’re getting a story!”

Jeannine side-eyed her Nana, as a flicker of disapproval crossed the elder LaRue’s face. The teen tried not to smile at her little rebellious verbal victory. Mama. Cassandra. We were all the same anyway, she thought.

Nana frowned after her grandniece. Most of her neighborhood had rejected Jeannine—her skin wasn’t dark enough to fit in. The few friends the little girl did have were mixed-race like she was. How is it that people could be so cruel to a young girl? But the world was cruel, the elder LaRue well understood having grown up in a segregated South.

Heavy wind battered the small row home, rattling windows and pulling Nana out of her own thoughts. She was used to storms—this was N’Orleans after all. She stepped to the simmering pot of gumbo, sniffing critically at the air. Dipping a spoon into the sauce, she confirmed what her nose already told her. “Definitely more hot sauce,” she muttered. She crossed to the kitchen window and picked up a large bottle.

The wind rattled the window again, harder this time. Nana’s smile turned to a frown.

From the living room TV, the voice of a panicked weatherman pleaded with the local viewers to evacuate. Then, the picture turned to static. A dark silence replaced the hiss as the power failed completely. 

Nana had never evacuated before. She wasn’t going to leave her home now.

That was her last mistake.

The living room window surrendered first. The frame squealed in protest, then ripped from the wall. Jeannine and another figure ran into the room toward Nana. Glass shattered around their heads as the frame roared away into the black abyss. Jeannine screamed but the sound was drowned out by the wind that turned candlesticks into missiles, utensils into shrapnel.

With the home open to the elements, Nana grabbed Jeannine, and she in turn grabbed her mother’s small hand.

Cassandra was in her Mardi Gras outfit, with white skeleton makeup on her black skin, wearing a karabela dress of cobalt blue. Little animal bones tied together with a bit of leather hung from her neck.

But . . . she was small, not tall like Nana. Why was Mamma so small? young Jeannine thought.

Nana’s hand was sweaty. She was nervous, Jeannine knew. The wringing hands always gave her away. But she had Nana and her mother, so there was nothing to fear. They would all be okay.

The wind howled louder, and the rain lashed horizontally. White resin chairs flew in through the rectangular hole in the wall and bounced off the walls, shattering the remaining pictures. But the cacophony of the raging storm was gradually supplanted by another sound—growing louder as the seconds ticked by.

Rushing water poured down the street.

Death was coming. Riding those waves like a jockey of the damned, while the pungent smell of sulfur and brimstone mixed with the musty scent of damp earth and sewage.

“Hurry,” Nana called to the two sets of wide brown eyes looking up at her. “We need to get up to the attic.”

A wall of water, froth, and debris blasted through the street, slamming into Nana’s house, wrenching it partially off its foundation. The damaged building groaned once but stayed in place. The brackish water mercilessly assaulted the walls and doors. Jeannine stood at the top of the attic ladder, her mother right below her, when a section of the east wall splintered and disappeared into the inky blackness of the rising flood. Farther down the ladder, the frigid, shit-smelling water was up to Nana’s waist as she tried to climb. Jeannine watched in detached horror as her little mother slipped on the steps, mouth opening wide. Cassandra must have been screaming, but Jeannine couldn’t hear over the tempest raging around them.

Her mother fell, pulling Nana off the ladder as she did, and both slipped under the tar-like froth as the rest of the east wall of the house was reduced to kindling.

Nana and Mamma were gone.

Jeannine screamed as the waters swirled higher, hungry for another soul. She kept climbing the ladder and, from overhead, Jeannine heard what sounded like teeth gnashing at the roof. With a final tearing sound, the plaster sloughed off from the ceiling while cascading wooden rafters tried to knock her into the rising pool below. Rain pelted Jeannine and her blood streamed from a dozen cuts as a hole appeared in the roof above, beckoning to her. The waters below reached higher and higher. Above, the wind shrieked, redoubling its triumphant calling for her blood.

Jeannine scrambled through the jagged hole in the roof, climbing into the mouth of Satan himself, as torrents of rain and wind begged her to join Nana and Cassandra. Slipping, Jeannine sliced her calf on a splintered rafter, the gaping wound spurting blood into a storm that was eager for it. But Jeannine wasn’t ready for death. She held onto her shattered home, finding purchase on some exposed timbers, fingers and palms bleeding with the effort to hold on.

As she lay there, gasping for breath, a pair of black feet appeared on the same beam she clung to. Looking up, she saw the feet belonged to her mother, Cassandra, now towering above her daughter.

Something about Cassandra’s appearance terrified Jeannine.

“Where’s Nana?” screamed Jeannine.

Cassandra stood stock-still, her balance somehow unaffected by the lashing wind and rain. Her hair hung over her eyes in a curtain of matted tangles and filth. She pulled back the limp strands and looked at Jeannine. Her face was still covered by a painted candy skull—but the paint was running down her face: white tears melting into the storm.

Cassandra’s eyes were now ice blue, illuminated with some inner light.

She held out her hand to her daughter, laughing.

“No!” shouted Jeannine, recoiling. “Leave me alone!”

“Take my hand,” said Cassandra. “I’ll save you.”

Cassandra smiled, showing pointed teeth. Black sludge oozed from her mouth.

“I told you before, no!” Jeannine screamed again, and her mother, standing above her, was still neither moved by the wind, by the rain, by Jeannine’s tears.

“Suit yourself, child.”

In an instant, Cassandra was gone.