The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,200

scrubbing away the mud. She would dry things out. In her time at the stadium, she’d heard all kinds of tales about what Katrina had done to New Orleans. But Treme was a solid, well-built quartier, and its sturdy houses had come through earlier storms unharmed. No, she wasn’t going to leave her city. She would sit right here until somebody with some clout told her she could go back home. Exhausted and inert, she took her last two pills; they stuck to her palate and eventually dissolved into a bitter mess. Her mouth was so swollen and her tongue so dry that she couldn’t even swallow.

A young man in a Red Cross jumpsuit approached her. “Are you alone, ma’am?”

She tried to answer but no words came. Instead of speaking, she broke down and started crying. She’d lapsed into crying jags on and off through the night, but they hadn’t done her any good. Embattled and surrounded, she was as determined to survive as ever, but she was so terribly tired. She didn’t have the strength to react. She was appalled to find herself an old woman, drained of energy, unable even to talk.

The young man handed her a bottle of water, but she couldn’t lift a hand to accept it. He loosened the cap, placed it in her lap, and moved on. When she eventually stopped sobbing, she lifted the bottle and drank, careful to take tiny sips. She felt better immediately. Such a damn thing—she hadn’t even realized she was dehydrated! She finished the water, set the bottle on the ground, and then, clinging to the metal railing, struggled inch by painful inch to her feet.

She hurt all over, and her head was spinning. She nearly lost her balance, so she tightened her grasp on the railing. If she fell, she’d break a bone or worse, and then she’d die like a poor old turtle left upside down to dry out in the sun.

Nana hung on the railing for more than an hour before working up the courage to cross the crowded plaza to where the lines for the buses were forming. Maybe somebody over there could tell her something. Step by step, squinting against the intense sunlight, she set out. She clenched her jaw. Her vision blurred. She was dizzy, nauseated, and in pain.

“Nana!” someone shouted.

Nana kept moving forward, unable to stop.

“Nana, it’s me!”

She managed to halt. Her old eyes, afflicted by the light and burning with misery, opened wide.

Bobby hugged her so hard she lost her balance, but he held her up. “Oh, Nana, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t get here till now. Nana, Mama Seletha died yesterday. I don’t even know where they gonna take her or when we gonna have a funeral.” His voice was broken and exhausted, hoarse and unrecognizable. He gestured toward the stadium. “I looked all over for you in there. I thought maybe they took you out with the first buses.”

“Bobby, let’s go home.”

Bobby’s face was grief stricken. “Nana, the house is gone. The flood went all the way up to the upstairs floors in Treme. They ain’t no neighborhood left. It all washed away.”

She tried to negotiate. “But the water goes down. It always goes down after the storms.”

“Nana, the levees broke and the water gonna stay right where it is. They ain’t even any way to get there, ’less you got a boat.”

Nana was distraught but she refused to be defeated. She couldn’t imagine her little house underwater, her kitchen obliterated, the album of clippings she’d left on the table washed away . . .

“Nana, it’s over. We got to go.”

“But maybe the storm gonna give my things back . . .”

“Storms don’t give nothing back, Nana, they take and take, till everything gone.”

She broke into sobs again and pressed her face into the young man’s chest. He held her with great tenderness. Gradually, comforting her the whole way, he guided her toward the place where thousands still stood in line, waiting for the buses that would take them away from their homes, many of them forever.

The plaza around the Superdome was filled with distress. Amaia saw thousands of people standing in the beating sun, all looking around with no idea of what they were seeking.

The stifling heat intensified the stench of body odor and mold. The damp bundles people were hauling stank. So did Amaia’s clothes. She felt the fabric stiffen as it dried against her skin. Their feet sank deep into the muck as they approached