Orleans Read Online Free PDF Page B

that blood. All that OP blood.
    She reach for me again and I take her hand. I won’t need both hands ’til the baby start to show. I count with her and sing when I remember a song, and tell her them stories she used to be telling me when I been little and scared.
    “Once upon a time, there was a magical place called New Orleans . . . There you go. Breathe, two, three, wait. Push. There was magic in the water, magic in the trees, and magic in the people. Two, three, there, I see a head!”
    I forget the story ’cause the baby’s head seem so big. It look like a melon pushing out, or a full moon, pale blue in the moonlight and bald. I let go of Lydia’s hand.
    “Keep talking,” Lydia whisper. “Please.”
    “Um . . . but most magical of all was a woman named Jeanne Marie. Jeanne Marie was—”
    “Clever as a clock and pretty as a sunset,” Lydia say. She be smiling, and I smile, too. That always been my favorite part, describing Jeanne Marie.
    “She was smart as a whip and pretty as a new moon,” I say. Lydia chuckle, then groan and push again. I hear a gushing sound and the baby come free in my hands, like a storm surge, but the water be mixed with blood and Lydia’s life be tied to the other end, gushing out.
    “Wait, Lydia, wait,” I beg, and wipe the baby’s mouth clean, and suck its little nose clear. I hold it up to her so she can see it, but Lydia be looking at me.
    “The City takes, Fen,” she say. “I can’t stay here. It’s too much. Too much to change.” She look around at the swamp and the ring of trees that hold out the rest of Orleans. “You’re a fighter. You’ll survive. Promise me you will look after my baby. Give him a better life than this. Teach him to be strong.”
    “But—”
    “Promise me. Promise. ” She grip my arm so hard, I almost drop the baby, all slick and wet with Lydia’s blood.
    I cry out with pain. “I promise.” She let go, and I hold out the baby and say, “But Lydia, she a girl. A baby girl.”
    Lydia look and her eyes light up like the midday sun. “A girl. I was so sure it was a boy.”
    And then she dead. Like that. Eyes dull and staring. The baby, cold in the October night, start to cry like she know she at her mama’s funeral. I stare at Lydia and feel like that baby crying for her mama. Only I had something this baby never will. I had Lydia.
    I wrap Baby Girl up in the edge of the sheet and cut a section of cloth and the umbilical cord with my cleanest knife. I swaddle her the best I can in her mama’s shroud and take off my shirt to make a sling to carry her. My skin be covered in goose bumps, but I been naked in these woods before. Only a matter of time before what happen once happen again.
    I close Lydia’s eyes, roll her up in the sheet, and sit down beside her, waiting for the sun to rise.

5

    THE SMELL OF GASOLINE FILLED THE AIR, sharp and noxious over the deeper stink of diesel fuel. Daniel unplugged the rental truck from the fueling station’s bank of electric chargers. Across from the kiosk of dark green outlets, eighteen-wheelers and cargo trucks idled, waiting to refuel at the fossil tanks. A few old jalopies waited behind the trucks, families crammed in ancient cars, moving east, west, wherever they had heard things were better. Freeways throughout the country were filled with cars like these, broken down on the side of the road, families huddled under blankets, waiting for help that was slow to come. What was so wrong with their homes that they traveled north so many years after the hurricanes had blown away?
    Overhead, black clouds threatened more than the current sprinkling of rain. Daniel hurried, dropping the cord to reel itself back into the charger stand. He clambered back into the cab of his pickup just as the rain began in earnest. He turned on his headlights and checked the tarp over the truck bed through his rear window. Everything was secure. Turning back around, he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He looked