Run Baby Run (9 page)

Yevchev pointed at Johnny.

"He is the one to make a fist and punch. Or his foot to kick. He needs his fingers and his toes. It is only morning now. The time will come to use them."

The Russian's index finger moved to his left.

"You, Dominic, are different. You can do your job, run my business, and find my money while fingers or toes are broken. This is the question to ask yourself: 'How did my bartender open a safe easily?' Think carefully of this before you tell me. The pinky is best to start with. You are right handed, yes?"

9

B
obby Delery trudged back across the train tracks.

He was shaken up. While in Chicago, he'd pictured a far different life in New Orleans, definitely a far different arrival.

It was about to get worse.

As he was walking on St. Ferdinand back to the overpass where it all began, he saw cars up above driving across and heard lots of honking. He was tired and worn down, so his initial thoughts were anchored by fatigue and frustration. It wasn't until the next thought flashed through his mind that he started running.

Delery took the quickest way to the foot of the incline, under the overpass and along the parallel surface road. Up ahead was his car, parked where he left it, blocking the left lane. No NOPD or other vehicles were alongside anymore, and the lanes had been reopened. Cars were flying past and a tow truck was in the process of backing up to his bumper.

He yelled in advance, "That's my car!" and got to it as the tow truck driver stomped back to begin hauling it away.

"Man, what you thinkin?" the driver asked with disgust. "Can't park here. People got to get through."

"I know this looks bad, but I've been helping NOPD solve a case. They were all across here a little bit ago," Delery said. He wasn't sure what the law was in New Orleans, if his car could still be towed if he arrived in time.

The driver shook his head. "For real?"

Delery nodded. Cars were honking and immediately zipping past his car into the left lane too close for comfort.

"Shit. If that's how they do you, then
you
the one need help from the po-lice."

"I'm beginning to think you're right," Delery admitted.

"You know how this work, right? Once I got you up on my truck, you gotta pay to get your car back, even if I'm still parked right here. Your car ain't have to end up in no impound lot for them to fuck you over. Couple minutes, you woulda been stuck. $193 to get it down, my man."

"Motherfuckers. $193? They can't just call it $200," Delery burned.

"You got that right. This city sure will nickel and dime you. Listen, this just my job, alright. You still got your car. You good."

They shook hands.

Delery got in his car. No time to collect himself here.

"I didn't want to go there like this, but that's how it's got to be," he said.

Rather than taking the overpass, he turned sharply to the left and used the side access road as a U-turn back to Franklin. He made a right at the intersection, and after a few blocks, made another on Galvez. There was more blight than he remembered, but the area seemed about the same, all in all.

He kept his eyes on the left once he got near Alvar.

"It's still there, big as I remember," he said, looking at his old school, William Frantz Elementary.

When he got closer, he saw there was a sign in front with a name he didn't know. "Akili, that's odd," he said. Delery was unaware of a threatened closure before the flood and the events after, remediation from damage and charter schools entering the city.

His memory was instead threaded with his walk as a kid. Four blocks on the nose. Mama walked him there. A few kids had picked on him, but that was so far in the past. Mama told him they didn't understand, to ignore them when they said, "You don't belong here, white boy."

"She told me about the importance of this place," he said to himself.

He was taught in school that Frantz was the first one integrated in New Orleans, about a six year old black girl named Ruby Bridges getting escorted by federal marshals. Mama told him about authors like John Steinbeck coming to town to write about it, about the painting by Norman Rockwell showing Ruby, and that the Bridges family lived only a few blocks away on Johnson. "The city would've changed the school name, Bobby," she said, "but you keep the name if there's history. They only change the name if they want to forget the history."

The next few blocks were different than anything else he'd seen so far. Most houses seemed inhabited, certainly, but there were also several empty lots with overgrown weeds. A couple newly built houses too, made to look historic.

Delery wondered if flooding in this area had come from the breached Florida Avenue Canal or the Industrial Canal. The first was an open one for pumping out water. The second a shipping canal connecting the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain.

As he drove along, he saw people walking or driving, going about their Sunday routines. Many were dolled up for church, others getting by with a twinkle in the eye, some with an aimless look or one compounded by trouble or ailment, and a few with obvious evil intent toward the rest.

This was the Ninth Ward, the back part, or at least further back. Black New Orleans largely. One of the areas of town that many had never seen. Even fewer had been on the other side of the Florida Avenue Canal.

Delery remembered a wearying series of ongoing questions once students and colleagues in Chicago learned after Katrina that he was a native New Orleanian, especially when he'd mentioned that he'd lived in the Ninth Ward.

"Why weren't those people in the Lower Ninth Ward living on higher ground?" was one that required explaining that 'upper' and 'lower' were directional, not used geographically.

Even the simplest queries required a mini-lesson on the location of New Orleans between the river and the lake, as well as about the canals that ran through the city. There were exponentially more of them than in Venice, Italy. They were in place to pump rainwater back to the lake, if necessary.

The city had changed when he left with his dad in 1979, though. He'd never heard the term "Bywater" used as a kid, though it was one of the hot neighborhoods all over the international press now. Didn't make sense to him. Everyone in the city was by water. But, he bought into it too. Look where he was renting.

Despite the abandoned lots and having been away for over three decades, the neighborhood still felt familiar to him. Nowhere else does architecture look like that in New Orleans.

"I wonder what it's like across the Industrial Canal now. Fields of weeds? Many people back?"

Delery planned to take a drive over the bridge to see the Lower Ninth Ward for himself, but he'd read enough to know that, despite the media attention, little support had come. Mainly Brad Pitt's foundation and a few legitimate non-profits.

He hadn't expected to see so many empty lots on this side of the canal, though. He knew he wouldn't get caught up in looking around and miss the family house. It couldn't be forgotten. Right at the corner of Galvez and Poland. Across the wide busy Poland was a smattering of warehouses and marine businesses. That wouldn't change.

He looked off to the left instinctively at the Bartholomew intersection.

The Florida Projects were built on the river side of the Florida Avenue Canal decades ago as housing for whites, his dad had told him in Chicago when they were discussing Cabrini-Green getting torn down there.

"Bobby, by the time we left New Orleans, the old white projects--St. Thomas, Iberville, and Florida--they were all black," he'd said. "At least people living in those could mix with everyone else. Look at the Desire Projects, though. They put a bunch of poor people in shoddy buildings that weren't fit for habitation the day the doors opened. Stuck in isolation between train tracks on left and right sides. I-10 on top. Florida Canal on the bottom. Limited socialization."

His voice had raised. "You know what that does to a person. You've studied it. What does it say? It says, 'Take a bus downtown where you make a lousy wage at your crappy job, if you can even get one, and when your shift's over go away to an isolated corner so we don't have to see you anymore.' New Orleans likes its black people in two contexts. Work for us or entertain us. White folks have a problem with black folks as just people. I'll be the first to say it."

Delery saw he was a block away. He knew his mother and brothers didn't live there anymore, or in New Orleans at all, but he'd grown up in this house during his formative years. A warehouse filled the entire block on the left. Memories from the houses along the right side filled him up.

It doesn't matter where you're from or where you've been. The house or structure where you were born and raised holds a special place. It alchemically transforms standard building materials into something magical.

The excitement built inside him. He knew coming back would be emotionally difficult. The family home was in the part of his memory where roads don't run. Delery didn't like them to run there anyway.

As he got closer, the yard seemed bigger and thicker than he remembered. "The owners must need to do some yard work," he said, finally pulling up in front.

His mouth dropped. Weeds of all types abounded. He was home, but home wasn't there.

Delery got out of his car, double-checked the street signs, and walked to the empty lot in disbelief. He saw red paint barely visible underneath the overgrowth. The only remaining part of the family house was the stoop. Three steps made of concrete. Left when the shotgun single was demolished and taken away.

"It's faded, but this is the red Dad painted when I was in first grade," Delery said.

He pushed the weeds back vigorously so he could sit on the top step. Delery didn't make a habit of crying, but he let loose and sobbed for a couple minutes.

He'd been in two worlds his whole life. His tender spot. What gave him perspective and experience beyond most people. It was also what could wound him to the quick like nothing else. Why he lived in two worlds. Not quite fitting in either. Wondering which person he was. Here he was at the source of it. Simultaneously close and far from his family.

"I need to get it out," he said to himself, "but not aloud."

"Dad and Mama married in February 1965. George Delery and Celeste Thomas. Made house in this spot on the other side of town from their families because both sides disapproved."

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Mama was pregnant with Robert. The first one. He died when she was giving birth."

Delery didn't have a handkerchief or tissue, so he leaned off to the side, held the top of his nose between thumb and index finger, and blew his nose into the weeds.

"Marvin was born in 1966. He also would've been my older brother. Died when he was only three from sickle cell. Painful death."

Delery paused, thinking of his birthday a couple months ahead.

"I was the oldest by happenstance. By accident. August 28, 1970. They used 'Robert' again. Looking back, I think it was too difficult for them to say it out loud, so I was always 'Bobby.'"

His hands were on his knees. He squeezed them.

"I was still a baby myself when Isaac was born in 1973. Looked so different from me. My little brother. Wonder what he's done with his life?"

Delery teared up again and promptly blotted with his hand.

"They had Curtis when I was in kindergarten. Would've been 1976. A toddler when Dad and Mama got divorced. I remember his eyes when Dad and I left. He knew somehow."

Delery made two fists and started to steadily knock his knuckles together.

"As part of the divorce settlement, Dad got me. Mama got Isaac and Curtis. We left the state. Dad got a job in Indiana. Union organizing job with UAW. At International Harvester. Went back and forth from Fort Wayne to Chicago a lot for work."

His knuckle tapping got stronger. Noise from their impact could be heard.

"Once a week, I wrote a letter to Mama, Isaac, and Curtis. Gave them to Dad to mail. Never got a reply. Stopped writing after 6th grade. Dad wouldn't allow long distance phone calls, so letters were all I had. But... they... they forgot about me."

His arms were now swinging and his fists were colliding with each other.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck. What did I do wrong, Mama? Dad said the three of you left New Orleans. Wouldn't tell me where. Said it was better that way. I was a freshman in high school then."

He violently slammed his fists together once before stopping.

"All these years. I never looked online. Figured if I was dead to them, what did it matter?"

Delery had been so deep in his release he was unaware of his surroundings. A mistake in any city, but definitely so in New Orleans.

He jolted when he saw three teenagers standing off to his right. He hadn't seen or heard them come around the corner. Each had a variation of long white t-shirt, black low-slung pants, and shoulder length dreadlocks. He thought they were young gangsters, and they knew it.

Delery rose and panicked. He tried to pull fear from his face and broke the awkward silence. "You guys didn't see all that shit, did you?" he asked. For all he knew, his lips had moved with his thoughts.

One of the trio brushed it off. "You don't have to say anything. Private ish. What you doing sitting out here, though?"

"This was where my house used to be," Delery said.

"You lived back here? C'mon. Naw."

Delery knew what was being implied, and his initial response to them meant he deserved it. "Yeah, I grew up here but moved away when I was still a kid. Before you guys were even born."

"Well, listen. We didn't mean to get up in your business, sir, but maybe you want to come to this," the spokesperson offered, handing Delery a postcard-sized promotion for a music show.

"This is you guys?" he asked. "And you don't have to 'sir' me. I appreciate the respect to a sad old man, though."

They all grinned.

"You're not that old. But, yeah, that's us. We're students at NOCCA, but the show's at the Musician's Village."

Delery was foggy. "I've never heard of either of those. Guess I have been away for a minute."

They schooled him on the high school arts center next to the river, which was actually near his apartment, and the Habitat for Humanity houses only blocks away, built for musicians after the flood.

They were sweet generous kids and their music sounded interesting, so Delery promised to catch their show the following Thursday. When they were about to part, one of the three who'd been silent so far, said with a sly grin, "I ain't gonna dap. Nothin' personal. But your knuckles, they ain't touchin' mine. Gotta keep 'em pretty for the trumpet. You dap like you're trainin' to beat Mayweather."