Upgrade U (12 page)

I don’t need me a basketball player
All I need is somebody that’s down for me

—C
IARA
, “A
ND
I”

H
ere’s what I wanted to see: Zaire’s grandmother standing on her gallery and smiling at us.

Here’s what I never expected to see: how devastated the Lower Ninth Ward still was—years later after Katrina.

Half of the block Zaire’s grandmother lived on reminded me of what I’d seen on TV five years ago—when my mother and Cousin Shake scrambled for the phone to make donations to the Red Cross. We watched people cry, scream, look for relatives, and hold on to dead bodies as if they were crown jewels. But when the cameras left town and the news stopped showing the clips, I thought that maybe … somehow it had all been put back together again. Especially since in the French Quarter, where campus was, it was pristine.

But ummm … this place was like a ghost town … well, not quite … because somehow in the air there was life. Like the people who hung on their porches and waved at Zaire as we passed by, seemed happy. There was also a lingering
of blues music, and the sound of saxophones danced in the breeze, children ran around, and neighbors chatted their hearts out.

So the neighborhood was alive, I just didn’t understand how—especially since there were abandoned houses scattered about with windows broken and jagged edges of glass gleaming all over the grass like morning dew. There were houses with black
X’s
spray-painted across the front door, marked with the number of bodies found inside.

There were plots of land that may have once held a home but now only held sticks, boards, broken window-panes, and strangely enough thriving palm trees.

A community of housing projects were at the end of the block, and amazingly they stood perfectly sound, which is why I couldn’t understand why the windows were boarded up and a seven-foot barb-wired fence created a fortress around it.

Yet, despite all of this there was life in the air; and for the first time since I’d arrived in New Orleans, I felt like a tourist.

“What’s wrong, love?” Zaire said as he opened the truck’s door for me and helped me to get out.

“I just didn’t expect that things were still like this…. I thought—”

“They were all cleaned up?”

“Well, yeah. Do you know how much money, my mother, my cousin, and I mean, well—millions of people donated?”

Zaire shook his head. “A lot of people donated money and a lot of things were fixed, some businesses were reopened, the French Quarter was maintained, Stiles U was able to remodel a few things on campus, FEMA bought us
some poisonous trailers, threw us some food. A lot of things happened, they just didn’t all happen back here.”

“I see that, yet everybody seems so …” My voice drifted as I looked around, “So happy. Despite the obvious devastation.”

“What devastation?” Zaire said as he took my hand and turned me around toward him. He pulled me close to his chest, rested his hands on my hips, and said, “I want you to close your eyes and imagine something for me.”

I quickly complied, especially since standing here like this felt like heaven. “Closed,” I said.

“Imagine that it’s the day after an angry river has stampeded its way through your city. Trees are everywhere, your neighbors’ vehicles are in your yard, or stuck in the remaining trees and hanging there like Christmas ornaments. Your neighbor that you’ve known all your life is floating dead down the street, your dog, your neighbor’s dog, zillions of dogs, cats, dead animals everywhere and the animals that survived are in the trees, holding on for dear life, but every few minutes you hear splashes hit the water.

“And then you remember—that before your grandmother made you go to bed the night before—your uncle, his girlfriend, and their baby were on the first floor watching the news and wondering if they should’ve left and went to the Superdome with everybody else.

“And now—the next day—you’re standing on the roof with your grandmother and you can’t find your uncle’s family anywhere. You can’t go down to the first floor because it’s a toxic sea from the floor to the ceiling. Besides, you’re only thirteen and you’re scared as hell, because not only is your uncle’s family unaccounted for, you don’t
know where your mother, your father, your little brother, your aunts, cousins, friends, you don’t know where anyone is. All you know is that you are standing in the belly of the beast, trying to figure out why you hadn’t died but were clearly in hell.

“Now”—he took a deep breath—“once you have a grip on that image, open your eyes and look at me. Do I look like a six-foot-three-inch-tall piece of devastation?”

I opened my eyes and tears slid down my cheeks. “No,” I said quietly.

“Now let me show you something else,” Zaire whispered against my cheek. “Turn around and look.” I wiped my face and turned toward the street. “You see that family?” He pointed. “They all survived Hurricane Katrina, no one from their family died.” He pointed to another house. “You see the little girl jumping rope in the yard?”

“Yeah,” I said, as I wiped more tears from my cheeks.

“She was floating down the street, in a baby carrier, with her dead mother floating beside her. Now you see that man sitting on the porch watching that same little girl?”

“Yeah.”

“He saved her. He and his wife adopted her, and guess what?”

“What?”

“Before they adopted her, his wife couldn’t get pregnant, and now they have three children. You see that couple?” He pointed to a lavender shotgun house, with deep purple shutters and a small gallery.

I wiped my eyes and laughed a little at the odd, but cute couple. The older woman had smooth chestnut skin, large breasts, wide hips, and stood about five three. Her
hair was dyed the wrong shade of auburn for her complexion, but nevertheless she rocked a short and cropped cut. She wore a pair of black jeans and a floral shirt. The man standing next to her with his arm around her shoulders was a balding Asian man whose eyes were so slanted they sunk into his cheeks and for a moment his face looked as if it only wore a smile.

“What about them?” I asked.

“The day after the hurricane, he came down the street with his boat. He didn’t know anyone; he was just looking to help and he did. He saved a woman and her grandson, and shortly after that, they fell in love, and he asked her to be his wife. And before him, she’d been a lonely widow for twenty years, who swore she would never remarry or date again.”

“That is the sweetest love story I’ve ever heard.”

“So what devastation? There’s life here, love here. We love our city, our homes. Some of us don’t know any place but New Orleans, and we want to be here. So, yeah, things could be cleaned up and more houses could be put back together, but there is no devastation. There’s only God’s perfection, and now”—he pointed to the ramshackle houses and littered plots of land—“all we’re waiting on is for man to do his part.”

I turned back to Zaire and I wanted to kiss him and melt into his embrace, especially since I felt like at this moment, everything that I’d ever done and had been going through was supposed to lead me here.

Zaire looked into my eyes and as his lips moved toward mine, the scream of “Grandson!” halted us.

I turned around and the couple from the lavender shotgun house waved us over. “Would you come on down
here before this food gets cold? I can’t stand no cold and old food!”

“Big-Maw’s calling,” Zaire said, as he grabbed my hand and we walked toward the gallery where his grandparents stood.

“Well … well … well, looka here.” Zaire’s grandmother stood with her hands on her hips and smiled at us. “Ling”—she turned to her husband—“Grandson has brought home some company. And she just as cute as she wanna be. Got some meat on her bones too. I like that. Lawd knows I can’t stand no chile too skinny. Now, Grandson, introduce us so we can go on in the house.”

Zaire shook his head and smiled. “This is Seven, and Seven this is my grandmother, Mrs. St. James-Wong—”

“You can call me, Big-Maw,” she said, taking over the introductions, “And this is my husband, Ling. And you can call him Ling. He likes that.”

Ling looked at me and smiled. “Welcome.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, is your name really Seven?” Big-Maw smiled. “Like God’s perfect number?”

“Yes, m’am,” I said, excited that she knew the meaning of my name.

“I love that name.” She looked at Ling, and said, “Remind me to play seven hundred, and zero-zero-seven, in the lottery. Now come on in here. The table is already dressed. I just have to fix your plates. Now, listen—” She carried on as we walked in behind her, “My show,
The Real Housewives,
is on.” She turned to me. “You watch
The Real Housewives?”
Before I could answer, she said, “Well, I do. So I’ma have to join you and Grandson for dessert, because I need to watch my show first.”

"I understand.” I smiled. “My mother loves that show.”

“And me too.” She chuckled as she led us into her country-style kitchen.

“You can sit here, Seven.” Zaire pulled out a chair for me to sit in and he sat across from me.

“Now, Seven, are you in school?” Big-Maw asked me, as she fixed our plates.

“Yes, m’am. I’m a freshman at Stiles U.”

“Okay.” She sat my plate in front of me, picked up a pen, and walked over to the refrigerator. “In college. Check.” She pointed to a handwritten list on the freezer. “Now what kind of folks do you have? Where’s your daddy? Your mama? You got any babies—?”

“Whoa, time out,” Zaire said in complete shock. “Big-Maw”—He walked over to her and placed his arm around her shoulders. Their backs were turned to me. “What are you doing?” he said, tight-lipped, and I did all I could not to fall out laughing.

“I’m checking my list and checking it twice. I’m like Santa around here, and you’re my prize, so before I can give you away I need to make sure she’s not a rag picker. So like I said”—she turned back to me—“you got any babies?”

“No, m’am.” I smiled.

“Look at those dimples, she just as cute. Okay, Grandson, I think we may have a match here.”

“Big-Maw, would you chill? It’s cool. We’re just friends.”

He walked back to the table and arched his brow as if to say,
Told you.

“You’re friends?” Big-Maw squinted. “Nawl, what y’all doing is playing. ‘Cause if I hadn’t called you when I did, you’d be out in the street in a lip-lock right now. And the
next thing I know I’da been cussin’ out my neighbor, Lucille.”

“Y’all still at it, Big-Maw?” Zaire questioned. “Seven, the only time they ever got along was the day after the hurricane.”

Big-Maw sucked her teeth as she sat Zaire’s plate in front of him. “Let me tell ya somethin', gul, hard times will make a monkey eat pepper, okay? So, I have tried with this woman. But she loves to run her mouth, honey. The other day, a funeral came through here, so me and Ling joined second line and who was there but Lucille. And do you know what she did?”

“What she do, Big-Maw?” I said.

“Dah’lin, she was dropping sexy eyes over at my Ling.”

I snapped my fingers. “Oh no, she didn’t.”

“Oh yes, she did.” Big-Maw snapped her fingers in response to mine.

“And what did you tell her?”

“I told her, it don’ have’ta be beans and cornbread time, but it can be.”

For the first time since I met Khya, I was stunned speechless. Beans and cornbread?
“What does that mean?”

“It means I will brang it. I told her I ‘taint da one. I will work a gris-gris on you, have you all confused. Now play wit’ me, ya hear? Or ya heardz me, as the young people say.”

“A’ight, Big-Maw,” Zaire said, “you can’t be busting out voodoo queen at somebody’s funeral.”

“Hmph, Grandson, Lucille better ask about me. Anyway, baby”—she turned to me—“you two go ahead and eat and when my show goes off, I’ll be in here to have dessert with you.” She smiled at me and then turned to
Zaire. “Don’t you miss another Sunday.” And she walked out the room.

“She is too cute,” I said to Zaire while studying the amount of food that Big-Maw had piled on my plate. There was shrimp gumbo over rice, fried corn, fried okra, collards, a piece of fried catfish, chicken, and cornbread. I must’ve blinked a thousand times, trying to figure out where to even start. I mean, like, ummm, I was a big girl, had wide hips, and wore double digits when I bought clothes, but ummm … dang. I looked up at Zaire and he cracked up.

“What, Love?” he said. “Didn’t you say you were hungry?”

“Yeah, but I can’t eat all of this.”

“Now you know you didn’t get all those sexy hips from eating salad,” he teased. “You know you’re used to eating like this.”

Did he just call me fat?

Zaire seemed to read the look on my face and quickly said, “I didn’t mean anything by that. I was just messing with you.”

My face remained twisted.

“Now see, Love, you’re too cute to be mad with me. She fixes everybody’s plate like that. Look at mine.”

I glanced down at his, and he had more food than I did.

“A’ight.” He rose from his seat and walked over to me. “Stand up.”

Reluctantly I did as he asked and stood. He sat down in my seat and pulled me onto his lap. He reached for his fork, and said, “We gon’ knock this out together.” He began eating from my plate and just like the perfect scene
from the perfect movie, Zaire and I laughed and joked and before we knew anything, we’d cleaned my plate.

“Just friends, huh?” Big-Maw walked into the kitchen. “Young people.” She shook her head. “Y’all come on in here with me and Ling so we can have some beignets and tea.”

We sat down in the living room and Big-Maw served us. We talked about everything under the sun. Ling told us how he loved Big-Maw from the moment he saw her. Big-Maw talked about how her family went from being a large unit to it only being three of them, with the exception of a few cousins that were sent to Texas after the hurricane and never came back.

Big-Maw showed me photo albums, Zaire told me stories about his mother, and Ling told us how he’d come to New Orleans for a fishing vacation, found the love of his life, and never returned to China.