Chapter 3 A large mahogany bookcase, a small plastic suitcase and a medium cardboard box

Amy stared at the black and white photograph.   In the photo, her mother and her uncle,  both preschoolers, are sitting at the dining room table in their home not far from the Canal Street Cemeteries in New Orleans.  Their mother Mignon sits with them, but not their father Carlos.  Carlos was rarely in any of the family photographs. He was always the one behind the camera.  In the background, behind the dining room table, stands the seven foot tall mahogany bookcase with its two glass doors and two small drawers at the bottom.

She sighed, her breath a griever’s prayer.

She remembered that bookcase fondly.    She could see herself even now sitting on the brown and gold floral carpet that covered the floor in her grandparent’s living room.  She was sitting at the foot of this same bookcase, with its lovely fluted columns running up each side, the carved leaves punctuating each end of the  columns, and the round carved trim framing  the top and bottom of the door frames.  Over the years, various collectible items filled the shelves, but it always contained her great-grandfather’s books.  Her grandfather told her that he had bought that bookcase after the war, and had stripped and refinished it.  Amy made him promise that he’d teach her how to strip and refinish furniture when she was old enough.  Of course, he told her in his whisper of a voice.  I will teach you whatever I can.  He never let her down on that promise.

Ever since she was a child, Amy would sit at the base of the bookcase for hours at a time, the two small drawers opened, photographs spilling over the sides and onto the floor.  She enjoyed going through the randomly stored pictures that her grandmother put there before Amy was born.    The photographs were in no particular order. She might find a photograph of her great grandmother from 1920 on some Guatemalan veranda lying next to a photograph of her grandmother on a Biloxi Beach in 1945.  Her grandmother would often remark, each time as if it were the first, your mother also sat there for hours looking at those photographs.    

Interspersed among the photographs were equally random pieces of paper. Some were letters written by her great-grandfather in a form of Spanish rarely spoken today and in an exquisite penmanship  that she had come to find out was called Willigha, a font based on the copperplate formal handwriting popular at that time, equally extinct in her digital world.   There were also painfully thin onion-skin papers with now blurry type-written poems written by her grandfather as well.  Amy admired the handwritten letters as if they were photographs, representations of another time and of people who were no longer with us.   It was however difficult for her to reconcile the ornate, lyrical handwriting of her great-grandfather when placed next to the stern, austere face in his photographs.

After she turned 18, she began to sit with these letters and poems more often, trying to decipher the words with her high school Spanish.  She recognized a love poem here, a tribute to some political leader there,  even  letters from  former Guatemalan presidents.   Because her grandfather never spoke about his father  (and when he did, he referred to him as Mr. Rubio and never as my father)  she sensed that she was not allowed to ask questions about him.

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Family stories take many forms.  In some families, they are shouted out proudly at family Christmas dinners, at Passover feasts, at Thanksgiving dinner tables, meant for everyone to hear, again and again and yet again, until the stories become family legend, larger than life.  In some families, the stories are contained within the “begats”  written on the blank pages at the beginning and end of Bibles.  Some family stories become public domain, the subject of cautionary tales or of inspirational self-help. Amy would come to discover her family’s story among the photographs and writings in the bottom two drawers of this bookcase.  Later, after discovering the small plastic suitcase and the cardboard box in the attic, she would have to rewrite that story.  Even so, the stories she would come to tell were like a book with whole chapters missing, lost to sea, dust to the wind.

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Amy put away the photograph of her grandmother, mother and uncle in front of the bookcase.  Two years ago, she had packed up the photographs and papers from the bottom two drawers of the bookcase, a decision that had come to feel to her like an act of supreme providence and grace, as less than a year later Hurricane Katrina would flood and destroy her family home.  She had convinced her grandfather that she would keep the photos safe and preserved.  And that she did.  She took the contents to the bald, yellow-toothed, gnome-like British archivist at Tulane University who oversaw the precious rare manuscripts.  He gave her acid-free special containers  and even  preserved some of the more fragile papers in a clear special material without her requesting him to do so.  The archivist clearly loved to preserve precious texts, even those of a family he didn’t know.  But she had kept them safe and preserved in a way she never thought she would have to.

She had taken the whole lot with her when she decided she needed to live in another town, 1500 miles away from New Orleans.  She had every intention of staying there long enough to walk a different geography, know a different culture, experience a different climate; but there were other plans for her.  When Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans nine months later, she packed up the few things she had actually unpacked , stored them at a local storage unit, and drove back South, first to Alabama and her uncle’s home where her grandparents had evacuated.  She stopped there to see how they were doing, before heading to New Orleans, as the Mayor was allowing people back into the city to see the condition of their homes for a few hours a day.   At her uncle’s house, she unpacked from her car some of the photographs she had decided to take at the last minute so that her grandparents would have something of their past to hold on to, including this one of the family around the table and in front of the family bookcase.    Amy handed her grandfather the photos, randomly picked and randomly stored in the small letter-sized brown envelope.  Carlos held the envelope on his lap.  It seemed as if  opening  the envelope was simply too herculean a task for him. He smiled at Amy, his eyes peering out from deep inside some dark space, his heart visibly beating through his thin shirt.

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When Amy entered her grandparent’s home, her home, nothing, not even the devastation she witnessed for the last three hours of her drive, could prepare her for what she saw. The wooden floors buckled like a roller coaster.  The stench of the moldy plaster and wood, of the rotten food in the freezer and refrigerator was so strong it clobbered its way through her black-mold protective mask.   She found the mahogany bookcase  in the hallway partially covering her bedroom door, still upright, but  clearly suffering heavily. She realized it had floated for days in the flood waters, until it came to rest in this odd spot.   She gently touched the right glass door that was partially open. It deteriorated at her touch, falling to the buckled floor, shattering the glass.     At that moment, she knew she didn’t want to remain any longer than she had to. She took the pad out of her pants pocket and made a list of what she felt needed to be done-what needed to be hauled out to the front of the house for—who? who would pick the stuff up? But she had seen in her long drive through the city that those who had returned were piling up the damage furniture and appliances in front of their homes.  No one seemed to be worried about who was going to pick it up.  Then she went to the attic stairs to see if anything up there was intact.

She pulled on the black-moldy rope that drew the attic stairs down.  The stairs were in pretty good shape, so she climbed them fairly confidently.  She found the box of Christmas ornaments her grandparents had put up the whole time she was growing up and the old wooden children’s xylophone from Guatemala.  After she removed these items, she saw hidden behind them  a small cheap plastic suitcase and a medium size cardboard box with the words “Anna’s Journals” written in her grandmother’s handwriting.  She had never noticed these before.  The urgency to get out of the house didn't allow her to reflect on the fact that she hadn’t known that her mother had kept journals, and that in fact she had nothing written of her mothers. Single-mindedly she quickly but carefully took each of these remains down the attic stairs and into her car out front. With these few rescued items now in her car, she rolled down  the windows to try to diffuse the suffocating odor they brought with them, musty smells that bore witness to the 10 feet of waters that resided in their home for an eternity of days.

Carlos and Mignon, the only two parents she had ever known, survived the initial onslaught of Katrina, but they did not survive the heartbreak it left in its wake.  Mignon died a few months later. She lay down one afternoon to take a nap, and never awoke.  Carlos, his home and his wife gone,  finally lost his battle to the congestive heart disease that he had held at bay for years, so he could take care of Mignon.  Katrina’s waters had been one drop of water too much for his enlarged heart.

The night before her grandfather died, Amy had a dream.   In her dream, Carlos and Mignon were young. They looked like they did in the black and white photographs in the book case drawers.  Mignon was dressed in a long white Victorian gown with a high lacey collar and elegant billowy sleeves.  Carlos was dressed in a white linen suit.  They were standing together on a tall cliff overlooking the sea.  Holding hands, they jumped into the water.

In my dream, I’m now seeing them under the water swimming, almost dancing enjoying the sense of weightlessness and the serenity of the silence.   Above them, the waves of white filigree frame the vision.  They swim to the surface only to find that they cannot break through, they cannot escape the water.  The ocean, the waves and my grandparents suddenly disappear.
In my dream, my grandfather’s face appears, smiling.

A golden light fills the dreamer’s eyes.

Chapter Two: Agua

On the day Carlos was born, the sky over Antigua was a fiery red.


His mother’s bedroom window's faced the volcano called Agua. The local Mayan Kaqchikel people called it Hunapú or "place of flowers". In 1517 Hunapu erupted. A huge mudslide produced a force of water so strong that it destroyed what had been the magnificent colonial city of Antigua. After that, the Spaniards changed its name tothe volcano Agua. Along with another volcano called Fuego, Agua threatened the residents; with periodic rumblings and sputterings of fire. But theirs had been the threat of a loud schoolyard bully, all words and no action. Over the centuries, the people had come to ignore the empty blustering that came from the old mountain.; Only the occasional wealthy tourist or foreign speculator looking to make a quick fortune stood in awe at its feet, watching the hellish lava that it spit out from time to time.


The day Carlos was born, Agua’s smoke choked the sky, and the birds were still. Cassimiro looked out his wife’s bedroom window and said calmly, Angela, have Chona pack a few things for a few days. We’re taking the children and going to Xela. Two days later, Carlos’ baptism was hastily performed in the small Church where his father had been baptized. A few weeks later, the family returned to Antigua, after the aftershocks had stopped, and they felt it safe to return. The earthquake had been relatively minor. The homes of the poorest residents had been destroyed, to no one’s surprise. A few buildings lost some tiles to their roofs, and the church a few stained-glass windows. Over the front entrance of Cassimiro’s family home, a crack the length of a small child scarred the plastered wall.

When Carlos was four years old, his mother gave birth to another son, Luis, her ninth child. One day shortly after Luis was born, Carlos was running in circles on the roof of the house. He loved running up there. From the roof top he could see the entire city and beyond, as their home sat halfway up a mountain at the north end of town. Agua was due South, Fuego West. On the days and nights that Agua was especially active, Carlos would secretly go up to the roof by the back stairs and watch its fires dance. Carlos went up to the roof secretly because his parents had forbidden him to go up there. But that day, Carlos was running freely on the roof. His mother was distracted with Luis who needed a lot of care after his premature birth. His father had gone to Xela on business.

The sun was beginning to set. Carlos continued spinning at the center of the roof, his eyes opened wide, the greens of treetops, the blue of sky and the orange of the setting sun shifting into beautiful shapes of colors and forms. Suddenly a burst of red from Agua exploded into his kaleidoscope. He instantly stopped spinning and rushed to the south end of the roof, but his eyes hadn’t found the horizon to steady his balance, and he misjudged where the roof ended. He flew off the roof and fell to the stone patio below.

By this time the sun had plunged behind the mountains and the cold air began to rush over the town. It was Chona that found him on the ground, unconscious, when she began searching for the children to come to dinner. Otherwise calm during crisis, Chona began to scream. Carlos was her favorite, although she’d never admit to it to anyone, not even herself. Angela heard her scream and rushed outside, holding Luis in her arms. When she saw Carlos on the ground, she handed Luis to Chona and knelt besides him. She leaned over Carlos’ face and felt his wrists—he was breathing, he had a pulse. Barely breathing herself, Angela took Luis from Chona and told her to go into town and bring the doctor back with her. As she went back into the house to find a blanket to cover Carlos, she saw from the corner of her eyes the red fires leaping from Agua in what seemed like a sneering taunt, as if it were sadistically enjoying her pain and suffering.

Carlos survived the fall. Luis, however did not. The cold air entered Luis’ fragile lungs and inflamed them with an infection he couldn’t fight off. Carlos survived, although he almost died. When he awoke, he couldn’t hear or see for a long time. His oldest sister Adela would read to him and encourage him to speak and see. For many years Carlos had dreams that he was flying above the city, above Agua and Fuego. Oddly enough, they weren’t nightmares, but rather pleasant dreams.

As a result of his fall, Carlos broke his left baby toe. It healed finally, but it was permanently crossed over the next toe, like a child’s crossed fingers hidden behind his back as he claims to tell the truth. Carlos’ three children would mercilessly tease him about his malformed baby toe, ignorant to the painful hidden and unspoken memory it held. His granddaughter Amethyst, on the other hand, would look at it with great sadness.

Chapter One: The Appointment

...may your mercy come quickly to meet us, for we are in desperate need.

The sky poured itself over the levee like a melting carnival pinwheel, shifting from a pale blue to slate blue to finally this shocking and unexpected orange. Angela thought about that for just a brief unconscious second—about the unexpected part, how unexpected the orange was, but not unknown. Every sunset from August till October, she had counted on seeing that orange sky from her home office window. Counted on it as one counts on the sun rising each morning; on oysters being safe to eat in the months with “r” in them; on hurricane season ending November 30.

The orange sky was framed by the window in her friend’s office where she sat, telling her story, and wondering if the leafy oak trees outside the window would be enough to cool down the office that had been slowly steaming up since she arrived.  She sat in a comfortable worn brown leather chair, that was cool on her skin, trimmed with brass nail heads that needed a polish, across from Wiley G. Lastrape, Jr., private detective  She realized this orange sky, her orange sky, also belonged to Wiley and his window. It felt so unexpected, to see that sky in his window.

Wiley sat fully present. Wiley always appeared fully present. That’s what she liked about him, even with her unspoken distrust of all PI's and ex-lawyers. Especially Louisiana ex-lawyers. If she’d seen Wiley on the streets, she’d have pegged him as a crooked lawyer and even more jaded PI, someone who represented the mafia bosses she saw every Friday night holding court at the bar at Mandina’s or who did the dirty work of unfaithful husbands wanting to catch their own wives in the act. Every day during the hot weather months, Wiley dressed in a light blue sear sucker suit, starched white shirt and pale blue tie with buttery yellow stripes. On colder days, he’d wear a dark blue wool pin stripe suit with a number of different ties to punctuate a season or (she speculated) a mood. There were the required green-and-red Christmas ties; the pumpkin-orange Thanksgiving ties; and the purple-green-and-gold Mardi ties for carnival season. Sometimes he’d give in and wear a black-and-gold tie for the equally loved-and-hated pro-football team. His dark curly French hair was always a little bit disheveled, as if a favorite spinster aunt had just tousled it as she sent him off to school in the morning.

Wiley was always present when she spoke to him. Fully listening as if she were the only person alive on earth, as if she held the secret to life’s meaning. And so she had come to trust him.

She hadn’t known whom to trust with her story. For years she had known the first chapter of the story and had freely shared this with many friends who enjoyed the tale. But it was only in the last few years that the second chapter had begun to reveal itself. It began to reveal itself shortly after Katrina, which had pushed both her grandparents into their graves when their house and all its contents were destroyed, that is, all but the cheap vinyl suitcase and the medium-sized cardboard box in the attic.

Like Amt, Wiley felt the heat from the window. But unlike Amy, he was beginning to sweat. He could see the unforgiving orange sky reflected in the glass doors of his large antique mahogany book case that had been in his family for generations. That color was a daily reminder to him that he should ask his wife Anne to help him find some sort of window shade to block the heat that defeated even the most powerful air conditioner he had installed after the storm took out his older unit. And every day he’d go home to his wife who mixed the best old fashions in all New Orleans. With one sip, his work day would slip with the orange sky behind the levee and the cool breezes would sweep every detail of his day into the river, until finally all he could remember was why he married Anne.

Wiley sat back in his chair trying to pretend the heat wasn’t stealing away his breathe, and focused on Amy. He had always liked her stories, and her. He had liked her from the moment he met her. She was bright and well-educated and interesting. She was very pretty, but she seemed to have no notion of that. She was interesting in a way most New Orleans women are not—she was actually interested in ideas more than people; both content and form mattered to her; and she didn’t seem decadent enough to be a native of the place. It was as if she were dropped from another planet into her family, at least the maternal part of it that had been in Louisiana for generations. Maybe it was because her grandfather was an immigrant that she didn’t quite seem like a typical native daughter.

But like her grandmother, she told stories true-to-form of a Southerner, with more side bars to the story than the story itself. Each side bar on its own contained the germ of a Gothic southern novel and usually carved a trail like a genealogical chart. The truth is, in New Orleans, at some point in any conversation, in any conversation about family, everyone is eventually, in time and in some side bar, related.

Wiley had come to meet Amy because his doctor, Dr. De Bois Blanc, told him he needed to start exercising or die. Die before his son finished college, which would be in two years. He’d said this to Wiley with a stone face of a friend who loved him and cared enough to scare the shit out of him. So Wiley began his search for something he had always disdained—a health club, something that to him seemed to be an oxymoron in New Orleans, an affront to the culture, as out of place as an honest politician.

His  partner Joe Mole told him about a gym in a large hotel one block from their offices where they took only a few locals. Joe whispered the location to Wiley as he were confessing some shameful sin to a priest in confession. Joining the conspiracy of closet health club members, Wiley told no one, not even Ann, that he planned to visit the health club.

When he entered the health club, had it not been for Amy he wouldn’t have stayed for more than a few seconds. Luckily she was there. She greeted him as it he had entered her own home and that his comfort was her sole purpose in life. And yet he instantly knew she didn’t belong there. That something wasn’t right with this picture.

Amy was pretty and young, a little bit older than his son. He always enjoyed talking to her; it made his otherwise dreary workout tolerable. He joined the gym because of her and its limited the number of outside memberships. This he liked. The limited memberships, that is. He liked that he didn’t have to work out with large numbers of people. And he liked that the fitness club manager was intelligent. They’d talk about movies and politics while he trod on the treadmill. She knew a lot about modern poetry and modern European art. He enjoyed the jarring contrast between the tedium of the work out and the unexpected tour de forces of their conversations. One didn’t find that combination often.

Wiley sat back in his own worn brown leather chair. The young woman across from him seemed to be intelligent. But her story was fantastic, even by southern standards.

When she finished her story, Wiley sat still for a moment. The afternoon sun continued to pour into his office window and onto his chair. He kept meaning to rearrange his office, to put his chair where the sun would never shine on it. Instead, he rolled up his sleeves, making a mental note to ask his wife for some advice on a new floor plan.

His stillness was an involuntary response to the heat and her amazing tale.

“So, Angela, this is an amazing story. How do you know it’s true? And what do you want me to do about it?”