Michelle, a slender, brown girl of eighteen leaned against the magnolia tree watching them. Thecouple got out of their car: a white man around thirty-five with windswept short blond hair and hiselegant wife also in her thirties with shoulder length black hair. They looked casually rich in their designer jeans that were wrinkled in all the right places.They’d parked their jaguar in the driveway and now stood on the lawn envisioning, Michellewas sure, lofty possibilities for the house she’d grown up in.It was a two story sprawling wooden house with a wide porch and what used to be a swing. BeforeKatrina had splintered it into shards of wood that now lay tossed over the lawn and steps like broken teeth. The demon storm had destroyed the inside of the house too – photographs, old hats andclothing she and Simone used to play dress up in, antique furniture, were gone now. All that couldn’t besalvaged had been gutted and piled in the front of the house.But the frame, as if immune to the elements had fought the hurricane and won. UnlikeGrandmere Angelique who’d died of a stroke.She pushed her braids out of her face and fought back tears. Hurricane Katrina in her fury hadtorn through New Orleans. Like a woman scorned, she’d ripped and destroyed the city, leaving itschildren homeless, hungry – in shock crying for their brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers... tossed to thefour corners of America like their ancestors before them.Her parents André and Louisa had fled to Baton Rogue. André had begged his mother to comewith them— had tried to force her out of the house.But Angelique refused. “I’ve seen storms before,
Cherie.
They come and go. I’m not leavingmy house,
non.
It needs me to keep it safe.”Michelle had found Angelique’s body in the attic. She’d hid there when Katrina hit.And now these people, these strangers, wanted to buy it.
What do they know of the scent of magnolias in the air each morning, or the taste of the Mississippi?
She’d pleaded with her father to keep the house. But André refused. “The water damage is too bad and now the insurance company won’t
pay!”
He spat these last words bitterly. “Thirty years – thirty years Mama pay them bloodsuckers, eh? And now they won’t fix her house!”
“We
can fix it Papa!”“André only shook his head. “No Cherie, it’s just a shell, not worth saving.”She remembered playing in the backyard with her sister, Simone, both running from her grandmother giggling on stubby little legs, past the vegetable garden and wild roses… until Angeliquewould collapse on her white lawn chair laughing with them.“Time for a snack, eh?” And Grandmere would shoo the little girls through the backdoor into
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