“I’ll clean your refrigerator, baby,” Cherice says carefully. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”
“Cherice, goddamnit, I’m worried about you!”
And Cherice gives in. “I know you are, baby. And Charles and I appreciate it, we really do. Tell you what — we gon’ do it. We gon’ go over there. I promise.” But she doesn’t know if she can actually talk Charles into it.
He surprises her by agreeing readily as soon as she mentions the part about the dogs. “Why not?” he says. “We can sleep in Mathilde and Tony’s big ol’ bed and watch television till the power goes out. Drink a beer and have the dogs with us. Ain’t like we have to drive to Mississippi or somethin’. And if the roof blows off, maybe we can save some of their stuff. That refrigerator ain’t all she’s got to worry about.”
“We’re not sleepin’ in their bed, Charles. The damn guest room’s like a palace, anyway — who you think you is?”
He laughs at her. “I know it, baby. Jus’ tryin’ to see how far I can push ya.”
So that Sunday they pack two changes of clothes, plenty for two days, and put the mutts in their crates. The only other things they take are dog food and beer. They don’t grab food for themselves because there’s plenty over at Mathilde’s, which they have to eat or it’ll go bad.
The first bands of the storm come late that night, and Charles does what he said he was going to — goes to bed with a beer and his dogs. But after he’s asleep, Cherice watches the storm from the window of the second-floor living room. The power doesn’t go off until early morning, and when the rain swirls, the lights glint on it. The wind howls like a hound. Big as it is, the house shakes. Looking out, Cherice sees a building collapse, a little coffee shop across the street, and realizes how well built the Berteaus’ house is. Her own is not. She prays that it will make it. But she knows she will be all right, and so will Charles and the dogs. She is not afraid because she is a Christian woman and she trusts that she will not be harmed.
But she does see the power of God in this. For the first time, she understands why people talk about being God-fearing instead of God-loving, something that’s always puzzled her. You better have God on your side, she thinks. You just better.
She watches the transformers blow one by one, up and down the street, and goes to bed when the power goes out, finding her way by flashlight, wondering what she’s going to wake up to.
The storm is still raging when she stirs, awakened by the smell of bacon. Charles has cooked breakfast, but he’s nowhere to be found. She prowls the house looking for him, and the dogs bark to tell her: third floor.
“Cherice,” he calls down. “Bring pots.”
She knows what’s happened: leaks. The Berteaus must have lost some shingles.
So she and Charles work for the next few hours, putting pots out, pushing furniture from the path of inrushing water, gathering up wet linens, trying to salvage and dry out papers and books, emptying the pots, replacing them. All morning the wind is dying, though. The thing is blowing through.
By 2 o’clock it’s a beautiful day. “Still a lot of work to do,” Charles says, sighing. “But I better go home first, see how our house is. I’ll come back and help you. We should sleep here again tonight.”
Cherice knows that their house has probably lost its roof, that they might have much worse damage than the Berteaus, maybe even flooding. He’s trying to spare her by offering to go alone.
“Let’s make some phone calls first,” she says.
They try to reach neighbors who rode out the storm at home, but no one answers, probably having not remembered, like Cherice and Charles, to buy car chargers. Indeed, they have only a little power left on their own cell phone, which Cherice uses to call Mathilde. The two women have the dodged-the-bullet talk that everyone in the dry neighborhoods has that day, the day before they find out the levees have breached.
Though they don’t yet know about the levees, Cherice nonetheless feels a terrible foreboding about her house, acutely needs to see how badly it’s damaged. She doesn’t have much hope that the streets will be clear enough to drive, but she and Charles go out in the yard anyhow to remove broken limbs from the driveway.
“Let’s listen to the car radio, see if we can get a report,” Cherice says, realizing they’ve been so preoccupied with saving the Berteaus’ possessions, they’ve forgotten to do this.
She opens the car door, is about to enter, when she feels Charles tense beside her. “Cherice,” he says.
She turns and sees what he sees: a gang of young men in hooded sweatshirts walking down the street, hands in their pockets. Looking for trouble.
Charles says, “You go on back in the house.”
Cherice doesn’t need to be told twice. She knows where Tony keeps his gun. She means to get it, but she’s so worried about Charles she turns back to look, and sees that he’s just standing by the car, hands in pockets, looking menacing. The young men pass by, but she goes for the gun anyway.
By the time she gets back, Charles is back inside, locking the door. “Damn looters,” he says. “Goddamn looters.” And his face is so sad Cherice wants to hug him, but it’s also so angry she knows better. “Why they gotta go and be this way?” he says.
They listen to the Berteaus’ little battery-powered radio and learn that there’s looting all over the city, crime is out of control. “Ain’t safe to go out,” Charles says grimly. “Can’t even get home to see about our property.”
She knows he’s sorry they came, that they didn’t stay home where they belonged. “I’m gon’ fix some lunch.”
So they eat and then go out in the backyard, and clean it up the best they can, even try to get some of the debris out of the swimming pool, but this is a losing battle. After a while they abandon the project, realizing that it’s a beautiful day and they have their dogs and they’re together. Even if their house is destroyed.
So they live in the moment. They try to forget the looting, though the sound of sirens is commonplace now. Instead of Tony’s fish, they barbecue some steaks that are quickly defrosting, and Cherice fixes some potato salad while the mayonnaise is still good. Because they got so little sleep the night before, and because there’s no electricity, they go to bed early.
Sometime in the night they awaken to a relentless thudding — no, a pounding on the Berteaus’ door. “I’m goin’,” Charles says grimly, and Cherice notices he tucks Tony’s gun into the jeans he pulls on.
She can’t just stay here and wait to see what happens. She creeps down the stairs behind him.
“Yeah?” Charles says through the door.
“I’m the next door neighbor,” a man says. “I’ve got Tony on the phone.”
Charles opens the door and takes the man’s cell phone. He listens for a while, every now and then saying, “Oh shit.” Or, “Oh God. No.” Cherice pulls on his elbow, mouthing What? to him, terrified. But he turns away, ignoring her, still listening, taking in whatever it is. Finally, he says, “Okay. We’ll leave first thing.”
Still ignoring Cherice, he gives the phone back to the neighbor. “You know about all this?” he says. The man only nods, and Cherice sees that he’s crying. Grown man, looks like an Uptown banker, white hair and everything, with tears running down his cheeks, biting his lip like a little kid.