Unbroken (6 page)

“But I
would
like to go,” Rebecca told him. She couldn’t come back to New Orleans without seeing Lisette’s tomb. “I don’t want to spend all this week in hiding. It’s just crazy.”

“If you want to see the grave, I’ll take you, OK? Let’s go tomorrow after school. No wandering around by yourself.”

“You sound like my dad.”

“Well.” Anton laughed. “As long as I don’t look like him. Because that would be weird.”

“You know what’s weird?” said a guy’s voice, and Rebecca nearly jumped out of her skin. But it was only Phil. He and
Ling had walked up without Rebecca noticing. She wondered how much they’d heard.

“People throwing shopping carts into the lake?” Anton didn’t seem at all fazed, and Rebecca admired his cool. He’d always seemed more grown-up than other boys his age. That was one thing she really liked about him. It wasn’t just that he was tall, dark, and handsome. Really.

“I mean, why don’t we do this kind of cleanup thing
everywhere
?” Phil was exploding with enthusiasm. “There has to be something like this going on in Portland. As soon as I get back, I’m going to find out and, like, mobilize every single person I know.”

“I know, right?” Ling nodded. She was standing with her hands on her hips, and Phil was beaming at her. Rebecca wondered if he’d met many girls since he arrived in New Orleans, or if the Temple Mead seniors were giving him the cold shoulder because he wasn’t from the right kind of local family.

Anton caught Rebecca’s eye, and smiled. Everything was OK. Rebecca felt herself relax. They hadn’t kissed, or hugged, or had a dramatic emotional reunion, but everything was going to be fine.

“So we should get back to our …” Anton nodded in what must have been the general direction of the St. Simeon’s group. “But tomorrow, yeah?”

“Tomorrow?” asked Phil, and Ling shot Rebecca a searching look.

“Rebecca and I are giving you out-of-towners a tour of Lafayette Cemetery,” Anton explained. “After school.”

“Great!” Ling looked thrilled. She must like Phil, Rebecca decided. It was just as well, given that he’d be her date for the Spring Dance on Thursday. Something Rebecca had completely forgotten to mention to Ling….

“But doesn’t the cemetery close at, like, lunchtime?” asked Phil. He turned to Ling. “Whenever I think about going in there, it’s all locked up.”

“That’s no problem,” said Rebecca quickly. “Anton has a key. You still have it, don’t you?”

Anton nodded. “So it’s a date then,” he said, smiling right at Rebecca, and she felt herself melt a little bit more.

R
ebecca thought she could hear thunder, which didn’t make sense on a blue-sky afternoon like this one. Then she realized what she could hear were drums, pounding out a beat. Drums and snatches of music — the swoop of a trombone, the peal of a trumpet. It sounded as though someone was having a party in the street.

They were in Tremé, driving back from the Big Sweep with one of the volunteers: a woman named Miss Viola, who owned a vintage boutique on Chartres Street. They’d taken what Miss Viola called “a divergence” to drop off a bartender named Sandy, and Rebecca was eagerly peering out the window, wondering which of these houses might be Frank’s “locket” house. This was a neighborhood of small old houses, mostly shabbier versions of the places Rebecca saw in the Quarter, but she hadn’t spotted anything yet that looked abandoned or boarded up.

The drums distracted her: They were more insistent now, and the music louder, and soon she could hear crowd noise, too, whooping and shouting.

“Where’s the music coming from?” Ling, riding shotgun, wanted to know.

“It’s coming right at you, baby,” Miss Viola told her, laughing. She slowed down the car by the intersection. “It’s a second line. The Lady High-Kickers, I think. Look!”

A huge mass of people were making their way toward them, led by a group of black ladies all wearing vivid purple pantsuits and broad-brimmed hats. They were waving giant fans made from purple and white feathers. Behind them trailed a brass band — mainly young guys in baggy T-shirts, blasting away on horns while the ladies twirled and danced down the street. Along the route, people were out on their porches or followed the parade along the sidewalk, dancing and clapping and calling out.

“Can we get out to watch?” Rebecca asked, intrigued by the sight. This was sort of like a Mardi Gras parade, but without the floats. The ladies were too old to be marching girls, and anyway, they weren’t really marching. They were half walking, half dancing, flapping the fans in the air.

“You can join in if you want,” Miss Viola said. She stopped the car there in the middle of the road and turned off the engine. “Anyone can second-line. Just follow the band.”

Ling was already out of the car, fumbling with her phone so she could take pictures. Rebecca climbed out as well. She shaded her eyes with one hand, in awe of the approaching parade.

“What are they celebrating?” Ling asked, shouting over the raucous noise of the band.

“Just bein’ alive,” Miss Viola told her.

A sweating teenaged boy carried a banner with the words THE LADY HIGH-KICKERS S & P CLUB, ESTABLISHED 1992 in silver letters. Rebecca had only the haziest recollection of social aid clubs. They were just another of New Orleans’s secret worlds, with their own schedules and rules and members.

“One club or another is second-lining every weekend,” explained Miss Viola. “You never heard of a second line?” she said to Rebecca. “I thought you used to live here.”

“In the Garden District,” Rebecca told her. The only parades that Amy and Jessica, her sort-of friends at school, had ever talked about were carnival parades. The weeks leading up to Mardi Gras were just when people took part in parades — or so she’d thought.

“People from Uptown like a second line, too,” Miss Viola insisted. “Doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, from Uptown, downtown, back o’ town. My cousin who lives Uptown, he’s in the Young Men Olympians — they even have their own tomb in Lafayette Cemetery. When you die, you can be buried in there and it won’t cost your family a penny. You never saw them when you lived on Sixth Street? They parade right by the cemetery, end of September.”

“I didn’t get here until November,” Rebecca told her. She
wished she’d seen these other parades last time, and was glad to get a glimpse of this one.

“I love the band,” said Ling, retying her hair with a red bandana. “What’s a second line?”

Miss Viola nodded toward the parade. “See the club members and the band? They’re the first line, making all the noise. Everyone who follows along behind is the second line.”

Rebecca had never seen so many people dancing in the street before — not following any choreographed routine, but just
dancing
. After the front-line ladies whirled by, swooning and dipping, dancing with each other or just by themselves, the band trudged past, blasting out a song Rebecca didn’t know.

And then there were dozens and dozens of people, maybe more than a hundred, of all ages. Most of the people were black — Tremé was mainly a black neighborhood, Rebecca knew — but not all. Some banged tambourines or blew on whistles, some carried umbrellas to fend off the afternoon sun. Some people had their dogs with them, or were pushing baby buggies along the street. Some had just dashed down from their front steps or porches to join in the dancing. Two little boys, no more than seven years old, were putting on an expert show on the sidewalk, practically leaping in time to the music, cheered on by everyone around them.

Even though she was tired and dirty after her day’s exertions, and even though she was still thinking about Frank’s dilemma —
not to mention the threat of Toby Sutton — Rebecca felt her spirits lift. There was something about the stomp of the band and the energy of the dancing that was exhilarating; it was impossible to keep still. Ling was feeling it, too, Rebecca could tell; she stood swaying in time to the music.

The whole time she lived here, Rebecca thought, she felt like an outsider. Maybe she’d approached it the wrong way — waiting to be invited in. Sometimes you just had to make the leap.

But now Miss Viola was hustling them back into the car, shaking her head when Rebecca suggested they could walk home.

“Isn’t it safe here?” Ling asked, fastening her seat belt.

“Well …” Miss Viola exhaled. “It’s safe and it’s not safe, like everywhere in this town. Don’t go strolling around at night, looking like you don’t know where you at. Don’t speak to the boys hollering at you over on Bayou Road. And don’t go wandering over to Lafitte looking for an ice cup. That’s my advice to you.”

“So Tremé is OK?” asked a baffled Ling.

“Well, there are some
elements
we don’t need hanging around the neighborhood,” said Miss Viola cryptically. “We don’t need those elements anywhere in the city, making everybody afraid. But you know, this is one of the most historic neighborhoods in this city, and very few tourists bother to cross Rampart Street. The only second line they ever get to see is in Harrah’s Casino.”

“I worked on a rebuilding project on St. Philip Street last May,” Rebecca told her.

“Why, I grew up right there on St. Philip!” Miss Viola swung the car in a violent U-turn onto the other side of Rampart. “Most of my family still lives there — like my nephew here. Look at him, just sashaying on by without even saying hello! Raphael! Raphael!”

Miss Viola honked her horn, swerving to a very abrupt stop. Two teenage African-American boys looked startled, then annoyed, and then — after they peered into the car — they started laughing. Miss Viola lowered her window.

“We thought you were trying to run us over,” one of the boys said, leaning in. He was lean and long-limbed, his hair cut short, a tiny scar like a frown line above one eyebrow. “You driving without your glasses on again?”

“This is my nephew, Raphael,” said Miss Viola, ignoring the question. “These young ladies are from New York. They’ve been helping with the Big Sweep today, just like you and Junior could have been doing if you weren’t so money-hungry.”

“We been busking,” Raphael told Rebecca and Ling. He was carrying a trumpet, Rebecca realized. His friend, Junior, jingled whatever it was he was carrying — a hat, maybe — to demonstrate how much money they’d earned. “Sundays we can make a lot, unless it’s raining. Usually four or five of us come down, but the others had a parade.”

“I don’t know how you made a penny today with just one trumpet,” Miss Viola sniffed. “What are
you
playing, Junior? Aside from the fool.”

“I sing and dance, Miss Viola.” Junior did another demonstration, this time a few steps, though it was a struggle for him to balance the hat of money, hold up his jeans, and dance at the same time.

“We’ll be volunteering this week,” Raphael reassured his aunt. “After school, clearing the weeds.”

“That’s right.” Miss Viola tapped the wheel, then turned to look at Rebecca. “You should tell your daddy about that. Maybe it’s something you girls might want to help with? Raphael’s school is clearing land and putting in a garden.” She gestured out the window, rolling her eyes. “And with workers like these two, they need all the help they can get.”

Rebecca agreed right away; the more time she got to spend in Tremé, the more chance she’d have to see the house Frank had talked about, and work out a plan to find the locket.

They were near Orleans Avenue, so Ling and Rebecca climbed out of Miss Viola’s car, calling out their good-byes.

The old town house on the corner of Orleans looked forlorn and scruffy. Rebecca couldn’t see Frank anywhere, even though this was the exact spot they’d stood talking yesterday. But there was someone else standing there, leaning against the boarded-up door, his face half obscured by shadows. A scowling
middle-aged man with dark hair, who looked at them for way too long as they rounded the corner.

“Perv alert,” Rebecca muttered to Ling, gesturing toward him. But by the bemused look on her friend’s face she could tell that Ling had no idea what she was talking about. Rebecca might be able to see the dark-haired man — he lurked just a few feet away — but Ling couldn’t see him at all. And that could only mean one thing.

He was another ghost.

Safely inside “the compound,” as they’d started calling it, Rebecca scrubbed off all the lakeside mud in the shower. She was still dwelling on Frank and then the dark-haired ghost she’d seen as she drifted into the main house thirty minutes later, looking for her father.

“Is that you, honey?” her dad called.

“Yeah.” Rebecca stood in the doorway, blinking into the gloom of the living room. With the front shutters always closed, it was quite dark in there. The exposed brick walls, dark wooden ceiling, and black sofa didn’t help, and the TV — golf on, sound off — was the only glimmer of color in the room.

Her father sat with his laptop perched on his knees, the sofa and coffee table a mess of scattered papers and files.

“You’re working?” Rebecca perched on the arm of the sofa, the only available place to sit.