Indigo Read Free Page A

know. It’s a regular ghost story,” she said, rubbing the backs of her knuckles across her bottom lip like she did when she was thinking.
    She first started interviewing the senior citizens up at Chartrain Hills because of a New Orleans history project I had to do at school. I couldn’t do it. It was early in the semester, when we had just moved here. I hadn’t said more than five words to anyone. She did the interviews for me, taped them.
    Mrs. Janell Jackson. Her great-grandmother had traveled on the Underground Railroad, had been a contemporary of Harriet Tubman, and Mrs. Jackson could really tell a story. The truth was, Mom saw me enjoying something a little bit, putting that project together for history class, so she urged me to interview some of the old folks myself.
    I couldn’t. But she kept bringing me tapes. It just kind of happened. She said the old folks liked talking even more than I probably liked to listen.
    “What should I do with these stories?” I had asked Mom after three or four of them.
    “You’ll think of something,” she said.
    And that’s when I started sketching the tale-tellers. I had always loved to draw: pen and ink, charcoal, pastels. But after Sophie, after the move, it became the only thing I remembered how to enjoy, even just a little bit.
    “When will Dad be back?” I asked, finishing off the iced tea. I had seen his handwritten note to Mom in the kitchen, on our chalkboard next to the phone.
    “Next Thursday,” Mom said, taking a carrot off my plate and getting up. Dad spent about half of his time back in Chicago, with Harlowe Construction booming at both ends of the Mississippi River.
    I nodded, reached over to press PLAY on the tape recorder.
    “Have you thought about letting me show these sketches to anyone?” Mom asked, leaning on the door frame.
    “No,” I answered simply. Mom nodded. She didn’t push.
    I didn’t want anyone to see my drawings. It was only a hobby. I wasn’t that good at it, not like the violin. But even more important, sharing my art would be a much too personal interaction now. These sketches of my tale-tellers. And I could never answer the questions that these sketches would bring. Especially the one.
    The question that even made Mom nervous. Fearful.
    How could I listen to the tapes of these people, listen to their tales—with Mom giving them the prompt “What’s yourstory?”—and then sit down and sketch them, without ever having seen them in my life?
    How could I do that? And how could I be uncannily correct each time? Right down to the placement of a mole, a chicken pox scar, or a set of wrinkles on the forehead?
    I couldn’t answer those questions.
    But I could draw them, and I loved their faces, their histories, their connections.
    I didn’t let myself think about it too much. In Chicago, I would’ve laughed at the idea of drawing people from only their voices. I would’ve called it crazy. But so much had changed for me, in me, since Chicago. And plus, this place. New Orleans. It made certain things seem so much more possible than the Chicago suburbs ever did. When New Orleans was just our vacation spot, our summer house, that made sense. New Orleans was a getaway. But now it was supposed to be home, and so many things seemed cockeyed because of it.
    Before, I had been a logical girl. A swimmer, a music lover. A math geek. I loved the way that math and music fit together, the numbers, the patterns. Things made sense with numbers and notes, with scales and time signatures, with equations and proofs. A equaled B. Logic ruled for me back in Chicago. Some things were possible, and some things were not. In Chicago, streets were parallel and perpendicular, named in order of the presidents of the United States. You could easily figure things out there. In Chicago, theseasons followed the rules. It didn’t rain when the sun was out. People followed the rules in Chicago too. You buried people under the ground, in graves. You didn’t have