Indigo

swimmy. Sparks of liquid orange flickered at the dark edges of my sight. I reached a hand out, tried to find something on which to steady myself. My hand itself felt far away, detached from the rest of me. I heard Mia-Joy as if from a distance: “Corrine, it’s good—”

I passed out flat on the white-and-black tiled floor of the Crawdaddy Shack, the fly buzzing at my ear as I lost consciousness.

I shoved the outdated tape into the ancient black cassette recorder. It was a crazy old machine, on its last legs and totally about to crap out on me. I had begged Mom to invest in some newer equipment. But she had insisted that she knew how to use this tape recorder, and if she was the one who had to use it, then she would choose to stick with it. I pushed the PLAY button, and Mr. Lazette’s voice picked up right where he had left off—the story of the Madame Bridgit ghost on the hotel terrace on Dauphine Street.

I picked up my sketchpad, my favorite pencil, and my little pocketknife from Granddad. I sat cross-legged on my bed, scraping at my pencil, getting just the right point on it, listening to Mr. Lazette.

“I was only a chile, ya see. I recall I seen it twice the summer of the fire on Basin Street. Didn’t know it was a ghost then. Saw her wandering on the roof of the Dauphine Hotel. Made me nervous to see—”

Mom knocked on the frame of my open door, and I stopped the tape. “Come in.”

“You sure you’re feeling okay, honey?” She carried in a tray and set it on my overcrowded nightstand. I looked it over: a tuna fish sandwich, carrots, a glass of sweet tea.

“I’m fine.”

“Sarah said you let her do the cards.”

I nodded.

“Was it fun?” Mom’s smile stretched tight across her face, wary. My mom, my middle C, my four-four time. My anchor.

“You’re worried. I’m fine.”

“It’s just that when I hounded you to hang out more, to overstep your boundaries, I didn’t mean you had to delve into voodoo.” Mom said this last part with that jingle-bell laugh of hers, but I knew there was some worry there.

“It was stupid,” I said. Now that I wasn’t sitting there with all eyes on me, those hokey cards staring up at me, I knew it was dumb. “I just got overwhelmed, I think.”

Mom sat down carefully on the edge of the bed. Her legs did not touch mine, didn’t even graze my knee. I took a bite of the tuna fish sandwich, and we sat in silence.

I ate a few more bites and took a couple sips of the iced tea. It was cold going down my throat.

“I’m glad you’re feeling okay.” She looked like she wanted to do something—touch me, hug me, tuck my hair behind my ear. I wanted to let her, but I couldn’t. I didn’t dare touch her. I realized in that moment that I could feel something, a tiny something in my chest, churning, blossoming.

I swallowed hard, inched myself farther away from my mother. I was too tired of asking how, why, what. The only thing I knew was that it was there. And I had to respect it.

“He looks a lot like that,” Mom said, pointing to my sketch of Mr. Lazette. “Again.” She shook her head and gave me a smile. Her eyes, the same blue eyes as mine, looked amazed and entertained, but hidden underneath sat some fear.

I felt it too. “His story is creepy. Good, though.”

“I 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 your story?”—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, the seasons 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 famous cities of the dead, with fancy aboveground mausoleums and crypts. You didn’t have reputable people talking about seeing ghosts at every other hotel in the French Quarter. You didn’t have labyrinthine mazes of back streets and alleyways. New Orleans was unpredictable, messy, and exciting.

Was it because New Orleans had so many mysteries? Ties to American voodoo? A link to the macabre?

Well, New Orleans felt different than Chicago. It felt more. Real. Not real. Crazy. Not crazy. Such a thin, thin line.

Sometimes when I would lie awake at night, watching the pear tree branch sway in the wind from my bedroom window, feeling the Gulf breeze on my skin, I felt so close, so very close to something. I felt open. That was the only way I could put it. Open.

I had never felt that way in Chicago. Well, maybe when I had played a certain piece of music and interpreted it in just the right way, I felt it. But it was rare. Here, though, I often felt open. Like I was very close to something. Had it right on the tip of my tongue. But what