Hurricane Joy

The algae eat our legs for their last supper because tomorrow they will be annihilated—they will die with Louisiana. But the algae doesn’t want to die. They want to live on our legs, keep us bound to the green still planet forever like we are aliens. Their bites are ticklish to us as we stand in the swamp where life does not seem easy beneath the hazel waters. We are one suddenly with the creatures of the shallow, one with the alligators, tadpoles, turtles, and maybe even the moccasins that we all try to stay away from. But this union will not matter tomorrow. They will annihilate too with the algae already dead. 

I turned to Celeste, my swamp companion, and captured the golden hour striking her eyes in a way that transformed her into an almost god. Dreams pour out of her when she exhales softly into the air. My eyes become a burden of weight, heavy enough to push my eyelids down into sleep and dream myself, dream about us together forever where we bear the world at our feet. Her gentle sigh, so beautiful in its flight. But then she spoke. And then my eyes were light enough to be open widely. Nightmares poured out of her, or maybe it was something far worse—reality. 

“I’m disappointed that I had to come back. I would rather die than be here.”

I stare at her and feel nothing but feel everything too. “Why?”

She heard the cry in my question and I swore she smiled at my humiliation. She knew I hated asking that question. She knew it made me feel like a toddler. It was too whiny, too open, too wasteful. I looked away so I couldn’t see her smile rise higher. 

“Because who would want to return to a place you’ll never leave?”

Celeste left our intimate neighborhood four years ago. Our houses used to be brothers and we became sisters when she moved in with her grandfather, Mr. St. Cyr. Her mother, the Creole woman whose lips were always red, came too. Like sisters, like twins whose hearts beat the same, we could never be sundered. I knew her better than I knew myself, once. It was quick, the bloom of our sisterhood. I was quiet and she was loud but we were harmonious. We shared rooms, blankets, secrets, stories, dreams, fears, and then letters when she and her mother left to find a different life in sweet New Orleans. 

I think I died when Celeste was taken from me by her mother, my only enemy. I was hardly a person before her. She breathed into me and when she left, she took her final exhale. My mother tried to convince me that making friends with the school girls was worth something but in the eyes of many, except the old Celeste, I wasn’t worth much. I wasn’t deserving of friendship. I don’t think I was deserving of anything, really. 

So when she returned to the brother houses for shelter to wait out the great blow of Hurricane Joy, I enjoyed the thought of time retwisting back into my favor, us again. Never parted again. 

It was our first evening together in four years and we reunited under imperfect circumstances. I should’ve known our reunion was spoiled when I smiled at her and she walked away, not even sparing a hello. Had I grown to be so unworthy that I couldn’t receive acknowledgment even from the Great Celeste? I was a foolish girl. 

Celeste stopped responding to my letters long ago. We could’ve communicated through the landline but words were so much easier for us. There was no pressure, full of thought and time, devoid of critique.

Every time I would open her letters, there would be stories about her adventures in New Orleans, how she settled in uptown and found new friends named Charlie and Babette, how she rode the clear streets of Saint Charles Avenue on her new bike, how everything about Crescent City was better than the nameless home we inhabited by the swamp. Months after her departure, Celeste did start speaking of her Creole’s mother green-eyed boyfriend whom she showed no favor. I wish he would leave, she wrote in one letter. He’s made everything worse. He frightens me too. Sometimes, I think…I don’t want to write what I think. 

The letters were vague then until they dwindled, until they stopped entirely. I sent her one every week despite her silence and then one every month or every other month and then I was too embarrassed to send more. I imagined Celeste frowning at the envelope with my name authored in brown ink, the smiley face I always drew an insult to her now. 

During her temporary return, I expected so much more—to hear the song in her laughter, to see the dimple in her left cheek, to enjoy the excitement of her young and hopeful life. None of that existed in her now. We stood in the swamp, a tradition dear to us in our younger years, and the algae continued to eat our legs. The bald cypress trees were miserable, the Spanish moss pulled their wooden limbs down, a weight that should’ve been light but too heavy for their body to hold.

“Shouldn’t you be happy to be back?” I asked, more humiliation, more sighs from the sky. I could hear the approaching hurricane in the gentle sound. 

“No. I hate it here. I hate this swamp. I hate my mother. I hate her boyfriend. I hate New Orleans. I might even hate you too.”

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say after Celeste declared that she may have hatred for me. I wanted to ask—What did I do, Please tell me, I’m sorry if I hurt you, Let me make it better! But my silence was louder than the questions in my mind. It’s always been like this maybe. Our friendship could’ve been a dream and when I’d woken up, I’d been plagued with my wrong interpretations and projected them all onto poor Celeste. I looked at her, the golden hour long past, and I wondered why the sun should shine so bright when a hurricane strikes our land just in a few hours. 

The storm with the eye imposed an encounter between us that was not yet ready to be born. It’s possible the encounter should’ve never been born at all. Yes, that could be true too. Everything could be true except the lingering sweet taste of our dead friendship, our shattered sisterhood that shattered unbeknownst to me. I conjured more fantasy into my skull and witnessed the hurricane’s eye glaring at me and Celeste before it whirpooled into us to fatally fracture the brittle bones of our relationship. It wanted to be one with us after destroying our home, our Louisiana, us. 

Hurricane Joy, was there anything joyous about you except your laughter as you swept over us?

“What happened in New Orleans?” I asked Celeste, my last question. 

She stopped breathing for a while. I didn’t know a human could achieve something like this. But Celeste was godlike, the golden hour in her eyes gone but the brightness in them, despite her new identity, still visible. But gods didn’t have to answer to humans. Celeste didn’t have to answer to me. She left the swamp, the algae crying for her to return. They were not done with their last supper. I didn’t bother to turn to watch her walk away from me for the last time. I became one with the swamp, the alligators, tadpoles, turtles, and maybe even the moccasins. The bald cypress trees appeared satisfied too. The moss didn’t seem to hang so heavy. My toes gripped the wet dirt beneath me before I parted, finally. 

The algae screamed at me. They begged me to return but they didn’t know there was nothing left to eat. I’d been eaten by the death of our bond. I wasn’t even flesh anymore, not even my bones were left. 

They didn’t deserve to have their last supper, they were already weak enough. I didn’t deserve to be friends with a girl like Celeste either. Perhaps I was weak too. 

Goodbye, Swamp. Goodbye, Louisiana. Goodbye, Celeste. 

Hello,

Hurricane Joy.