Many Rivers to Cross

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28 D ee was still trembling when she grabbed LaMarcus's flashlight, rose from the carpet, and hurried over to the fallen woman. The cart had sideswiped Sistah M and she'd twisted a knee in the falL Her grandsons were stooped over her, trying to help the woman to sit up. "Where's rna petit pois!" she asked with a maternal cluck, looking for Ashley among the crisscrossing flashlights. "Come here, pretty girl, and give Sistah M a hug. Looks like I'm gonna have to camp a spelL" Ashley raced over to hug the old woman's neck. "You stay close and take care of your momma, now, sugar. Lot of mischief going on in this place. Looks like we reached the Land of Canaan," Sistah M said, magically retrieving another bottle of water from her robe and taking a long drink. "Here, you need some water, child?" The runaway cart had shattered the group's fragile unity. Frightened and angry, they tended to one another in small scattered clusters of family. Charles Tran was incensed by the assault on his daughter and spoke in livid, rapid-fire Vietnamese as he comforted the girl and helped his wife revive her mother. Dee didn't know what to do. Things were falling apart, and it appeared that nothing could stop the worst from happening. She thought about hustling LaMarcus and Ashley back outside and returning to the Superdome plaza, but she was too terrified to make that long dark journey alone with two small children. Charles Tran had organized the families from his church in a protective circle. The women and children sat inside the circle, huddling close to one another while Tran and a half dozen Vietnamese 2lJ 212 fathers positioned themselves as sentries around the group. "Miss Dee," he said, shining his flashlight on her. "Please," he said, gesturing like a theater usher, "you come with your children. We keep you safe." Dee looked at Sistah M and her grandsons. She didn't want to walk away from her own people. The old lady seemed to understand her hesitation. "You go ahead, now," she said to Dee. "They're good folk. They'll make sure no hann comes to you." Dee and her children camped on the carpet in the center of the circle. Everyone had turned off their flashlights to conserve batteries -and for fear of giving away their location. Within the circle there was a collective odor of stale sweat and sour clothing, like the smell of wet towels after a week in a clothes hamper. The ponytailed Mrs. Tran and her mother were praying softly in Vietnamese. The two teenaged sisters, Dao and Trinh, sat back to back, dozing and sometimes whispering to each other. Gunshots echoed somewhere in the distant halls. Dao said to Dee, "Don't worry, ma'am. My father and these men, they survived a war. They know how to protect what is theirs." Dee was touched by this. The chivalry of aging soldiers who thought they could defeat anned thugs with their bare hands. "My father was wounded in that war," she said. "When I was little, he used to show me his medals. He kept them in a shoe box." Charles Tran overheard her. "We fought hard for the Americans," he said. ''Afterwards, we came to this country. Thirty years now. Life has been good to us. But this ..." He hesitated, grasping for words. "We have lost everything, Miss Dee. And you?" "Yes," she said. "Everything." They fell silent again, each one measuring the weight of this tragedy on their own shoulders. Dee wanted to sleep but she was too aware of ghostly ftgures passing in the darkness, wandering souls searching for a patch of carpet to claim until this long night was over. As time went by, more and more of them appeared, at ftrst a smatter of voices, but in another hour the random voices had become an echoing hum. Camps had cropped up all around their circle, the newcomers confused and afraid and sometimes angry, sometimes in despair. Those distant gunshots struck fear in them alL Tension was mounting and there was a sense that something dangerous was building and might explode at any moment. Dee felt her strength flowing out of her, and she fought the drowsiness that was pulling her down. She was lost in some faraway dream when Ashley raised...