Broke on the Bayou

My dad pulled up to an ATM. Behind it was a pile of rubble where a bank used to be. He hopped out of his Ford F150 and took out a couple hundred dollars for gas. After Hurricane Katrina, it was better to have cash than to rely on credit.
“Money’s tight,” he said, tucking the bills into his wallet. “I’m giving you a heads up, don’t expect nothing special for Christmas this year. This trip to see Grandma and Grandpa, and you coming here…this is it.”
The gifts didn’t matter. I was anxious to get out of town and up to the Poconos. New Orleans wasn’t the same place I remembered visiting as a kid. It was quiet and sad. Buskers no longer performed on the streets because there was no one to perform for.
My dad lived in a trailer with no shower, just a hose out back. A far stretch from his shotgun-style house in Algiers.
We filled the tank and rode along the levee and the down the bayou as we left the state. He wanted to show me the extent of the devastation and narrate his story along the way. Looking at all the debris and seeing nothing where a drive-thru daiquiri stand that was attached to a Blockbuster used to be, made me crave a cigarette.
I picked up smoking that fall during my first semester of community college. I was 18, barely an adult, still an innocent little girl in my father’s eyes. Even though I had the urge to pull out my pack and smoke in front him as sort of an “I’m an adult now, you didn’t raise me”- type of gesture, I hesitated.
We drove by a miles-long stretch of broken trees splayed out in every direction. I looked out the window silently, biting my nails and reminiscing about when I was 12 and went to Mardi Gras World to get a tour of all of the floats. I thought about the swap meet in the French Quarter that had dozens of different hot sauces and taxidermy alligator heads lined up next to them.
“…But you’re not even listening, are you? You probably don’t even care, do you? No empathy whatsoever,” my Dad said. His voice had dropped an octave.
“Just because we don’t have a back-and-forth conversation about it, doesn’t mean I don’t care,” I snapped back. Truth was, I had nothing to add to what he was saying. I was speechless.
The urge for a smoke consumed me. I reached for my backpack to grab a cigarette and looked at my Dad, who had become quiet. He kept his eyes forward and his hands on the steering wheel. I put my bag back on the floor, deciding against the cigarettes. My dad had lost his home; he wasn’t ready to lose his little girl.