Ultimately-and beautifully-it makes her stand up taller than she even had before: But that knowledge doesn't come close to sending her into a tailspin, before OR after Katrina hits. Her head tilts her body relaxes in the chair like a balloon losing air. (8)Īnd yes, of course that makes her sad, and of course it makes her scared. Lanesha knows, even before the storm comes, that she's going to lose the woman who has raised her sooner than later-look at how she describes her in the first chapter, even: I wouldn't have predicted that a book about Hurricane Katrina could be so quiet or so warm. that the danger they face may come after the storm. But while the dreams make it clear that New Orleans will make it through the storm itself, there's something about her dreams that there's more to it than that. For some time now, Mama Ya-Ya has been having dreams about a storm that's coming-a big one.
She pays attention to symbols and signs: in school, as parts of an algebraic formula or a story in English class and in real life, when things she sees and hears serve as advice, or portents of the future.
Lanesha loves math, and she wants to be an engineer. Sometimes she even sees her mother, though unlike a lot of the other ghosts around, her mother has never talked to her.
But that isn't why her Uptown family doesn't want her-they don't want her because, like Mama Ya-Ya, she has the sight. Lanesha's mother came from money, and her father didn't. I love her more than anything in this whole wide world. (2-3) I'll be your mother and grandmother both."Īnd she is. Don't care nothin' about folks who dishonor traditions as old as Africa. Better crazy Mama Ya-Ya raises you," she says, sucking air through her false teeth. "Better you be an orphan, your family thinks. That hurts, but because of Mama Ya-Ya-and because of the close-knit Ninth Wardneighborhood they live in-she has grown up with love: Twelve-year-old Lanesha has lived with Mama Ya-Ya since she was born: Mama Ya-Ya was the attending midwife, and when Lanesha's mother died giving birth, there was no one else to take her in. Lanesha knows that she has living relatives, and she knows that they don't want her.
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