After the Storm
“Granddaddy! GET BACK IN THE HOUSE!”
Of all the things I thought I’d be doing on this visit back to Mississippi, yelling at my grandfather in the middle of a hurricane wasn’t one of them. I had spent the better part of that summer, before my senior year at Oberlin College, working at Cambridge University Press in New York City. I didn’t think I would ever make it as a writer, so I was bracing myself for a writing-adjacent career in the publishing world. At least I’d be close to books.
I never thought I’d yell at my grandfather, ever. He was my grandfather, we are black, and I like having teeth in my mouth. My grandfather never raised a hand to me, but I just assumed that any sort of backtalk would release a giant rock from the sky to smite me.
On the other hand, I never thought I would see a hurricane in Port Gibson, either. We’re no stranger to thunderstorms, floods, tornadoes. But hurricanes? That’s a coastal problem, and we are about 200 miles from the Gulf Coast. The “port” in Port Gibson denotes its position on the mighty, mighty Mississippi River. But Katrina was a different kind of storm.
Maybe that was why my grandfather thought it was a good idea to go recover the feeder for his beloved hummingbirds after the wind knocked it down. It was all so unbelievable, so why believe it?
