Shoot
The
Wind
An
Eye-of-the-Storm-Witness
Account
of Katrina & Rita
Lacrimae
Rerun
“History is the truth that in the long run becomes a
lie. Whereas myth is a
lie that in the long run becomes the truth.” -Cocteau
“God provides the wind.
Man must raise the sail.” –
“Night was close to her face.” –Nadine Gordimer
This book took me two days to write, two months to live,
two months to avoid, two seconds to regret, two
lifetimes to forget.
This book is horror, confession, myth, true crime,
science fiction, gonzo journalism, fait divers,
epic. Read it.
P.S. All the names are fictitious, including mine and
yours. The places are as real as they
come.
There is an ancient goddess named Kali. As she spins her tendrils expand, strings of
fate, slender sharp tentacles tangle, reaching out to touch the world. They stir the dark waters. They mix it in the earth red and black and
yellow and clutch at trees, throw in foul wet wood. The very air they churn and electrify. Strands whip out everywhere from the great
eye that sees all and discriminates nothing.
One life it seizes and another it leaves alone- why? It swells, rises and subsides, has its own
fierce rhythms and heeds none other. It
is beautiful in a way; let’s tell the truth.
But only the liars say it cleanses.
It leaves behind chaos and fear and debris. Pieces of everything it scatters to the six
directions: photos, armchairs, plants, pliers, children’s shoes, knives... All lay in the dank mud afterwards. Bugs breed.
Kali laughs. Henceforth her new name
shall be…
Katrina.
Fade to Black.
Kzsgh;’hdgf shtkl hoi 0y6 08=1y36=98
POWER FALURE
I cannot write to you anymore.
You must take over.
Where is everyone???
What is that noise noise?
What is this feeling rising rising
rising?…
Do you read this by candle light now: feeble,
flickering, smoky, smelling, measured out?
Snuff.
All dark.
Alone.
Alive?
External Validity???
Sitting in class. Masters of Social Work year two: Organizing, Fundraising, Research… In each class we pause to pay lip service to what Katrina means to our profession. It exposes the inequities of our society, etc. Too true. So what shall we do? “Okay, now to Chapter Four: External Validity.” What the..?!
I called Red Cross right away. Spotted the ad in the
paper. I do not own a TV. I admit I missed most of the images you all have
in your heads from CNN. I have my own to
share. But I read the news and listen to
NPR and hear the call for HELP. Deep in
my bones I hear it somehow. Sure we had
raised money for
On Labor Day, more than a week after Katrina hit, I went to an all day training Red Cross held in the Auditorium of our State Department of Health Building Complex. It was basic, an introduction to what is called Mass Care. I looked around at the others- young, old, men, women, different races and ethnicities. It was inspiring.
“How many of us will go?” someone asked. There were three hundred of us.
“All of you who are ready,” answered our facilitator, a
veteran of many disasters, a local. Many
volunteers were once victims themselves.
He explains that Red Cross needs four thousand volunteers right
away. Most stay only two to three weeks
and then must be replaced. The time
limit is real and to be respected. They
are still sending volunteers to
Our facilitator takes questions seriously, but has a sense of humor thankfully. The jokes are not worth repeating but modeled an important skill in surviving disasters psychically. The questions were sometimes amusing too, although earnest. I did not laugh out loud as one accustomed to strange deployments myself. I know there is no guessing which person will crack under the strain. Those concerned about packing toiletries may end up being some of the most stable volunteers. There is almost no telling.
The video is not too bad.
There are famous folk in it: the
There is lingo to learn of course. Some he explains. Some he does not. Our facilitator stops the video often for questions. An ERV is an “emergency rescue vehicle”. They are like a cross between an ambulance and an ice cream truck. Teams of two drive the food to shelters and around routes where people (henceforth clients) await hot meals. He warns us to be careful backing them up: there have been fatalities. There is a driving course.
Red Cross cars are not for your individual use, he warns
us. Do not take from the boxes of phone cards. You are stealing the donated dollar. Do not talk to the press. There is someone designated to do that. One volunteer told a local TV news crew they
needed cereal or something and then they were swamped with it, whereas in fact
they had other more urgent needs. What
made this advice so useful was that one detected a real life story behind each
bit. It is in this vein I hope to write
this book, offering my own real experience and the real life stories people
shared with me. Otherwise one gets bogged
down in a morass of editorializing and procedure as fetid and sticky as the
sludge Katrina left on
*
“Here’s a name tag. Fill it out. Follow her…” to a card table behind a line of zombie like survivors. Forms on the table. That is all the introduction I get. The thin, thin woman on walkie-talkie in khaki shorts with clipboard, severely pulled back frazzled red hair and pale wan unsmiling face is clearly the boss. The larger older woman who conducts me through the maze of people, stations, halls and stairs is all a blur, as are almost all the other volunteers and the first few clients, cases, forms, cards…
On my way from my work at HABLA in an old elementary school
on
Later that evening I get the call to go do case work for Red
Cross at their
Note the layers and levels beginning to surface: Red Cross
as distinct from Carolina Cares. Later
another dozen agencies come in to the mix.
We volunteers were often caught in the mess, so imagine how frustrated
our tired clients must be. And this is
in only one of the affected states. Then
there is the federal level. In
It must be said that I had not heretofore been impressed by
social services in the state of
There were halls around a large central room. To the left was Red Cross, Office for the Aging, a nursery. In back were shower rooms. In the main room were many casework computers. Somewhere too were phones and computers for clients to contact loved ones and register for FEMA. To the right was an information window, housing, a nurse’s station. Upstairs they had places to apply for Medicaid, Family Independence (Welfare), Food Stamps, Social Security, Identification Cards. The Red Cross “case work” room was in the back corner. By the time they reached us they were exhausted.
Keep in mind I got the call that first day around five or six in the evening. I was there past midnight processing clients. We started again at eight the next morning. What we offered them was a CAT card with cash on it, the amount depending on family size.
This was to tide them over cash wise until FEMA came through (good luck!) or other employment, sustenance, etc. was secured. Sound simple?
In some ways it was. I was thankful when Red Cross briefed us eventually that an example was made of a family of four. Looking at them you see mom and two children. On the paperwork you read father: deceased, dated yesterday. If the mom insists they are still a family of four, that is to say she is not there yet accepting the situation, we were told to give her an award for a family of four.
“Don’t make a big deal over it.”
That was the best advice I ever heard! If only it were always so. Other agencies too were waiving many usual requirements, expediting the process. I am convinced the savings in time, burnout, training, etc. more than compensate for whatever duplications in benefits resulted. But there were complications. We were always waiting for more cards and then eventually they did run out. After that we had to write Purchase Orders for specific stores. Some stores limited us to certain locations or other things, therefore we wrote them all for BiLo (groceries) and Kmart (clothes) who were more flexible.
So that was the basic job. We just needed to gather a little information on each client, write a few numbers in on their forms and send them on their way with their “shepherd” to their next stop or the hotel if they were lucky. There was hot food in there somewhere too! But I never got a break to go find it. I sat, watched a case or two, grabbed a pen and started saying yes to the random people asking me if I were available.
*
“What kind of music do you like?”
I don’t remember how I got the conversation around to
this. Maybe I mentioned my own travels
in
“Jazz,” the man says.
I start to tell him about Mac’s on
“I love peach cobbler!” the man smiles at last. I could not stand the vacant stare. Was it him or me? He is missing a tooth, marked.
They class up the place though. Minutes to grab their stuff and most men have hats on!
Gentlemen’s caps. Kangols. Now that’s style!
“I want to go,” his wife says. She is falling asleep at the table, picking at the contents of a plastic box of cooling salty greens and fried chicken. She has such bad bug bites all over her I tell her “shepherd” (from some church or another) to take her to the nurse while I finish with the husband.
“Do you have any injuries?”
“Dog bit me in the hotel I was staying in. No, I didn’t go up to pet it. It just come and bit me out of the blue.”
Dog bites were the most common upper body injury. Most frequently though the cuts and scrapes were on legs, from wading through brackish water and bumping sharp debris.
I cannot remember more details. I saw a few dozen more clients like that.
*
This character has a big old hat and not only that a walking stick. But he is young, white. They call him Wyatt Earp. He talks loudly, volunteering lots of information, some of it what I need for the forms. He has a serious grudge against his (ex-?) wife.
“What possessions do you have with you now?”
“What are your immediate needs?”
“What is the state of your home?”
They have almost nothing, one bag, some of their documents, some not, houses gone.
In the face of this it is not surprising to me that they would assert their personalities.
But some are silent.
*
One of the most distraught is a policewoman. She sobs and cannot tell me much. Her sister lives in
Eventually I guess the deeper problem. The sister is overbearing yes. But the real bond is with the horse. She was mounted police. Her horse stayed behind.
Red Cross told us all the work would be on computers. There are no computers. The real problem I was told is not getting the information IN (logistics, basics, demographics), it is getting the information OUT. These people- people first, clients second- they have stories to tell and we have little time for them. Now I find the story hard to tell myself.
*
My client is an older Black man, gaunt, dignified. The scruffy white kid at the next table is with him somehow though you would never guess it. Luckily the kid likes to talk and fills in many of the blanks in the old man’s story. The old man cannot read. He nods his assent. He is aware, alert, wary perhaps, sharp for that, wise even.
They were neighbors perhaps.
They were forced to evacuate.
Almost all the evacuees in that planeload were forced to evacuate. They were not told where they were going
until they were in the air. Some had
family in
“My house was undamaged until the army helicopter,” one client says.
Another client was given ten minutes to pack, “or you go out in cuffs” they said.
These two took a boat out. When their boat ran out of gas they pushed it, chest deep in water and mud, until they came upon an abandoned car. The old man was wiry. I imagine he could push a boat farther than I could. The kid was broken up. He really wanted to confess. They took that gas from the car. Did that make them looters?
Not in my book.
*
I approached one skinny dread-locked fellow sitting for a
long time in the corner by himself. He
stared at me blankly. On instinct I spoke
to him in Spanish. Many of the Latinos
in
Of each client we asked their eventual plans. They were just off a plane, arriving in a
state they never bought a ticket to, who wanted them to stay and work, but a
week ago they were in homes in
I had asked Red Cross if they needed Spanish caseworkers for the Hispanic evacuees. No, really, there had not been a need, I was told. I wonder how many Latinos sat in the corner silently with nobody helping them until they just went wandering away. There was an Asian man I noticed across the room who nobody could talk to; he just used the few words of English he knew over and over. They gave him a card with money on it.
*
Other complicated situations came up. A man came looking for his “woman”. She had not listed him on her family card. We had sent her to a hotel already. Someone asked me to handle it. It was very possibly an oversight and reuniting families is always a priority with displaced persons. On the other hand we could not know the nature of this man’s relationship to the woman or whether she wanted to be found by him. We could not assume. So I set about trying to discover the procedure only to find that there was none. I went to housing to see if we could call the woman. Unfortunately just as an I finished explaining the situation and as the understanding gentleman in that “office” was attempting to locate the lady, down comes the man with his caseworker, a teacher by trade, who decides the man had waited long enough, and though I ask them to wait comfortably upstairs she barks at me No! and so there I had to leave the man in housing to deal with a very touchy situation. I attempted to explain to my “colleague” what was happening on the way back up the stairs but she was confusedly apologetic.
*
This should be the story of the evacuees, the victims and survivors, clients, residents, those affected firsthand. But it cannot help also being the story of the volunteers. Most were untrained, sold cell phones full time, a few social work students joined us, no professors although one had been at the Red Cross training complaining that more of us from the Program did not participate. State workers were allowed two weeks leave automatically to serve. Students like me lost all credit for the semester at least.
There were some excellent volunteers. The large Black lady who brought us CAT cards
and checked our forms was full of good humor.
She did not, I think, work in social work regularly, but took to it
right away. The next morning I was
sitting next to a very young woman, slight of build, unimposing but not
intimidated either. I learned chatting
that she worked in
Some vacation! Now that’s an addict, I thought. Our Red Cross trainer had warned us of this. The adrenalin would carry you a while, he said. But beware the eventual burnout later! The far-off look in this young woman’s face told me there was wisdom in this. She looked not quite like the victims. She was beyond vicarious trauma. It had her life.
*
I continued volunteering there. There were too many cases to recall. There were politics too of course. All in all I was proud of my city and the job we were doing. But there were many who could serve here without leaving their families and jobs. I knew I was one of the few available to GO in where we were needed most. And strangely I needed to see it all up close. Going home each day to my own cozy life felt oddly uncomfortable.
In the end it was not Red Cross that called me up. It was not Americorps although they did put a call out to their alumni later. It was the Peace Corps that called me. I was registered for an arm called Crisis Corps that went into disaster areas around the world where volunteers had served and hit the ground running with language skills and local contacts. They had never before deployed domestically. We were told we would be making history.
There were many plans to be made certainly. Medical was trickiest. I made the mistake of listing a few
conditions common among us in
There are no suffering masses in this chapter. There is not one single client! Yet this will be the bitterest chapter of all, not despite the absence of the afflicted but exactly because of this fact. It was all one big waste of time, effort, money, and spirit. It was not tragic but criminal! In order to offset this sour note I must bring in a comic element.
Todd was the first of my cohort I met. It was already surreal stepping out in the
“Meet at one this afternoon in the lobby to be briefed and sworn in,” my note said.
I skimmed the TV in my room for an hour or so, showered,
dressed, waiting for a roommate who never came, then took myself down for the
meeting. News images
of the devastation was all I saw, like any other American in the Midwest
or
“While old ladies rot on the sidewalk!!!”
One of the things I loved about Todd was his sense of righteous indignation. He had suffered much himself and so thought he understood the impatience…
“A son has to watch maggots eat his mother’s corpse!”
Admittedly these rants were not Todd’s funnier moments. But macabre humor would come soon enough, and the whole surreality, one had to appreciate the irony of the situation. There was nowhere to eat at the FEMA training center. Todd called it “femish”.
Many acronyms there were to learn. Todd like to play with them.
“For Ever My Amour” is how he spelled FEMA!
He kept me sane those days learning that if one did not qualify for SBA one could still get ONA and that failing your FIT or income test was good because you were eligible for aid but could still be unqualified for an ENA award if house damage was answered “no” when client filled it in on the Web because say they were in a rental or they put damaged dwelling as their current location because they had returned since the mandatory evacuation.
From behind I saw a green polka dotted shirt and a wild mane
of hair. This is a Peace Corps, I
guessed! Todd also had earrings and
sandals he soon kicked up on the table.
He had done Crisis Corps before.
In fact he had been deployed to
‘But it was at a friend, not a customer!” he protested.
“Dan, baby,” he took an immediate liking to me… Some called us twins!
Scary.
The rest were an unmotley crew I am
sorry to say. There was a quiet fellow
who served in
Paul was a retired nature lover who had run a non-profit, a steady man and wise, Jimmy was a devil’s advocate type (and clashed cartoonishly with Todd) proud of his skills in mediation. Our fearless leader was Randal who was a lawyer “not a lobbyist” who had the glad-hand down and I loved. Paul was bearded, Jimmy was thin, Randal was boyish.
They all dressed kinda J.Crew. Adam had more gear than all of us put together. The women, sorry again, were for me, I admit it, forgettable.
*
This would not be a Peace Corps reunion it soon became clear.
Sitting in the hot tub one evening after open bar, Todd and
I could not entice some folks from the cohort before us to join us. They were studying! They had finished training but FEMA had yet
to get them plane tickets to a
*
Disclaimer: I do not understand animal lovers.
I was attacked by a dog as a boy. But I do not dislike animals. I want them to be free. I will not argue this point here. I argued it with Todd who fired an employee for not taking good care of Todd’s dog at a work site. Todd has strong socialist tendencies generally.
What is important is that when vehemently defending various positions, drunk I admit, Todd told me I had taken it “past people’s comfort levels”. A beautiful phrase that and it stayed with me in many ways throughout my time of service.
Before I left a manager at my bank who could not help me told me the saddest story she had seen. Everyone has something to say about Katrina. It was someone feeding a dog on a bridge. The dog attacked the person. She felt bad for the dog.
I do not mind people loving animals, although I believe they misunderstand even their own pets. I do not even mind the reality of the situation: people will not leave their animals. Many folks who die in disasters are social isolates: non-English speaking sometimes, elderly more often. They stay with pets. Pets left behind die most often.
It is part of people’s mourning. But they are not allowed in Red Cross shelters- for many reasons. I am sorry but I agree with this policy. FEMA sent volunteers to animal shelters. That is okay by me too. It is only one aspect of this confusing society in a situation of disaster since Katrina and in many cases before. Loneliness can kill.
*
FEMA makes me wax philosophical on many points. Let us stick to the facts. The FEMA complex was terrible. We trained in a hot, noisy warehouse. The trainers were condescending and confused. There was coffee at least but it was somewhere in the maze. To eat one had to make one’s way to the mall. We had no car of course.
“Clap for your partner!” our trainer commands us, after one inanely easy exercise.
When we were finally allowed on the computers we were not allowed access to real cases and the few Oscar pulled up contradicted him. They told us what our job was NOT and what we could not do. They were wrong about our access later. Oscar said not to use his name. He would be sued. I protested. They could not get us plane tickets on time.
We learned about hazards like gas, fire, and clients. Many numbers were thrown at us, codes and maximum amounts. The recoup effort matched abatement but that was all done at the NPC, none of our business. We were mere apologists for those decisions.
We had to be detectives. No wait, that was not out job either.
No hard questions were allowed. In the press they knew as much as we did. At the end of training a long speech was made blaming all on the Homeland Security merger (the border cops in our midst wished to bring their guns). Another problem was lack of “leads”- FEMA subdivided at every seventh person (asexually, one supposes), but seemed to have infinite levels of separation. The purpose?
FEMA was to protect people and property. It became quickly apparent that they leaned heavily towards protecting property, not people. “Safeguarding the taxpayer dollar” was a phrase Oscar used that often made me laugh. FEMA feared one thing- duplication of benefits. For that reason any renter or adult child living at home who made a separate claim on a same address or phone number was basically screwed. But I did not know that yet!
Oscar did explain one reason someone could be denied benefits if their case looked good. The county perhaps had not done what FEMA said construction-wise according to this or that flood area and thus all residents’ claims in that county were summarily denied! What to do? Draft appeal letters? We cannot tell them what to do or say, Oscar said.
Whatever can be said against what FEMA evily calls the VolAgs (other volunteer agencies like Salvation Army) -and there are legitimate problems even with Red Cross which has local chapters to their credit- FEMA is in another class of evil. Everything they do sounds evil: FRAATS and NEMIS, etc. It soon became apparent that we were supposed to be canon fodder facing the mass of their disgruntled victims, first out of the boat, as it were.
Femish, indeed.
*
There was one session of FEMA training we got to miss, but I regret it now. I went to the mall for lunch. The bus system to get back was terrible. I ended up waiting a long time and talked to a young Haitian woman who was homesick, just graduated high school, looking for work to support her aging mother, hated the mall, broke, on the verge of tears. I spoke to her in my African accented French. We laughed about pepper sauce.
She thanked me when I got on my bus at last. The people to help, I must remember, are everywhere.
I had been excused from the session since it had to do with billing FEMA, how to collect money, how much for car, hotel, per diem, salary, hazard pay, who knows what else. Although none of this applied to me since we had our money up front and would not be issued government credit cards or seek reimbursement for expenses, still I wish I had been present to learn how much these beknighted heroes, these poor complaining displaced workers, these FEMA temps were making! Safeguarding the taxpayer dollar- HA! HA!
*
We were booked on a plane at last- Adam, Randal, Todd,
Jimmy, and I. The women had later
tickets. Paul had already gone. Some stayed in
We had hours to wait so naturally we were shuffled through
security easily, our FEMA badges shining brightly, dearly bought. Todd sweated the FEMA security check as he
told me encounters he had had with federal park rangers. In the nurse’s line at FEMA he told me about
his native Hawaiian tattoo, a huge eye in a hand on his back. My Celtic knot armband from
Now here we were in FEMA polo shirts (honeybee brand, I kid
you not!) with FEMA baseball caps, all American. Todd even buzz cut his hair. We were changed already, ushered into the
waiting gates. Todd engaged poor Adam on
some point of theology and would not let him go even in the john where Adam sat
trapped in a stall doing his business as Todd stood just beside
pontificating. Later Todd and Jimmy
began their squabbling. I talked
strategy with Randal for our
I was glad we had been assigned to
I do not remember anything from the plane ride. Was there a special forces agent going to secure “targets of opportunity” or did I dream that. Where would I even dream up such terms? I prefer to remember nothing of the plane ride.
It must be said. Much
of
No! The
“You kids are so cute,” Debbie said to us, “we don’t want anything to happen to you.”
One morning Debbie asked us to meet at the eating tables where she never showed. Later when she saw us she scolded us for not meeting her on time in another place! Was it all a sick ruse?
*
Dividers had been put up everywhere. Of course it was no trouble to see in to an area where military figures might be mulling around with maps, or a phone bank, or a row of laptops. Broken escalators led to a second story. There one eventually found a tunnel over to the other side of this massive place where the food was. Behind this was a pallet path with pillows, bedding, cots. Upstairs a giant empty room housed men and in one corner four showers had been set up. It was dark but the warehouse rules on returns of merchandise could still be read.
FEMA staff complained about the food being cold. We had coffee, egg sandwiches, full dinners. They complained it was not free. Heaven forbid the locals be allowed to have some business! It became clear the whole vibe was disgruntled. One company of firemen had t-shirts printed that said “WE AIN’T FEMA!”
I reclined in a corner losing faith, but sipping my cold coffee grateful for caffeine, and wondering if I would ever be able to help anyone. I found a phone to call out to the world for words of encouragement. (My cell signal struggled there and I was afraid to charge it at night for theft what with mercenaries all around…) Home was encouraging about my mission but it became clear I would pay a high price: my job there was being advertised. Then suddenly word came: We had a job at last! Tim had threatened to rip Dominatrix Debbie’s head off. Randal had worked his magic and scored us a job for a…
Day.
It seems there were not enough “leads” to open a DRC (
*
Maps were secured. An obscene amount of bedding was taken- just in case… and not enough water for the heat of course! Security hassled us going out. Jimmy’s rental fit us all miraculously, Peace Corps style. It even had a computer that talked to you- scary.
If you stopped for gas and turned off the set route it said “no.”
At first the drive was beautiful, green. Then there were more and more downed
trees. Then the shacks began to
appear.
What they say is terrible and makes more difficult this task of understanding the chaos that strikes all faiths equally.
Billboards were splintered. Storefronts were smashed. Soon every other edifice was showing signs of damage. The image that stands out in my mind is that of a boat tied up against the side of a house. The water had subsided in such a way to leave the boat hanging about the height of my head. Broken stalks stood where perhaps water towers once were, satellite dishes dangling. Giant containers overflowed with detritus: splintered planks, siding, window frames, house frames, tree limbs, bushes, broken bicycles, sheet metal bent into eerie shapes, iron rods snapped neatly in two…
*
We see a giant eighteen-wheeler with “Caravan of Hope” painted on its side against a stars & stripes type patriotic motif complete with eagle. It would have been more honest if it also had the suffering son of man on its side. It was parked in an enormous parking lot. The strip mall therein was utterly devastated. I used to have nightmares about the “Day After” like many Cold War era children. This looked like our worst-imagined fallout from an A-bomb. For the first half hour after I finally found a porta-potty all I could do was walk around surveying the disasterscape. The saddest thing was a little library branch with thick black stuff on the floor, like tar, ceiling tiles falling among the books all of them molding becoming something fuzzy and fungal. The front was all smashed in and I heard someone say it was looting. For books? I wondered how many of the images of looting were actually scenes stolen by the rain and air.
Next I walked around the operation. We were to work in the back busting up boxes and pallets. Then we sorted cans into bags for families, a few potted meats, a few fruits and veggies. It is the kind of work I love. But I wanted to see the rest. The recipients came in cars. I suppose those without must starve or depend on neighbors. As cars (trucks mostly actually) entered, the first stop was a bunch of Midwest Christian high-schoolers who asked if clients wanted to pray with them. Only after that did they roll up to meet Randal and get a cool drink and directions.
There was a stop for picking up paper goods, another for sanitary goods, a separate one for women’s things and diapers, a nurse’s station, boxes of dried goods, the cans of course, then they could pull around for a branch operation offering clothes and more of the Christ.
“Camino de la Esperanza” offered “crisis counseling” on their sign but had no counselors and spoke little Spanish. It consisted mainly in the pastor putting the arm around your shoulders and bowing heads in prayer to the risen Lord. I am not generally one who is critical of faith-based social services. On the contrary they have always been among those who are doing the most. But I must admit this seemed parasitic to me. They flocked like flies at disasters I soon learned. They were nice. I sat with them. They gave me lemonade. We chatted. But within minutes the subject of my soul came up. My avowal that I was Mahayana Buddhist did not deter. After a few questions to show their complete ignorance of other faith traditions, they started in on their spiritual journey and wouldn’t I want to join them? The Way of the Cross is alright by me although I received neither the communion nor confirmation of my Catholic family. What I object to is folks like this one who ask me of these victims who live in sin: “How can they call themselves Christians?” Southern civility barely kept my tongue in my head as I thought: “How can you not??”
*
Luckily it was then that a nice Honduran lady came up. Buena suerte too that I was there to speak Spanish with her. She was not in crisis luckily. She just had questions about the clothes. I interpreted. Then we chatted a while. She was a hairdresser, not a migrant worker. One of her daughters was a lawyer back home and another a travel agent- she wanted to go back there. The complication was these children she had with her here. They were not hers it seemed to me but she kept them for someone.
The younger was busy among the donated toys. The older, a wild-haired girl of ten or so, came over with a big smile. She had a bedraggled little floppy-eared puppy in her arms. She had found him during the storm, she said. His name was “Tormenta”. At the time I did not see it; we were happy. Later I reflected on “Torment” as a title for this book. When I worked for a Catholic group with Latino immigrants the faith question seemed less pernicious. But when Evangelical sects proffer aid to other evangelical sects, all of their doctrines vaguely Protestant and mysterious to me, what is the line?
Whatever one believes, it seems to me, here comes another to
challenge it. For those who can listen
strong in themselves, that can be a fine thing, I think. There are dangers, complications,
assumptions- but one must eat! The
Christian kids I packed cans with in back were quality persons, full or the
spirit, sacrificing their vacation to serve.
But I think of the villages after the Tsunami where group after group
came to vaccinate the children until it killed them- killing with kindness. I do not doubt their intentions. But we must assist in such a way as honors
the recipient, must we not? When I was
in
*
The smell there is not of death. It is the bayou. I had lived in a swamp before and knew the smell well- decay certainly, some rotting flesh perhaps among the acridly recycling vegetation, stagnant water with algae, droppings, gases… Tim was horrified at one point he got a whiff of a suddenly turned breeze. I was finishing my umpteenth Gatoraid, it was so hot!
“My God, is that
I did not have the heart to tell him it was the porta-potty he smelled.
Even stench can be leant grandeur by our imaginations. The spam burgers we ate on our lunch break I
thought smelled nice. Later though I did
smell one of the worst things I have even encountered in my travels through
Africa,
We opened the hundredth or thousandth box of creamed corn or
pudding or some such. A can had exploded
therein and Botulism immediately infested the air all around. Not just from heat and fatigue, I thought I
might vomit. Instead I sat right there
and kept sorting cans. This is what I
had come to do and I was happy to finally be of use. On the way back to the JFO to my cot however
I have to admit to some bitter reflections. Surely this was not the best use of
my skills. There are many Christian kids
to sort cans. They really ought to be
employing locals to do it actually. They
need the money! Not only that but I had
to go to
I did try to tell someone before I left the Caravan to change the crisis counseling sign to something more honest. He said it was not his group! Then I mentioned the local Food Bank crew that had come through inspecting. Did they give any good ideas? (It was soon to rain and everything was sitting outside- cereals, rice, etc.) He said they were the ones who told the locals how to do it. I said goodbye. He did not say thank you. That is the truth and I knew I would not go back there again. I was running out of options though.
*
Debbie sent some of us to the animal shelter. It was then I tried to create a coup. I had gained the name of a local Food Bank in
need of a crew. I called the lady in
Adam disappeared. We had lost another. He went to stay across the river at Port Allen. I was also plotting my escape. Tim was fit to crack. Even Randal seemed manic. We did not fit in. Picture a giant warehouse with fifty to a hundred cots. They were all in rough rows. Ours were the only ones in a little square by a pillar, our little fort. We had not noticed at first. We just came in, tired, and plunked down naturally. I prepared care packages to leave for the guys. I had gone to the dollar store before deploying and picked up things to cheer shelterees. Now I was using them on us. There was oatmeal, beef jerky, cards of course, a super bouncy ball, light up party sticks to help find your way in the swamp, funny books, duct tape (a Peace Corps icon) for Tim, chopsticks…
*
Then we got sent to Salvation Army. It was just another food bank preparing to open. We did get to give out water and meet folks at least this time. This was good enough to keep me in FEMA’s clutches another couple of days. It was in another strip mall, in town this time. A quiet, hard-working man ran it. As usual we were not given any real instructions. We just sort of figured out how to help. The fellow who told us about it was a U.S. Marshal and looked the part, long blond fair under a hat, stubble, hard-nosed. There were local volunteers there too. One was taciturn. I tried to talk to him on his smoke break. He was just off his hundred acre farm, used to big silent spaces perhaps, come to help out in the “city”. He knew about hard work!
The work was hot, so hot I could not eat but just gulped drinks down one after another. I could not imagine living here. I was like a mere day-tripper.
*
I bonded with the other local volunteer while pouring water over myself. He had headphones on so I hadn’t spoken to him. He took the headphones off and poured water over his self and told me slowly with coaxing his horrific story. I could never do justice to what happened to him and the calm matter-of-fact way he told his peace without malice but here goes:
He was in a rehab clinic, a roundish fellow with an easy smile, Black, short hair, quiet, not a leader there I imagine, but his courage showed. They smashed their was to the upper floors as the water rose. Days passed. They ate all the ketchup on crackers. They had no water. Boats passed. Finally he climbed down like in a movie on a rope made of tied-together sheets. He was at the level of the water, waiting, disease lapping at his heels. The police boat came.
“Up the rope,” they said.
“What?! We have no food or water!”
“Up!” the policeman drew his gun to explain. What could he do but climb back up stunned. They cut the rope.
When the helicopters came they made it up on the roof. It was not the police who rescued them. Not all of them had survived that long of course. Did they feel cursed or worse- just expendable?
*
Sometimes I hear people say stories like this are
apocryphal, urban legends. I heard this
even from clients in
Another fellow asked for several cases of water. Jimmy was inclined to set a limit. I was of the feeling that as water had no street value anyone who waited ages in line for it most probably needed it pretty badly. This young African American man was running a make- shift shelter. I got to talking to him. He told me about a ten year old who was celebrating his birthday that day. He was happy because his parents were out of the hospital. But his little sister was still touch and go.
“What happened?” I asked with some sudden sense of dread.
“The guard at the grocery store shot them.”
I did not ask any more.
The role of security forces in disaster is complicated. There are masses to contend with and sometimes shortages. Some order is needed. But the real danger is panic. In stress-ful situations one is either escalating or deescalating; there is rarely middle ground. I like best those forces which are helping with the deescalating. They should be trained for this and defer where appropriate to those with the proper training. There is more to be said on this for sure but I want to tell stories, not editorialize. The stories speak for themselves.
*
Of course there are some shady types, but they were
innocuous. There was a family came back
day after day for water. They had a
truck with a bumper sticker about Noni juice. I asked about it, trying o make small talk as
always. It’s the only way most people
can start telling you their troubles. The brother from the
*
Car after car, truck after truck came, even after we closed
down for the day they were still coming for water. There was a Vietnamese family of twenty some.
This was common for all folks now.
People Black and white took in all their kin from
They were distracted sometimes, would drive off with trunks open, through barriers not seen. A man came to pick up for his old neighbor. He could barely open his car door, let alone haul water. I can only imagine how feeble the neighbor was, whether still alive by the time he drove hours back out to him.
There was a postman who came in his official jeep. Perhaps he was taking water to folks on his route. He asked me about Carolina hurricanes and told me ours was named after his grandma Ophelia who would wake him up at night to give him a whoopin’ if he had been bad, she was so fierce- “Whooped me onto the right path!” he said.
Regular life makes a semblance of going on. Many trucks have high school football flags. We ask about the game. They had won! One boy had a broken leg and couldn’t play. That was his major tragedy. Jimmy and I gave the kids granola bars and felt good about our selves. It is never enough anyway. Or is it?
*
I was afraid of the forklift. I admit it.
I used a hand truck. Another huge
truck arrived with food to be put in aisles for agencies to shop at soon. It was unclear what forms and identifications
would be needed; we never knew how to answer the clients’ constant questions.
This truck was from the
*
FEMA had had me now for over a week without using me for whatever supposed intended purpose. Enough! I knew an agency that could use me. We went to do laundry at a place that turned out to be full of Latinos (where did they all go as clients, to their own informal networks?) and there we talked to a lady who told me about Red Cross by the mall. She had been screwed by FEMA and Tim fully shared his own frustration with her: “Fuck FEMA!” We asked him not to further tax her with grief. “Vent on us,” Randal begged. Tim continued. He a real big heart in his chest. At the airport he held a victim’s hand as she cried.
When Tim was the only one keen on joining me for the jump to Red Cross I was hesitant. And what would Crisis Corps say? I did not care. As it turned out the others got sent out shortly thereafter to a DRC opened by Coast Guard volunteers. Tim hesitated a day as Red Cross played coy about offering him a job with International Services. In the end he went with the rest of the crew. I took my big bag and moved on, feeling quite a bit alone, weary and apprehensive.
The lady who first received me at Red Cross was very nice
and listened to my skills and situation which is more than FEMA had ever
done. However!-
since my local chapter in
I did meet a fascinating woman in the rest area, a veteran
of many disasters. She was an engineer
and working for Red Cross communications.
She was older and had been the only woman engineer for a long time. She said sympathy was between shit and
syphilis in the dictionary, but really she was more a sweetheart than a
pistol. She wanted to attend the Burning
Man festival in
*
In my comings and goings I picked up a pair of hitchhikers, a Black couple, outside a motel by a busy street. They had been standing waiting for a bus for over an hour. They had to get back by noon with the motel money, forty bucks, or be put out. They had to keep the address as they had given it to FEMA in order to receive their FEMA check.
The woman had a cat and besides she would not go to a shelter, something about her health- epilepsy? The man seemed to have recently joined with her. He was a garbage man, very interesting, and sure of work here or there, where ever…Anyway, they had money, both of them, at the Social Security Office which was up by the mall where I was going anyway. When I left them there the line did not seem bad. They had time to make it back easily if the bus ever came. I considered waiting but instead pressed a twenty into his hand quietly on wishing them goodbye; she was proud, she had said. I didn’t know what to say.
“Good luck?”
“Thank you!”
It was the first time I thought I knew why I had come to
This is a true story.
This is a horror story.
It has all the elements: a dark, lonely setting, fear and foreboding, tragedy, infestation, anger, gore, supernatural undertones. For many, from this story, there is no deliverance.
The horror! The horror!
I am lost.
I left
Driving slowly along a street that I was sure I had seen before, I stopped and ask a man. It seemed a bad part of town. He wass startled. I apologized. Police lights. What y’all doing? The man explained. The policeman gave gruff directions. I drove off into the starless night again, hours it seems. At last in a town so tiny I almost blinked and miss it, I saw the only turn off. After that was miles and miles more, deep midnight, I was drifting off barely noticing the change into pine country. I was looking for a barn by the road marked only with a little sign, but I did not know that yet. I went past it, asked some drinkers at a convenience store (they did not even have bar!) and they sent me back, glad to go, not sure whom to trust. I saw the sign at last and with relief note some folks still awake, sitting in front of the door. I did not notice faces. There was a mean dog tied to the tree. Some residents were smoking. The older white lady laughed and told a young man to get me a cot. Right away I fell asleep. The nightmares begin there, literally.
*
The building- could be a
It turned out that Red Cross had sent them several
supervisors. I was last. The power hungry one Craig grabbed the
supervisor spot and tried to get us to sort chairs. I just couldn’t fight it. He was a Red Cross trainer (supposedly an
EMT) and a real schmuck, sorry to say!
We were sent to replace this young supervisor who was finishing his
tour, nice. He had actually wants to
close down the shelter. The other
contender with me, Chris from
*
I just could not shake the headache, the nausea. The road was still going through my head. I heard all these voices but could not meet them yet. There was a huge grassy area with tent showers set up. They had a resident in the showers, helping her out, helping her “come down”. Someone told me to go to the “staff” shower at the fire hall. And I went because I just wanted out of there.
The lady who managed the place looked me over, barely.
“Don’t call them guests,” she said.
She told a story about someone shitting in the tent showers. She yelled at the whole place:
“I set this place up and I can shut it down in five minutes! I am not your maid! I HAVE a home to go to!”
She actually admitted that she had said this.
*
Her son the fireman talked about school board stuff with the power monger kid, Craig. Was it just my prejudice, this feeling of evil? He insisted the place was not racist. The whites just sent their kids to private school, is all.
“Hell, even the teachers talk that Ebonics!” he complained.
One client called the place “coon” country. Don’t get me wrong. I believed this man and his mom wanted to help on some level. Maybe they did not even saw the harm they were doing. But they should have! Even the macho fireman admitted he would need a lot of therapy after this…
*
The new problem in the place was the strict new “supervisor” Craig who refused to see that everyone was a client. A fellow came in to offer us medical equipment for free- that’s his business. I am not sure what his story was but his eyes were tearing up; then the commandant rushed him out. A couple of old ladies came to apply for CAT cards, not to stay. We did not do that there, I knew, but I sat them down, started to chat. He ushered them right out to, unceremoniously- it’s not like we’re swamped- not even writing down for them the 800 number which was always busy anyway, a waste of their time. Did they even have phones? This place was poor and rural after all!
*
Lost again. I could not clear my head, not even in the shower. The first firehouse I found abandoned. A HUGE tree had fallen through its roof! I learned later that the local tall pines have shallow roots not able to withstand 95 mph winds. Farther on I finally found the other firehouse. The bugs there were so thick my windshield was black. “Lovebugs” they were called, coupling everywhere. The shelter residents could not even go out; they would get instantly covered. I wanted to take a picture of a run down half-collapsed shack that I am pretty sure looked like that well before the storm set by this idyllic pond with cows. A man came out shouting and I sped off. Lost again.
I finally found my way back. I had begged the outgoing supervisor to just keep me on as any old staff. There was one other nice young guy, head shaved, from Wisconsin, and the stern skinny young woman volunteer almost smiled once in the kitchen when we were making sandwiches together, plus the nurse man needed my car to go get supplies. He seemed intelligent, relatively, at least in the two minutes we talked. I had three weeks left for Red Cross and just wanted to stay in one place with one crew and be of use. It became clear though that I was perceived as a threat by “Super Volunteer Man” Craig and so I would have no peace. I decided to move on after that day.
The nature of my malaise was odd, a vortex of resentment of regular life but- which was really more “real”? In this I was unlike Randal who I had seen go manic, rushing about FEMA even when senior staff told him to “shut up!” I would not stand that. Withdraw instead, distancing as a defense not to feel. We are all transient in the Buddha-view.
I still tried to meet clients though, to get some idea where I might end up. Should I do sheltering, feeding, case work? I was not yet licensed, thus barred from being an official Red Cross mental health worker- to my chagrin: “Find one of the smiling faces”, our trainer had said- you’ll recognize them! I felt I could use one now…
*
All I managed to do there was take this guy up the road to look at a car he wanted to buy. He was a bit of a wheeler-dealer. He wanted out of there. We went to the chicken place, the only joint in town really, then to buy phone cards at the general store. Plus he wanted some medicine. I did not inquire more. The car was a bust.
I like this guy somehow, with his earrings and sunglasses, not my usual type. He wants the freedom to go around his place in his drawers, he says. When the teenage kid said the sloppy Joes tasted like shit, this guy asks him- “how do you know what shit tastes like?”
I feel sorry for the kid though. He wants his GED but is wiped out from a
roofing job. (Roofing is the hardest
work I have ever done including field work in
*
I did get to use my Spanish. This woman was coming off of a meth addiction, seven months pregnant, tossing all over her cot, ripping at her clothes.
“No quiero. No puedo!”
She was Puerto Rican and probably knew enough English but in
her state was calling for her padres in Spanish. Something about a Greyhound
to
I could barely stand to watch myself. Her hair was brown and tangled, her skin clear brown, her feet and hands small, her body larger and fleshy, her clothes loose- I think someone else put them on her. She never cursed even when they moved her. She hurt.
Sorry, mi hija, I had to leave you there in that hell, somebody’s daughter soon to be a mom…
*
My handy wholesome new fried Chris came with me gladly. He concurred that the other fellow was impossible and said one often met such power-trippers on disasters. He was a talker and we had a long drive. I am not sure how much of his story to tell but it was mostly interesting. He had sharp features and a sharper nose, wore glasses, had short, neat hair. You would never guess he once wore a mullet!
As we left the dog was still chained to the tree, barking fiercely, but forlorn. It had water and food spilled among the roots and trash. It had pooped everywhere. It smelled. I noticed then that it had puppies too.
*
Chris begins with the religion and I think this ride will be
even longer than the first one. I
consider my slump and the merits of driving us into a bog to test our
faith. He is born again, a welder, but
had seen some of the world, served in
He has this dilemma it seems in that he had married a “fallen woman”. He thought he could save her but she will not turn her back on her children who use drugs. He informed on them but denied it to her, a lie. He feels bad but cannot condone her actions. He is considering divorce. From this you would never guess he ran away as a young boy, was on the street himself, met strange men…
“My father did dental work on me.”
Then a Christian home for boys turned it around for him. I cannot remember all the details now- and there were many- but actually he was divorced before, a Stepford wife attracted to all the money he made fixing air conditioners (was it her daddy’s plant he worked at?) but he hated the big mansion and she made him give up country music. Or was it Nascar? Anyway, he lost the kids and the condo. Her friend was cute though.
“I wish I had nailed her best friend,” he said.
Anyway, the farther I got from
“Sure, let’s go,” he said. We got some dinner first, blackened catfish under etouffe.
He was a good fellow traveler, Chris, but I realized now how I missed Tim and the gang, such as they were.
I never do get to use my French in Cajun country, alas. It will not be until I am boarding a plane to go home that I hear any spoken in fact, outside of song. I will wander dully as a storm cloud seeking caffeine to help make sense of the whole experience before landing in “real life” land and being asked to account for myself. The uniformed airport attendant
will then inform me that everything is closed except a greasy diner window but he will warn me off their coffee, calling it pisse de lapin- rabbit pee!
Imagine you are in an Arena-sized shelter. National Guard patrol around. People in red pinnies get on the P.A. and announce your schedule each day. These are the Red Cross volunteers. At night they lurk over your six square feet of space. One morning a fat new one strolls in and introduces him self. They are always changing. This guy has pinched little glasses and smiles a lot, bad skin, short hair, big nose. That is me, not so important.
The
We came in late one night into what they call the “spine”, a
loading dock between the Arena and the convention hall side called Shelter
One. Boxes of donations were strewn
about, piles of cots used and less used, kitchens wafting Styrofoam meals
(supplementing MREs: military Meals Ready to Eat that cooked in their own pouches). We wandered,
no idea where we were going, and entered the Arena and met Erika who tried to
answer our questions while we got bedding and toiletries (personal care kits)
for a newly arrived family. She
recommended the night shift as mellow; and this was the best thing I had seen I
went looking for the boss to request it.
Folks I’d never seen before shouted questions and commands at me, people
people everywhere- all exhilarating somehow! Nonetheless the boss Skip, a superintendent
from
*
After one more false start, I would finally find my place. Little did I know it was my place in a giant science fiction experiment! I would barely see the light of day for two weeks! I would break down twice… Then it would all end unexpectedly.
I went hat in hand to Mark, the commander of the place. He heard me quickly and pronounced me useful but labeled me a mental health worker. It so happens I had met one on her rounds the night before and had some idea of what was entailed. She had been go-between for a fighting man and wife. The man was absent, drinking perhaps. The wife was in the “infirm” section near the nurse’s station. Was she pregnant? She seemed more interested in her radio than in talking to us, so we left her, dissatisfied. There had clearly been physical violence. I learned that one had to manage situations; no time or space for interventions; it would not do to elicit too much. All this I garnered quickly. Nobody explained it to me.
In fact I was just about to introduce myself to the head mental health worker. They were identified by bug stickers on their badges. We were in Room Five with window looking over Shelter One where felons and singles were put, generally considered less stable.
“Mark sent me,” is about all I got out before a call came up on the radio and off I was sent.
I had been pointed to a reclined man, largish, bearded, in a section roughly delineated by letters and numbers on the wall. When I got down there though there were folks teeming everywhere. I could not get oriented. I could not get any staff attention. I dared not talk to soldiers, unaware of protocol. I had had no orientation, no training, had not been assigned a bunk, met only one colleague, the friendly but busy Erika, now absent.
Nonetheless I had signed up and volunteered for this and eagerly went. I knew he was depressed (suicidal?) and a veteran. When I finally found him, half-asleep, he was also pretty drunk. In the shelters where I had worked before residents had to be sober, so this was tierra incognita. I had met a psychologist with the V.A. before I left (in my French conversation group of all places) and I had asked him about hints for working with PTSD which was all new to me. I could not remember anything!
In addition I do not think having all the uniforms around was helping this man much, nor the hard cot. He stared at me glassy eyed when I said hello and introduced myself, not as a counselor, or course, just as a volunteer. I said it did not seem like he was doing too well. He nodded agreement. Can we talk? I asked, with nowhere to sit, squatting down.
These were lame and standard remarks. “Yes, sir. No, sir,” he said. Should I ask if he was a veteran- would it give me away, give him paranoid thoughts, give him an opening? In the end he was dozing off…
“You have had some drinks,” I said, “but I can come back when you’ve slept to talk more if you want. I want you to know we are concerned for you.”
“Thank you, thank you,” he mumbled, but his eyes showed he understood and appreciated. I left and let him sleep, feeling pretty lame.
When I got upstairs I was just being shown the book. Record keeping seemed spotty. We had few if any local resources. They had done one group- with children- but it was not repeated. AA was meeting but not going that well. Religious services, various, were well attended and there were chaplains here as well. Then the boss walked in.
She was no nonsense. You’re not licensed? What studies do you have? Internship? Years of experience? A second to ponder, then: No. This is too intense. You are more tired than the volunteers I am sending home now. No. It was useless to argue. Liability?!
She is too swamped to talk to me. “You’re swamped but can’t use me,” I say, leaving.
*
Back to Mark. Luckily Superintendent Skip had learned of my skills by now and wanted me as supervisor of the night shift. With no sleep then I took over control of the Arena. I was very lucky in my excellent staff. Although Patrick was a lone wolf, he would do what you asked if you could find him, and he probably kept the shadier elements in line of sight at least playing poker with them in the hall where one of our guests cut hair. I think Patrick who went around brooding in his hoodie was probably homeless in his regular life. They had taken on some residents as staff in the early going and there was much controversy about “demoting” them after some incidents of “theft” of donations.
Patrick never did leave, I think. He said he was a fisher and made noise of going to work on an oilrig… I often wonder where everyone is now.
Erika and Naomi were
“It’s me!” I said. Thankfully they quickly made me welcome as I laughed it off.
Rita and Ralph were ex-military, he a helicopter pilot, she a navy photographer. They were steady and ready. Rita went the extra distance helping older clients. Ralph filled me in on most of the procedures. I had to have him break down the snack table right away. As luck would have it I came in on the day upstairs decided to cut out evening munchies which was felt to keep folks awake resulting in more “behavior” and less smooth transition in the mornings.
My only problem was old Dale who we did not even know was on
my crew. He lived to make the
coffee. When the supervisor in Shelter
One, a young
There is some confusion later when I am called upstairs
about the car (now returned) and my “attitude”, not a “team player” apparently,
what is my DSHR#… They had confused me with Dale it seems about whom the
Anyway, I ran a pretty tight shift, watching the side hall by the phones and the front shower area myself, which seemed to me the main danger areas. When staff saw me pick up dirty towels myself and be nice to clients they respected me. It also helped that I did not come down hard on practices already secretly in place like rotating out for naps in the quiet wee hours. I was used to managing volunteers- using their skills and motivating by showing appreciation.
*
Ralph was an interesting character. He was somewhat serious and thus the butt of
many of the
When it came time for me to go I recommended Ralph replace me
as supervisor, although Rita was just as strong. She was uninterested in leadership, a
natural. He was scared of it but at the
same time craving recognition. Upstairs
of course, having solicited my staffing recommendations ignored them
completely, on this and other decisions.
They were always trying to split up the
*
My biggest worry was Naomi.
At a certain point she turned listless.
Whereas before she had great energy, doing stickers with the children,
coloring, running errands without complaint, suddenly she was absent. Even when she was there she could barely
leave the cot to go out and have her smoke.
She stopped talking or bringing us food.
She hung around Patrick suddenly whom everyone usually mutually avoided. It may just have been burnout but in her case
she had told me about staying in contact with her N.A. sponsor back home. I suspected she might be using and asked her
to talk to mental health. One night the
*
My second night as supervisor another hurricane hit! Rita hammered us all night long and just about tore the roof off. We had to crowd all the residents around the edges due to leaks in the center of the Arena. Tension was in the air. My major concern was loss of lights. All it needed was a little screaming by kids, one warning shot in the air, and we would have a riot on our hands for sure. The essential thing I knew was for everyone to remain calm. I felt sure of my staff and they knew the evacuation plan. Unfortunately the chain of command was not clear. Skip my boss had disappeared. Samuel and his fiancée who had both been at the Arena far too long, since the beginning, had both been on shift all day but refused to go home. Samuel was manic in my opinion. His fiancee went to hide in the bathroom hall with the walkie-talkie. Amazingly, I could not find a megaphone. Police and military refused to part with theirs! If we lost lights due to power outage, obviously I would lose the P.A. system too. Also I wanted to pipe in music to counteract the constant loud banging which was causing everyone to relive their previous horrors. I could not find the facilities staff. I had no radio.
Finally I said, “Okay, Samuel, here’s the deal. We have to trust each other quickly I’m afraid. I can take control or leave it to you all, no problem. If you are responsible, tell me what to do. If not, give me the damn radio so I can call out at least!”
He gave me a radio. Mutual respect had been established. Apparently his fiancee had once been attacked and did not like to be without a radio, so I put someone else in the scary bathroom area and her with me at the information table. Samuel went up to the bleachers to survey the water damage. I looked after our families.
*
There was a Korean lady with her daughter and elderly mother. She rarely spoke to anyone. She did not want men residents so close. I could tell it cost her a lot to come up and speak to me.
“I am very nervous,” she said, barely audibly.
She walked a lot at night. Her mother just slept. Her daughter smiled. I tried to talk to them sometimes. We got her family moved with as much space as we could, which was not much but they were reassured. I said I would keep a special eye out for them, and I always did.
*
Betty was one of Rita’s good friends. She had senile dementia but could be very
sharp. Her language on this occasion was
quite sharp. Not only was she not happy
about the roof noise, she had wet herself again, and it seemed to me been sick
as well. There was a tough
“Betty, you giving me a hard time again,” said the nurse.
She said don’t step on her shoes. He had not moved his feet!
“I can’t do like you. Can’t get up so fast. All my people died of leukemia. The sickness gonna get me too. I lost my only son on January 30. Don’t touch his photo! I’m tired of talkin’. What’s that noise?”
“It’s the wind,” I offered.
“Well, shoot the wind. Kill the wind!”
The smell was something terrible, but one got used to it. We often changed soiled cots.
“Could we put her in bathroom B?” Rita asked. We had a couple private bathrooms by the nurse’s station, but I did not want her forgotten there: “Tell mental health too.”
“Sure,”’ I said, “Brilliant!” and Rita set it up. I got her in a wheelchair with firm offers of applesauce, believe it or not. Rita and the nurse took her in to clean up. I removed the old cot and things, without gloves to Ralph’s horror. I was busy! (Later I learned that Rita went over to the Sheraton and washed Betty’s things.) I am the one the nurse calls his new hero though: Back at ya! There are many, volunteers and clients!
Next item of business: There were some volunteers jamming in the break room. I drafted them, their guitar and harmonica. I miked them up in the middle of the Arena. This is your big concert, I offered!
“Make it quiet, and soothing.” They did. And we made it to lights out and morning.
I lived in the Bronx and the Sahara and Southside of Chicago and Southern Swamps, even the Selva of Mexico, a barrio of Mexico City, Communist China…
I have never been as scared as I was that night, shivering with cold night sweats of terror.
*
Rita had not finished with us yet. There were busloads of more refugees. The sewers backed up into our showers. Phones went down, even landlines. The
Now whenever one is sharing space, some will be displeased. In this case is was a mean old man reading his Bible of all things. The microphone cord passed by his cot and he yelled at me vaguely. I figured out at last and went on the inside of the baseboards to announce things. Most of the residents were gleefully cheering! Some Red Cross staff scowled as they walked by- happiness in a shelter; what is this? But I did not care. It brought a little joy for while in a stressful time and we were still all cleaned up and in bed by lights out at ten!
*
Supervisor meetings were at nine in the morning, a tough
time for me to stay up the extra hour (we worked 8pm-8am) but the worst by far
was general staff meeting at four in the afternoon. When would I sleep?? There seemed to be new information every
meeting those days.
It became apparent after several days that the city was purposefully not sending the health inspector to clear the reopening of our cleaned up showers. I personally inspected them and did a last wipe down myself. Finally I managed to get two random people from the city crew at my table one shift. They said- you sign off and go ahead and open, you’re liable! Was I ready to risk it? I thought I was. My residents had not showered in days. But instead I got right on the horn to Skip. He declined; we had to wait for the inspector.
*
We got bus loads of new residents from the
In the middle of this there is a call for Spanish at the front desk area. No response so I had to go up front to check in a couple of Latino families. Nobody knew who spoke Spanish on staff but Human Resources was dogging me!
When we got the extra staff to agree to go to bed it really quieted down. Everyone was settled before lights out. The suitcase that was lost was found by other residents. The trash bag of belongings alas was not. It was common for residents to lose things in the confusion of that life; theft was rare. One man lost his jacket, empty, but as it was the last thing he owned he was rather upset. He had come in late the night before. At last a resident thought to ask him which side he came in on. Turns out he had been in Shelter One not the Arena and he went there and found his jacket but came back to stay with us. He liked the Arena better. Our Catholic chaplain, a rosy-cheeked older lady in green, lost her mind a bit leaving frantic messages at the church she was locked out of wherein she thought she had left her fanny pack. Her cell phone with which she was calling was of course kept in her fanny pack, which she suddenly saw was on her waist all along! I met a lady on an afternoon off and out, wandering the dead streets. She had been covered for everything by her insurance. She then took that money to pay bills. One of the bills she paid was the insurance on her house and car. Then she remembered she no longer had a house and car. That is why she had been awarded the insurance!
*
I remember best the large families from the back hallway. I went out to explain to them that custodial staff informed me that the storm light in the hallway would not go out at night. Would that be all right or would they like to move. They begged me piteously not to move them again. When they were moved the next day against my recommendation it was the first of my breakdowns. I cried bitter tears for them, silently, in the dark.
There was a widow there with her daughter. She was not as freaked out as the man’s best friend and wife. They told me the story: the man had heart failure. He begged everyone he could for his medicine. When they finally found a hospital the hospital shut him out and said their medicines where for inpatients only. He died that night. The man’s other friend was jumped, beaten and robbed. The man told me the story stunned, in shock, and eventually did accept medication from mental health. The wife walked the night, night after night, with horrible insomnia. I do not think she slept the days either. The widow meanwhile slept a lot and watched her daughter who seemed in oblivion. Another lady in that hall asked me to touch her each time I went by for head count. She was afraid she would suffocate in her sleep.
The most haunting image from that night was from one a.m. headcount. Usually there would be more activity then but they were all so exhausted and the phone bank there was shut down. Everyone slept including old, old Marggie who sounded at death’s door. She had the habit of rattling breath and stopping breathing frequently at night. When I asked her once if that was normal she asked if I was a doctor, then told me sharply to go back to bed! She often had fights with neighbors so someone had put her in a corner out there. Well, there was a family with seventeen children. When I went by all were asleep except a dozen of them, not talking or playing, just popped up like prairie dogs, eyes big as saucers with terror, listening to the rattling of the old lady. I could not comfort them.
*
We have many physically ill clients, but it the mentally ill that worry me most. There is one woman who will not take her meds. She needs attention constantly. She had a foot cast and said she needed help to the bathroom every five minutes. She needed coffee. She needed a cigarette. She needed a snack, a donut. I heard she had been caught behind the bleachers with men. What could we do to protect her? One day she was just gone.
Some other residents: a contractor warns me “you got some people in here”, owns two houses, just displaced, wife wants big house, “people be hookin and crookin”, wants his frosted flakes! This pasty racist with curly hair who tried to tell me what Katrina stood for but I stopped him after “kill” and before he got to ‘n’- we’re all people in here! An addict tells me about his rehab- run by inmates, harsh!- scrubbing with toothbrush, forced to wear sign, head shaving as punishment- for having money! There is an old lady up at three a.m. every morning to take pain medicine, has a liver catheter, survives on juice, no naps, notice her reading Christian literature so I give her a card sent in one of the donation boxes, an older Christian lady wanting a client to write her back…
One resident I recognize in the staff breakfast line. He cleans for us at night and works for the city days, I find out. He seems like an old pro now, a success, so ask him- how are the new Lake Charles/Rita people doing, and are staff and other residents helping out enough?
“Some are stunned and some are mean. I was that way too at first. Now I turned it around… one hundred and seventy degrees!”
*
My favorite time is head count. I like to see the new formations kids sharing
beds make, the punked out teenagers with thumbs in
their mouths. I turn down the TVs but
cannot turn down the giant snorers on their purchased double air
mattresses. Someone farts in their
sleep. There is an “escapee” who always
falls out of his cot and everyone puts him back in. Another little boy with tossed blond hair
always sleeps half off his half-collapsed cot.
The “walker” does his rounds with his headphones on all night. One night a man with a bent penis (he claims)
asks to secretly shower as he is ashamed to during the day. He smells and we let him. This is the time to spot the depression,
folks staring at the ceiling. One lady
feels singled out- some stuff stolen- “I’d have given it them if they asked”-
just like the folks who refuse aid- “others need it more” and I give her a
voucher for Goodwill. One I ask what she
wants: “Your house keys!” she says. All
right then, she’ll settle for garlic crab.
“At least I’m losing weight in here!”
There’s a silver lining even in hurricane clouds. One man gives me one of the tastiest turkey
necks I ever ate! He is delighted I will
even try and refuses to believe I lived in
A boy shows up late, wants a cot. He has a tiny baby so I sure am not turning
him away. Then I recognize the girl with
him, seems a bit simple, telling me she was going to get her baby daddy. The problem is how to do it.
As I write in my journal by the shower area, a kid comes up and rubs the page. A gentleman come out and says: “You know what black belly say- damn I needed that washup! I smell gooood- yup!” Another time I overhear them glued to the TV talking about evacuating, whistling casual. “I love sausage but I don’t like to see it being made!”
Katrina and Rita are NOT
This night this guy is giving me a hard time: too cold, germs, go do this or that, tell them I sent you… I admit I lose my cool but I do not say anything luckily. Later that night I walk by and I see him nuzzling his infant. We should all be caught sleeping.
On Sunday I have a wake up for Pastor Charles at 5a.m. for
the
*
There was never a routine shift. At five a.m. I would sneak back to the spine where hot breakfast was served, feeling guilty for the cold cereal I just put out for our motivated clients who did get up that early to go to work. After the supervisors meeting at which I would usually make just one remark and usually had satisfaction on whatever I needed (dates on memos, other boring stuff) then I would crawl into my cot in Room Two, the dark room for daytime sleepers. Once I tried the air mattress everyone raved about but it hurt my back! Frequently I misplaced my flashlight and had to feel around for a shirt to run to the john in. When evening came around it was time to do it all again.
The residents were being mugged; forced to wear orange wrist bands (like at the fair, I joked, so you can get back in) they were easy pickings. They were closing our infirmary. Where would we send the people with special needs, medically fragile?
“We haven’t had a fatality yet,” Mark said non-chalantly, “we usually do.”
Mark was always “working the issue.”
There was usually something to distress me in every staff meeting. At the end of one, Mark came up to me and said:
“Keep your ass in that Arena!”
I tried not to respond. I knew the incident. One quiet night I did an online session for one of my classes (who later failed me) in the back hallway where Skip the night man found me. Ralph alas had tried to cover and said he thought I was in the john. They were cracking down on wandering and wanted me on the necks of my staff. I was too busy watching residents; besides we had the “quiet” shift….
I was still frustrated from the lack of leadership the night of Rita. Many answers crossed my mind. I just left luckily as Mark turned his back. Later they would give me excellent evaluations, but at the time I could never guess I was doing well… I could not go right to bed though; I had to vent. I found a mental health worker, my second cracking. Not until the end would I need to speak to mental health on my own behalf again, although I often recommended it to staff.
What I really needed was a day off. I take one, lose my wallet, have to be brought home in a patrol car, scaring staff half to death until I explain, and never did get to see a movie.
*
A “typical” shift:
They try to shut down the smoking area.
A near riot ensues. Why?! Facility staff had confiscated all the
chairs. The food vendor who had an
exclusive bid for the Arena demanded to enforce the contract and charge us
three times what our provider charged us.
In the Arena we had a microcosm of
Anyway I get the smoking area reopened. There’s noise at lights out. It turns out to be a guard who turned up the game. Irony: when we do have a wallet stolen, the large gold toothed victim finds a witness and the possible perp who claims to have turned it in “up front somewhere” and I take them all to the policeman but he will not take a statement. (Some kids, encouraged, steal some shoes the next day.) When I leave there the large man is still angry about his wallet, hounding me in his squeaky Tyson voice, tank top, and gold chains. There is nothing I can do.
Gadson is a talker. His story is interesting at least, although I have heard it before. His house blew up because the pawn shop beneath sold brown powder illegally- he ought to sue! Hw knows too the levee was blown! He is a survivor of three heart attacks, wears oxygen at night, last one over the bridge during Hurricane Calire. He helps others: with has shortwave, they all know him. He loves gadgets, has an air pump he lends everyone, a high-powered flashlight he uses to spot leaks in our roof and Samuel in the bleachers! I cannot understand the loss he feels at his gun collection his dad gave him at the kitchen table, his baby he waded back in to kiss goodbye, a dog. His brother is all he has left and he talks of him with nasal devotion. Gadson has a heart attack that night!
He told the guard not to wand him. They have to line up to be searched every time they go out. It can take an hour so some stay in. They use a metal detector wand but Gadson has a pacemaker. They have protocol not to wand those with pacemakers and I tried to get Gadson’s medical record so the nurse would agree to write him a note about it…
We get him in the ambulance. I am helping his brother who is just distraught, a tough sonofagun fight back teats- to have survived everything and now, now… The next day a lawyer was coming to get them. I am helping him gather papers, medicine. The big man, strong smell, who not long ago would take on soldiers for a puff, he was now trembling, shaken. The EMTs said he would be all right, as did our nurse. But I never expected to see Gadson again, God’s truth.
Turn around from that and the guards have surrounded a very tall Black man with a large Afro and falling pants. “Shut up!” they say, pointing and call him “wolfman”. I have no idea how it started, again at the door. The man is clearly mentally ill, not violent and I radio for mental health as I manage to get him away from the soldiers. Soon he is sleeping. I can usually head these things off sooner but not all at once. The excellent counselor who works our shift arranges an eval the next day for him to get meds but he disappears before then. At least we avoided arrest.
*
There are so many nice residents, but so, so many alas that only the situations can stand out. Forgotten is the gap-toothed lady with the nice shoes and bag who asked “can I smell it?”, the other lady who always said “what part you didn’t understand?”, the Sikh lady with her lovely little boy, the man in the corner who somehow got medical to clear him for a tent (but still complained about the diet) around which he put a cardboard fence that the kids decorated with flowers and a sign that said: “Thank you FEMA!”
What insists on attention now is the methadone situation. We have one fellow I call Mr. Kindness in treatment and frequently in nods, a very dignified white fellow with a walking stick, young but aged by hard living, hidding behind a nice mustachio. He is one of the ones who wakes up not breathing. Another time he is sitting up half covered in vomit. I use the medical and mental health staff freely!
The problem now though is the tattooed couple with do-rags who say they are in methadone treatment and their doctor before used to cut their dose because now they are in serious nods. Nobody would care about them except for their baby (although one man showed interest in their preteen daughter too, until we discouraged that). I knew calling CPS would result in no action and a noisy investigation and I needed them to talk to me. They were talking- he told me the harrowing story of their escape. But then the soldiers shut that option down. They started hounding the couple. One was in there off duty watching, stalking. I talked to the commander before about some soldiers crowding staff (flirting, okay- the night is long) when they locked a guy in the bathrooms where I had to remind them we had put a terrifed old lady terrified; they were not apologetic- that time the shenanegans stopped! This was a new unit though. This time they were crowding clients. I asked them to stand down, understand they are not trained in addiction or mandatory reporting as we are not trained in shooting M16s, so let us have space to do our work. Excuses, so I took it to Mark who was ex-military and he straightened it all right out- no more crowdng. But too late for me to get the methadone couple to talk any more after their survival story:
Katrina was his ex-wife’s name. He knew this one would get him. He wakes up to go down to the kitchen and sees water coming through the door, looks out and immediately yells for the wife to grab the baby. He has the daughter grab medicine, formula and out they go through the window, pass the baby up. The neighbor’s house had an upper story. He cannot get in though, waist deep in water, the door stuck, locked, he tried to kick, frantic. He is a big guy saved by a plank or pole that floats by he uses to super-humanly bust in. They get upstairs and the water reaches chest-high on the girl up there! Mother still has to hold the baby up! He finally finds a floater and goes for help, helps out an old neighbor on the way, gets in a canoe, comes for the family. It has been two days.
They all head to higher ground, a prison. The prison, already over-capacity will not hold any more people. They get her in a hospital with the children while he goes to help rescue folks. When he gets back they will not let him in with his family. They hear about a dock. They all go there. By luck a police boat comes by to check the dock. It has been several more days. They wait hours for a bus to come to take them here.
Here they are hounded day and night. Heroes? Villains? Heroin nod nightmares!
“Scared?” he asks me. How should I answer to calm him, and me?
This family is white. Most of the residents are Black, let’s be clear. Most of the staff are white. In fact a local nurse is one of the only Black staff and what an asset as she finds the local methadone clinics at last. Little here is black and white.
*
Not all is ugly here. Red Cross runs a very good school and they win good mention in the press. I was offered a position with the school or press relations. I consider it, not sure how long I can stand the strain. There is noise of closing the shelter, or of going to eight-hour shifts. In the end is W who discourages me. He is coming to sign a quilt or something, so they say. I do not want to meet him. Up until now he has sent one visitor only. Was it from FEMA or HUD or any federal welfare agency? No, it was the Drug Czar, a slap in the face!!! What message does that send?
The head of Crisis Corps emails me to make sure I am okay
from Rita. Where am I? I share some good
press with her. She writes back that she
is coming to take me back to FEMA. Shall
I fight it? Well, I decide at least she
should see what the loss is. I arrange press
access for her, very difficult. She is
coming with a film crew. Even we staff
have no picture of the
*
I found this scrap of “Allegra-D” stationary in my bag back home a while later. It had a song on it a client had written. It is anonymous, unattributed, found it on the Arena floor:
See I’m stuck up in
and I don’t know what to do.
I’m living in a shelter
getting free clothes and food.
Didn’t wanna do it
but I had no choice.
In my mind and ears
can hear my momma’s voice.
She said it’s all right.
All you doing is getting smart.
But I can’t understand
how people trapped a van,
water in our houses,
cars and on they land…
Another paper I found was a meeting agenda, dated 9/20:
client volunteer badges to be taken back, national guard
change out to
*
My last shift: Only a
couple of crises. Announcements: FEMA was coming in the morning to sign up
certain people for travel trailers. So
and so please come to the information desk for a message. A Red Cross Family Service Center has finally
opened uptown. Those who applied for CAT
cards at the
I had fought this unfair decision. Apparently they could not be sure all
The
The concert: Zydeco!!! Do you
wanna go? Funny thing about concerts in
the West African country of
Back in the
But she could not do anymore! I let her vent a while. It is time for me to go but she is not looking for solutions yet. Finally she asks me. I tell her, and her family, one of them, anyone, needs to go apply to get the CAT card. It should not be her. She has done all she can do for now. Later she will do more. Now she will rest. She had just had her wisdom teeth out the day before and was in pain. Would anyone help? Of course one of her family volunteered. She was still not that satisfied. I told her also I would personally right now go complain to Red Cross upstairs but it would probably not change facts but I would do that for her and for everyone. And I did. The way to help folks out of a shelter, friends, is not to force them OUT but to find somewhere appealing for them to go TO.
On my way out I decided to do one more thing to try to end
on a positive note. I fail. Mr. Patel, a lonely
Will we ever stop blaming the victim? The crew that replaced me at Red Cross was so nice. I had complete confidence in all except the new nurse who thought Gadson’s heart was hypochondria. She says she knows the “paranoid type”: he often repeats his stories verbatim. Gadson had still not come back from the hospital. No news.
I am haunted by the image of a couple from
Fear
& Loneliness in
They shot Hunter’s ashes out a canon! His soul entered my body in
Kali whirled. Kali crashed. Kali cried indiscriminately. Kali laughed again, bitterly.
Mary, head of Crisis Corps came with her camera crew. She did not have the decency to come pick me
up her self at the
They had promised to take me to the DRC where my team
was. Now they were not sure there was a
car to take me, nor if anyone there could actually use
me. I had already asked to work at the
DRC in
I remember a FEMA complaining about working seven days a
week, telling me about ingrates. Some
woman was living in her car according to her by choice: “She left five
shelters!” I suggest to her that the
lady had probably suffered abuse and could not stand crowds. “Oh.”
Go FEMA yourself!
*
I set out to make my own connections, having learned not to rely on FEMA. There was actually a Crisis Corps volunteer who had opened a DRC somewhere in the downstate area with no computers, just a cell phone he used all day. He could use me. So he had been made a “lead” somehow. What had changed in the interim since I’d left FEMA? I realized then FEMA was moving out soon. My theory is that they do not open the DRCs when they are so desperately needed. Only at the very end do they open a bunch so that they can say that the had such and such big number in the state. Clearly though those DRCs were not supported, and they closed soon after.
So the next day I assert my way into someone’s car
*
There I was in the ruins of the
Naturally I went looking for a drink.
*
It wasn’t my fault. I tried to find an ATM and food at
first. The giant TV at the JFO had said
the casino was open but it was boarded up.
I walked the length of Canal, palm trees and street lights strewn about,
SUVs smashed to knew-height, saw a tourist office front crashed in- I wanted a
map but scared to enter it and be shot.
Signs everywhere read: “We shoot looters.” Most signs were damaged: “Doubletree” read “D
ubl t ee” for instance.
Giant hoses sucked at the guts of the large hotels. I walked the whole way down to the
Walking back up I saw a newspaper dispenser with this headline- “Katrina Takes Aim” dated: August 28, 2005.
Nothing was open, I was told, except on
*
I eat in a place called Desire: turtle soup, crawfish cakes,
jambalaya, bread pudding, all on paper plates, Purple
Haze beer in plastic cups, sanitizer lotion in the bathroom, the water unsafe
to even wash with. The Acadiens came down from
I listen in on the conversation of the EPA Agents. Some woman had brought a suitcase of cosmetics, five moisturized shampoos, etc. Some guy had slept in their coed dorm in the buff!
The place is attached to a hotel. I go in their lounge and watch the Saints game- surreal. The place is full of Police and FBI and other agents. I am the only one without a gun and I think: this is a recovery operation? Or an occupation?!
I steal a box of pizza and leave.
*
I grabbed the goddess, wrestled her into the air, felt her dark arms encircle me.
Flashbacks good and bad: Entering the Arena for the first time, a gladiator, doomed. I dashed the egg on the altar and pulled thorns from lion paws. I cried.
It is Halloween and I am escaping my Ph.D. French Program at
Rice in
One time I passed out in the
Easter- I curl up in a sculpture somewhere in the French Market. Staying at the YMCA, sunset shines on trolley tracks. Pink and green lights atop a tower. Clippity clop of the horse-drawn carriage. I decide to go to the French Market.
*
It is abandoned.
Branches are down and the wind whips leaves around. “Do you know what it means to miss New
There is an umbrella dancing. It rises, falls,
banks, twirls. I am in a children’s
book. Wait that it music I hear! I walk up to Decateur,
past taped up windows like lovely snowflakes.
I remember reading a surrealist in
A beat up tuba plays bass to a guitar and a one man band
keeps time.
I feted the Millenium here with a couple on the cop car hood manacled together, kissing as the fireworks exploded and we all guessed it must be about time, yeah, about that time.
*
The signs on the free houses (bars) say: “State ID Required”.
Written over it is: “Or Federal”!
“Are you press?” they ask me again. They noticed my badge tucked into my pocket-
in
There starts to be a routine of faces, like bluebottle flies.
“No,” I try to explain but I see they do not believe, what with this badge and the other- who am I? A good question.
“It was supposed to be Decadence,” they explain. They talk freely to me nonetheless. Katrina had interrupted this festival, a celebration of alternative lifestyles. I tell them how I just seen a troop transporter passing beneath the balloon rainbow and how I had mortified them all (or most) with my wiggly-fingered “yoohoo!” wave…
They begin to talk among themselves. My pallet fence-toothed new friend with
bubble gum shaded lipstick insults the Mayor for fleeing to
*
They put up plastic bags of water against flies just like in
This sign on a garage business and home: “Help a Brother Out! (all electric kitchen)”
Another sign from
We have weird priorities!
All the construction workers in
*
The zydeco player tells me there are two accordions in the same box of his instrument.
In the souvenir shop I am horrified to see the caricatures of slaves on magnets, slick pornographic playing cards and lacquered alligator claw backscratchers, some Christian literature: “Why bad things happen to good people”, a t-shirt that says: “FEMA- Federal Employees Messing Again!” I love the Pakistani misspelling and marvel at the t-shirt response time, faster than FEMA can get food in!
Some guy in the Blues Bar complains to me there are no women. What it is with machismo and mustaches?
There are fridges out on all the corners.
Blue Roofs moved through my brain.
In the Cajun Asian restaurant I swear there was a flying
mermaid on the ceiling! The bisque came
in a martini glass and the
*
The guard at the gate of
“Ya ta hey,” I say and she lets me
past. The Ranger gives me a birth in the
gooseneck of their own
Nightmares.
*
Middle of the night trip to the porta-potty: what is that sweet peppermint smell?
Morning. I reach Tim on the phone at last. He is in a hotel nearby, doubled up in a room
with a coast guard agent. The hotel will
not let me stay so I sneak in and sleep on the floor one night for the
company. Tim is sour though. He is furious with Jimmy “technically, it’s
true” for defending a racist remark on TV about Black babies and
abortions. I head back to my gooseneck
in
Another lost day while Tim tries to secure me a spot at his DRC. Randal has just dropped out apparently: another one down.! I was still a monkey jumping on the bed…
I was not too mad at Peace Corps for dumping me- I was supposed to be resourceful and independent, but why then did they yank me from Red Cross where I was being self-directed? Mary said she had tried with lawyers in D.C. the get FEMA to release us to other VolAgs… They already had anyway, I insisted!
*
This bar never closed. The bartender is friendly but wary of the guy next to me. I am glad I am alert to this as the fellow starts to talk to me, nice for a second, then into the strange challenges. He is rich from cutting branches of rich people’s roofs. He is also a counterfeiter.
“But what good is all the money with my boy dead in
He is gaunt and I decide to believe him whether or not it is true. I am used to sucking in the pain now, numb. If he is so rich why doesn’t he buy me a drink? I wonder… The women next to him do not seem interested either. They are absorbed by their little mutt that scampers behind the bar under foot. I feel sick, go up the rickety winding stair to a closet bathroom, Art Deco. I am alone.
*
The gonzo journalism seemed purposeless and I wanted to make sense of things. The sky was gray again and I am not even sure I wanted to talk to people anyway. Horse charged us in the streets obscuring the camera view of police beatings. Nobody cared before and soon none would care again, perhaps already. This is the moment? Throttle it?!
I’m glad the SUVs were crushed. There, I said it! And the rich cannot sit in their suites atop it all anymore. They must come down the street for free meals like the rest! I just wish the storm took away the blue hairs’ casino boats too! No, that’s not true. Peace, restless angel. Have another drink. Brooding clouds.
*
N’awlins is not the balloon flower you buy. It is the dollar you give the street clown. Sure it is festive, but the Big Easy if I understand it right is also coffee time, Dead Man’s Blues as well as Dixieland brass, coming back from the funeral dancing but also going out their mournful to cry on stone Tombs, green with moss. I never get the grand tour of devastation; no doubt that trolley will leave soon from the Garden District down to the Levee or what’s left of it. What is left of the Metarie Mansions, the shotgun row houses of the 9th Ward? I do not know. I want solitude. I walk past the warehouses, over the tracks to the wide, wide River. I watch the brown waters, now so quiet, flow by and I wonder what can be cleansed in it, and where the dead go…
*
Get back to the Center.
I went to
We lost my friend on the way back from the Irish pub singing “When I came home…” and “What do you do with a drunken sailor”. There was a rainforest in a bar. There was a flaming fountain. All that was gone now. My favorite little patio café under the trees seemed ran-sacked.
Disclaimer: drinking is not a good stress relief strategy, as I learned at FEMA training. Am I a hypocrite? It may surprise, but in all the mad musings of this time there were but a few drinks to be had. Rember also- I had no money, and very little will. For coping? Try yoga instead.
I wrote all this in a donated children’s notebook with little angel and devil monkeys on it.
Trailer
“No ball is official until it is called” reads a sign on the wall.
The
Tim used to use visuals to explain the complications of the Byzantine process to clients.
So did I: I drew a screw.
*
“I think I figured something out,” Tim explains, “maybe there’s a little FEMA in every… female? Could it be?”
He receives strange pop-ups on his laptop:
“Come closer. I cannot catch your thought patterns”
“I’m trapped in here”
“We’re watching you.”
Is it the Blackwater Security guys
screwing around? Certainly they are far
from professional, eyeing pretty female clients, making comments. The coffee box says: “Contribute or else…”
There is no coffee. These guys make a thousand a day with Halliburton as
personal security associates in
*
Tim told me this story about their evacuation to
Then they got to the Comfort Inn with the head of FEMA himself sleeping upstairs and them bunk down in the inside parking area with a generator inside! Charlie admitted after that he had with eagle eye seen the generator inside, Tim insisted. It is not of course safe to run generators inside, as most of us know. Tim and Paul and others had to be hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning! “FEMA is trying to kill me!” Tim claims.
*
Our clients in Bouttee are rural poor for the most part with some middle class homeowners among the supplicant. They are for the most part grateful, cordial, even formal. I receive many kind words and handshakes. I hope that one day we will have more to give them more than lines to wait in, that we will give them resources and opportunities along with sweaty handshakes, and without the endless questions!
What item would you miss most if your house went away? Who knows what straws a man or woman will grasp at in attempts sometimes vain to reclaim their lives. One man showed me his family reunion photos proudly. Families seemed large in this part of the world. No doubt folks received more aid from kin there than they ever would from FEMA, leastways I hope so!
I could not help but contrast the class they showed, these “throw-away people” of the forgotten underclass, with the common crudeness of the FEMA process.
*
A woman broke down crying.
Her sister had finally made it back to
Another woman presents upset, her husband called her “disgusting” at fifty years old. He watches her to see when she goes out, hits her with furniture for talking to another man about anything. She is separating their stuff. But she will stay as always, she says- he has a job.
Lashanda has beautiful
tattoos. Her children are at home: a
nine-year old girl with “skin asthma” and a teenage boy with epilepsy “catches
seizures in the sun”. She was pregnant
again but on the road to
*
Men tended to show depression as frustration or even anger sometimes. One man was storming off when I surprised him:
“You’re a long way away to be a Patriots fan!”
He was wearing a
“I guess I haven’t lost my job. I guess I don’t have a seventeen year old son!”
I looked past the codes in his case and found his son’s name thank goodness. We talked about his son. Only later did we get to his lost job in the granite quarry. He had been turned down for Disaster Unemployment as well as for FEMA. It took time to establish the details; there was not much I could change. But I did get his to go to Social Services and the Crisis Counselor.
Another man was very calm. I had to call over a FEMA permanent employee the JFO had sent to sort us out since his case was so complicated. She ticked him off while my back was turned. I asked her to step back to explain the case but she refused, suddenly hard of hearing. She walked off on him! He apologized to me- he never usually lost his temper. But she suspected him of who knows what…. He was a school bus driver who had saved up eight thousand hard-earned honest dollars. He had spent it all that month helping out his whole family. This I understood but she apparently could not believe. Now he was broke, sleeping in his bus, his wife had left with the last of the money, and on top of all this his case was locked up for duplication for some reason. We wrote an appeal letter together. I apologized for us, for so much…
*
I do not think that I am somehow scapegoating
FEMA and Homeland Security for all the fiasco, like some say. I saw FEMA up close and it was not
pretty. Monetary waste was usual in
operations while we argued with clients over $20 for windows. I remembered shivering in the JFO in the
early autumn heat of
Luckily for us at our DRC, we were protected from FEMA central for the most part by our courageous Coast Guard leaders. Our DRC was even cited for sending clients to their Senators when FEMA cut the $2000 expedited sum which was the only good thing they were doing. Many missed the “cut” without rhyme or reason. We Xeroxed the elected representatives’ contact numbers for our clients! For this we were sanctioned, but our blue uniformed leaders winked!
Later I meet a woman whom FEMA had called asking her who it was at our DRC that recommended she contact her congressman. I asked if they at least asked her what she needed? She said yes, and it was fixed the very next day. We called the press and kept on giving out the public servants’ phone numbers.
Some structure was inevitable and some just perverse. What possible reason could there be for telling a client they are “approved” if the “ineligible” code means they will never get anything? This it beyond confusing- it is criminal! I call it a con game, fraud, scam. My motto for FEMA:
“Adding insult to injury all over
*
Tim knows a Po Boy place. We escape there for a break. “I feel like I took a big shit!” Tim says- he had nearly broken down earlier when he had a rich housewife say “I guess you never went through something like this” and popped- “I walked away from two houses with the shirt on my back, lady, I wish you wouldn’t be so abusive!” He looks around, tells me she makes $140k a year- “Someone else talk to her.”
I can no longer remember antediluvian life. After me, the deluge! I feel sunken. On the commute to work no one talks much
anymore. Another time Adam talks about
strange women smooth in the mouth like honeycomb, but bitter. I convince Jimmy to stop at the coffee house
only to hear about United Way Outcome Measures.
This other Crisis Corps guy Mack is with us, popping a beer on the way
in to work to calm his hangover. He had
done the Crisis Corps in the
*
They call for me to attend to some clients from the
These folks know about hurricanes. Hurricane Mitch took their town, not a small village either. There were no roofs to cling to until help came in canoes or rafts. No helicopters came. They did not like to talk about it. They just wanted to fill out forms.
*
Another family had been evacuated to a State Park in
An older man came in, all chest hair and gold necklace. He had been Mister Louisiana! He lost eighty trophies in the slime. Now the pendant on his chest held heart pills. But he was still proud. He messed up the application online though and accidentally did two and now his case was locked up for duplication. HE was embarrassed but I told him not to worry. I had seen one lady who made herself six applications somehow!
“Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted,” said one client.
A common expense FEMA would not consider was freezer contents. They failed to realize that in this part of the world the hundreds of dollars worth of meat and especially seafood that were contained therein represented a significant asset for these poor folks:
a season’s eatin’!
*
“Hey, man,” says Tim in his hippie drone, “you gotta be FEMA flexible!”
Tim kept me almost sane with his humor and he kept me from leaving more than once with the sobering thought: Who would fill out chairs if we left? We would have to of course eventually. And FEMA did one good thing in the end I must say: They sent a social worker out to debrief departing staff before we returned to their homes. Boy did I need it but others refused to go behind the blue tarp to their detriment.
Tim, who returned every night to hotel dinner and TV tells me he saw the President give a speech assuring that everyone would get the same consideration after Rita hit. Twelve hours later we were briefed that FEMA had stopped the two thousand dollar expedited award on which everyone was counting.
“Know what FEMA means?” Tim tells me- “Fuck Every Mo’fo’ Around!
*
There was a woman whose husband she called a
“follower”. He went to
A man is broken up over his two pecan trees (three barrels each every year!) which had fallen. At first I think it is just grief, then I recognize survivor’s guilt: They fell on his neighbor’s house!
A veteran of World War II had been to the
An older man who had no letters (reading) caught the asthma. Another lady lost two parishioners in her N.O. church, elderly, one body still missing. Somebody heard about a bulldozer driven through a supermarket wall! There was a highway worker making $26k a year same as in 1987 who was under 310 when the storm hit- “I never saw concrete move like that before!”
*
Difference between rich and poor appeared even here. Monsanto had many chemical plants there in poor rural area; many clients had cancers. Meanwhile some rich parents complained about their own children’s awards when they did not get the exact same amounts themselves!
At this time I was able to talk to home more often, and this
I needed. I could relate to home life
somewhat but was reluctant to talk about my current experiences. Folks all over meanwhile told me their own
horror stories. One friend told me about a mom who crashed and killed her baby
boy evacuating somewhere in
*
FEMA is shameless. An old man who had been left by the
helicopters, jumped off a roof onto a scavenged life preserver, spent hours in
the water before reaching land, walked miles more, was evacuated to
Briefing: requests for reinspection now require an estimate by a contractor on letterhead with a business card. The contractors are all busy meanwhile and are gouging clients.
Good luck!
My advice for dealing with FEMA: don’t. If you must do: apply apply apply and then appeal appeal appeal. But expect nothing. When FEMA tried to send an agent out to “straighten up” our somewhat sympathetic DRC, Tim said we tore him up “like jackals”!
*
Tim had bile for insurance adjusters too whom he overheard
in his hotel dining room decrying the price tag of $100 billion for the
But lest you think Tim is anything but soft-hearted, picture
him holding the hand of a distraught woman at the airport mere minutes after
our arrival! He was warned not to become
over-involved, especially with
Tim would laugh at me when I was calling my girlfriend Chrissie. Said we were growing on each other like a “post-incident mold”. Secretly I think plans for my scavenger hunt marriage proposal excited him and brought a little joy in a dark day. We wrote FEMA poetry in the quiet moments. Mine to Chrissie:
Fearlessly I am
Evermore assured of you
Merciless
Angel
*
Later when I return home I will make “For Ever My Amor” part of my successful marriage proposal. Life will go on. It is important to discover why we survive. But it will be hard. It will take a while to realize I waking myself up with my own screams from dreams I cannot remember because they are other people’s nightmares…
*
On my last day I broke down.
It was not the woman in the wheelchair that got to me. She was facing amputation, cancer in her
leg. Yet she was the caregiver of her
family. Her husband was bed-ridden by
some illness and her mother invalid with age.
Her brother would help but was mentally ill and had not had his medicine
since the storm. They had evacuated to
“Let’s make a plan,” I suggested. We made a first step. She needed an advocate. We got her someone from Catholic Charities. I went around with her and we ended up hitting almost every stop in the DRC from Social Security to the Small Business Administration (the misnomer puts everyone off- they offer loans for homeowners). After an hour or so I put her in her van, tired but dry-eyed as she had been.
Then I met Joyce. She was just a regular grandma. She loved to garden and cook. All she wanted was an oven to cook the Thanksgiving turkey for everyone. FEMA trailers do not have ovens. She had at first gone to stay with her son in a subdivision nearby, but while the subdivision would let her stay, they would not let her granddaughters and their mother stay, so she left there with nowhere to go.
I tried to call the subdivision to put pressure on them, unsure of the legalities, appalled as always at the closed-mindedness and hide-bound rule worship of many Americans. But that was an anger path and I was not sure we should go down it. She agreed. She told me about the books in her basement all gone to mold. Her family Bible was in there, signed by generations. She started to sob, and so did I.
I put my screen down and sat with her a while. “You will never be able to replace that Bible,” I acknowledged. She had some hopes of freezing it or something, but slim to none really. “But you can start a new one!”
She jumped up and threw her arms around me and kissed my cheek and said in my ear: “Thank you. You gave me hope.”
That was it for me; I had to take a walk, bawling like a
newborn babe, looking over the fields and roads and sunny sky there that day in
Bouttee.
Forgive the
Kali is sated, calm.
She has had her mischief, for now.
She has danced and eaten. Now she
will sleep. Who knows how long she will
sleep? Who can reckon how many times she
has slept and awoken? She laughs but
also she dreams, and in her dreams she knows, and she cries. Until next time…