AFTER RITA

Youngsville, LA

Rita has passed through the area for the most part, yet the winds and rains still linger as she spins to the northwest. At nine this morning, P. woke us up by knocking once and then sticking her head in the door to the bedroom where we were staying.

“We’re fixin’ to head back to Kaplan. W. (aka Bozo') is anxious to get home and see about the house. You comin’?”

We decided to stay just a few more hours at F. and E.'s, a family of four who are the our host family's friends from Columbia. It had been a pleasant stay, albeit amongst stressful circumstances, and we did not want to rush the departure. All yesterday, as images of the storm loomed on the TV and the ticker-tape announced shelters opening, area curfews and school closings, Jeremy and I had romped and played with the three boys. Their thirteen year old daughter and I had bonded through jewelry-making and spent the afternoon comparing beading materials and making necklaces. Jeremy took one of the boys (who must to be called John) under his musical wing and began to teach him chords on the guitar. Yesterday was a day where we were able to enjoy the simplicity of children, good company , idle time and home-cooked Cajun gumbo (compliments of Bozo). We plunged right in, perhaps forgetting for a little while that this was not our family, this was not our town, these kids were not Dimitri and Chalaya (Jeremy’s niece and nephew who evacuated to Washington state with their mom) who were running around us in the living room, wrestling and calling each other childish names.
As I heard our family from Kaplan's eight-cylinder Chevy truck pull out of the driveway, I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. It was a “here-we-go-again” kind of dread that lodged itself in my upper chest- a mild desperation, a slight panic. Jeremy, we had fallen asleep again, opened his eyes at the sound of the truck’s departure.

“There they go,” he stated simply and looked at me through the fog of just-waking-up. Then his gaze shifted towards the window. Outside, trees swayed back and forth like sea grass and leaves blew down the street in every direction. As partners often do, we were both thinking the same thing. What the hell would we do next?

P.'s cousin, her husband and small daughter, who live near Forked Island in Vermillion parish, were left homeless by the storm the night before and were already on their way to P. and W.'s house in Kaplan. Their daughter’s house had part of it’s roof blow off. Their own home would probably have mild storm damage that needed to be tended to as well. Ironically, with Rita, the family who had opened their home to evacuees had become evacuees as well, at least for a day. And now they had their own crises to attend to.

There have been times in my life when I have chosen homelessness and the vagabond ways of the traveler. Yet, as I hitch-hiked with other ragamuffin twenty-somethings out for adventure, I always knew that I did so by choice. I could go back to the “straight” life (job, school, apartment) at any time. The difference with this is that this was no one’s choice. Not those in shelters, not those staying with families, not those who fled or were transported to the other side of the country- not Jeremy and I. I hold the fact that Jeremy and I are among the fortunate ones high in my consciousness these days. We have a vehicle, jobs and each other. Yet the fear and anxiety for the future remains. We are still looking for housing in a market that is saturated with 40,000+ evacuees. There are simply not enough rentals and even houses for sale for the demand. Meanwhile, rumors of FEMA trailers being brought in, of more checks to pay for rent swirl epherially around the evacuee community. My question – where are they? When will one see those trailers, that rental help to arrive in the state that needs it the most (LA)? All we see instead most of the time is a sea of busy signals and red tape.

Then there are the big questions in our little lives to consider, those that we avoid until they bubble over in us like sores that have turned blue. Are we staying nearby in vein, waiting for the city to reopen and our lives that we were just beginning to lead to resume? With the waters and winds of Rita, the fragile infrastructure of New Orleans is beginning to crumble again. Most of the levees have over-topped or are leaking. There is five foot of floodwater in the 9th Ward. Every time we hear news like this, our hearts break a little more. What I wouldn’t give to take just one step again into the French Quarter- that microcosm of humanity, history and mystism. To walk down Dauphine Street on a sweaty summer night. To watch for ghosts along Gov. Nichols. To curse the tourists who call for directions when I am on my bike and in a hurry. To hear the chimes of St. Louis Cathedral or the “Woo, baby’s” of idle men cat-calling to big-bootied women (including me) on Rampart St. To be a witness to the world in one of the places in the world that has witnessed the most.

But when I really and truly think of New Orleans, I think about how much I can never really leave her. Of how much I want to hold her in my arms, stroke her sticky, sweaty hair, tell her I will never let her go. “Not this kid, sweet baby, “ I would say amongst the sewage-water and trash, the little kids on stolen bikes and the armed national guardsmen rushing me out of the way. I would stroke and pray, stroke and pray. And I would say: “I ain’t never gonna let you go.”