Hanging by a thread

When we arrived at 10:57 p.m., there were just enough streetlights remaining to reveal what was left of eastern New Orleans.

Even so, after the first few hours on Bourbon Street, I, along with my old friend, Heather Payne, began to feel as if we could save New Orleans one drink at a time. By spending much-needed tourist dollars, it seemed a realistic and convenient way to think. After all, the French Quarter looked the same, only cleaner, and nothing compared to what I had seen and heard in Mississippi. The men I met at the truck stop in Gulfport weren’t exaggerating; those places no longer existed.

That notion changed the next day, when we headed out to the Lower Ninth Ward, the city’s worst hit district. I soon realized how wrong I had been. The jazz and the beads seemed a world away from this place. Before you encounter the ripped, hanging street signs, you know you’re there. Houses completely thrown from their foundations, cars picked-up and hurled into other people’s yards and abandoned homes with spray-painted markings, indicating whether or not any dead were found inside. Others read in large desperation, “HELP.” All had the initials “TFW” across the front walls, which stood for “Totally F—–g Wasted.” And these were the more fortunate ones. To sum it up in eight words: This was not what America should look like. At that moment I was not too naive to believe I had some idea of what Hiroshima looked like the morning after.

Denise Ohillia was there, searching her former home for anything salvageable, now that it was permissible.

“It was rough, but God brought us through,” said Ohillia. “Right now, we’re at a standstill, but we hope to someday rebuild right here.”

She never blamed anyone. She wore a positive smile the entire time we were there, saying she was grateful to have visitors, giving me more than one hug.

“What we lost was nothing,” she said. “We are survivors. Others lost lives, and many are still looking for their children. But, as long as you’re alive, you can always rebuild.”

After meeting Ohillia, Heather and I became compelled to help in relief efforts. The partying could wait. In any way possible, I wanted to repay New Orleans for all the memories.

A volunteer group down the street called “Community for Christ” agreed to provide us with protective gear, but we chose to go it alone. After signing an emergency waiver, we received goggles, suits, face-masks and, luckily, rubber boots; I was still wearing flip-flops, no match for the broken glass, nails and ankle-deep sludge we would soon encounter. I hadn’t planned on trying to save the world that morning.

We rode through the neighborhoods until we found Robert Basley outside what was left of his home. I rolled down the window and asked if he needed any help. His reply was “Thank God, I’ve been waiting on you.” He assumed we were with FEMA. When he learned we were independent, he too was bewildered. He told us his house needed to be gutted, as all of them did; this meant everything left in the ruins, all the way down to the sheetrock, had to be thrown on the street in the hopes that FEMA would someday pick it up. All of the homes of the Lower Ninth were to be bulldozed. He warned it was a dirty job of hard labor and several risks. Regardless, Heather and I threw on our costumes, which looked like something from “Outbreak,” and finally attempted something productive.

We had been warned during our brief encounter with the organized volunteers that there may be dead animals inside many of the houses, and that we had better not open the refrigerator, for whatever food was inside last August would still be there- soaked in contaminated water. We worked for hours, though we knew we could not finish the job alone; the church groups sent about eight students to each house, and they had tools. But, we did our best. Mildewed couches, broken vanities, carpet, insulation, Blockbuster rentals that would never be returned-we quickly accumulated a pile by the deserted sidewalk of which we could be proud. I became dehydrated, still tasting the Southern Comfort from the night before, but New Orleans wouldn’t have had it any other way.

The child’s room was the toughest for both of us; we could tell it belonged to a boy from his water-logged racecar bed, his grimy monster trucks and from old Polaroids the family had overlooked or chosen to leave behind because of their warped and slimy distortions. It began to sink in that nothing the world had heard about this district is true: The media and politicians alike had labeled it as crack-ridden and crime infested, as did many we met in the more upper-class and relatively unscathed portions of the city.

When we had done all we could, we looked at our pile. Katrina was not just a news story anymore, not just another American tragedy; it was smeared through our hair, its fumes were in our lungs and caked in between our fingernails.

At the house next door, another refugee had returned to her rubble. Sandra Brooks lived down the block, but had come to the former home of Yolanda Brown, her best friend, a woman with an unfathomable story of survival. As she took me on a tour through the house, she explained how Brown survived the storm, a story as powerful as it was miserable.

“Yolanda was disabled and in a wheelchair,” said Brooks. “But, she made it to the roof, then to the tree outside, where she spent three days and four nights.”

Brooks pointed out in detail the route of her friend’s survival story. She said Brown broke through the roof and made it to a more elevated tree in her yard as the water rose. When we came to the tree, I noticed as Brooks confirmed, Brown’s gown and bathrobe still hung in the wind.

“How she stayed up there, I’ll never know,” Brooks said. “The city wanted to cut this tree down, but I begged them not to. That tree saved her life.”

Riding back to the Quarter, we were both silent. Along the drive, it occurred to me-even the places that looked the same were forever changed: the Convention Center wasn’t the Convention Center, but where hundreds of bodies were stored during the carnage. Canal Street wasn’t the path my friends and I used to stumble down, talking to girls during Mardi Gras past. It was the site recently home to forgotten, floating bodies. The palm readers in Jackson Square still revealed to me how long I would live and what my fertility rate was looking like, but even they had more to share than ever before.

“Katrina came in the night, with a voice like 10,000 screaming demons,” said Jerik Dadnarson, a professional palm reader. “Meteorologists had warned us for many years, but we always assumed it was going somewhere else.”

Dadnarson said he didn’t think he’d live to see that day, but as he watched the news the day before and saw a hurricane a third of the size of the Gulf of Mexico heading straight for New Orleans, he knew that day had come.

“They said, ‘evacuate,” but how does a city as poverty-laden as New Orleans– where 1/3 of the population owns a car–how the hell do you evacuate?” he asked. “There was nowhere to go. The mayor said he’d declare a state of emergency and someone would come. But, there was nothing that could be done.”

As Dadnarson spoke, his eyes began to swell with tears. It was obvious he had told this story many times before.

“I was in a building on Decatur Street that had weathered every other storm. I figured it would weather one more,” he said.

Like many, Dadnarson agreed the storm wasn’t the nightmare, but the aftermath that followed.

“The winds moaned all night. Then there was darkness, not a light in the city,” he said. “The news from my transistor radio sounded like that of a war zone. The savages were all around, but they said the calvary was on the way. But, there was no water, nothing, and no one came.”

Dadnarson said Mayor Ray Nagin then instructed the remaining residents to wrap any dead in blankets and leave them on the sidewalk.

“They had enough to worry about with the living. FEMA hadn’t come, the National Guard hadn’t come. Where the f-k was the help?”

Dadnarson and his family had to scavenge for food, water and batteries to survive. They were not thieves, he said, just people trying to stay alive.

“We had to worry about the police, who went psycho, shooting people on sight,” he said. “They said if we didn’t evacuate, they’d shoot us. Sure, we could smell the bodies, but it was our home, damnit and we wanted to stay, and I’m still right here. I will never forget the 12 days and nights living in my besieged city, and I will never forget Katrina.”

We left Dadnarson and headed back to Bourbon; needless to say, we needed a drink. I had drank at Johnny White’s before, but now, it was different. History will remember this hole-in-the-wall bar as the only place in the entire city of New Orleans to never close through the entire saga of Katrina. While major headlines across the country read, “City is left to the dead,” the guys at Johnny White’s were still serving Jack n’ Cokes and giving a safe haven to those who had no place left to go. I asked the bartender if she’d give me the story.

“Come back during the day,” she said. “This is still the Big Easy. Enjoy your drink tonight.”

She smiled and walked to the other end of the bar to greet the hectic 3 a.m. crowd, carrying on through another night.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 7 2006. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry