I sat with my stuff at my feet in the waiting area by the gate at Chicago O’Hare, waiting to board a plane for the second leg of my flight home to Louisiana. I had claimed a prime seat in the row nearest the jetway, and I had my headphones on, when a tall, thin African-American man in an airline uniform walked up to the counter and picked up the microphone.
Time to board? I lifted my headphones off to listen. “Ladies and gentlemen, we will be boarding this flight in a few moments. But first, just for you – this Christmas carol,” the man said in a rich tenor. And he sang:
I’ll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
I don’t cry in public. I just don’t. But I had a hard time with it. I watched people from the other waiting areas, passersby, start to gather around. I was born and raised in central Louisiana, a four hour drive from New Orleans. We were the farthest away, of anyone in the family: everyone else was closer to where my family was based, in New Orleans, Donaldsonville, Metairie. Now I was going back. For the first time in two years. The first time After Everything Happened.
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents on the tree
I shopped well. Not only had I acquired presents for nearly everyone, they were all flat enough to fit into my suitcase. None of the family I was bringing them to had lost everything. I looked around the waiting area and wondered who was going back to their family home for the first time since Everything Happened.
The plane ride was smooth and I landed and was received with love by my brother, my aunt, my cousins. And after some visiting my brother and I got into his car and drove to the site of the 17th Street Canal levee break. The neighborhood that was flooded was mostly single story homes, with a water line above the doorways of most of the houses. The people there, they lost everything. There was debris everywhere. A drowned car that had gotten washed onto the median. (They call it the neutral ground, there. But now I call Coke “soda” and I am in that moment a stranger to my family.) Red X’s were painted beside the door of each house. The initials of the search crew. The number of bodies found.
Christmas eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
There are FEMA trailers here and there. That’s what everyone calls them: FEMA trailers. They’re plain white travel trailers, most of them. Small. You could pull them behind a car or truck. They have one window and one door. I can’t imagine fitting a family of any decent size into one. Some lots have more than one, and I have heard at least one story of a family that has the parents and one child living in one trailer, and three other children living in a second. Because one trailer just isn’t big enough. But it is a roof and walls, electricity, and running water.
The trailer parks full of them are the strangest thing of all. Because they’re all identical, the same unyielding white. You could get lost in them, never find your own trailer in the sea of them all. You could drown in the impersonal sameness.
The Times-Picayune reports that there is much political wrangling over sites for more trailers. The mayor released a list, but council members objected and he has been forced to step back as they claim he did not live up to an agreement to allow them input on the selection process. One council member, who wasn’t named, tried to reject every single proposed site within his district. There are rows and rows of the FEMA trailers sitting at staging grounds, waiting to be deployed, sited, hooked up with electricity and water. Only then are the keys turned over to the new occupants.
There are many who are still sleeping in tents and cars, and waiting for their trailers. Waiting for their homes. Waiting for a sense of normalcy that seems elusive. Everything here, every conversation, every thought, is divided into Before and After.
I’ll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams
All this strikes me so deeply it’s hard to find words. I am struck with a deep and pervasive sadness. Not only that. A sense of shame. Shame, to witness all this and yet feel so helpless and powerless. These are my people. Living in homes with blue tarps on the roof. Living in trailers, living in cars and tents, sifting the shards of Before and clinging to whatever is left them in this time of After. And we will never, never, never, never, ever get Before back.
Only in our dreams.
Furryjester, thank you so much for sharing this. I’m speechless. I hope you get to truly enjoy the fellowship with your family for Christmas. Paz.
Thank you. It’s been really good. I haven’t got to spend time with my family in a long time and you almost forget how nice it is.
You may not have cried but I did reading this and I don’t cry often either. And sometimes dreams are all we have to get us through.
You’re right, and we’ve got to hang on to them, otherwise, what’s the point? The one thing I insist upon believing fiercely is that there is a point.
Finding the balance between expressing deep emotions and conveying the intellectual content of those emotions is really difficult and you have done a beautiful job of it.
Thank you very much. It can be hard for me, I start to feel self-conscious for being so sentimental. And it’s hard to explain. I didn’t grow up in New Orleans but it’s still a part of me. We came here so often. Mardi Gras every year. Family visits. A big Catholic Louisiana family.
Thank you brother, for being on the spot to report to us how people are.
The reason why that council member didn’t want any trailers in his district was because he didn’t want a ‘certain element’ there. You know those code words.
All of this is making 70 and 80 year old black women sleep in their cars; making families sleep for the umpteenth time in makeshift tents on the ground next to ruined homes. This is SOME shit.
Where is leadership? Where is compassion?
You’re welcome. And thank you. You’ve done a lot to keep this issue before us. The Lord’s work, as they say.
What really broke my heart yesterday was to hear, on a local call in radio show, residents going after each other because some had held flood insurance and others hadn’t, and some who hadn’t were getting checks from the government, and some were getting bigger checks than others, and…
There’s no solidarity. It’s like our whole society has lost solidarity as a virtue and a value. I wanted to call into the show and say so but I didn’t dare, because they don’t need some outsider lecturing. Bad enough I’m driving through the neighborhoods taking pictures like a damn tourist, but I needed to see and to be able to tell people.
Sorry I wound up posting and running last night. It looked like there weren’t many people around, and I was wiped.
I appreciate your writing this. With a few days off for the holidays, I’m able to give my saddness and rage about all of this some room to be. And I am so sorry that, for many of us in this country, we have moved on and forgotten.
Yesterday I went to iTunes and bought the video of Stevie Wonder’s song “Shelter in the Rain.” Its really beautiful and all proceeds from the sale go to his Wonder Foundation for hurricane relief efforts. So, with a simple click and $1.99, you can bless your soul, support hurricane relief, and support BooTrib, all at the same time. Just do it!
I was in Homestead 3 days after Andrew flattened it. I was there with others from along the east coast to assist members of my wife’s family. The devastation was overwhelming and the look in people’s eyes…vacant, in shock. Soldiers marching in columns down neighborhood streets and the sound of thumping Hueys and searchlights in the sweltering and blackened night. Surreal.
That the people of New Orleans are still forced to sleep outside is beyond immoral. It’s a criminal action against Americans at the hand of those who should be protecting them.
I understand your feelings of shame at feeling helpless. I feel that way. The task is enormous.
But in writing here, you prove that you’re not helpless at all. You do us and them a great service by keeping us informed.
Thanks to you. Thanks also to Blksista and Duranta
Peace
A criminal action is just what it is. I am so very, very angry.
OMG my heart breaks as I sit here in my comfortable house- this is all too awful and terrible- in the true sense of the words.
Thank you all for reporting reality.Special thanks to blcksista and duranta and polydactyl for keeping me on my toes.
Oh my friend, I am so moved by your account of what it is like and the feelings it has involked for you. I weep for those that are still living in squalor. No one on the face of this Earth should have to live in a tent….for any flipping reason.
I know I am guilty of moving on. But you and duranta and blkstr must continue to remind us of what it is like for the people of NOLA. Shame of Americans everywhare to allow this to happen to these victims of the Storm, natural and man made.
It’s really hard. You just want to numb yourself or to move on for your own mental health. I wanted so badly when the hurricane hit and when we saw how bad it was, to just come down here and help. I made the decision not to because I had just started a new job two weeks before, my first real chance at financial stability in years, and I could not bring myself to give it up even though I felt this call, these people who needed me elsewhere.
I did what I had to do but I will always feel guilty about it.
My Christmas wish is for Mayor Nagin to get some balls and take charge of this trailer issue.
The othere wish I have (there are just two)is for everyone to realize the free market system will not rebuild this city in a way that welcomes home all who want to return home.
My understanding from the Times-Picayune was that he tried, with this big list, and got slapped down.
As for the free market. I think a lot of people realize that and just don’t give a shit. To put it bluntly.
On the radio, a woman called in and sang a song: “I’m dreaming of a white trailer”
I guess she hasn’t got hers yet either.
I heard that some couple was being paid $1.50 per mile to haul these trailers one at a time from Illinois. They do it a couple of times a week and they are flush.
I’ve seen huge staging grounds full of them. I guess the delay is in getting them hooked up with water and electric (as they call it here).
Duranta’s right about Nagin. I’m not defending people who don’t want FEMA trailers in their neighborhoods, there’s certainly a lot of racism or just plain selfishness behind the NIMBY attitude we’re getting out of the residents of the less damaged areas. However, Nagin seems to be unable or unwilling to explain his decisions. Back in Sept. and early Oct., he refused to explain the delay getting into the more heavily damaged areas. It was the middle of Oct. before I was able to get into my apartment to find out whether I still had any winter clothing; there may well have been valid reasons for this, but he never explained them. Now it’s the same thing with the trailer sites. People in both rich and poor (A.L. Davis park is in one the poorer parts of town) areas point to vacant lots near the parks Nagin wants to use for trailers and want to know why they need to give up their park. It’s a reasonable question; there may well be good answers (costs maybe), but Nagin seems to have some kind of mental block against answering questions. I’m truly appalled by the attitude of some my neighbors, but Nagin’s not showing a lot of leadership.
You’d surely know more than I, I haven’t been here. Not being able to communicate about your decisions, that’s not so good.
I hope you are doing okay this Christmas. My aunt was just telling me earlier that she had tried to give away clothes and no one would take them. And a lot of people she knew were thinning out their closets and had a hard time giving stuff away. If you are in need of winter clothes (or any other type) I could ask around.
Thank you for the offer, but miraculously my apartment didn’t take on any water. According to the flood maps, I should have had about a foot(my street’s higher than the surrounding streets and my converted garage apt. is set back enough that I didn’t get the water that the basement apts in front of me did), which would have meant mold on everything by the time they opened my neighborhood. I’m sure that there were valid reasons for the delay, but the mayor’s office didn’t explain them. Now there might be valid reasons why the vacant lots people point to near parks are unacceptable for FEMA trailers, I can think of a few possible ones, but the mayor can’t or won’t explain them. By refusing to explain his decisions, the mayor makes it easier for people to take that NIMBY attitude. I’m sure that a lot of people would still take it, I just wish he wouldn’t make it so easy for them.
Thanks again for the offer, I suppose the people that really need it are still scattered or there’s some sort of distribution problem.