And that's exactly what happened. The storm ripped into the area surrounding the Louisiana/Texas Border, leaving a path of destruction that rivaled the damage in the east. Resources, thin to begin with, were stretched nearly to the breaking point.
Squid had moved to Shreveport a few years previously, after burglars had broken into her New Orleans apartment and held the occupants at gunpoint while stealing what they deemed valuable and destroying most of what was left. We hadn't seen each other much since then (a story I'll leave to her, should she ever choose to tell it), so her offer to evacuate to her house came as a pleasant surprise. One of my fondest memories from that trip is the taming of her Husky (a Siberian, I think).
Nico - told you we were Velvet Underground fans! - had never been people friendly, and often had to be kenneled or put in the back yard when she and her husband were entertaining guests. When we arrived, they tried the pet taxi first. After a night of her growling and barking, all were in agreement that she might do better outside. It didn't make a bit of difference. When she wasn't eating or sleeping, poor Nico stood at the back door barking and trying to claw her way through the glass door. When deep scratches started to appear in it, I decided that enough was enough.
I slipped into the backyard, closing the door on the cries of protest that erupted behind me. I laid in the hammock that was stretched across their back patio, then urged her to come up and take a nap with me. We became instant friends, and she wasn't a problem for the rest of the trip.
(I've always been that way with so called "man-eaters." Some call me the Dog Whisperer.)
We didn't realize by how slim a margin we'd dodged another bullet until we got back to New Iberia. A mere 100 yards south of the RV park was a clear line of demarcation showing where the water had stopped rising.
We were eager to make another trip home. Partly to survey the damage south of where our earlier trip had ended, but also to take comfort in familiar surroundings. It sounds a little schizo, because nothing there was likely to evoke comfort. It matters not. I can honestly say that the zone of destruction, while heartbreaking, still had the magic feeling of contentment that nowhere else in the world was capable of bringing us.
All of that to say that we were homesick. Later, I came to realize that I was quite possibly the only person in my household that felt any desire to return. That's putting the cart before the horse, though. Something else happened before we got the chance to travel again. One of those things that religious people say are a chastening from God.
Like maybe he heard our cries that we'd been through enough, that things just had to get better. His answer was a thunderously loud:
"I'LL DECIDE WHEN YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH!"
Remember my surrogate mother, Tammy? She let a friend move into her spare bedroom after she lost Joseph. Her name was Belinda and she was dying of cancer. If was a grim reminder of her own recent battle with breast cancer, so she cared for Belinda until her passing. Then she went to stay with a friend in Mississippi. The memories of finding Joseph there, then watching Belinda lose her tenuous grip on life inch by crawling inch, drove her out of her own home. She let Brother Fro move in when Belinda became bedridden, and there he remained when she left. Alone, except for the ghostly vitality of Belinda & Joseph, who were so recently departed; and the heaviness of Tammy's absence.
(No. "Went to stay" is putting it far too lightly. She fled. Fled the pain. Fled the crushing grief. Just as we all have, to our own detriment.)
She never went back to see what was left of her house after the storm. The choice was taken out of her hands.
Mama Tammy (as she'd been known to so many of my generation) called my wife after Rita to let us know she was ok. She had gone to Houma after Katrina to be near her mother. While there some flooding had occurred, but they rode out the storm unscathed.
She had bad news as well. During the months following Joseph's funeral, her health began to fail. After a few months, she threw in the towel and went to see a doctor. There her worst fears were confirmed. Her cancer had returned and was now spreading to her liver. Furthermore, she had no desire to go through chemo again. She had given up.
My wife was crushed. This woman, formerly her aunt by marriage, had always been a "go to" when her parents were too fucked up to give a shit. Now she made it clear that we needed to go see Tammy as soon as possible.
... but things that had once been possible slipped out of our grasp without a moment's notice.
My father-in-law had been suffering with a lung disease known by the acronym MAC for several years (and we'll get back to it sooner than you'd like. I promise). His doctor was based out of Charity Hospital in New Orleans, and he had been unable to get in touch with him since Katrina. Eventually he was told to go to the Charity Hospital in Houma, where he was assured his doctor would be located while he was being treated.
He asked us to take him, so we left at 5:00 in the morning to beat the traffic. We arrived at sunrise, parked near the emergency room, then walked right into another of our life's most devastating moments.
Mrs. Lolita, Tammy's mother, was in the waiting room. Awakened by a noise, she had gotten up and found her daughter collapsed near the bathroom door. Unable to revive her, she called an ambulance and had her rushed to the hospital.
After my father-in-law was shown to an examination room and started on a breathing treatment, we went to Tammy's room. Aided by a ventilator, her breathing had become what I'd first heard of in Insomnia as a death rattle. Her cancer-ridden liver had released toxins into her body, turning her skin yellow with jaundice. After informing the doctor that we were family, he told us that her time had grown very short. Once again we had to call family with terrible news.
Her daughter answered the phone the first time we tried, and got there promptly. When she was informed that as next of kin she would have to sign the DNR order that Tammy had requested, she got into the bed. Those minutes that she spent with her arms around her mother, begging her not to go... to keep on fighting....
That is a hue I don't have the ability to paint.
Her son called back shortly after that heartbreaking interlude. He asked if I'd pick him up in Centerville, so I drove there at 110 mph with my flashers on. Reckless, yes, but my fear that she would slip away was more persistent than thoughts of safety.
A friend dropped him off at the exit, and we headed back to Houma. We made a little small talk , but it was for the most part an uncomfortably silent trip.
We made it, but only just in time. One moment she was breathing, and in the next she never took another. My wife went to break the news to her father, who was now more distressed by the fact that he would not be able to lend support to the family. They'd decided to admit him, and there he would remain for several days.
Jeff came back from Florida for her service. He told me that living with her while Belinda had been dying had been draining. When Tammy had gone to Mississippi after losing two people so closely together, it had felt like he was grieving for her as well. The house felt like a tomb. To this day, we sometimes wonder if she slowly lost the will to live during those sad, strange months. Can your emotional weather cause illness to attack? Highly debatable, but it seems quite likely. Especially in light of how things turned out later.
We rented a suite a couple miles from the funeral home, where Fro spent the night with us on the sofa bed. Two memories from her wake are crystal clear as I sit here tonight. My daughter, with a handful of Kleenex, weeping uncontrollably is one of them. It makes one wonder what kind of world we live in, that a 7-year-old can be caught beneath the load of such crippling pain. The other is that damned song. My wife made me buy a boombox and a cd. I can't recall the album title right off hand, but the song she got me to play was "Angel" by Sarah McLaughlin. It was one of Tammy's favorite songs. These days, I turn it off if it happens to come on. All I can see are people falling apart to the strains of it.
Her funeral was the moment that I first began noticing the effects of the antidepressants. Grief-stricken though I was, I didn't shed a single tear. They needed to come, but were nowhere to be found. For the longest time, I thought I had used a lifetime's worth over my brother. I really believed that the well had run dry. Much later, I came to the realization that I had been numbing rather than grieving. Pharmaceutically assisted grief control, dig?
After the graveside service, we got together with her children, her cousins, and all the grandchildren, which turned into a trip to Chuck E. Cheese. Afterward we ate at Outback. That's the last time I remember all of us being together at once.
Jeffrey didn't have to be back at work in Florida for a few days, and was eager to make a trip DTR. We were just as hungry to go, so we all made the trip together.
The flood waters were finally gone, but it was far too muddy to leave the roads. Everywhere we looked, the highway was the only place viable for parking. In Mom's neighborhood, we walked through many of the houses. They were all grim reminders of the destructive force that had plowed through town. At my house, the decision to break all the windows proved foolhardy. Flooding had occurred again just days later, spreading what was left of our possessions all over the neighborhood.
(I finally decided to look in my closet. Being OCD had paid off, it seemed. Exempting underwear and pajamas, all of my clothing had been hanging. When the hanger rod had pulled out of the sheetrock walls, everything had been so tightly compressed that only the items on each end had mildewed. I grabbed every shirt that Tammy had given me - some were gifts. One was hers, but Joseph wouldn't stop wearing it - and my favorite sweater. I still have that stuff.)
Dad's house was such a shambles that we had to climb over debris to get inside. In the living, under piles of unrecognizable garbage, we found a few of Michael's rims.
When we got to Empire, we were greeted by two-story houses sitting in the highway. Bub & Paula's place was gone, along with the boat sheds that had been in front of it. On my wife's grandmother's land, we found no sign of her aunt's or cousin's homes. Some of the siding from her grandmother's trailer was hanging from a tree. We found the rest of it several hundred yards away in the woods. After my wife got her bearings enough to point out where her grandmother's room had been, Jeff and I punched a hole in the roof and retrieved her jewelry box.
Her father's trailer had been nearly flattened. There was just enough room for Fro & I to crawl through it on our bellies. It was there that we saw one of the most astounding images of our entire trip. A small figurine of Jesus, arms upraised, stood illuminated by a beam of light that had found it's way around the debris.
(The number of places that were wiped clean while religious imagery - Christ, the Virgin Mary, crosses - was left untouched is enough to give one pause.)
A cow lay rotting in his back yard. The smell drove us away.
In Buras, my grandmother's place had been crushed like a tin can. My uncle's, directly in front of hers, was accessible but not stable enough for one to safely traverse. Sadly, they looked like a dozen roses compared to what lie a block south.
Her sister's home had been moved over a hundred yards, so my wife made a beeline for it. She refused to set foot in Tammy's yard. That was a job left to Jeffrey and I.
In the vacant lot across from the Pentecostal church, the red Cavalier she had given to her son sat like a liferaft in the middle of an ocean (It's pictured in my previous post. I actually found it on Google.) Her trailer? It looked something like a pretzel, if you can wrap your mind around that. Some rooms were crushed flat. Others were missing a roof or a wall.
The decision to evacuate with us had been last minute for Bro Fro. Tammy hadn't been home to pack anything. We searched high and low for the urns containing Joseph & Belinda's remains. We never located hers, but during a search that yielded nearly a dozen of her angel figurines to be saved for her kids - we spotted Joseph's. The top had come off, but the water hadn't carried anything away. His ashes had hardened like concrete. We took it with us to clean and place at the foot of his wife's tomb.
Looking back, I still get upset. Mama Tammy never got the chance to come see what had happened there.
Mr. Rene & Yale had fared a little better. Their houses had been built raised off the ground on pylons, and only had water in them until the storm surge receded. On the way to Rene's, we had to pass behind the high school. The biggest barge in the world was balanced precariously atop the levee. Driving past, it seemed one could feel it itching to be mischievous. The saddest sight at Yale & Vicki's was Michael's Plymouth. It had sat underwater for over a month, and was covered in debris. I felt my dream of a graduation present for Jaci - and another little piece of my heart - taking wing.
On the river road, the lot where Tammy's daughter had lived was empty except for the power pole. The satellite dish was still strapped to it. We parked and took a walk through the woods. From the looks of it, the lives of everyone in the parish were scattered over that mile or two of garbage that we walked atop. We found a few items that had been in E's house, but turned around when we realized the pile we were walking on was ten feet tall in some places.
Venice was much of the same. On the levee, the river side had basically become a landfill. Yale had been there first, marking the place that he'd found the cross with spray paint.
Something had changed between the trips by boat and that first on foot. We began to see a lot of animals that had survived. Elk, deer, wild hogs, and pelicans at first. Then lost pets. Cats and dogs seemed to be everywhere. Most of them were too traumatized to approach, but none of them turned their noses up at the food and water we left. The lesson in finding our own cat a few weeks previously had not been lost on us. We carried bags of dry food and water on every trip thereafter.
Back in New Iberia, I finally made it to a parish mental health unit. After filling out some forms, I found myself sitting in a therapist's office. We had maybe an hour long conversation, then he hit me with 2 questions that wound up being the crux of every session (then the only thing we talked about as our sessions grew shorter and we ran out of things to say):
"Are you having any thoughts of hurting yourself, or others?"
and
"How did you feel when you saw what was going on in New Orleans? How do you feel about the hurricane now?"
(Lord Jesus help us! I got so sick of that hurricane question.)
Then he gave me my scrip and told me to come back in a month. I did accomplish something good while I was there. I finally applied for a replacement social security card. The original had gone missing 9 years earlier, and I'd been squeezing by without it ever since. I still half expect my identity theft chip to be cashed in one of these days.
Soon after, I returned to work. The jack up had sustained severe damage to the legs, and was stacked in Fourchon while undergoing repairs. I rejoined my co-workers, and within a few months we were back on the water drilling. I found out while there that the company was giving small donations to the employees that had been affected. Unfortunately, the period allowed to sign up had passed when I returned and all parties that could have helped seemed to have lost interest.
My luck was no better when dealing with the federal government.
Our insurance company had been based in Covington(?), and while not catastrophically damaged, there were issues with power and such. Most businesses in the area were still closed, leaving them unreachable. In time, a hotline was set up to send messages to your insurance company stating that you needed to file a claim.
A few months before the storm, they set up a new insurance package strictly for mobile home owners. Flood coverage was included in the homeowner's policy. It seemed more convenient (and cheaper!) than paying for a separate flood policy, as had always been the norm. We went for it, and it bit us in the ass when everything played out.
Eventually they got in touch, did a phone interview to file the claim, and told me that an inspection would probably not be necessary. Several areas had been marked as decimated, with plans to pay the policies in full.
And pay it is what they'd done. I'd only been in the home for 7 years, and you know how mortgage loans are set up. In the beginning payments are interest heavy, with the percentage of principal slowing rising as the loan matures. They sent a check made payable to myself and the mortgage company. After signing and forwarding it on, we received a refund of just over $8,000 dollars.
By this time, FEMA had stopped playing nice. In the beginning, they granted emergency assistance money in small sums. As time went by, they began giving all applicants a bit of a hard time due to fraudulent claims that had been filed. I've lost count of how many people were called liars (some were called out for trying to claim the city of Plaquemine - near Baton Rouge - when they clearly meant Plaquemines Parish). The looting and violence in New Orleans had further biased them. We all went from victims to refugees to criminals in 3 easy steps.
When my insurance claim was payed out, FEMA wanted to know how much had been payed by homeowners and how much had been paid by flood. This was to determine what damage had been caused by flooding and which had occurred due to storm surge. There was no making them see that where we're from, storm surge and flooding were one and the same. Lots of legitimate claims wound up being denied by insurance companies and government agencies due to the blurring of those lines.
In the end, they denied us any assistance due to the insurance claim. I wrote a personal letter, asking what happened to the assistance the president had stood in Jackson Square promising. According to his optimistic plan, all those affected, regardless of how unlikely that seemed while standing amid the muck, would come out of this even better than they had been before. I knew that all those promises were legitimate as a three dollar bill when he side-stepped right back into the Gospel according to Bush - the war on terrorism.
(He wasn't ashamed to hide his arrogant attitude about it, either. I saw a reporter ask him if he was going to pull troops out of Iraq and send them to the Gulf Coast. He responded that the recovery effort on the coast was going just fine, and he would not let down his guard against terror just because of a storm. Yeah. I facepalmed, too.)
My letter did a little bit of good. Instead of the form letters I'd been receiving, I got a personal phone call. The caseworker told me that I should be able to purchase another home with my insurance payment. When I pointed out that the mortgage company had received the majority of the payout, he said that I still had $8,000. When asked how much money he thought we had left after being out of work and having to completely re-outfit a family that had essentially nothing left but the clothing on their backs - and that's not even taking into account the amount of price gouging that was going on - this smug asshole replied that it was my problem alone, not the government's. At this point, I realized that in the eyes of our federal government, none of us were victims. We were criminals that wanted every free dollar we could get our hands on.
(But it was okay for some of the most powerful people in the country to stay on their taxpayer funded vacations while thousands died; and over a million slept in shelters, in their cars, in tents, in the homes of strangers... Ok, I'm getting angry again. Moving right along.)
That was my last communication with FEMA. When I moved out of their travel trailer some 9 months after the storm, I never even notified them. Just locked the door and never went back.
The Red Cross helped out with a one time donation, but their attitudes were no better. When they told me that they'd have to do a home inspection to grant their measly $500 dollars, I told them they could take one drive-by of our town then call me back and tell me I was a liar again. They hung up on me, but their debit card came and kept us afloat for a few more weeks.
In the end, we wound up worse than before. This is how.
The SBA approved us for a low interest loan in the mid-40s, with the stipulation that they'd be willing to negotiate that amount due to the rising cost of housing that demand would create.
There was also a new program set up, the Louisiana Road Home, that pledged to dole out grants of up to $150,000. It was supposed to pay for the cost of new housing, and if it had been secured already by the SBA or a mortgage company, the grant would pay off the balance and offset any remaining expenses
In the beginning it worked out great. It created jobs for some of those who had been displaced, and grants began to go out immediately. Over time, more and more criteria had to be met. To me the rise in denied claims was just too convenient when laid beside the accusations of mismanagement that were being reported. Some were denied with no good reason.
They called me at work and told me that we'd been awarded a grant in the amount of $77,000. When I got the paperwork in the mail, I immediately noticed a glaring error. They had put the total insurance payout in the blanks for homeowners AND flood insurance, making it appear as though we'd received twice the actual amount that had gone to our creditors. After over two year's worth (yes, long after we actually relocated) of appointments, documents flying back and forth in the mail, and telephone calls, they did what every other federally funded program that ran out of excuses for denying us did: they hit us with some brand new shit.
Now, it seemed that people that had lived in mobile homes were not eligible for assistance.
"Let me get this straight," I said to the caseworker that took my call. "We lived in a trailer instead of a house, so we aren't eligible? What kind of bullshit are you trying to lay on us? Just because we're not rich doesn't mean we aren't human."
"It's a new requirement. Here's the address if you'd like to appeal," said our caseworker. "You'll be receiving a letter in the mail that informs you of our decision and your legal rights in the matter."
Yeah, yeah. Blahdy blahdy bullshit bullshit blah.
I never tried appealing. By then I'd grown weary of it all, and to be honest, I had worse problems and didn't have any fight left in me. Mom gave up trying to have her house repaired because every time they'd make a couple steps toward progress, the zoning laws would be amended and they'd have to start over. She wound up buying a house in Florida to be near Fro.
We'd started looking at houses all over the state after the SBA gave us the go ahead. They had crushed my dreams of moving back home with their first requirement: that we would only be granted assistance if we relocated. That was fine with my wife, though. Her desire to go home had grown cold after our first visit. She'd gone from "we can't wait to go home again" to "we're never going back." And me? Never one to rock the boat, I just went with it. And wound up a train wreck in the end.
We settled on a house in Donaldsonville, LA, a short distance southeast of Baton Rouge. When we neared closing, the SBA informed us that they were no longer interested in renegotiating the loan amount. We'd have to finance the remainder of the balance elsewhere. And to add insult to injury, while the amount had been adjusted slightly upward to accommodate a small percentage of the rising cost of real estate, the original $8,000 left over from our insurance payment would be deducted from the loan amount. My father-in-law wound up giving us the down payment amount out of his FEMA grant money. The rest we financed through a mortgage company. So instead of bettering the slowly dwindling mortgage that we'd had pre-Katrina, we were now stuck with two separate mortgage payments: the larger percentage being higher interest, of course.
Nonetheless, our real estate agent was very friendly. She treated us to dinner one night, and vowed to introduce us to her church's pastor. She wound up doing exactly as she promised after the closing. And that was the beginning of my second, and final, awful experience with a church. And madness. And a few other things as well, but I guess I shouldn't let all the cats out of the bag just yet.
Until next time: brush twice a day, drive carefully, and tip your waitresses. See ya!