Second Line Rescue: Improvised Responses to Katrina and Rita

Bridges of Katrina: Three Survivors, One Interview

127 My Katrina Story I moved there the week before Mayor Ray Nagin called for everyone in the Crescent City to evacuate. I left reluctantly. I had only been there for a week. I wanted desperately to stop moving around, to stop living out of a bag and to finally stand still long enough to get an honest accent. I had yet to unpack any of my bags from all of the traveling I did that summer, so I put that bag back in the trunk of my car and joined the pre-Katrina exodus down I-10 West. I drove to Houston alone because my dad had decided to go to Atlanta, and although the freeway was packed with cars and SUVs, this extended yet all too familiar drive foreshadowed what the next few months would feel like. Once in Houston I returned to the house I grew up in, and although the house and myself have changed I have always resisted the way that the house changed because it looked less and less like the home of my adolescence . Sixteen years after moving into this house my parents are divorced, my mom is retired and two of my sisters live there, one was expecting a NICOLE EUGENE Bridges of Katrina Three Survivors, One Interview [Revision of an article that first appeared in Callaloo Volume 29, Number 4, 2006] 128 Nicole Eugene baby girl in December and already had a two-year-old son staying with her. There was very little room for me in that house, but regardless of the uncomfortable quarters I was happy to see them and be with them. Since this was supposed to be a brief visit, I didn’t mind sleeping on a futon in an unkempt room. Like so many evacuees and non-evacuees I was overwhelmed with disbelief and shock when the footage of the flood started appearing on the TV. I remember looking at the first footage of the Superdome that they kept showing because for the first few hours there was no other footage . Those first few days were saturated with captivating images that were accompanied by the sound of talking heads. Now I realize that, for the most part, these images had no voices. So many of the people stranded in New Orleans were not given voice. At the time, I didn’t know enough about the geography of New Orleans to know if all my belongings sat underwater or on dry land. Weeks later, even after finding out that East New Orleans was hit really badly, my mom and I still could not know anything for sure. There were no New Orleans neighbors that I could call. I didn’t have a real relationship with anyone in New Orleans, besides, of course, the aunts and uncles I rarely saw or heard from. All we could do was wait, and so that’s what we did. My uncle’s family evacuated Metairie after the storm hit and then stayed with us for a few weeks in the Houston house. While there my uncle and his wife would spend all day dealing with FEMA, Red Cross, or the Department of Human Resources after which they had many stories about how long the lines were and how difficult the whole process was. My mother and I were merely spectators of their tragedy; we didn’t know how this affected us and we didn’t know what to do. It was my mom’s first Nicole Eugene, Houston, 2006. Photo by Dallas McNamara. Bridges of Katrina: Three Survivors, One Interview 129 house that I had just moved into in New Orleans, but since it wasn’t her primary place of residence she didn’t know the extent of the damage, or even that there was damage. I took my mother’s lead and was apathetic about the matter until it finally hit me: I had nowhere to go and all my belongings were gone. Luckily we had flood insurance so we were given the full worth of the policy. Even after the insurance adjuster went to the house without us, we still held on to the possibility that something could be salvaged. Maybe it was not a total loss. I didn’t have to deal with Katrina, it was something I was able to just put aside, as if I was on vacation and Katrina was something...