I don’t know dates.  I don’t even know the dates of Katrina. 

I still got a box upstairs I didn’t go through. Sho' did.  All my golf balls. I got all that. Well the ones that I’d put in the water when I was playing. 

What did, when was Katrina, anyway?

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Well, we got called back from Destin, me and Alicia went visit, um, I don’t even know who we went see in Destin.  And then that night they told us we all had to evacuate because it was going towards Destin. And we were out drinkin'. Next day we said, “That hurricane’s not comin'.”  We were on the beach. I got my top off. Here comes - what is that girl’s name? - “Yall! Yall’s phones are ringin. Yall gotta get back! The storm’s going to New Orleans!” So somehow I left my top.  Wrapped the towel around me. Couldn’t find that little top that I wear. We pack up cause we call the hospital they said “Yall gotta get in.” We drive - I’m in back, in that little Subaru going like ninety...

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I come home.  I pack my bags, you know, to go to the hospital. I looked at the two birds. I left. I got to the hospital on time. Checked in at the garage. Went up where I was supposed to park. Then I left. I left.  I told them I left something at my house, and I had to go and get my stuff, because I had a bad feeling. Well the guy said, “You can’t come back.” I said, “I have some important medicine I have to go get, you know, you gotta let me leave.” So I left and then I came here and I regrouped. I got all the bird food.  I got all the birds. I took all my papers. I took all of the pictures off the wall. The futon was on the back. I lifted up that nice mattress that I had on there. I threw that on top the table. I put all of the pictures in the closet in the kitchen. I took them off the walls. Cause I was like, “Oh, if the window gets broken or something, you know, they’re gonna mess up my pictures.” And I said, "Oh shit, you leavin' on Friday to go to Alaska, you better pack all your stuff." So I was goi'n to town. I packed my jackets.  I packed my big old fuckin' suitcase about this big, you know, with my hiking boots. In case they let me go on Friday. You know, I was gonna go straight to the airport. So that’s how I ended up with all my clothes and everything. And my papers. I don’t know what- why I took that whole thing of papers.  It’s beyond me.  

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It was gonna be bad.  They kept saying Category 5. But I was thinkin' more wind, not flood.  That kind of stuff. I didn’t think that it would knock the house down or anything.  

Got to the hospital. Got the birds settled.  Cause they had to stay outside. In the stairwell.  You know, by the garage. 

But the first time I went there, I didn’t have hardly nothin', and I started thinking all of the sudden on my way there, “I need to go back, I need to pack." Cause all I was worried about was going to Alaska. I was ready.  

And I did go visit you with them birds in the back.  Them two birds. I didn’t have to work that night. Sunday.  

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And then— When Katrina hit?  Monday. Monday morning. So I had to work that day.  We were outside going from one door to the other with the big winds. I’m lucky I didn’t lose my leg, cause you’d go to walk and it would just take your leg. And you know, we were just laughin'. Stupid Leslie Dorskey got a sheet and we hooked it on to the fuckin' wheelchair and it got a hold of the wind. That thing took off!  He hit one of them parking things, them cement things, and he flipped. He bust his face up! Look he was flyin'! He made a parachute.  That’s how bad the winds were.  And then administration came, “Yall need to quit actin' like this. This is a disaster.”  So it was time to go to bed.  

So then Emmett came the next day.  He said, “B, I went by your house.” He said, “Your house made it.” He said, “Oh, but those awnings, you don’t have an awning on your house.  He said, “It’s all— the back," that awning thing I had, he said, “That’s all gone.” 

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So when the levee broke?  When did the levee break? Monday.

So Emmett comes the next morning.  He says— and then he tells me again— and he looks like shit.  He didn’t sleep since Sunday. He was a J.P. cop. And he said, “B, It’s bad.”  He said, “You lost your house.” I said, “What?” and I was outside talking, I said, “What you talking about? You just told me my house was good.”He said, “No. It’s flooded. Your house is flooded. You had about six feet of water.” I said, “Oh. Okay.” I said, uh, “Yall I think Emmett is exhausted. He told me it was flooded.” 

So then I was back in triage and here come these wet people. And I said, um, “Where do yall live?” They said, “We live behind— by Labarre.” I said, “It’s flooded over there? I live on Edinburgh.” They said, “Oh, yeah it’s flooded.” I said, “Shit! Really?” and started watching the news. Blanco or whatever her name was on there, and showing aerials and all of this stuff.  And then everybody was being all hush hush: Don’t tell Brenda. I’m like, I already know, but I never, I never fathomed it was that bad.   

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So I guess it was.  It might have been Wednesday, I heard two of the nurses talking, and the unit was slow, slow.  Nobody, you know, people didn’t start coming yet. And then we were, we set our outside triage for a while.  And a bunch of methadone addicts come in and all of this kind of stuff.

Sylvia and somebody else was going to check on their house on the other side of— they was going down Causeway, going on the other side of Veterans to her apartment.  I said, “I’m comin'. I am comin'.”

“We said don’t tell Brenda.” 

I said, “I’m comin'.” 

I got my bag, cause I knew in my bag I had a camera that was, you know, left from the beach. It was one of them water cameras. And they said, the whole way, you are not getting out the car.  I said, “I promise. I am not getting out the car. I promise. I’m not.”

Child, we got to that Causeway loop right there by Airline. And the traffic stopped. I got out. 

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...So I walked down there and the water, you know, it was up there pretty high. So they guy said, “No, you gotta go to the other side.”  So I told them to go head. So I walked around and I went down. And this guy’s saying, “Can I help you?” you know, he says, “I have my boat,” he says, “I’m from Houston.” 

I said, “I wanna get to my house.” I said, “cause I think my neighbor Margot is still stuck up in the house.” I knew where she was, but I just told them that cause I wanted to come. So we go down to the bottom and I said , “Look, my brother is here with his boat. My neighbor is stuck in the house,” and he says, “I know you, you work in the emergency room, you took care of me.” I said, “Yeah, can my brother take me?” He said, “I’m not supposed to,” he says, “Yeah, tell him to back up his boat, back up the boat right here.” I said, “Look, you my brother Jerry. So your name’s Jerry.” I got his name written down somewhere. So he tells me to get in the boat. And then they had got news that people were shooting at the helicopters and stuff. So he was a firefighter or something from Houston. So he said, “Do you mind if I ask—” Cause this big black man. He wanted to know if he could come. And he had a big old camera. He worked for CNN news. So, he was all excited. So me and him sitting in the front of the boat. Boy, that boy’s pullin' that thing, pullin' that thing. Typical. Everytime I get in the boat, the boat never fuckin' runs. So he says, “I don’t think we in deep enough, you know, water or something.” Badoosh.  That black man lookin' at me like I’m crazy. I’m pullin' that boat like this, I say, “Come on. Try to start it now. Come on.” Yeah, I jumped in the water. I’m like “Pull it! Pull it!” And I’m walking towards Rouses right there, you know, and the boat starts. So. I jumped back in the boat, and we’re going down— we’re going down Airline. He’s asking me where to go. Lorrd! We pass in front the gym. I start snappin' pictures. Snappin' pictures. I’m like, “What the fuck.” And then when we got to Ridgewood right here. He was going slow, cause they were in awe. The water was over the sign. The street sign. So he said, “You think they have cars that are parked on the side of the road?” I said, “Well I’m sure they do. Just stay in the middle of the road.” He said, “Well I can’t figure out what’s the road,” because you couldn’t see. So we had to go very slowly all the way down here, so his propeller didn’t hit the windshield or something like that, because the water was over the street signs. 

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So we make our little turn right here, and I’m like— Oh when we got to the side, I got a picture of me and I’m leaning like this, I told that black man, “Take my picture!” Cause, you know, it was, at first it was like I was really like in shock, you know. And then that fence right there was knocked down. It was bent, like all the way, so the boat couldn’t fit to get in the back of the house, and I had a wrought iron fence that went around the old lady’s porch. It wasn’t a very big porch. We were able to float— he picked up the motor and we were able to float on top of it, and I had jumped out. And I missed the step so the water was like well over my head, and then I got on the step, and then I tried to get in, and I had a storm door, and I went, “Shit. I locked the storm door," and I said, “I don’t have the key and we can’t get in the back.” So I’m pullin', and pullin', and pullin' and pullin' and pullin', pullin', pullin'.  I’m going, like, like— I went, like, cuckoo. So they come around again and then the guy’s standin' up in the boat and he’s pullin', he’s pullin'. So I’m just gettin'— I said I’m just gonna swim to the back, and it was low back here, because it was a little sunken area. And they said, “Oh, no, you be careful…” And I said, “Ima do it.” So the black guy says, “Well let me try.” He was a big guy. He goes like this: click.  He was, fuckin'— it must’ve just broke loose or whatever.  But it just opened.

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So I went, I got in the house.  I opened the house.  The first thing I saw. You know how they had them big butt TV’s. I had this big TV at the time; had a big butt that long. It was in the corner. That thing was floating face down still plugged in to the wall, face down, just— when I would make ripples it would move. Computer was right there. That whole glass had knocked out. I tripped. The floor was buckled. I got in the kitchen. It had— the mattress that I picked up. Child I was all covered with water. There was water was over the cabinets and shit. And um. I was like, "fuck." There aint nothin' I can do.  Shit. I'ma get me some liquor out of this fuckin' cabinet! So. I remembered I had like two bottles of rum that had like, you buy in the shape of a monkey— Carribean stuff.  I said I think I know where it is— look, I hold my nose, and I put all the liquor on the top. And I decided I needed a bag, and I knew I had grocery bags.  I had to hold my nose and I got them grocery bags. So then they was clankin'. So I said, well shit, lemme go in my bedroom. The top of the bed was covered.  The only clothes that was semi-dry was the clothes that don’t fit, all the shit on the top. So I took these old jeans and I rolled up all them bottles of liquor. I put it in there. I grabbed some other stuff, I don’t know. I was finished. I was done with this place.  

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I went outside.  I said, “Mothafuck. Them mothafuckas left me here.” I’m on the porch I start cryin'.

I’m like, “I’ll show em, I can fuckin' swim all the way to Rouses.  I could swim over there.” 

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So then, I hear a boat, and I hear em yellin'.  They went to take pictures at the playground. They went, they went sightseeing, they went take pictures. So they come back. They help me in the boat. And I was cryin'. And the black man said, “Here’s my phone. Who do you want me to call and you can talk to them?”

I said, well, “Ima call my parents.” So he was going slow, right here, so the motor wouldn’t make noise. 

I said, “Mama,” I said, “Um. It’s Brenda!” I was hysterical. “I’m just leavin' my house! Mama I don’t have no house! I don’t have nothin'! Mama, the water is over my head outside— ” 

She says, “Stop it now.” She says, “That is all material stuff. Everything can be replaced.  Don’t even think about that.”

I said, “I’m on this man’s phone!”...

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So we going.  This man says, “Can I ask you a question?”  He says, “Is that your, like, prized possessions that you took?” 

Child, I’m diggin' in that bag. They're filmin’ this. I said… “No! It’s liquor! It’s liquor!!” 

“And it’s clothes that don’t fit from the top of the closet!”

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So he’s laughin'.  So they get me back and Sylvia and them are pissed. Because they had to wait like two hours for me to get back. They were so pissed at me. They went and run they errands and all and then the guy told them, “No, she went back to her house.” So they were waiting. If not I was just gonna walk_. So I thanked that guy. And then we left, went back to work. 

They knew I was lyin' about Margot. They knew I was lyin', these two guys.  They knew I just wanted to get here.

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Right when I got there I was soppin’ wet. Doctor G_ grabs me, he takes me to the tent. “You need to get Hepatitis A shots, you need to get a tetanus shot.” So I just let them give me the shots. And I was like, “It’s my house. I’m not worried about that.” I just took 'em. So I went take a shower.

Stayed there eight days.  Was upstairs bringing a patient to the floor and something made me look in this man’s room because they was havin’ some noise.  And I looked at the door, and it was Mister Fant. Phil Fant. A good friend of mine that lives in California. It was his dad. So, he’s got Alzheimer's, he was in his nineties.  He was in there for a bad UTI. Um. The mama, well, I had gotten my address book. I had that. I said, “Phil, I have you dad. I want to know if it’s okay, when I’m released from here, if I take Mister Fant with me to Lutcher, and I already talked to my dad, he can oversee his care.”

And Phil said, “We’re not doing extra measures,” but he said yes.  He’s an attorney. So they just took a verbal from him on the phone from him that it was okay when Brenda was discharged, just to take him to another hospital. I had to get Lutcher hospital to accept him. Joan and them, they were full but they still accepted him. So when it was time to go home, went up there, got Mister Fant dressed. Had the orderlies bring him down to the emergency room.  The nurses helped me put him in. Hooked his Foley to the door. Hooked him in. Man’s wayyyy out to lunch. Got the birds in the back. You know, I’m packed like Beverly Hillbillies. We’re crossing over. He was an engineer. And he says, “Wow. That’s some water.” I said, “Mister Fant,” I said, “They had, you know, the levees broke. You know, Hurricane Katrina, they had a bad flood.”  

He said, “Your house is okay?”

Cause I’d said, “My house is over there.”

I said, “No, my house is flooded.”

He said, “Don’t worry, honey, you could stay at my house.” And I’m thinkin’, "Mister, your house is worse than mine." He lives right where the levee broke, you know? And he had told me that Billy, the one that came to Mary’s house. They lived in a one story house. The water started rising. The mama just had had hip surgery. So he put the mama on his back, he got a gun, and broke the neighbor’s door, carried the mama up the stairs to the second floor, helicopters got them and brought them in Houma.  So Phil said they were safe. They were in Houma, and they were getting a flight out to meet Phil in California. 

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So me and Mister Fant’s going.  We’re on the Bonnet Carré spillway.  And them birds start actin' up. They must’ve wanted to be free or something. One was going, “Meow! Ruff, ruff! Ruff, ruff! Meow!” He said, “I thought you said they had birds back there! They got a cat and a dog!”

But they, Sam, the African Gray, he had picked up all that verbiage.  All them cats and dogs up in there, you know, poor thing. They was all traumatized.  

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And we get to Lutcher. Then I follow Daddy to the hospital. We get the old man settled. We go home. My daddy starts, “Where’s your house policy? How much you owe on your house?” And I. Went. Nuts. Cryin’. My Mama. And everybody’s comin’ see me. They got siblings are there.  Everybody’s there. Mama said, “Everybody’s gonna have to go home.” I made her so nervous. And she say, “Carl. That is NOT important.” 

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I said, “No, we’re gonna have to do it sooner or later.” So I go through the suitcase. Go through all my stuff. Got the papers. Owed less than five thousand dollars. Daddy said, “We’re gonna pay that off, cause when the insurance money’s gonna come, you don’t want it to have to go to the mortgage and get all split up.” Woke up the next morning, there’s a check made out to me. He told me, “Go to the bank, pay it off,” and— that’s why mine was smooth sailing, cause it was paid off.  

Oh yeah, I knew he knew. But as soon as you’re home? It’s, it’s just, it was crazy.  Crazy.  

But that’s how daddy’s think sometimes, I think. The Eds and the Carl Jeans, you know what I mean?  You don’t deal with the emotions first. You deal with the material— the things that they have control over. You know? That they can make things better. Money can make things better. You know, with Daddy. Not Mama. It’s like, “Shut up, sit down right here, let’s have an Old Fashioned, let’s—” you know what I’m saying.  “Let’s chill.” 

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​

I worked eight, so I had to stay there for eight. So let me back up a little bit.  When we still were at the hospital, people were coming— Oh mister. It was… Droves.  I skipped that. So we had to set up triage outside. 

...When we heard that all of the pawn shop and all that was burnin', they made us go inside, and we locked our doors. And it kind of calmed down a little bit. I look outside, “Hey it’s a bus!” “There’s a bus!!” So I go runnin' out cause I’m so happy they got a fuckin’ bus. So me and Nancy, we go outside by that bus.  I’m the first one in that bus. There’s a man out here about six hundred pounds! That bus didn’t have all the seats.

He say, “I don’t need no medical care. I just need to get to safety!”

I’m like, what the fuck.  And they got a disabled man in the front doin’ like this. Then they got another disabled in the back. They only had three people. So I asked the man, “Where yall comin' from? Yall got this bus?” It’s a school bus. 

He said, “Well we was at the Bywater Hospital, and we heard these people yellin', and then I saw they had this bus so I had to hot rod it,” and he got it to start. So he had to ask people, cause he was from North Carolina...He said, “You need to take this bus and go down, take a right, and go to Causeway,” right there, helicopters were pickin' up people. Child, we watchin' TV that night, I see that helicopter. Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa.  I see that fat man! Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa! They had picked him up and he was in one of them things! He was, he went up in the helicopter! I think they could only take one that trip. And they was takin' all of them to Houston.

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When the National Guard got there, after, we only locked down for like a couple of hours. Here comes these big old army trucks. We didn’t know they was coming. They were emptying out Charity Hospital.  And they lifted me up and they said, “Brenda, do a quick triage, and tell us where these people need to go.”

So I said, “Whatcha in the hospital for?” You know, whatever, “Okay, he can walk, get him down, send him this way,” you know, bla bla bla. 

I get to this girl, and they had some that was on gurneys that we had to get off, too sick to walk. This one girl said, “I’m in there for a urinary tract infection.”

I said, “No, get up, I need you to walk over here. You need to go over here.”

And then when they looked at her, they said, “This girl is sick.”

And I said, “Well she’s here for a UTI.”

And then when they took her vitals, her blood pressure was like seventy. And poor thing was a trooper to get up and fuckin' walk. You know what I’m saying? But she told me she was in there for a urinary tract.

I tell you that, that’s my biggest regret. I mean, being forceful to that girl, because she didn’t live three hours. She had been at Charity. I guess she was in the ER. I don’t know where she was. She had, she had a ruptured tubal pregnancy. And by the time they got her to the OR, whatever they did, she ended up dying. She was young. 

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I just felt bad because the girl was like, really hurting. And I’m just like, “Move it, move it.” Because here comes the next, the next thing pulling up.  I think we had three big Army trucks and then they_ said, “We can’t take anymore,” you know, “We’re done. We’re done.” 

I was just forceful.  “No! Get up! Move! You can walk!” And she was, she had that shuffle, you know, that…  And then they lowered her. But. She was like the sickest one.  

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And then a couple days later when they started getting people out the house, we had this mamaka.  Big fat mamaka, and her mama. Even their nipples was like about to rot off, because they had been standing in their house for like three or four days. Their legs were this big. They were already fat, but they were hard like a table. Just from standing up. Never ever being able to sit down for like seventy two hours or so. And we would stabilize them and they would send them to Baton Rouge, or send them somewhere else.  And then we had a couple of corpses come in, you know, like people that had died, they found them in the bed, and they still brought them to us. They brought us the dead. Just a few like that. I don’t remember how many… It was a lot of people that had started to come through, you know, from Downtown that they were finding. 

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And then we’d sit around at night and talk to, what’s his name, Cooper? He just came out said he’s gay.  He was a night news… Anderson Cooper. He would sit at the desk and talk to us and all that. He was very nice.  

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And then after the eight days, I still was on my eight days, Jerry took me over here by boat.  My real brother. We were over there and, we couldn’t come this way, so we crossed the Veterans bridge in Lutcher and came on the back and I showed my ID, it was no problem, they let us in, pull in the boat. We get all the way by right here, Hollywood.  Jerry gets out, he goes, “Shit. I brought the wrong flat boat. I brought the one—" He’s got two. He’s got a real flat boat and he’s got the one that’s more like a fishing boat. You know he wasn’t thinking, cause I guess the other one was somewhere else.  So, we couldn’t get that boat over the tracks. So then we were going down by Oscar’s, that second street, and this guy flags us down and Jerry gets out. Jerry knows his family. He owns that New Orleans-style house, has a pool in the back, it’s— he’s from Vacherie.  And Jerry says, “Man, I brought the wrong boat,”

He says, “You don’t have a flat boat?”

He says, “No.”

He says, “But, I think you’ll be able to get it over this track, you know, because it’s not as big as the other one.” But he says, “Look,” he goes, get his kids’ big old swimming pool and a long rope.  Makes a hole, ties it, and he says, “Look, you can put more of her stuff in here and in the boat, and just pull it behind.” He was pretty smart. 

So we get over here, and Jerry says, “I can’t (get over the tracks).” 

Well these people are yelling at us, “You need a boat? You need a boat?” Said, “We commandeered this boat from somebody’s house.” Said, “We’re finished with it.”  

Jerry said, “Yeah, gimme that boat!” So we both get in the boat.  Jerry got an antiquated movie camera, you know, one that had them little disk about this big, but it was old. He said, “You know how to work it?”

I says, “No,” I said, “I’d rather just paddle and you film.” So we come down Atherton, down Palm right there, and we turn by Bath, and we’re coming down the fire station.  And Jerry’s filming, he says, “Look at Brenda,” we had paddles and we had poles. He would help me. So we get here, and the water had receded. The water was like maybe to my waist, maybe less. Cause we had hip boots.  And that bastard wanted to take everything in the damn house!  He is taking clothes out of the, out of the drawers that were still underwater.  Throwing everything in there. And I just was piddling. I just was looking at everything.  When I looked at that swimming pool.  That boy had all the clothes out the closet.  Out of both closets! Blankets. Everything. Clothes that didn’t fit.  I don’t even know what else we grabbed.

So then it was time to go back, and, you know, we’re goin' back, we turn.  I see Kim Miller outside! Child— I saw him in the window. He was upstairs in the window. And I’m yellin' at him, “Hey! Hey! Hey!”

And he’s like, “That’s Brenda?”

I said, “Yeah.”

He said, “Come on… Don’t tell Jamie how bad it is!” She was in Texas or something. 

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So, um, then we got back.  Jerry put everything in bags. And then we on our way back home, soon as we drove up. I’m talking, ten ladies came to Mama’s house. All the neighbors. And he was talking to em. They said, “Jerry can you bring this bag to my house?” You know, these big garbage bags.  Big. Ten ladies. Two days later, I go, my clothes are all washed, all stacked, Mama had taken my clothes. Mister Norris did my dresses that don’t fit and all that stuff. He did it for Mama for free. And I had all that shit hanging up.

I said, “Mama that’s not even gonna fit, you know, your son done took everything.” 

So that’s how I ended up with all my clothes, because it didn’t have time to sit in the soot and die and all that kind of stuff.

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So, then by that time, yall came home. And, oh, I had to go stay at the Sheraton. I was punished. Cause Mary wasn’t home. So, after my eight days, about sixteen days after, they_ said, “Okay you gotta stay at the Sheraton.” That’s where FEMA sent us. I kept waiting for a camper, but we couldn’t get a camper because we still had water. So I had my own room. I checked in.
And no place to park, so you’d leave your car at work and the bus shuttle would bring you back and forth unless you wanted to bring your car.  At the beginning you was able to park on the neutral ground. Then the city was saying, “We’re gonna, you know, boot your car and all of this kind of stuff.”

And then we had all them Mexicans. The Mexicans were all coming in and it was so much noise. We all was complaining. So then if I’d go to Lutcher for the weekend, then they said, “This is only your room.” So, you know, I just got my deodorant, blow dryer, got all of that stuff, you know, you just leave every everything in there. So I stayed there just a couple of days. I stayed there a little while. But a couple of times, I went to Mama’s house and I’d come back. Mothafuckas emptied out my room. I’d open that ready to go to bed. Empty. In the Sheraton. FEMA had said that’s my room. Maid’s only gonna clean it once a week. That’s the only thing they was gonna do. And so I’d have to call work, “Ima be late,” because I didn’t have any uniforms.

Housekeeping opening in the morning. And I’m crying the whole time, trying to find my clothes, my drawers, my socks, in this big old basement thing where they laundry is, down there, get all my belonging, everything. And then, I started going drink by Mary’s house.  And you remember a couple times I went home and I think I might have stayed there just a week after, and then finally, yall said, “Uh, uh. Come pack that shit up.” 

You gotta get up five thirty, six o’clock cause you gotta catch the _ bus, you know, to go back.  You’re late for work everyday, cause they waiting for somebody. Then I was staying at Mary’s longer and longer. Finally yall said, “Come on, stay over here. Enough.”

So you remember me and you going over there, you remember me trying to check out with that man.. “I’m not doing this FEMA stuff, I’m going stay at my friend’s house,” you know, bla bla bla.  Packed up the stuff, and just stayed there.

Because, they_ kept saying, “We’re getting you a camper. We’re getting you a camper. Getting you a camper. Getting you a camper.”

So, It’s all the way, Thanksgiving. The week of Thanksgiving. Yall was going play in the Quarter, or going somewhere, I said, “No, Ima stay home.”. And I had come over here, piddled. No camper, no nothin'. Went back to yall’s house. Yall came home. No camper.

Next day, the man calls: “How’s the camper??” I said, “I never got a camper.” He went ballistic on that fuckin' phone. He said, “You will get a camper tonight.” 

I said, “Well. It’s raining. It’s— the weather’s bad.” He said, “I don’t give a shit. You was supposed to have that camper.” And I had gotten all the paper work. I got mine, I got one for Margot. I got one for the blue house. I got one for Glenn Michael. And I got one for the people right there. I got them all to sign.

Child, that afternoon, they come with that camper. They must’ve had fifty people in my yard doing the plumbing, doing the— everything. They pulled up right where your car is, right in the driveway. 

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 And I’d stay in the camper by myself.  When it was time to come home from work, the cops would come check on me every now and then.  Because it was only me and it was that man a block down that I would see every now and then. We was the only two over here for I guess about six weeks.  

And I’ll never forget.  Christmas came. I didn’t even go to the Bonfires.  Christmas Eve, I stayed in that camper. Cold as a witch’s tit.  It was like freezing, and it had sleet and all kind of stuff. I was like, “I’m not going home, you know, and then have to come back the day after Christmas. I’m not going home.” Well.  The fuckin' propane ran out. It was so cold in that camper. I had every piece of clothes I had on, I wrapped up in the blankets, cause that’s like being in a tin can. It was so cold. Then I realized what had happened. I had run out of propane. And then you can’t get propane on Sunday, but I was at work.  

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...So, when my brother came out here, the lil' shit, I wasn’t smoking at the time, cause I had quit. I didn’t smoke all before Katrina. I had quit. And I didn’t smoke until they had poured that slab. And the Mexican was here, and they did the slab, and it was a Marlboro. He gave me one, and I said, “Can I have another… have another… have another.” Finally I went to the store, I bought him a pack, I bought me a pack, and that night, it was gone. I was right there. But Jerry— cause we had a gas leak over here, and Jerry said, “I’ll burn this son of a bitch, then you’ll get the hundred sixty thousand.” That’s what he said!

And then, he was like, he would say, “Bren. Look at all this rotten wood on this house. You know the money you would've had to put out. I know you’re upset,” he said, “but all of this looks rotten underneath there! you know, you woulda had to replace all this!" He says, "You know, one day you’re gonna see the silver lining,” he told me. And.  He’s right. 

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So I had my friend Kent, he was a neighbor of mine, and he renovates old houses and all of that kind of stuff. So he came over, and he’s looking at everything, once everything had dried out, you know, like the floors, beautiful wood floors, had tilted, buckled like this. He said, “Let me work all this up.” 

He works it up he comes over two days later, he said, “You bought this house for eighty thousand," he said, “Brenda, it’s gonna cost me over eighty just to gut redo,” he said, “I’m tellin' you, if I was you I’d tear down.” And I cried. And I cried. Cause I figured, I never knew that FEMA was gonna give us all that money and all of this. And I just… It was a good house. I did a lot of work in it, too.  We took that sledgehammer to that wall in there. 

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You were, I got a picture.  You were this big. I gotta see if I can find that.  You were a little boy when I first bought this house. You were watching us try to knock down this wall that was in the kitchen. Ruth said, and Ruth went to swing.  It came around, hit her in the ribs, she cracked her rib, oh yeah. Cause she hit the plaster wall. It wasn’t like sheet rock. It wasn’t sheet rock, and then it bounced off. And then you remember all that chicken wire they had? That was a strong frickin' house. I gotta find that— where is that picture. I just told Mama when I went home the other day, “I gotta go through that box that’s in the bedroom up there.” That’s the box, the only box that I took out of your garage, and I put everything in one box, and I’ve never been back to it since. Kevin came, Maura, all of them, Ed, all of them. Jeff, Janet… We thought we was gonna keep it. We tried to salvage stuff. Well, the day that everybody was getting— we were all sleeping at Mary’s house, and we all had a lot to drink, and then they was all coming over here the next day and then they had trucks and you know whatever we were gonna keep, and, Lynn was there, they drive up. I got a big old green blanket, and I got a bucket of Clorox, and I was washin' my golf balls and puttin them on the— Lynn gave me the picture.  She got a picture from the car. Everywhere the green was, where the Clorox was, it turned white. And so, and when Mary came, I had a couple of cots that I got from a hospital. Remember? You walked up, and you saw that piece of paper, and that was your Mama’s obituary. I had all my obituaries dryin' out because I save obituaries. I had them all dryin' out and the wind had blew and Mary found Florilda’s obituary.  She flew off. 

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So then we save, like, Tupperware, and pots and pans and all this stuff. And Myrrh was so good, you know what she ended up doing? She called the Magnalite Company, and they sent her information, and she told them it had been underwater for like, you know, two weeks, you know, the Katrina water, and they said, “The only way you can keep them pots is if it says ‘Made in USA,’” because they had a different coating on it than the ones now that are made in Japan.

So, I took the pots home, Myrrh washed them. Some of them still have water levels on it. But when she called, they said, you know, “Don't worry about that, those pots are good.” And all of mine that Myrhh had bought had 'Made in USA', so I still got my pots. Yep.

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And then, when I finally went through all the stuff at Mary’s house, I ended up, I was gagging, remember? I was crying, going through that stuff. And we thought we was doing good, oh it smelled so bad. I coudln’t— I’d said, “No, don’t throw that away. Don’t throw that away.” Dishes, Mary washed all the dishes, and then finally I ended up giving it to a college kid. The whole backyard was covered one day, and then I said, “No. None of this.  None of this.” 

Cause I was getting ready to move into my house.  It smelt— it still smelt bad. Yep. 

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...Mona’s chest.  That’s the thing I was so upset about.

Mona said, “Well I’ma give you this.”  And I said, “Yeah, I’ma take it.”

And you remember, I redid it, sanded it up, fixed it up nice, computer was in there, the glass broke out, I was gonna.  And my Grandmother's— Mawmaw’s furniture! Mawmaw!” I was cryin and cryin and cryin.  

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Poor Katrina didn’t have her bedroom no more.  I done took over that thing. Girl you know what was funny, I was thinking about this the other day. Sometimes I would come down from getting dressed upstairs, and I’d look at Mary, and there was so many days we had the same like color shirt, same pants, I’m like, “Something is wrong.”  And I don’t have all my clothes over there, and I say, “Me and the bitch both gonna walk down, both got a pink shirt." I got both of us with pink shirts on, and pedal pusher pants on. You know, I’m like, “I’ve been livin' here too fuckin' long.” Same type of clothes on, I’m like, “Something wrong with us.” This is crazy.  

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Cutting the grass. That wasn’t my job that was my only sanity. Remember, I’d take that lawnmower, cut everything? So I got Madeline’s husband’s lawnmower. Madeline said, “Come get Cal’s lawnmower!” So I went get Cal’s lawnmower. I don’t know who’s grass I was fuckin' cuttin', I thought I done broke both of my fuckin' wrists. I’m pushin that lawn mower. That lawnmower kicked back up. I hit like, a piece of cement, kicked up, kicked down, that thing budrrrrrr, budrrrrrr. I got in the car, I went to Sears, bought a blade. I broke the fuckin' block on it. So I had to tell Madeline that I broke the fuckin' lawnmower. I’d pay for it. You know, “You’re not payin' for that, that’s only a hundred dollars!” Everytime I still talk to her, she still tell me how I broke Cal’s fuckin' lawnmower! I’m like fuck I should’ve just bought another one! But I was like, “Ed! Ima cut the grass! Ima cut the grass, Ed!” 

Girl, that’s all I liked doing was cutting the grass.  And I had to get the liquor out of my system, shit. 

Ed-- Showing off that meat. And we enjoyed eating that fuckin meat.  And then, look, I would say, “Ed, I got some more money on my food card, c’mon.” And I’d swipe my card. We’d swipe it. 

Ed and them, they weren’t working, and it was the first fuckin' day the daiquiri shop opened. I think we was like the first ones— us four. And we was like a couple the whole week. All the time! Me and John, Ed and Mary. Me and John, Ed and Mary. And then, they’d go to bed, John’s on one couch, Brenda’s on the other. We slept like that— long. And then you remember? Was Jacinta there or not?  The night you was playin' that music and we was dancin' with them Poise pads, kickin them Poise pads! Jacinta came to town and, and we were walkin' around the house, dancin'— what was the song? We’d play them songs. 

And Uncle Kevin would come.  He would bring big old dishes of stuff, and, yeah— it was.  They came like twice or more. They would come and they would help us with anything, anything we asked them. They were here just to do.  He made CD’s and we would sing and dance.

Me, Ed, and John were downstairs at John’s house, and I most probably was the best fit, because I had been goin' to the gym, and I had even been going even more because I would leave the camper, and I would get up in the morning and take a shower at the gym, cause I couldn’t stand that little shower that they had. So Ed and John they trying to slit that carpet. They went somewhere, I took that knife cause they was strugglin'. Wet carpet. By the time they come back, I had that son of a bitch rolled up. Their eyes were this big. I’m fuckin' pushin' with my fuckin' feet.

Ed and them are goin', “Oh. My. God.” I was just like, I was fuckin crazy with demolition. You, you’d tell me to demolish something, and I’d carry heavy sacks of things that I couldn’t even—. 

So we’re hauling shit out of the basement apartment. The niece was living there. We worked like trolls. There was a dildo. “Come see Mary!” It was in a drawer. We laughin', we laughin', we laughin', we laughin', laughin'. Took the box. And we throw it out to the curb, and we go out there, the shit is out there on the curb. It’s like growin' and growin', this trash pile, and Dick Coralis and his wife, neurosurgeon, drives by sees us on the porch, we like, trolls, we all like dirty and trashed out.

But he comes up there, he and his wife are talkin to us, and he’s leaving. And the dildo is out there. It’s going dudddudddudddudddudduud.  It turned itself on!! And I don’t know what her name is but she says, “Like, there’s something out here, like, it’s alive.”

We’re like, “No no no, just forget about it!”

But the dildo’s out there like dudddudddudddudddudduud, dudddudddudddudddudduud.  It turned itself on. 

You better leave Tipsy and me in your will because of all this fuckin' anguish we goin' through!