Returning to Disaster Land

Returning to New Orleans after a week and a half in beautiful, debris-free Maryland, has felt a little like stepping out of your warm, cozy home into a blustery storm. I had been bracing myself for my reimmersion into this alternate universe that feels even more disconnected from the rest of the country than it did before the storm. But it has been both harder and easier than I thought it would be.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote in my journal about how I wondered if I would feel guilty about moving away from New Orleans, or if life in a peaceful, normal city would ever feel “normal” again. I wrote, “Would it be hard for us to go back up North? Could it be like a soldier who returns from war and can no longer look at the green lawns and noisy school yards in the same way? Of course it wouldn’t be quite like that. But I can imagine it feeling strange, almost like we don’t deserve it or as if it is a mirage. Sure, I crave a peaceful, stable life without storm debris lining the curbs, buildings crumbling, men hovering on every other roof (to repair them), Humvees roaming the streets, and every conversation being about FEMA or insurance or how many feet of water you had. But it might also not feel right if we suddenly had nothing more troubling to confront than a barking dog past midnight or the choice of a paint color for our new house. Is it right to live in virtual luxury—even the middle-class kind—when so many are struggling to rebuild this city that was our home? Is it right for us to escape the struggle that is going on here to retreat to a ‘normal life’ in the Midwest?” After my trip to Maryland I can see how much I crave the life the rest of the country is living right now. I was gone long enough that this place started to seem surreal again. How long before it reasserts itself in my mind as “reality”?

My return to disaster land was made even more surreal when I went into the belly of the beast yesterday. I drove through our old neighborhood, now a wasteland that feels as if its inhabitants have been vaporized. Every house is vacant and either stripped to the studs or left to rot. I have seen this all enough times that it even started seeming normal to me. But when I drove up our old street, I was shocked to see nothing but a gaping hole where our house once stood. We sold the house to a developer two weeks ago and knew he would tear it down, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. Here was our old street, which we were only just beginning to settle into when Katrina struck, but our existence had been removed from it. Where once our home with the accumulated possessions of thirty-plus years stood, there was now only dirt. There were no trees, grass, concrete driveway, or brick sidewalk. Nothing had been left behind except for a beat-up washer and dryer on the curb. After a few moments of disbelief and a long, cathartic cry in the car, I got out to look closer. All I could find were a few of my husband’s baseball cards, a fragment of my computer’s hard drive, and a teaspoon in the dirt.

Until I had to confront its absence, I didn’t realize how much I had been holding onto that home, even though we had known for months it was unsalvagable and we would not feel safe rebuilding it. Many nights while I lay in bed, I couldn’t get the image of it out my head. I knew that only a few miles from here stood a vacant shell filled with the rotting, stinking remains of our life. I walked through it in my mind, passing over the overturned furniture, the boxes that were never unpacked, my daughter’s toys, the newspapers, kitchen paraphernalia, artwork, tv’s, CD’s, and my books, oh my books, hundreds of them. All of it was brown, covered in mud and flies, and emanating a stench that first hit you out on the curb and overpowered you by the time you entered the house. Markings spray-painted on the outside by rescue workers, broken windows, brown trees, twisted plants, black mold growing up the walls, slick mud covering the floor all marched through my mind when I couldn’t sleep. Then the things I couldn’t find but knew were there somewhere, buried under a pile of furniture or tucked away in a closet made inaccessible by a stray dresser, like the stuffed animal I loved as a child, or the photo albums containing indispensable memories, or my daughter’s baby book, or the computer with years of scholarly work on its hard drive.

Now that it is has all disappeared, I feel not merely sorrow at what we have lost. That feeling has been lying just under my rib cage for months now, making it difficult to breathe sometimes. But I think I feel lighter, able to inhale more deeply. It’s all gone, as if it never existed, which is easier to bear than knowing it is still there and slowly rotting away. Now I hope we can move on. I know I am ready to turn over the calendar and start anew.