Monday, August 29, 2005; 6:45 AM
The vibrant, psychedelic colors of a long-forgotten Spongebob Squarepants episode draining into a black void were the first signs that something was wrong. One moment, the antics of a yellow sponge and a bubblegum pink starfish filled the screen of our clunky, gray TV set. The next moment, my youthful reflection gawked back at me, perplexed. Our TV had a habit of acting up, often displaying fuzzy gray squiggles that would cloud the program. We regularly gave it a good thump on its side, producing a deep hollow noise. This action usually coaxed it back to life, and our shows would slowly emerge from the static. But this wasn’t one of those times.
I sat up, breaking free from the cozy comforter cocoon, and the worn leather sofa creaked beneath me. My older brother was on the cream couch across the room, engrossed in his royal blue PSP, the name of the game a mystery to me. He hadn’t seemed to notice the absence of our nautical friend yet.
The smooth brown table between us held the remnants of our first round of breakfast: crumpled paper towels, forks, and a bottle of Aunt Jemima’s syrup. In the kitchen, my momma, clad in her forest green scrubs that stood out against the tan wood cabinetry, was taking Eggo waffles from the toaster to serve us another round.
“What happened to the TV?” I asked no one in particular.
The answer came in the form of an ear-piercing siren, filling every corner of our home. The invasion was all at once, an unsettling frequency, one I couldn’t recall hearing before. My mom glanced at us, casting a dismayed expression at the lifeless television, and the intrusive noise disrupting our mundane morning routine. She then checked the clock; we needed to leave for school in forty-five minutes.
“It’s the bad weather siren,” she explained, placing a plate of waffles between my brother and me. She peered uneasily out the window, facing our tree-lined front yard.
Just then, the house phone rang.
Growing up in southwest Mississippi, I had become accustomed to the sights and sounds of inclement weather: the raucous siren (one sat mere feet away on the edge of our property line), a warning to all that could hear it; the inharmonious rumbles of thunder; the pelting of deluges; the blinding lightning strikes; and the crying wind. These were the typical soundtracks of our summers. But now, there was eerie silence.
My dad’s voice came through the phone, speaking from the hospital down the road. I hadn’t seen him that morning; he left for the clinic each morning before my momma roused us for school. I turned my attention to my mom, trying to read her emotions to gauge whether I should be worried. My brother, on the other hand, remained disinterested in the unfolding events, still engrossed in his game. The siren began again, its long, single-pitched note. My waffles were cold.
My mom moved to the window, pushing aside the sheer cream curtain, searching for something. I’m not sure what. I couldn’t say if she put my dad on speakerphone or if she repeated his words, but the message was clear, even if I didn’t fully understand it at the time: Katrina had made landfall, and evacuation was no longer an option.
“We’re in the direct path of the eye wall,” my dad said. “It’s coming up I-55, fixin’ to hit in the next few hours. I’m on my way.”
Monday, August 29, 2005; 7:00 AM
People often talk about the calm before the storm, that eerie stillness that blankets everything, setting the stage for the main event. As a five-year-old, I didn’t know much about hurricanes, eye walls, levees, or storm cells. I just knew that every skinny pine tree and girthy oak stood absolutely motionless. Not a hint of wind stirred. Every living thing held its breath in anticipation and fear. The sky was an unfamiliar shade, a grayish green that signaled trouble. A singular sheet of cloud stretched on infinitely, obscuring the sun. Nature knew what was coming. If only, we had listened.
After my dad hung up, my momma moved on autopilot.
“Grab the storm radio,” she instructed my brother, who had finally realized that something greater was happening outside of his handheld game. The radio lived in our newly built sunroom, resting atop our old vinyl player. As he fetched it, my momma hurried down the still-dark hallway and into the second door on the left, my sixteen-year-old sister’s lair.
My anxiety kept me glued to my mother’s side.
“Wake up, Tammy,” she ordered, turning on the lights and casting a warm-toned hue over the purple room. “Grab your blanket and get into the bathtub. We’re fixin’ to get hit by a storm.”
There was a groan as the light illuminated her jumbled room, and she stirred slightly beneath the mound of sheets and comforter. “I’m not getting in the bathtub,” she mumbled, groggy but defiant.
“Now,” my mother insisted, grabbing and ushering me out of the room.
By then, my brother had located the radio and handed it to my mother, who was lowering the garage door as if it would provide some shelter against a Category 5 hurricane. I can only imagine the heightened fear she felt, knowing she had to keep three children safe in a house situated on an acre of woods. At that moment, we didn’t know the eye wall heading north up I-55 was about 30 miles in diameter, or the havoc the storm had wreaked on the Mississippi Coast with its 120 mph winds. The distance between us and New Orleans seemed vast during our early morning car rides to the airport or the highly anticipated field trips to the zoo and aquarium, but now, it felt painfully short.
The initial tidal surge had reached nine feet. New Orleans had lost power over thirty minutes before, and the levees had already failed. By the next half-hour, a twenty-foot tidal surge would inundate the already-flooded Ninth Ward. The night before, as my momma tucked me in and we said our prayers, President Bush had declared a state of emergency for Mississippi and Alabama. The interstate had shifted to a contraflow, meaning there was no longer an I-55 North and South. It was just north out of the below sea-level bowl that New Orleans existed in, leading away toward higher ground. But we were in the path, and the hurricane winds were closing in.
Evacuation was now a pipe dream. The governor of Louisiana had ordered a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans a day earlier, and the National Weather Service had warned that those who stayed without proper shelter would face certain death. However, we were unaware of the full extent of Katrina’s impending decimation, like many others. We hadn’t left. This was the storm we’d always feared, a nightmare for Gulf Coast locals. The storm of a lifetime. When my parents finally realized what was happening, it was too late. We were trapped.
The storm radio tuned to our nearest news station from Jackson informed us that area schools were closed indefinitely. Our governor had changed the order from evacuation to sheltering in place. Trying to leave now would be a deadly mistake. For those who decided to flee too late, stuck in frantic traffic on the Lake Pontchartrain bridge and other parts on I-10…they would have to ride out the storm where they were and wait for emergency services once it was safer to do so. The city would soon become a watery grave.
But again, we hadn’t known any of this at the time. Only that we needed to go grab Sheila, our dog, from the tie-out that stretched between two oaks and bring her inside. A storm was coming.
Monday, August 29, 2005; 7:30 AM
My father arrived home in denim-colored scrubs, briefly explaining what he had heard from others at the hospital about the ongoing situation. The impending hurricane was a source of uncertainty for everyone, as it marked the first major hurricane experience for many, including our family. All my parents knew was that safety protocols advised taking refuge in the innermost room of our house, as basements were uncommon in our region due to the stubborn clay soil. With our family of five unable to fit into a single bathroom, it was decided (presumably by our parents) to separate the girls and the boys.
Every comforter from the four beds in our house was confiscated and stuffed into the tubs along with pillows, effectively transforming our bathrooms into makeshift campgrounds. My parents hurried to bring essential supplies into the space before hell loose outside. Had they even prepared for this? My dad managed to locate two flashlights that flickered to life when twisted just right, and the storm radio served as our information lifeline before it too went silent.
Being from a third-world country, my parents were accustomed to a world where basic necessities weren’t always commonplace. Their background was a blessing as they instinctively resorted back to learned survival skills. They collected water in the remaining tub and buckets from around the house in anticipation of potential shortages (which did happen) for flushing toilets or bathing. The sole generator on our property was in my momma’s mobile veterinary clinic, so care had been made to move as much as possible into the RV’s fridge and freezer.
Monday, August 29, 2005; 9:00 AM
Since I was a baby, I was made to be in the tub with my sister. While she, ever the pleasant morning person, sat visibly annoyed and crammed in the opposite corner reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince with earbuds in, listening to whatever playlist from her Walkman, my parent’s frantic hustle was unsettling. As they maneuvered around the house, locking doors and drawing curtains, the uneasiness in my stomach grew.
“Mommy!” I cried, yearning for her reassuring presence. She had never failed to return, and I hoped she would reappear soon.
“I’m coming,” she called from somewhere else in the house.
When she returned, she had changed into house clothes and brought some of my toys, books, and puzzles in an attempt to distract me. She also needed distracting. Later, I realized that she was also terrified; my parents hadn’t known if we would be all right.
As the lights went out, the wind howled, and rain pounded against the walls. Katrina had no intention of moving swiftly after making landfall. Water began to accumulate, transforming our serene backyard brook into a violent torrent that drowned everything in its path. The ground disappeared, replaced by a deluge of limbs and debris. Thunderous sounds shook the house as our trees fell like matchsticks, casualties of the ferocious straight-line winds. They bent in unnatural ways, looking like the blow up inflatables at car dealerships, before snapping and plummeting to the earth. In hindsight, the way the trees lay haphazardly on the ground, it was hard not to believe in any divine intervention, as not a single one of the twenty-five touched our home.
Monday, August 29, 2005; 8:00 PM
The first day was spent primarily in our bathrooms, seeking shelter from the relentless storm and praying it would subside. An overarching sense of discomfort prevailed, exacerbated by the deafening, train-like noises emanating from the unknown outdoors. Wherever you were in the house, Katrina clung to you. My parents made it their mission to preoccupy our minds with things outside of storms and wind and rain and hail.
We played board games by candlelight, my momma attempting to make me laugh. We sang songs and read books. As the storm raged on, my momma told me that the noise and flashes of lightning were God bowling with the angels. The thunder was the ball rolling down the lane, the lightning was when He got a strike, and the rain was the angels’ tears because they lost. Later, we counted the seconds between thunder claps to see how quickly Katrina was moving away. I didn’t know if this was a legitimate thing or not, but the ritual of counting—1, 2, 3—settled my stomach enough to eventually lull me into an apprehensive sleep, surrounded by an assortment of candles, as Katrina’s lullaby of wind and rain sang us to sleep.
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