Even in the daytime, the sky was dark as night.
Three weeks earlier, I had gotten out of prison, having served 18 months for burglary. After returning home, I went to the projects during the days and hung out with old friends. I was back out on the street, but staying out of trouble.
Then the rain began, and I heard a broadcast about a storm coming.
My friend said, “Don’t get too happy here, man, you hear what the weatherman said? We may have a hurricane coming this way.” I was like, “It ain’t gonna be. You gonna leave? You gonna listen to the weatherman?”
As time went on, they were talking more and more about it on the news. I was thinking to myself, Man, don’t believe the news reporters, like the old song, “Don’t Believe the Hype.”
I was 37 years old and lived with my mother, sister, three nephews and a pit bull named Spot, who had a ring around his eye, like Pete in The Li’l Rascals. My mother kept the TV news on all the time; she wanted to know where that storm was going. One morning the mayor came on television. He was telling all the families and residents to stay alert to the news, watch the weather, and go out to get things they would need, such as food, water, batteries, and emergency lights.
The next day, the mayor came back on, offering places to stay: schools, churches, the Superdome. My mother said, “Get your clothes and whatever else you need. We’re going.”
And I said, “Not me, I’m not leaving. I’ll help y’all, but I don’t believe this.” I helped them move to the Superdome. It took all day to move my mother, sister, three nephews and Spot with their clothing, cosmetics, shoes, deodorant, and soaps. Friends and I made several trips; all the while it was pouring and thundering. I never felt rain like this, so hard it could knock you down. Despite my raincoat and hood, my T-shirt got drenched and stuck to me. My feet got soaked through my tennis shoes. And my whole body felt gritty from all the dust and debris flying around. On the car radio I tuned to the news, rather than to my usual jazz and rap stations.
My mother worried something was going to happen to the home that our family had lived in for thirty years. Only four blocks from the Mississippi, it was a three-bedroom, two-story house on Jackson Street, which ran straight to the river.
After moving the family and knowing they were in a safe place, my friends and I went back to the house, which now had a whole different vibe, like a haunted house. Maybe it was the steady whoosh that sounded like the ocean.
We turned on the TV. The weatherman was saying how fast the hurricane was moving toward us in New Orleans. He said it was coming straight at us. My friends and I laughed, “There goes the newsman again. One day it’s hot, one day it’s cold.” We were just sitting around in the living room joking about it, when we heard a knock on the door.
It was another friend, who told us everyone was moving and that trucks were out there packing people up. I said, “The truck drivers gonna make a lot of money because they’re gonna be moving for nothing.”
My family lived beyond the projects but my friends and I went walking over there. Outdoors it smelled like the stench at the bottom of an incinerator. You could feel the whole earth vibrating. Trash was blowing around in spirals. The wind forced the rain sideways at times and, at other times, in all different directions.
We got to the projects and my friend told us, “The power’s out.”
I said, “Man, don’t worry about that. The power’s always going out.”
That evening, while eating tuna fish, we could hear the rattle of supermarket carts on the street. People had gone to different markets to get baskets, so they could push their stuff to the Superdome, which was five blocks away.
I fell asleep to sounds of leaves rustling, branches falling onto houses, and roof shingles crashing to the ground. Off and on, thunderous cracks—entire trees falling—pierced the whooshing that never paused.
The next day a neighbor told us people were downtown, all having this drink called hurricane. “You drink that junk, you be all over the ground,” he said, which I already knew.
Then, we heard a sudden BOOM! All the power went off. And so did the water.
We went outside to look around. Service trucks lined the street, while above, utility workers were trying to repair power lines. Rain was still pounding away.
I asked a power man, “What do you think that explosion was?”
“I don’t know,” he said. It could be the hurricane the newsman has been telling y’all about. It’s picking up speed.”
The last contact I’d had with my family was when we still had phone lines. My mom told me the government was sending buses and that they were going to travel to Texas on one, because the Superdome needed room. She asked me, “You coming?”
I told her, “I ain’t goin’ nowhere. Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen.”
Even though I was saying it was a joke that the hurricane was coming, parts of my mind were telling me there could be something really happening, and I was kind of at peace with it, because I knew my family was safe. I was like “Lord, whatever you do, let my family be safe. And everybody else’s family too.”
And then things got really bad.
