One year ago, some of my customers put their airline miles together and sent me home to New Orleans for my birthday, which is September 7. I will never forget their kindness and generosity. Now for the latest installment!
Previously: KK, Calio, and I led the K9 squad with their dogs in their boat from the Superdome to the projects. The guards assure us we be safe and they be getting us out of here. When they say how they going to tie a rope around us and hoist us up to the helicopter, we get quiet at the thought of danglin’ from that rope—me, KK, and Calio. I feel my eyes get big. But the guards don’t say when they be coming back to get us and I’m like, “This is takin’ too long, we gotta do something.”
At the projects, the K9 guards asked how long we been there, and they wanted to know did everyone have food and water. We admitted we did have food and water. We wanted to be honest because we wanted their help immediately.
The guards unchained their dogs and they all headed out in their boat. An hour later some National Guards arrive and station themselves, one on each floor to make sure no one leave the project. They stay on the floor all night and watch us.
“You can’t go out for no reason,” they say.
Knowing a better security watchin’ them, the people be feeling more relaxed: mamas swayin’ with little bitty babies in they arms, up-age kids riding them big wheel trikes up and down the long balcony, girls playing with their little baby dolls. The guards telling them, “Y’all be gettin’ out soon.”
We start to feel so comfortable with the guards, and they talk to us about different things. They askin’ us, “What made y’all stay? Why didn’t y’all leave?”
And we all askin’ them where they been sending people to, how many people in the Superdome, how many people they rescue, how did they get ‘em out?
We asked where they gonna send us. They say they gonna send us to the convention center. We didn’t know yet that we was gonna be leaving New Orleans.
I told the guard I didn’t have no insulin. I’m a diabetic, and I ain’t had no medicine ever since I just got out of jail a few weeks before Katrina hit. It was havin’ me feelin’ kinda weak. My eyes feelin’ blurry too. But I couldn’t just stay down; I had to survive.
During this period that they was watching over us, they came with all kind of medical. They lined us up and took our blood pressure and checked us up. All the while, some people sayin’ what a hypocrite Bush was.
We had water coming out of the faucets, but the National Guard told us not to drink it. Folks was using it to wash clothes in buckets. Then they hang the clean, wet laundry on open doors to their apartments and on kitchen on cabinet doors.
All me, KK, and Calio wanna do is go out, but we couldn’t. It make you more fearful about goin’ out when the National Guard tell you “Don’t go!”
Right there I got real nervous. We ain’t got no power, couldn’t see anything, and now we constantly hear “Don’t go out!” They make me think all kind of things in my mind, like maybe people from overseas be sneakin’ in the country to blow us up.
The whole thing had us all on tippy toes.
We begin playing cards and domino all day, trying to get our minds off feeling trapped. All we can hear is BRRRR, BRRR. Helicopters. Bunches of them over our heads, like flocks of eagles, and you don’t know where they going.
I ask one National Guard, “Sir, can you please be honest with me? How long they say we gonna be here?”
He stated back, “There’s a lot of y’all here. It ain’t like we can just take you and be gone. We gotta make sure ya’ll eat, get medical care and all that. Y’all gonna be all right.”
They be talkin’ and laughin’ with the kids as well as with the grownups. They play dominoes and cards with us. They let us know they trapped just like we was trapped, but they also let us know we be all right.
When the guard walk up and down the balcony, the senior citizens tellin’ him the last time they had some medicine.
Finally a Red Cross crew people came off the boat, like twenty of them, wearing white vests with the little red cross on them. Several medics wore hard hats. They spread out four or five to a floor, and really help us with our medical and also saying we would get away safely.
After what seemed like months, I got up and heard birds for the first time since the storm began. The sky was brighter too. At first I thought I was dreaming.
I got up off my cot on the balcony and looked out. Below, as far as I could see, military trucks had lined up, blowing their horns. Wonk, Wonk.
After I wake up good, I heard people hollerin’, “Yeah! Yeah!” with thumbs up. “About time!” some was sayin’; others was cursin’ Bush out.
That’s when I told KK, “This must be our ball call, our final day!”
But once again, I misjudged.
To be continued . . .
