My Katrina: Part 25

Good morning, good morning! I’m so happy to see you, my community of friends and readers, in the new year! I want to thank my customers for all they support and gifts and cards! I hope everyone enjoyed time with family and friends.
For Christmas, me and my editor went to this fancy restaurant. We ate grilled chicken, rice, French fries, and little bitty cabbages called Brussels sprouts. Wow, this meal was so great!
It was a little rough for me last year but this year I see a better outcome, because the motivation from you—my friends—gives me power and strength, whatever the situation.
I must share this with you all while it’s in my heart: If I’d had people like you all to hear me out while I was younger, I would have seen a better way out.
Remember, it’s never too late. This year I’m clear-minded, focused, and living with good, supportive men in my household. It ain’t the biggest house, but thanks again for helping me get my own set of keys to my place where I lay my head in peace.
Previously: Finally it was my turn. The guard I been talking to say, “You ready buddy?” Then the heli pulled up in the air, and my stomach dropped. My heart dropped too. Like they both still on the ground. Helicopter open, no door. Damn! I looked down, but I didn’t look too much down. I look side-eyed down. I wanted to see what going on. You couldn’t tell which was the floodwater and which was the river. Everything in my stomach move, but not as much as when I see what I see fifteen minutes later…
Once we got to the Convention Center that’s when you really see everything that people was goin’ through.
It was just like a hospital. In fact they had some veterans who had been evacuated from hospitals with tubes in their bodies. There was Red Cross and all kind of medical. Volunteer medics too. People in neck brace. People lyin’ on the ground, some moanin’, others screamin’ for help. Babies cryin’.
So many families huddled together. It looked like the world was comin’ to an end.
It smell worse than the garbage plant. It smell worse than when an armadillo get hit. The odor was louder than a skunk. People that know about a skunk they’ll tell you these things.
They say we’ll get better medical attention wherever they send us.
There were trailers where they ask all kind of questions. You had to go through that before you leave. They had like 50 gates where you could line up for medical help.
I told them I was a diabetic and had high blood pressure, so they gave me pills and insulin needles.
They got tents out. They ask how many in your family. I tell them, “My family been gone. I’m just with the people from the projects that I been helping.”
My homeboy KK had left the projects before me, so I didn’t see him. I spent that night outside the convention center in a tent with others that we had helped survive through this. Like 20 of us sleeping in cot beds, using little aluminum lanterns to see.
In every tent they put boxes of food, water, juices, and milk.
It was sort of like, but I wouldn’t say exactly like, bein’ in prison. Here you got babies cryin’ all through the night, people cryin’, people prayin’, people just wonderin’ where they other part of they family at.
I really didn’t sleep too well that night because I worried where my family at. They had a old lady sleeping next to me. She had a bleeding ulcer and she screaming all night.
She ask me to reach in her bag. All she had was a bottle of Maalox and some pain pills. I really can’t imagine the pain of her situation.
I close my eyes, thinking about all the suffering and wondering what would happen to me.
(to be continued)