My Katrina: Part 26

PREVIOUSLY: Once we got to the Convention Center, you really see what people was goin’ through. People in neck brace, some lyin’ on the ground, some bleedin’, some moanin’, others screamin’ for help. Babies cryin’. Families huddled together. It looked like the world was comin’ to an end. It smell worse than the garbage plant. I spent that night in a tent with others we had helped survive. Like 20 of us sleeping in cot beds. It was sort of like bein’ in prison. Here you got babies cryin’ all through the night, people cryin’, people prayin’, people just wonderin’ where the other part of they family at. I close my eyes, thinking about all the suffering and wondering what would happen to me…
When the next day came we had boxes of Fruit Loops, Sugar Pops, and apple sauce to eat in the tent, along with granola bars, honeybuns, chips, cookies, and cupcakes.
And then a man announces that thirty minutes from now we be heading to the airport. He say the airport had another slot open. With me never bein’ in an airport I didn’t know what he mean.
We got back in the helicopters, and they flew us to Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.
They landed us down and we come up at like a side building where we entered the airport. It looked like a zoo. Literally. To me it had more animals than people: iguana, big dogs, snakes, all kind of animals. Except giraffes and hippopotamuses, they didn’t have all that.
It was like people was comin’ to town for Big Fat Tuesday and that means: Mardi Gras.
I sat in the waiting area and the airport people come by and say “Go to the desk and they tell you where you goin’.”
They told us, “You going to Utah.” And we say, “Why we can’t go to Texas?”
You look up on the chart and they show us all the states is fill up—all the hotels and all. I say, “Who I know in Utah? My family in Texas.”
Then the lady say, “Oh, they have space to Washington, DC. If y’all willing to take that plane, we’ll take y’all there.” She say it’s Delta. I say, “Ma’am I never been on a Delta in my life.” My homeboy Chester—he know “Delta” mean it be a plane.
I say, “Where we gonna go in DC?”
Chester say, “Ain’t nothing but a hip and a hop from Washington, DC to Maryland. Maybe we go there.”
The airport lady say they have snacks on the plane. Also she say they have waitress on the plane.
I say, “Nice-lookin’ waitress?” I just try to say something to make myself cheered up.
My homegirl Cheryl, she with me too. A lot of us from my area where I come up are on my plane.
When I get on that plane and walk all the way to the back, I say, “Damn, when the end of this plane gonna come?”
My homegirl say, “Why you goin’ to the back?” The back more cooler than the front. The front you see everything. I don’t want to see that. Helicopter more scary though; you got the doors open.
The waitress say my homegirl can’t sit on my lap. She say you gotta sit in your own seat with a seatbelt.
The plane took off and headed into the clouds; it was dark and reminded me of the storm all over again. And, boy. now it went back to my mind about that plane that crashed in the ‘80s.
But finally I was on my way, leaving my hometown for another state. I was thinking how it was goin’ to feel bein’ in another state where I don’t know anybody. But I’d be with a better roof over my head, not eatin’ cold sandwiches, having hot food, a better place with no more water in the streets, no more nightmares.
Well, that’s not exactly how it all turned out.
(to be continued)