It's All in the Way You Tell the Story

Someone I'd just met told me her storm story this weekend. She and her roommate/aka gay husband (Patrick) didn't evacuate because they each had a dog, so they watched, and photographed, the rising water that eventually engulfed their one-story home, forcing them to seek refuge on the second floor of a neighbor's home. They were rescued by boat. They spent nights sleeping outside in the sweltering heat before being evacuated across the state to Cajun Country, where they landed with some clothes, a few key documents, and little else. Their New Orleans house is now a shell as they keep waiting to find out how much money they'll get to rebuild. Despite the fact that much of the city is a disaster zone, city officials had given the woman a formal warning about cleaning up the jungle that her yard had become. (Which is how I met her. I was there to pull weeds and clean up her yard, armed with -- God help us all -- a machete.)

Yet despite her sad and sometimes horrifying tale and the general feeling that life and insurance companies and government officialas aren't fair, I can honestly say I don't think I've laughed so hard in a long time.

It was how she told the story.

Let me put it this way: When the most important bit of storm advice you get is, "Make sure you're wearing a bra," you know you're talking to someone special. As in, "And they're pulling these 70-, 80- year old women in their nightgowns off the roofs of their houses and putting them in the boot with us and I was like, 'Good Lord, gravity is not kind!' And I know we all have to deal with it some day but hadn't we been through enough at that point? I was like, 'Patrick! Take off one of your six shirts and give it to that woman right now because I can not look at that!" (Later, we discussed the bra rule: Does that mean that, if you think a natural disaster is coming, you have to wear one to bed? Or is having one handy good enough? Does a bra join your wedding ring and insurance papers and photos in the "Bag of Things That Must Be Saved"?)

I know I can't do this woman's story justice. The funny just won't translate. You just had to see her, sitting on the floor of her gutteed house, showing photos of the flood and its aftermatch on computer. You had to listen to her incredibly self-deprecating way of describing things, and get excited and sad as she did as she yelled and laughed and pulled us along through late August and early September, 2005.

Some bits and pieces:

Her tale began the day before the storm. She lived in Lakeview, a part of the city that had never flooded before and two nervous friends were coming to ride out the storm with her and Patrick. So when the water started filling the streets, her house was clean. As it kept rising, she still insisted her friends go outside to smoke so the cigarette smell wouldn't infuse her belongings. "We kept going outside! And I'd cleaned all day the day before! And what did that matter?" she laughed. "We lost everything anyway." (Her friends had brought a bunch of their stuff over as well. As it turned out, their home didn't flood. More bitter irony.)

(Pictures: the two women smiling, one wearing a headlamp; smoking outside; water in the street; the pecan tree that toppled and destroyed the back deck.)

She described how the water took its time reaching her first floor, but once it was there, it seemed to pick up speed. It didn't come gushing through cracks in windows and doors. It seemed to come from below, gaining inches rapidly , covering their feet then their ankles. She said she could understand why so many people drowned in their homes. There just wasn't time to get out.

But she and her roommate and friends did manage to get out. They had a key to the neighbor's two story home. There, they watched the water rise, "She had a floating floor and it really was floating! Then we're on the second floor worried the dogs are going to pee in the house, the same house that was taking on 6 feet of water. We were so worried, my roommate went on the balcony and peed in certain places hoping the dogs would follow the scent."

(Pictures: Smiling on the balcony after marking one's territory; the floating floor and floating furniture; her house, below them, which water high on the first floor.)

So they're trapped on the balcony of the neighbor's house and firefighters come by with a boat. They're at least five feet from the boat and are told to jump in. "And I'm like, 'Oh no. I can see the headline now, "Fat Woman Kills Firefighters While Jumping into Boat.' It'll be on the front page of the Times Picayune with a big picture of my fat ass." I was a mess. I was like, 'Please, Jesus, don't like me tip this boat over.' And the firefighters are telling me to jump, jump. So I wrap my hands around this board and lower myself as much as possible and then plink! Barely a ripple. They were very impressed. Then Patrick was about to hand me my dog and the firefighter put his arms up like, 'I'll take him.' And I said, "No! No! He's such a jerk!" and just then the dog went crazy in Patrick's arms, biting and barking and the firefighter was like, 'Whoa. OK.'"

(Pictures: Sadly, none of cute firefighters, but one of the group after they'd been rescued and were standing together on the bridge. Evil little dog was hiding his face in the shot, though.)

The firefighters ferried them to a bridge near City Park where about 90 other people were huddled after being rescued. There was no food or water or any kind of comforts. As the hours passed, the water surrounding them got deeper and deeper. Three times, a Coast Guard helicopter flew overhead and seemed to assess the situation before flying away. The third time, they dropped down a harness and tried to put an elderly woman in it. But she'd had some hip surgery and they couldn't get her in, so they just pulled up the harness and flew away. "I don't agree with those people who opened fire on the Coast Guard at the Superdome, but if I'd had a gun, I would have let loose that third time they circled overhead and didn't do anything. It would have just been like, 'Everyone out of my way' and I would have fired."

They all spent the night on the bridge and it was dark and eery and hot. (But in a tribute to American decorum, the group decided that one side of the bridge was the men's bathroom and the other side was the ladies'. They sang songs and tried to be sleep but the helicopters (see above) kept waking them up.

(Pictures: Some lovely ones of City Park under water, with the trees climbing out of the water; others of the group against the bridge and, amazingly, still smiling; the two restroom facilties.)

The next morning, Patrick swam back to the house and got some food and water to share with everyone on the bridge. Everyone, that is, except the man who was tooling around in a boat and who had refused to let Patrick use it to get food.

(Pictures: One of Patrick, looking tough, which she joked was going to be used for his next personal ad.)

They decided to try to walk out of the city. They were along the railroad tracks when they looked back and saw somone had started rescuing people by helicopter. Patrick yelled at her, "We could have had a helicopter rescue!" Instead, they kept walking, eventually ending up on another overpass in Jefferson Parish, from which they were rescued.

When they got on the bus, they weren't given food or water. They were given Old Spice deoderant sticks. "We smelled so bad! We're just rubbing those sticks up and down our arms and all over our bodies and we didn't care."

They could have been placed in "gen pop" at Thibodaux, a big room with crying babies and musty air. But because they had their animals, they had to be separated and, as it ended up, they got the much better end of the deal."That's another trick to evacuating: have your animals. We ended up at the Taj Mahal comparatively."

(Pictures: General shots of the gen pop area and the Taj, as well shots of individuals they'd met: the woman from Minnesota who said, "I don't know what I'm going to do about a job. I don't think Pet Smart is going to be open again." Which prompted them to say, "It's a national company. Go home to Minnesota and work there;" the elderly man, about 80, who had his back to the camera. His wife had evacuated without him, leaving him home with his dog and cat. When he got to the shelter and called him, she told him she wanted a divorce. He spent a lot of time crying.)

After a few days, they made it to one of her cousin's houses.

(Picture: Patrick in two layers of boxers borrowed from a teenage boy, smiling but looking ridiculous. "The first pair he put on, you could see right through it and I said, "No way are you going to have dinner with the family wearing those.' So then he put this other pair on top of it and it had these little snowmen on them and he would kill me if he knew I was showing you this picture.")

Eventually, they made it back to New Orleans.

(Pictures: Her parents' house, destroyed; her cousin's house, destroyed; her house, destroyed; some random pictures of some local libraries, taken because she'd used her city worker i.d. to get back in the city early and wanted to have some sort of proof she was there working if she was stopped. (She wasn't really working.))

It was a horrible story. It was a hysterical story. She made us cringe when she told us how she and her family had lost everything, then made us laugh as she described her big subterfuge, sneaking into the city weeks before normal folk were allowed in. She made us feel the heat and misery of sleeping on the bridge while making us roar as we imagined her poised to jump into the rescue boat.

it's all in how you tell the story.