Job Conditions, Pt. 2

I recently helped gut a house that hadn't been touched since the storm. That's not that unusual. What was unusual was how pungent the house was.

In the days and weeks after Katrina, the city smelled. Bad. It was like something rotten and stagnant and unclean. (Could have been me. I didn't shower for days on end and it was 1,000 degrees.) But that smell gradually went away and the flowers came out again and New Orleans was returned to a normal city smell, except at night Uptown, when the flowers always smell deliciously sweet. (Bourbon Street never smells good, even though it is only blocks from beignet-making heaven. The overpowering smell most mornings is pee and cleaning fluid. Delicious.)

Some houses I work in, everything's OK -- just generally moldy smelling -- until you pull out a hollow closet rod that's still filled with water and it spills on you. You're grossed out for a while, but you move on. (And smugly congratulate yourself for your thrift store shopping prowess.) You're wearing a mask, which helps, and you breathe through your mouth until the odor dies. (I also employ this technique around the seafood part of the Italian Market. Or I hold my breath. I'm like Houdini in my breath-holding abilities.)

But this one house overpowered the second you stepped inside. You wouldn't think that, after 20 months, rotten food would smell anymore. Wrong. Or that flood water, still sitting in bowls and cups, would still prove gaggable. It does. Or that there would even BE flood water after so long. There is. In the bedroom, the mattresses were still dripping wet and bags and bags of adult diapers proved their absorbency, expanding to triple their size. (God, they were heavy and rancid.) The living room had a wet couch and a china cabinet filled with water-bearing objects, all smelly.

The kitchen was particularly heinous, with black slime covering the floor, but for some reason, I made it my pet project. I attacked the cabinets, still filled with food, and the dozens of scattered cans, bottles and jars on the floor. When you're gutting, you're supposed to separate out the food from other items and the food pile for this house was one of the largest I've ever seen-- huge jars of salsa with floating mold and rotted and rusted canned vegetables and tons and tons of spices. It was ... gross. Just gross.

There were moments in the Kitchen of Rankness that I asked myself why I was in there. Usually, I avoid kitchens, partly for this very reason. (And there's usually tile there, which you already know I hate, and cabinets can be a pain.) And on later reflection, I realized it's because of how much I liked the daughter of the woman who had owned the home.

Her name was Gloria. Her mom -- who had one of those great old time names, like Odette or Odile. I found a paper napkin that had been saved from her 80th birthday party -- had lived here but had died right around the time of the storm. Gloria hadn't been able to go into the house since her mother's death so it had sat and ripened.

Gloria was tough and funny and positive when she was talking to us -- "The water washed away everything but the chance to rebuild," she said at one point. She was upbeat when she talked about her mother, a diabetic who had lost both her legs years ago and used a wheelchair to get around. Her mother had insisted on her independence and on living alone and taking care of herself. She had been a native New Orleanian and she loved the city and its festivals and that showed in her house, where windows had been covered with strands of Mardi Gras beads and her glassware collection included glasses from Jax Brewery and the racetrack. When she finally go so sick that she had to go to the hospital, she brought some of her beads with her.

While hospitalized, Gloria's mother began hoarding the free booties/slippers the hospital gave to patients. Gloria said she couldn't understand it: Her mother didn't have legs. But as the end grew closer, and her mother seemed content and accepting of her death, she finally got it: Her mother was going to Heaven, where Jesus would make her whole again, and she wanted to have something to wear on her new feet. (This comment led to a later discussion with Jordan about God's apparent inability to provide footwear. I mean, he can give you legs and feet but he can't throw in a pair of Aerosoles? We're not asking for Jimmy Choo's here, Lord.)

Gloria just charmed me. She was so thankful to us volunteers for being there, asking us for our addresses so she could write thank you cards and promising us a big BBQ if we ever came back to New Orleans. One of the volunteers said, "Can I give you a hug?" and she said, "Can you give me a hug? Hugs for everyone!" and she hugged all 20 of us in turn, never losing her smile.

I asked Gloria if there was anything special we should look for in the house, anything she wanted us to save. It was the only time her face crumpled. A catch in her voice, she said, "Anything, anything of my mother's you can find." She left in tears.

That's why I do this, even when I can't breathe.