He vaguely remembered wading down the street in the middle of a crowd. Jackson Square? Yes, that was it, one of the few spots of higher ground. After that, something about a boat, a hospital, and the dreamlike sensation of being lifted through a window.
Martin had been sitting on the floor for hours, his back against the wall. At first, he’d accepted the chair offered by a young man accompanying a comatose woman, probably his mother. But dizziness soon overcame him, and he could hardly hold his head up. He’d slid to the floor and leaned against the wall with the old woman’s stretcher on one side and the metal IV stand holding drips for both of them on the other.
Martin looked up at the half-full bag. The staff had said the plasma was dosed with antibiotics and tetanus vaccine; the second unit of that solution was draining down the plastic tube and through the needle taped to his arm. He lifted his other hand and touched his forehead. The fever seemed to have subsided. He was still weak, but he felt a lot better. He needed rest. He needed to get some of his energy back. He reached down and gingerly probed the skin around the new dressing. His leg was still inflamed, but it seemed less swollen.
He looked around. The young man who’d given him the chair was weeping aloud, his head in his hands. It looked as if his mother had just died. The hand that dangled over the edge of the stretcher was little more than skin and bones. The medic told the boy they had to remove his mother’s body because they needed the stretcher. He removed the IV, left Martin the stand with the drip, and took one end of the stretcher. He and an orderly carried the body away. The young man followed, but Martin knew they wouldn’t let him into whatever temporary morgue they’d set up.
He’s a good son, Martin thought, and wondered if she’d been a good mother. That conjured up thoughts of his own mother and how he’d dispatched her to heaven. He murmured a brief prayer for her soul.
59
FORSAKEN BY THE SAINTS
Superdome, New Orleans
Nana awoke again, uncertain whether she’d slept for hours or merely minutes. She was too tired and dizzy to try to unzip the knapsack to take out her purse and search for the little gold watch Bobby had told her to keep hidden. Each time she woke up, she found herself bathed in sweat, a sign she was becoming dehydrated. There was little she could do; her blouse stuck to her back, and big drops of perspiration trickled down her chest and belly behind the plastic knapsack she clutched tightly. She cursed the pressing urge to pee that had tormented her for hours. She knew she wouldn’t be able to ignore it much longer.
She looked around. She was convinced there were more people now, even though that seemed impossible. She gulped the foul, contaminated air. It stank of the piss, sweat, and breath of thousands of refugees. She was distressed that she was so weak. Perhaps she should finish the last of the chocolate granola bar in the knapsack. Her nausea just made her need to pee all the more.
She’d promised to wait there for Bobby, but that was yesterday, an eternity ago. Another day had begun. She was going to pee all over herself if she didn’t do something about it, and that would be awful.
She gripped the head of her cane and put a hand on the shoulder of the man seated next to her. “Please, can you help me get up?”
Her first thought was to go to the nearest toilet. She didn’t care if it was filthy. She needed her privacy, even if she had to pee on the floor. This is teaching me a lesson, she thought. Comes a time, from one day to the next, when we find ourselves ready to accept things we swore we’d never put up with.
The painful journey to the women’s restroom took more than half an hour. Even from afar, she smelled the stinking puddle churned by thousands of passing feet. The rubber tip of her cane slipped awkwardly a couple of times, sending her stumbling forward in the slick mess. Groups trying to get into the stadium surged dangerously against those trying to get out, so that for long moments, the jammed bodies pushed and shoved until at last someone managed to wriggle through in one direction or the other.
Nana felt a hot, humid breeze from the outside on her face. It stank, but she preferred it to the fetid air inside. She’d almost reached the exit when somebody elbowed her one way and somebody else shoved her back. Nana lost her cane and fell forward onto her knees, her palms slamming audibly against the concrete floor as she tried to catch herself. A cruel pain shot up from her kneecaps. She’d wrenched her hip. Helpless on the concrete floor, Nana panicked. Overcome and ignored, heedless of the pain, she thought she was done for. She was going to die right there in the press of all those bodies.
A woman pushing past grabbed her under one armpit and yanked her up. The abrupt tug hurt, but it brought her back to her feet and kept her from being trampled. There was no time for gratitude, for the woman immediately disappeared into the crowd. Nana tottered forward, buffeted from one side to the other, her cane lost in the scrum. Her legs ached unbearably. That human tide swept her onward until the stadium vomited her out into the plaza.
She was outside.
The sun burned down from on high. Nana staggered and limped onward, each step threatening to bring her down. Clinging to the railing around the access area, she looked out at her city, and her heart burst with grief. For hours she’d heard tales from arriving refugees, but never in her worst nightmare could she have imagined this hellish sight. Women headed for the stadium dragged desperately crying little children behind them. Filthy, half-naked people stretched out on the ground. Surging water surrounded the stadium and the stench was overpowering. Flies swarmed over the faces of drooling elderly men and women left to their fate. Nana realized that she and they had been abandoned in the heart of their own city.
Without her cane, she could hardly move. She knew she couldn’t go back inside. Bobby would never find her now. She was alone. She saw that the open area around the stadium had become one immense toilet. People squatted everywhere, doing their business like animals, heedless of those around them.
Horrified, mad with pain and knowing she couldn’t hold out much longer, she stepped out into the area where the lawn had been. The earth squished and yielded underfoot, soaked in feces and urine. She went to the wall, trying to keep from stepping in the worst of it, and wept as she raised her skirt, crouched, and released a stream of pee just as the National Guard trucks roared into the parking lot.
60
BLACK MANGROVE SWAMP
The swamp
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
They’d left the Cajun camp before dawn and had navigated through the swamp for more than an hour. Despite the previous day’s high temperatures, it was incredibly chilly out on the water. The vapor in the air cloaked them in a film of cold humidity. The sun began to penetrate the swamp, and the dense mist over the surface of the lake started to lift. In that light, Dupree’s face revealed how much pain he’d been suffering; as if in compensation, his gestures were imbued with a profound determination and vigor. He whispered directions as Bull steered their craft with the help of two Cajuns.
Seated in the center of the Zodiac, Amaia, Johnson, and Charbou huddled under plastic sheets the shrimpers had lent them. In the prow, the dark figurehead of Médora was positioned as if in the lead. With her was the traiteur, who’d insisted on coming with them. They advanced along shores laid waste by the storm and flood two days earlier. Natural features and human constructions were reemerging. The many simple shacks that had previously dotted the shorelines seemed to have been destroyed. The masts of several shrimp boats jutted up from the muddy brown water over the slips where the hurricane had sunk them. Like eerie tombstones they marked the watery graves of their owners’ means of making a living.