GUSTAV GOSSIP, Phase 1

—Should we stay or should we go now? If we go there will be trouble… and if we stay it will be double… by The Clash

PHASE 1: August 26-30 2008

I stepped outside to look around.
The air is thick with water; the sun’s heat is fierce.
My neighbor across the street throws coolers, pillows, and boxes into his car.
He’s wearing an “I love NOLA” shirt.
In the sky, a helicopter swings by.
The Sunday paper is at my feet. I almost trip on it.
After all, it’s only Saturday.

So it’s officially real. Our Sunday paper was delivered on Saturday and it carries the same message: get out.

Gustav, the storm we’ve been hearing about for almost a week is finally making its slow, mean path towards here: to New Orleans, on the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The irony is so spellbinding that one local meteorologist just called Gustav Katrina by mistake.

So I shut off the TV. We’ve been watching the news nonstop since Tuesday, stopping briefly to watch the historic speeches of the Democratic National Convention so we wouldn’t miss out. Brian Williams interrupted one speech to bring us news of a monster storm headed for the Gulf. The anniversary of Hurricane Katrina was mentioned in the same sentence.

On Wednesday morning, as I was delivering my fidgety second grade students to physical education class, the PE instructor yelled a question across the yard:

“Ms. Dayeh! Did you get your flight yet?”

Flight? I looked at Ms. W with a confused expression. Then it hit me.

“Ohhhh…. “

She laughed as she told me she was going back to Tennessee, where she passed time for months after Katrina. This wasn’t the lackadaisical approach New Orleanians were famous for. This was pretty alarmist, even paranoid.

I smiled and shrugged. “I guess we might go to Dallas. My brother-in-law and Uncle are there . . . “

That evening my school held a faculty meeting devoted to “storm preparation.” We were urged to move all classroom items away from the windows no later than Friday. At the time, the storm was still in Haiti.

I came home that night and started to pack. I threw our wedding albums, passports, marriage license, birth certificates, social security cards, university diplomas, and cherished photos into a box. These are the things Katrina survivors told me they needed most. I even unearthed my boxed wedding dress and two cat carriers.

This preparation made me feel better, like I was being responsible, and not “waiting ‘till the last minute” as the news urged me not to. Haz declared that I was officially a New Orleanian, or rather a Post-Katrina New Orleanian— a new brand of Big Easy resident. While the former New Orleans city dweller would be quite fine with riding out the storm, or at least considering it, this new brand of citizen doesn’t even consider it. Not even for one minute. Not since Katrina.

The old brand of New Orleanian— as Haz most definitely is— looks at these storms and shrugs.

“Ah, could go anywhere,” he sighed.
“But it could come here,” I insisted.
“Yeah, but let’s wait a few days. These things always change,” he replied. “its part of the fun of living here.”

“Fun” is what storm evacuations used to be. Some even called them “e-vacations.” New Orleanians used to delight in throwing a few days’ worth of clothes in a bag, and randomly taking off for Memphis, Houston, Atlanta, the Gulf Coast beaches, or other scattered destinations. It was part of what made New Orleans permanently feel as a temporary place— the idea that at any time you might have to drop everything and go.

That was before what everyone calls “the storm.” Since Katrina, there hasn’t been even one single evacuation. Not even a real scare. So this Gustav, threatening to knock down our door, is the one we’ve all been waiting for.

We all knew the first “big one” after Katrina would be bad. I just didn’t think New Orleanians were capable of such mass hysteria.

Thursday night, as I sat in one of my grad classes at the University of New Orleans, everyone asked each other “so we are y’all gonna go?” The message was clear. The word evacuation wasn’t necessary. My professor ended class an hour early so we could all “go home and prepare.”

I went home that night and watched the news. To me, it looked like Gustav wanted to go to Houston, but was contemplating New Orleans. Haz, having spent most of his years in the area pre-Katrina, continued to consider the whole ordeal a farce.

“The damn thing hasn’t hit Cuba yet!” he said.

By Friday it was in Jamaica. The red swirly swirl was getting larger on the weather reports. An eye was now visible. Parents came to pick up their children early at school. I asked one mother:

“So what are your plans? Are y’all leaving?”

She turned and looked at me and said:

“Yes, indeed. We’re outta here.”

“When?”

“Tonight. Not a minute later.”

Her son looked up.

“Does that mean no football practice?”

She laughed. “No way. Time to get on the road.”

Earlier that day, my students arrived in the classroom full of questions and comments of the hurricane variety. They had actually been talking about it since Wednesday.

“I’m gonna lose everything again!” one girl exclaimed.

“That thing is going to blow the city away!” a boy yelled.

I tried to calm them. I tried to reassure them that it “might” come this way, but it also “might” go to Texas, or Florida. I told them it wasn’t as big as storm as Katrina.

Later, when the custodial staff covered my classroom computers with garbage bags, they all asked “why?”

I gulped and lied. “The classroom gets really dusty on the weekends. The bags protect the computers from getting too dirty.”

I think they actually believed me.

But there was no point in talking like this to the parents. They noticed the garbage-bag covered computers and nodded, as if that confirmed their resolve to leave. This time wouldn’t be like the last.

Many of my coworkers, some of them Katrina survivors, felt the same. I had to sign an “evacuation list” before I left work on Friday. Our school’s faculty is now scattered all over the country: in Mississippi, Texas, Colorado, New York, and Illinois. Our principal already declared no school until Thursday next week.

Haz and I decided to go out to dinner that night. We drove across the city, past the Superdome, Arena, and central business district and across the Mississippi river to our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Tau Bay.

Pho Tau was as packed as usual. We gobbled down spring rolls and talked about where we should go. If we went. I mean, the storm was still being ambivalent. As we paid our bill, the cashier asked our plans and lamented the state of the city’s levees.

We watched the news until late that night. I threw 5 days’ worth of clothes and toilettries in a bag, along with some magazines and two books, in case I finished one.

We both woke up earlier than usual, today, on Saturday. Nearby local parishes were requiring mandatory evacuations, but not in Orleans. Haz’s extended family was heading out east to Tallahassee, where the storm most certainly wouldn’t go. We spent the day contemplating Dallas or Tallahassee, Dallas or Tallahassee. One destination would put us in a budget hotel for 4 days with 2 cats, while the other would put us at Haz’s brother’s house, though potentially on the wrong side of the storm.

As I started to read the Sunday paper and showed it to Haz, our doorbell rang. It was our neighbor, Peggy, who had to be airlifted out of a building during Hurricane Katrina.

“I’m outta here, guys, just wanted to say goodbye.”

The panic in her voice and the frenzy in her gesturing hands made it all seem too close, too immediate. We weren’t finished packing. We still didn’t have a definite plan. The cats had no idea they were about to be in a car for as much as 12 hours. And the storm was now hitting Cuba.

TO BE CONTINUED…..