Southern Ruby (59 page)

They asked how I'd ended up at the Superdome and I explained that I was there with my grandparents. ‘I've got to get my grandmother some water. She has a heart condition.'

Matty reached into her bag. ‘I've got half a bottle left — here, take it. Surely this can't keep going much longer? This
is the United States, after all. I'm expecting Superman — or at least Arnold Schwarzenegger — to appear at any moment and save us all!'

I thanked them and wished them well before returning to Grandma Ruby and Leroy. Grandma Ruby was snuggled in Leroy's arms and they were deep in conversation. After giving them the water, I walked a little distance away so as not to intrude. What must it be like to have believed someone was dead for fifty years and then to find them again?

I stared out at the floodwater surrounding the Superdome. It wasn't as deep as in the Lower Ninth Ward. The speed limits and the lines painted on the roads were visible under the water. Army vehicles would have no difficulty getting through it — so where were the convoys? I looked at the tired and desperate faces around me and shuddered. Could it really be possible help wasn't coming because most of the people who needed it were black? Grandma Ruby's stories of the Civil Rights Movement flooded my mind and for the first time the implications of Leroy being my grandfather dawned on me. I knew that when I got to tell Tamara and Leanne that while in New Orleans I'd discovered I was one-quarter African-American, they'd think it was the coolest thing ever. Australians associated black Americans with entertainers and soul singers, but here in the United States things were different. Now, seeing all these people trapped here, suffering poverty and discrimination because of their skin colour, I saw nothing cool about it at all. It made me sick.

Grandma Ruby voiced a similar opinion when I returned to her and Leroy. ‘I thought after all our sacrifices, New Orleans had changed. But look at these poor people. Nothing has changed! Does the government even think of these wretched souls as human beings? Why haven't they sent in planes with food and water for everyone?'

A National Guard sergeant approached me. ‘Are you a foreigner?' he asked.

‘I'm Australian,' I told him.

‘We've got to get you out of here. You're not safe. We've got gangs, shootings and rapes. There are crack addicts wandering around crazed because they can't get a fix. Foreigners are easy targets. I'll take you to the basketball arena. We've already escorted a group of foreign tourists there.'

‘I'm with my grandparents,' I told him, pointing to Grandma Ruby and Leroy. ‘My grandmother has a heart condition and she hasn't had warfarin for three days.' I didn't tell him about Flambeau, who was hidden in his box again. I was worried somebody would steal him to eat.

‘All right,' the guard said. ‘There's a temporary clinic at the arena.' He eyed Leroy. ‘And it will look better if your grandfather comes too. But walk with me real slow and don't look happy or relieved. There could be a riot if it appears like I'm giving you special privileges. But we take care of our guests here in New Orleans.'

To get to the basketball arena we had to pass through several armed barricades. The walk took us a long time because Grandma Ruby was unsteady on her feet. The sight of her weakness made me queasy in the stomach but I kept reassuring myself that she'd be fine again once she'd had a proper amount of food and water and was back on her correct medication.

The arena was dim inside, except for intermittent flashing blue lights from a smoke alarm nobody had switched off. At least it wasn't overcrowded like the Superdome.

The guard showed us to some seats in the stadium. ‘You'll find the medics over there,' he said, pointing to a hallway.

Grandma Ruby was panting, so I gave her some time to rest before suggesting we head to the medical help area. Leroy took one of her arms and I took the other. Her flesh felt cold and clammy — too cold for the stifling heat inside the arena.

As we entered the hallway, the stench hit me like a punch in the throat. I gagged at the sickly smell of urine, vomit and faeces. Dozens of people, mostly elderly, were lying on army cots or sitting in wheelchairs while volunteers, equally as filthy and ragged as we were, fanned them with bits of cardboard. I could hear foreign accents, including a number of Australian ones, everywhere and no longer had to wonder what had happened to the unsuspecting tourists who'd come into New Orleans the previous Friday.

I spotted Matty and Dave and called them over. ‘Could you help with my grandmother?' I asked. ‘She can barely stand.'

Dave brushed a fly away from his face. ‘There are no more cots — I'll see if I can get her a chair. It'll be a long wait until a doctor or nurse can examine her.' He returned a few moments later wheeling a push-cart trolley with a plastic chair placed on the platform. ‘There aren't any more wheelchairs,' he said apologetically. ‘I had to improvise with this wheeled cart.'

It was humiliating to put Grandma Ruby on something that was intended for moving boxes, but there wasn't any choice.

As Dave and Leroy took her arms to help her onto the chair, Grandma Ruby staggered. I steadied her and noticed her face was drooping on one side. ‘She's having a stroke!' I cried.

A young nurse who had been taking a patient's blood pressure stood up and rushed over to us. She studied Grandma Ruby's face and asked her to lift both her arms, which she couldn't do. A frown wrinkled the nurse's face when I told her about the lost warfarin.

‘It could simply be dehydration,' she said, pinching Grandma Ruby's skin. ‘We haven't got any medications, not even aspirin. We ran out yesterday. All I've got left is IV drips. We'll put her on one and see if it helps.'

Leroy shot me a panicked look. ‘Isn't there a doctor who can look at her?' he asked the nurse. ‘She might be having a stroke!'

The nurse dragged her hand through her hair. ‘I'll get one to see her, but they won't be able to do anything more than I can,' she said, her own frustration clear in her voice. ‘I'll put that drip in now.'

I held one of Grandma Ruby's hands while Leroy fanned her with a piece of cardboard to keep her cool. My mouth was dry and it hurt to swallow. Grandma Ruby might be having a stroke and we couldn't do anything about it.

The nurse put the drip in Grandma Ruby's arm, but she continued to worsen. Her beautiful skin was drawn tight over her cheekbones and her body was curled up on one side. She tried to say something but all that came out was a raspy moan.

‘Don't die on me now, Ruby,' Leroy pleaded, stroking her hair and weeping. ‘Not now we've found each other again.'

I wanted to scream, but at who? Not at the other people who were suffering around us, or at the kind, overwhelmed and exhausted nurse who was doing the best she could to help. I pressed my face into my hands, as if by doing so I could make the whole nightmare disappear and transport us back to ‘Amandine', where we would sit in the summerhouse drinking mint juleps and none of this would have happened.

A doctor arrived and checked Grandma Ruby's vitals. When he studied her face, his own expression turned grim. ‘She'd better go to emergency,' he told the nurse, indicating a screened-off area at the end of the hallway.

‘Can we go with her?' I asked.

‘No,' he replied firmly. ‘Help out here. I'll come and tell you about her condition when I can.'

A man whose entire head was bandaged except his nose and mouth tugged on my arm. ‘They're not taking her to emergency,' he whispered. ‘That's the morgue. They're taking her there to die.'

His words made the blood rush to my head. I tugged at the neckline of my top as if I were suffocating. ‘No!' I said. ‘That can't be true!'

‘He's talking nonsense,' a female volunteer with a Danish accent said. She handed me a pair of latex gloves and a surgical mask. ‘Ignore him and help us. We're desperate.'

L
eroy looked on the verge of collapse too, but he rallied himself, picked up a piece of towel and started cleaning the vomit off the front of an elderly man's hospital gown. Motivated by his example, I grabbed a garbage bag and collected the empty drink bottles and soggy adult diapers strewn over the floor. I worked like a maniac to push away my terror that Grandma Ruby might not make it through the day; or, if she did, she'd end up paralysed.

Someone poked me in the back and I turned to see a toothless woman staring up at me from her urine-soaked cot. ‘You're an angel,' she said, pointing at the wing tattoos on my shoulders. ‘I asked God for an angel and he's sent one.'

At first I thought I must be hearing things when violin music filled the air. I scanned the area to see where it was coming from and spotted a black man standing in the corner, playing Bach's ‘Air on the G String' in the midst of all this despair. The beautiful music entranced me and for one brief moment I was transported from the hell around me.

‘It's like the bloody
Titanic
, isn't it?'

The music's spell broke. I turned around and saw that it was Dave who had spoken to me. ‘What?' I asked.

‘You know,' he said with a sardonic grin, ‘the part in the movie where the musicians keep playing while the ship sinks.'

Leroy and I spent the rest of the afternoon and night working in the medical area. Each time I saw the doctor, I'd ask him how Grandma Ruby was. He would only say that she was stable and refused to tell me anything else. He looked so ill and delirious himself in his sweat-stained scrubs that I wasn't sure he even knew who I was asking about.

When I told Leroy what the doctor had said, he bowed his head. ‘I can't lose her, Amandine. Not now. If she dies I can't go on. When I returned to New Orleans, I made sure she'd never see me but I watched her from afar, always making sure she was all right. If she goes, I've got no reason to keep on living.'

There was a sign on the emergency-area screen that read:
Medical Staff Only Beyond This Point. No Volunteers
. I moved close to the screen and peered through the gap that served as a doorway. A nurse was squeezing air into a man's breathing tube using a self-inflating bag. A doctor approached them, felt the man's pulse and shone a torch into his eyes. ‘He needs more oxygen than that,' she told the nurse wearily. ‘And we're all out of oxygen.'

I stepped back and bumped into a National Guardsman. ‘Get away from here!' he growled at me. ‘The medics have enough to deal with without having to worry about busybodies!'

The following day, a guard announced to the medics and volunteers that the special needs patients were about to be evacuated. As the screens came down and the patients were carried or wheeled past, Leroy and I studied every face but
Grandma Ruby wasn't among them. Panic rose in my chest. Had Grandma Ruby died? I ran my hand through my hair and my legs turned to jelly. I glanced at Leroy whose face looked pinched. A sickening feeling gripped my insides. Was this nightmare about to get worse?

I searched for the doctor who had treated her, but couldn't find him. I asked another nurse if Grandma Ruby's name had been on the list of patients to be evacuated.

She stared at me, then laughed like a mad woman. ‘Girl, you think we've got a list? Where do you think you are? The Mayo Clinic?'

We were then told that the volunteers were to be moved to the Hyatt Hotel, along with the health-care workers and remaining patients. We were informed that the Hyatt was one of the few hotels that hadn't expelled guests during the hurricane, and Mayor Nagin was now using it as his command centre to inform the rest of the country how desperate things were in New Orleans.

‘I'm not leaving till we find out where Ruby is,' said Leroy.

I didn't want to go until we found out what had happened to Grandma Ruby either, but I also suspected if we didn't take the opportunity to get out now, when it was offered, it might be days before we were rescued — and the food and water here had already run out. Leroy wasn't the strong looking septuagenarian he'd been a few days ago. He was unsteady on his feet and his eyes were dull. Whatever had happened to Grandma Ruby, I knew the she would want me to take good care of my grandfather.

‘I don't think she's here,' I told him, doing my best to hide the tremble in my voice. ‘They must have moved her and we'll have a better chance of finding out where if we go with the medical staff. One of them must know something.'

Leroy sighed and after a moment's hesitation agreed to my plan. We joined a group of volunteers being led to the lower
level of the arena. There was a fruit and vegetable truck waiting for us there, and we climbed into the back. The water came to the rim of the truck's wheels and stank worse than ever. I was sure I could feel the toxic chemicals burning my skin when we had to wade through it.

Once Leroy was seated, I turned around and noticed an 18-wheel refrigerated truck parked some distance away. Had food and water finally arrived?

‘That truck is for the bodies,' one of the health-care workers whispered to a colleague. ‘I heard that two of them arrived a few hours after the storm passed. Isn't it strange that the Federal Emergency Management Agency got those mobile morgues here quickly but haven't done anything for the thousands of living people at the Dome and Convention Centre?'

I turned away. I couldn't even allow myself the possibility that Grandma Ruby might be lying in one of those trucks.

When we entered the Hyatt's lobby it seemed to be functioning as usual, apart from the plywood-lined walls. Some of the patients from the basketball arena were sitting in chairs around the lobby. A reservations clerk was handing them bottles of water. One of the patients got up to help her. My heart leapt ten feet into the air when I realised it was Grandma Ruby! She must have been transferred to the hotel along with some of the other less critical patients before the special needs patients were evacuated. Leroy recognised her at the same time and we ran towards her.

Tears brimmed in her eyes when she saw us. ‘Thank God!' she cried, hugging us both. ‘I was terrified we were going be separated.'

I clutched her in another fierce embrace. She still looked pale but much better than she had been when we'd arrived at the arena.

‘I wasn't having a stroke,' she informed us. ‘It was dehydration. The doctor told me to get a thorough check-up when I get out of here before going back on the warfarin.'

Flambeau wriggled in his box at the sound of Grandma Ruby's voice, but I couldn't risk taking him out in the lobby in case we got thrown out of the hotel. We went down a corridor and found an empty meeting room. ‘Go to your henny,' I told him, taking him out of the box and placing him on the floor. ‘Stretch your legs.'

Flambeau ran to Grandma Ruby who swept him up into her arms. ‘You're a good boy,' she told him, nuzzling her face into his neck. ‘But we aren't out of the woods yet.'

Someone coughed and I realised we weren't alone. I gasped as a man in a hotel uniform appeared from behind a chair. I opened my mouth, trying to think of some convincing reason why we had brought a rooster into the hotel but before I could say anything he lifted a ginger kitten that he'd been playing with on the floor. ‘Don't worry,' he said with a conspiratorial smile. ‘Your secret is safe with me. Reggie here has been hiding in my bag and I've been bringing him in here for exercise.'

The hotel staff were as helpful as they could be under the circumstances — finding water for us from their dwindling supply and even serving toast and cereal for breakfast the following day but the toilets were backed up and we had to use bottles and bags for our waste. I realised that I would never take civilised life for granted again.

Finally, the National Guard announced there was a convoy of buses waiting to transport us out of New Orleans.

‘You will be protected by armed guards on your journey,' one of the soldiers informed us.

‘Is that really necessary?' I asked him.

‘There are snipers shooting at volunteers and police all around the city,' he replied. ‘Law and order have broken down, and there's a possibility that the buses could be hijacked.'

Snipers were shooting at volunteers? I thought of Elliot and was sick to my stomach. What if some nutcase with a gun killed him for his boat? Or even just for the hell of it?

We were directed onto one of the buses. I sat in the seat behind Grandma Ruby and Leroy and took Flambeau out of his box and put him on my lap, covered by one of Grandma Ruby's scarves. The bus was air-conditioned and I turned the vent to my face and let it blow soothing cool air over me.

As we drove through the city, I tried to fathom the destruction I saw all around. It looked like someone had dropped a bomb on New Orleans. Fires were burning unchecked. The windows of many high-rise buildings had been blown out and glass, sheets of paper and computer parts littered the streets. Street signals were strewn across the roads and cars lay upside down. I saw dozens of people wading through the foul water with their belongings on their heads, like they had no idea where to go.

The driver told us over the PA: ‘Mid-City, New Orleans East, Gentilly, Lakeview and the Lower Ninth Ward were all badly hit. St Bernard Parish was totally wiped out. It's hard to get accurate reports on all the areas but it appears eighty per cent of the city has flooded.'

Some of the passengers burst into tears, while others sat like mute zombies, too dazed to take in the destruction of the city. One man hugged himself and wept over and over again, ‘I don't know where my wife is, I don't know where my kids are, I don't know where my dog is . . .'

I leaned forward and pressed my head against the back of Grandma Ruby's seat. We were the lucky ones but could life ever be normal again after going through what we had?

‘Where are you taking us?' Leroy asked the driver.

‘I've got instructions to take you to Dallas,' he replied.

‘Dallas, Texas?' Leroy said. ‘How long is that going to take?'

‘Dallas, Texas,' repeated the driver. ‘We'll be there in about fifteen hours.'

We arrived at the Dallas convention centre, which had been turned into a shelter, in the early hours of the morning. The first people I saw were a group waiting outside holding signs that read:
God has destroyed the City of Sodom and Gomorrah! New Orleans: Repent and Be Saved!
Grandma Ruby shook her head. ‘People have lost their homes, their families and their lives and all those stupid people can do is judge and hate,' she said. ‘They are like those women who screamed at the children outside William Frantz Elementary School during integration. Hate and judgement turn human beings into idiots, but they never seem to be able to learn that and behave differently.'

The volunteers inside the convention centre were much more welcoming. Despite our dishevelled and filthy state, they hugged each one of us and expressed their sympathy before directing us where to go next.

Grandma Ruby's condition was of immediate concern. Two volunteers helped her into a wheelchair. ‘We'll take you straight to the medical command centre,' they told her.

‘No!' she said firmly. ‘You help the people who have no means. We'll go to a hotel and I'll get the staff there to call me a doctor.'

‘The Westin has rooms,' one of the volunteers informed us. ‘Let me go get you a cab.'

When the driver dropped us off, he refused to let us pay. ‘God will pay me back, don't you worry. You look after yourselves now.'

It was humiliating to stand in the stylish foyer of the hotel in my filthy clothes and with my hair a rat's nest, while the immaculately dressed clerk checked us in.

She asked if we had any luggage and her gaze fell to Flambeau in my arms, wriggling and clucking under the scarf, but she said nothing.

‘Let me send you up some room service,' she whispered. ‘It will be on me.'