The Big Easy (Or the City that Care Forgot)
Sheltered
safely in a suite at the VL version of Miami’s Fontaine Bleu Hotel, Crystal,
Kiz and I watch television—as does the rest of the world—as Hurricane Katrina
roils over the Gulf of Mexico on its way toward New Orleans. Outside our hotel,
the skies are dark and the wind is howling. Smoky clouds rush past a full moon,
and the window glass in our room shakes and bends. Outside, a tattered American
flag whips (and weeps) in the squall.
Katrina has already moved past South Florida, only grazing its
southwestern tip; nevertheless, anticipation of the storm’s landfall on the
Gulf Coast leaves us breathless, and our concern grows by the hour for the many
that are not able to evacuate the Big Easy. We watch the television in
horror as thousands file into the Superdome.
Of
course, we are in a VL REP: the television we are watching is a digital
creation, and the personalities on air are also dot matrix Virtual Life
emulations; the reporters, the local residents and the politicians—from New
Orleans Mayor Clarence Ray Nagin Jr. to President George W. Bush—are but
digital representations of their all-too-real counterparts.
For
five straight days we do not leave our room. We watch CNN almost non-stop:
Soledad O’Brien, Anderson Cooper and Mari Ramos broadcast in breathless
superlatives. We order room service and look out the window at the heavy clouds
of the storm’s aftermath. Meanwhile, New Orleans swelters. Many have no
shelter, or food, or water. Children have no clothes. The water continues to
rise. They beg for help. Promises are made: “Buses are coming, just hold on
awhile longer!” So they wait. There is nothing else to do.
“Fizzy,
this is terrible!” Kiz says to me. “Nobody is sending help. People are dying
there, and nobody is helping. We have to go there. We have to do something!”
“What
can we do?” I ask.
“Something…
Anything… But we’ll need a boat. Do you think Captain Cousteau will help us?”
“I’ll
IM him immediately,” I tell her.
Dear
Captain Cousteau,
We are sitting in our suite at the
Fontaine Bleu and watching the scene in New Orleans. We feel great sorrow for
the people whose lives have been turned inside out, and we want to go there to
help, but we need a boat. Nothing large: just a small boat with a motor, so we
can navigate the streets of the city. Can you help?
Sincerely,
Fizzy
Oceans
Crystal
Marbella
Kizmet
Aurora
The
answer from Calypso is forthcoming: “Of course we will help. We have placed
the boat you requested in your cache. Good luck, girls. And God bless you!—Jacques-Ives
Cousteau.
In
Virtual Life, there are no less than ten REPs for New Orleans. There is
one that recreates Bourbon Street and the French Quarter, and another for the
Mardi Gras Parade. There is a REP for Cajun Voodoo, and one for Brennan’s
Restaurant. But the one in which we are interested is called The City that
Care Forgot. As we transfer, boat and all, directly to St. Bernard’s
Parish, the first people we see are two Black men, one tall and skinny and the
other one short and fat, wading through chest-deep, fetid water as they
approach our boat. Both are frantically waving their hands over their heads, as
if to signal us, and they are calling out, “Hey! You with the boat! Help us,
please! People’s dyin’ here!”
As
the two men reach our position on (or actually several feet above) Humanity
Street, they introduce themselves as Charlie ‘Bayou Creature’ Collins and
Willie ‘Wordsworth’ Greene. They tell us that their homes have been flooded
out, that they have lost everything, that they haven’t slept for three days,
and that now they are just trying to reach people that are stranded by the
floodwaters inside their houses. Without hesitation, we make room for them
inside the dinghy. Soaked to the skin and smelling of sewage, they climb into
the small craft.
As
we look around, the scene we see does not look at all like an American city; it
looks more like Bangladesh, or Indonesia. In the distance, we see the New
Orleans skyline, virtually unscathed. Downtown New Orleans might as well be the
Emerald City, because here in St. Bernard’s Parish the devastation we see is
incomprehensible. Normally below sea level, the floodwaters have submerged the
entire neighborhood, reaching past doorways and second story windows. Everywhere
people are camped out on their balconies or on rooftops, waving white flags,
begging for salvation, or just a drink of fresh water or a morsel of food.
Animals howl, and debris floats in the rancid water: rumpled bedding, broken
toys, sodden car seats, and empty baby strollers. Putrid corpses float by, too.
It is far too late for many to be saved, but those who have survived the storm,
and thus far the flood, are in urgent need of help. “This is unbelievable,”
says Kiz to ‘Bayou Creature’ as he tries to start the small motor. “Where is
everyone?”
“Ain’t
nobody come to help,” he says. The outboard sputters and coughs before it
finally roars to life.
“Louisiana
National Guard is here,” says Wordsworth. “And the Coast Guard is here. Wynton
Marsallis is here. And Sean Penn is here, too. Harry Belafonte is here. In
fact, I heard that he went down to Venezuela to talk with Hugo Chavez, the
Venezuelan president, to see if there was anything that he could do to
help. Not only the flood victims, all the poor folks across America. Even the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police are here. Can you believe that? Now talkin' 'bout
the New Orleans Police Department? They all left. Sure ain’t no George Bush
here. And there ain’t no FEMA, neither. Only the Cajun Navy—everyday people
tryin' to help their neighbors.”
“Sure
as shit, they blew the levees,” says Bayou Creature. “Just like they did back
in '65, during Hurricane Betsy. I heard the explosion myself. Bang! Then
comes all the water, and we is no better than rats on a sinkin' ship,” he says
as he wipes a tear from his eye.
“Why
would they do that?” asks Crystal.
“Because
they know they got to save the rich folks’ property in the Garden District and
Parkland and Uptown. And they know they got to save the French Quarter. Without
the French Quarter they got nothin', you understand? Most of the rich folks got
out in their cars. They started drivin' two or three days before the storm hit.
Some went to Baton Rouge, others just kept on drivin' as far north as
Tennessee, or Kentucky, or even Illinois. But the poor folks that live in the 9th
Ward, or here in St. Bernard’s Parish, had no way to get out. A lot of these
folks are elderly, or sick. No money for a bus ticket, you understand? No
nothin'!”
As
we approach a clapboard house with water above the front porch and two feet
deep inside the house, five children appear, three wading hip-deep through the
deluge and two others riding on the shoulders of the older siblings. The
expression on their faces is beyond grim as they survey the mire that was once
their neighborhood and playground. All innocence has been lost; only stunned
condemnation remains. “Is anyone else inside the house?” I call out to them.
Tears
well in the eyes of the two eldest children, for only they truly comprehend what
has happened. “Mama’s inside,” the eldest child tells us, “but she dead.” I am
stunned at the news.
Bayou
Creature guides the boat closer to the house and moors it at what was once the
front porch. Once the dinghy is tied to a protruding post, he steps off the
boat and into the water. He lays his hand upon the head of a young girl—she is
twelve years old at most—then pats the head of the baby in her arms. “Show me
your mama,” he tells the girl.
Wordsworth
also disembarks, as do Crystal, Kiz and I. We wade inside the house as the
young girl leads Bayou Creature to the bedroom where her mother lay dead on the
bed.
“She
couldn’t get no oxygen,” the girl tells us, “so she died.” No sense of panic
reveals her true emotions; her voice is placid, resigned, and utterly vacuous.
“No oxygen,” she repeats as she shakes her head in resignation. “And we ain’t
got no food.”
Bayou
Creature approaches the corpse. He brushes away a swarm of flies from the
woman’s face before covering her with a sopping blanket. “We going to take you
out of here now,” he tells the girl. “They come for your mama later.”
“Okay,
Mister,” she says. Even walking into the unknown accompanied by strangers is
better than this wretched place that was once her home.
“Come
with us now,” Crystal tells the children. “Get inside the boat so we can take
you some place safe.”
As
if such a place exists in this reality…
Once
the children are settled inside the boat, Bayou Creature starts the motor and
we head for the Convention Center (because we don’t know where else to take
these poor orphans). Halfway there we encounter a small terrier dog in the
water, paddling for his life. Wordsworth reaches over the side of the boat and
plucks the small dog out of the water and lays it in the lap of one of the
children. The dog immediately falls asleep from exhaustion. “This dog dead
too?” asks one of the girls.
“No,
he’s just sleeping,” Crystal tells her. Then she adds, “He’s your dog now, so
you take good care of him.”
“I
will,” she assures Crystal as she strokes the dog’s wet fur.
As
we arrive at the Convention Center, we are stunned to see thirty thousand
displaced souls—hot, tired, ragged, hungry, dehydrated, sick, disenfranchised,
and discouraged—in front of the main hall. Forty thousand more are coming out
of the Superdome. Their condition is not much better than those who have spent
the past five days since the storm subsided out in the open air. Most are
dirty. Some are covered with feces, or urine, or menstrual blood. Others exit
by wheelchair on their way through the Hyatt House and out the Loyola Street
door. Just where they are supposed to go nobody seems to know, but General
Honoré, a Black John Wayne dude wearing a tammy and dark shades, directs the
procession. “Weapons down!” he orders the ad-hoc police and the National
Guardsmen. “Weapons down!” he barks through his bullhorn.
We
dock our boat in front of the building and we are met by scores of people
asking for help, or simply for information. We have neither to give. What we do
have is five scared and dazed orphans and a waterlogged terrier. Bayou Creature
explains the situation to a large, soft-spoken man named Herbie Fulsome, who
offers to take the children in charge until relief comes. We learn from Herbie
that his eighty-four-year-old mother has passed away while waiting for
transportation out of the city.
“I
could see she was gettin' weaker and weaker. She was in a wheelchair, and she
needed her medication—for her heart. But I couldn’t get her pills. All I could
do was stay with her. Every five minutes she would ask me, ‘Has the bus come
yet?’ and I would have to tell her, ‘No, mama, not yet.’ Then I wheeled her
over to the place where the buses were supposed to arrive, because I thought at
least she could be the first one to get on the bus when it finally did come.
And she kept on askin' me, “Has it come yet?” and I kept on sayin' ‘No, not
yet.’ Finally, I look down at her, and it looks to me like she’s asleep. I
nudged her gently, but she didn’t wake up, and I said, ‘Oh, my God Almighty, my
mama’s died right here!’ So I covered her up with a towel. But it wasn’t
enough, so another guy helped me wheel her inside. She’s inside the Convention
Center right now. Lots of dead people in there. And we is still waitin' for
those buses. Maybe they never going to come.”
Meanwhile,
President Bush is at a fundraiser in San Diego. On the podium he plays air
guitar and jokes about the war in Iraq. Michael Brown, once Head of the Arabian
Horse Association and promoted by Bush to FEMA Chairman, is taking plenty of
heat (and he can certainly have a bit more if it will decrease the street
temperature even a degree or two), while Michael Chartoff, Head of the newly
created Department of Homeland Security, and safe and sound in Atlanta, refuses
to unlock the resources that will enable the rescue effort to proceed. The vice
president, Dick Cheney, is fly fishing in Wyoming (I bet it’s not a hundred and
four degrees there), and Condoleeza Rice, the Secretary of State, is at
Ferragamo’s buying shoes, at a production of Shamelot on Broadway the
next night, and playing tennis with Monica Selas the next afternoon. What
gives?
We
meet up with the singer Harry Belafonte (just returned from a meeting with
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez) and we ask him why nothing is being done to help.
“Arrogance of power,” says Belafonte. “Socially, these people are of no
importance whatsoever to the power elite. Racially, they are even less
important. Believe it or not, I just saw President Bush on television
congratulating FEMA Director Brown. ‘Good job, Brownie,’ he said to him. Look
around! Can you believe it?”
To
my eye, it appears that nineteen out of every twenty people stranded in the
city and left to fend for themselves in impossible conditions are Black.
In
our little boat (which I have now christened Calypso II) we travel
underneath the Crescent City Connection, a so-called pick-up point for stranded
souls. Except nobody seems to be picking up anybody else. Instead, people are
camped out on top of the bridge that spans the Mississippi River, with no water
or food, praying for salvation. Dead bodies lay covered on the road shoulder.
Angry looters shoot at helicopters as they pass overhead. Suddenly a man calls
out, “We going to stay here, or we going to walk out of this hell?”
“Today
is the day we walk!” somebody else answers.
“We
is all walking to Gretna!” announces another.
The
crowd begins to move en mass, but soldiers with guns meet them at the far end
of the bridge. “Nobody leaves Orleans Parish!” the refugees are told at
gunpoint.
Apparently in America
we can no longer traverse American soil at will. Indeed, who are these
soldiers, and what reason might they have for stopping the lawful movement of
free people?
