Superdome

They filed in, one Sunday in early October, two years after the storm, Saints fans in their team's colors, eager to watch the struggle on the field, to see the plays unfold after each huddle, to cheer their team to victory.

Two years ago, working in the ghost town that was New Orleans that fall, I had nightmares about this place, as I watched the workmen slowly repair the roof battered by Hurricane Katrina. I would wake up shaking but the nightmares were not mine; they were absorbed from the stories I heard from the people who were there in the days following the storm.

Superdome October 2005

They also spoke of huddles, huddles that meant the difference between life or death. We put the young and the weak in the middle, they said. Sat or stood all around them, in a circle, facing out so they could sleep or rest or just be safe. We, who formed the ring, could not sleep or rest. We were not safe. But it was the only way to protect someone, there inside the Superdome. Day after day, in circles, huddling to protect those who couldn't protect themselves.

A young man told me how he was picked up after days on his roof and taken by helicopter to the Superdome, a surreal and dubious rescue. He says he could not bear to go inside, the stench and chaos and danger are too much, and instead befriends a woman in a wheelchair parked outdoors. He does what he can. He holds her hand through the horror. He tries to care for her, to give her water. And he holds her hand as she dies, and covers her body with a cloth.



Outside on this day people hold tailgate parties and clog the streets with cars. People file in with their umbrellas and backpacks. They are not carrying blankets and pillows and clothes. They are not evacuating their houses, fleeing a monsterous storm. It's just a game this time. Just a game. But I can't forget the ghosts of those struggled here and lost, dying on the playing field meant for mere entertainment. It still feels haunted here.

And still, the rain comes down.

Houses

I read about art therapists who work with the people living in FEMA trailer camps waiting to go back home. Draw pictures, they tell the people, pictures of what you want your future to be. And young and old, they draw houses.

And sometimes they draw only triangles, triangles they call a house. Triangles that look like attics and roofs. Triangles that don't look much like safety except when water is at your knees and rising.











































Photos: Lower Ninth Ward and Seventh Ward, New Orleans, October 2007