Old House My House

When I first came back home to check on my house and clean it out during October 2005, I saw total devastation throughout the Gulf Coast. As my sister and I drove down I-10 we passed fishing communities with upturned fishing boats and many destroyed homes. There was an eerie silence and vacancy―no one was present in these demolished homes and camps.

This was an introduction to what I would see when I entered my hometown of New Orleans. We rode in silence as we saw the vacancy of our community, flooded out homes, and began to talk again about memories as we entered our childhood neighborhoods, past homes, and grandparents' houses.

When I came upon my house, I had already accepted that whatever I lost could be "recovered"―that I had not lost generations and lifetimes of memories, like my parents, many of my neighbors, and elders in my community. I create ceramic sculptures as well as conceptual installations―ceramics has an almost eternal longevity and cannot be destroyed by water and my conceptual installations are about the process of creating the piece, not the object itself―so I didn't suffer much of a loss with my artwork. Besides, I saved my images on a digital cd and collected them from my house before I evacuated. I did lose some important documents, clothing, and furniture, but I had my health, my family, and my life. Also, my house was still standing(!)…in the same place it was before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

I began to recognize my fortunate circumstance even more clearly as I noticed more of the trauma and losses that many members of my community experienced.

I remember being at my Paw's house (the house my father was raised in) on St Maurice Street, a few blocks from Florida Avenue, and one of the neighbors was crossing the street to find his house and reclaim some of his valuable item. (His house floated two blocks to a lot behind my grandfather's house following the breach of the Industrial Canal levee.)

So with all of this said and done, when I came upon my house―although a colossal mess (the refrigerator overturned, things everywhere)―it did look like a "hurricane" hit my house. A tree fell on my roof and damaged it. I told myself, "it could have been worse." (To clarify: For me that is―I don't think Katrina could have been any worse for the majority of New Orleanians.)

When I went to check on my grandmother's house on St Bernard Ave and Gardenia St, I saw horrible black mold climbing the walls and suffocating her once beautiful, peaceful home. I have grieved the loss of my grandmother's presence in my life (she can no longer live close to me in New Orleans) and the losses of people who lived in my New Orleans community, whose family members died during or after the storm, and who are eternally displaced.

Since I didn't see the dangerous toxic black mold in my house that I was consistently warned about (from different people), and my house wasn't flooded from floor to ceiling, I assumed that mold in my house was almost non-existent. Besides, I didn't have months of standing water like most of the Lower 9th ward since my house is at higher ground and closer to the river. The water lasted only a week, so that didn't give the mold a chance to grow

Or so I thought.

(Up next: the mold story)