My Mother was right. (Four words I often have difficulty saying.) My sister's house is not one of the ones reduced to rubble. The many houses reduced to sticks? That was the work of the F-3 tornadoes that zipped through the neighborhood right after the hurricane. They didn't touch her house and a few others. The tornadoes cherry picked down the street. A couple of other houses also look untouched, until you walk around them and see the missing wall.
"Now I have a beach view home AND I'm a refugee!"
"You should call the U.N.! Maybe they'll send you some forms to fill out to get a free T-shirt."
"What would I do with a T-shirt from the U.N.?"
"Put it on eBay!"
She sounds exhausted, but not haggard. That sound thrills me.
Her house is a two story. Out front, somebody else's door was in the front yard, and the cars were flipped, piled against the side of the house. The Camero (or whatever it was) the brother in law was restoring was also moved far from its original position, but it had not a scratch on it. Out back the shed was rubble and the sattellite dish had relocated from the house to on top of the pile that used to be a shed. Trees down all over the place.
Inside, the surge flooded out the first floor and it looks like the water got to waist and chest high. The furniture was all shoved to the back of the room, the refrigerator askew. But the stuff inside the china cabinet was unbroken, even though the doors were wide open. The frames for her dining room and end tables were piled in a jumble, but there was no sign of the glass that was in them. That glass dining room table is huge and heavy. It fell on her once (don't ask) and she had to get a hefty neighbor to move it off of her. Weird that the dining room table has vanished, presumably smashed into little pieces that washed away, while the girly glasses in the china cabinet were unharmed.
Everything on the second floor was untouched. The dust that was there before she left was still there when she got back.
What got my sister walking around the house was knowing where they would have been had she not finally got up and left town. Most of the everyday living goes on downstairs, especially during a storm. The kids don't like storms, so they all pile in the living room or in the nephews' room to wait it out. The nephews have their room is downstairs, and the baby's playpen is right next to the front door in the living room. They all would have been downstairs when the waves came through.
"As fast as that water was moving, I wouldn't have gotten to them all," the Refugee said. "We would have died."
Neighbors told her how fast the water roiled through the neighborhood. They told her the surge slammed through like a train; no one could believe how fast it was moving, even the old timers who have gone through hurricanes before. One woman across the street swam out of a window to get to out of the house because the water moved so fast she couldn't get to the stairs. Bodies swirled past her in the waves.
The retired military guy across the street lives in a one story house which was completely flooded and then hit by the tornadoes. He had made himself a makeshift camp in the yard, which is where he was when the Refugee and our father drove up the street. He was so sweet, she said. He went right up to her, looking worried and said "honey, you need to brace yourself."
"He's sleeping in the dirt and and he's worried about me."
"Old Southern men are different," I told her.
My sister told him to move into her house and make himself comfortable on the second floor. She actually had to talk him into it. HE DIDN'T WANT TO IMPOSE.
"I don't know why he didn't just go ahead and do it already," the Refugee said. "He'd been outside ever since the thing happened."
"That's an old school Southern thing. I can't believe you've been down there for so long and you still don't get that. I told you to get off base more. Why don't you ever go off base? I mean, I still can't believe you were in Bosnia and never went off base unless you had to guard something."
"It was cold."
"What about Manilla? Until that plane went down and you guys had to go build the rescue ramp thingie, you never went off base."
"I TOLD you I went to that McDonalds."
"That does not COUNT."
"ANYway," and I could hear the Refugee rolling her eyes, "I would have just gone on and moved in."
"That's because you're from Cleveland."
She grabbed some clothes, important papers, and found pictures of the eldest nephew at the now Gone day care center at First Baptist. Those pictures are really going to help his heart. He's been so upset since learning that his day care center was destroyed.
But that girl also got a whole bunch of DVDs. And the brother in law asked her to get the second floor television, too! AND SHE DID IT.
"Are you SERIOUS?"
"These are my dvds! I need them."
"You can get dvds ANYWHERE. I can't believe you took time to get the dvds."
"These are from my COLLECTION. Shut up."
"Mom and Dad have that ubertelevision downstairs, and little televisions in every single room upstairs. And like, if you turn off one of them, they ask you what's wrong. What are you going to do with ANOTHER television?"
"Shut UP. He wanted the television for when we move."
"What kind of movies are we talking about?"
"His kung fu movies."
"Oh! Okay then."
"I hate them, though. I should have let those drown."
"I cannot BELIEVE you would be so selfish as to deny the man solace by not rescuing a few of his kung fu movies."
Anyways, she also managed to save some of the CDs she recorded. My sister is a singer. She has a really nice voice and people always ask her to sing, especially in church (which she goes to and I do not). She's not the only singer in the family; one of our cousins cut an album in Nashville not too long ago. She's also on tour as a backup singer with an Up With People-style religious group. Her cookbooks "you know these are sacred to me" were soaked and battered, but she took some of them in hopes that she can figure out a way to repair them.
Getting into town was difficult due to the damage to and on the roads, and the closer they got to the affected region, the larger the heartbreak. Scraggly people everywhere, looking exhausted and beat. It was pretty obvious that relief efforts were scant. Houses in the middle of the street, piles where houses used to be, cars jumbled in a parking lot as if they had been swept into a pile with a broom. On one road a car was up ended as if a pile driver had shoved it into the ground. The destruction was enormous and really hard for her to take in.
While in Memphis, my sister suggested to Our Father that they stop to get gas. He didn't want to, thinking that it would be better to get some when they got closer. But by the time they hit Jackson, the lines were LITERALLY miles long at every exit they hit.
"He kept saying let's just try one more exit. I was like, oookay."
They ended up backtracking sixty miles for gas and rolled into the station on fumes. They wanted to get gas for the return trip but no one had those plastic gas cans. Eventually a woman at one of the stops gave them a whole bunch of empty small plastic bottles that antifreeze comes in, and they filled those up with a total of about 10 gallons and put them in the back seat. They had to drive with the windows down. (In additon to being church going people, they don't smoke. Which is why they could drive with a car full of gasoline in tiny bottles without fear that the car would blow up.)
"I did NOT want to spend the night on the side of the road in Mississippi," the Refugee said. "I've seen too many movies like that and none of them have a happy ending."
Once again I pointed out to the girl that if she had weaponry, this would not be a problem. I only know how to use and strip down a shotgun, a Baretta and a Glock. And though I had a glorious time bonding with a Ruger Mini-14 fully automatic assault rifle with a collapsible stock and a night scope (matte black, BABY), that was a one time thing because the STAT team never let me play with it again. What I'm saying is my gun knowledge is self-taught. She has been trained by PROFESSIONALS. Both of them have! She knows how to use firepower I can only read about and drool. Why they don't see the benefit in getting some steel is BEYOND me. This is JUST the sort of situation --
"Are you done?" Sometimes I suspect that I get on my sister's nerves. But as I am First Born, there's very little she can do about it.
They also waited in line for that gas, though the line wasn't as bad as the ones they passed. Because Our Father is pretty much the most honorable man we know, he did not do what the two of us thought would be the obvious thing - get out of the car, tell the police officers Who He Is, flash those credentials and go to the front of the line.
"I was like, tell them you're on reconaissance or something!"
It's kind of embarassing how we suck in comparison to him.
On their way out of town they gave a case of water and some food to the neighbor whom she ordered to move into her house, and they gave the remaining gasoline to a friend who by some miracle had a working vehicle, but no money for gas. It was killing both of them not to be able to do more for everybody they saw. On the return trip they did decide not to stay in their motel room for longer than a couple of hours nap because the lobby was filled with people who had lost everything and had managed to get out. They wanted to free up the room for use by somebody who needed it. And happily, this motel wasn't doing the gouging thing, like some of the places were. Some of the motels are actually being decent; the managers aren't immediately charging the displaced.
Through the local blackvine, my sister learned that all of her friends she was so worried about were accounted for. Miss Sandy is alive, but they didn't have a chance to find and see her.
One thing they were pleased to see. There were convoys of good old boys in trucks with boats hitched on the back heading down into the zone. So, even if it's taking the feds a while, everyday people are heading down to do what they can. Later in the trip they did see a military convoy. That was good to see, too. But there was just the one, and it wasn't very big.
Meanwhile, the brother in law was in Okinawa wigged out with worry, hoping they'll let him go home for a while and waiting for the typhoon that was heading toward southern Japan way to hit. This was on Friday, which was the last time she talked to him. I zipped over to Google News (I talked to her on Saturday night) and see that typhoon Nabi is expected to hit there on Monday. I also happened to notice a story about a different typhoon, Talim, where authorities in China managed to evacuate over 700,000 people to safety before that one hit on August 31. And then I just got pissed off again and stopped reading those stories.
Anyways, the brother in law is on the disaster recovery team. So once Typhoon Nabi - which according to the news stories is right now (Saturday night) the equivalent of a Category 5 - hits Japan, he will be sent out to help save people.
"It's kind of bad that you're doing disaster recovery in another country when your home is a disaster," the Refugee said.
The pain in her voice made me want to cry again. But as the chocolate cupcakes are still in the oven, I'm trying to hold off. Also, I'm out of chips so if I start crying again I'll have to get dressed and go to the store.
So. There's lots of stuff still to do. The house is still standing and she rescued some clothes, dvds and a TELEVISION, but everything else the family had is gone. She has to figure out day care for two of the kids and starting school for one of them. Then there's her own schooling; she had started college down there in Mississippi. I've heard that colleges are letting refugees transfer for free or very reduced cost; to feel less useless I am going to be all over the internet(s) and telephone trying to find a school near my parent's home to do that for her. I mean the girl is a veteran with three kids and a husband overseas and tough enough to hold down a family and carve out space for her own education. Somebody somewhere has got to let her in, and they damn well better have decent day care. There's paperwork and the occasional wig out caused from the delayed shock, which hits her in waves. And the big conversation with the nephews, who have been shielded from a lot. Then there's the matter of moving into the home of the Parental Units for many months until the brother in law's current deployment ends. This isn't even close to being over. But she sounds so much better than she has in days.
"In the car I started to tear up, not just because I was sad, but because I felt blessed," the Refugee said. "We are alive. We lost things, but we are alive. I don't know what all is going to happen with anything else, but we're alive."
