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Deborah Green
(Winn-Dixie employee: meat department, retired)

1
 
I listened to the wind all night. 5 a.m.
my mother hollers, Y'all better move your cars
'cause the water is coming up and up.
People were floating their mattresses
to the Dome with their little bitty children.
You better feed them children
before you leave, I called.
I'm gonna make y'all sandwiches.
And I did that.
Must have been an angel
speaking through me.
That was the last meal
them children had for 3 or 4 days.
Something just told me,
I can't go to the Dome. Uh-uh.
One of my friends worked for Charity
Hospital, and she was sent
with a boat there to get the sick.
The man steering made her
get out at the Dome.
That was very . . .
People was so dirty.
Girl, I ain't never thought
you were at that Dome, I said.
Oh, people got cold-hearted
being there without food or water.
My friend said, Debby, I looked at the things
going on there--people urinating everywhere,
the old dying, children getting raped--
and prayed to the good Lord,
whatever you want me
to do, I'll do it. Please
get me out of this.
She was on dialysis so she wasn't
urinating. That held her calm.
Afterwards, the police chief who cried
to the press claimed he'd lied about it all.
Those stories are the Lord's truth.
At night it was pitch dark and hot.
Tuesday my brother walked through dirty water
all the way uptown from downtown
to check on us. He had a long stick
and a rag tied round his head.
He looked like Joseph.
We said, Look at Joseph. That water stayed
a long time. The last time I heard
the Mayor talk on the television,
he was cussing and crying at the same time:
We need help here! 
My girlfriend who lived in the Lower
9th Ward drowned. That water came up
so fast. Didn't give people a chance.
The ones that made it
was on the Lord's grace.
I seen angels so I know.
 
2
 
I dated a rich man after my divorce
from Clarence's father. Here I am.
Oooh, I was looking hot. One night
I couldn't sleep in his bed, I don't know why,
so I slept downstairs on the sofa.
When I woke in the morning--
you know how you can feel someone
in the room looking at you--
he was in the recliner with tears
pouring down his cheeks. Baby,
what's wrong, I asked.
"By 8 a.m. you'll be dead."
Now what you talking about?
I did not move when I saw two guns
in his pockets, a .357 and a .22.
He took the .357 and fired.
I put up my hands to cover my face.
Oh, I cried. The bullet went through my hand,
my mouth, and the back of my head.
I tried to run but he'd locked the door,
so I sank to the floor and curled up.
He said, You still alive?
and shot me again
but the .357 (brand new)
jammed so he shot me twice
with the .22 before it jammed too.
Then he hit my head with a brick
but my thick hair protected me.
When the police came--
I do not remember this--
I looked up, Why, you come with angels.
They fastened round me looking grim,
but when I left ICU two weeks later
those angels was dancing
up and down just like this
with their wings spread.
 

3
 
By Sunday my mom said, C'mon.
I'm putting a sign outside the window
to come get me. They airlifted us
one by one from the balcony.
I was so scared when I had to crawl
out of the harness into the helicopter,
but the man said, Just look at me.
And it was all right. At the airport,
I went to Emergency with my bad heart.
I told my mamma, Y'all wait for me
right here, but my people was told
I had left, so they took the next plane out.
When I came back from the doctor
my family was gone. I shouted,
Why did y'all tell my people I left? 
Y'all shouldn't do things like that.
Now I lost my family.
I boarded the plane by myself-- 
didn't even know it was going
to Phoenix, Arizona--and guess who
I found?  Clarence!  Look at my baby!
I screamed. It was 4 a.m.
My son had not slept
because he thought I was dead.
He has a nervous thing
but he's coming along. My uncle
died last June. Never was sick
a day in his life, but he had a stroke
and didn't know it. People dying
from Katrina. I heard of a young woman
who killed herself and her children.
She was depressed. Yeah.
So there is still a lot
going on. Mmm-mmm.

 

 
Cynthia Hogue


Deborah Green
Photo by Rebecca Ross

 "Deborah Green," interview-poem, © 2010 by Cynthia Hogue, and "Deborah, outside her apartment, where she moved with her son after Hurricane Katrina, Phoenix, Arizona, April 2008," photograph, © 2010 by Rebecca Ross, from When the Water Came: Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina, © 2010 by the University of New Orleans Press. Reprinted by permission of the University of New Orleans Press and the authors. An excerpt of "Deborah Green" was published under the title "Deborah's Story," in Frontiers, vol. 30, number 1, pages 140-41, © 2009 by the Frontier Editorial Collective. Reprinted by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. 

 

This work comes from When the Water Came: Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina (UNO Press, 2010), an extended collaboration among writer, photographer, and thirteen interviewees. Interview-poems are drawn from the actual words of each evacuee. Photographs record details of everyday life, post-Katrina. Together, pictures and words convey personal experiences of a cross section of Katrina evacuees.