Patty's life could be divided into two distinct halves.
The Before.
Growing up in Crescent City as a child with Audubon Park as her playground. The Aquarium, Congo Square and The French Market, Dixieland Bands and Jazz, Towering Bamboo Forests at The Zoo, and the party atmosphere of the yearly Mardi Gras with their Carnival Crewes.
She ran after the floats to catch candy and other throws. Ate green, yellow and purple decorated King's Cake until her lips were tinged with the icing colours. And once, unbeknownst to her mother, swallowed the tiny plastic baby figurine inside...to no ill effect. Her mother had shaken her head when the last bit of the bakery good was devoured and exclaim the bake-shop must have forgotten to slip one in.
Then her Auntie had been drafted to bake next year's cake.
Dreams sometimes came of this simpler half of life. A time when she would eat fresh hot beignets dusted with confectioner's sugar beneath a 100 year old Live Oak, festooned with throws. Its broad limbs reaching like a shiny bead covered hand toward the sunny sky.
Everything safe and warm in her world.
The After came on August 29th, 2005.
A full four days after Hurricane Katrina had hit New Orleans.
She was no longer living in her parents wooden two-story in St. Bernard Parish. She had found a cozy (read- small...closet sized) apartment just off Canal Street on Esplanade, months before.
The move to an area above sea level, and further away from the Industrial Canal, probably saved her life.
During the hurricane itself the four story ancient apartment building was battered and lost rotted board and shingles. It was nothing compared to the nightmare to come.
At 8:14 AM on the 29th, the National Weather Service issued a Flash Flood Alert for both Orleans and St. Bernard Parish. The heavy rains from the storm had stalled over the area for days.
It was a Sunday Morning.
By 10:30 AM the 17th Street Canal Levee (along with two others) had given way spilling not only the Industrial Canal but the swollen contents of Lake Pontchartrain into the below sea level bowl of New Orleans, Lousiana.
Some areas were covered in nearly 20 feet of water within minutes.
With no electricity in 100+ degree heat and similar humidity. Industrial waste mixed making a horrific chemical soup. Some hacked their way through rooftops then sat waiting in the unbearable heat for rescue. Some waited for days. Some died waiting, rolling off their rooftop perches and slipping silently beneath the oil sheen on toxic black water.
The thousands who managed to reach the Superdome, crowded inside. They faced other horrors as what passes for civilization crumbled after several days of darkness, filth, unbearable heat, and lack of food and water.
Some of them left to take their chances again on the outside.
Bodies floated down the streets and canals. Human and animals. Some were dragged under by alligators never to resurface. When the water subsided a full week and a half later the rest of the dead would remain in the several feet of thick blackened, drying mud.
Thousands of people died. Many would remain missing or unidentified forever.
On September 2nd National Guards were deployed. Then, on September 6th, while doing a house to house search ( marking the number of living found or bodies on the front of the water and mud-clogged homes) Patty's parents were found. Partially buried in muck in the corner of their bedroom. They had not even had time to escape the room.
"Probably never knew what hit them"
the officer said, trying to comfort her when she was identifying their remains.
The black mud drying in her mother's open sightless eyes is an image she would carry with her to the grave.
After that day nothing would ever be completely safe again.
Sometimes, when the nightmares come, she sees their horrified bloated faces as the wall of stinking oily water swallows them up.
She wakes screaming.
In October of that same year she would meet The General for the first time.
She was working in a now defunct bar off St. Peter's Street. Still reeling from the loss of both of her parents. Her Auntie had left New Orleans for Texas, by then. She said that Patty was always welcome, but she would never set a foot in NOLA again, boarding the plane with her eldest sister's cremains in her checked luggage.
The bar was busy. Reconstruction workers. National guards and reservists. People who wanted to help. There were also people who were there just because of the chaos, and opportunity to create more chaos themselves. And those (she thought quietly to herself) who both ran the Ghoul Industry...and the Ghoul Tourists. Buses that would take you through the devastation and give you nauseating detail- for a hefty price.
(...like what mud looks like drying in your mother's eyes...she thought bitterly...or the inhuman positions the bodies had been found in...)
The General was different than her regular clientèle. He listened to her. He seemed to care. Just after she had revealed to him that she had lost both parents in the flooding, he had brought her a huge bouquet of flowers, and made the offer of housekeeper/cook position back in Pennsylvania. She had agreed almost immediately.
She left New Orleans without giving a backwards glance. Finally realizing what her Auntie must have felt flying out of Louis Armstrong Airport that day she left.
"Never left a damned thing in this city...and I WON'T be back."