Two Girls

In October 2005, I worked as a disaster mental health worker in a shelter in New Iberia, Louisiana. The city park gymnasium was home to over 300 people at one point, and when I got there, about 120 were still living there six weeks after Hurricane Katrina had ravaged New Orleans, and two weeks after Hurricane Rita had forced evacuation of Iberia Parish and the shelter. On September 21, the New Orleans evacuees and the staff had all gone north to another shelter, and when they returned, they were joined by local evacuees whose homes had been flooded and razed by the second major hurricane in the season.

The two groups, Katrina evacuees from New Orleans and Rita evacuees from the local area, were very different from each other and didn’t spend much time interacting. As a mental health worker, my job was to assess the emotional problems and try to find creative ways to help people cope with an extremely stressful experience. I don’t have a lot of experience with children, and there were children of all ages in the shelter. I often found myself overwhelmed with the enormity of the distress, and frustrated with my meager interventions. This is the story of two young girls, one from New Orleans, and one from New Iberia, who found a moment of common bonding.

Courtney kept getting sent home from school because of head lice. She was a 10-year-old girl with a big smile and short blond hair. Her mother, Becky, was a Cajun woman who was missing several of her top front teeth. Courtney had a younger sister, Kristin, and an even younger brother, Justin. Her mom seemed to always be yelling at one or the other to “mind” and never seemed to relax or be happy with her kids. Her husband, Matt, was usually sitting outside smoking cigarettes with the other residents. He had a thick accent and I found it difficult to understand him. Besides being angry with the school, he seemed fairly suspicious of just about everyone. Matt and Becky seemed to have a fairly stable and loving marriage; he was protective of her and the kids, but she was the one who seemed to be responsible for everything.

Courtney’s dilemma was especially difficult for Matt and Becky. Becky was sure that the school was just picking on her. “They always pick on the poor ones,” she complained to me. “They never send home the rich kids.” She was probably right, I thought. But maybe not because Courtney was poor, but because of the lice. The lice problem was also hard on Elena, our nurse. Elena was a big woman, probably of Nordic heritage, with young kids of her own. She had been at the shelter for almost two weeks already when I got there, and it was clear that she was under quite a bit of stress herself. When Courtney was first sent home, it almost put Elena into tears. She checked with the local health department, got on the internet to check the CDC site, and talked with our shelter support folks about how to handle the problem. The answers were all the same: treat the child, check the other members of the family and treat them, and then check the heads of the rest of the people at the shelter. Elena and the rest of the staff were trying to keep the lice problem quiet to avoid stigmatization of Courtney and the rest of her family. It was hard enough for the urban New Orleans blacks and the rural white Cajuns to find ways to live together; this was too much.

Treating the child was not so hard. But when Elena took a look at Becky’s head, she was aghast. Her head was swarming with lice. Her shoulder length brown hair was completely infested. First, she and Courtney were sent to the showers with the lice-killing shampoo. Luckily, not many people were around in the early afternoon to realize what was happening. Their bedding and clothes were double bagged in thick plastic bags. Calls were made to a friendly local beautician to make a haircut emergency house call, but she wasn’t available.

Finally, furtive arrangements were made to cut Becky’s hair by a black woman who was running a beauty shop in a corner of the shelter for its residents. Becky was banished from the shelter, and had to sit outside on a folding chair. Julia, the black hairdresser, got dressed in a paper surgical suit, and spent twenty minutes taping the edges of the sleeves and the pants. She put paper booties over her shoes, a mask on her face, and a cap on her head. She looked like she was getting ready to enter a contaminated nuclear facility.

I made the casual comment that it was only bugs she was dealing with, that they weren’t fatal. That set Julia off and she spent the next five minutes telling me how she works in a nursing home, and that she will not infect her own child, and that she has to take this seriously, etc. etc. My anxiety about how poor Courtney and her mom would be treated by the other residents was only heightened by her tirade, and I prayed that she would finish her taping quickly and get out there to cut Becky’s hair.

The whole process took all afternoon and into the evening. Meanwhile, we had to come up with a plan to check everyone else’s hair as well. Elena and Kathleen and the night nurse, Karen, would be the checkers and I would take down names of people who were infected. After dinner, Elena made the announcement that we had been told that lice was a problem in other shelters, and that we were advised to check everyone here. People lined up to be checked, and all in all, it ran rather smoothly. If they were infected, they were marked with a dot on their right hand; if not, the dot was on the left. No one ended up with a dot on their right hand. Elena put dots on the left hands of both Becky and Courtney as well since they had been deloused earlier.

The next day, both Elena and Karen checked Courtney before they sent her off to school, and pronounced her clean. Later that morning, the school nurse called and Courtney was brought back to the shelter. Becky and Matt were angry, and Elena was upset. Courtney’s bright face was smiling and happy when she left for school; when she returned, and saw how frustrated and angry her parents were, the innocence faded and creases began to form in her brow. She grabbed her brother roughly and told him to “mind.” She didn’t cry; I’m not sure she knew exactly what was happening, but she wasn’t quite as happy any more.

When it happened again the third day, Becky and Matt decided to go down to the school board and take Courtney out of school for good. “I’ll home school her,” Becky declared. And that’s what they did, to Elena’s dismay. Courtney was kept at the shelter when the other children got on the bus, with not much to do except watch her younger siblings. She didn’t even have any schoolbooks; the school informed her parents that they would have to buy them. Their meager budget did not allow for books since Matt wasn’t working due to the storm, and it would take a while for social service agencies to find the funds to help.

Tamara was from New Orleans. She was a bright, well-dressed 8-year-old African-American child who had good ©Valerie Cole Page 3 manners and was quiet and shy. She had braids in her hair with big pink plastic beads and bows. She showed me the stash of books under her cot, and we made a deal to read them together one day. I suggested that maybe she could read one of them to me, and she smiled brightly.

On the third afternoon of Courtney’s banishment from school, the day her mother liberated Courtney and indentured herself, I found Tamara also sitting in the shelter with nothing much to do. The other children that she usually played with, her cousins and friends, were all at school themselves. The only kids left were the toddlers. I asked her why she wasn’t in school, and she looked down at the floor. “We’re moving to Houston this weekend,” she said. “My mama doesn’t think I need to go.”

When I looked around the shelter, I didn’t see her mother. She could have been sitting outside smoking, or in any number of places. I’m not sure I knew exactly who her mother was anyway. I had been there a week but there were so many people, and I wasn’t that good with names. Tamara was part of a family that spent most of their time in a tight-knit group. There were aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings, and I couldn’t really tell one from the other. I had the same problem with both the black and the white families. The only person I was sure I knew the first few days I was there was Sandy, an Asian woman who was only four and a half feet tall. She was distinctive; no one else looked even remotely like her. Everyone else seemed to have at least one or two twins in the shelter. I was often afraid to speak with people, thinking I was mistaking them for someone else.

But Tamara had made an impression on me. She seemed so approachable and smart. She didn’t have the rough edges and the hostility toward the world so many of the older children had. I felt like she might actually talk to me if I gave her a chance. I felt she very much wanted to trust me.

That afternoon, I asked Tamara if we could read one or two of her books. She led me to her cot, and proceeded to take out every one of her books. There must have been 10 or 12 of the thin story books meant for early grades. I asked Courtney if she wanted to go read with us, and we took Justin and Kristin with us as well.

We went outside and sat on the grass. Tamara wasn’t sure about sitting on the grass; she was very hesitant and appeared afraid of actually allowing her weight to settle down on the bare earth. At one point, a bug crawled on me, and she recoiled in horror. I thought it was very possible that this was the very first time she had been on the grass.

I read through the first story with much difficulty, as Kristin and Justin kept distracting us. Kristin wanted me to read the book she had in her hands, but when I agreed to read it, she picked up another book, and demanded that I read that one instead. Justin, who was only two, didn’t really have a clue what we were doing, and kept wandering away. Finally, both he and Kristin left us, and it was just me and the two girls.

By that time, the sun was hot, and they asked if we could move over to the swinging bench. I agreed and found myself seated between the two young girls as we swung back and forth.

The first book was a story about hunting for owls in the winter night. It was fun to make the owl sounds, but I don’t think either girl had ever had any experience with snow or ice or night times. Tamara wanted to read the next book, and we began a geography book. I asked her to read and she made a valiant effort, but eventually it was too much for her, and she asked me to read it without her.

The book showed us the various continents. When we looked at North America, I showed them Louisiana, and New Orleans. Tamara started telling us how her uncle had held her over his head as the water rose in their Ninth Ward home. She eventually had to swim to safety with her family. Not to be outdone, Courtney talked about how the wind ripped through their trailer and the bayou flooded their land. The girls went back and forth, each sharing more and more of the traumas they had experienced. “Miss Valerie,” they pleaded for my attention one after the other, vying to impress me and earn my compassion.

“You both have had very difficult experiences,” I said, “and I’m glad you both are here.” I wanted to equalize their stories and spread my care equally between them. We talked about what a city is, what a state is, what a country is and what are the continents. Their knowledge was so limited, and they rarely answered correctly when I asked for examples of each. I tried to remember what I knew when I was their ages, but it is too long ago. I had to remind myself to be patient.

Eventually, we talked about Africa, with the book showing us pictures of the animals that live there, and the types of terrain. I told them that all humans came from Africa, and both girls became very suspicious of me. Tamara said, “everyone?” incredulously. I said, “yes, your family probably came from Africa only a few generations ago,” wondering if she would know what a “generation” is. “For Courtney and me, our ancestors left Africa much, much earlier than yours.” I knew I was on rocky ground, literally, and I had no idea if either girl had any understanding of what I was saying, but I pushed ahead anyway, and prayed that neither girl’s parents were creationists.

We rocked and talked, and I kept pointing out the similarities in their lives and their stories. By the end of the book, they had decided they could be friends, although Tamara wanted to keep their friendship a secret. When I got up to go back into the shelter, they were still on the bench, talking and reading and swinging.

I didn’t have any other intimate moments with either girl before I left. Tamara and her family left a day or two later, and Courtney was usually seen with one of her younger siblings in tow, and Mom not far behind, telling them to “mind”.

I told Elena about our afternoon, and she almost cried again. “I just want her to have a chance,” she said. “I just want her to be able to learn what she wants to learn. I’m not sure Mom can teach her.”

I don’t know if Tamara or Courtney will remember our afternoon, or if they ever learned what states and cities are. I learned that I can spend a couple of hours with children and have something to talk about. Maybe they learned that people are similar even when they’re different.