"Hey sis." Jason slid into the chair across from Abby, a coffee cup in his hand. The coffee shop in the lobby of the hotel was full, but the only sounds to be heard were of people eating. Abby felt as if she was sitting in on an episode of the Twilight Zone.
"You're up early." Abby picked at the sprinkles on her donut. She had bought it more out of habit then anything, and had no appetite.
"I heard you leave the room a little while ago, and figured this was where you would come. Since mom and dad are still asleep I thought you and I could go see the house."
The house. The home that she had grown up in, now in ruins. After driving past so many houses the day before she had a good idea of what it would look like, and the idea of seeing her own made her want to cry. She wasn't ready yet, but then she probably never would be.
"When did you want to leave?" she asked.
"Whenever you are ready."
"We can go now." Wrapping her donut up in a napkin she carried it to a trashcan and threw it away. She took her coffee with her, though, as she and her brother left the cafe.
II
"The day before yesterday was the first time we could get in to see the house," Jason told her as they drove out of the French Quarter and through a maze of streets. So many streets were blocked that it was taking them much longer then usual.
"Did mom and dad go with you?"
"Dad did. Mom said she wasn't ready yet, and we didn't want to push her. It's been hardest on her, I think. When we finally received word that it was safe to enter the neighborhood and survey the damage, she just shook her head and told us to go." Jason pursed his lips at the memory of his mother, sitting on the hotel bed and shaking her head in denial.
"Was she able to save anything?" Their parents had lived in the same home for more then thirty years. She couldn't fathom all of that history being lost.
"Whatever she could fit into the car before they evacuated. Her silverware, the family Bible, a couple of photo albums, the quilt that Nana made her when she got married. She took a box out of the closet, and I think that it was all the report cards and art projects from when we were little. Dad saved his Swiss army knife collection and his fishing pole." Abby remembered seeing the cardboard boxes in the corner of the hotel room when she had been there earlier. She was glad that they had saved a few things, but grieved over all that was gone.
They had reached the east New Orleans suburbs by the time Jason finished answering her question. Looking around her, Abby wasn't able to speak. The darkness that had surrounded her the night before no longer protected her from seeing the devastation around her. In the harsh light of day the full force of the hurricane hit her.
Weeks of news reports and newspapers had not come close to preparing her for seeing the destruction of the neighborhood she had once called home. It was like they were driving into a war zone in some far away country. Where there had once been homes there were now just piles of sodden and broken wood. Furniture lay along the sides of the roads in a macabre version of a play devoid of actors. Buildings were missing roofs, windows, walls, or all three. The sidewalk was covered in mud and debris. At one point Jason had to drive up on the pavement to get around a tree that was laying in the middle of the street.
From the end of the street, the house almost looked normal. It was made of wood siding, and though the paint was peeling and there were shingles missing from the roof the structure was mostly intact. There was trash in the yard, and Abby was reminded of the Halloween when she was a freshman in high school and their yard had been attacked by a group of teenagers. It had looked bad, with eggs and toilet paper everywhere. From the end of the street it looked much like it had back then.
When Jason pulled up to the curb and parked the car she could see that the damage was much worse. None of the windows had any glass in them. There were entire sections of shingles missing from the roof. The front door was missing, a sodden mattress stuffed in the open gap. When she stepped onto the front lawn she sunk inches into the soaked sod, and felt something brush against her ankle, and looked down to find a hand embroidered pillow. The rose pattern was familiar- it had sat in the corner of her mother's couch for as long as she could remember. As a child, when she had been home sick she had curled up under a blanket and slept on that pillow. With a burst of anger she kicked the pillow and watched as it hit the porch railing and fell to the ground. Jason, standing on the sidewalk behind her, understood.
Taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, Abby crossed the yard. She didn't allow herself to pause when she reached the front porch, but squeezed past the mattress that blocked her way and entered the house.
The first thing that hit her as she stood in the middle of the room was the smell. She had spent half her life dealing with odors that most people couldn't tolerate; noxious gasses, decomposing bodies, evidence covered in blood, gray matter or human waste. None of it compared to the putrid smells that now assaulted her. Only by breathing through her mouth - and probably inhaling toxic matter while doing so- was she able to keep from vomiting up the little food she had eaten for breakfast. She rubbed at her arms, as if by doing so she could keep the odor from clinging to her skin and seeping into her pores.
"Where do we start?" she asked when she felt her brother join her in the moldering space that had once been home.
II
They spent the next two days with shovels and buckets, emptying out the house. Garbage service was non-existent, and would be for quite some time, so they designated the far corner of the yard a trash heap. They worked in tandem, one person filling the bucket, the other taking it out to be dumped, and then they switched. At lunchtime both days they went back to the hotel to shower, have lunch with their parents, and get away from the smell.
Abby tried not to think too hard about what she put into the buckets. Sometimes, though, she recognized the picture on the cover of a book that had been treasured as a child or a broken remnant of a nick-knack her mother had kept on a shelf. There had been a few pleasant surprises. A brass doorstop in the shape of a cat was just where it always had been. One living-room lamp was in the corner of a bedroom, the stained glass shade miraculously unbroken. Far and few between, those were the little things that made the cleaning a little more bearable.
On Sunday evening, Abby said goodbye to her family. She had already been away from DC for four days, and until she could arrange for someone to come and cover her at the lab, she needed to be at work. Jason promised to look after their parents, and Abby swore that she would return as soon as possible.