The Long Road Back
Shades for the windows at home became an issue, for instance. Ottallah's mother raised it promptly. "She said, 'Do you see this window? It needs some shades, because anybody on the street can look right into the living room,'" Sam recalls. "But when I went and changed the sheetrock, electricity, and flooring, I knew the windows needed shades, but I also knew that the business needed to be stocked."
Today, there are still no shades on the windows at home, but the Brown Derby is open for business again, an outpost of comfort, a bridge to the past. A man named Abby swept the floors and did odd jobs around the Derby before Katrina. When he heard the place was back in business, he took the Greyhound from Chattanooga, Tenn., and came straight to the store from the bus station, bags in hand. They looked out for him here. Behind the register, cashier Vivian Richards greets him warmly. "You my darlin' darlin' baby," she tells Abby. "You're my sweet and tender love," he replies. Call-and-response, a reminder of better times.
Richards keeps a watchful eye on the Derby's regulars. If they're a bit short on cash, she puts them at ease. "It's OK, baby," she says. "We ain't gonna trip over a few cents." A bulwark for others, Richards struggles herself. She is, she says, "hitting a wall." Her gospel-music tapes help ease the stress, but still, it's a lot. Her 10 siblings all lived close by before. Now they're scattered far and wide.
For Richards, like many here, money is a constant worry. She's still covering the mortgage on her home, even though she can't live in it. She doesn't know if she's going to be able to rebuild, since she had no flood insurance, and the settlement for her household goods came to just $7,000. Now she's using some of that to pay the $1,100-a-month rent on the three-bedroom apartment where she cares for her 10-year-old daughter and her husband's ailing father. Her son, Dennis, moved upstate to live with a cousin so he could finish his senior year. His high school is one of the 99 of 117 public schools in Orleans parish that remain closed. For Dennis, being away is hard. "I miss her smile," he says of his mom, on a recent visit. "I miss her face." For Christmas, Dennis gave his mother a foot massager. After a tough day at the Derby, he used to rub her feet, but now he's not there to do that anymore. One more comfort lost.
One good thing is that business at the Derby has come back pretty strong. The trouble is, the money goes out almost as fast as it comes in. "Everything I sell," Ottallah says, "that's money I give to someone else." At least the customers keep coming, though, lining up for the Big Sam soul-food lunch specials, with smothered neck bones and greens. Pickles in a pouch are also popular (also available, Richards notes, in a low-carb version). The jarred pigs' lips and Keep Movin' Claro cigars are steady sellers, too. It is the liquor sales, however, that are brisk these days, customers filling the countertop with cold cans of Coors, bottles of cream sherry, and Midnight Express cherry wine. Self-medication is going to be "extraordinarily high" here for years to come, says LSU sociologist Hurlbert, along with rising rates of alcoholism.
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