Chapter 1 of the award-winning book that follows Bay St. Louis through the very heart of Hurricane Katrina – and three years of grueling aftermath. This installment includes a new introduction from the author.
- by Ellis Anderson 
Photo of the old Merchants Bank on Beach Blvd. after Katrina by Joe Tomasovsky
I kept writing, though, recording details that somehow changed the shocking reality into a story, one that might have an ending where I didn't die. The words my shaking hand wrote also gave me a little distance from the present. Any distance at all was good – I longed to be many, many miles away from Bay St. Louis, Mississippi where the unprecedented storm was hurtling in.
I obviously survived Katrina, but the ending was far from happy - thousands of other folks died, five in my own neighborhood. In the days, weeks, and then years after the storm, I continued to write. It became my way of processing the surreal new world in which we lived. And it was clear – even then – that many of the stories I recorded in the aftermath would, in the years to come, seem impossible, unbelievable, and even absurd. It seemed important that the courage and comradery and compassion shown by the people on the coast were documented. The community's stories deserved more than becoming faded small-town legends. 
Communications were disrupted for weeks after Katrina so people often left messages with spray paint. Photo by Joe Tomasovsky
Just a month after the storm, when electricity had been restored, I began posting my journal entries on a blog I named Katrina Patina. Surprisingly, it garnered readers around the globe, eager for on the ground stories. Eventually, those journal entries and other pieces I wrote about the long phenomenon of recovery became a book.
Under Surge, Under Siege, the Odyssey of Bay St. Louis and Katrina was published by University Press of Mississippi in 2010 - the fifth anniversary of Katrina. For the 20th anniversary of Katrina, the Shoofly Magazine will be publishing one chapter a week from Under Surge – about half of the book's 24 chapters. May these chapters serve to remind Katrina survivors of the fortitude they embodied in those heart-breaking times. And may they introduce readers who have no knowledge of Katrina's impact on our coast to that core of human nobility that often manifests when belongings and status and politics are suddenly stripped away. Perhaps one day that astonishing and beautiful state of being will reveal itself in our everyday lives - no hurricane required. Ellis Chapter 1 - The Language of Loss
Ellis's dog Jack, photo by Ellis Anderson
There is a man living in my driveway now, and I don’t find that at all unusual. He makes his bed in the back of his small SUV and sleeps there with his little dog. Many afternoons he can be found sitting behind the wheel, reading the paper, his Shih Tzu nestled on his lap. He calls his car “home.” It’s part of the new vocabulary that’s emerging on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.
The man is the grandfather of Hannah, who’s nine years old and one of my new residents. She and her parents stay at my house for now because the storm took their own. Hannah tells me that the Shih Tzu is fussy and will pick fights with my dogs, so her grandfather would rather stay in his car than intrude. I’ve tried to insist that he come inside — we’d find him a bed to sleep in — but I think that now he’d rather be in the one place he can call his own. He’s not the only one. I have other friends living in tents in their driveways or in cramped travel trailers, rather than taking refuge with family in other towns. They want to stay connected with the place that has been their home, even if the structure is no longer standing. It may not seem very practical, but practicality flew out of the window along with everything else when Katrina tore through Mississippi two months ago. The community that remains behind on the coast has evolved into a new animal – some fantastic creature I’ve never seen before. It’s fiercely loyal, incredibly hardy, and deeply determined. It’s developed a wicked sense of humor and doesn’t whine very often. No matter your loss, too many others have lost more. It’s bad form to complain. And this new community is developing its own language, with an extensive and colorful vocabulary. There’s “mucking out.” That used to mean cleaning out a horse’s stall. Now it’s something you do to the inside of your house. “Gone-pecan” is used frequently – it’s a designation for anything that got taken out by the storm – houses, businesses, cars, family photos. It’s interchangeable with “got-gone.” Friends meeting in the meal tents or the FEMA lines will ask each other, “How’d you make out?” Too many times the answer is “I got slabbed,” meaning nothing of the house remains except the concrete foundation. If one of them still has walls standing, the answer will be along these lines: “I came out pretty well—I only got six feet of water.” The homeless friend will offer congratulations. This is the only place in America where having six feet of mud and water violently invade your house is considered lucky. 
Photo by Joe Tomasovsky
When we leave the region and go someplace that wasn’t affected by the storm, we call it “the outside world.” The outside world has cable TV and working phones. You can walk out your door and look at a neighborhood instead of rubble. You can drive to any number of gas stations and stores and they’re actually open. You don’t have to stand in line four hours to buy a washing machine or talk to a FEMA agent. A chain saw isn’t a necessary household item. You can call an insurance agent and actually talk to someone. There isn’t a ten o’clock curfew. And in the outside world, the word “Katrina” is just a name instead of an adjective. Here, we have “Katrina-mind.” That refers to blanking out, forgetting something absurdly simple, like your own phone number or the name of your best friend. We say “Katrina ware.” That’s the paper and plastic we mostly eat from now. 
Volunteers set up kitchens after the storm, which quickly became vital gathering places for survivors. Photo by Joe Tomasovsky
There’s the “Katrina cough,” a persistent hacking from breathing all the silt brought in by the storm. This dust hangs in the air and coats everything with a fine, malevolent grit.
A portable toilet has become a “Katrina latrina.” Fetid water that has hidden in corners and plastic boxes, a dark brew of multicolored molds that emits an unmistakable stench, is “Katrina juice.” And my absolutely favorite new phrase is “Katrina patina.” Anything that survived the storm is coated with sludge, discolored, mangled at least to some degree. It’s got that “Katrina patina.” Jewelry, artwork, tools, photographs, furniture, clothes—all have been transformed by the storm into something vaguely recognizable, yet inalterably changed. Friends, at the end of a long day of mucking, covered with grime and sweat and a substance resembling black algae, will refuse an embrace. “Stay back,” they’ll warn. “I’ve got the Katrina patina.” Even after a scalding shower, scrubbing with soap and disinfectant, the Katrina patina remains, marking every one of us. It doesn’t wash off. We, as well as our belongings, are vaguely recognizable, inalterably changed. We can only hope some of it wears away as the years pass. Yet beneath that patina—under the sludge and the mud, the loss and the mourning—a bright determination flourishes. Our spirit as a community is evolving as surely as our vocabulary. We’re fluent in the language of loss now, but we’re also learning more about the language of love. 
The Show Must Go On! And indeed it did! The building that later became the Bay St. Louis Little Theatre building after Katrina, photo by Ellis Anderson
The Bay St. Louis Little Theatre building on opening night, 2011. Photo by Ellis Anderson
Next Installment: Chapter 4 – The Dominos of DenialAt first, I thought the street was flooding from the hours-long downpour of rain, but the thin film of water covering the road quickly became a seething stream. An orange cat bounded pell-mell across the yard, headed to higher ground. A cooler sailed by at a fast clip, followed by a sheet of tin from someone’s roof. When the trunk of a large tree careened past—looking like a kayak caught in rapids — adrenaline began to roar through my veins. The roots of my hair rose up in a futile effort to desert the rest of my body. Denial wasn’t possible any more. I was watching a storm surge charging in from the Gulf of Mexico. To be continued... 
Under Surge, Under Siege is available in paperback and as an ebook.
In 2011, Anderson founded her first digital publication, the Shoofly Magazine and served as publisher from 2011 - 2022. She established French Quarter Journal in 2019, where she currently serves as publisher and managing editor. Anderson currently divides time between the New Orleans French Quarter and Mobile, Alabama.
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