Thursday Work Project The Ladybug Lady (Cindy)

Thursday Work Project The Ladybug Lady

We never got her name, but the Ladybug Lady came out of her shop offering the kids candy from the pink plastic basket she was carrying. The Ladybug Gift Shop was in a small strip mall in St. Bernard’s Parish where we were busy picking up litter in the hot sun. There was an apparently closed up gun shop next door and we had found handfuls of empty gun shell casings on the boulevard. I had been wondering about the neighborhood we were cleaning.

The Ladybug Lady thanked us over and over, saying that they appreciated all the volunteers more than they could say. She started her story with “before the storm.” She told us that St. Bernard’s had been like a big family. It took you 2 hours to get milk at the store because you ran into so many people to talk to. Many families had lived there for generations and everyone knew each other. “After the storm” many families left, because they were not able to rebuild in the Parish. “Before the storm” the Ladybug Lady and her husband lived in the 3000 sq. ft. home where they had raised their children. When the levee broke with Hurricane Katrina, their house was flooded by 8 feet of water. When Hurricane Rita hit just a few weeks later, they were left with 13 feet of water in their home.

They spent the first months after the storm in a FEMA trailer. She said they would go back to the house and look, but couldn’t seem to do anything when they were there. She said it wasn’t until the volunteers came and started working that she realized they had been so depressed that they couldn’t get started. She said that all she could do was to cook big pots of food in that little trailer to feed the volunteers. She tearfully told me how they had helped her literally sift through the remains of her home looking for anything valuable or sentimental that could be salvaged.

We mentioned all the shell casings we had picked up and she told us that “things happened” after the storm. They had friends who were firefighters, EMTs and police officers. She said they had stacked up wrecked cars to make a wall between St. Bernard’s Parish and the hard hit 9th Ward, but that there was still a lot of looting. She told us that their friends still would not talk about the things they had to do after the storm. Many chose to find a new line of work after the storm.

We asked about the spray painted markings we saw on so many damaged homes. The Ladybug Lady explained that the National Guard went through every home. They made coded marks to tell officials which Guard group had checked the homes. They spray painted numbers representing the numbers of bodies, of both people and pets, found in the homes. She said her daughter has tried everything, but couldn’t remove the spray paint from the brick on her home. She has decided to keep it “as a souvenir.”

The Ladybug Lady and her husband are still not back in their home. They are living with one of their sons and his family. Their house has just gotten running water and a bathroom that works and they hope to get back in it soon, even though there are still no walls. She said her husband is looking forward to two things: sleeping in his own bed and being able to change channels on the TV remote without asking anyone else.

The Ladybug Lady came offering much more than candy to share. She shared part of herself and her story with us.