Normal South Carolinians, the non-clipboard-wielding kind, never answer anything too quickly. \u00a0But after a moment he nods, and says, \u201cI know who it is you\u2019re looking for. \u00a0The woman who is asking for help. \u00a0She lives in 8F.\u201d \u00a0He points around the corner from where we\u2019re standing. \u00a0\u201cGo all the way back to the end, to building F. \u00a08F. \u00a0 Ask for Vera.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another quarter-mile, and we\u2019re looking at building F, down at the very remotest end of the apartment complex. \u00a0It\u2019s quieter here, the only activity a U-haul truck parked in front of the center of the building. \u00a0We scout until we find #8. \u00a0It\u2019s upstairs, across the hall from the guy moving his things into the U-haul.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a vague stench, but it\u2019s not any worse than my minivan with the bad seal on the door that we had to dry out the night before. \u00a0No mud on the floor or anything. \u00a0Someone\u2019s started pulling up carpet on the entryway.<\/p>\n
The door to #8 is open, but I don\u2019t see anyone inside. \u00a0\u201cHello? Vera?\u201d<\/p>\n
No answer. \u00a0The kids wait outside. \u00a0They\u2019re not really into walking into strangers\u2019 flood-stenched apartments.<\/p>\n
I walk in a little deeper, and call a few more times, and finally find Vera in the back bedroom. She\u2019s about my age, your basic self-reliant middle-aged mom-type, and she\u2019s absorbed in getting the contents of the master bedroom packed up. \u00a0For a moment I wonder if we\u2019re about to be sent off to look for work elsewhere. \u00a0No. \u00a0She can use our help. \u00a0A wispy girl of maybe thirteen or so is doing things in the background. \u00a0We\u2019re never introduced, but I assume she\u2019s Vera\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n
The other moms find us, and our crew converges on the site. \u00a0Thank God it\u2019s fellow moms, because getting strangers to clean out a flood-worn apartment is like trying to get a house guest to load your dishwasher correctly, only in this case they are charged with hauling a third of your possessions to the dumpster and boxing up the rest.<\/p>\n
\u00a0***<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Vera was a regular mom. \u00a0It was a rainy day; she probably worked, or ran errands, or maybe did something with her kids. \u00a0She might have had an outfit picked out for church in the morning. \u00a0She might have made a mental note to pack umbrellas. \u00a0There\u2019s popcorn on the floor in the front bedroom \u2014 one of the kids probably stayed up late watching a movie on the big TV, and set the bowl aside to clean up in the morning.<\/p>\n
Sunday morning, instead of making breakfast and getting the kids to clean up their mess from last night, she woke to the hope that someone would show up with a boat to rescue her family, and her downstairs neighbors whose homes were rapidly getting submerged, out of this fresh hell no one, anywhere, ever, had considered a possibility.<\/p>\n
Monday they returned home, and word is that thieves in boats came in the night to help themselves to the valuables in the upstairs apartments. \u00a0So she comes home to a condemned building, wet floors, and the need to find a new home, fast.<\/p>\n
She and the kids were efficient. \u00a0In each room they\u2019ve done a quick-sort, and tossed everything that can\u2019t be salvaged against one wall, then done their best to make sense of the rest. \u00a0She tells me there\u2019s all this trash to take out, and she\u2019s trying to get the clothes in the master bedroom ready to go. \u00a0As it happens, the one and only thing I threw into the truck on the way out the door was our\u00a0supply of trash bags.<\/p>\n
I fetch the bags (and the truck, and prayerfully make my way over that terrifying bridge and find parking on a muddy patch by another building), and we use the lightweight ones for makeshift garment bags, and set up a relay for filling the contractor bags with trash.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
It\u2019s good work for kids. \u00a0There\u2019s a lot of standing around waiting for something to do, and kids are good at standing around doing nothing as part of their normal pace of housework.<\/p>\n
The girls have a habit of stuffing the contractor-bags until they are too heavy. The boys have a habit of being able to haul really heavy things down the stairs and over to the dumpster. \u00a0There\u2019s no power; when we\u2019ve got the big trash hauled and the good stuff boxed and staged in the living room, we scoop up the random bits of tiny-trash with our hands. \u00a0Almost as good as a vacumn, if you have enough children and a small apartment.<\/p>\n
Across the hall, a sketchy-looking man in his twenties, tall and muscular and with a demeanor that suggests he\u2019s not used to being helped by church people, is trying to get his furniture into the U-haul. \u00a0I don\u2019t get the idea he and Vera are buddies. \u00a0I send three teenage boys to help him, and leave them to the nearly-silent communication system men use when they are working together to get something enormous down a tight, rickety staircase.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
We finish up the last bits of work in Vera\u2019s master bedroom. \u00a0She has family, she explains, who will be able to help her move later in the afternoon, but who weren\u2019t able to come sooner \u2014 she\u2019s not the only one drowning in the work of sorting out the post-flood life. \u00a0And there\u2019s still work. \u00a0You have to keep going to work, to pay for all this mess. \u00a0She has a lease on a new apartment down the road, and just needs to get hold of a moving truck.<\/p>\n
\u201cGod is good,\u201d she says. \u00a0And, \u201cYou guys were awesome.\u201d \u00a0She starts crying. \u00a0One of the moms gives her a big hug.<\/p>\n
Yes, we were awesome. \u00a0We descended on her place, and in the space of ninety minutes\u00a0we\u00a0hauled out dozens of bags of trash and got her good stuff boxed and labeled and ready to load. \u00a0This is probably the most awesome thing any of us helpers has ever done.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has been so awful,\u201d she says, \u201cAnd everyone\u2019s shown up and helped each other. \u00a0We\u2019re really a community for once.\u00a0 It\u00a0should be like this all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
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