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NINA BERMAN / REDUX FOR TIME
GUTTED: Julie and mom Anne Comardo, on the ground floor of their house in Metairie,
La., live in the mold-free zone upstairs |
•THE COMARDAS
TO GOTHAM AND BACK AGAIN
Julie Comarda had always wanted to go to college in New York City, but she was distressed when her move north came a year early. At 18, she should have been starting her senior year at New Orleans' Academy of the Sacred Heart, a school she had attended since age 3. "I had looked forward to this year my whole life," she says. Instead, she was the new kid at Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattan, which, post-Katrina, offered to take students from its sister school tuition free and house them with host families. "I've never been the new girl," she says.
That's tough at the best of times, but with her mom Anne staying with family in Arkansas and her dad Chris in Baton Rouge, La.--her parents are divorced--Julie had to face her situation alone. "I feel such a huge responsibility that I'm representing my family, my school and my city," she said after arriving in New York. She struggled to maintain her Southern manners when she heard people say that those who had lived below sea level got what they deserved. She feared seeming ungrateful. "We're really lucky," she says. "We got out alive." She stopped singing in the shower "because you can't be completely yourself when you're sharing a bathroom" in someone else's home.
Her hosts, she says, treated her very well. But she missed things like CC's, her favorite coffee place, and her mom's grillades, a beef stew. Most of all, she missed her family. While she was away, her grandmother, also living in Arkansas, had a minor stroke. Days later, her dad had a heart attack. He's recovering, but her dreams of college in New York died, she says: "I want to be where I'm able to get home if I want or need to."
On Nov. 5, Julie went home at last. Her mother had moved back into the elegant family home in the suburb of Metairie, having had the flood-damaged ground floor gutted. She and Julie live on the second floor, which thus far is free of the mold that has made so many other homes uninhabitable. Three older siblings are away at college. Plastic sheets seal off the second floor, and shoes are left outside a zippered entryway to avoid corrupting the new living area. But mold has invaded the garage, which is packed to the rafters with belongings the family hopes to salvage. Three new refrigerators in the garage are stuffed with books and family papers sealed in plastic bags. That, an antiquities expert told Anne's sister, was the best way to kill mold and mildew.
At her grandparents' ravaged home, just blocks from the breach in the 17th Street Canal, Julie found her grandfather's World War II Navy helmet. "I'm taking this," she said. "We can save it." Then she ran to a heap of sopping fabric--which reeked of sewage, dead fish and rotting trash--and picked it up. "Julie! Don't touch it!" her mom hollered. The silk-and-tulle Mardi Gras gown had been worn by Julie's Aunt Wendy. It used to be white. Julie had hoped to wear it someday. Flushed, she dropped the dress, her hands shaking.
On Nov. 7, Julie returned to her newly reopened school, the alma mater of her mother and grandmother. When her friends spotted her, they rushed her, besieging her with kisses, hugs and questions. Was New York cold? ("Supercold!" said the girl who wears sweaters even in the swelter of a Louisiana summer.) Did you see anyone famous? (Does Nicky Hilton count?) Were the boys cute?
It was a bittersweet day because she heard for the first time the Katrina stories of many friends. Some classmates evacuated to the same places as their teachers and kept studying together, so she is behind them in the curriculum. But Julie is not worried. "Everything is falling back into place," she says. "It feels right being here with everyone again."