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CALLIE SHELL / AURORA FOR TIME
THE NEW SCENE: Brown sits between daughters Vivian, left, and Angeline outside their new apartment |
•THE BROWNS
HAPPILY OUT OF THE NINTH WARD
MABLE BROWN'S NEW JOB isn't what you would call spectacular. She works at a red stucco, French Quarter--themed Doubletree Inn in the suburbs of Atlanta, cleaning rooms for $7.15 an hour. But Brown, 27, isn't complaining. She doesn't get health insurance, but her employers are supportive. And she makes enough to afford the $595 rent for the ground floor of a duplex she found to share with her daughters Vivian, 13, and Angeline, 9, on a cul-de-sac off a quiet, wooded street in Marietta, Ga. "It's just us," Brown contentedly told TIME two weeks ago. "We're like the three bears here."
That was then. The Brown household has since doubled in size: mamma bear welcomed into her den three of her older sister Latasha Davis' four rambunctious kids--Rodkeen, 8, Angel, 7, and Dasia, 5. Davis has lately found it difficult to cope with their needs. "She has her days, just like I do," Brown gently explains. "Sometimes people don't feel like getting up in the morning." But Brown seems to handle the pressure. If she has an expertise, it is surviving the surprises of fate.
Brown and her five siblings grew up in the gritty Ninth Ward of New Orleans. When Brown was 11, her eldest brother John, who she believes was a drug dealer, was murdered. Police fished his savagely beaten body, bound to the bumper and rims from his dismantled Oldsmobile 98, out of Lake Pontchartrain. In her teenage years, Brown was raised largely by her sisters. By 14, she was pregnant with Vivian; Angeline followed barely five years later. Brown lived for a while with Angeline's father in Cobb County, near Atlanta, but he drifted back to his old gangster life in New Orleans and was gunned down in 1999. Brown reluctantly moved back to New Orleans in April to get Vivian away from kids at their apartment complex who were harassing her.
So Brown found herself in New Orleans when the levees broke, leading her mother, her sisters and their 13 children through the reeking water to the Superdome. There, the family took the help offered by Atlanta writer Lisa McLeod, who got the family to Georgia. Brown first moved in with a Marietta couple. By the end of September she found her den. It's pretty crowded these days. Vivian and two cousins share bunk beds, while Angeline and Dasia sleep on a pallet of quilts and pads. But things are looking up. Angeline loves elementary school and wants to play the flute. Vivian is happy with her middle school, where she sings in the choir and hopes to join the track team.
Brown runs a tight ship. The kids can't snack until they have done their homework and Brown has reviewed it. They never leave the house in unironed clothes. Her daughters share the responsibilities: Vivian gets her cousins ready for school, and Angeline helps look after them in the afternoon. Of course, the kids often test Angeline's authority, but Brown will be happy if that's the only way her daughter's toughness is tried. In any case, she says she is never taking her babies back to cruel New Orleans.