Hurricane Rita, Diversity and the Glue that Binds Us....

Jacquielynn Floyd:
Home's host, guests put diversity to the test

10:42 PM CDT on Friday, September 23, 2005
Dallas Morning News

Even before Rita unleashed a fresh wave of Dallas-bound coastal evacuees, there was evidence the city was starting to sag a little under the stress.
It's entirely understandable. The fragile blossom of spontaneous generosity wilts around the edges after a while, but the need is as great as ever. Evacuees still in shelters need apartments; those in apartments still need furniture; people with furniture still need jobs.
Then there are those who opened their homes during Katrina's dramatic aftermath. Sharing your living space ranks at the high end of the selflessness scale, and it's demanding. I spoke to a woman last week who is sheltering 10 family members in her one-bedroom apartment. She's growing desperate at the difficulty of finding financial assistance and more permanent housing for them.
This week, Mayor Laura Miller reported that some hosts were throwing in the towel, dropping evacuees they had been sheltering off at Reunion Arena and swelling the numbers in the city's care.
Jeff Martin says he won't do that, no matter what, even though his house is too crowded and he's running short of money and he misses his privacy. He won't do it, even though his household is currently a stranger assemblage than the most ill-conceived sitcom that ever fell out of a scriptwriter's head.
Jeff is a young, outspoken gay man (he was a float driver in last week's gay pride parade) with a dramatically decorated home and five meticulously bred miniature Shih Tzu dogs. Don and Darlene Davis are rough-hewn and voluble, devout Pentecostals left homeless by the New Orleans floodwaters.
Shelters wouldn't take them because they refuse to be separated from their own two dogs, big, scruffy mutts. Jeff was volunteering in a church soup line when he found the Davises, helpless and adrift. He took them home, dogs and all.
On that first day, Jeff discreetly took Mrs. Davis aside for a confidential discussion.
"I said, 'Let me tell you straight up, I'm a homosexual man,' " he said.
Mrs. Davis nodded eagerly and recounted the rest of the conversation: "I said, 'Oh, baby, that don't matter none.' "
The Davises are not, perhaps, your average houseguests. Both are diabetic and in poor health. Mr. Davis is an irascible 70-year-old who readily admits that he did prison time in his younger days; his many stories are occasionally punctuated with racial references that might be considered offensive. Mrs. Davis is excitable and talkative; she frequently recounts her dreams and visions and conversations with God.
But there's a vulnerable sweetness about the couple, a naive trust that Jeff takes as a personal obligation. The unlikely circle is rounded out by one of Jeff's closest friends, an elderly African-American lady named LaVera who brings covered dishes and casseroles over every day.
The Davises are lucky in that they fled New Orleans with their own cars. Mr. Davis is a taxi driver who owns his own cab, which he drove in a bumpy little caravan with Mrs. Davis, who drove the other car with the dogs and a couple of suitcases full of clothes.
Every day, they drive from Jeff's house downtown to Reunion Arena, where they stand in long lines, trying to get medical attention, prescriptions, and food stamps. Like many other evacuees, they are proud working people bewildered to find themselves dependent on a slow and not-always-efficient bureaucracy.
After several weeks at Jeff's house, they would like to find their own place. But Jeff has been unable to find suitable placement for the Davises, despite calls to countless agencies looking for help. So far, his calls go unreturned, or he just gets busy signals.
"I can't help thinking about my own parents," he said a little shakily. "I think about them being away from home, stranded somewhere with their dogs ..." His voice trailed off, and he pulled his glasses free to wipe his eyes.
"Jeff's our guardian angel," Darlene said – she was crying, too, and I was a little close to tears myself. "That's exactly what I call him."
But Jeff quickly recovered his composure and his wicked wit: "They asked God for an angel," he said, pausing a beat for the punch line: "And he sent them a big old queen!"
And there we all sat, laughing and weeping, with the dogs rolling around on the floor.
The glue that binds us is often messy and awkward. And it's miraculous stuff.
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