NEW ORLEANS — Kierstyn Cyrus cracked open the front door of her ruined home, a single goal in mind, just one precious thing she wanted to rescue. It was October 2005, the first time since Hurricane Katrina that she had stepped inside the brick ranch at 2455 Deslonde Street in the Lower Ninth Ward. The morning before a levee burst four blocks away, Kierstyn, her mother and grandmother had fled 250 miles inland.
On this mockingly sunlit afternoon, as Kierstyn entered the house, she spotted a kitchen chair perched atop the roof. Inside, the refrigerator lay sideways across the living room. In Kierstyn’s bedroom, her Tweety Bird doll was wedged amid the rafters, where the flood waters had pressed it, and all her church dresses were gone from the closet, swept away.
“Mom, where’s my book?” Kierstyn called out to her mother, Melanie. “Where’s my portfolio?”
Ms. Cyrus was standing outside, doctor’s orders. She was in the middle of chemotherapy for breast cancer, and she had been warned not to expose herself to the filth, germs and mold in the house. But she knew which book Kierstyn meant, and she shouted back to look under the radio on the bedroom dresser.
Kierstyn was searching for a loose-leaf binder, filled with every award and honor from her academic career. Her mother, a teacher, had begun keeping the book when Kierstyn was in Rock-a-Bye nursery school and continued all the way to the eighth-grade year interrupted by the hurricane.
The pages held all of Kierstyn’s report cards, the honor-roll ribbons, the snapshots of classmates, the certificate good for a free meal at Shoney’s in recognition of high marks. Ms. Cyrus and Kierstyn had put every page in a plastic sleeve, as if smudged fingers or spilled coffee were all the book had to be guarded against.

nytimes.com


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