Coffee

FOUR WEEKS AFTER Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, I accompanied my friend Audrey there to check on her home. At the Homeland Security checkpoint, an officer warned us that if we spent the night, we’d be on our own. “There’s no 911,” he said. The city appeared postapocalyptic: no electricity or street signs; felled trees, deserted boats, and abandoned cars littering the landscape; a Coast Guard helicopter belly-up on a grassy median. Even so, we stayed.

That night humming generators, screaming sirens, and sporadic gunshots kept me up.

My first priority the following morning was coffee. Audrey rummaged through her truck for bottled water, Sterno, and a saucepan. I found mugs and half a bag of coffee in a kitchen cabinet, then ripped an old T-shirt into two squares and draped one over each mug as a filter. We sat on Audrey’s front stoop and waited for the Sterno to heat the water. When, after twenty minutes, the water still hadn’t boiled, we decided almost-hot water was good enough.

I held the cloth while Audrey filled each makeshift filter with coffee and dribbled water over the grinds. The neighbors wandered over to share their evacuation stories, exchange contractor recommendations, and drink what we offered. No one complained about the wait for a cup.

Drinking coffee was a moment of normalcy amid the chaos, an ordinary habit elevated to something elemental, another way of saying, We’re home.

Jean Coco

Baton Rouge, Louisiana