Even in despair, family feels blessed
Lifted up and brought down: A day in the life in Houston
After little slumber, Helen Benjamin, 78, rose from bed at 7 a.m. in pink pajamas and a ruffled purple sleeping cap and began preparations for church as she would any other Sunday.
But this day was different. Benjamin didn’t wake up in her home of more than five decades in the city’s Kashmere Gardens neighborhood. She woke up 15 miles across town in a cramped hotel room with two double beds — her youngest daughter, Kim Malbroue, 46, and 10-year-old grandchild, Imana, in the bed next to her.
Benjamin and her family are among tens of thousands of Houstonians displaced from their homes by Hurricane Harvey, which tore through southeastern Texas one week earlier, killing at least four dozen people, filling more than 50,000 homes with water and testing the endurance of the nation’s fourth-largest city.
“I didn’t sleep hardly at all,” she says, now dressed in blue skirt and blazer with a silver brooch on her lapel and navy blue hat atop her neat-kept silver hair. “We’ve been pulling wet stuff out of the house all
“Lots to do today. But in all that’s going on, the first stop belongs to God.”
Helen Benjamin, 78, on her way to church
night. My daughter was crying because her back hurt.
“But we are blessed. A lot of people are worse off.”
Five other members of her displaced family stirred in two nearby rooms at the Hilton west of downtown, preparing for what they knew would be a hectic and emotional day ahead.
“From sunup to sundown, we’re working, throwing out stuff,” says Benjamin’s other daughter, Ann Neal, 59. Neal, whose home is flooded, is staying in a hotel room with Benjamin’s niece Karen Lacy and her husband, Jerry Lacy, who also live in Kashmere Gardens. “There’s little time for sleep.”
Several floors up, Benjamin’s 88-year-old brother-in-law,
Thomas Benjamin, and his 87year-old wife, Dorris Benjamin, rest. The couple also live in Kashmere Gardens, and the past seven days, the family says, have been especially trying on the pair; she is in a wheelchair and on dialysis.
“Lots to do today,” Benjamin says as she approaches the hotel’s large glass front doors.
“But in all that’s going on, the first stop belongs to God.”
TAKING REFUGE IN FAITH
Benjamin — matriarch of the family (her husband, J. Edward Benjamin, died in the early ’90s, leaving behind her two daughters, a son — Graylon Benjamin, 52, and the late Larry Benjamin, 50) — has a welcoming, impressive energy.
Members at the Fifth-Ward Church of Christ where she makes her first stop and has been a member for nearly six decades describe her as not only a respected member of the community but a selfless and caring person.
“The most giving, angelic, honest, pure Christian lady,” says Hugh Larkin, a pharmacist and fellow member at the northeast Houston church with a 2,000member congregation. “She and her family, like many others here, are going through so much.”
Benjamin and her oldest daughter are a tad late to church.
But that’s OK, Benjamin says. They missed last week’s service because they were stranded in their homes, waiting to be rescued — some by dump truck and others by boat. Before checking into the hotel, at one point all eight family members stayed at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston with more than 9,000 fellow evacuees.
As she makes her way to church, Benjamin thinks about how much longer they can stay at the hotel. She is on a fixed income. Neal is on disability. Malbroue was laid off last month from her job as a financial adviser for Chase.
Her son, who has been unable to reach her for days because of flooded-out roads and interstates, recently sold a house and moved into an apartment that won’t accommodate her brood.
The credit cards are nearly maxed. All but one in the group lost their cars. None have flood insurance. They hope to get approved for FEMA assistance to pay for their hotel rooms, but the process is time-consuming and tedious, she says.
As she sits three rows from the back of the sanctuary, Benjamin closes her eyes for a moment.
“You got that water in your house right now, smile and, you know what, say, ‘I’m thankful that I’m alive,’ ” preacher Gary Smith says from behind the pulpit to scores of amens and applause.
After eating at the church, Benjamin and Neal leave.
“It’s back to the grind from here,” Neal says, glancing up into the sun now high overhead.
It’s 2 p.m.
TOO MUCH TO DO
Benjamin opens the front door of her single-story brick home, turns the latch and sighs.
“The storm ripped the door off,” she says, pointing to the white screen door leaning up against the house directly next to her wood front door.
She then points to a waterline on brick near the front door.
As soon as she opens the door, a rotten stench fills the air.
“Oh, it smells horrible,” Benjamin says, clutching her nose.
Like clockwork, the two go to work opening windows and doors.
“She used to not be able to walk without a walker,” Neal says as her mother walked from room to room in the three-bedroom, 1 1⁄2- bath home. “But she had two knee surgeries, and now nothing can stop her.”
Every elevated piece of furniture is covered with household items.
Benjamin was in bed when the water came rushing into her home. She remembers stepping out of bed at 5 a.m. into the cold water on her bedroom’s tile floor.
She was stuck in the home for days with her daughter and Imana. She finally reached her cousin, a firefighter, who sent help.
“They backed a dump truck in, put a ladder down and I climbed in,” she says. “We took off and it went in a ditch. Then another truck had to get us and take us to the convention center.”
It’s now 3:30 p.m. and time for Neal to return to her home across town in the Parkway Forest neighborhood. She returns to her home to find her son and husband cleaning up.
“I broke down last night at the house and cried,” she says, her eyes now fixed on her front lawn with a large pile of broken and soaked furniture from her home atop it. “It’s so much.”
“We’ve been cleaning for five days,” says her son, William Neal, 34. “Feels like a million years.”
A LONG DAY DONE
Back at the hotel, Benjamin is alone in her room dressed once again in her pink pajamas and ruffled sleeping cap.
It’s just before 10:45 p.m., and she is holding a set of colored pencils in her hand. Her granddaughter’s coloring book is on her stomach. “My granddaughter gave this to me,” she says.
Benjamin’s other daughter enters the room shortly after. She barely managed to grab some food before restaurants closed for the night. Because of the flooding, there’s a curfew.
Malbroue reminds her mother that her former company gave her grant money for the hotel and that the money has run dry.
They need to check out within the next day or two.
“We’ll just stay with my husband in southeast Houston,” she says. “We’ll all squeeze.”
The little girl, a sweet child of few words, looks up from an iPad she holds.
Her grandmother then pulls one of the colored pencils from the stack still clutched in her left hand and lifts the coloring book from her stomach.
Its title is now visible: Keep Calm and Color On.
“I love coloring,” Benjamin says softly. “It’s so relaxing.”
Her granddaughter, now under the covers in the other bed, turns her head to her grandmother, smiles and says, “Me too.”