Miami Herald - December 29, 2005
Emily Schmall, eschmall@MiamiHerald.com

Hurricane Katrina couldn't have come at a more desperate time for the Miller-Taylor household. Renita, whose eight children and two grandchildren live with her in a five-bedroom home in a low-income housing project, had left her child-care job in May to attend to Tamika full time.

The motor shot, Renita's old truck finally puttered out in July, and the junkman would offer only $50 for the parts. On top of it all, Renita's second eldest daughter, Shantrell, 19, was pregnant with her third child.

When Tamika died on Aug. 29, four days after Katrina flooded Homestead, the household lost not only a sister and daughter but also its principal breadwinner. "It's been a bad year," Renita sighed.

Reminders of the holidays seem to compound the family's grief. At least one of the children, 9-year-old Queron, didn't have any presents to open on Christmas. He wanted a football -- a sport that he has taken to with natural athleticism, like his older brothers. Like all the kids, he needs clothes and new shoes as well.

Bankrupted by Tamika's funeral and the hurricane season, the family has no money for a new car and often scrounges even for bus fare. Shantrell uses food stamps to buy daughters Aniyah, 3, and Arieal, 1, breakfast from a bodega a half-mile away from home.

Shantrell takes three buses and a train to reach her baby, Anthony, at Miami Children's Hospital. Anthony, a month old, was born three months early, and his underdeveloped lungs and an intraventricular hemorrhage -- bleeding from the brain's blood vessels -- confine him to an incubator. Shantrell still waits to hold him for the first time.

Aniyah, also born prematurely, goes to Project Thrive, an early intervention program for mentally disabled children, to learn numbers and colors. Arieal, whom Renita delivered at home, also came too soon -- and despite her age hasn't learned to walk.

"I'm worried about my baby. And I need a cellphone, so that the hospital can call and tell me how he's doing," Shantrell says. "I don't have anything to complain about with my mom here to help me, but I just wish I could hold him."

Renita uses Aniyah's monthly $579 Social Security disability check to pay the bills. Eleven people survive on this. A new car would allow Shantrell to visit her baby more often, Renita to shop for groceries for her family, and the kids to make it to school.

Inside Shantrell's house, a wet stench permeates the walls, leaving brown stains around the door and window frames.

Most of the furniture had to be tossed, including mattresses, and now the kids "make piles and sleep on the floor," said Renita. Aside from a wraparound couch Renita's sister donated, what was destroyed has not been replaced. Football trophies line an empty, water-sodden entertainment center.

"We were scared, terrified. Water came in through the floorboards, in the ceiling, so we all got together in one bed up in the attic," Renita said of the Katrina experience. A FEMA inspector visited the home on Nov. 13. Though Renita directed him to the fungus dangling from the ceiling, the inspector deemed there to be "insufficient damage" for money to be granted.

Renita feels a certain injustice has been imposed upon her family. "We struggle to get these things and then, because of the hurricane, we lose them. I'm not looking for a handout -- I'm just asking for what we had before to be replaced," she said.

Derek goes to a labor pool to get work at a warehouse or on a factory assembly line, but without a car, a day of work is increasingly rare. When Shantrell's children are old enough to attend free day care, she plans to resume school, and Renita will take another job.

Until then, Renita and Shantrell wonder how they will make it through the day.

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