- Check, check, check, check.

I'm gonna give you this microphone.

Would you just tell me where we're going.

- Yeah no worries.

So we're just gonna go straight, and I'm taking a left.

So this is all flooded.

You wouldn't have been able to drive down here.

This is Delford.

So you can drive down.

Now you're gonna see, like architecturally why this would be the worst hit street.

Soon as you come in you're gonna notice the declines.

It's an immediate decline.

(soft instrumental music) The area down here though, they're hit the worst.

The water goes up to the door knob.

So we didn't have enough time.

(soft piano music) - Welcome to Stories From the Stage, produced by World Channel, and WGBH Boston, in partnership with Mass Mouth.

Each episode, ordinary people stand up in front of a live studio audience and tell a story based on a theme.

I'm Liz Cheng.

- And I am Patricia Alvarado Nunez.

and we help create Stories From the Stage.

- In this episode, we hear from Ashley Rose.

a poet, a writer, and a teacher, working at Suffolk University Center for Restorative Justice in Boston.

- So Liz, imagine that on a perfectly normal day when you are 11 years old, you witness dark water rising up from the basement to take over your home.

And suddenly the entire neighborhood is flooded.

- And then you find out that the flood is just the beginning of your troubles.

Ashley Rose takes us back to that day.

I grew up in Roslindale on a dead-end street called Delford.

I was born in 1985, so I existed in Roslindale probably about the first 12 years of my life, and I would say it was a bit of a utopia.

A lot of people think of America as a melting pot in this time period.

No, my street was a tossed salad.

We had a little bit of everybody, and everyone brought their own flavor, their own style.

I learned about convergent and divergent boundaries from people who escaped these volcanic islands that erupted, from Montserrat.

I learned about Puerto Rican culture and that Puerto Ricans, some of them were black.

I was, like, "Oh, my God."

This was just all these learning experiences.

I was raised by Cambodians.

I had a little bit of everything in Roslindale, and it was perfect until a day in 1996, when Boston decided to drown a whole bunch of poor immigrants in Roslindale.

On this particular day in 1996-- it wasn't raining, it was drizzling, all right?

So doing what I would always do on Sundays with my brother, I decided that I wanted my bacon, egg, and cheese.

And being a little sister, my brother's, like, "You're going to go to the store to get the eggs."

I'm, like, "All right, cool, whatever, Josh, I'll do it."

So I go get my eggs, but the first thing I realize is, "Why am I hopping over puddles "to get over Washington Street to Four Brothers' Market?

All right, whatever, let me just get the eggs."

I head on home.

By the time I get home, I realize the water's starting to pool at the side of the sidewalks a little more.

The water's not going down, but it's really not raining.

This is kind of weird, but I'm just going to watch "Ghostwriter" and keep minding my business, all right?

Eventually, we start to hear the water, the dogs start to congregate on the third floor and howl, the cats start to pace.

Me being from Roslindale, growing up in arboretums, I know you trust animals, all right?

So I'm, like, "Something's wrong."

Eventually, I hear the sound of water-- sounds like it's coming from the basement.

Me and my brother, being the investigators that we are, go into the basement and realize that there's brown and black water pouring in from the back of the basement.

And it's coming in pretty fast.

Eventually, it opens the door, and we can't close the door.

So we're, like, "Okay, well, let's just call Ma."

Ma's at work.

My mom works in Cambridge-- "Ma, the house is flooding."

"Ashley, it can't be flooding-- I'm in Cambridge, it's not raining."

"I know, but it's flooding."

Within the next hour, there's a firefighter at our door saying that we have to leave on a raft.

This is Roslindale, y'all-- this is Roslindale, okay?

A raft.

"Ma, I got to leave on a raft."

All right, I'm just going to get the cats and the dogs and get on the raft-- the guy says, "You can't bring the cats and the dogs."

I said, "Well, then, you know, I'm not going."

I go onto this whole tangent, Noah's Ark, I'm not leaving, Punky didn't leave Brandon, I'm not doing it.

Leave me here, I'm going down with the ship.

One of my neighbors come over and said, "Ashley, get in this raft."

And this was back in the day when your neighbor could still, like, discipline you, so I said, "All right, I'm going to get in the raft and go."

I end up at the Roslindale Community Center, which is... at the Archdale Community Center, which is now the Menino Center.

And it's pretty fun, because this is where I play basketball every day.

I, like, get there, this group called FEMA passes me a hat, a flashlight, and a cot.

I'm, like, "I can play basketball, "my mother's not here-- this is great.

All right, this works."

Until my mother shows up with the cat in a bag, literally.

I'm, like, "Yeah, you saved my cat, Ma, you're the best!

But you smell like sewage."

She looks like... "All right, Ash, take the cat."

But my mom doesn't look like her normal self.

I'm, like, maybe it's because she's wet.

Once she dries off, she'll be back to normal.

"Ma, look at my... Ma, what's wrong?

What's going on with the house?"

She says, "Everything's under water.

We can't go back to the house."

I'm, like, "Well, Ma, we're at the gym, it's fine."

She said, "But..." My mom doesn't look normal at this point.

Like, I'm starting to get a little more worried, but we have four days at this community center.

On the fifth day, my friends called FEMA leave.

Little did I know they would leave us floating on faith forever.

After that, we had to live in cars, because the community center had to turn back into a gym eventually.

We lived in cars for two weeks.

Eventually, my mom, being from New York City, having no family, ended up breaking back into the condemned apartments, because we realized they'd flooded us with sewage.

So we could no longer live there, but my mom had nowhere to go, so she becomes a squatter.

We squat in this apartment illegally for seven to eight months until eventually my mom wins a home off of watching TV.

Oprah had a show on on a special called Habitat for Humanity right?

Clap for Oprah.

Clap for Oprah.

Love Oprah.

And I look at it, I say, "Ma, we should apply for this Habitat for Humanity thing."

She's, like, "Ashley, don't you realize I lose everything?

I just lost a house, I lost everything."

I said, "Ma, I just won the Easter egg raffle-- I win everything, all right?"

So we're both going back and forth.

I decide, "You know what, Ma?

I'm going to apply.

Because my English teacher said I'm a good writer."

The application comes, I apply.

Lo and behold, two weeks later, I told you so.

We got picked for the Habitat for Humanity house.

I'm like, "Yay!"

Now that's when we clap for Habitat.

(applause) Within one...

They spent one year, college kids, church missionaries, volunteers helped me rebuild a house that we now... my mom still owns and lives on on Hansborough Street in Dorchester.

I get a scholarship to college, my life's put back together.

I go back and make sure I help out for Habitat for Humanity when Hurricane Katrina hits, 'cause it's the cycle of giving, but I still hate FEMA.

(laughter) I hate FEMA-- I kid you not.

The wrath of revenge and hate that I have for them, it never left.

It actually didn't leave, I would say, until about two weeks ago.

I end up about to be able to perform at a special event, and I'm happy to go over.

They're, like, "Oh, Ashley, you're a poet.

I hear you write a lot about housing rights."

And I go into this whole tangent about being displaced and flooded, and this random guy in the audience stands up and says, "I'm sorry."

I said, "You are.

You are sorry for interrupting me like that."

I was, like, "What are you doing?"

He goes, "No, ma'am, I was on that team 20 years ago from FEMA."

(upbeat music) - We'll see what happens next in a minute.

(dramatic music) So Patricia here is what happened.

In 1996, the outdated sewage systems servicing Roslindale Massachusetts, failed and dumped millions of gallons of sewage, into Ashley Rose's neighborhood damaging hundreds of homes and businesses.

- So it was human error, not Mother Nature.

Maybe that's why it was so unexpected.

And it happened to a neighborhood particularly unabled to rebuild and recover.

- In 2005, after nine long years, the Archdale Roslindale Coalition, representing 209 families, won more than $4 million for sewage improvements.

And $6 million in restitution from the state and city sewage agencies.

- But this victory, wasn't enough to help Ashley heal.

Instead that came randomly, when she met the former region one director for FEMA, 23 years after the flood.

- First of a shocking, for me to be sitting there, not pre-planning this meeting it was just real weird.

At first I thought he was actually playing.

(laughs) I thought that it was a joke and that was somebody who was just, " Hey I knew about this just have something to say at the table," but to bring the truth in and start saying no this was Delford, he was like, y'all the worst hit."

This was Maria before Maria.

Within the same, it was anger.

It was happiness.

It was empathy.

I see it now as the essence of restorative justice, like, cause afterwards I gave him a hug like we exchanged information.

He offered to like, " If you wanna go help rebuild in Puerto Rico, how can I be of service to you now?"

To me that meant more, his words that day were enough but he actually tried to back them up with actions.

And if you would have asked me prior would an apology had done anything for me, I would've told you no.

You pay this, do that, do this.

But like when I actually sat there and received it unexpectedly with such grace that this man delivered it with, it was priceless.

It was worth everything.

I feel like the reasons why I'm sitting here with you now and it's not like a sad feeling that I'm feeling right now rather it's like a hopeful feeling for others who their ending might not be in five days yet they might be 23 years later.

- Wow smetimes the future can unfold in completely unexpected ways.

- And there was another unexpected outcome.

The flood forced Ashley into the community center, right across the street from her old apartment.

And that opened up a whole new world for her.

- When I got to the community center, I mean it's the worst in the best.

Like I went there 'cause I had no place to really go.

And the lady was kind of nice to me since the flood happened, but it became a place where I started to make friends in the projects.

Its like in the projects became everything.

I was like, " Oh my God they have a whole community in here."

I can always remember friend.

I don't know where Vivian Cologne is right now but Vivian Cologne, making pots of rice for me every day.

So she did Thanksgiving with me Christmas 'cause she knew that, that little girl is by herself, There was a guy named Chris Mack who was my mom's coworker at work and he knew because he drove cabs what happened.

So he would drop off food, I would say for two years.

This man is single by himself I don't know where Chris Mack is but he's a Hatian cab driver.

He dropped off food every day, every day.

And my mom would refuse the food 'cause she doesn't like handouts.

He would make sure he showed up an hour before she came home.

'Cause he knew we didn't have a fridge.

So it was like we always needed the extra food.

So I think my friends group turned into family.

My friends that I call friends till this day, are all met at that place in the projects that was after the harm.

But that was 'cause they literally embraced me.

I mean their mothers like strategically, this was intentional, embraced me.

'Cause things happen.

It's how you react to things that happen.

What do you do?

What are you gonna do as an individual, to help somebody?

I don't think, these would have been stories that have been heard but I believe that it's like those, unsung heroes.

that it's like those, unsung heroes.

that it's like those, unsung heroes.

It's like those key people like, they're all there.

It is the people who help people.

(piano music) - Ashley experienced acts of surprising humanity.

- And it makes you wonder, how all of that influenced her life.

- If I was still thinking about my life now and just how this all impacted all.

At the beginning there was no help I felt like I was cursed when I was younger.

Like they just could not have been worse statistics.

Like my dad was killed when I'm very young, like my mom is single.

We don't speak the language.

We're poor then you lose a house and you lose a flood all this stuff.

But in the end when I'm thinking about it it all was for every single one of those moments served a purpose I gained, a strength or a skill that now allows me to sit with kids who were once me, but also sit with folk who are nothing like me to open up their hearts in ways that they can help each other.

I've seen real lawyers sitting in halls with people in projects with 17 languages going on at once and then fight for 10 years, organized for the Archdale Rosindale Coalition, to sue the city for millions.

Not because they wanted money but because that was what's needed to heal.

That's activism .

It's sometimes, is the worst event that acts as a point of urgency.

And when I look at my life right now, sitting at the Center for Restorative Justice, I mean had you not asked me the question, I don't think I would probably have this grin on my face.

It makes sense.

I realized it was probably an initiation in ways.

Spiritually like some people like the initiation might start early, but then it becomes a point where it will all make sense with the lessons that you are forced to carry on, the burdens end up becoming wings.

You could fly with them.

So the residue of the flood, is no longer residues.

Its more like fertilizer.

I always say the flowers didn't grow back in Roslindale the same way after the flood.

But I think certain other things blossomed.

(upbeat music) - Ashley Rose is a poet, writer, and teacher.

(upbeat music) - You can hear and see more stories, @ worldchannel.org.

- I'm Liz Cheng.

- And I am Patricia Alvarado Nunez.

Thanks for listening.

(upbeat music) - Yeah you can turn right here.

So this is the community center.

So I lived here prior to the community center being built, which is why I didn't like it at first.

I used to hang in the Arboretum I'm like, " I'm not going to hear these stupid people."

But eventually I realized this is where I wanna be.

Yeah right here, yeah that's fine.

So I gotta say hi to Michelle Ali.

I'm sorry 'cause my mom will say I'm being disrespect.

I'm sorry I'm on tape.

Hey Michelle.

So she might be able to tell you about the flood too 'cause hey were all here.

- When the rowboat was going down.

- This were boats.

They took us (indistinct).

- That's the only way you can get through it's on rowboats.

Seriously, but the water was up so high, it was rowboats.

- So you'll get them- - Even the mayor had to come too on a rowboat.

(laughs)