Her apartment is a few hundred yards from Pinecrest High School, where she is a teacher. But she misses New Orleans, the city where she was born and raised.
She fled the city, along with her elderly parents, during Hurricane Katrina, only to be displaced for months on end. She found respite in North Carolina and a job teaching Spanish at Pinecrest.
"I don't want to hear about Katrina anymore." she says. "I don't want anyone to forget. I want to heal from it, and I want to move on. I don't want to wallow in it."
She was born in New Orleans Parish Charity Hospital on Dec. 5, 1948. Waller lived in France during part of her childhood. Her father was in the Army. He was transferred to La Rachel in France.
While living in France, she found her impetus to become a foreign language teacher.
Her mother had a seamstress, Madame Airault, who asked Waller to continue speaking French in the former European colony.
"She asked me to not let it die out in Louisiana," she says, "she made me promise her."
After settling back into her hometown after college, she began teaching at Joseph S. Clark High School and lived in Gentilly, a small community in the suburbs of New Orleans, near to her family. Waller had four brothers.
"My family was close-knit," she says. "We were our own best friends."
Her family home was in the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans that flooded during Katrina. It destroyed everything in the area.
"They call it post traumatic stress (disorder)," she says. "I guess I've been having flashbacks to (her mother's) living room and dining room, and there was one open room."
She especially feels the loss of her mother's house.
"I just wish it could be restored," she says.
‘Lost Everything'
Waller and her parents had intended to stay in the house and ride out the hurricane, until she realized it was too powerful.
"I heard a voice say, ‘get out -- get out now,'" she says.
No warning came before the levees that held in the Mississippi River broke.
"They never said anything on the television because (if they had) I think we would have picked up more of our belongings," she says.
Those fleeing from the storm were told by local authorities to pack for three days' worth of travel.
"We had three days of clothing -- it was like a ritual," she says of the packing.
Waller packed herself and her parents into her car Aug. 27 and left to stay with family. After 13 hours, they finally arrived at a nephew's house.
"God gave me the strength to get my parents out of their house," she says.
Waller's home was lost when the London Avenue Canal levee breached, flooding miles of the Seventh Ward, including Gentilly.
"I lost my job," she says. "I lost my car. I lost my place of worship. I lost everything."
Waller says she had "almost the perfect life and then somebody just turned it upside down and just shook it. And I'm trying to pick it up and put it back in the box -- but it's not the same box."
"I think if I could just understand it a little bit, I would be OK," she says. "I just don't understand how a whole city went underwater."
Waller and her parents shuttled between relatives for week after week. Her brother in Baton Rouge called when he had gotten a one-bedroom apartment for her and her parents. They fled there to escape Hurricane Rita.
"You're jumping from pillar to post," Waller says. "My mom couldn't take it."
As she had done for most of the time moving from one relative's home to another, she slept on an air mattress.
"I feel I was more blessed," she says. "I still had a way out. I didn't have to go to a shelter."
Permanent State of Limbo
She continued to wrangle with the insurance adjusters, her former employer, the New Orleans School system, and relief agencies.
Waller and her mother returned to their home, only to find nearly all of their possessions ruined. They wore protective white suits to go through the wreckage. Sifting through the smelly debris, Waller found what was left of a family photo album.
"It was as if someone had washed the pages" she says, "and they were all white. There are no more childhood pictures. There's nothing,"
Waller had to move on and find ways to support herself and her parents in the midst of chaos. It was frustrating and depressing.
Her parents needed health care, particularly her father, who suffered from a combat injury.
She applied to work as a teacher through Federal Emergency Management Agency. There were no jobs in Texas. She found jobs in South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia. Schools in North Carolina and Georgia were more similar to the system in New Orleans.
Waller, usually a happy, outgoing person, became withdrawn. The stress of contending with FEMA, the New Orleans Parish Schools retirement board and relocation took a toll on her.
She became anxious about losing what little she had left. She was still haunted by what she left behind. She was stuck in a permanent state of limbo.
She was trying to decide between Georgia and North Carolina. The flight to North Carolina was cheaper.
"I didn't call for a plane ticket until the day before," she says.
When she finally arrived in Southern Pines just after the first of the year, she couldn't decide whether to stay or go.
"I would not sign a lease on this apartment," she says. "I waited and stayed in the Days Inn for nine days."
A cousin's husband, her closest relative, drove up from Columbia, S.C., to try to convince her to stay.
"He knew I was getting ready to jump ship," she says. "I had to take care of myself, (but) I still wanted to go home."
Waller cried until she reached Southern Pines, and when she finally sat on the edge of her bed, things "clicked," she says. She decided to stay. She took the apartment and the teaching job.
She still felt the effects of the traumatic events. She has lost weight and had a hard time sleeping.
"I started having nightmares every night, and if there were two pairs of shoes, I couldn't make a decision," she says. "I just could not buy anything. If I buy it, I might lose it. I still can't buy clothing for myself."
Waller recalls that as she threw out all of her clothes from her flooded home, it seemed like such a waste to have that much clothing.
One day, she saw a vision of the interior of Our Lady of Gudalupe Church, where she was a parishioner and taught a religion class.
"I heard of post-traumatic (disorder) but you actually lose sight of where you are," she says.
For a few moments she could see clearly the church, probably because it was one of the parts of her life she misses the most, she says.
Healing in Teaching
The position at Pinecrest is an attempt to begin rebuilding a life.
"I know I'm professional," she says. "I can walk in any school and perform my duties."
Teaching once again was not so much about the money or the health insurance, but about "the interaction outside of the hurricane zone," she says.
"I decided to teach because it was something I loved to do," she says. "I've always had a good rapport with children, and I felt children could help me heal."
She is unable to camouflage the pain all the time, she says. Her students notice when she is distraught.
"I have good days, and I have bad days," she says. "It just comes over you."
Her Spartan apartment is furnished with the bare essentials.
"I feel I have a shelter, but there is still a sense of being homeless," she says. "I can't read anymore. I just see print on the page."
She used to read a lot of novels.
"I can't listen to music," she says. "I used to shop. It was so relaxing. I lost part of who I was, and I hope to find her again."
She misses the food, the music, the people and the many cultures that make her native New Orleans.
"I lost a way of life," she says. "I don't ever plan on living there again. It did something to me.
"I know, I know it happened, but I don't understand why," she says. "I don't understand why God allowed that to happen. I have mixed feelings. I just hope I don't regress."
Her mother, however, insists on returning.
"She is a true Louisiana Creole woman, and she does not want to leave New Orleans and her kids."
"I only live for the 24 hours I'm given, and I try not to look back" and "I just try to survive in the moment and I'll get past this, I know I will."
For now, she finds comfort in the small routines of every day.
Waller still calls her mother every morning at 7 a.m. She wakes up at 5:45 a.m. and is at school by 7:30 a.m.. She tutors students after schools, sometimes past 4 p.m. She goes home, has dinner, watches the news, makes phone calls to family and goes to bed.
"Saturday nights and Sunday nights are very hard," she says. "It's very lonely."
Waller keeps up with the hurricane relief efforts and rebuilding on the television news. Her main concern is that the nation will forget about Katrina's victims as the rebuilding begins and the country worries more about soaring gas prices, holidays and other news stories.
Waller says she can sympathize with how the families of Sept. 11 victims feel, as they sort out their lives from the rubble of the towers.
"I wonder how many people who survived that are trying to piece their lives back together, and it's forgotten," she says. "I want to have something to look forward to, but we'll never forget it."
Caroline Kornegay can be reached at 693-2484 or by e-mail at ckornegay@thepilot.com.
