House & home

Third in an occasional series

NEWTON -- Finally, 12 days after Ray Garland and Tamara Bernard and her six sons stepped off a bus from Baton Rouge, they have a home -- or what is home for now. It is a modest, three-bedroom, one-bath frame house with gleaming floors, and a picnic table out back, rented with the aid of two Newton families determined to help this family made drifters by Hurricane Katrina. Finally, as of Friday, almost four weeks after they fled New Orleans, all the boys are back in school.

Yet, as welcome as having a house is, settling in brings new challenges. As frustrated as the family was having no place to live but hotel suites, gone is the fantasy of being on vacation they could stoke in the Sheraton Framingham and the neighboring Marriott Residence Inn. ''It felt," says Bernard, ''like we'll be going home in a few days."

Now here Bernard sits, slumped, exhausted, in a chair in the corner of her new, barely furnished home, away from Louisiana for the first time in her life, absorbing the reality of a long sojourn in Massachusetts. She watches Garland fiddle with the television they just bought with a donated gift card, listens to the boys chatter about their new schools. She and Garland teeter from fear of the unfamiliar to mourning what they've lost to impatience to reclaim control of their lives.

''I want to go home so bad," says Bernard, 33.

''It's stability," says Garland, 28. ''Ain't nothing like home, but we make do with what we have."

The house, near shops and transportation, sits at the end of a long, dark driveway. It has a basement, which Bernard calls ''spooky" because she never had one in New Orleans. It's within view of a cemetery. The family spends their first few nights here sleeping on mattresses in the ground floor living room and dining room, too uneasy to sleep upstairs.

''I have to get used to it. I'm scared," Bernard says. ''Do policemen patrol?" she asks. ''I went to Walgreens and bought three packs of knives." Fifteen-year-old Russell sleeps with one of the kitchen knives in his shoe. ''In case somebody breaks in," he says.

The irony, of course, is that New Orleans, as Russell points out, is nicknamed the ''murder capital." But it's home, and Newton isn't yet.

Ever since they arrived in Boston on Sept 10, Bernard has been anxious to get her sons in school and Garland has craved the routine of everyday life. They'd expected to be put up by a Somerville church but left after finding a hastily constructed space lined with cots that reminded them of the Baton Rouge shelter they'd just left. With the help of an Ashland businesswoman who'd put the church in contact with the Louisiana shelter, they found temporary refuge in the Framingham hotels.

With this house, their physical needs are close to being met. Donated furniture is expected soon. The family has a minivan, from Skyline Motors in Walpole, and Garland has a job installing sheetrock in a Dorchester house that is being renovated by Skyline's owner. Bernard, who was a data processing clerk in New Orleans, plans to look for work once the family is more settled. Russell, who played football for his New Orleans high school, expects to play football here. The family has gotten lost, sometimes for hours, navigating unknown roads -- veering first to Hingham one evening and then almost to New Hampshire trying to find Framingham -- but slowly they're learning their way around.

Meanwhile, the Newton families (they request anonymity), who scrambled to find a landlord willing to house a family with six boys and little money on short notice, are busy trying to raise money to cover 10 months' rent and any emergencies that might arise. A Newton mother, who'd listed herself on the Internet as being willing to help resettle families made homeless by Katrina, said yes when Charmelle Young, of the shelter in Baton Rouge, asked for help housing the Bernards. The Newton woman co-signed the lease with Bernard and Garland. Newton's Myrtle Baptist Church is covering the first month's rent and has set up a special fund for the family and will invite them to join the predominantly black congregation.

Ahead is the difficult emotional task of creating a new life in this new home.

''It's a daze," says Bernard. ''At home I don't need no help. Now I don't know which way to turn."

''I'm used to carrying my own weight," says Garland. ''I ain't trying to be dependent. That's why I hurried to get a job. I live my life on a routine. They" -- he gestures to the boys -- ''live their life on a routine. People have been good to us, real good, but it's just confusing. Real confusing." The boys, he adds, ''don't understand what me and her" -- he nods to Bernard -- ''are going through. She gets frustrated. I get frustrated."

In addition to experiencing the generosity of strangers -- gift cards, clothes, toys, money, hotel suites, not to mention the house -- they've met two women, ''Miss Connie" and ''Miss Isabelle," whom Bernard likens to surrogate mothers while her own mother is in Dallas. Connie McCaskill, a semiretired nurse from Wellesley, and Isabelle Nicks, a retired guidance counselor from Holliston, befriended the family after reading about them in the Globe. From hotel to hotel to house, they're there. ''I'm a Southerner," says McCaskill. ''I know what that culture is all about. And I'm African-American."

Getting used to a new city, the family has had a few unnerving experiences. Leaving a Chinese restaurant in Mattapan with Bernard's cousins from Maine, a 14-year-old cousin was accosted. Shopping at a suburban Target, Bernard says, ''they followed us like we was stealing."

They're getting used to a city that's cooler -- in attitude as well as climate -- than New Orleans.

''You heard the saying 'Southern hospitality?' That's how we is down there," says Garland. ''People here aren't as friendly as people in New Orleans. If I ask them questions, they're friendly but just to a certain extent. I can't understand where people are coming from."

Slowly, hesitantly, they put down new roots. Garland's mother, sister, and mother's fiance arrive in Medford, intending to settle here. Nine-year-old Tyrin and 13-year-old Tyrone join a basketball program at the Waltham Y.

''The new life is coming," Garland says, ''but I'm just taking it one day at a time."