2005-11-14
sawdust
On the night of hurricane Wilma, I dreamed that the government had sent bulldozers to circle my backyard as some form of protection. Around and around they buzzed, as the rain lashed sideways instead of down. When I woke at dawn, I pulled back the curtain and peeked out one of the few windows we hadn't boarded. The oaks spun in figure-eights like some kind of crazy tree ballet.
Lying on the living room floor, surrounded by cell phones and Sony Walkman wires (once charging, no longer glowing), I realized that the power had blown out. I sucked in a breath. The house grew darker than dark--a blurry texture I could almost taste. It smelled like saltwater and seaweed.
My Florida grandmother had taken over my bedroom, snoring in my queen-sized four-poster. I sat straight up when I heard a trainlike howl. No doubt, a tornado had touched down in the yard. I got ready to run to the hallway. But then it died down, as quick as it started.
Awake for hours, listening for tornados, I started thinking about my eyes, just a bundle of nerves and muscle. Most creatures had this in common (even some giant species of jelly fish). I counted from one to five, over and over like a song. I found the video camera beside the couch. I flipped the button to Nightvision (still too dark outside to capture anything in color). I aimed it at the window. Probably not the smartest idea. But I couldn't help filming the noise if not the sight of this nasty hurricane: a category three with a cartoon character's name.
In the next few hours, the wind would settle, if not stop pounding. Mama would shuffle down the hall and ask, "Where's the little one?" (meaning the cat). Gran would stand in the kitchen and say, "Good morning."
"What's good about it?" Mama said.
I poured a bowl of Special K for Gran so she could choke down her pills. So many pills of pebble shapes and sizes. She has trouble opening the milk carton or just getting dressed (the woman practically bathes in talcum powder, the cloudy fragrance trailing behind her like a ribbon).
I moved downstairs and camped under the wicker deck furniture ("outdoor chairs" now indoors). Mama turned on the battery-powered TV with its Gameboy-sized screen. Every channel showed the same scene--newscasters in yellow rain slickers, huddled in hotels.
At noon, the hurricane had finally passed over South Florida. Still, the chill breeze whipped the trees. I opened the sliding glass door by the leaf-clogged pool, like standing on the deck of a sailboat, the land swaying around me. The temperature had dropped so low, I had to throw on a sweater.
The air smelled like sap and lemonade (our Key lime tree bent backward over the fence...about a billion yellow Key limes dotted like tennis balls across the backyard). My bare feet crunched across acorns (many still connected to their branches). Bright leaves and log-sized debris carpeted the yard. Already, I heard chainsaws grinding, along with the lawnmower buzz of generators sparking up across the battered neighborhood. We sat there, sipping cups we couldn't wash.
Over the next few days, I fell into a routine. I woke with the sun like some pioneer-era girl and began to sweep. I gathered leaves into plastic garbage bags and stacked them high. Try washing your hair in ice-cold buckets...or carrying them to the non-flushing toilet.
We stuck to our old patterns...reading the newspaper comics each morning (I can't believe that the Herald arrived on the morning of the hurricane). The hardest part was carrying our junk back outside, including Mama's army of orchids, so many pots, they covered the dining room table.
After a while, I got bored with the stillness of reading by candlelight. I took a walk around the block. Fences twisted like shoelaces (the tornado's work, no doubt). Palm trees sprawled across roofs, as if they had sprouted there. The house for sale on the corner...God, they didn't even close the windows. It stood there, abandoned, the mailbox crammed with leaves. Some neighbors whose names I'd forgotten stood on their lawns, punching buttons on their cell phones.
"My boys are mad because they can't go on the Internet," said a woman in a pastel sweatsuit.
When my cell finally got a signal (I had to stand very still, in one place) not many friends up north had bothered to call and check on me. They probably didn't know what had happened, the newspaper filled with blurbs about Angelina Jolie wanting to adopt more kids.
Weeks later, the power lines still dangle in the breeze. We walk to school on a sidewalk buried in dried-out branches, the shriveled leaves yellowing, the air mazed with sawdust. It burns my eyes. I can't rub it away.
f-i-n at 1:53 p.m.