12.20.05
hula
The house is so dark now with its tall windows covered in aluminium shutters. I remember wondering when I bought this house how anyone could have thought it was the best idea to have these windows with their tall deco peaks lined against the wall. Would it be safe? I could imagine so many things shattering their glass, whole trees flying through them, but as the sun streamed down upon us that summer, the real estate agent in her pants suit assured me that they were perfectly safe. They were shatter proof, she said. The house was built before the hurricane laws grew lax. It would take a bomb to bring it down.
Where the sun was, now there are three slats of metal so heavy I had to get my neighbours to put them up for me. They struggled for hours, cutting themselves sometimes on the coarse edges while I waited inside, listening to the television and offering them glasses of lemonade when they rested. Their sweaty bodies soiled my couches with dirt. I should get the automatic shutters, the kind that gleams a painted white and closes shut with one button.
Next time.
I can hear the wind making its way though the ridges of the metal, it is playing with the palm trees in the front yard and I can tell it is teasing me. They tell me that the gusts will come soon.
The television downstairs talks to itself, flickering blue against the walls and I can imagine every scene. There is the reporter, with his slick subdued rain jacket standing on the shore, holding his microphone tightly because the squalls are so strong. You can believe him because he nearly topples over and behind him the branches do the hula dance that they do every year, the sea has become dark and grey and the surfers run into the spray with their waxed boards at their sides.
They say to stock your pantry. Put your fridge on the coldest setting, fill the car with gas. Don�t bring your radiators inside they say, leave the grills outside they say.
Once more, they show the trajectory and the little animated hurricane following the big red dots right to us. It�s adorable.
Outside the sun is shining. As the time gets closer, the winds die down and above me; I can see the sky, such a brilliant blue, almost smiling down on me. My neighbours sit outside in their deck chairs, watching the children run around for one more time before they are forced inside to shudder under the covers. Maybe instead that was I that year, clutching my doll beside me while the sky changed colours and my house blew apart. That year it was so bad they had to evacuate us to the hospital. The children will probably play their video games until the batteries slowly die.
When the first drops come, they scatter. I close the last pair of shutters and the house is complete in its darkness. I can still hear the television but now over it the winds are coming back, pounding against the walls now, howling at me. The rain begins its incessant hammering against the roof and I imagine the streets filling with water outside. Only thin strips of light come in, spreading the shadows of dancing branches against my walls.
The electricity flickers a bit before it goes, turning off and on until the water finally drowns the wires completely. For hours, the television has been whispering snow in my living room and finally it turns itself off, and everything becomes silent. There is that electrical surge before the computers, the DVD players stop their quiet whirring, and I hear the air conditioner slowly winding down. In this quiet, I feel like a captive audience, there is nothing else for me to do but listen to the storm while the heat begins to suffocate me.
They say that people start killing each other in times like these. They families haven�t had to be together so close for so long and in the dark, in the quiet, they begin to go slowly mad. The day after, the ambulances will start searching for them, the dead bodies that have already begun to decompose in their own homes. There are no cell phones too, nothing unless you have a landline and even then, there may be no connection.
There is no telling what might be happening outside. So many times, I imagine a knocking, or a scream. I imagine that something has fallen onto my house, but I can�t tell. My neighbours could have died; I could have heard their screams and thought it was the wind. These thoughts keep me from sleeping and I lay across my steps, listening.
I am afraid to watch through the cracks.
When the wind dies down, no one comes out. We wait, as a city, for some hours before leaving; as if afraid it is a trick the hurricane is playing on us. Maybe it will come back, we think.
We creep out to survey the damage and the trees have fallen. My neighbours are still there, alive, intact. The houses stand, solid and imposing against the clear sky.
I sometimes wonder if it is a joke how beautiful, the sky looks after a hurricane. When houses have been knocked down and the water has been spoilt, the air is cool and everything is new in the world. The air is fresh, bright, and warm and there is the sense that the world has ended and now it�s time to start over.
Floridians would know how to start over if the world ended.
Though the slats I watch them lift the large royal palm from the middle of the road. The men strain their backs under its weight as their children watch, wide eyed, as the branches lift toward the sky. Inside, the mothers asses the pantries; the ice in the freezer is melting, the meat will go bad, the milk will spoil. Later that night the smell of barbeque wafts though the air in one communal smell. I imagine the children drinking chocolate milk for days, rejoicing at their good fortune.
I haven�t stocked any milk, I know better than that. No meat, no yogurt, only gallons of water and trays of ice packed as tightly as they could be. I filled the tub with water too, scrubbed it clean with bleach before, and added water-purifying tablets. In the kitchen, there are piles of wood, matches- gas containers explode, and generators run out of energy. My stock of batteries is arranged neatly in a corner with the flashlights, the radios, the small knives, and Band-Aids.
I listen to the radio and they tell us that FPNL will try to get electricity to us as soon as possible. In my mind I think, and when will the internet be back, when will my phone work again? I know it will be weeks after the electricity comes back, but still the thought gnaws at me. I feel as if the world is going on without me.
Now, in the bright sun, our houses become very efficient saunas and we sizzle in the heat. We wait expectantly for that sudden whir, that jolt of electricity that means we will be cool again, that we can flip switches and they will obey our command. Then we can stop stalking our homes with flashlights in hand, shades wandering the halls with lanterns.
We leave the shutters up. I leave the shutters up because another storm will come. Another hurricane will barrel though us and I cannot bear to be deprived of the sunlight yet again. I think to myself, it is better for it to be once. I whisper to myself as I rock, I will wait it out.
The shelves of the stores will be empty now. The lumber has been gone for so long, the water and all of the canned goods too. A few days ago, it was like the isle of the misfit toys, only creamed corn and beets left, but now the shelves gleam in their complete barrenness. The meat begins to rot now under its plastic cover and a stench rises up from each of the groceries. There is no one to pick up the mess. As days pass, the flies will dance around the fetid trash, celebrating their feast.
Cars make lines that trail back even to me, � no one is driving, and the lights have long been blown away- waiting for gas. The stations have begun to put up signs; they shroud their pumps in plastic bags, as if to say, there is nothing for you here. Still, they wait for day on end.
On the radio, they begin to argue about when things will begin return to normal. When will the children go back to school? When will employees go back to work? Parents are beginning to grow loathe of their children. They want to unload them on the teachers, they want to go to work and escape the heat of their homes.
I see teenagers roaming the streets in packs, their skin, and shirts growing darker from the sun and dirt. Water is far too precious to waste on cleaning. So far, they say, there have been no signs of looting.
When the generators run out of power there is nothing left that can be done. By now, the food has run out, the family subsists on one final tin of soup and there is nothing to cook it with. The fridge is of no more use and the water has been all used up. They tell us to put the water in buckets and let it lie still for days. The dirt will fall to the bottom, and them we can skim the top, they say.
They tell us too, not to light candles, but the batteries are long gone and now I see pillars of smoke smudging the clouds in the distance. The children grow ever dirtier and now we have been declared a disaster zone. Help is on the way soon, they say. There will be police. There will be electricity, food, and air.
When I was younger, we gathered the fallen coconuts and my father cracked them open with is machete. He let us drink the cool milk and my mother scraped out the meat for us, mixing the minced pieces with spice. We had fans then, we had a pool then, and we swam in it even though the debris floated over us. It was bearable then.
Children and old people are the first ones to go. They die of starvation, of heat stroke. I see whole families walking together inwards the shore; they never come back. They build great pyres outside. In the street they pile up their trash, their bodies, their food, and they light them on fire. The smell seeps though my door and for a while I can�t breath, my head swims and I faint.
When I wake up, I hear strange sounds outside again, but they aren�t coming from the wind. I�m sure this time that they are human and I close the blinds. I muffle the sounds of people screaming outside with my pillows and I lay in the cool tub, the darkness surrounding me.
Every Floridian child knows what a hurricane is. A hurricane is a low-pressure system that normally forms in the tropics and treks its way through the Atlantic all the way to Florida so that we have to watch that it doesn�t strike our relatives. We are used to the television naming each storm, updating the trajectory every day. We know too that they aren�t sure where it�s going. We know that it may swerve, that it may slow down or speed up or disappear and strike Georgia.
A hurricane means wind, rain, and a few days off from school, if you�re lucky.
I know what it is like to watch those same trajectories and know that it will be the same result no matter what. I know what it is like to know that that storm that is coming is bigger than your state. I�ve seen whole cities cleared out in hours.
Eventually, the police did come. They are stationed at every intersection and they stand there, legs spread apart, stopping every car that passes by. They tell them not to continue. You don�t want to go there, they say.
The electricity is still not back, but when I turn on my cell phone, it works and I hear the dial tone. There are no messages.
The smell finally begins to die down and large trucks cart the trash away. They deconstruct the pyres and clean the groceries. Other trucks come to take the bodies. On the radio, they say everything is returning to normal.
For a few days, there is silence. Nothing moves, the children disappear, and I venture outside. The tree in my backyard fell, the great trunk split in half and they already took the top part away. All that is left now is the bottom half of the trunk, pointing into the sky like a great spear. My fence is gone too, the screen over my deck.
I think they�ve mowed the lawn.
In a month, the electricity has come back. Soon after follow the television and the internet. The children go back to school and the lights are up again. The gas stations have removed their signs and slowly, the police fade into the background.
Life continues.
Everyone in the community takes down their shutters and their windows gleam in the sun once more. Contractors wash the walls; they paint the wall brighter colours and reshape the topiary on the lawn.
The sunshines, but it�s still dark in my house and I am listening for the wind again. I watch the cars go in and out of their driveways and I wait. My pantry is stocked again, fuller than before. I buy extra batteries. Soon, the trees will start their dance.
shi-ou-sama at
