35

1991



My brother and I were driving to the video store to rent a movie. It was a day like any other, a day when I watched the man from the future zip and jump through the trees as before. A day when we sang at the top of our lungs to the songs on the radio. Yes, it was a usual day. I sat in the car while he was inside picking out a movie for us to watch. I was reading the tv guide and gazing over the upcoming titles to various shows when I felt a prickling sensation behind my eyes. I shook my head and become dizzy. YOu know the kind of dizzy when you stand up too soon, yeah, that kind of dizzy. The words of the guide started to blend into one another. I put the book down and exhaled. Wishing my brother would hurry up wasn’t making him hurry at all. IN fact, it seemed to be slowing him down.



I looked into the sky through the windsheild and noticed the dark clouds forming in the distance. They looked darker with the sun shining on them. A flag was flying on the building next door, a car wash. The red material whipped wildly in the newly brisk wind. I watched the red hypnotically and hummed a song I had heard on the radio. The flag whipped then made a weird pause, then whipped again. I scrunced up my forehead and looked out the side window. Someone over at the carwash pulled their leg inside the building and closed the door. In a moment, someone opened the door and came out. I felt sick at my stomach suddenly.



The clouds were overhead now…bubbling and wrestling with each other. A flash of lightning hung for a moment then disappeared underneath the blanket of dark blue clouds. My brother came out of the video store and looked into the heavens. He looked at me and came to the car.



As we turned into the highway, I noticed the clouds were covering us now and all we could see. I ran my fingers across the cool glass of the passenger window and closed my eyes.



I saw it then, and then is when I saw it. A familiar landscape raced across my mind as I hel my eyes shut. Pieces of broken homes, debris littering the streets and a toilet standing in the forest…perfect and without flaw. I saw my cat, running into the woods followed by various things that were not meant to fly, but they were flying. The sky was alive with objects that should have been grounded. In the doorway of a broken home, stood my mother and she was crying.


1991.



My vision broke in the midst of my rapid breathing. My brother was screaming “What is wrong, hey! Sherrie, what is wrong? Are you okay?”



The wind outside picked up and the rain began to fall, it fell hard and harder still. My brother drove and I looked to him and frowned. “Something is very very wrong. Hurry, we have to get home.



Before we could make it home, the rain fell so hard that we had to pull over on the side of the road. The car shook violently and vision was little of nothing. I was paralyzed, stiff as a board, wondering what was going to happen to us. The hardness of the rain fall paired with the relentless wind threatened to tear our car apart, or so I thought at the moment.



When the furious winds slowed, we pulled back onto the highway and traveled toward home. I did not feel relieved as I should have at this time. I still felt a choking sensation, a need to hurry and get home. I asked my brother to drive faster. The storm calmed dramatically and the skies almost cleared. About 2 miles from home, I started to noticed things were different. First it was a tree limb, then a stray bit of insulation rolling across the highway. The closer we got to home, the more debris we saw. With every peice of strangeness and out of placeness I saw, my heart beat faster. Around the corner from my house, I saw it. It was hilarious in ways, so odd but it was terrifying. Right in the middle of the road was a mailbox….with my last name on it. Then trees, so many broken and mutilated trees lined the roadside. As we cleared the other debris, the broken boards, rocks and various other unidentified articles, we saw our home.



My father’s store was gone…well, only the floor remained. The trees around it was no more. Up the hill from the store was my home. The big tree where I used to lie in the poison oak and brag about how I wasn’t allergic, was split in half. The roof of my home was destroyed by the tree that once stood in the back yard. It too, was split. The windows were blown completely out, siding had been stripped from the foundation and the driveway was almost impassible. I couldn’t move, I was terrified. We pulled as close to our home as we could get and I ran from the car. I screamed for my mother and realized that she was standing in teh open door to our house. she was crying. My father was sitting in his truck staring through the windsheild at the brighteneing sky. My wheelchair bound grandmother was inside the front room shaking from the previous ordeal.


1991.



I sat on the ground and cried for a moment. I wondered if my cat was still alive. As I thought about it, he ran from the woods and climbed into my lap. I kissed his head.



My father exited the truck, my mom walked down the concrete steps and my brother slammed teh car door. With my grandmother, who was now sitting in the doorway rubbing her phantom leg in her wheelchair, watching, me, my mother, brother and father met each other with a hug. Some of us cried but father just laughed. “Oh, no sense in crying now, its all over.”



“No one could have stopped it.”



Fall-1991



Summer was over and I was glad for it. I couldn’t stop thinking of the twister that had come through our town. Every time the wind would pick up, my breath would quicken and my heart would pound. Even though I wasn’t at home when it happened, I remember the way the wind pounded against our car wanting to extract us, the little human sardines, from our car can.I still shiver at the thought, and I am obsessed with the Wizard of Oz. I stare blankly into the tv screen when Dorothy panics, running from storm shelter to house when the twister is coming.



Fall-1991



I saw Nasha today, walking from History class. I ran up and grabbed her arm. “Hey, what’s up, girl!”



She turned, surprised to see me and gave me a hug. We chatted about things we had done during the summer as I walked her to class. I told her about the storm and she told me about her boyfriend, Matt.



It was the first time I had heard his name and for the moment, it didn’t really phase me.



“Did you read any of the book?”



Nasha’s eyes lit up, and she smiled. “Yes, I did…I am so in love with Louis, I imagined his eyes of green just staring into me.”



I laughed and grabbed her arm. Her face was beautiful when she spoke of attraction. The awe in the way her bottom lip dropped was so innocent yet so sultry. I looked into her gray eyes and saw the innocence still hanging there. I remember how strong I felt toward her at that moment.



“Sherrie, I want your phone number so I can call you. I have some questions about the book. There are some things that I do not understand.” Nasha smiled sweetly and nodded her head.



She had to go to class but I stood there thinking of ways to get closer to her. I watched her turn to go. In minutes, I realized that I had to go to class as well and I was growing later by the minute.



Why did she make me forget reality.