We were prepared when the rain came knocking hard like it had every right to be here. Like that cousin at Thanksgiving you didn’t actually invite, but through proximity of cousins ended up there anyway and is stomping through your clean house with muddy boots and snooping through your cabinets for more food, because apparently dinner wasn’t enough. It’s never enough.
It’s like that, except later this cousin gets drunk. Not giggly drunk, not touchy-feely drunk, but a kind of drunk that awakens an anger 32 years in the making, deeply rooted in family neglect and abuse. And he hates it all. Hates you all. Hates the 17 year olds sneaking bottles out back and the eight year olds playing tag about the house – running, tripping into tipsy adults who keep missing the dartboard, but refuse to leave the competition just yet. And the cousin is in the middle of it all, twisting in circles, arms in at first and then out. And he’s twisting and turning, drawing attention to himself while escaping into himself. Everything’s a blur. And he’s screaming – the kind you’d leave for a pillow if you had one, but he doesn’t want a pillow. And everyone stops. Everything stops. In awe at first the family stares before jumping onto him. But even four on one isn’t enough and he’s not just spinning, he’s swirling and colliding. Everything bends in his path. The picture frames fall, glass shatters, punctures holes in father’s dress blues – some sort of Avant-garde comment on the military. He breaks everything is sight, leaves each family member with a big, black bruise and swirls away, out the door, taking the door frame with him. When he leaves, there’s a collective sigh. And the family is together once again. Huddled, hugging, happy. Even tragedy leaves the sigh of relief when it’s gone. And everyone wants to be mad – but can’t somehow. Yet. And we thank God and pray deep prayers. We pick up the pieces. We were prepared for that kind of intrusion. Know, at least subconsciously, that that’s part of the deal living here where we’ve always lived. We’d filled the bath tub with water. We’d bought out the grocery store’s supply of canned green beans and corn. We mentally prepared ourselves for repetition. We replenished candles and matches and boarded up windows, not with just any type of wood, but southern chestnut, which Grammy swears her life on after living through Camille. We listen, as Grammy describes Camille’s roars and knocks and we see, like she saw at 28, the water. We heard the wind. Together we watched how the ocean transforms into a young grandmother, searching desperately for her grandchildren in burning houses. All of the houses are burning. And with a vitality that no one expects she rips into each one, puts out the fires destroying each house in the process. “She never found her grandchildren, in the end” Grammy said. “Just slowly petered out. Like she’d used up all of the energy she had in this burst of desperation. She kept knocking, her knocks just got slower. Until of course, they stopped all together.” We were prepared for even that. |