by K. G. Duncan
Where do birds go when there’s a storm? She glanced at the flailing elm tree in the front yard. Lord knows I wouldn’t want to hunker down in a flimsy old tree or try to fly in the sky right about now.
And that’s just about where we were at when Abby had decided that something wasn’t quite right with the world when the sky had turned green.
No ma’am. Not one trifling bit.
Abby smiled, and just like that, everything was okay.
Her mom’s old, weather-worn blue Hyundai came roaring to a stop right in front of the porch, its wheels spinning ferociously and kicking up gravel and rocks, which flew like bullets pelting the porch. Abby covered her face in the shower of tiny rocks and flinched as she felt a sting rap sharply against her bare leg.
“Get in!” Momma Bea was screaming as she reached across the seat and struggled to hold open the door.
Abby darted down the steps and dove into the front seat as the door slammed shut behind her, narrowly missing her feet. She could barely breathe as she glanced down and saw that she was missing one of her crocs.
“Momma, I lost my shoe!” She shouted, looking back as the car sped away. Her pink croc was lying on the gravel, trembling beneath the force of the wind.
“Leave it!” Momma shouted as she struggled to straighten out the car, which was fish-tailing down the driveway. “Get yourself in the back seat and keep your head down!”
Abby obeyed automatically, and quick as a cat she leapt into the back. Still looking behind the car, she watched breathlessly as the wind snatched her sandal away, a tumbling blur of pink, and then it was gone. The engine of the Hyundai roared to life as they picked up speed, and her house grew smaller behind.
“Momma! The wind took my shoe!” Abby screeched, more excited than scared. But then she felt her momma’s hand firmly pressing down on her head.
“Get down, A.B.!” Momma was yelling. “I told you to stay down, Jiminy Christmas!” Momma Bea swerved, then put both hands on the wheel as she made the turn from the gravel driveway onto the smoother surface of the road. Abby threw herself down on the floor boards of the back seat, and the car picked up speed. From her vantage point down on the floor, Abby could still look out the windows and see the green sky above the bending trees. She yelped as something hard smacked against the side of the car, but Momma Bea kept driving, speeding up even faster.
Keep calm, little sister. This is our storm!
That Voice in her head buoyed her spirit, and Abby dared to lift her head up slightly so she could see the front windshield in the space between the front seats. They careened around a corner, and now they were racing down highway 190 through her hometown of Mandeville. The whine of the car’s engine was discordant against the howl of the wind outside, and she could feel her heart pounding inside of her breast. She watched a large branch of some unlucky tree fly horizontally across the road in front of them. Momma Bea’s knuckles whitened, tightly gripping the steering wheel, and she stepped down on the accelerator.
“Got to get to New Orleans…Got to get to New Orleans…” Momma Bea was muttering, over and over under her breath. The Walmart and the video depot whizzed by. They raced down empty gray streets; the only souls foolhardy enough to venture out into the storm. Abby stared at her momma’s lips, repeating the mantra, and she could sense the fear in her mother almost turning into panic. Abby’s gut suddenly all wrenched up inside and her pulse was pounding with a pressure that felt like it would burst right outside her ears.
Breathe, little sister. Breathe.
Abby obeyed and took deep breaths. She managed to keep calm even as the skies whirled above, and hail stones started raining down again, rapping against the car like a drum.
“Momma?” Abby lifted herself up from the floor and leaned in between the seats. “Why you drivin’ so fast?”
“Hush now!” Beatriz glanced back distractedly. “Get back and buckle that seat belt,” she snapped as the car hurtled onto the East Causeway Approach.
Abby slid on back and complied, her mind oddly empty and detached, like her spirit was separating from her body. What an odd feeling! A part of her felt no safer, even after the buckle clicked. The other part of her just kept breathing, slow and deep. She pulled the adjuster tighter and clutched her panda, Ling Ling to her chest.
The curve of the road, slick as it was, proved perilous as the car slid alarmingly across the lanes of the highway before her mother straightened it out and accelerated once again down the straightway. Abby lifted herself up slightly and peered out the window—she could just make out the Waffle House and the Sesame Inn Chinese restaurant on the right, before they whizzed by and there was nothing but angry sky, the swaying trees of the bayou giving way to open wetlands. Up ahead and approaching quickly, the vast expanse of Lake Pontchartrain came into view, a boiling whirl of grey water and frothing white caps.
Abby’s eyes grew big as she spotted the bridge in front of them. The causeway jutted out on top of the water like two grey fingers, nearly 24 miles of concrete that spanned the entire lake. From north to south, it connected Mandeville in St. Tammany Parish to Jefferson Parish and the city of New Orleans. On an ordinary day, Abby loved driving across the water because the bridge was so low and sat right on top of the lake—she would roll down her window and let the wind hit her face, and she could fancy herself like some great water bird gliding free and easy across the water. A blue heron or an egret. Momma Bea would laugh and call her a puppy, like some golden retriever whose favorite thing was to hang her head out a window and just grin in the wind with her jowls flapping. Today, however, the normally smooth and glassy surface of the lake was a churning, heaving force of nature, and the causeway ahead looked ominous and uninviting. Wind-whipped waves slapped across the railings of the bridge, the water threatening to swamp the road at any moment. No other cars were on the bridge.
“Momma?” Abby’s voice was barely a squeak as they bolted toward the bridge. Beatriz ignored her and sped on, blowing by the state trooper car, parked near the entrance to the bridge. A lone officer, plastic blue parka splattered wetly against his body, emerged from a small concrete hut next to the road and ran towards their car, arms waving madly in the air above his head. The Hyundai streaked past him, not slowing at all, and Abby was just able to catch a glimpse of a thick mustache and the eyes of the shocked trooper’s face before it was gone.
The car blasted through a makeshift barricade and blinking wooden hazard signs shattered off the front fender. “Gotta get you to New Orleans!” Abby’s momma shouted above the storm.
“But why, momma! Why?” Abby squeaked as they sped out over the bridge. Her eyes got bigger as she spotted the roiling clouds straight ahead, a mad swirling cluster of black, purple and blue. Waves dashed across the road in front of them as far as the eye could see, but the wind whipped the water away before it could form any hazard on the road.
“Hush, A.B.” Momma’s voice was oddly calm and quiet. “This is our storm. It’s calling to us. Can’t you hear?”
Abby found her momma’s question oddly reassuring. Maybe she could feel it, too? There was someone or something out there, calling to them. Maybe Abby wasn’t imagining things that were just in her head.
She tried listening real hard to find the voices of whomever might be calling, but all she could hear was the raging wind and the hail stones clacking off the car. The Voice in her head was silent. She leaned back and pressed herself tightly against the seat back and just felt the roar of the engine beneath her as the wind, water and ice pelted them.
Up ahead the roiling mass of clouds took on form and shape, and Abby’s heart nearly stopped as she saw it: the swirling vortex of a cyclone. Just off the right side of the bridge, about one third the way across, the spinning finger touched down on the lake and drew the water up into its hungry, whirling maw. The needle-like nose of the twister darted erratically, touching down at random.
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sp; And they were racing straight towards it.
Abby knew right there and then that she couldn’t watch, so she clamped her eyes shut, covered her face in her hands, and turned away.
“Got to get to New Orleans…” Momma Bea was still muttering, over and over, and Abby latched on to the words just so she could hold on to something, anything.
A few deep breaths, and she felt the calm returning, the deep rumble of the Voice within soothed her, reminding her that she was not alone. Her courage returned, Abby opened her eyes once again and peered out between her fingers. She could see the top of the lake looking west outside her window where more dark clouds pressed down upon the middle of the lake.
Unfortunately, she did not find any signs of encouragement; in fact, she found the opposite. There was another cyclone there—bigger and badder—swirling and sucking water into its spinning, snaking cylinder. The green of the sky seemed brighter and glowing there above the waterspout, and Abby watched in horrific fascination as it looked as if the entire lake would be sucked up into the sky.
She snapped her head back and screamed as her momma suddenly slammed on the brakes and the car spun around in circles before coming to a lurching halt. The engine stalled. Now the car was sitting in the middle of the causeway, having spun perpendicular to the road. The ice had stopped falling, but rain and wind continued to pelt and buffet the stationary car. Abby’s window looked out directly down the causeway in the direction they had been driving. The railings of the bridge ahead of them were being yanked out, one by one, pulled ferociously into the first cyclone, which was no more than a thousand feet away, directly over the bridge, and barreling straight down on them.
“Momma! Turn back! Turn back!” Abby shrieked and banged on the seat in front of her. Momma Bea glanced back at Abby, her mouth a perfect gaping “O.” She clumsily put the car back into park, and desperately turned the ignition over. The car roared to life, and Momma Bea popped the engine into drive. The tires spun in place for several moments before squealing to a sudden, jolting start. They shot forward like a rock from a sling, hurtling back down the way they had come. Abby’s heart was pounding, and just when she thought she could bear no more, a wall of grey swallowed them, and the road below and everything ahead of them disappeared. They were weightless, and they were flying.
Now, at the time something like this occurs, the brain doesn’t always let it register, but that is exactly what Abby thought as the car was lifted. She felt just like when your insides get all fluttery all of a sudden when you’re riding on a rollercoaster and the bottom just drops out. Like that. But what she couldn’t grasp at that moment was the unimaginable. They were caught in a fifteen-foot wall of water that had rolled unseen across the surface of the lake, and the wave had crested the bridge and swallowed them. There was a moment or two of profound silence. Then her stomach felt like it was suddenly being pushed through the top of her head as the car suddenly dipped, rolled over once, and slammed back down on the road. In less than a second the car smashed against the side railing, and the back window shattered into a million fractals of spinning light.
Abby screamed on impact as her head was painfully jerked to the right and then left. Everything seemed to wobble and rock before settling into a stunned and silent center of stillness. The raging storm all around was replaced by ringing in her ears.
Abby opened her eyes and saw broken glass covering her blouse and Ling Ling, her stuffed animal still clutched tightly in her arm. “Momma!” Her voice seemed distant and muted, but she knew she was shouting. “Momma!” She could see her mom’s head resting against the steering wheel, the cracked front windshield beyond her. She fumbled to unbuckle her seat belt and then flung herself forward, reaching for her mother. There was a trickle of blood seeping down her mother’s temple, but then her eyes fluttered open as Abby’s hand stroked her hair and face.
“We’re alive momma! We’re alive!” Abby was yelling and then laughing, and it all sounded weird and remote with the ringing still in her ears. But Abby felt fine. She felt fine. And her mother also smiled.
Come fly, little sister.
The Voice was different this time, like it was just outside her head, almost like somebody was sitting right next to her, whispering in her ear.
Then mother sat upright and stared down at her hands. Hundreds of little shards of glass were trembling and hovering in the air above them. Momma Bea turned and looked back at Abby, who gasped and froze as the shards of broken glass that moments before were on and all around her lifted and quivered, suspended like snowflakes in the air. She glanced down at her own hands, the one still holding Ling Ling, the other reaching out towards her mom. Her curly black hair and the golden cross that hung by a chain around her neck were also lifted up as if by invisible hands.
That was when the ringing in her ears became a roar.
Instantly, the car trembled then groaned and lifted. Beatriz screamed, “NOOOOO!” a long wailing note that was sucked away as the force of the cyclone descended upon them. She had to cover her eyes as the glass suddenly streaked outside the shattered rear window. Then Abby’s school bag, and the twisted-up papers and the gum wrappers and stale peanuts that were under the seats—everything was sucked away in a flash.
And then there was Abby.
Beatriz locked unto her daughter’s incongruently calm grey-green eyes. Abby seemed to be mouthing the words, “It’s okay, momma…” And then she was gone, ripped from the back seat, through the back window, and into the screaming purple-black void above.
What we have forgotten can be found in the tears of the stars.
It is from such things that we have come.
The threads from Great Mother spin and spiral downwards to the earth.
But we can climb back up again.
This, we have forgotten.
—from The Book of Sayings, “Bo M’ba Nesh Speaks”
Another Time, Another Place – The Season of the Ishwi Vine
The forest was quiet and still. Abby walked silently, her bare feet making no sound on the soft jungle floor. Through the canopy of trees ahead she could see blue slits of sky. She approached closer, wanting to have one more look. As she brushed past the lush foliage, she could hear the sound of rushing water. She slowed her steps as she came up to the rim of a steep gorge.
Pushing purple and pink blooming vines aside, she stopped with her toes gripping the lip of the cliff. She caught her breath as she looked out over the river valley. Giant boulders dotted the mountain side across the gorge—they hovered in the air like giant heads, defying gravity, their gray faces glowing with the pink of the sinking sun. Abby knew this meant that the elders were still at their looms weaving. As long as they worked the tapestries, the rocks would slowly lift and move up the mountain. It was how the Sihanaka people got the giant slabs up the mountain. “Dream Engineering,” the elders called it. Abby smiled to herself as a single word bubbled up from somewhere deep inside of her. Magic. But that was a voice from somewhere far away and unreachable. It was a voice that she had heard before. A voice that was hers but wasn’t hers. A sneaky voice that whispered things like “magic.”
Abby shook herself and the thought that was not her voice fluttered away and was gone. Just like that. Such a slippery thing. Once her mind tried to fix on it, it squirted away like a wet bangku seed between her fingers. She took a deep breath and her eyes swept up the side of the mountain. Yes, there, like tiny ants, she could see the builders moving on the terraced top, guiding the stones into their proper position where the temple was being erected. Once on the ground, the stones would be cut and polished, then placed.
Abby looked down the cliff’s edge below her feet. Water fell noisily over rocks and down for hundreds of feet. The spray misted all around creating rainbow arcs of light. Not much longer and the sun would dip below the western mountains, and the long semi-darkness of mountain twilight would settle in. With a
nother deep breath, Abby turned and slipped back into the forest.
She quickened her pace, counting her breaths as she sped down the path. Sixty-four breaths later, the sound of wood chopping and muffled voices came to her in soft, intermittent waves. The village was getting closer. As she neared the edge of the jungle, Abby could make out the thatched roofs of houses built into the side of a hill. She could smell the cooking fires and beneath the smoke, the sweet scents of fried plantains and taro; she could hear the distant laughter of children, their voices much clearer now. No doubt they were playing alongside the river, a robust game of Adawa i Kek-chirri, or Stones and Frog.
The village, surrounded by jungle and mountains on all sides, was built on terraces carved into a hillside that overlooked a lush and fertile river valley. Abby was approaching from the north along a stream, one of many rivulets that wound its way circuitously down from the mountain top. Up there were fresh springs, where water bubbled up from deep within the mountain. At the source, the water was clean and full of minerals—perfect for the late afternoon bath from which Abby was returning.
She was near the weaving hut now, a larger structure raised on a wooden platform supported by thick stilts above the stone bluff. Abby knew at this time of the day the old woman would be there. She squatted in the brush and watched.
Through fern fronds and wild orchids, she caught a glimpse of the women moving about below the hut. Large baskets and bundles were strapped to their heads or to their hips. They were bringing in the ishwi vines and the branches of the bangku tree, unloading their daily haul from the heart of the jungle. The vines would be shredded and picked clean, the bark of the bangku would be stripped and soaked overnight, then later hung out to be dried. Eventually all would be sorted and recombined by color and used for dying and weaving.
