by Roger Bruner
Although Alazne’s plans made me apprehensive, the knowledge that she was doing what she thought she should do comforted me somewhat. She had never been reckless. She always thought before acting and always thought of others first.
Moving as rapidly as she was, she might reach my former cave home before Anjelita and I. But if she needed to duck into one of the closer caves, she would. In that event, I would worry incessantly until our family was reunited after the black wind moved past the village.
I had undertaken the education of the villagers as a civic responsibility, and the results had exceeded my greatest hopes. But shouldn’t Alazne have shirked this, her perceived civic duty, because of her age? Alas, that question hadn’t been mine to answer or the decision mine to make.
Nothing bad would happen to Alazne. It couldn’t. She had survived too much over the last twelve years to lose her life now to the tornado she was saving everyone else from.
Because our cave was further from the church than the others, no one would have taken it. The villagers were so terrified they ran to the closest caves first.
As our rapid walk broke into a wind-blown run, we saw several villagers returning to their homes one last time after securing their children safely in a cave. Apparently to rescue something they considered sufficiently valuable to risk their lives for.
Although their decisions were none of my business, I thought they were foolish. But at least their foolishness wouldn’t compound anyone else’s danger.
Let those people be. They have their own priorities. If they survive, they survive. If not, they have chosen their own path to death.
By the time Anjelita and I reached the mouth of our cave, we saw the black wind approach the first house in the village. The funnel seemed to hesitate and then pounce upon it like a hungry cat on an unsuspecting field mouse.
When it moved on, nothing of the shack was left. I assumed that its remains were whirling helplessly inside the black wind like carpet dirt the most powerful of American vacuum cleaners had sucked up.
That was all I needed to see. I pushed Anjelita into the cave and jumped in behind her.
The black funnel hid what little daylight had been visible a moment earlier. We stretched out on the ground with the rock column, a large stalagmite, between us.
Hopeful that our will to live was stronger than the wind that swept large portions of our village past the cave’s darkened doorway, I took Anjelita’s hand in one of mine and the stub of her elbow in the other and held on as tightly as I could.
We couldn’t see anything at all by then, but we heard heavy objects shaking the ground as they bounced in our direction, threatening to pierce or collapse the roof we were counting on to protect us.
Although dusty slivers of stone had fallen on us, the roof remained intact.
Now that we seemed safe for the moment with no guarantee we would still be safe the next, I fretted about Alazne. Not that I had ever stopped. She hadn’t made it to the cave.
She had been working carefully and quickly. The black wind wouldn’t have caught her off-guard. She must have taken refuge in one of the other caves. She would be frightened now. Terrified. Like the rest of us.
But she would be safe. I had to believe that.
Yes, somebody would have made sure she was safe. After everything she’d done to ensure the villagers’ safety, someone would have said, “Come with us, Alazne. You have done all you could to help. Your momma would be angry if we failed to protect you. We couldn’t live with ourselves, either.”
Frowning in the darkness, I wondered whether they would have been equally concerned if Anjelita had needed to share their shelter. Perhaps if the storm had come the day before yesterday—prior to Pedro’s death. Or maybe even yesterday before the Elders announced that Anjelita had killed Pedro.
But not today. I knew the villagers and their superstitions too well. If we survived this storm, they would blame Anjelita for it, and nothing Alazne might say to the other children would change their minds. Adults and children alike would insist that the storm had been nature’s retribution for Santa María’s failure to punish Anjelita.
I thought about this God I had never learned more about. And how often he had punished his people for their disobedience. Was he using this storm to express his anger toward Santa María for some reason? Or did he have any reason to consider us “his people”?
I suddenly noticed the silence. The black funnel was moving elsewhere, and daylight had appeared at the mouth of the cave.
“Let’s find Alazne.” Anjelita could barely speak for sobbing. Was she as worried as I was?
“Not yet.” I squeezed her hand and stub to assure her we had survived the storm together. “Legends about the black wind don’t tell us whether one ever turned around and came back again. We shouldn’t take chances. The storm will soon be out of sight. Then we will run as fast as we can to find your sister with whoever of the villagers took her in.”
Anjelita gently pried her hand loose from mine and attempted to dry her tears.
After a moment of silence, she spoke again. “You are right. We shouldn’t do anything foolish. Alazne is safe with another family.”
We waited another fifteen minutes, although in our uncertainty it seemed more like fifteen hours. We kept telling one another that Alazne was fine. Yet I knew in my heart that we wouldn’t be at peace until the three of us had reunited in a tight family embrace.
Every couple of minutes, Anjelita asked again, “Momma, is it time yet?”
I finally couldn’t take the waiting any longer myself. “Let’s go.”
I smiled and tried to look as if I meant it, but I wasn’t smiling in my heart. Where was Alazne?
As we surfaced from the cave, we found ourselves ankle-deep in trash the raging storm had regurgitated. Pieces of this. Tiny shards of that. Slabs of something else. Santa María was gone. Nothing was left except for the village’s shattered remains. I retched at the sight. It took me several moments to recover enough to proceed.
“Come, Anjelita, we must find Alazne.”
Stumbling through the debris, crying out for Alazne, Anjelita and I moved as quickly as we could from family to family as they, too, came out of hiding.
“We saw her with them once,” someone said, pointing to an older couple. We rushed toward them.
“She didn’t stay with us during the storm,” the husband said. “She helped us reach safety, but she went back out again.”
Never had I felt so frantic. So helpless.
“Perhaps So-and-So saw her,” he suggested, obviously sympathetic.
But she had also gone back after helping So-and-So.
We yelled into the caves no one had occupied.
“Alazne! Where are you?” I shouted.
“Where are you, big sister?” Anjelita echoed.
No one responded.
And we couldn’t find anyone else to ask if they had seen our precious Alazne.
Perhaps she had hurt herself getting inside with her crutches and wasn’t able to respond. So we went back to each unused cave, carefully looking inside each one and straining in the darkness to see.
Still no sign. Still no answer when we called out her name.
“Momma, where can she be?” The fear in Anjelita’s voice made me tremble.
Then I noticed it. How had I missed it? Why had the black wind spared it when it had destroyed everything else, including the warehouse?
The church—whatever a church was—was still standing. It appeared to be intact. Anjelita and I ran toward it as if our very lives depended on it, staggering through the wreckage that surrounded it.
The litter in the churchyard was far worse than anywhere else. Although the black funnel hadn’t touched the building itself, it had blanketed the yard with the remains of much of what it had destroyed. As if some evil spirit had raged at the building it couldn’t destroy in the only way it had left.
I tripped on a piece of broken board. Although I didn’t fall, I l
ost momentum, struggling to regain my balance.
Anjelita didn’t wait for me. Determined to find her sister, she wove her way through the rubble, looking here, looking there, and finally disappearing on the other side of the building. As I grew closer, I heard her scream.
A scream that rivaled Alazne’s when she first spotted the black wind.
39
When I reached the front of the building, I screamed, too. My heart almost shot out of my chest.
Lying face down a foot or so from the church door was Alazne. Even though rubble covered parts of her body, I couldn’t mistake the brilliant blue shirt she had worn that day. None of the other village girls owned clothes that color.
“Alazne!” Even the deafest of the villagers could have heard my scream.
Two of the village men, Mateo and Diego, were working to clear the debris from Alazne’s body. How had they reached her? Those mountains of rubble—some were at least three feet high—must have been nearly impossible to climb over.
Several feet ahead of me, Anjelita fell down whenever she took a step or two toward her big sister. Several small bloody places on her knees and elbows made me grab her and pull her onto my back before I began stumbling toward Alazne’s body. I fell frequently, too. Possibly a dozen times. She held tight and didn’t fall off, thank goodness.
Once we almost reached Alazne, Anjelita slid down from my back and looked at her sister. “Momma! Momma!”
We clung to one another as the men continued removing rubbish from Alazne’s body.
My head told me Alazne couldn’t have survived the black funnel’s direct attack. But my heart wouldn’t give up—not until it had to.
~*~
“We are sorry, Rosa,” said Mateo, struggling to keep from falling as he stepped away from Alazne so we could reach her. “We are truly sorry.”
Anjelita and I threw ourselves on top of Alazne’s lifeless body, wailing at the realization all hope was gone.
Moments later, we stepped back to allow the two men to finish freeing Alazne’s body from the debris.
Diego lifted Alazne’s shoulders. He looked down and narrowed his eyes. “Look at this, Mateo! Underneath where she was lying.”
“What? What have you found?”
“I don’t know,” Diego said in a puzzled tone. “Come take a look.”
Mateo threw a double handful of debris far to one side and moved closer. Diego pointed at something bright lying beneath the place where Alazne’s face and chest had just been lying. Mateo picked it up, and Diego gently lowered Alazne’s body to the surface of the rubble again.
I stumbled several feet closer to see what they were looking at. From an art book I used to enjoy, I recognized the object as a large gold cross, the kind known as a crucifix. It was at least two feet tall. And it looked very thick, very heavy, and probably very expensive.
Since the author of the art book hadn’t explained the significance of a crucifix, he must have assumed it was common knowledge. Perhaps it was to other people, but it had always been a mystery to me.
The only thing I understood was what I saw—a nearly-naked man hanging on the cross. He appeared to be in distress. Was he already dead? I groaned at the irony of him and Alazne suffering together.
The art book had also shown another type of cross. One without the likeness of a dying man.
I shared my limited knowledge with the two men, neither of whom had seen anything like the crucifix before. We marveled that Alazne’s upper body had been lying on it, for we couldn’t imagine where it had come from.
“The black storm must have traveled many miles before reaching Santa María,” Mateo observed.
Diego nodded. “So the wind could have brought the cross—this crucifix—from almost anywhere.”
Their theory was as good as any we could think of. This gold object didn’t belong to any of the villagers. In a place like Santa María, where people were frequently in and out of each other’s homes, such a possession would not have remained a secret.
“Something else, Rosa. I didn’t mention it before,” Diego said. “I felt funny saying anything.”
“Tell me, please.” I continued to stare at the crucifix as I spoke. Although I couldn’t understand its significance, it inspired a sense of awe.
“Part of the crucifix had wedged securely under the doorway of the church. The way Alazne wrapped herself around its arms helped to wedge her in place, too. The storm would have had to tear her body to pieces to dislodge it from anchorage like that, yet it didn’t.”
Anchorage? Although I had never seen a boat close up, I had seen boats at a distance when Nikki took Alazne and me to the beach. I had read enough about them to understand the concept of an anchor.
I sniffled once. “I am wondering why Alazne died so close to the church building.”
“Me, too.”
“And I.”
“Perhaps because the church was the closest shelter?” I suggested. “Could Alazne have somehow sensed that the church was more secure than our houses?”
Diego shook his head. “We’ll never know.”
“The debris blocked her way,” I continued. “She couldn’t open the door. She would have been safe inside. Clinging to a heavy gold cross that appeared in front of the church door as if by magic might have kept the storm from carrying her away, but it didn’t—it couldn’t—prevent her from dying.”
With tears in his eyes, Mateo picked up the crucifix and handed it to me. “This is yours now.”
~*~
I berated myself continually for not going after Alazne and insisting that she come with us. She had always been an obedient and cooperative child. She would have obeyed this time, too—if I had just been more insistent.
Yes, her death had been my fault for not being a more selfish mother—my fault and mine alone.
No matter how hard I tried to blame myself for Alazne’s death, however, the villagers refused to let me drown in self-reproach. One person after another praised Alazne for the tremendous good she had done. Without exception, they thanked me for her unselfishness.
“What a brave young lady she was.”
“She did what none of the adults was brave enough or smart enough to do.”
“My family would be dead now if she hadn’t made the extra effort to get my children out of the house.”
“I was asleep when the storm was approaching. My hearing is not good. I would have missed the warnings if Alazne hadn’t come inside and roused me from sleep.”
“Alazne moved like lightning on those crutches of hers. She seemed to know all the right things to do, and she didn’t stop until the very end.”
But I took one comment to heart more than all the rest.
“Rosa, you could have stopped Alazne from helping us, but you didn’t. You took a chance she would die saving the rest of us. We know how you loved Alazne—how you love her still. Thank you for making a willing sacrifice of love and allowing her to be the hero of this tragedy.”
How I wished it had been my willing sacrifice. Or even my decision.
But it hadn’t. It had been Alazne’s.
~*~
“We must bury Alazne today before her body attracts wild animals and birds of prey,” one of the Council members said. “There is danger of illness and additional deaths if Alazne’s body remains unburied.”
How different Alazne’s burial would be from Tomás’s. Although I hadn’t seen his exquisite coffin, Nikki had described it in detail. I had marveled at the idea of spending so much on the dead even in a country as wealthy as the United States.
Santa María didn’t bury its dead in coffins. The villagers had long since used up the trees I played in during my childhood. They hadn’t planted new ones.
Even if they had wanted to use wood from trees located a mile or two outside the village, they didn’t have tools for felling them, bringing them to what little was left of the village, or turning them into planks. Assembling the simplest of coffins would be just as
impossible as rebuilding our lost homes.
So the men prepared to dig a hole twelve to fifteen inches deeper than the thickness of Alazne’s body. They would lower her to the bottom and cover her with whatever solid materials they could find to prevent predators from digging deep enough to desecrate the decaying body and spread who knows what kind of germs throughout the community. The health and safety of the villagers took precedence over the pampering of a bereaved mother and daughter.
It had to. I understood and accepted that fact.
People continued to share words of praise about Alazne’s life, and I forced myself to smile outwardly in appreciation for their kindness. My heart was broken, however, and adjusting to this tragedy would take the rest of my life. I was convinced of that.
After Mother Chalina’s death, I’d thought life would never be the same. In one sense that had been true. With each passing year, however, her death had proven slightly easier to accept.
But the death of my first child? The child I had almost lost to spina bifida when she was still a tiny baby? How could I possibly recover from that?
~*~
When Mateo and Diego finished freeing Alazne’s body and taking it to the graveyard, I noticed that my grandmother’s necklace was missing. Alazne had been wearing it earlier that day. I had recently asked her to let Anjelita wear it sometimes, too, and she had readily agreed. Although Anjelita hadn’t gotten to wear it yet, she already thought of it as partially hers.
I had more important things to mourn than the loss of the necklace, although I deeply regretted that Anjelita hadn’t gotten to wear it. I had lost every possession that linked me physically with my mother. The necklace had been just one item among many.
After Matteo and Diego set Alazne down near the shallow grave two other men were digging, Mateo reached inside his shirt and pulled out the three most valuable items I owned. I had never expected to see them again after the storm. Yet here they were, and they helped to explain why Alazne had failed to reach the cave in time.
