Side Chick Nation

by Aya De León

  Suddenly, the current sped up. Dulce blinked the water out of her eyes and tried to orient herself. The storage space was U-shaped. Rainfall was flooding down from the hills, and getting trapped in the elbow curve of the building. She was moving swiftly with the floodwater now, down along the building’s side. In the fading light, she could see that she was on a collision course to crash head-first into one of the second floor storage unit doors. Frantically, she kicked and paddled with her arms to turn her body around, so she was floating feet-first.

  Ahead of her, water pounded into the second floor storage spaces. She leaned back in the water, stretching her legs toward one of the metal doors.

  The current was too fast now. Was she going to break both of her legs on impact? But this was also familiar, like jumping off the roof of her tía’s shed. Yet this time, it was the force of water, not gravity, speeding her toward a collision.

  She heard her brother Santiago’s voice in her mind: “Bend your knees, Luqui!” And as the current pressed her toward impact, she bent her knees as she hit one of the metal doors, absorbing the shock.

  Meanwhile, all around her, water kept rushing, crashing, and it was tossing her around. She couldn’t stabilize. She paddled frantically to stay afloat. Her arms and legs were starting to get fatigued. She’d drown if she couldn’t find somewhere to rest.

  The water was even higher now, and the current ducked her under and slammed her, shoulder-first, into something hard. She grabbed for it, and in the dim glow of the phone flashlight, she could see that it was a railing. Yes! The second floor had an exterior walkway, surrounded by a railing of several parallel metal bars. It was about a foot underwater. Dulce knew if she held the railing and made her way, hand over hand in either direction, she could get to the stairwell in one of the corners. The building had three stories. If she was able to make it to the top floor, she might be safe.

  The sky had turned to charcoal, a diffuse not-quite-dark that spit an avalanche of water and wind. In the limited glow of her phone light in the water wallet necklace, she couldn’t see which corner stairwell of the building might be closer, but the current was pushing her to the left, so she started moving with it.

  As she made her way, the water steadily rose up over the railing, and it became difficult to hold the the top bar underwater and keep her head above the surface. As she got closer to the corner, she could see there was a whirlpool from the inflooding water, filled with debris, but also a perpendicular light post that stuck up well above the water level. She ducked her head under, and used the full length of her arms to shimmy over to it.

  When Dulce grabbed the light post in the corner, she was nearly sucked into the maelstrom of branches and debris that had lodged there. Her arms were totally fatigued now. She clung to the light post, but beneath the surface, the current was pressing her body against the railing. With the last of her upper-body strength, she heaved herself up over the top of the railing and into the open stairwell.

  Her body tumbled in, but something was caught around her neck. One of her hands grabbed the lamp post so it wouldn’t choke her. What the fuck was it? Her water wallet? No. Her free hand scrabbled at her throat and she realized that the Cartier chain had hooked on something. A branch? A piece of roofing? Dulce pulled, but the Cartier chain was stronger than she expected.

  Her body was on the inside of the railing, but she was tethered at the neck to the debris somehow. Her flailing feet could nearly touch the building. She held the light post with both hands, but as the water kept rising, she was just able to keep her head above the surface. The current was pressing her toward the building. If she didn’t get loose, she could strangle or drown. She contracted her core and pulled her legs up under her, in a fetal position, then planted her feet against the railing. She took a last gulp of air as the water level rose nearly above her head, and pushed off against the railing with all her strength. The chain finally broke, but the momentum sent her tumbling toward the building, with the current accelerating her movement, the water harsh, insistent. She had lost control of the movement of her body. She was another piece of debris in the rapids. The combined force sent her spinning into the stairwell, and she banged the back of her head into the edge of one of the steps.

  The building was made of mostly cement, and the impact of her head against concrete and metal stairs was unyielding to her skull. She blacked out for a moment, then the storm woke her with a wet slap to the face.

  When she stood up, rising from the water, she felt dizzy. Movement was hard because of her fatigued limbs and sodden clothes, and also because of the strong winds that lashed into the stairwell. She clung to the bannister and moved up to the third floor. The stairwells were open, and rain drove in, but there was a covered part at the corner of the hallway.

  In that small piece of shelter, the winds and rain were a bit buffeted. She huddled into a corner, and hugged her knees. She shivered with the cold from the wind, despite the humidity and tropical moisture of the rain.

  A few moments later, the water was at her feet again. She shook her head and began to drag herself up the stairs. She had to get to higher ground.

  On the landing halfway up between the third floor and the roof, she stopped to rest, protected from the wind and rain. She panted as her heart hammered against her rib cage. It was almost totally dark now. A dimension of dark beyond any she had ever seen. Nothing illuminated anywhere. Except her phone in the water wallet around her neck. She had better save that light.

  Carefully, she took the phone out of the wallet and turned off the flashlight. Then she sealed it back up. She leaned against the wall and let her breathing return to normal.

  But the water level was still rising. She couldn’t rest here much longer. She needed to head up that final flight of stairs leading up to the roof. Halfway up the steps, she collapsed. Her body was beyond exhausted. Her brain was concussed from the blunt trauma. And as she slept, her heart doggedly beat, gradually pumping the last of the marijuana and alcohol out of her bloodstream.

  * * *

  When the storm had finally passed, Nidia got up to survey the damage. It was still raining, but the winds had died down. Zara and the baby were asleep in the bathtub. Thankfully, the part of the roof above the bathroom had stayed intact.

  But the rest of the house? Rain drove in through a roofless ceiling. The back wall was just . . . gone. It wasn’t really gone. Instead, on the ground behind the house lay the mortal remains of the wall, tangled with mud and foliage. But it was against that wall that Nidia had so carefully stacked her supplies. When the storm had blown out the wall, it scattered everything in the backyard like shrapnel. The water bottles had all fallen and the lids burst off. Gallons and gallons of clean water mixing with the swampy aftermath of the storm. The bags of rice and beans lay in mud, rain drumming down on them. The radio was soaked. The cook stove, the propane, the batteries, the extra kerosene were nowhere in sight. Perhaps they were hidden under something? Hard to spot through the rain in the tangle of fallen leaves and debris?

  She searched all afternoon. She found the propane. The batteries. The kerosene and a few more cans of food. But the cook stove was lost (or perhaps looted) and the bottles of water had all opened when they hit the ground. Only one was upright and half full with clear water. The rest had a telltale tint of red dirt. She brought the half-full jug inside. They could use it for something other than drinking. She tried the tap and found that the water wasn’t even running.

  The roads near Nidia’s house were all washed out. In her front driveway, a tree had fallen on the car and smashed the roof in. The windshield and all the windows were shattered. Nidia looked in to see the gas pedal and brake were peeking out from several inches of water. Rain was still coming in the holes where glass used to be.

  So that was it. There was no real way to get to the shelter.

  * * *

  When Dulce opened her eyes, the disorientation was complete. The interior of her body was dehydrated and hungover, d
espite the fact that she was still sodden and surrounded by water.

  Through blurry vision she could see that it was light out and the rain had stopped. But it was the sound that was the strangest of all. So silent. No traffic. No human activity. Even the animals were still. No coqui. No crickets. No insects buzzing around. Just an unnatural quiet.

  What the hell was going on? From where she stood on the staircase, she could only see the other storage building. The floodwaters had gone down to the first floor, but the area was still flooded. Somewhere at the bottom was a waterlogged suitcase, full of designer clothes, with mud seeping in through the wide teeth of the zipper and sluicing across linen and raw silk.

  How was she going to get out of here? Was everything flooded or just her building? Maybe she would be able to see something from the roof. She climbed the stairs and stood at the landing. She tried the knob, and it was locked. But when she pulled on the door, it came loose, a sodden piece of paper dangling from where it had been propping the lock open.

  Also, from above the door, some cigarettes fell. Whoever had hidden them had slid a lighter in between the cellophane wrapping and the half-full pack.

  Dulce scooped them up.

  Out on the roof, she looked out to find a sight more disorienting than she could have imagined. From her vantage point, it was as if someone had run a giant rake across the land, scraping leaves and branches off all of the trees, and felling many of the trunks onto houses, cars, and roads. It had raked roofs off some of the houses, and tossed cars into roads and ditches. It had scraped up all the green foliage. Then it had mulched much of what it had raked, mixing roofing tiles with tree branches, an uprooted traffic sign with several pieces of broken lawn furniture. And then, without planting a thing, this malevolent gardener had overwatered their giant yard, leaving pools and rivulets of muddy water everywhere. The corpse of a dead dog floated by, a mixed breed. The frame of a retriever, but a mottled gray coat. The curls of its fur were sodden with water.

  Her mind couldn’t quite take in the devastation. She reached for the cigarettes. The pack was dry enough to light. She took a long drag, felt a head rush, and abruptly passed out.

  Chapter 17

  At first Dulce thought she was hearing disco music. Was she back in the club in Miami? Her body was drenched. She usually didn’t let herself dance that hard. She didn’t like to sweat out a good blowout in her hair. Her eyes opened for a moment, and it was too bright for a club. Rainwater trickled from her sodden hair into her eyes and she closed them tight again. Everything around her was wet. It made no sense.

  The sound above her was like fluttering percussion with a whizzing whine in the background. It reminded her of that part of techno music where the beat drops out, and they were ramping up the dancers all over the floor. The pitch gets higher and higher in anticipation. Dulce was waiting for the beat to drop. The thudding one-two of disco. The ramp-up music kept getting louder. Like some DJ was preparing them for the biggest dance explosion ever, but the beat never dropped.

  Instead, Dulce heard a woman’s voice over the music. The voice spoke to her in Spanish. Was she okay? She wanted to respond, but wasn’t sure of the answer. Yes? No? Was this woman the DJ?

  Then, above the whining beat, she heard a man’s voice, arguing with the woman in English.

  “Ma’am,” the male voice said. “My orders are just to fly you over the city to assess the damage. We’re not supposed to intervene.”

  “I’m sorry,” the female DJ responded. “If I see a woman lying on a rooftop who may need medical assistance, I’m not going to just leave her there. I don’t care what your orders are.”

  Dulce opened her eyes for another brief second and the vision was so surreal. A helicopter hovering above her. A woman with glasses and bobbed blonde hair under an army cap was climbing down a rope ladder to her. Dulce felt the woman touching her neck for a pulse. Asking her questions in Spanish. Dulce still couldn’t answer. Her eyes fluttered shut.

  The blonde woman half-dragged her back down off the roof into the shade of the stairwell. “I’m coming back for you,” the woman DJ said. And then Dulce heard the music fade out, as the helicopter flew off and she slipped back into unconsciousness.

  * * *

  Nidia, Zara, and the baby moved out of their half-roofless home and stayed with a neighbor whose house had fared better. The first post-hurricane days were taken up with just the basics. Preparing food, keeping everyone sheltered, managing makeshift bathrooms. They shared news with families who lived in the immediate cluster of houses, but it was hard to get info from anyone much beyond that. Nobody had electricity, water, or phone service. One family had a radio, but by the second day, they decided to take out the batteries for more urgent needs.

  It had continued to rain, which made it dangerous to go much farther from home, because there was flash flooding in Las Palmas’s hilly terrain.

  * * *

  By the fifth day, the neighbor’s house where they were staying was out of drinking water. Everyone was running out.

  The rain had let up for a bit and Nidia carefully waded down the tributary where the road had been. The water was up to her waist, but she was determined to get to a neighbor on the other side of the hill. She asked if they could spare any drinking water. They were almost out too, but they offered a can of juice. “For the baby.”

  The neighbors with the juice also had a working radio that could be powered with a crank. Nidia learned that power was out on the entire island. Most roads were blocked. Curfew from six PM to six AM. Nidia was worried about her aunt who lived in a town right in the path of the hurricane. But there was no way to find news of her. Nothing to do but pray.

  While Nidia was there gathering news, another neighbor came by. A young woman with wet, frightened eyes. Her mother was diabetic and the insulin she depended on needed refrigeration. They had gotten a battery-operated refrigerator and enough batteries, but some of the batteries had gotten damaged. The unit was failing.

  “Have you tried using the car battery?” Nidia asked.

  “We don’t have a car,” the young woman said.

  “You can use ours,” Nidia said. “Come on, I’ll get it.”

  “Who’s watching your baby?” the other neighbor asked the young woman.

  “She was asleep when I left,” the young woman said. “The battery alert sounded on the refrigeration unit, and I just ran over here.”

  “You should go home,” the neighbor said to the young woman. “Your little girl is walking now. If she wakes up, you don’t want her loose in the house. Your mother can’t keep up with her. I’ll go with Nidia to get the battery.”

  The young woman nodded and hugged them, then ran out the door.

  Nidia and the neighbor waded through the mud and water back to Nidia’s house and retrieved the battery.

  “I don’t know how long it will last,” Nidia said.

  “After it runs out, she can use ours,” the neighbor said.

  “Any word on the radio about how long they think it’ll be til the power comes back?” Nidia asked.

  “They don’t know,” the neighbor said. “Weeks. Maybe even months. She’s gonna need to get her mother to an emergency shelter where they have a generator.”

  From where they stood, Nidia could see the land covered in fallen trees and branches, theirs was one of several towns along a washed out road. The shelter was at least five miles away.

  As the neighbor waded off to give the battery to the young mother, something caught Nidia’s eye beneath the car. She looked closer and was startled to see the face of her grandmother, bobbing like an apparition in the muddy water.

  She reached down and saw the black and white portrait was facing out from her double ziplock bag of passports and family photographs. She snatched it from the water that had pooled beneath the car. As she rotated the bag, she could see that the inside was dry. Through the entire storm, it had mercifully stayed closed tight. She held the bag to her chest, and her body h
unched into sobbing. She leaned on the broken car, weeping with gratitude that all her preparation had made the difference in this one thing.

  * * *

  Dulce woke up on the floor of a rescue center.

  “Where am I?” she asked.

  “Albizu Campos elementary school,” the woman said. “But you were in a makeshift hospital for a few days. They say the mayor brought you in.”

  It was daytime, and she had somehow been moved from the storage building to another place and then to here? She had no memory of it. Looking up at the ceiling, she saw fluorescent light fixtures, none of them illuminated, all the brightness came in through skylights. She tried to sit up to see where she was, but the movement caused a stab of pain in the back of her head where she had hit it. She lay back down and closed her eyes against the throbbing. From the sounds around her, she could tell that she was inside a large school auditorium. She turned her head to the side and opened her eyes. Next to her was a woman with a little boy, who was screaming. Dulce would have thought that she couldn’t have slept with a kid screaming, or with her head in such pain. But somehow, she drifted back off.

  When she woke up again, it was evening. The last rays of sunlight illuminated the room with a dim glow. Dulce tried to sit up, and moaned as the back of her head began to throb again.

  A woman came over to her.

  “You’re awake,” the woman said in Spanish.

  “I’m so thirsty,” Dulce said. “Can I get some water?”

  The woman stepped away and came back with a dropper bottle.

  “What are you giving me medicine for?” Dulce asked.

  “This isn’t medicine,” the woman said. “This is the water.”

  The woman explained that they had begun with enough drinking water for fifty people for three days, but they ended up sheltering over a hundred people. By the time Dulce came in, they were down to only a few gallons of fresh water, and had more people coming in. They expected FEMA or the National Guard to be on the way with more water, but so far they hadn’t gotten anything. The woman gave Dulce a dropperful of water every couple of hours.