Jennifer Brown - Torn Away

I checked the sky. The clouds seemed to be tumbling and roiling, blocking out the sun and making me feel cold inside. There hadn’t been a storm since the rain stopped two days after the tornado. I had never been afraid of storms before, but I found my pace quickening, my breathing getting deeper as I lunged down the sidewalk, hoping to get back to the house before the storm really rolled through.

This wasn’t me. I kept thinking that as I felt my limbs shaking, my brain filling up with panicky thoughts. I didn’t even know who I was anymore, and it hurt to feel myself changing. I wanted my life back. I wanted so much that I couldn’t ever have, and everything felt so horrifically unfair and frightening and sad, it took all I had to keep control. I felt like I was slipping away.

The thunder got louder and more frequent. I could see them. I could see my sister and mother, backing away from the windows at Janice’s studio. I could hear the little girls crying, could feel the phone buzzing in my mother’s pocket as I called her. I could see my mom, holding the phone to her ear, shouting, telling everyone to get back, unable to hear me on the other end of the line.

I could see them, hand in hand, sprinting across the street to the grocery store, ushering the little girls along in their sparkly leotards and their tightly bound updos. I could hear the girls’ frightened voices, could smell the electricity in the air, could feel the sirens bleating through their bodies.

I could see them, eyes going wide as the tornado became visible, and then squinching down tight as debris and cars and streetlights and entire roofs looked like dots of litter in the sky, before crashing down onto the streets.

I could feel them, fear sinking in—fear and the instinct for self-preservation—as they thrust themselves down the aisles at the grocery store, hoping to get far enough.…

I reached the end of the street and turned the corner to get back to Flora Lane, picking up to a jog, and then a run as raindrops—pregnant and insistent—began to beat down on me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the ball the kids had been throwing earlier, bouncing in the wind down the center of the street.

It had gotten so dark. So very dark.

I pushed myself harder. My stomach hurt from exertion and panic. My grandparents’ house still seemed so far away.

And then I skidded to a stop, gasping and pressing my palms hard over my ears as the tornado alarm started sounding.

My grandmother was standing on the front porch, one hand holding the top of her head as if she were afraid her hair was going to fly off. Her face was deeply lined with worry as she glanced at the sky and then moved her eyes up and down the street. She called my name twice before she saw me, half-jogging, half-staggering along the sidewalk, hands over ears, ragged breath tearing dry tears out of me.

I didn’t want her to be a beacon of safety for me. I didn’t want to feel like I was running home while running to her. But my heart leapt around in my chest when I saw her.

“Jersey! There you are,” she said, and I could barely hear her over the siren. “I was worried.”

The rain began to splatter around me as I cut through the front yard, my legs feeling exhausted and jelly-like as I pounded one foot in front of the other. For a terrifying, almost dizzying moment I was afraid I’d be unable to make it those last few steps. I was sure my legs would give out and crumple beneath me, that I would sprawl facedown in the grass, my grandmother unable to pull me up. I imagined the sky splitting open and an angry tornado reaching down to scoop me up and toss me into its eye with flying debris and swirling dead people; people like my mom and sister.

But somehow I made it, and even though my grandmother was reaching out to me, I lunged right past her and into the house. I raced through the hall and down the basement steps without even pausing to search for the light switch, my brain briefly flashing back to the day Meg and Lexi had shut off the basement light and I’d gotten so spooked. The memory only served to agitate me further, and I could feel fury rushing through me.

Down in the basement, it was quieter. The sirens were muted and the wind was no longer beating in my ears and the rain sounded far away up on the roof. Still, I was buzzing. My head was making a siren noise of its own. My ears were ringing and my breath panted out of me as I paced, moaning and crying and growling. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I’d never felt or acted this way in a storm before. But I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop the fiery, tossed feeling in my chest, and I couldn’t stop my body from acting on it.

“Jersey?” my grandmother called, and seconds later the basement was bathed in light. I saw her feet pad down the carpeted stairs. “Jersey? Can you hear me?”

And maybe it was the way she kept saying my name—always, constantly, saying my name—or maybe it was the fear or the siren, which had gotten into my head. Or maybe it was those words—“Can you hear me?” Those words that I had said to my mother a few weeks before. Those words, which had gone unanswered.

Maybe it was all of the above, but I panicked. My chest squeezed tight and I dropped to my knees on the floor, surprised by the sensation. My hands, which were shaking, clutched at my chest and I gasped and gasped. I could feel my eyes bugging out, but I couldn’t see my grandmother or the carpeted basement steps anymore.

All I could see was the bottom of Ronnie’s pool table, the papers as they blew around me, a rolling ashtray. All I could hear was the collapse of my kitchen down into the basement, the roar of a wind mightier than anyone had seen in forty years, death and destruction balled up inside its nasty, painful grip. I could hear the sound of glass breaking, of bricks thudding to concrete, the squeak of wood splintering. Myself screaming.

Screaming and screaming and screaming, my eyes squeezed shut so tightly I was no longer sure where I was. Only that I felt paralyzed by fear—the fear that began on the day my mom took Marin to dance and never came home again. The fear I’d been holding at bay, had been pushing down inside myself, all through the days after the tornado, through the time at the motel with Ronnie, through those frightening nights of wondering what Lexi and Meg would do to me. The fear washed over me, held me down, made me feel like I was going to die—just lie down and join my mother and sister.

I don’t know how long I remained that way. But eventually, as if coming up from the deep end of a pool and taking my first breath, I began to sense things. My grandmother’s voice, saying my name over and over again, her hands gripping my shoulders, and a movement that sharpened into shaking.

“Jersey!” she was barking. “Jersey, dammit! Stop screaming. It’s going to be okay. Jersey!”

She shook harder and harder and I felt my head moving back and forth on my shoulders, and finally the shrieking just… died out. I blinked through the tears and the swollen eyelids and saw my grandmother kneeling before me, looking stern.

“Stop it,” she said. “Stop screaming. They’ve turned off the sirens.”

My mouth clopped shut, my lips slippery with snot, and I tried to catch my breath.

“It’s all clear,” she said, her voice still barking, but softer now. She’d given me a soft shake on the words “all” and “clear” but then must have seen some recognition that I was back to reality, because she nodded curtly and let go, then stood up. My grandmother crossed her arms and gazed down at me unyieldingly.

“You can’t go disappearing like that,” she said, and I wondered if this sharp-featured woman was the Patty my mom had hated so much. “We were worried sick with the storm coming in. You could have been anywhere. Grandpa Barry is out there right now, driving around looking for you.”