This is a Test of the Emergency System
by Jill Kolongowski
My mother is counting batteries, matching them up in two-by-twos. She rolls three D-batteries in her hand and frets because there is no fourth, no match.
“Why are there no more?” my mother asks. My father adjusts the rabbit ears behind the television. Taryn Asher, our former babysitter and the local Fenton, Michigan brunette weathergirl, snaps in and out of our living room. My little sister shoves her blanket up her nose like always. My father doesn’t answer her, but their silence is so normal by now that it’s almost comforting. We refuse to think about long-term darkness. I repeat our TORNADO EMERGENCY PLAN to myself: Walk out the door. Leave everything behind. Do not wait for anyone. Meet at the swingset.
In our plan, the tornado spares the swingset. In our plan, there is always someone to meet.
“Why are there no more?” my mother asks. My father adjusts the rabbit ears behind the television. Taryn Asher, our former babysitter and the local Fenton, Michigan brunette weathergirl, snaps in and out of our living room. My little sister shoves her blanket up her nose like always. My father doesn’t answer her, but their silence is so normal by now that it’s almost comforting. We refuse to think about long-term darkness. I repeat our TORNADO EMERGENCY PLAN to myself: Walk out the door. Leave everything behind. Do not wait for anyone. Meet at the swingset.
In our plan, the tornado spares the swingset. In our plan, there is always someone to meet.
✧
Brendan Fraser, playing the child of a nuclear holocaust survivalist, stacks Campbell’s soup cans in a swank bomb shelter in Blast from the Past. My sister and I love this shitty movie the same way we love dollhouses—all the ordered shelves, full of trinkets, the way we secretly wish our own house was. We go to the cupboards and gather our own supplies—Saltine crackers, Grape Nuts, juice boxes—and wrap them up in red bandanas.
We don’t understand what “radiation” means or why Brendan’s father is so dumb and scared that he locks them underground for 35 years. We just like the way the bandanas tie up so neatly.
We don’t understand what “radiation” means or why Brendan’s father is so dumb and scared that he locks them underground for 35 years. We just like the way the bandanas tie up so neatly.
✧
The power goes out and my father continues fiddling with the rabbit ears on the TV, as if his dedication and hard work can make Taryn Asher come back with better news. Somehow we all have flashlights, my mother having thrust them into our idle hands at some point. The three of us clomp down the wooden stairs to the basement while my father lags behind, closing windows and then opening them again. He always forgets which is safer. My mother yells up the stairs to him the same way she yells at us when we’ve been bad—GET DOWN HERE. The basement is cold cement, unfinished. When it wasn’t tornado weather my sister and I would come down, put on our rollerblades, and skate in ten-foot circles and figure-eights around the poles. It’s not cozy but the walls are thick and so solid I can believe in them. My parents sit with their arms around us, not each other. I listen so hard for the tornado sirens that my ears hurt. I want confirmation that it’s going to be bad.
✧
Around this time, my sister and I like to go out in the woods and pretend we’re orphans. I find sticks as thick as our own legs to build our shelter, and lean them against a big tree to create a triangular space just big enough for the two of us to sit knee to knee. I weave leafy branches through the spaces in between, enough so that during the day the space is cool and dark, and when the sun goes down it stays a little warmer, and we start to feel like it could actually protect us from danger. My sister gathers plants and pretend-cooks and I pretend to eat them. But we know enough about real danger to step around the red-stemmed poison ivy. We know too the difference between poisonous berries and the tiny, tart blackberries we pull off the prickly bushes, almost always too sour and seedy but every now and then we find one so sweet—a dimeful of sugar.
My mother tells us much later, when we’re adults, that it hurt her feelings that we liked to play orphan so much. Perhaps she could sense the future, when she would be her own orphan—mother gone, no husband, sister and daughters moved away. We tell her it’s got nothing to do with her, and it’s the truth. But maybe we could sense the future too and it made us feel good to think that, if things went badly for all of us, we could make a plan, take care of ourselves, take shelter.
My mother tells us much later, when we’re adults, that it hurt her feelings that we liked to play orphan so much. Perhaps she could sense the future, when she would be her own orphan—mother gone, no husband, sister and daughters moved away. We tell her it’s got nothing to do with her, and it’s the truth. But maybe we could sense the future too and it made us feel good to think that, if things went badly for all of us, we could make a plan, take care of ourselves, take shelter.
✧
The tornado broadcasts became so common that we got sick of Taryn Asher and her bright-toothed warnings of danger. Our drawers rattled with dying and dead D-batteries. A tornado did come along, following the highway Old-23 and tearing a scar through a forest only two miles from our house. Still the cans of beans stacked in a dank corner of our basement remained unopened.
In my bedroom, I pushed my bed underneath the window. Anytime the wind yowled up the hill, I measured the swing of the branches as a metronome to my rushed pulse. I practiced my disaster stories.
In my bedroom, I pushed my bed underneath the window. Anytime the wind yowled up the hill, I measured the swing of the branches as a metronome to my rushed pulse. I practiced my disaster stories.
✧
Several years after the tornado on Old-23, on the bottom step of the basement stairs, my mother would tell us that she and my father were getting divorced. I can’t remember why we were in the basement, no tornado except for this one. Perhaps upstairs would have been too warm, too homey. There’d been no big fight like I’d seen in the movies, no dishes thrown at the wall, no slamming doors or suitcases piled by the door.
My mother sat nearly motionless and my father was crumpled against the wall and my brain wasn’t working right. My solid father leaned sideways like the dead tree in our front yard and cried into his hands. Here my brain turns to TV static and, though there must have been talk, I only see my father, trying to be quiet and trying to stop himself from crying but unable to. I felt nothing, nothing, nothing, except for something boiling in the middle of my chest, something ready to scream out of my mouth and shake their stupid, serious faces.
I stepped up to stand above where my father sat. I didn’t want to look at him anymore. Instead I looked down at his bald spot, remembered once when my baby cousin had come up to him carrying a brown marker, wanting to fill in his missing hair.
Now, I can track up to this scene by following their years of silence like a string of dead bulbs. But then, with their feet on the cold basement floor, gallons of water and cans of beans stacked in the corner, it seemed impossible that we should feel so unprepared. I cannot remember the rest of that day, and the many ways we must’ve tried to be normal again.
My mother sat nearly motionless and my father was crumpled against the wall and my brain wasn’t working right. My solid father leaned sideways like the dead tree in our front yard and cried into his hands. Here my brain turns to TV static and, though there must have been talk, I only see my father, trying to be quiet and trying to stop himself from crying but unable to. I felt nothing, nothing, nothing, except for something boiling in the middle of my chest, something ready to scream out of my mouth and shake their stupid, serious faces.
I stepped up to stand above where my father sat. I didn’t want to look at him anymore. Instead I looked down at his bald spot, remembered once when my baby cousin had come up to him carrying a brown marker, wanting to fill in his missing hair.
Now, I can track up to this scene by following their years of silence like a string of dead bulbs. But then, with their feet on the cold basement floor, gallons of water and cans of beans stacked in the corner, it seemed impossible that we should feel so unprepared. I cannot remember the rest of that day, and the many ways we must’ve tried to be normal again.
✧
When my mother was eight, her father, sipping tepid coffee, watched a tornado rip across their back yard through the picture window in their living room. After the sky turned from green to blue, they went out to check on their property. Their 15-foot motorhome trailer was wrapped around a fat oak like a ribbon. Their house was unchanged. Their neighbor’s house was gone. There was no reason for the tornado to choose the neighbors instead of them, the destruction random as a coin flip.
“All that was left was two bricks,” my mother told me. Even so, it takes seeing the movie Twister for my sister to become so afraid of tornados that a breezy day or a sky that wasn’t quite the right color blue would start her screaming. She was afraid of being torn out of my parents’ arms, up and out of the basement. We were always waiting for the coin to flip, for the tornado to turn toward us.
“All that was left was two bricks,” my mother told me. Even so, it takes seeing the movie Twister for my sister to become so afraid of tornados that a breezy day or a sky that wasn’t quite the right color blue would start her screaming. She was afraid of being torn out of my parents’ arms, up and out of the basement. We were always waiting for the coin to flip, for the tornado to turn toward us.
✧
Now, I am in love with The Weather Channel. Every morning I check the weather for everywhere my family lives: parents in Michigan, sister in North Carolina, aunt and cousin in Massachusetts, more cousins in DC and Florida; then for everywhere I’ve ever lived: Michigan, Boston, Spain, California. Sometimes in the fall or spring they are all within ten degrees of each other and it makes me feel like I have some sort of plan, some sort of control over what might happen. No, that’s not right. The synchronicity of weather makes me think that the day might feel the exact same to my mother stepping outside to get her mail, to my sister carrying her coffee mug to her car on her way to work, to my host mother making coffee for her son Diego, and to me walking to the grocery store. Really, weather is just weather—but isn’t it the same wind blowing everywhere?
✧
For a while after they divorce my father lives in his boss’s winter home while his boss is away in Florida. My sister and I like going over there even though it means we have to shuttle back and forth. Our house now feels like the gash in the woods from the Old-23 tornado, even though it looks mostly the same, with some furniture missing: the loveseat, my father’s brown easy chair. We like the borrowed house because it’s a mansion. It has a metal, spiral staircase leading up through all three stories, a full-sized basketball court in the basement, and a TV wider than I am tall, the biggest I’ve ever seen. But this house too is mostly empty, since no one really lives here.
At night my sister and I watch Friends on the big TV while our father naps in a chair, a bowl of hot popcorn between us. Every 30 seconds one of us hears something and whips around, peering into the dark, open foyer where the hulking grand piano stands. It’s always nothing.
In the middle of the first week my sister drags her mattress into my room. We’re both in middle school and we’ve never shared a room before. Neither of us mention that. We try to make plans for what to do next, but neither of us know how. The house still creaks but for now we can both sleep.
At night my sister and I watch Friends on the big TV while our father naps in a chair, a bowl of hot popcorn between us. Every 30 seconds one of us hears something and whips around, peering into the dark, open foyer where the hulking grand piano stands. It’s always nothing.
In the middle of the first week my sister drags her mattress into my room. We’re both in middle school and we’ve never shared a room before. Neither of us mention that. We try to make plans for what to do next, but neither of us know how. The house still creaks but for now we can both sleep.
✧
When we are twenty-five my boyfriend and I move to California, where we rent a sunny second-floor apartment, south of San Francisco. No one has a basement around here. The epicenter of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake is only twenty minutes northwest of our street. That 7.8-magnitude earthquake destroyed nearly 80% of the city, killed at least 3,000. People felt the shock from Oregon down to Los Angeles, as far east as Nevada. Scientists on The Discovery Channel say it’s about time for another big one, though no one around here seems all that worried.
I like to plan. Need to plan. Every day I check the weather, choose my clothes, my meals, my 45-minute commute, how long I’ll exercise, and don’t do well when things don’t go right. I plan because I know even tornado sirens don’t always come soon enough. There is no earthquake warning. I ask my native Californian friends what to do in an earthquake, and they shrug. They say, go outside, hope something doesn’t fall on you. They are fascinated by tornadoes, but I can’t understand how they can be so unafraid—for an earthquake, there’s no emergency plan, no safe space. For many months we are too afraid to even hang pictures, and the empty white walls feel safer that way, like we could leave in a moment if we have to, like no one really lived here at all.
I like to plan. Need to plan. Every day I check the weather, choose my clothes, my meals, my 45-minute commute, how long I’ll exercise, and don’t do well when things don’t go right. I plan because I know even tornado sirens don’t always come soon enough. There is no earthquake warning. I ask my native Californian friends what to do in an earthquake, and they shrug. They say, go outside, hope something doesn’t fall on you. They are fascinated by tornadoes, but I can’t understand how they can be so unafraid—for an earthquake, there’s no emergency plan, no safe space. For many months we are too afraid to even hang pictures, and the empty white walls feel safer that way, like we could leave in a moment if we have to, like no one really lived here at all.
✧
It turns out that in California, people are far more afraid of rain than earthquakes. One December, after three years of one of the worst droughts in California history, farmers checked the forecast and saw they might not have to close up and leave town just yet. 4.6 inches of rain fell in my neighborhood. 4.6 inches means nonstop pouring rain for nearly 48 hours straight, and days when the light reminded me of the Midwest, the kind of gray that makes you feel like the sun never came all the way up.
I was thrilled. I found I missed weather that was something other than mild, weather that you made you feel like something big could happen. Highway 280 closed down because parts of the freeway were flooded. Some roads dug under railroad tracks drowned a few cars, but no people. Schools all over were cancelled; people’s bosses told them to work from home. Kayakers brought their boats to flooded parking lots and enjoyed their new lakes. Newscasters tripped over themselves to warn us about wet roads and showed stills of broken umbrellas abandoned on the street.
But soon I got indignant and self-righteous. A few inches of rain and everyone is losing their goddamn minds? What did these people know about weather? They hadn’t had to practice tornado drills in elementary school like we had. We knew the drills were coming and that they were pretend but the still the loud buzz of the siren made my heart pound. We’d file out into the hallways and sit down in a line, up against the cold lockers, knees to the floor. Sometimes I would sit next to a boy that I liked and our knees would touch a little. We clasped our hands over the backs of our heads, maybe with a heavy science textbook over our skinny necks, maybe not, so much like the old atomic bomb drills that none of us knew about yet. Even though I’d grown up swimming in dirty lakes and in oceans and knew how strong water could be, I was mad at everyone for being so afraid. Somehow, I felt protective of the bad weather. The weather was bad; the weather was Midwestern; the weather was me; buck up and take it.
But the truth is, cycles of drought and flood are as much a part of California’s history as tornadoes and thunderstorms are Michigan’s. There is no prize for fear or for fearlessness. The storms continue to come.
I was thrilled. I found I missed weather that was something other than mild, weather that you made you feel like something big could happen. Highway 280 closed down because parts of the freeway were flooded. Some roads dug under railroad tracks drowned a few cars, but no people. Schools all over were cancelled; people’s bosses told them to work from home. Kayakers brought their boats to flooded parking lots and enjoyed their new lakes. Newscasters tripped over themselves to warn us about wet roads and showed stills of broken umbrellas abandoned on the street.
But soon I got indignant and self-righteous. A few inches of rain and everyone is losing their goddamn minds? What did these people know about weather? They hadn’t had to practice tornado drills in elementary school like we had. We knew the drills were coming and that they were pretend but the still the loud buzz of the siren made my heart pound. We’d file out into the hallways and sit down in a line, up against the cold lockers, knees to the floor. Sometimes I would sit next to a boy that I liked and our knees would touch a little. We clasped our hands over the backs of our heads, maybe with a heavy science textbook over our skinny necks, maybe not, so much like the old atomic bomb drills that none of us knew about yet. Even though I’d grown up swimming in dirty lakes and in oceans and knew how strong water could be, I was mad at everyone for being so afraid. Somehow, I felt protective of the bad weather. The weather was bad; the weather was Midwestern; the weather was me; buck up and take it.
But the truth is, cycles of drought and flood are as much a part of California’s history as tornadoes and thunderstorms are Michigan’s. There is no prize for fear or for fearlessness. The storms continue to come.
✧
One night, two years after we’ve moved to California, my boyfriend, a few of our friends, and I head south to Fremont Peak, away from the light pollution of San Francisco and San Jose, to watch the Perseid meteor shower. At 3,000 feet, after midnight, the temperature is near freezing. We lay out blankets and sleeping bags to watch the sky and huddle together, shoulders in a line. Every time a meteor sparks across the sky, we point up like we are children and ask each other, “Did you see that?” We like the brightest ones best, the ones that look the most dangerous, like they might make it to Earth.
After a little while the observatory creaks and the ground starts to rumble. My first thought is construction equipment, but I realize a second later that can’t be right. We’re feeling an earthquake. The ground trembles under our backs like there is a monster underneath, trying to get out. Terror shoots electric through my body and I can feel it in my friends beside me too; our hearts are 73% water and we are livewires; we are conductive. There’s nothing we can do to prepare. There’s nowhere for us to go.
Out of nowhere, everyone starts laughing.
Note: I consulted the following article for this essay: Mitchell, H.H., Hamilton, T.S., Steggerda F.R., and Bean, H.W. “The Chemical Composition of the Adult Human Body and Its Bearing on the Biochemistry of Growth.” The Journal of Biological Chemistry 158 (1945): 625-637. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.
After a little while the observatory creaks and the ground starts to rumble. My first thought is construction equipment, but I realize a second later that can’t be right. We’re feeling an earthquake. The ground trembles under our backs like there is a monster underneath, trying to get out. Terror shoots electric through my body and I can feel it in my friends beside me too; our hearts are 73% water and we are livewires; we are conductive. There’s nothing we can do to prepare. There’s nowhere for us to go.
Out of nowhere, everyone starts laughing.
Note: I consulted the following article for this essay: Mitchell, H.H., Hamilton, T.S., Steggerda F.R., and Bean, H.W. “The Chemical Composition of the Adult Human Body and Its Bearing on the Biochemistry of Growth.” The Journal of Biological Chemistry 158 (1945): 625-637. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.
Jill Kolongowski teaches writing and is the managing editor at YesYes Books. Her essays have won Sundog Lit’s First Annual Contest series and the Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Nonfiction at Lunch Ticket magazine. Other essays are published in Sweet: A Literary Confection, Forklift, Ohio, Southern Indiana Review, Fugue, and elsewhere. Jill is currently working on an essay collection, watching Chopped marathons, and fearing earthquakes in a sunny apartment south of San Francisco.