Still Life with Tornado(69)

This isn’t like the headpiece. The headpiece wasn’t the beginning of anything. The headpiece mattered but it was the end. The owl was the beginning. And now that it’s gone, I want to draw a picture of it so I can remember it. All the ruined things in my life, I want to draw. It’s like Carmen’s tornadoes. I suddenly understand her more than I ever have before. I get this feeling bigger than just anger—I think it’s rage. I think after so many years numb and quiet and smiling and faking, I am finally feeling something uncontrollable.

Let him hit me. The police are on the way. Let him smash me on the tiles in front of the woodstove. Let him just be a rat.

I push past Mom and walk into the house. Dad is standing by the shelf with all of our DVDs on it.

“You’re going to end up in jail, Dad.”

“I’m already in jail.”

“Okay.”

“Put that umbrella down!” he says. “It’s bad luck.”

“You think?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, Dad. I just know that you’re acting like a crazy person.”

“I’m not the one calling the cops.”

“Can you see yourself?” I ask. “Can you see what you just did? Look around, Dad. You have problems. Okay?”

“At least I have a high school diploma.”

I shake my head. If this is what living with Dad was like for the last twenty-some years for Mom, I don’t know how she did it. “Touché, Dad.”

He stops looking at the movies and walks toward me. Fast.

I brace myself for whatever he’s about to do but he stops short. He puts his hands in the air. Laughs. “Didn’t work. You’re just a kid. You can’t make me hit you. Bring your mother in here. She’s the one who did this. She’s the one who wrecked all your stuff.”

He reaches over and grabs my umbrella. He twists my wrist to get me to let go. He turns it inside out, rips the fabric from the metal spokes and bends the handle over his knee until it breaks.

I realize now that all my older Sarahs must have a different umbrella from this one. I could never tell the difference. I guess it doesn’t really matter what kind of umbrella you have—as long as it keeps the bullshit off you.

I hear talking outside.

I leave Dad in the living room breaking my umbrella and go to the door. Two police officers are there asking Mom about what’s going on.

I say, “He’s lost it.”

Bruce says, “Everything will be fine. Trust me. I do this all the time at work.”

The cops go inside. I am now without my umbrella. And my owl. And my dream. And my headpiece. And soon, my dad.

“I’m calling off tonight,” Mom says. “I think this qualifies as a family emergency.”





MEXICO—Day Seven: The Windmill



The drive to the airport was fast. We got picked up by a man in a white Mercedes-Benz with an off-white leather interior and it was just us—not like the van we had to take to get to the resort. We were the quietest family in Mexico inside that car. None of us said one word. Not a word. Dad sat in the front seat. Bruce had another ice pack on his jaw. Mom had slathered me in enough aloe that it wouldn’t dry and I had to sit forward in the leather backseat so I wouldn’t stick to it. Mom sat in the middle. Bruce sat to her left. I sat to her right. We both stared out our windows and Mom looked straight ahead.

The driver started talking about ten minutes into the drive and he told us about things that happened in the news in Mexico and when we passed by a part of the road that had a lagoon to the left side, he told us stories about people who go fishing in the lagoon for small crabs. “It’s so stupid!” he said. “These crabs are so small they are not worth being eaten by a crocodile.” The whole stretch of road where the lagoon was, there were white wooden crosses to mark the places where people got eaten by crocodiles—just like the way we mark places along the road in America where people died from car accidents. But there were so many. Maybe twenty. The driver told another story about a man who got drunk and fell asleep at the side of the lagoon. Crocodile ate him. Another white wooden cross on the side of the road. A tourist who stopped to take a picture of a crocodile in the lagoon. Eaten. Another cross. As we drove by a crocodile farm and zoo on the right—a tourist attraction —he told us how the workers there hold a live chicken above where the crocodiles are so the crocs jump and people can get pictures. He said twice a worker at the zoo lost his hand just so people can take a picture. He said that there was an American man suing a golf course because he played from the rough that was a swampy area near the lagoon and got his leg chewed off by a crocodile.

I was fascinated by this man’s crocodile stories, but I didn’t ask any questions. We were the quiet family. I watched the overgrown wilderness pass by me to the right. Then the entranceways with what looked like gates but with no gates—just the pillars, some crumbling and many only half standing and covered in aggressive vines—one after the other. The houses I saw were smaller than an American garden shed. There was a billboard for Coca-Cola. Stone walls around a small roadside kitchen. A cement truck. I loved the road signs. The signs for bumpy road ahead looked like boobs.

The driver said, “Do you see the windmill over there? This big, expensive windmill is not generating electricity. It’s only for that small office building there. Do you see it?” None of us answered. He kept going. “That’s what electricity it provides. Just for that building. That’s it. Three years ago we had a global market meeting. There were people from all over the world. Dignitaries, diplomats, presidents, ex-presidents, et cetera. They all stayed at the nicest hotel over there in Cancún. The meeting lasted a couple of weeks. Then, the Mexican authorities decided to put up the windmill. To show to the world and to our visitors that we are, you know, using this kind of energy. But in this part of the country, we cannot use this type of energy because we are next to the Caribbean Sea and we have rainy season also called hurricane season.” This was when I fell in love with this man’s accent. The way he said hurricane. The way he said season. The way he said windmill. “So this kind of windmill is very risky here. But in the meantime the Mexican government spent thirteen million pesos, or one million dollars. Which means that I have to work and pay taxes for a windmill that will never do me any good.”