When We Believed in Mermaids(96)

Leaning back against the wall, I wonder what that must have been like. My father was almost fifteen years older than her, and at first totally obsessed with her.

When had he started taking lovers? When did she find out?

It makes me sad.

Out of nowhere comes a memory of when I was only four or five. My mother and I sat together on the vast patio of the restaurant and watched the ocean. She sang to me, a ballad about a mermaid who warned sailors of a shipwreck. A knot in my chest aches as the vision unspools—the waves crashing, the quiet moon, her voice and her arms around me.

Mama.

The day of the earthquake, we were in downtown Santa Cruz. She bought me ice cream, not because I liked it but because she did. I was stunned and sad, my uterus cramping after the violent cleansing it had just undergone, and she was uncharacteristically silent. “Are you okay?” she asked at last.

I shook my head, fighting tears. “I’m so sad.”

She reached over and took my hand. “I know, sweetie. I am too. One day, when the time is right, you’ll have babies, and I’ll be a grandmother who spoils them rotten.”

The pounding ache in my chest spread through my body, pulsing hard in my throat with an almost unbearable pressure. “But this one—”

“I know, sweetheart. But you’re barely fifteen.”

And that was when the earthquake started. It wasn’t like we’d never experienced one before, but you could hear this one coming, rumbling beneath the surface of the ground, coming toward us. The first wave hit the building with a slamming bang, knocking cutlery and glassware and baked goods from the counter onto the floor. Almost at the same second, the plate glass window next to us shattered, and my mother grabbed my arm and yanked me violently out of my chair to haul me toward the door. Before we got there, the ceiling started falling down, crashing around us, and a big chunk smashed into my head, knocking me down. My mom’s hand was ripped out of mine, and I screamed for her, feeling like I would faint, like my heart would stop beating.

She bent down and hauled my arm around her neck. “Hold on!” She dragged me to my feet, and we staggered outside, but even there, it was loud, and people were screaming, and things were breaking, falling, groaning all around us.

Blood spilled into my eye, and I pressed a hand to the throbbing spot on my head. It was a big cut, and blood was soon leaking down my arm. My mom was holding on to me, hard, as the world shook itself apart around us. It was violent and loud, and I was trying not to pass out. It seemed like it went on and on and on, though later they said it was only fifteen seconds.

When it finally slowed to a stop, my mom let go of holding me so tightly as she looked around.

She said, “Jesus wept,” and I had to see too.

The air was filled with dust and debris, making it dark, and it looked like a bomb had hit, with the front of buildings crumbled into individual bricks on the sidewalk. One building looked like it had imploded. People were crying, and somebody howled, and I saw a man who was so dusty, he looked like he’d walked into an exploding bag of flour. Alarms were going off. I smelled gas.

My head hurt loudly, with a noise to it, and the blood dripped to the ground from my elbow. A woman hurried over and tugged off her sweater. “Sit down before you faint,” she ordered, and pressed the sweater to my head. “Mom, you need to sit down too.”

“Oh my God!” my mom cried, and she was literally crying, shaking so hard that when she reached for me, it made me think of the shivering of the earth, and I moaned, ducking away. She sank down beside me. “You need to go to the hospital.”

“We need to call Kit!” I cried. If it was this bad here, what happened at Eden? Panic squeezed my lungs so hard that I couldn’t catch my breath, and I grabbed my mom’s wrist hard. “Kit!”

“I will; I will.” Mom stood up, stared around her, looked at me. “You’re bleeding so badly, I don’t want to leave you.”

The woman lifted the sweater. “Yep, you’re going to need a bunch of stitches. Can you walk?”

I tried to stand up, but another wave of noise and shaking overtook us, knocking me down. Someone started screaming again, in little bursts. My mom was on her hands and knees. “The hospital is too far away. We need to call an ambulance.”

“Every ambulance within a hundred miles is going to be busy.”

“Let’s just stay here. They’ll be down here soon enough.”

The woman had the air of someone who was used to getting things done. She hesitated, looking around us, then sank down beside me. “You’re right.”

A roar filled my head. “Kit and Dad! We need to call them!”

“Yes. Right. I need to call home,” Mom said. “I’m going to try to find a phone.”

I nodded, but I was feeling dizzy and sick, and only lolled against the planter. I was covered in blood, and my gut was cramping in rhythmic waves that mimicked the earthquake or maybe the ocean.

My mom came back, looking sick. “No answer.”

And there was nothing to do but wait. Wait while people staggered by, while they tried to drive cars that couldn’t go anywhere because the streets were broken into waves, while little kids screamed at the top of their lungs. While the smell of smoke filled the air and increased the darkness, and sirens finally wailed into the space, carrying police and EMTs who assessed the injuries of the people scattered like more litter around the area.