Living in Tornado Alley

Last weekend I was captivated by the live images of tornadoes in Oklahoma. Huge tornadoes stretching towards the earth for seconds -- sometimes not even that long and then disappearing back into the churning clouds. A hog farm was taken out. I am sure most of us have seen the footage. It has been a catastrophic tornado season. Do I love tornadoes? No. Am I haunted by them? Yes.
No one in my family has ever had a basement or a cellar, but one of my earliest memories is sitting on my mom's lap in the cellar of my grandma's neighbors -- the Rileys. My knees shaking, listening to the sirens wail through the heavy, humid air. I wasn't scared. Curious is a better word. Sitting in the unfinished cellar, I wondered when we came out what we would find. Would things be upside down? Would the stereo my grandma just bought still be in the same place. Would it be in the street? What about the plants? What would happen to the dishes? When the sirens finally stopped and we emerged from the cellar, nothing had happened. Some trees had lost their branches, hail the size of baseballs had ruined some windshields, but that was all.
Fear came a few years later . . . this time we were at home -- no TV, no phone, only the radio. This is an emergency. Horses in the corral running circles and neighing to be let loose. Dogs barking. They knew something was wrong. Low, pink clouds hanging like cotton balls. My mother stands in front of the couch, talks to my dad. We have to go. It's going to hit. It doesn't matter if I'm six. I know exactly what she means. And my dad laughs. There's nothing to worry about. We're fine. She didn't listen. She had been caught in a tornado before. Once when she was a teenager, she had been working in the fields outside of Lubbock when a tornado hit. They had all lain flat amidst onions? cotton? while the tornado moved around them. She could never forget that. Of course she didn't listen to my dad. So she pulled me outside and we got in the truck, drove two miles to the neighbor's house. No one was home, but they had a cellar. It was locked. My heart nearly jumped out of my mouth. I can never forget the way the clouds started to churn. No tornado came that time either. It doesn't matter. I never felt safe in that house again.
Many years later standing in my mom's driveway my brother and I watched a tornado, thin and twisty as spaghetti spiral from the sky, drop onto the ground. It was miles away, far on the western edge of town. A rainbow formed to the east.

The Trouble With Finishing My Dissertation

When my dad used to pick me up on the weekends, this hard rock of anxiety would crystallize deep inside my belly. I wanted to see him. I did. I wanted to see him. I wanted to see my grandpa. I wanted to see my Uncle Max, my Uncle James, my Uncle Mario, my cousins Christopher and Christy. What I did not want to see was how he lived. I didn't want to see the bare mattress where he slept on the floor of a house where my mother and I no longer lived. I didn't want to see mismatched plates and cups, or an empty refrigerator, or beer bottles. And I definitely didn't want to help him feed the horses that I suspected he had always loved more than me. All I wanted was maybe a simple lunch or dinner at Pizza Hut and that was it. That never happened. Instead I would spend all week waiting for his truck to pull into the driveway. Studying. Memorizing every capital in the United States. Reading about Presidents, American Indian chiefs, important battles in Texas history. By the time his weathered truck pulled into the driveway I was ready. I was ready for the hour and a half drive to Lubbock. We drove past windmills, through towns so tiny they didn't even merit stop lights. Towns with names like Happy and Shallowater. Marty Robbins and Johnny Cash came through the static of AM radio. But not 15 minutes out of Canyon, the quiz started. Tell me about the Alamo? What really happened at Goliad? What's the capital of Vermont? Who was the 6th President? Who was Quanah Parker? And on and on. Maybe if that had been all that would have been great. Maybe if these little 90 minute history lessons had been it, that would have been just fine. But the visits stopped. I won't say I'm sorry. I didn't look forward to seeing the way he lived. I felt guilty as hell for the way he lived and because I had not been able to stop my mom from leaving in the first place. Then the phone calls started.

I have been sitting in front of my computer for four years. I struggle to write a single chapter, sometimes paragraph by paragraph, or word by word, and so many times I hear his voice. I told your mother I wouldn't pay her one red cent in child support. I know you're angry, Dad. I know we hurt you. I know I hurt you. I'm so sorry. You know I was really smart in school, too but your grandpa always pulled me out to go work. I never got to finish a single year. I know, I know. I'm so sorry, Dad. I'm so sorry. Working in the fields is so hard. It wasn't anyplace for a little kid. I don't even know how you survived.

We had these conversations. Twenty years later I know I don't deserve a life where I write, teach and never have to work really hard. My parents, my grandparents worked in fields. What have I done? I try to incorporate my father, my family into everything I write but really I know that nothing I do will ever be enough. All I want is to deserve to be his daughter, to deserve to be their granddaughter -- to write the thing that finally really says I'm so sorry.

The House of Scorpio

Annette's a Scorpio. I've never been with a water sign before. As an Aquarius I always thought it wise to stay away. Air and Water don't mix right? Just by definition doesn't air suffocate in water? But that's just astrology. I've been with people who were born under just the right configuration of stars. Those didn't work out at all. So maybe the stars don't get it all right. Or maybe it's the whole chart that matters -- rising signs and houses -- the moment of birth, the location. Every detail precise as an astronomical formula.

Until I met Annette I didn't know Scorpions were the only animal? Insect? Creature? able to sting itself to death. She thought this was the perfect metaphor for herself, she smiled over a chef salad. We ate late into the night. I already knew she had been diagnosed with lupus almost a decade ago. I had no idea that she saw her body like a scorpion's -- cells attacking each other. She sat in front of me, smiling drinking coffee, wearing low rise Juicy jeans, a white tank top, her Versace glasses slipping to the tip of her nose. Nothing about lupus seemed serious. I flare up sometimes, she said picking apart a boiled egg. It's not a big deal. Mostly my joints get a little stiff. I was taken in by the white Hane's tank stretching across perfect breasts, the crooked teeth she tried to hide. Stiff joints didn't seem so bad. I should have Googled lupus when I got home. But I didn't.

Almost three years later I know she doesn't get just a little stiff. She hates for any friends to know when she's having flares so when one erupts she removes to the house and no one can come in. She sleeps for hours and silence takes over. She refuses doctors and meds because she believes these things will pass. Most of the time, they do, but I worry. How long will this one last? Will I know when it is absolutely necessary to get her to the doctor? I figure out ways to touch her forehead, feel for a heat that shouldn't be there. The flare she is in now has lasted a couple of weeks. The fevers have been minimal, but everyday, it seems she can move a little less. I know the worst thing to do is to only talk about her illness. She hates for me to ask. She is so much more.

How can I say that conversations with her, hours with her pass like seconds. She can enchant anyone with her voice. I've watched person after person entranced by her ability to ruminate on politics, Amy Winehouse, green porn. The girl has a wide scope. It's what caught me and it's what saddens me now -- now when she cannot talk so much. Now when so much of the day is spent asleep. I close my eyes and try to imagine the red blood cells in her body regenerating -- regenerating. I will them to regenerate.