Torn Away

by Jennifer Brown

  Marin nodded, already sucked in.

  “That’s pretty much what this game is about. You want the kings and queens to get married.”

  The storm had moved through, Marin and I playing Sixty-Six and then Go Fish. When we started playing solitaire, I told her that technically, solitaire was a game for one person, not two. She’d argued that we were playing our own kind of solitaire, the kind that two people play, so I’d dubbed the game Couples Solitaire and had gone with it. The wind beating the rain against our house went unnoticed by my sister. The hail that dropped for a few seconds was totally ignored. Even the thunder didn’t register with anything more than a concerned upward glance as she held a fan of cards in her pudgy hand.

  That was all it ever took with Marin. Just some time together. Just some attention. I could make her day by saying hello to her. I could have made her so happy if I’d just once gotten off the couch and danced with her.

  I flicked on the flashlight and smoothed out the foil gum wrapper. I drew a picture of a stick figure with its hands over its ears, a window behind the figure streaked with dashes of rain.

  Marin hates thunderstorms, I wrote.

  I drew a vertical line down the center of the foil and drew a hand holding some playing cards. I colored in the tiny fingernails. Marin always had polished fingernails.

  Marin likes thunderstorms sometimes, I wrote underneath.

  I studied my artwork appreciatively and then folded the foil into a tiny square and stuck it in the zippered pocket, along with the other I’d drawn.

  The thunder crashed again, a flash of lightning blooming brightness into the basement, and I jumped.

  I grabbed the deck of cards I’d found alongside the towels in the dresser drawer. I opened the box and pulled out the cards, idly wondering if my deck from Noaychjon was buried under rubble upstairs or if it was blown away. If the dresser was gone entirely. Or if it sat there, pristine and untouched amid the debris the way Marin’s purse had been.

  I counted the cards, pulling out the jokers, and when I was satisfied that I had a full deck, I shuffled them and laid them out in a line.

  For you, Marin, I thought, beginning my first game of solitaire. And for Couples Solitaire.

  I played hand after hand, winning some, losing others, cheating a couple times so I wouldn’t have to redeal. I played until my eyes were tired and my fingers were lazy and the flashlight beam began to dull, making me squint to see the numbers.

  I slapped the cards on the floor, all the while wondering what the next day would hold for me. Kolby would be gone. My cell phone would probably still be useless, if it even had battery left. I would be hungry and thirsty and dirty. I would spend some time digging through broken stuff that used to be our belongings, our treasures. I would worry and wonder and wait for Mom.

  Eventually, the storm picked up, the rain hammering against the ground and the wind raking it farther and farther into the basement. I tired of my game and gathered the cards together, stuffing them into the box, then putting the box back in Marin’s purse. As the lightning flashes came closer and closer together, I wound myself up in my blanket and stretched out over the couch cushions, falling asleep almost immediately, trying to push my worries about the next day out of my head.

  Hoping for a miracle.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  I awoke to a voice.

  “Dear Jesus,” it said, and I opened my eyes to the underside of the pool table, unsure where I was. I had been dreaming about school—I’d been at the lunch table with Dani and Jane, but none of us could find any food and I was so thirsty—and for a few seconds I had forgotten about the tornado. But then the voice, anguished, got closer. “Jersey?”

  I was fully awake then. At first I thought it was Kolby, coming down to say good-bye. But the voice was older, gruffer.

  “Ronnie?” I croaked, sitting up and letting the blanket fall off me. It was done raining but was still gray outside, and I wasn’t sure if that was because it was cloudy or because it was early.

  “Jesus,” Ronnie repeated, his breath expelling the word in a gush. “Oh, God.”

  I slid out from under the pool table and rushed to him, wrapping my arms around his waist, which I’d never done before. Marin was constantly climbing all over her dad, but I’d always sensed a barrier there—he wasn’t my father, so hugging him felt weird and awkward. Too close.

  Now part of me needed to hold on to him, if for no other reason than to prove to myself that he was really standing there. It wasn’t my imagination. Ronnie was real and he was standing in the basement. The tornado hadn’t gotten him.

  I buried my face in his chest and sobbed with relief. Ronnie rested his hands tentatively on the backs of my shoulders and at first he made shushing noises, like he used to do when Marin was a cranky infant, but after a while I was pretty sure he was crying, too.

  Finally, I pulled away, rubbing my blurry eyes. Ronnie turned, his hands on his hips, and surveyed the basement, taking deep, sniffling breaths through his nose.

  “Gone,” he said. “Everything.”

  “Where were you?” I had so many things I wanted to ask and say, and I wasn’t sure where to begin. “Have you heard from Mom? Is your phone working? Where are they? What are we gonna do?”

  He scuffed over toward his workbench—or where his workbench used to be, as it was now covered with most of the kitchen—and kicked something metal. His curses echoed over the clanging, then he kicked something else.

  I stepped forward tentatively. What had once been puddles of rainwater on the floor was now one big pool, and Ronnie was standing right in the middle of it.

  “Goddamn, everything is gone!” he shouted, and crashed through a pile of broken dishes with the heel of his boot. “All of it!”

  “Ronnie,” I said. “Have you heard from Mom? Is she okay?”

  He turned, and it was only then that I noticed how horrible he looked. Probably at least as bad as I did. Grungy, sweaty, stubble coating his chin, his hair greasy. His face was red and his nose was running right down over his top lip. His eyes were bloodshot like he hadn’t had any sleep in days. Or like he’d done a lot of crying. He stared at me as if he didn’t recognize me.

  “No,” he finally said.

  “No, you haven’t heard from her, or no, she’s not okay? Where’ve you been?”

  “Ah, God,” he said, turning his face down to the floor and taking a few breaths. Then he looked up at me again. “You’ve been here alone this whole time?”

  “Here and Miss Janice’s,” I said. “But I’m okay. I had Kolby.”

  This was not Ronnie the way Ronnie usually was. That Ronnie was steady, even-tempered, quiet. This Ronnie was vacant and frantic and seemed ready to bust open.

  “Is there anything worth saving?” he asked. “Have you looked through?”

  “Some. But no, not really.” I didn’t tell him about Marin’s purse. He’d probably think it was unimportant, anyway. “I haven’t been to the other side. With the bedrooms.”

  He rubbed one hand over his chin. “I can’t… I can’t…” he repeated to himself a couple times. “Do you want to look for anything? Clothes or anything?”

  I thought about all the rain we’d had. How it had smelled out there yesterday afternoon, with the May sun baking a mildewy stench into everything. I couldn’t imagine that anything I had would be worth saving. But still I nodded.

  I followed Ronnie outside, bringing along my backpack, inside of which I’d stuffed Marin’s purse.

  Together, we walked around the leaning front wall of the house, to the side where our bedrooms used to be. To my surprise, two interior walls remained standing. One in Marin’s room, and one in mine. Of course, the outside walls were gone, so most of our stuff was tossed and spun and pulled out and torn.

  I scaled the mountain of mess to get into my room, and Ronnie walked around the interior wall to where his and Mom’s room would have been. I heard some muffled exclamations, and clanks and thu
ds as if he was pushing or kicking or throwing things out of his way.

  I pulled on some boards and tossed them, the way I’d done with Kolby the day before. I found a couple of old CDs, some clothes that had been stuffed in the back of my dresser, and—thank God—my cell phone charger. I found some old ribbons from elementary-school field competitions, but those didn’t seem important to me anymore—or at least not important enough to keep. In fact, not much of anything in my room seemed all that important anymore. Not after everything that had happened.

  But as I stepped over my bookshelf, which had tipped and spilled books everywhere, something shiny caught my eye. I bent to pick it up.

  It was a porcelain kitten—a black-and-white one with great staring blue eyes and a big, curvy 6 across its chest. I wiped the grit off it and held it up. It was in perfect condition, which seemed impossible.

  I’d had sixteen of them—one for every birthday. Each kitten was different. Each one fragile and shiny, and each holding a large number across its chest. They came in the mail, always a few days before my birthday, always in a plain manila envelope, always wrapped in the comics section of the newspaper, and with no return address.

  Marin never got a single one.

  Mom’s mouth turned down at the corners every time one showed up, her face deepening into a bitter frown. I assumed they were from my father. Guilt gifts, I’d come to think of them. His way of pretending he hadn’t abandoned me after all.

  But secretly I loved those kittens, and hung on to a warm hope that maybe the kittens meant my father did care a little bit. Like maybe they were a secret message that he still wanted to be connected. That maybe he’d only meant to leave her, not me. Sometimes the kittens felt like the only connection I had to half of myself.

  “I want a kitten,” Marin had screeched when I’d gotten the last one. “I want a real kitten. A gray-and-white one with blue eyes. Can I get a kitten, Mommy?” My mom had rolled her eyes as, for the next two months, Marin had begged and begged for a kitten of her own.

  “Ronnie’s allergic,” Mom had always said. “We can’t afford a kitten. And they puke in the house. Who’s gonna clean up the hairballs and the litter box? Not me, and certainly not you girls.”

  I could understand why Marin wanted a kitten of her own. I had a whole collection of them.

  Carefully, I set the kitten down with the CDs, then used both hands to right the bookshelf it had once been sitting on, hoping to find the others. Instead, all I found was broken porcelain. Shiny pieces of trash. Six was the only survivor.

  I heard the wooden clonk of boards being flung on top of boards over where Ronnie was, and decided I’d looked enough. I was tired and thirsty and I wanted out of there. I stumbled over a sneaker, which set me on a frantic search for its twin. I found it a few feet away, under a plastic-coated wire shelf that was normally housed in the hall bathroom. I cradled the shoes in my arms, excited for them to dry out so I could take off Ronnie’s boots. Then I gathered up the clothes and the phone charger, pushed the kitten into my pocket, and headed to Ronnie.

  “I’m ready,” I said as I rounded the wall. “I didn’t find much.…”

  But I trailed off when I saw my stepdad, who was squatting next to the bed—which, oddly, didn’t appear to have moved an inch—his face pressed into the mattress, his hands holding something on top of it. He was crying, his whole body shaking.

  I took a step forward and saw what he was holding—a framed wedding photo of him and Mom.

  “Ronnie?” I said, but my heart had shriveled and fallen down into my toes. I knew. Right then I knew that my only miracle had been waking up to the word “Jesus” this morning. I knew there would be no other good news.

  I knew that Mom and Marin were gone.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  On the day of the tornado, Ronnie had been delayed at work by an irate customer who wouldn’t leave until she’d had her say, no matter how ominous the sky looked. Normally, this wouldn’t have bothered Ronnie too much, because he understood that when you managed a hardware chain store, you didn’t ever get out at the time you were supposed to get out. You got angry customers, or guys late in returning the rental flatbeds, or indecisive women who sauntered into the store five minutes before closing and stared at the mailbox display for half an hour.

  But with the sky looking so ominous, he was anxious to get the customer out of the store so he could get home. There was a storm coming, and the weather radio had been saying the possibility of tornadoes was high.

  Ronnie was like everyone else in Elizabeth—he didn’t get too worked up about storms. But this one felt different somehow. Ronnie said he couldn’t explain it. He felt uneasy, and like he needed to get home to me and Mom and Marin before the bad weather hit.

  But he’d gotten delayed. And by the time he’d hit the highway, it was too late.

  “I could see it from the road,” he told me, the two of us sitting in shadows in our motel room. Neither of us had bothered to turn on the light. Neither of us would bother to turn it on for the whole next day, either. I think we were each afraid to see the other, afraid that our brokenness would become contagious if we shined light on it. “I’ve seen videos of tornadoes before, but, Jersey, I’ve never seen anything like this. It was huge. Had all these little tornadoes circling it, too. The thing was so big it looked like it could swallow the whole world.”

  It did, I thought. It swallowed my whole world. But I didn’t say anything aloud. I sat on my bed, staring at the wallpaper across the room, unsure whether the design was pineapples or diamonds, and listened.

  “I tried to beat it home, I really did,” he said. “But it kind of veered off toward me and I had to stop the truck. Everybody was stopping their cars in the middle of the highway and running as fast as they could to the underpass. So that’s where I went, too.” He shifted forward, resting his elbows on his knees so that his words fell directly to the floor. “It never went over us. But I could feel it. The wind, I mean. It was so loud. And it had… I don’t know… a smell to it. Like… electricity or something.”

  Immediately I was taken back to my spot under the pool table, the wind roaring around me, tugging at my clothes, my hair. Like it was alive.

  “I keep thinking about your mom,” he said. “And Marin.” And once again he was choked with sobs, as he had been off and on since I’d come up behind him in the wreckage of his bedroom. “They must have been so scared.”

  Rescuers had found them yesterday, not too far from where Kolby and I had been standing. Apparently, when the storm had started rolling in, Janice had decided that their building was too full of windows to be safe, and since it had no basement, everyone had rushed across the street to Fenderman’s Grocery. Ronnie said he thought maybe they were hoping to get into the milk cooler.

  But they didn’t make it in time.

  Janice and three others survived. Three of the moms had crawled out of the downed building, crying weakly for help. Janice had not yet regained consciousness. None of the little girls in Marin’s class made it. Not one.

  According to Ronnie, rescuers rushed to Fenderman’s Grocery right away, picking through the massive bulk under the curtain of rain, until the one remaining emergency siren—the one too far on the other end of town for us to hear on our end—cranked up another tornado warning and they’d been forced to take cover. In the morning, after the sun came out and only hours before Kolby and I were trekking toward Sixth Street, a crowd of helpers—including my stepdad—fell on Fenderman’s again. They found eleven employees—alive and well—wedged inside one of the walk-ins. And in the aisles heading toward the walk-ins they’d found everyone else. Including Mom and Marin, who were buried under a massive shelf of canned goods.

  Marin’s hands were over her ears, Ronnie said. Mom had been lying over her, trying to protect her.

  I thought about all the times I’d told Marin that the storm was fine. That it was only noise. That it couldn’t hurt her as long as she was inside
.

  I wondered if she’d remembered I’d told her those things. I wondered if she’d died feeling like I’d lied to her.

  Is the noise fine, Jersey? Is it over?

  Yes, Marin, you’ll be fine. It’s just noise.

  Dance the East Coast Swing with me, Jersey! Miss Janice taught us. It’s fun!

  No! Go away! You’re blocking the TV!

  But the noise…

  It’s fine! Just go!

  Three moms had made it out. But none of them were my mom. It seemed impossible that the same wind that had left my fragile porcelain kitten untouched could have destroyed the flesh and bone of my mother.

  “Where are they now?” I asked Ronnie, closing my eyes. The stupid wallpaper design had imprinted itself into my eyelids—purple blobs against the black.

  “At the morgue,” he said. “I went to the hospital, but it was chaos in there. So many people. And a lot of people still missing. So I went home and you weren’t there. I had no idea where you were and I thought maybe you’d gone with your mom and sister to dance class, so I went back to Fenderman’s to try and find you. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “I was looking for them, too,” I said, a big tear rolling down my cheek. In my mind flashed a thousand images. Images of my mom and me, all the fun things we did, all the times she made me feel special and loved and happy. Images of Marin, who was so sweet and innocent and who I resented for being the baby, even though I knew it wasn’t her fault. She looked up to me and wanted me to accept her as a person. She wanted me to say she was cool. She wanted me to look up to her, too.

  I realized that the worst part of someone you love dying suddenly isn’t the saying good-bye part. It’s the part where you wonder if they knew how much you loved them. It’s the part where you hope you said and did enough good stuff to make up for the bad stuff. It’s the part where there are no second chances, no going back, no more opportunities to tell them how you feel about them.

  At some point I drifted off, and though I woke a few times to the coarse sobs of my stepdad in the bed next to mine, I slept better than I had in two days. I’d showered and changed into the clothes I’d picked up at home. I’d used the toilet and had eaten a hamburger that Ronnie had fetched for me. And it felt like forever since I had been in a bed.