I Survived the Great Molasses Flood, 1919

by Lauren Tarshis

Carmen stood there for what felt like hours, until she was so tired she had to sit down. She chose a spot under a tree and gazed out at the ships in the harbor. Again, she thought of Papa.

  It had been Papa’s dream to come to America.

  But now Papa was gone — and so was the life they’d built.

  Maybe the Grassos were right, Carmen realized.

  Maybe it was time to go back to Italy. To her old life. To where she could be with Nonna.

  Carmen leaned against the tree. She imagined her grandmother’s arms around her. Then she closed her eyes and fell into a restless sleep.

  Carmen’s eyes snapped open and she scrambled to her feet.

  She thought she’d dozed off for a minute or two. But now the day was very bright. And warm. She unbuttoned her coat and looked around. Some men were on benches with open lunch pails.

  It must be past noon!

  Carmen couldn’t believe she’d slept so long!

  Everyone must be worried about her. She had to get back to the Grassos’ apartment. Or maybe she should go to school. Maybe she should …

  And then her insides turned to jelly.

  Where was Rosie?

  Carmen whirled around, but the horse was nowhere to be seen.

  What a fool Carmen was! She hadn’t tied Rosie up. And now …

  What if the horse had wandered into the busy streets? She could get hit by a motorcar — that happened all the time.

  Before Carmen knew it, she was running, screaming Rosie’s name.

  Carmen sprinted to the stable. She burst through the door and over to Rosie’s stall.

  But Rosie wasn’t there.

  “Think, Carmen, think,” she said to herself as she ran back outside. Rosie was smart. Where would she go?

  Carmen stopped and looked around. It was always so crowded down here by the water — even more packed than the streets up where Carmen lived. Men were everywhere. Trucks and wagons rumbled by.

  Carmen was sprinting to a nearby shed when she noticed her eyes were watering. Her nose was burning, too. Blech. What was that sickly-sweet smell?

  Molasses, she realized. The smell was thick in the air, worse than ever before. It even coated her throat. The molasses tank was just behind her. She turned around, and what she saw made her heart skip a beat.

  “Rosie!”

  The mare was standing at the tank, licking molasses off the sides.

  Carmen almost cried with relief as she came up next to Rosie.

  Smart horse! Carmen remembered how Rosie licked the molasses from Tony’s fingers. She must have smelled the molasses in the air and followed it right to the tank.

  “So you wanted a little snack?” Carmen said, patting Rosie’s forehead.

  The mare smacked her sticky lips. Her whiskers were dripping with goo.

  “And I guess you’re saving some for later,” Carmen said. She grabbed a handkerchief from her pocket and started wiping Rosie’s face.

  That’s when she heard it.

  GRRR guh guh gug gug GRRR guh, guh, guh, guh …

  Carmen ignored the strange growling sounds. It was just the molasses, boiling inside the tank. She knew that now.

  And then Carmen heard a familiar voice.

  “Carmen!”

  It was Tony! He was running toward her from back near the stable.

  Carmen swung herself up onto Rosie and clicked her tongue. They trotted over to meet Tony. His face was bright red, his hair damp with sweat.

  “Where have you been?” he said, his voice cracking. “We’ve been searching everywhere!”

  He looked so worried, and she could tell he’d been crying. Carmen reached down and grabbed his hand.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I …”

  But she didn’t know what to say. She felt terrible for disappearing like she had. And now she wondered: Did Tony know about the plan to send her back to Italy? Did he realize that in a week, Carmen would be gone, and they’d never see each other again?

  Just the idea of saying good-bye to Tony — to everyone — made her whole body shake.

  But wait. It wasn’t Carmen’s body that was shaking. Or Rosie’s.

  It was the ground.

  And this time she felt sure there was an earthquake. Carmen gripped Rosie’s neck tighter, expecting the ground to split apart. The horse snorted and nervously stamped her feet.

  “What’s going on?” Tony said.

  A man near them screamed out the answer, in a voice filled with panic.

  “It’s the tank!”

  GRRR guh guh gug gug GRRR guh, guh, guh, guh …

  The noise got louder and louder, drowning out the honks and rattles echoing from busy Commercial Street.

  But it wasn’t the growling gurgles that sent stabs of fear through Carmen.

  The entire tank was rocking back and forth. The rounded sides were bulging in and out.

  The metal groaned and squeaked.

  And then …

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Something small hit the ground, inches from Tony’s boot.

  Carmen stared. It was a tiny piece of metal, the size of Carmen’s finger, covered with brown syrup.

  “It’s one of the bolts!” Carmen cried.

  The bolts — rivets — that held the tank together. There were thousands of them.

  And now all the rivets seemed to let go of the tank at once.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

  They blasted through the air like bullets.

  Bang, bang, bang, bang. Bang, bang, bang, bang.

  Rosie whinnied.

  They had to get away from here!

  “Tony!” Carmen said quickly. She offered him her hand, to help him climb up onto Rosie with her.

  “Get on. Let’s go!”

  But just then a rivet came whistling through the air. It hit Rosie in the neck. She let out a high-pitched, screeching cry, then reared up as blood spurted from the wound. Carmen fell off and hit the ground hard. And before she knew it, Rosie had taken off — without Carmen.

  “Rosie!” Carmen screamed.

  Tony was at her side in a flash, pulling her up.

  “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  But Carmen didn’t have time to answer.

  Kaboom!

  The tank shattered apart. Jagged sheets of metal went whirling through the air.

  As the tank collapsed, the molasses inside seemed to hover in the air for a split second — a massive roiling cloud. And then it crashed to the ground, a colossal, churning wave.

  The gagging stench of molasses rushed up Carmen’s nose and down her throat, deep into her guts. Screams of terror pounded in her ears, shouts in English and Italian.

  “Help me!

  “Run!”

  “Get out of here!”

  Carmen couldn’t help looking back as she and Tony ran for their lives. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The wave of molasses was at least twenty feet tall, and swirling and churning in every direction. With each passing second, it devoured more of the waterfront.

  It smashed into buildings, tearing them to pieces. It picked up sheds and wagons, horses and men. The roar got louder as the wave filled with wreckage.

  She and Tony ran as fast as they could. But the wave was faster.

  Within seconds, it had caught them.

  Was this how Papa felt when the tidal wave swept up over their village? When the churning water grabbed him and Carmen and pulled them out to sea?

  No, Carmen thought. Because this wave was nothing like water. It was thick and gooey. It felt alive as it rose up around her legs. Carmen had read about a kind of snake that wrapped itself around its prey, choking it to death. Now Carmen felt like a thousand snakes were wrapping themselves around her, trying to pull her down.

  She and Tony locked eyes.

  What should they do?

  What could they do?

  It became impossible to run. Each step was a battle through the thick slime. And with every blink, t
he molasses was rising higher.

  To their waists. To their chests.

  Carmen’s clothes were soaked. The goo coated her skin. It was already hardening around her, trapping her inside a shell.

  The molasses was up to her chin now. Globs splashed into her mouth, sickly sweet, sharp and bitter. It made her think of rot — of old garbage left out in the sun, buzzing with flies, crawling with rats.

  Her stomach twisted. She was afraid she would be sick.

  She and Tony looked desperately around. But everyone near them was struggling, too. There was nobody here to help them.

  Carmen thought of Papa again, how he’d found that old shutter to float on. That’s what they needed — a piece of wreckage to keep them from sinking.

  And just then Carmen saw it: something big, made of wood. It was part of a horse wagon.

  “Tony! Grab that!” she screamed.

  There was not a second to waste. It took all of Carmen’s strength to propel herself forward through the muck. She pulled herself up on the wagon so half of her body was out of the molasses. Tony grabbed hold of the side. But before he could pull himself up, he lost his grip on the slime-covered wood.

  Carmen clung to the wagon with one hand and she reached down with the other. She managed to grab Tony’s arm, and with every last bit of strength she had, she yanked him up hard. He threw his arms over a wagon wheel, locking them together.

  The wagon bobbed and wove in the churning molasses. Terrible sounds rose up around them — cries of fear and moans of pain, the screeching of metal. Molasses coated Carmen’s face, an itching, burning, dripping mask.

  She and Tony huddled together, too terrified to talk.

  All they could do was look around in horror.

  Now Carmen knew how Dorothy felt when she fell out of that tornado and landed in the strange land of Oz.

  Except that Oz was a magical land filled with bright colors and jeweled cities.

  This strange place was a nightmare, a wasteland of rubble covered with brown slime. The destruction reminded Carmen of the pictures she’d seen in the newspapers of the battlefields of the Great War — the cities and forests of France and Belgium turned to charred ruins.

  Wagons, motorcars, and parts of buildings swirled around them.

  And people.

  A man, his shoulder badly bloodied, clung to a barrel. Another man was thrashing wildly, trying to keep his head above the surface. A woman was facedown, not moving at all.

  How many people were trapped in this flood? Dozens? Hundreds?

  Was Tony’s family safe? What about Mr. Lawrence and the kids at school?

  And what about Rosie?

  Carmen leaned harder against Tony.

  And that’s when he screamed.

  “Watch out!”

  From nowhere, a giant piece of the tank smacked into the wagon, nearly flipping it over. Tony managed to keep his grip. But Carmen slipped off.

  “Carmen!”

  Tony’s voice was the last thing she heard as the molasses swallowed her up.

  Carmen desperately kicked her legs and spun her arms. She stretched out her neck to try to get her head back above the goo. But the molasses was like quicksand. The more she flailed, the deeper she sank. Beneath the surface, claws of metal raked into her leg, splitting open her flesh. She felt her blood spill out, gushing into the swirling river that was carrying her away.

  It was no use struggling, she realized. The molasses was too strong, too powerful. How did she think she could fight back?

  The force of the flood pushed her forward. She somersaulted in the muck. She gagged and coughed, struggling to breathe through her molasses-clogged nose and mouth.

  No, she couldn’t fight this. It was impossible.

  Soon there was only darkness and pain.

  And then a voice in her mind, just a whisper at first.

  Hold on.

  It got louder.

  Hold on!

  Papa? Was he here with her?

  No. It was just his voice, calling to her. He was telling her what she needed to do. But this time Carmen was all alone in the raging flood. It would be up to her to keep herself afloat.

  And she would not give up. Not without a fight.

  She somehow managed to straighten her body. She let herself sink down until her feet touched the solid ground. Then she pushed off, propelling herself up through the goo. Her head broke through the surface. She managed to take a breath before she sank down again.

  Hold on.

  Down and up, down and up she went, over and over again.

  The fourth time she came up, she managed to open her burning eyes for just a few seconds. Long enough to see an empty wooden crate floating by her. Long enough to reach out for it. To get her arms around it.

  She held on.

  Like she had before.

  Like Papa had taught her.

  Blood spilled from her leg.

  Her heart slowed.

  The world became blurred. Sounds faded.

  But she didn’t let go.

  Not until the men found her washed up next to a smashed house, and pried her arms away.

  They wiped the molasses from her nose and lifted her up. Sirens wailed. Voices called to her. But Carmen felt very far away from the North End.

  In Carmen’s mind, she was with Papa.

  And she didn’t want to leave him.

  “Hello? Are you awake?”

  Carmen’s eyes opened.

  A woman was holding her hand.

  Was it Mrs. Grasso?

  No. This woman was very young, with red hair and freckles. She was wearing a white cap.

  A nurse, Carmen realized.

  “Hello, darling,” the nurse said, her Irish accent tickling Carmen’s ears. “I knew you were waking up.”

  Carmen looked around.

  A pink curtain surrounded her bed. She was in a hospital.

  She tried to sit up, but her leg throbbed in pain. Carmen sucked in her breath.

  “Don’t fuss too much, love,” the young nurse said. “You have quite a wound on your leg. Lost yourself quite a lot of blood. Doctors stitched you up, though. You’ll be running around soon enough.”

  “How long have I been here?” Carmen asked. Her voice was scratchy.

  The nurse fluffed Carmen’s pillow and straightened her blanket.

  “Three days.”

  Three days?

  How was that possible?

  Carmen lay back as the nurse took her pulse.

  “You’re in good shape,” the nurse said, “compared to some of the others. Who would have ever thought that a molasses tank could explode like that? The whole waterfront is gone, you know. They’re going to be cleaning up for months.”

  Carmen’s mind was clearing; it was all slowly coming back to her.

  The shattered tank. The raging river of molasses. The bodies floating by.

  Carmen sat up and gasped.

  “Tony!” she blurted out.

  What had happened to Tony?

  “Who?” the nurse said.

  “My friend, my best friend.”

  Just then, someone called from the other side of the room.

  “Nurse! We need you here!”

  “Don’t you worry, love,” the nurse said to Carmen. “You rest now. I’ll be back.”

  And she disappeared through the curtains, leaving Carmen all alone.

  But she wasn’t alone for long.

  Carmen heard them before she saw them.

  “I want to see her first!”

  “No, me!”

  “You pushed me!”

  “Did not!”

  A stampede of little footsteps clattered across the tile floor.

  The curtains flew open.

  And the three littlest Grasso kids swarmed around her bed.

  They all stared at her, six enormous brown eyes.

  Frankie broke out into a huge grin. He raised his hands up into the air.

  “She’s alive!” he bellow
ed.

  Carmen laughed.

  Mrs. Grasso came rushing after them, out of breath.

  She took one look at Carmen and started crying. But her face lit up with a smile even as the tears poured down.

  Carmen held her breath, afraid to hope.

  And then, seconds later, another face appeared.

  Battered. Scraped.

  Smiling.

  Tony.

  Carmen was getting stronger. But doctors worried about the wound on her leg. They told her she needed to stay in the hospital at least another week. Carmen was tired of lying in bed. But at least she wasn’t lonely.

  Mrs. Grasso came every day with a feast of pasta or lasagna.

  Mrs. Ortelli brought boxes of cream-filled cannoli and crunchy biscotti she shared with the nurses.

  Frankie brought his baseball cards.

  Teresa and Marie sat on Carmen’s bed, braiding her hair over and over.

  Mr. Lawrence brought books.

  Carmen missed Mr. Vita. He still wasn’t back from Connecticut. But Mr. Pallo stopped by one day.

  “You have a visitor,” Mr. Pallo said. “But she had to wait outside.”

  He helped Carmen out of bed, and to the window.

  And there, tied up in front of the hospital, was Rosie.

  “We found her near the stable,” Mr. Pallo said. “Or what was left of it.”

  The stable had been destroyed, along with the fire department and almost every other building around that part of the waterfront. Carmen couldn’t imagine how upset Mr. Vita would be. But at least his other horses were all safe; they’d been far from the North End when the flood happened. And now Carmen could see for herself that Rosie was all in one piece.

  “The cut on her neck is healing up fine,” Mr. Pallo said.

  Carmen opened the window.

  “It’s good to see you, girl!” Carmen called out to Rosie, waving.

  The horse’s ears perked up. She let out a loud, happy whinny.

  Tears sprang into Carmen’s eyes, and not only from the relief of seeing Rosie unhurt.

  Carmen realized she’d probably never ride Rosie again. Because not only would she be leaving the hospital soon. She’d also be leaving America. Nobody had mentioned that Carmen was going back to Italy. But someone would soon, Carmen was sure. Mrs. Grasso had probably already packed Carmen’s clothes.