Anna Was Here

by Jane Kurtz

  “Let’s get you home,” Cousin Caroline called to Great-aunt Lydia over the rising wind.

  I looked around. Dad was at the corner changing the letters on the sign. Great-aunt Dorcas started toward him. I scooped up a plate the wind had dumped over. I stepped toward the garbage barrel with a gnawed chicken bone in my hand and an awful thumping in my heart.

  CHAPTER 41

  Tornado!

  Dad sure liked Sunday afternoon routines. He bent and picked out a letter. Put it into its slot on the sign. I stepped a step closer. BLESSED. ARE. THE. P-E-A-

  “No call to stir things up even more,” Great-aunt Dorcas said.

  Shiverydee.

  Cousin Caroline, pushing Great-aunt Lydia’s wheelchair, stopped.

  “Hold on,” Dad said. “People like Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Moses . . .” Dad paused. “Hard history doesn’t go away simply because you don’t talk about it.”

  But Great-aunt Dorcas didn’t want to hold on. “We asked you to help heal problems, not open up old wounds.”

  “A time for every purpose under heaven,” Great-aunt Lydia said. “A time to bind up and a time to tear down. Like Katherine said.”

  “Katherine!” Great-aunt Dorcas looked like she would shake her fist at the dark sky. “Sneaking off to meet that Nickel boy in the city. Then they were gone—just like that. Broke our mother’s heart entirely.”

  “Oakwood isn’t right for everyone,” Cousin Caroline said.

  Great-aunt Dorcas wagged her finger. “Katherine broke your mother’s heart, too. No wonder she died young. No wonder you had to go off to be a cop and marry a no-good man whose crimes ended him in prison.”

  Everyone was talking at once. Cousin Caroline was saying the word judgmental and Great-aunt Lydia was saying ach, jammer and Morgan’s voice was loudest, saying, “He is not no good.” Angry words rolling, gathering up dirt and flinging it everywhere.

  Why did the Christmas angels even sing tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people? The world was still a mess!

  “Stop!” Dad shouted. Everyone got instantly quiet. “I wanted to help.” I’d never heard him mad like this before. “But everyone would rather hang on to hard feelings.” He popped his fist into his palm. “Fine. I leave you to them!”

  Whoa. What about the call? I fingered my whistle nervously. It’s terrible when your dad isn’t perfect.

  Great-aunt Lydia rocked back and forth.

  I had what I wanted. Didn’t I? “Do you mean—”

  “Yes.” Dad picked up the box. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Cousin Caroline’s hand flew up. “No,” she yelled. “Simon, stop.”

  I whirled around. I saw Simon with his hand on the cat carrier.

  A fork of lightning stabbed the sky.

  The world went wild. Midnight hissing. Rain starting down. My cat leaped from the table and streaked away.

  CHAPTER 42

  Midnight H. Cat, Where Are You?

  I tore after my cat—through the parking lot, toward the houses of Oakwood. Midnight H. Cat zigged and zagged. She paused. Crouched. Footsteps pounded, and from the corner of my eye I was pretty sure I saw Simon. My cat bounded forward and ran.

  “Midnight!” My feet slapped against the sidewalk. The edges of my mind realized how creepy green the sky had gotten. A thin, faint siren started wailing.

  That stopped me flatter than flat.

  The air was thick, and the siren held its breath. I looked up. Eerie and dark. The wailing that had sighed down to nothing started again.

  “Anna.” Dad’s voice, shouting.

  No. I had to get Midnight H. Cat.

  “Anna!”

  “No!” I hollered over the wind.

  “Anna!”

  The world went all whirly-swirly.

  Hail was pinging and stinging and cracking off cars. The siren wailed. I felt Dad’s arm go around my waist, joggle me off my feet. “Dad, wait!” I screamed.

  Dad hoisted me up. The downpour crashed onto us. Now my stomach was smooshed against Dad’s shoulder, and I felt the ground rumbling and Dad’s feet pounding. Door. Dad swung me down and shouted, “Go!”

  I was stumbling. Stairs. Run. Duck. I was a gladiator, and the beasts howled.

  I was almost at the bottom. Bricks—heaving. Table. I scrambled and clawed along the floor. Run, duck, and cover.

  The lions let out one tremendous roar. My ears popped.

  Crash!

  The taste of dust choked me. I was coughing and gasping. I groped for my whistle and blew as long and loud as I could.

  CHAPTER 43

  Luckily, Unluckily

  It was dark, and my ears rang.

  I coughed and shivered. Where was I? Where was Dad? Had we been blown to bits?

  Silence. I could hear breathing. Mine. I reached out and touched a wall.

  I was sealed in pyramid darkness.

  I was with Hope, Faith, and Charity under a bank of snow.

  Silence. Then I heard a faint scrabble. I scratched at whatever was blocking me in.

  In a minute someone else’s fingers touched mine.

  Slice of light. Someone was pulling the wall away. Fingers closed around mine. More scraping sounds. Finally I could squeeze out.

  I was lugged up the stairs I’d rush-tumbled down. Out into the air. Set down. Dad was there, kneeling, facing me. I leaned into him.

  The next minute people were all around us, talking in blur words. Unluckily, the tornado didn’t skip over Oakwood. Luckily, it wasn’t a monster tornado. Unluckily, Dad and I were in the wrong place. Luckily, a house was unlocked. Unluckily, Dad didn’t have time to get into the basement. Luckily, a fireman lived right next door. Luckily, I had my whistle.

  Did it all come down to luck after all? Or was God’s eye on the sparrow and me?

  Dad had one arm dangling in a weird way. I slumped against him and heard him asking, “Anybody badly hurt? Do we know? How’d the church do? How many houses hit? Anyone know?”

  The air still felt thick, and my brain was a fuzzy blanket. My hair was wet. I stumbled a few steps away through floating insulation ripped out of someone’s house.

  I’d been doing something important.

  Midnight H. Cat.

  A guy was standing by a car that was upside down with its wheels in the air. A woman walked up to stand by him. “That’s a misery,” she said.

  “Have you seen a black cat?” I asked them.

  Mae appeared out of nowhere. “Can I help?” she asked me. She turned to the woman. “Mrs. Yoder, do you have a flashlight?”

  Mrs. Yoder patted my shoulder. “Have you checked your own house, hon? Cats have amazing instincts for getting home.” She pointed at Dad. “And I’m driving you to the clinic right now.”

  Dad and Mae and I got into her car and rumbled the few blocks to our house, but I couldn’t get my brain working. “Look. Your tree isn’t uprooted,” Mae said. “I’ll help you while your Dad goes to the clinic.”

  The minute I was out of the car, I started calling. “Kitty, kitty?”

  “Back in a jiffy,” Mrs. Yoder called as they drove away.

  Mae and I poked and called everywhere. We were calling by where the wind had knocked the shed in the backyard into a jumble of boards when we heard the car come back. Dad’s voice was shouting, “Find anything?”

  When I got to him, I held up the green jingling mouse. “Just this.” All that was left of Midnight H. Cat. My legs were shaking like painful stumps. “Are you okay?”

  “A sprain.” He held up his sling.

  I sat on the porch while Mae helped Dad put Band-Aids on my scratches. The air had a sick-sweet gas smell to it. No wonder my head was fuzzy.

  Two Oakwood houses were destroyed, Dad said—the ones that were hit by the vortex. Luckily, they were empty. Other damage was from wind and flying debris.

  “Our family?” I held my breath. “The farm?”

  The great-aunts and Cousin Caroline and Morgan were okay, but
they were still in Oakwood. “There’s a tree across the road,” Dad said. “So they haven’t been able to drive out to the farm yet.”

  Pretty amazing everyone was fine, considering that my family had been standing in the churchyard shaking their fists at God and yelling at one another.

  Had Dad really said we were leaving Kansas? I turned Midnight H. Cat’s favorite cat toy in my hand and tried to remember my terrible tenth birthday from start to finish.

  All I wanted to do was climb into my sleeping bag.

  Hope was soaking out of me faster than I could stuff it back in.

  CHAPTER 44

  My Guardian Angel, Where Are You?

  Early the next morning Mae rang the bell, and Dad gave me a one-armed hug and said she and I could keep looking for my cat while he went to the airport. “Can you drive?” I asked.

  “Yep. I’ll steer with my right arm and hold the other one still.” He climbed in the car, and I stood waving until the car was gone.

  I still couldn’t believe the only thing left of my cat was a toy in my pocket. And I really wished my angel hadn’t turned out to be something that nabbed fish.

  Mae and I headed over the bridge. A block away Great-aunt Ruth was talking to a man. “Funnel pulled back up in the cloud,” she was saying. “Touched down a mile away. Picked the roof clean off a barn and didn’t touch the chicken shed. Not a feather out of place.”

  I ran up to her all heart-thumpy. “Has anyone been able to get to our farm?” Sasha and Gwendolyn and Penelope and Pinky and the emus? The lavender? All Cousin Caroline and Morgan had worked for?

  “Early this morning.” She tapped my shoulder comfortingly. “Hardly any damage I hear. I’m heading out there now to have a look-see.”

  A little damage? Maybe my tree house crime scene might be covered up.

  “Let’s start where you last saw your cat,” Mae said. As we walked, we saw a basketball stand hanging from a tree and an air conditioner sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. We went from yard to yard calling kitty-kitty. People whose names I didn’t know said, “Don’t give up,” and, “Good luck to you, dears.”

  After a while I told Mae she could be huddled in someone’s basement and I should go home to make signs. While I was getting markers out, I heard the car pull up.

  I flew outside and into a four-person hug. Mom kissed me twice. “That’s from Grandpa and Grandma,” she said. “Let me put on my boots, and I’ll help you.”

  Isabella took my hand. “Daddy told Mommy we’re going back to Colorado,” she whispered.

  “I know,” I whispered back. But I couldn’t feel anything.

  “Anna?” Isabella said.

  “What?”

  “I wish that cat knew how to run, duck, and find cover. Or I wish that cat had wings and could fly away from the tornado.”

  “I know.”

  After they got ready, we headed over the bridge and into town, taping signs on light poles and fences. A man was driving slowly around with cookies and big pots of coffee in the back of his pickup truck, calling, “Anyone need something hot to drink?” At the school Cousin Caroline, smudged and muddy, was helping Noah and Chad and Kylee carry ruined books to a Dumpster.

  “The farm’s really okay?” I shouted.

  “A bit of rain damage,” she called back. “No biggie.”

  Except for the tree house. No biggie except for Anna damage.

  When we got to the church, I slumped on the front steps by Great-aunt Lydia in her wheelchair. Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Yoder were studying a dented garbage can. Words floated over to us. How lucky. Oakwood came this close to being flattened. Could have been much worse.

  Great-aunt Lydia told me our family’s lucky story, too. Morgan and Cousin Caroline carried her up the steps—because garbage cans were blocking the basement steps—and huddled behind a pew. “It sounded like a freight train. Exactly like everyone says,” Great-aunt Lydia said. She’d looked up through a window and seen dirt cascading down . . . and then the tornado pulled up, in that weird way tornadoes do, and didn’t blow them all to hallelujah.

  “What do you think about being saved by a church?” I asked.

  “Ach.” She winked at me. “Maybe God and I are even now.”

  Was it luck? Was it God? How did people figure these things out?

  I looked around. This church felt familiar now—now that we were leaving. Mom was picking branches out of the bean plants. At the edge of the parking lot, Great-aunt Dorcas was frying hamburgers on a camping stove on a long table. Dad was arranging buns with his good hand. “I’m terribly good with onions,” Great-aunt Lydia called.

  Mrs. Miller came to where we were sitting and pushed Great-aunt Lydia’s wheelchair over beside Dad. I didn’t have the energy to move or say a word.

  A few minutes later hamburger and onion smell was everywhere. Grubby people walked through the parking lot in twos and threes and ate quickly. I could hear bits of conversation about picking neighbors’ belongings off bushes and sorting through wet photo albums in living rooms while water still dripped through holes in roofs. “Got a mess back here in the graves,” a man called. “Anyone have a free hand?”

  Isabella wandered over and settled beside me. “I saved this for you.” She opened her hand. “For your birthday.” A piece of Kleenex was crumpled on her palm. I took it. Inside was a black jelly bean.

  I rubbed her head. “Did you lick it?”

  “No. I just kind of slid my cheek on it. You can have my hamburger, too. I didn’t put my lips on it.” She put her head on my arm. “If I was out there playing with a stop sign, I could have run to the tornado and said, ‘STOP.’”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “It’s mine.”

  What I wanted was a do-over. I’d never bring Midnight H. Cat to the party.

  Or I’d be looking when Simon sneaked up.

  Or I’d run faster. Over and over I saw myself catching Midnight H. Cat this time.

  What did she think when her world went whirling and twirling—blam?

  Isabella’s head felt warm on me. “When we cry,” she said, “God in our stomach cries.”

  Would Jericho say even in spite of everything, I should feel Gratitude Attitude? After all, no one was yelling about peacemaking or the sign at the corner. In fact Great-aunt Dorcas was boasting about the emus and saying Morgan had promised not to talk about smallpox and scurvy with customers at the farmers’ market.

  But why did Simon even come by the church yesterday?

  If God was on the side of justice, why did some things end up so lucky and some things so, so massively unlucky?

  CHAPTER 45

  Smallpox, Tarantulas, and Quicksand, Oh, My

  The longer I sat, the worse it was to imagine Midnight whirling through the air. I took Isabella over to Dad and then wandered down the sidewalk, hearing the mocking jingle of the cat toy in my pocket.

  We were leaving. Would anyone remember that Anna had been here?

  Behind me, a bike squeaked. Who cared? Simon couldn’t do anything worse than what he’d already done.

  Oh.

  I saw it wasn’t Simon at all. It was Morgan, with Bob-Silver trotting beside her with his leash hooked to the handlebars. I felt a guilty ache. Morgan climbed off and leaned the bike against a tree. “I waited until Mom left. Because I wanted to bring Bob-Silver along.”

  “Did you ride the bicycle the whole way?” I asked.

  “Got a ride with Great-aunt Ruth to the edge of town.” She and Bob-Silver fell in step.

  I didn’t want to look at her. “It’s so great the farm’s okay.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  It was weird the way tornadoes could hit one block and not touch the next one. I took a breath. “So . . . the wind didn’t get your tree house?”

  “Something did.” Her face made me predict she knew. I wanted so much to say sorry, but I didn’t want my apology to be stupid and meaningless. “Do you think tornadoes are the scariest thing in the whole world?” I aske
d.

  “Smallpox is pretty scary,” she said. “And scurvy.”

  “Tarantulas,” I said. “For Isabella especially.”

  “Quicksand. When my mom said we were going to move back to the farm and my dad wasn’t coming along, I thought quicksand might be anywhere.” She twisted Bob-Silver’s leash. “I pictured walking around the farm one day and getting sucked under the dreadful sand.”

  I looked at my toes walking. Quicksand. What good could it possibly do in the world?

  We were coming up to Simon’s house. I tried to think how to ask forgiveness from Morgan. How were people supposed to do it seventy times seven times when I couldn’t do it even once?

  “This part of Oakwood didn’t get touched,” Morgan said.

  I leaned against the fence around Simon’s yard. The stone animals stuck out their tongues.

  Suddenly the fuzz flew out of my brain. I shoved the gate open. Simon. What if he had Midnight? “Morgan,” I said, “I have an idea.”

  The gladiator crowd was screaming in my brain as I ran onto the porch. I whammed on the big, carved door with my fist. Were Simon and his grandma in there hiding?

  I stomped down the steps and around the house, under the stone lion tongues. “Come on,” I yelled.

  “I have to keep the dog out here,” Morgan called. “Simon’s grandma doesn’t like him.”

  The backyard was a tangle of sticks and branches. Some might have blown down in yesterday’s winds. Some had obviously been there a long time. Simon could be holding Midnight captive in this mess.

  Morgan, help me! But she always had stuck up for Simon.

  Branches poked. Too late I saw I was stepping into a spiderweb, all beautiful and awful, too. I slapped at it wildly, trying to get it off me.

  At the back of the yard was a slab of cement where a doghouse or something used to be. I saw a tiny sign stuck on one of the trees. ANGEL HOUSES, it said in crooked writing. ANGELS WELCOME.

  I knelt down. Tiny houses were lined up on the cement slab. One had a dome made out of sticks and bark and a round bed made out of pebbles and moss. I saw berries and feathers and brown troll head pods. Behind the dome house was a tent made out of leaves, with a twig ladder leaning against its side, and a table made from a shell resting on four green berries.