A Glass of Crazy

Dad never called that week, at least he didn't call my phone, and because of Mom's psychotic behavior, I was afraid to ask. Why I waited until she was driving seventy miles an hour on a freeway, I don't know.

  "I haven't heard from him," was her reply, as if that were sufficient.

  When we finally reached Houston, I said, "How come there's no traffic?"

  "Houstonians have already returned. Only those who live on the coast had to wait."

  Traffic did slow to a crawl as we approached the bridge to Galveston Island and all the bizarre images I'd seen on TV appeared stranger in real life. Even Mom with her newfound happiness, shook her head in disbelief at yachts laying sideways in the marshlands, like toy boats someone had picked up and tossed aside. Actually, someone had: Ike.

  As we approached the bridge, it looked like a war zone. Hundreds of soldiers in camouflaged uniforms lined the streets, gripping semiautomatic weapons.

  "Why do they have guns?"

  "National Guard," Mom said, digging through her purse. "They want proof we live here."

  "Why?" My voice broke.

  "For our own protection."

  The military man examined Mom's driver's license, then handed it back. With the tip of his rifle, he waved us through. I held my breath.

  A few fallen limbs after a rainstorm was about the most damage I'd ever seen in Galveston. This time, it wasn't tree limbs they had bulldozed off the roads. Sticking out of a pile of broken lumber were bed mattresses, a sofa and a little girl's pink bicycle. My breath caught.

  Piles of rubble lined both sides of the street. Doors ripped at the hinges, broken chairs and tattered restaurant signs leaned against busted up fishing boats and uprooted oak trees. When Mom turned onto our street, she took my hand and squeezed it gently. I closed my eyes. She stopped in front of our house, but I was afraid to look.

  "Come on, honey." Mom's door clicked open. I glanced through the window-our house was still there. Upstairs and down, all the wooden shutters were closed except one. On a kitchen window, a shutter hung by its corner and the glass was broken.

  Mom struggled to open the gate in front of the house. A tree had fallen on the wrought iron fence and jammed the gate tight.

  "I'll get it," I said, and to my amazement, Mom stepped aside. I lifted the latch and kicked the gate open.

  Rather than lecture me on ladylike behavior, Mom said, "Thank you, honey," then hurried through the gate as if what I had done were perfectly normal. At the top of the steps, Mom drew a deep breath as if trying to calm down, but her hand shook like a rattle while trying to get the key in the door.

  In the dark foyer, Mom nearly knocked me over when she took a bad slip on the floor. I pulled her up and flipped on the light. It was obvious from the silt line on the wall that the house had been submerged in two feet of water, but something freaked me out even more. I tugged Mom's arm and pointed at the big footprints on the muddy floor that came out of the kitchen and went through the foyer, into the parlor. I had a feeling it wasn't Hurricane Ike who broke the kitchen window.

  "He might still be here," Mom whispered. "Let's go."

  "Wait," I said. The footprints led straight through the middle of the empty parlor and ended at a bay window that had been opened from the inside. I pulled the window down and locked it tight. "He's gone."

  "He must've thought the whole house was empty," Mom said. "Look over here, the footprints don't go upstairs."

  "Go see if our stuff's still there." I'd just given Mom a direct order. I didn't even hide my smirk.

  "I'm afraid," Mom said. "Come with me."

  I looked deep in her eyes and at that moment the Queen of Control was dead. She must've read my mind that I wanted to give her a hug because she reached over and held me close for a good, long while.

  "We have to take care of each other now," Mom said softly.

  I wasn't about to let go because tears were streaming down my cheeks and I didn't want Mom to see me cry just yet, especially since she was starting to treat me like a grownup, but mostly because I wanted to make sure she meant it.

  "Let's get these shutters open," Mom said.

  Mom started at one end of the house and I at the other, until we met somewhere in the middle. Sunlight illuminated the room, and for a moment it seemed ultra bright. Perhaps it was just the sunlight, but something inside me felt a little brighter, too.

  Upstairs, everything looked exactly as we had left it, except for a roof leak in my bedroom that had ruined the red Chinese comforter wadded up on my bed. Maybe Mom would let me choose my own stuff now. She was on the phone with one of her real estate friends, asking if an apartment was available for us to rent until the house got fixed.

  "All the sheetrock downstairs will have to be replaced," Mom was saying on the phone.

  I went from room to room opening shutters to let in more light.

  That night we unpacked at the loft apartment Mom's real estate friend had found for us. "There was a waiting list," Mom had said. "She put us ahead of everyone else." Mom was in the closet hanging the new clothes she'd gotten on Sixth Street. "It's the last time I'll use your father's position to get priority. I can take it on my own from here."

  Obviously Hurricane Ike had caused no damage to the historic apartment, which wasn't surprising since it looked like a bomb shelter. The walls on the inside had the same worn bricks they used on the outside of the building. I guess they had to drill into the bricks to hang the old oil paintings that hung behind dark antique furniture. Huge hurricane shutters that slid sideways on a track, hung inside the windows. The shutters were open now, but had obviously been closed during the hurricane. I was just glad the place was furnished.

  I tried to look miserable. "How long do we have to stay here?"

  "A month at the most," Mom said. "I'm meeting the contractor at the house first thing in the morning."

  I started to ask about school, but didn't want to put the idea in her head in case she'd forgotten. The last person I needed to see was Megan, the traitor.

  The open apartment had a kitchen at one end, two bedrooms at the other, and a living room in the middle. Since there were no walls between any of the rooms, the bedrooms were divided by freestanding partitions, which made it easy to talk from different rooms. This was annoying.

  "Marconi High opens on Monday," Mom said from behind the partition.

  So much for hoping she'd forget.

  "Fortunately, it didn't have nearly as much damage as other schools."

  Lucky for her, not for me. I missed that my life used to actually make sense. Like whenever the triple Ps walked by, I always said, "Oh God, it's the Sisters of Perpetual Pandemonium," and Megan always laughed. It didn't matter how many times I said it. She always laughed. Now she was one of them. The traitor.

  "Did you hear me?" Mom asked.

  "I don't wanna go back."

  "Getting back to a normal routine will be good for you, honey." Mom's voice cracked.

  Maybe I wasn't the only one hating my life right now. Before climbing into the high, four post bed, I sent Rafa a text asking if he would be at school on Monday, but he didn't answer.

  I checked my phone again first thing in the morning. Still no reply. When I crawled out of bed, Mom was sitting at the kitchen table at the other end of the apartment. She looked small and lonely staring out the window with one hand loosely holding a coffee mug.

  Even though I'd never tasted coffee, I reached for a mug. For a nanosecond, I considered asking Mom if it was okay for me to have coffee, but she was in outer space, so I pulled the pot from the coffeemaker and poured myself a cup.

  "You probably won't like it unless you add cream and sugar."

  "Right," I said, amused at myself for having mastered vodka before coffee.

  On my way to the little table, I stirred in the cream and sugar. Mom smiled at me, which I completely ignored because all this sappiness was starting to make me uncomfortable. I mean God, it wasn't normal.

  We sat in si
lence and gazed out the window at the harbor. Mom had a sadness in her face I had never seen before. Her eyes stared out the window, but she wasn't looking at anything. I wondered what she was thinking.

  Through the window, broken shrimp boats were piled in the harbor in front of unrecognizable buildings that were once seafood restaurants.

  "I'm meeting the contractor in an hour," Mom said. "Do you need anything from the house?"

  It was my last day of freedom before I'd have to face the kids at school again and even though it was shocking to see all the damage Hurricane Ike had done, I wanted to go exploring.

  After another sip of coffee, I said, "I need my bike."

  What I really needed was to see the destruction. Okay, it was twisted, I know, but I felt twisted inside and for the first time ever, my insides matched what was happening on the outside.

  ?

  Later that morning, I rode to Rafa's house to make sure it wasn't getting looted. Since I hadn't heard from him, I assumed he was still in San Antonio with his family. That's why I was surprised to see him standing in the front yard, grilling all kinds of meats with his dad when I rode up.

  "Buenos dias." His dad moved the meats around on the grill and did a double take at my hair.

  "Hey, Mr. Espinoza." I put the kickstand down and stood next to Rafa to get a better look at the grill.

  "Your hair," Rafa said, "It's shorter."

  "Not really. You should see Mom's," I said, pulling my hair back. "She's a mid-life crisis in motion."

  "I liked it better before."

  My eyes welled up and I forced myself to not blink. When your enemies don't like something about you, who cares? But when your last friend on the planet criticizes you, it hurts. "What's with all the food?" I asked, trying to sound stronger than I felt.

  "When the electricity went out, all the meat we had in the freezer thawed out," Rafa explained. "We have to cook it before it goes bad."

  Sizzling on the grill were beef chunks, chicken quarters and a variety of sausages. Even though I had just finished eating, the rich smell of meat charring on the grill made me hungry. Under a giant oak, Rafa's mother finished smoothing a cloth over a long table she had set up in the front yard and then she came over and gave me a hug. On the porch, Rafa's oldest brother wiped mud off a chair.

  "How bad is it?" I asked.

  Rafa kicked the dead grass. "Our beds, our sofa, our TV, all ruined."

  "Mom said the insurance company covers all that."

  Rafa gave me the sometimes-you-are-so-stupid look that he saved for special moments like this. I totally got it. Not everyone could afford insurance. I felt smaller than a hermit crab and immediately, my sick need for wide scale destruction was gone.

  With a garden hose, Mrs. Espinoza rinsed silt off a plastic chair and placed it at the table. On her way back in the house, she said something to Rafa in Spanish that I couldn't understand.

  Rafa curled his lips like he already knew the answer. "She wants to know if your parents need to come over and eat with us."

  "Seriously? She didn't see the news about my dad?"

  "She saw it," Rafa said. "You have to understand that in my culture, things are different." He grabbed two chairs. "No matter what happens, you still sit down and eat with your family."

  I tried to visualize Mom and Dad sitting down to dinner with me now and said, "Well in my culture, that's not going to happen."

  - 7 -