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A line of black, cottony clouds was approaching
fast, driving the warm blue sky past me. Still,
I thought we had enough time so I waited in the
car with my granddaughter Hannah while her Mom and
Dad and Ethan approached from the west, the storm
on their heels. I started gathering her stuff from
her weekend visit so we could switch in the mall
parking lot. That’s when the siren blared.
I hurried Hannah out of her car seat, grabbed her
suitcase, my cell phone and keys, and tossed my
purse onto the floor of the car.
“Don’t forget the flowers, Grandma!”
said Hannah. I snatched the paper cup of flowers
she had picked for her Mom -- daffodils, bluebells
and one red tulip, still tightly closed. We ran.
We were parked close, just 20 cars or so from the
mall doors, but as the wind pushed against our faces,
the parking lot seemed to expand, like a bad dream
sequence in a ‘B’ movie. Hannah’s
thin wrist was wrapped in my tight fist and still
it felt as though she might blow away. A gust of
wind tore the daffodils out of her hand.
“Run as fast as you can, Hannah!” I
yelled.
“Why do we have to run?” she yelled
back.
“We just do! Run as fast as you can!”
But it was as if we were running against a rubber
wall. We didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.
That’s when Mark, her dad, burst out of the
mall doors, a gust of cold wind and debris rushing
in, scattering a pile of stuffed bears. Mark scooped
up Hannah and we made it to the glass doors, which
were opening and closing wildly. I saw pink bears
everywhere and people’s faces, expressions
of stunned awe. We collected her mom and baby brother,
Rachel and Ethan, and kept moving, past the checkout
counter, past clusters of people who stood gawking
at the crowd near the door, and at us rushing by.
Hail beat down on the mall’s corrugated roof
and plastic skylights. I had an eerie feeling of
unreality as we ran deeper into the mall, past stores,
away from all the glass, into the food court and
play area. The deeper into the long, narrow building
we went, the less alarmed the people were, looking
at shoes and jewelry as if nothing was happening,
as if the roof couldn’t possibly fly off like
the top of a tuna can and disappear into the dark,
swirling sky. And I became more convinced it could.
I knew something they didn’t.
Small crowds of people were pressed against the
plate glass walls and windows at the mall’s
side entrance, watching the strange cloud formations,
I saw them in my mind, smashed flat by a blast of
broken glass, or worse, sucked out cleanly into
the night. I thought - this is what it would be
like, what it will be like, when the next terrorist
attack occurs.
Maybe this is how it was when the planes hit the
towers, when the tsunami wave crashed 40 feet over
the tourists as they sunned themselves on the warm
sandy beaches the day after Christmas, when the
hurricane flood rushed into the small, white frame
houses of the Ninth Ward and just kept coming and
coming. Who would have believed they could end up
in the attic, faces pressed against the nail-studded
roof, sucking their last breath of air? Who would
guess a nose cone could appear in the conference
room, or that a wave could engulf the hotel built
on solid, dry land? Yesterday, I saw that it could.
We waited out the storm in a family restroom with
no windows, no glass, the knowledge of water pipes
and elevator shafts nearby, and the hopes of staying
grounded to the earth. One tight red tulip lay wilting
on the floor.
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