My Mother's Premonition

"Sleep in the living room tonight,” my mother, Tish, said to me, concerned. This was a rather odd thing to tell a child who had recently moved into a new house in Katonah from Cortlandt Manor. It was mid-October, leaves tapping the windows like a toddler in desperation to be calmed. Rain was pelting the windows like bullets, trees thrashing about like tube men at a car dealership. The wind whistled through the branches as if it had a song stuck in its head. 

Storming away from my mother, I went to the bathroom to change out of my dark denim pants and my long-sleeved shirt into soft red flannel pajamas. I was mad that I had to go to bed. I hated sleeping. Of course, I was not caring about the weather, I was only eleven. I only cared about having to go to sleep earlier, and I was more angry because I was not even in my own bed. I wanted to stay up, just as Tish did. After changing, I went to speak with my mother about why I was going to bed at a normal hour, not at her normal hour.“Why am I sleeping in the living room?” I asked, confused. “I wanna sleep in my bed.” 

Since we had just moved in, I was in the process of designing my room the way I wanted it. My room was becoming mine, with posters of the band One Direction covering my walls. The walls were a dusty green color, almost like old thyme in a jar, with light lavender curtains that were mostly faded to light blue due to the harsh sunlight that faced the two windows. I looked forward to repainting the walls a bright turquoise and getting new pale green curtains. My bed was shoved into a corner that was lined with windows. Every piece of furniture matched: a dark, stained wood that had a similar hue to chocolate syrup. The room reminded me of a tornado of color, shades of green clashing with lavender and white. 

“It’s storming out, sleep in the living room,” Tish responded, pushing her maroon glasses up to the bridge of her nose. (I usually call her Tish, because she is one of three mothers, and the other two are Mamou and Mama.) She tiredly walked me to the living room, sporting her red waffle-knit shirt, practically threadbare pants, and way-too-old Merrell slip-ons, all of which she still owns today. The room was decorated with portraits and sculptures of bodies in metal, plaster, wood, ceramic, or plastic in all shapes and sizes. I didn’t like it because there were too many bodies. I nodded and sat on the piano bench across from the couch where I would be sleeping.  I tickled the piano keys, a worn but soft ivory clashing with stark black. I played a few pop pieces by ear. The weather was getting worse, and the house started creaking, anxious for the incoming threat.

“I don’t wanna go to bed in the living room, it’s gross,” I retorted. I thought the living room was weird. I didn’t think it was a living room. It was more of a watching room: watching me play the piano, watching the lake outside through the bay window. The sculptures were watching and listening to the usual hustle and bustle of the house and were listening to the storm outside. There was a giant portrait of a naked woman above our rather small fireplace. Scattered around the fireplace were other small figurines of people and fish and ornate flowered jugs. At least the watching room looked out onto our lake, which was a view I loved because I could see geese.  I stared into the storming night, the lake being pelted by rain and tree debris.

“Elenor, go to bed,” Tish said calmly. “I have a bad feeling about that tree.” There was a tree about three yards away from my house that was old and decaying, surrounded by a falling stone wall. But I didn’t care about it. To me, it was just a tree out my window. Nothing was going to happen with it; it was old and could stay in the ground. I had heard the tree moan a few times when other gales threatened to knock it down, but it had always stayed up. Groaning and rolling my eyes at my mother’s comment, I moved myself to the living room. The blue couch was the itchiest thing I had ever felt. It could only be compared to sleeping on blue poison ivy. I pulled my new dog Papi’s blanket over my shivering form for we had little heat (installed, but only worked in two rooms) and attempted to sleep on the scratchy couch. The night was briskly cold, and the only heat in the house was body heat. After twenty minutes of shivering, I fell asleep, only to be woken up a few hours later. 

My mother was tapping my shoulder saying, “We need to get up and get out of here.” In my groggy state, I got some shoes on and my jeans and shirt from the day before and went outside. Tish was leading me, my small cold hand in her warm one, for she hadn’t yet gone to sleep. My mother had, and still has, a habit of staying up making phone calls and doing her other therapist tasks until two or three in the morning. Being led by Tish in the hazy darkness, I felt too tired to notice the damage around. It felt like I was blindfolded with fatigue as we stepped outside. 

I stepped onto our front porch and saw what the storm had done. A tree had fallen through the house and was blocking the way out. Sirens were blaring incessantly at the bottom of the driveway, with the police chief car in front, followed by a firetruck. The ride to the firehouse was short with many turns. There were no other houses we could see in the tar-colored darkness of outside. I was not fully aware of what was going on until Tish stepped out of the firetruck, facing the looming firehouse a few miles away. In a sleepy yet anxious state, I questioned how my life was going to continue without a house. I then remembered my other mother was going to pick me up in the morning, and my worries ceased. My parents had been separated for eight years at that point, so my concern for not having a house was short lived. 

We were led upstairs to where the firemen have their breaks. The room was a dark green, the exact shade of a billiard table, with trophies and awards lining all sides, and an actual billiard table in the center. The furniture was all a dark red velvet color lined with wood, faded to gray with use. It was a man cave. A middle-aged fireman walked over to us, explaining to my parents about the situation of the house, sounding mostly like a mumbled mess of words. I was dozing in and out and finally slept until the next morning.

Tish woke me up around 8 a.m., and as we went downstairs, the fireman chief was  making homemade waffles and pancakes. The dough was sugary with hints of maple syrup and cinnamon. I ate the food quickly, wondering what was going to happen next. The pancakes were sweet, with a crisp outside and moist inside. Syrup cascaded down the pancakes slowly, like the slowly passing time. It was around 8:45 when we finished breakfast, and we got into Tish’s car, which Tish had driven to the firehouse after I fell asleep. She drove us back to the house, and I was more awake, whether it was from the syrup or just the time or the sight before me—our house.

There was a massive tree in my house, which had fallen through the roof and onto our front walkway. I walked closer to the tree, the enemy of my house. My house, defeated. Leaves were littered around it and on the cars. No car damage, luckily. It was a Saturday morning, closer to the time I had to go to my other mother’s house. Tish helped me gather all my things once we opened the door. I slithered around my house, gathering all the things I needed for the other parent’s house. I had not gone into my room yet.  I slowly crept into the hallway to which my room was connected and slowly opened the white plastic door. As I looked at the damage in my room, my jaw dropped. 

The roof and insulation had caved in. Pieces of tree and puddles of rain and melted snow were in my room, making it blend in with the madness outside. A portion of the tree had landed right near the window-lined bed. The only spot where a large chunk of tree landed was on my bed, where I would’ve been sleeping if my mother hadn’t told me to sleep in the living room. My bed. Not just on my bed, on my pillow. Right where my head would’ve been if I had slept there. My mother’s premonition saved me last night, I thought. 

There were tufts of nauseatingly bright pink insulation and plaster ceiling scattered all over my school books, my desk, my floor, everywhere, as if a carnival cotton candy machine had a fight with a bag of flour. Pink, beige, and green flecks were everywhere. I was drawn to the branch lying on my pillow. A one-foot by two-foot branch, one end sharp like a spear, a spear that pierced my house perfectly. My pillow was the bull’s eye. Frozen moss was covering the branch like a blanket, the pillow acting as its mattress. The branch was resting on my pillow as I had rested on the living room couch earlier that day. I continued to stare at it, a flood of shock and gratefulness hitting me. I could almost see the way I would’ve died. My mother had a premonition that night that saved my life. 

That storm was Hurricane Sandy, and my family had lived through it, despite the house getting a bit bruised. Thankfully, none of us got bruised, and my family survived. I survived, but all because I had to “Sleep in the living room tonight.”