Typhoons

A thunderclap. I remember watching the Simpsons depiction of thunderstorms: God in a bowling jersey running down the alley and sliding on his shoes getting strike after strike, high-fiving Michael and Mary on his way back, doing a little celebration dance. At school Father Joseph told me that typhoons meant God was infuriated at all the sinners, that I personally had enraged Him, that those suffocated in landslides in the news, those drowned in flash floods charged with fallen electric lines deserve His wrath, that we were spared like Noah and the country was purged of sin. I feared God. I feared the havoc of typhoons. I feared the brownouts. I feared the dark.

I clutched my ears crying in a corner praying the rosary begging for forgiveness, promising Jesus, God, the Virgin Mary, Our lady of Mindanao that I’d be better, that I wouldn’t skip rosary beads and I would go to confession every week and thank God for everything in my life. I swear. I’ll be the best you’ve ever seen, I whispered between sobs. My brother found me in the hamper among long socks muddy from soccer. He had a lantern with him for brownouts. His shadow was large and it scared me.

“Come on, stop crying,” he nudged the hamper with his foot, “get out of there.”

“God is mad at us, PJ.”

“God isn’t real.”

That only made me cry harder. “PJ, please don’t say that, please!”

“Get out of there. We’re gonna eat.”

“I’m scared!”

He sighed. “They made chicken nuggets and Spam.”

“Really?”

We made our way to the dining room. Downstairs the lightning illuminated the house in sudden flashes. Clinging to PJ, I flinched at every crack and flash in the sky. I was afraid that it would come crashing down and I’d see white flames of fury in God’s eyes, a massive hand lifting the lid of my roof and reaching for me the way it looks when I stuff my hand into a bag of chips, licking my blood and bones on his fingers the way I sucked the chip dust and salt from mine. Those flashes were God’s fury; the ensuing boom was his voice.

~~~

The doorbell rang. At once we turned to the door. The wind whipped the trees into C’s. It was hard to hear the second ring over the sheets of rain battering the roof. Neither of us moved. Then: another flash. We see a silhouette of a man peeking in through the window. PJ looked at me. We inched toward the door. It rang again. Another flash.

“Oh. What?” PJ opened the door.

“PAPA!” I screamed and jumped on him.

Though I couldn’t see his face I knew it was him because I could smell the smoke sticks and yellow water on his shirt.

“Where’s your mother?” He says.

“Upstairs, I think.” PJ answered.

“Ok. Wait down here. We’re going to eat soon.”

Now that my father was here somehow the fear dissipated. I hadn’t realized he was gone, but I was glad he was here now. God was already angry with me so instead of listening to my father I crept up the stairs and into my parents’ room. They sounded angry but it was hard to hear their voices over the drone of the rain. It sounded like my mother dropped a blow drier or something, or maybe it was the thunder. I ran to the bathroom, afraid. My mother’s face was red, soaked in tears like the storm only touched her face.

“What’s wrong? Scared of the thunder too?” I asked her.

My eyes widened and watered seeing someone so distraught, devastated, hurt. I knew, from the look on her face, that something awful happened, but in the moment my brain couldn’t bear to imagine that it was my father who brought her to look so… so vulnerable, so sad. Was it because I upset God? Why would he let this happen if he loved me? I needed someone to make sense of it all, to tell me it was all ok. My father, towering above the both of us, a dark shadow cast over his indiscernible face like the new moon said,

“Everything's okay my baby boy.” He pulled us into a group hug and my mother held me so tight it scared me.

The table was silent. Just the typhoon, low rumbles, the lazy susan and silverware. The electricity was still out and the back-up generator was broken or something so we used lanterns and candles. It was nice. Really, in spite of the brown out, the silence between my parents and the vacancy in my mother’s eyes and the scary no-face father, it was nice. The candle light danced about. Shadows shifted, overlapped on my father’s face like a shore of shadows with tides of light.

We finished dinner early. While doing the dishes with my mom I heard her singing something sweet. Apparently my father did too and when we finished putting everything away he brought a small battery powered radio downstairs and inserted a disc into the tray. I saw him move in the darkness, motioning towards my mother to join him, a slow yellow smile spreading across a dark shape where his head should be. He moved his hands up and down as if a t-rex were trying to dance, even so my mother took his hands and danced to Madonna. PJ and I joined too. We danced until we sweat, until the songs replayed, until my father went upstairs to fetch other albums, until our feet ached and our soles were black. By the end, it was just my father standing alone, a silhouette bouncing and twisting to “Dancing with Myself,” occasionally a flash of light would blast past him, but never illuminating him.

I awoke to my mother’s sobs. She was holding two rings in her hand. I hugged her. Why would God do this to my mother? Didn’t he love us?

Carlos Yu is a writer from the Philippines that has an addiction to chocolate milk, rice and writing about his family. He thinks everything in the world is worthwhile and beautiful. He tries to employ this view in his writing.