April 3

On Wednesday, April 3, 1974, a tornado touched down in my hometown, Louisville, KY. It was just one of many tornadoes that devastated the region that day. At the time it was the largest (it was surpassed in that category in April of 2011) and is still the most violent outbreak of tornadoes in United States history. Thirty-one people died in Brandenburg, KY. Two people died in Louisville. Two hundred twenty-eight people in the city were hospitalized.

I had just turned three years old the day before. Too young for T.S. Eliot, I did not yet know that April is the cruelest month. April was my favorite month, because it contained both my birthday and Easter. My birthday meant chocolate cake from Plehn's with chocolate frosting and pink frosting roses. Everyone else in the family got a white cake with yellow flowers, but an exception was made for me. Easter meant a pretty dress, and dyeing eggs and giant waxy chocolate bunnies. And everywhere there were daffodils, and violets, and sweet-smelling pale purple lilacs.

What I remember of that day is standing at the kitchen window watching the sky through the budding maple branches. It was a color I'd never seen before, the yellowish-green of a bruise as it begins to heal. I remember my mother standing next to me, on the phone with my father. My grandmother had told me that you were not supposed to be on the phone during a thunderstorm; you could be electrocuted. She was full of admonitions that struck fear into the heart of a child: if you forget to take the toothpick with the colorful cellophane top out of your club sandwich, it will tear open your intestines and kill you; if you pet a stray cat you will have to get thirty-seven shots in your stomach. All of these things had actually happened, she said, to people she knew.

My mother was breaking the rules, which meant that something was very wrong. I heard her asking my father what she should do. It's hard to remember that she was only twenty-seven. I don't know if the siren went off before or after she led me down the basement stairs. I remember that the lights went out and our basement was very dark. It won't be that bad, my mother might've thought. A tornado won't touch down here.

Tornadoes are nature's roulette. Even if you live your whole life in Tornado Alley you can always tell yourself it won't hit your house, and probably be right.

We didn't have a radio or a flashlight and we had forgotten about my grandparents' mean-tempered poodle, which we were dog-sitting. I wanted to go back up and get him but of course my mother wouldn't let me. We felt our way to the washing machine and then a little bit past it until we were nestled underneath the staircase. We heard a scrabbling by the dryer and my mother crawled over and grabbed the dog, which found its way downstairs after all. I squeezed the dog so tightly that it bit my face.

When it was all over, we climbed out of the basement to find ourselves and our house unscathed. The tornado passed half a mile north of us, near our church. It took cast iron finials from the railing around the reservoir. It took the roofs of old Victorians and whole wooden foursquares and part of the Water Tower. Daniel Boone's bronze likeness presided, unbent, over thousands upon thousands of felled trees in Cherokee Park. The National Guard blocked off streets to prevent looting. My parents donated blood at the Red Cross for the injured. It was for a generation what the '37 flood was for my grandparents: the natural disaster that will always live within you.

I don't remember a time when I didn't dream about tornadoes. I've lived on the west coast for thirteen years but I still have them. Earthquakes and tsunami occupy a part of my waking mind. When we are at the coast I check the escape routes. But neither has managed to penetrate my unconscious, where over and over again I spy the funnel cloud in the distance and have minutes, or seconds, to find shelter. I'm usually way out in a field, or in a car on some isolated road. All I can do is watch. 

*

“How far along are you?” the nurse asked, running the Doppler over my belly.

“Thirty seven weeks and five days,” I said, seeing the twister approaching, hoping that it would miss me. Its strange silence. Aren't they supposed to sound like freight trains?

This is April 3, day of tornadoes.