Living through a flood

 

It is 6am on Saturday morning, stirring her eyes behind closed eyelids Susan awakes disquieted by the torrent of rain and commotion in the neighbourhood. She winces, aghast at the foot of foul water across the floor of her house. The deluge of cyclone Azra approaches her house in unrelenting waves, rising through the shrubbery and up the brick walls. It was supposed to be an awesome weekend for her. She received a promotion at work and was looking forward to wearing comfy clothes, inviting her best friend over and having a lovely time. But now she’s frozen knowing not where to start.

Her brain veers to autopilot mode in a flash. She swiftly put on her floral print mustard raincoat and rainboots, grabbed her purse, phone, and some mismatched clothes in a bag, the only things that seemed important at that moment before scurrying out of her house. When she got out, she sees water everywhere. “Where is all the water coming from?”, cries out a distraught neighbour who is rushing with her little son. The firemen are already there, moving people out. For Susan, rain rendered beautiful memories until now, the water floats everything even the dead.

Overwhelmed, she gazes at the church steeple drifting into silent prayer. Before long Susan and other disaster victims are brought to a school hall by the firemen. Her phone rings, it was her aunt Lucy who lived alone in a different part of the town on a high plateau hardly affected by the flood. Susan answers the call with a quivering voice. Aunt Lucy said, “I’ve been worried about you. Your street is on the news mostly swallowed up by water.” Susan elucidates the situation and without the least delay her aunt offers to pick her up the next day and share her house with her niece until the water recedes and the house is restored. Susan felt lucky but naively had no idea about remediating her house.

Just then she hears a husky voice utter to her, “Aren’t we like gypsies traipsing hither and thither?”. There stood a tall man with dark hair and brown eyes. Susan tries to be cheery and replies, “We’re on an adventure”. He chuckles and says, “I am Anthony, people call me Tony, worse luck I chose this day to inspect my uninhabited family house, now rising out of the waves”. “Yes, worse luck, indeed. I’m Susan, I live by the old sawmill. Come rain or shine, we all have to rebuild our wrecked homes”, she sighs. “Yeah, Til kingdom come”, replies Tony with a mischievous smile. They giggle, Tony’s phone rings over and over but he continues the chatter. They pass that hapless night at the school hall with other victims, there isn’t time or space to fall apart with emotion.

At the crack of dawn, Susan wakes up frantic and famished. The water has receded, volunteers bring food. As she took a small bite of the round piece of bread it felt like comfort and her eyes welled up with tears of joy. Aunt Lucy arrives in good time in a sturdy, rugged car juddering to halt outside the school hall. Tony ushers Susan through the hallway bidding farewell. Susan clambers into the car with mixed feelings. At her aunt’s house, in the expanse of her room with calm pastels, Susan can’t stop thinking about Tony. She takes a deep breath as the sky lightens up.