The Day the City Fell

From the porch of our house on the beach, we could see

the city fall. I remember how my mother

dropped her coffee cup and gripped the railing when our

porch shook and tilted with the bombs. We could not hear

the screaming of the metal timbers or the crunch

of buildings crumpling. We could just see the city,

its thin silver buildings squatting in the faint haze

across the bay, and the gray cloud that rose up and

blotted out the sun. It was a toy city like

the ones I built in the sand that my brother stomped.

“Mommy,” I said, “Is the city going to fall in

the sea?” And in the slowly rising water that

came after, they told us we must evacuate.

When the helicopter came to take us away,

as the swirling waves lapped the white-painted porch steps,

we could not find my brother. I cried because he

was supposed to take me sailing later, and the

black-gloved men would not let me go back into the

house to get my book. At the Red Cross shelter we

found my brother, on a cot around the corner

with the huddled neighbors. I did not recognize

him in the scary rubber masks they made us wear

because of the diseases in the air. I just

wished I had my book, because there were too many

people and the TV was too small and I had

already seen that movie. The men at the door

had guns and masks, and my brother said, “They look like

stormtroopers from Star Wars.” I thought that was funny.

I laughed, but it wasn’t like there was a tidal

wave or anything. They should have let us go back

to our house. I guess they were afraid a piece of

the city might fall on us, or something in the

air might eat our skin. I wanted to tell them that

they were wrong, that at our house the air was salty

and clean, and we had a Sunfish with a yellow

sail at our dock. I wanted to tell them we had

to go back, because furniture and bookshelves are

not supposed to get wet. But the city fell that

day, and all my Nancy Drew books that Grandma gave

me got swallowed up. I used to sculpt toy cities

in the damp sand, weaving little flags out of the

sharp yellow grass that grows on the dunes. But when you

see a real city fall into the sea like that,

and imagine the pages of your books waving

wetly underwater where the fish can’t read them,

you do not want to build sand cities anymore.

February 2003