Kansas Sky

Just a short story about anxiety and familial love

Kansas Sky

Living in Kansas meant we got tornado watches and warnings all throughout the spring, but nothing serious had ever hit our tiny town of Salina. They usually bounced around us, causing winds that knocked the power out. I always got scared but was never willing to admit it. My brother loved sitting on our front porch in the old white wicker chair, pointing at the menacing clouds above him. He shouted out the names and what the potential storm could be while I silently begged for him to come in the house, terrified of what might happen to him. My therapist said I had anxiety issues, but I personally think my mom’s strange love of Helen Hunt had exposed me to the movie Twister one too many times. But last night was different than anyone before. The radar showed clearly an EF5 tornado headed straight for our tiny brick house. Six open acres surrounding our house meant the tornado would have to have aim as good as Justin Verlander (?) to damage our house. But we hid in our basement anyway due to my incessant suggestions. My brother rolled his green eyes at the fear in my voice but followed me to the basement anyway. While I was glad for his cooperation, this somehow made me feel worse. He had never listened to my suggestions before and it solidified to terrifying potential in my mind. Maybe my therapist is right.

 The second we took shelter in our red carpeted basement, we realized the real danger. The red radar coverage eclipsed our towns name and we could hear the wind picking up, faster and faster. My father was watching the radar on a tiny TV he used to watch baseball on in the kitchen. He kept adjusting the antennae trying to hear the voice of our local weatherman, Jack Frost (yes, his given name. Two winters ago he won the snowman building contest while brandishing his birth certificate for the whole town to see. The story made its way to the Jimmy Fallon show under the hashtag #myweirdhometwon). My brother and I sat around our ping pong table doing homework. I was desperately trying to deduce the meaning of Jane Eyre while my brother was attempting to scrub out the beer stains on the table with his tshirt.  My mother kept turning up the volume on the TV as if Mad About You could somehow drown out the sounds of the snapping branches and distant screams. Although the latter was likely just in my head as our closest neighbor was about 10 miles away. My therapist is definitely right.

The lights abruptly knocked out, silencing Helen Hunt’s voice and blackening my view of Charlotte Bronte’s rather excessive use of semicolons. My brother grabbed my hand off the ping pong table and I could feel the fear in his hands. I could see the faint outline of his face illuminated by the strange green light the tornado had turned our Kansas sky. Perhaps I imagined the complete fear in his face but his hand cupped over the top of my right hand gave me a strange feeling of comfort. I was not alone in my fear for once. I glanced to the area where my parents were sitting but the one small window in our basement did not allow light to be shed on my parents faces. None of us spoke as I allowed my mind to imagine every horrific outcome this night could have. I imagined my mother’s face crumbling silently as she heard our home trying to fight against the winds, but inevitably losing the impossible battle. I imagined my father silently weeping with his face as calm as ever. I imagined my brother’s face crumpled in anger and confusion. The boy who thought nothing bad could ever happen suddenly thrown into an unfamiliar situation. I didn’t allow myself to complete the thoughts of our most treasured belongings being swept helplessly into the air or of my family somehow not making it out alive. Those thoughts were in the very back of my mind but I fought to keep them back there, never willing to face that thought. I thought that exercised impressive self-control. Maybe my therapist is wrong.

My family sat in the basement in silence for what could have possibly been weeks. Or maybe seconds. My mother would occasionally whisper her love for us. I would return it with a squeak, my brother with a head nod only I could see, and I imagined my father returned it with a pulse in my mother’s hand. The winds continued to rip through our sky I had once flown kites in, blew bubbles into, and blew dandelion seeds into. That felt like a lifetime ago and seemed impossible to ever do again. I hadn’t done any of those things in probably 10 years but I suddenly had an overwhelming desire to do so. A wave of anger swept through my body, which was more or less foreign in my body. I was used to the stomach pitting anxiety sweeps, not the blood boiling anger sweeps. In my anger I wrenched my hand from my brother’s grasp and stood up. I heard my mother whisper my name but I ignored it. I felt my way to our couch I knew was vacant. I yanked my red sweatshirt over my knees and hugged them to my chin, trying to contain the anger to my secluded body. My family continued to sit in silence for another week, or day, or second, I had no idea. We weren’t aware our beloved oak tree knocked our roof into oblivion, or that the winds ripped up every board and brick in our house before eventually reaching our cherished items. We heard the crashes getting closer but none of us allowed the thoughts to enter our head fully. But perhaps I am projecting my thoughts onto my family like my therapist constantly warns me about. Sometimes my therapist is right.

I stared into the darkness of my basement, never quite sure what thoughts were going through my mind. I heard the crashing stop above us, but the winds continued to roar. I felt a wave of relief in my body. A completely normal wave of emotion for me after realizing a burglar was not breaking in, or that the man also shopping at the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon had absolutely no intention of kidnapping me. The wave of relief was followed by a pang of guilt. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the idea that I had hurt my brother’s feelings by yanking my hand from his. I turned to look in his direction, I saw his face still outlined by the now yellow pigment in the sky. I couldn’t read his expression from his profile and I untangled myself from my oversize sweatshirt, prepared to walk back over to him. Perhaps I would have reminded him of the times we spent flying the cheap plastic kites from the dollar store into our sky while he told me the real story of how electricity had been discovered. Or how he would tell me wishes were impractical as I would squeeze my eyes shut and wish on a dandelion for the singing voice of Christina Aguilera or the confidence of Kate Hudson in Almost Famous. Maybe I would have even told him about the time I lied and told him I had seen Santa’s sleigh flying through the cloudless night on Christmas Eve 2002. A lie he knew was a lie but I had been too stubborn to ever admit. But I did not get to tell my brother any of these things. A lightning bolt from the vicious EF5 tornado lit up the basement for a split second. Long enough to see the fear in my brother’s eyes as the small window in our basement exploded and sent shards flying into our home. Myself, my mother, my father, darted forward out of our seats towards the exploding window, and towards my brother. I knew before I had left the comfort of the couch that it was too late. That the shards had hit a target with as much accuracy as Tiger Woods aiming a golf ball into a miniscule hole. There was screaming. Whether the screaming was from my mother, my father or myself I did not know. There was blood. I knew from who. I felt my father’s rough hand reach out and intertwine his fingers with mine. I felt another foreign wave go through my body. A wave I could never give a name to. A wave I did not want to feel. I squeezed my father’s hand and looked away from my brother’s body and through the now open window and into the foreign sky.

Author's Note

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