Hunted by Wind

“Something scary is coming tonight.”

I was six years old and I was frustrated with my father for one reason or another. We were standing in the living room by the couch when he leaned over and spoke these words to me in a mock dread (or at least what I perceived to be a mock dread at the time). I didn’t understand what he meant and just thought he was trying to scare or make fun of me. I wasn’t old enough to understand that he was trying to mask his own fear and simultaneously take his little boy’s mind off of what was going on around him. It was August 23, 1992, and we were getting ready to nail plywood boards over the windows of our South Florida home. In a matter of hours, the inside of our house was shrouded in darkness as my dad and his brother blocked out the sun window by window.

“Zack, wake up. Get up.”

Whispered words in the middle of the night. Confusion as I am groggily led away from my room and into the hallway by the bathroom (the only room in the house without windows). A small group of us sit in the hallway by the light of the bathroom: my dad, my mom, my aunt and me (Rocky, the cat, is nowhere to be found). The house is dark as it should be at that time. It seems secure, but something is wrong- the night outside is a cacophony of horrible sounds: angry howls from a seemingly bottomless throat and audible creaking from the boards just nailed up hours before. It was August 24, 1992, and the eye wall of Andrew was broaching our neighborhood as we moved into the bathroom.

“Rockyyyyyyyy! Roooooockyyyyyyy!”

My mom shouts into the darkness as she holds the door open at arm’s length, hoping for the cat to come out of hiding to join us in the bathroom. Moments before, the boards were ripped off the windows and the wind smashed through the glass. Her voice fails as the wind ransacks the inside of our house and drowns her out in its roar. The door is closed and fear permeates the bathroom as the walls begin to shake. The house is being ripped open like a clam, the storm looking for a prize within it.

“Lord, please help us.”

Dad is standing over us with his hands pressed against the large mirror, attempting to keep it from shattering all over us in the constant shaking. My aunt is pressing her body against the door, her hand gripping the handle, attempting to keep the door from breaking off its hinges as Andrew presses his weight against it to get inside the bathroom. Her shorts are getting wet as Andrew’s angry rain soaks the carpet and creeps under the door. My mom is comforting me as I cry in fear in this hot, cramped bathroom- a monster destroying the house around us and trying to get into our sanctuary to eat us. Eventually I fall asleep, but I don’t remember when.

Quiet. And light. Morning had arrived and the sun’s light shown under the door. My aunt moves away from the door and my dad opens it, letting in the smell of soaked carpet and ceiling insulation and a very terrified cat. We were overjoyed to see Rocky as he rushed into the bathroom to join us, his body somehow dry, but the sight that greeted us outside the confines of our small citadel was utter devastation: the house was wrecked. The roof over the living room was gone. Mostly every window had broken and glass covered every square inch of the soaked carpet.

Dad made me stay in the bathroom as he went out to get my shoes. I can only imagine what he felt as he walked through the ruin of our home. Where are we going to go? How am I going to provide food and clean water for my family? What’s going to happen?

When we went outside we witnessed the havoc Andrew wreaked. The street had standing water that was waist-high (fortunately our house was on an incline, so the newly-formed river could not breach our home). Our neighbors’ homes were destroyed (to this day we call one of the homes in the old neighborhood the “dollhouse” because the winds had ripped off the entire roof and an entire wall of the two-story house, exposing everything within). On the remaining wires of the power lines was the curious sight of colorful, tropical birds perching, a clear sign that Metro Zoo was also destroyed during the night. Their unique and exotic beauty stood in stark contrast to our neighborhood’s downfall. Soon enough the neighbors started checking in on one another, and eventually some worked up the courage to venture out into the water to lift one of the manhole coverings in order to give the floodwaters a means of escape.

“We might have to stay here.”

After a little while the cool breezes supplied by the passing of the storm dissipate and it is hot and humid again. There is no electricity to power the AC or the refrigerator. There is no TV. There is only the constant waiting and observing. The soaked carpet and insulation take on a more rancid smell as they are baked by the sun and left to rot in the exposure of the breached house. This is all too overwhelming for a six year old. I cry helplessly as my father tells me the possibility of spending the night in our broken home. But we don’t. My uncle’s in laws take us in. Their house is intact after the storm and they have a generator. I remember, though, that the sewer system around their house smelled like death, a sign that Miami’s infrastructure was crumbling under the fury of Andrew. We remained a refugee-like family for about a year, bouncing around from home to home, apartment to apartment, till our home and neighborhood were restored.

We came back to the house a few times after the storm to salvage what we could from the wreckage. Aside from the view of the sky from the living room, the pink insulation everywhere, and the smell, one image caught my attention and remains with me till today: the “smile” in the ceiling of my parents’ bedroom. Structurally speaking, this was not a good sign as it pointed to irreparable damage to the roof and ceiling, but looking back I have instinctually attributed different meanings to that curved crack in the ceiling. On bad days, I remember it as a smirk- a little signature left by Andrew to remind us of the fear and devastation he caused. On more hopeful days, I remember it as the weak smile of our dying house- sad that it could not withstand Andrew’s ability to pull it apart, but satisfied in knowing that it protected us from the storm, smiling because it knew we would live beyond Andrew.

The house was rebuilt and we endured many more literal and figurative storms in it, but none quite like Andrew.