Only when the strain in my cheeks became unbearable did I realize I was smiling. Regardless, lines of salted emotions stained my face.

The memories of Gran brought on a mental fog, yet my body felt light. Muscles relaxed from oils and incense, remnants of when she occupied the small bedroom.

Much of her was still here. I packed a small portion of her patterned frocks in a duffel bag to be donated, but pictures of me littered the walls and the varnished nightstand. The perfumes I gifted her were displayed on the dresser near upturned bottles of cocoa butter and Vaseline.

I sighed. “Dis is takin’ longa dan ah thought.”

A sudden downpour created a soothing rhythm against the corrugated galvanized steel, and I rose to my feet. My legs felt stiff, but by the time I reached the weathered Dutch door, they were mine again. A rusty hook held the top half of the doorway, so I propped my body against the lower part, took a deep breath, and stared into the backyard. Then, a tingling surge began in my chest and radiated outwards. It dissolved into a soothing warmth as fine mist kissed my face.

Rain pounded the lush crotons, batted the acrid damsel to the ground, and cleansed the cherry tree of several ant colonies. The coconut palm waved in response to the gust from the ravine, and the hot soil gave off a rich, earthy aroma. Torrents of fresh water rushed into the muddy drain and disappeared into the callaloo bush.

Then, the air currents picked up. A loose piece of chicken wire thrashed against the abandoned coop, clawed at the wood. Its booming effect carried four houses away. Meanwhile, the neighbor’s battered tarp took to the skies, caught the breeze, and vanished into the gloom, reminding me of the natural terrors that plague the Caribbean.

In that instant, the only things that existed were my present self and the ghosts of memories.

Since I survived three cyclones, I’ve witnessed roofs twisted and bent, resembling discarded paper. I’ve watched as giant trees blocked roads. I have seen villages reduced to rubble, as if machines had plowed through them, and I’ve witnessed gardens fade, their vibrant colors and fragrant scents swallowed.

Hurricane Ivan, with its torrential rains and powerful surges, wreaked havoc, bestowing a trail of devastation that stretched from Grenada to other Caribbean territories and the U.S. It intensified to a category five three times, so the destruction was beyond belief.

The storm devoured not only our homes but also our neighbors’, leaving us with no shield from the tail of precipitation that dragged on during the early morning. It destroyed our vegetation, compelled us to loot, and tainted the image of our peaceful society.

I always believed we were susceptible to Ivan’s terror because we were unprepared. Before him, it had been over fifty seasons since our land had faced a hurricane’s fury. As a result, we had grown to think that we were untouchable. The ideology that God was Grenadian left us vulnerable.

Janet, similar to Ivan, was evidence that this was flawed. In 1955, she roared through, a terrifying force of nature. Her achievements were so monumental that the World Meteorological Organization retired her name.

That unproven ideology swayed Grenadians then, so despite the warnings, Gran went about her day as usual on September 22. She washed a full week’s clothing for her entire household and spread it on the backyard clothesline in the stillness of the warm air. While the pigeons searched for shelter and the dogs howled, Grandma picked breadfruit and prepared provisions and meat. Then, she packed them in a heavy-bottom Dutch oven and left the island’s national dish to simmer in coconut milk. Like many in those days, she cooked the meal on a coal pot in the front yard, where the scent of the Oil Down couldn’t stick to the laundry.

“Ah had mi one little breadfruit on de tree, so ah eat it before she take it.”

In the time fragrant juices bubbled, Gran swept and scrubbed her wooden floors clean. Afterward, she bathed, greased herself with unprocessed coconut oil, and sat at her living room window with a steaming mound of freshly cooked Oil Down. She left the rest on the stove in the kitchen, anticipating a second helping.

“Honestly, ah din’t tink nothin’ bad was gonna happen. Ah thought some wind and rain, but nothin’ like wat hit us–I shoulda known betta though. My joints hurtin’ me whole day,” she would say and pat her knee.

The gales picked up in the evening. That’s when my grandmother remembered her family’s clothes. She didn’t allow them to be taken, though. Only rich people threw good clothing away. So, Gran put on my grandfather’s old shirt, slipped her feet into his worn brown work boots, tied her unruly hair under a plastic bag, and braced the weather. She saved it before the breeze strutted across the hill like a cock ready to fight. This was thirty minutes before the first rain fell.

Ahead of her arrival, Janet howled from the nearby villages. From her vantage point, Grandma watched as a woman fled her shanty, baby in arm, moments before nature picked it up and launched it into the dwindling visibility. The tallest trees bent over to touch their roots, the ashy clouds lit up bright blue, and rumbles shook her foundation. Above a nearby house, neighboring power lines clashed, sparked, and weakened knees. When it last flickered, my grandmother’s home went dark, so she put the kerosene lamp, a beacon of our history, to use.

Still, it was not until massive steel frames from the proximate lumberyard crashed on her shelter that the adrenaline spurted into her system. That’s when my grandma realized the severity of their visitor. It grew, crashed, rolled, rumbled, and exploded around seven p.m. Janet flattened homes, turned windows into shards of glass, stripped flora, and cleared lands.

As rainwater seeped down the partitions that separated rooms, the muscles in Gran’s shoulders tensed. If her home fell as well, where would they find safety? With the wind whipping debris, they wouldn’t have reached the closest shelter, yards away.

“Wat we go do?”

This stumped my grandmother, but not her husband. From his bed, he watched fragments of the storm seep through the roof and readied himself to face it. Then he rose, dressed, and went to join the rest of his frantic family.

Fifteen minutes later, as the Duncan household crowded the red velvet mahogany chair set, the wind whistled once, and the first plywood peeled from over their heads. Droplets poured in, hard and cold, with a sudden burst of light, and temporarily blinded them from the visible path of the cyclone. Their quiet world became loud, and Gran gasped for air.

Grandpa reacted early, instructing the three to cower underneath the four-seater dining table. But it wasn’t long before the gust returned and claimed the rest of the ceiling. Knowing his bedroom was next, Gramps led his clan to the children’s room as the cyclone pushed them inward. Their closet was spacious, with a partition dividing the two sides. While my grandfather secured the teenagers, he noticed his wife was missing.

“Shit.”

He saw her leave the living room; he knew she was behind. As he thought of what could have happened, spots clouded his vision, his blood pressure elevated, and the world spun. The breeze wasn’t powerful enough to carry her off, so he knew she had gone astray.

Gramps found his five-foot wife stuffing her plump body into a lower kitchen cupboard. She had already removed the white buckets that stored sugar and flour and was waist-deep in the musty space.

He yelled for her, his voice barely a whisper lost to the air currents. So he touched her hip, and, like a horse, her foot went backward, landing on his leg. My grandfather held her with a firm hand, but Gran fought as if the storm itself was whisking her away. Eventually, he dragged her into the light, where she saw his face and regained her senses. However, this task was not without its injuries. A busted lip, a bruised hip, all in the act of love and heroism.

My grandmother told me he later said, “Ah shoulda leave ur crazy ass there.” Jokingly, of course.

Or was it?

My grandparents returned to their children, where they remained until the world around them became quiet. Then they escaped, jumped out of their house to an abandoned first-floor concrete-block structure. The building was unfinished, leaving the outer windows as empty frames, and the inner ones barricaded with plywood. This was the best to hope for, considering the remodeled village.

Fragments of debris were scattered where homes had stood. The storm stripped the trees of leaves, branches, and even bark. Those too weak to resist were yanked from the root with a sickening crack and dragged several feet, or vanished. The villages, once obscured by the lush greenery, were exposed, and as the family fled to safety, they witnessed others doing the same. Their home wasn’t special; it was just another marker in the graveyard.

“Here we go again,” Gran said. Her speech vanished within the echoing rumble, as it grew violent.

The hurricane raged throughout the night, its fury only to wane as the first rays of sunrise appeared. During all those hours, my grandmother’s stomach rumbled while she sat on the cold concrete and mumbled.

After the tyrant’s monstrous roar faded to a murmur, she returned to the shell of her home. It remained on its pillars, but the storm took all the plywood and galvanized steel. The clothes Gran risked her life to save were soaked, the floors in ankle-deep runoff. The pictures from the album, faded and tattered, turned up in the neighbor’s yard weeks later. But none of this pissed her off.

What irritated my grandma was that the dumplings floated in water, along with pig tail and breadfruit, and that she still craved Oil Down.

Editor: Shannon Hensley