Storm Shelter
By Bethany Cutkomp
July 15, 2023
July 15, 2023
Nana insists we go into the attic for a closer chance at heaven. This is why I’m here, to save the family from another unnecessary funeral. While Nana’s cognitive ability may be declining, her physical strength has no plans on succumbing to her age. It takes two of us—me and my buddy Gabriel—to wrestle her toward the basement, but she fights back, yowling about meeting God inside the twister.
After avoiding a sock to the eye, Gabriel smooths his beanie over his eyebrows and hisses, “Your grandma is a fucking psycho.”
“Really Gabe?” I say over my shoulder. “I wasn’t aware.”
Gusts of soggy air push through the window screens, tousling windchimes and loose drain pipes. Nana’s glassware and framed photos chatter from distant thunder. If I wasn’t put in charge of leading her to safety, I’d be out on the porch, beer in hand, watching the clouds flirt with the ground. The opportunity is right in front of me, but I’m not sure my mom is keen on the idea of us abandoning Nana to meet her creator.
We stumble through the kitchen that no longer smells of cupboard spices and cooked fruit. That familiarity is gone, replaced with musty staleness comparable to a nursing home.
“You go open the basement door,” I request. “I’ll try and—”
The tornado sirens cut me off. That revolving howl triggers my pulse to quicken—a primitive reaction since I was little. Nana stiffens at the sound, shoving me into her refrigerator and using that momentum to escape our grip. Magnets clatter, freeing decade-old art I’d drawn in crayon.
I slump against the fridge, reeling. Nana’s slackened expression burns a permanent image in my head. It’s as if, for a fraction of a second, she doesn’t register who I am. That is what scares me.
My parents warned me of this when asking me to check up on her. I didn’t expect it to be this bad already, and she’s only going to get worse.
Before turning to God, Nana believed in the water cycle.
Our bodies are composed of over fifty percent water, she’d say. Surely that water will seep into the earth once we decay. We will break down into molecules and evaporate, back to the clouds that conceived us. Then we’ll be rain. As rain, we will become streams. Streams to rivers. We’ll empty into large lakes and seas before the sky claims us as clouds once more.
“I’m a firecracker of a woman,” Nana used to tell me. “When I pass on, you’ll know I’m here to say hello when a good storm rolls through.”
Long before her brain started sabotaging itself, Nana chased storms for a living. She’d come home with electrifying stories risking her life for the sake of research. Pulling over and clambering out to witness the funnel build. Taking cover in the nearest ditch. Braking just in time to miss a toppled powerline.
The adrenaline rush kept her kicking, she’d joke, which lit a spark in me. It drove my parents crazy, worrying about Nana surviving out there while keeping me from sneaking outside, too.
I wished to be older, but never considered that Nana would age with me.
***
The rain is coming down hard. Sideways, almost. Gabriel’s watching the weather radar, nursing a sore spot near his ribs.
“How am I supposed to tell my dad that I got the shit kicked outta me by a senile old woman?”
We’ve given up and let Nana climb the retractable ladder hanging from the hallway ceiling. Neither of us want to rush her back down and risk her falling. She’s in God’s hands now.
I press my nose flat against the living room window, watching ghastly clouds waltz and darken. Porch lights flick on. Frantic cars speed around fallen garbage cans, through puddles and potholes. The sirens have ceased for the time being. They’ll start up again. That’s the way it always is.
“Don’t feel like you have to stay here,” I tell Gabe. “You could probably make it home in time if you leave now.”
“What, and leave you here to die with your grandma? That’s pretty fucked up, Ben.”
The windows flash white, followed by an immediate explosion of thunder. We both flinch. No response from Nana upstairs.
I let out a long breath. “Guess I should go prepare getting blown to heaven.”
My friend’s scowl curdles. “You’re just as crazy as she is.”
But he pushes past me and starts up the ladder. I shut the windows and prepare a pack of essentials—flashlights, bottles of water, crackers and cookies—with trembling hands.
What are you even supposed to bring to heaven?
***
The attic smells like wet, aged wood. Between stacks of storage boxes, Nana sits on a futon with her hands clasped. Gabriel slouches beside her, mindlessly picking at his acne scabs.
“So how does this work?” he asks Nana. “Will we meet God in the eye of the tornado or—”
“There is no eye of a tornado,” Nana interjects, the first lucid sentence since we’ve arrived.
Gabriel glances at me. Venturing. “But Twister. The Wizard of Oz. Don’t they—”
“Hurricanes are the storm systems with an eye, larger in scale than tornadoes,” Nana continues. “The eye of a hurricane alone typically stretches twenty to forty miles across whereas an entire tornado’s width only extends to a few hundred yards…”
Her eyes have lit up with a vigor that brings me back to taking shelter in the basement as a kid. I fought my parents to let me stay upstairs and watch the sky turn green. Nana sat me in her lap, cramming weather facts down my throat until I grew drowsy.
She still has her own storm raging within. I won’t let her evaporate just yet. Resting her frail hands in mine, I send a silent prayer to the water cycle and wait out the worst.
After avoiding a sock to the eye, Gabriel smooths his beanie over his eyebrows and hisses, “Your grandma is a fucking psycho.”
“Really Gabe?” I say over my shoulder. “I wasn’t aware.”
Gusts of soggy air push through the window screens, tousling windchimes and loose drain pipes. Nana’s glassware and framed photos chatter from distant thunder. If I wasn’t put in charge of leading her to safety, I’d be out on the porch, beer in hand, watching the clouds flirt with the ground. The opportunity is right in front of me, but I’m not sure my mom is keen on the idea of us abandoning Nana to meet her creator.
We stumble through the kitchen that no longer smells of cupboard spices and cooked fruit. That familiarity is gone, replaced with musty staleness comparable to a nursing home.
“You go open the basement door,” I request. “I’ll try and—”
The tornado sirens cut me off. That revolving howl triggers my pulse to quicken—a primitive reaction since I was little. Nana stiffens at the sound, shoving me into her refrigerator and using that momentum to escape our grip. Magnets clatter, freeing decade-old art I’d drawn in crayon.
I slump against the fridge, reeling. Nana’s slackened expression burns a permanent image in my head. It’s as if, for a fraction of a second, she doesn’t register who I am. That is what scares me.
My parents warned me of this when asking me to check up on her. I didn’t expect it to be this bad already, and she’s only going to get worse.
Before turning to God, Nana believed in the water cycle.
Our bodies are composed of over fifty percent water, she’d say. Surely that water will seep into the earth once we decay. We will break down into molecules and evaporate, back to the clouds that conceived us. Then we’ll be rain. As rain, we will become streams. Streams to rivers. We’ll empty into large lakes and seas before the sky claims us as clouds once more.
“I’m a firecracker of a woman,” Nana used to tell me. “When I pass on, you’ll know I’m here to say hello when a good storm rolls through.”
Long before her brain started sabotaging itself, Nana chased storms for a living. She’d come home with electrifying stories risking her life for the sake of research. Pulling over and clambering out to witness the funnel build. Taking cover in the nearest ditch. Braking just in time to miss a toppled powerline.
The adrenaline rush kept her kicking, she’d joke, which lit a spark in me. It drove my parents crazy, worrying about Nana surviving out there while keeping me from sneaking outside, too.
I wished to be older, but never considered that Nana would age with me.
***
The rain is coming down hard. Sideways, almost. Gabriel’s watching the weather radar, nursing a sore spot near his ribs.
“How am I supposed to tell my dad that I got the shit kicked outta me by a senile old woman?”
We’ve given up and let Nana climb the retractable ladder hanging from the hallway ceiling. Neither of us want to rush her back down and risk her falling. She’s in God’s hands now.
I press my nose flat against the living room window, watching ghastly clouds waltz and darken. Porch lights flick on. Frantic cars speed around fallen garbage cans, through puddles and potholes. The sirens have ceased for the time being. They’ll start up again. That’s the way it always is.
“Don’t feel like you have to stay here,” I tell Gabe. “You could probably make it home in time if you leave now.”
“What, and leave you here to die with your grandma? That’s pretty fucked up, Ben.”
The windows flash white, followed by an immediate explosion of thunder. We both flinch. No response from Nana upstairs.
I let out a long breath. “Guess I should go prepare getting blown to heaven.”
My friend’s scowl curdles. “You’re just as crazy as she is.”
But he pushes past me and starts up the ladder. I shut the windows and prepare a pack of essentials—flashlights, bottles of water, crackers and cookies—with trembling hands.
What are you even supposed to bring to heaven?
***
The attic smells like wet, aged wood. Between stacks of storage boxes, Nana sits on a futon with her hands clasped. Gabriel slouches beside her, mindlessly picking at his acne scabs.
“So how does this work?” he asks Nana. “Will we meet God in the eye of the tornado or—”
“There is no eye of a tornado,” Nana interjects, the first lucid sentence since we’ve arrived.
Gabriel glances at me. Venturing. “But Twister. The Wizard of Oz. Don’t they—”
“Hurricanes are the storm systems with an eye, larger in scale than tornadoes,” Nana continues. “The eye of a hurricane alone typically stretches twenty to forty miles across whereas an entire tornado’s width only extends to a few hundred yards…”
Her eyes have lit up with a vigor that brings me back to taking shelter in the basement as a kid. I fought my parents to let me stay upstairs and watch the sky turn green. Nana sat me in her lap, cramming weather facts down my throat until I grew drowsy.
She still has her own storm raging within. I won’t let her evaporate just yet. Resting her frail hands in mine, I send a silent prayer to the water cycle and wait out the worst.
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Bethany Cutkomp is a writer from St. Louis, Missouri. One day, she hopes to write YA novels and befriend the opossums under her porch. Her work appears in Mag 20/20, Worm Moon Archive, Crab Apple Literary, Split Rock Review, oranges journal, and more. You can find her on social media at @bdcutkomp.
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