Chapter 4:
Beauty Queen
“I’ve never seen a flood before,” I said.
Famous last words.
I’ve always had an uncanny ability to predict the future, and this was one such prescient moment. This is precisely what I told my mother before she stuck the key into the ignition and turned it. The engine roared. She grabbed the steering wheel and twisted it. And out we went on this rainy day to our destination.
“Hopefully, you never will.” My mom said.
My mom was very risk-averse. She didn’t like dogs or, really, any pets. She didn’t know how to ride a bike and didn’t care to learn.
One time, we went on a field trip with the St. Lucia National Trust to a beach that was so remote that most people had never been there before.
It was on the Atlantic Ocean side of the island, so the seas were rough and hostile. Menacing. And there were all sorts of exotic creatures on the Atlantic side that could kill you or fuck up your day, so most people avoided swimming on that side of the island. You were indeed much more likely to drown over there.
The waves on this beach were unspeakably rough. The tide would pull back so far you could see the corals and sea urchins where the sea floor was just a moment ago. It pulled back hard for what seemed like an eternity. You could have easily gotten sucked out to sea if you weren’t careful.
But when the wave finally returned to the shore, it crashed like it was trying to kill you. The water got to our necks and knocked us over like bowling pins. One guy got smashed into the side of a cliff and broke his leg.
That’s when my mother said, “I don’t care about how great this mystery beach is… We’re all going home.”
“C’mon!” I said. “We never do anything fun.”
I had never experienced so much fear of missing out in my life. My father was also quite salty about her executive decision but went along with it.
About half the people kept going even after the guy broke his leg. And they did make it to their destination… But they risked life and limb to get there. Grown adults started to cry like children. Some parents had to hold their baby over their heads to keep it above water.
For my mother… There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that she would get caught up in a nightmare like that. She would do anything and everything to avoid that kind of situation.
But sometimes disaster strikes when you least expect it — and no amount of preparation can save you. That’s the very situation we found ourselves in one day when I was 11.
I told my mother I’d never seen a flood before because cats and dogs were raining that day.
Now, there are TWO types of rain in St. Lucia…
Sometimes rain came crashing down out of nowhere, and then five minutes later, the sun would come right back as if nothing happened. Look around, and you’d see some gutters draining out, some dripping from tree branches, maybe a little steam coming off the roads, but that was it. Ten minutes later, you would have no idea it rained.
And other times, the rain would put the fear of God in you. Usually, the rain would last the entire day. Sometimes, two or three. It would be like a monsoon. Or a wet blizzard. The sky would go completely dark and sinister. Thunder would go off like cannon fire — giving you goosebumps and startling you more with each burst.
