He said the worst of the earthquake had struck just blocks from my house. All the freeways were closed. The only way to the Valley was back through the canyon, and still he didn’t know whether he’d be able to get me to the other side. The earthquake of January 17, 1994, was a 6.7 on the Richter scale.
“The big kind,” the cop explained. “The kind that will have a name and a personality one day, the kind everyone will have a story about.”
Police, highway patrolmen, even the National Guard were involved.
“Do you think my family will be okay?” I asked. “They live in Van Nuys.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
I thought of the Sound City Studios at the edge of my neighborhood. I imagined Nirvana’s platinum records falling off the wall, Kurt Cobain’s bright eyes watching over the disaster from the corkboard. Another extreme event occurring in the Valley. All the more reason to love that place. What could be more grunge than a recording studio cracking open and falling into the earth?
As we got closer to the San Fernando Valley, we could see it from above shooting up in flames in the predawn light. The flat grid I’d walked far and wide and knew by heart was under siege. The city lights I used to see stretch for miles were gone. We stood over a dimmed city. I’d seen it like that before—a barren, pockmarked expanse—on the day we arrived, streets still fuming from the riots. That land had a fixed way of reacting to tragedies. Like a celebrity after a scandal, it begged for invisibility. It lay low under pressure, squat and compressed until disasters passed. Magnolia and cypress trees cowered into flaming bushes, buildings shrank, streets folded over, and lakes flung fish out of their waters. Everything waited for nature to rapidly take its course so that an ancient harmony could be restored.
I could see the Woodland Hills Mall in the distance, a beached cement whale, emanating no life pulse—a shaken slab of concrete. I thought of Arash and saluted him. For the first time he felt far away, a memory beginning to fade, replaced by new quakes.
The auroral rays intensified. The night’s chill retreated behind us and we were expelled into the fiery morning below. Day broke, racing against a chorus of manic chirping birds, howling dogs, and roosters. Hungry, fast rays of sun began to climb across the crushed roofs and treetops, cracked antennas, and telephone wires that hung off wobbling poles—a far-reaching sun, responsible for the Valley’s sameness, for the changeless days and odorless air. It engulfed you.
“Let’s hurry home, sir,” I said as we drove up Ventura Boulevard. We tried to make our way through smaller side streets, but every avenue was blocked by a collapsed building or a pile of cars. My head spun and I felt like throwing up. The cop said to stay calm. Disorientation and nausea were normal reactions to earthquakes.
From the car, I saw families huddled together. Lines formed around the few functioning pay phones, tent villages were beginning to rise while dogs roamed in packs looking for food. We met the hollow stares of those who had had a home and then thirty seconds later did not. The Valley was denuded and nakedness made no sense to a town so used to being dressed up. Without its vestments there was no Los Angeles.
The cop dropped me off on Sunny Slope Drive and I was happy to see that it hadn’t fallen into the earth, that it was still there. Just more crooked.
“I hope your family is okay,” he said.
I tried to hug him, but he pushed me back at arm’s length.
“Just doing my duty,” he said in a rush as more horrific news radioed in: the looting had begun.
“Remember what happened to this town the last time things got out of control,” the cop proclaimed. “We’re not going to let that happen again.” He gave me a nod and took off.
Most of our neighbors were out on the street. The Mormons prayed on their front lawn. Desmond, the star, with his wife, mother, and blind dogs, wandered about in a silk bathrobe. He’d been so keen on safeguarding his privacy, but now he looked around, desperate for someone to recognize him, to talk to him and ask him how he was doing. I gave him a quick consoling nod and moved on.
Timoteo was asleep in my mother’s lap. My parents sat cross-legged on the front lawn, eyes wide open. They waited silently for someone to walk over and tell them what to do. They lit up when they saw me with my unstitched leopard-fur coat and messed-up hair. Our driveway was cracked open. The living room had folded in, giving the house a crumpled Z shape. The garage door had fallen out. Boxes had toppled onto the Cadillac’s windshield, breaking it, but everything else seemed fine.
“Where have you been?” my father screamed. “Your mother has already filed three missing-person reports!”
“I’m sorry. I had no way to call. I got here as soon as I could.”
Timoteo awoke and walked up to me, staring at my unlikely outfit.
“You look crazy.” He smiled.
“I know.”
He opened my coat and nuzzled inside. “I thought you weren’t going to come back.”
I opened the fur as wide as I could and wrapped it around him. My parents joined us and I fit them all in. We stayed there, squeezed together in our crammed group hug.
“What about the monitors?” I asked my father. “Is the Alexandria footage damaged?”
“Don’t worry about that now,” he said. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
Those were the words I’d waited to hear for so long, but now that he’d said them I was worried. If he had gotten to that point it meant he’d surrendered.
Someone had told them not to go back inside because there might be aftershocks. The house was not safe, my mother explained, clutching a battery-less flashlight, vaguely remembering that was something you were supposed to have handy when earthquakes struck. She set up breakfast on the front yard: dry cereal, bread, butter, and milk. She’d managed to put together a meal out of the derelict kitchen. Everything had spilled and crashed to the floor, but she was on caretaker autopilot. We were to have breakfast because it was morning and that’s what people did when they woke up. So we ate, sitting on pillows on the front lawn. Neighbors trickled by to talk about loss and damage and my mother welcomed them stoically with her improvised breakfast plates. Everyone said where they were and what they heard when it happened. Some had sad stories, some had happy stories.
I curled up next to my brother on the ground.
“I didn’t wake up when it happened,” he said with a smirk. “I could have died.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“I didn’t tell them about the guys in the pickup truck.”
“Thanks.” I smiled, like any of that even mattered now. I leaned against him, exhausted.
My father looked at us with ironic commiseration and started to laugh.
“What?” Timoteo and I glared at him.
“Well we can now say we’ve done it all. Non ci siamo fatti mancare niente. The whole California experience with the earthquake grand finale too. Pretty cool, right?”
Serena rolled her eyes at him. “It’s not funny.”
“There’s dead people, Dad,” I interjected.
“Okay, okay. Sorry. I was trying to be lighthearted.”