The Day the Wave Came – by Paul Mitchell
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Morning sunlight through the kitchen window warmed my stubbled face and I finished filling the sink with hot water and soap suds. I turned off the tap and picked up the silver pot that I hadn’t been able to cram into the dishwasher last night. It smelt of the Portuguese-style chicken dish Leah had made, a meal she’d dubbed ‘our last supper’. I hadn’t laughed, or eaten much.
My dressing gown sleeves drooped into the dishwater so I rolled them up, tighter this time. I could have taken the gown off, but I was naked underneath. If I went and got dressed, I’d risk waking Leah – who should really be up by now, given the plan we’d made last night. Maybe she was sick and would stay in bed all day. And the inevitable would be postponed.
‘Zoo army!’ shouted little Griffin. He was sitting on our white Chesterfield couch in front of the TV, wearing the Peter Pan outfit he’d refused to take off before bed last night.
‘Tsu-nami,’ I corrected him when I saw the footage of flooding streets. I dried my hands on my dressing gown and made for the lounge and the glass coffee table. Since the tsunami had smashed parts of Asia a few days ago, Leah and I had tried to shield the kids from news of the disaster. It seemed best-practice parenting; they had plenty of years ahead of them to deal with the world’s horrors.
‘Where’s your sister?’
I picked up the remote from where it sat on a magazine.
‘Over dare,’ Griffin pointed. Brittany was on the back deck in her ballet costume, silently pirouetting.
‘Go dance with her, please,’ I told him and waved the remote towards my daughter. Griffin slid from the couch, burped, and grabbed his plastic sword from the Egyptian rug and its pattern of Tutankhamun. I hated the rug and was glad Leah had decided it was hers. Griffin scampered for the deck, leaving the glass doors wide open behind him, and poked his sister’s tummy with his weapon straightaway.
‘Griffffinnn!’ she squealed, and off she flitted to the relative peace of the leafy fishpond.
I watched the Sri Lankan village on the screen take the tsunami’s full force. Thatch, hessian sacks, hubcaps and shop signs rode the tide. A pair of cows rose and fell, gulping for air, and an ancient Mini Minor, its hood flapping open, was just as frantic for breath.
Why hadn’t there been any warnings? Or had there been warnings and not enough people had heeded them? I’d been so busy protecting the kids from the horror, from all horrors, I hadn’t taken enough notice. A studio interview began and a compere questioned a bespectacled woman with long grey hair, an expert on seismic phenomena.
‘People were used to earthquakes,’ she said, adjusting her lapel mic, ‘but this was something beyond imagining. Really, nothing could have prevented what we saw …’
Her considered voice went on over footage of people running from the water’s muscular arm. A provincial city with ancient stone buildings withstood the tide, but the wave still turned its streets to pulsing rivers. A young Muslim couple embraced on the flat roof of a stone house, while below them office chairs, mattresses and fishing baskets surfed along. I thought I saw a dead body float past as well, but surely the network would have edited that out.
In a crowded disaster refuge, a bronzed and bald old man appeared in a tattered white shirt, close up and distressed, his stream of words translated into a younger man’s calm voice.
‘The government must answer for this. How do I rebuild? They knew this was coming.’
A large and heavily robed woman with two moaning toddlers in her arms got her chance to talk, her words also rendered in a cool and reasonable tone.
‘Where is my husband and my sons? What am I to do? One minute we are safe, the next we are in water.’
Another street became a river, flowing with kitchen chairs, pots, fluffy toys and cushions. I thought of my new rental house, two suburbs away, and as yet unfurnished. A friend was planning to loan me his second television until I got around to buying my own, but watching ours this morning, I doubted I’d take up his offer.
An old couple argued, standing in the smashed remains of a bungalow.
‘Why are they fighting?’ asked Brittany. I turned to see both kids staring up at the screen, their faces open, honest and hopeful. They had no idea how bad the world could be or how useless adults were. I let the TV footage run.
‘They’re upset,’ I told them.
‘Zoo army?’ Griffin nodded seriously.
‘That’s right. The tsunami took their home.’
Was Leah ever going to get up? The plan was for the kids to have breakfast, then we’d sit them on the couch with hot chocolates and explain the situation carefully and gently. As if that would change anything.
‘Will the tsunami come here?’ Brittany asked, hauling herself onto the couch.
‘No,’ I told her firmly. ‘Tsunamis don’t come to Australia.’
‘Why?’ asked Griffin, popping himself beside his sister.
‘Because they’re caused by earthquakes out at sea and we don’t have any earthquakes close enough to Australia.’
‘Why?’ Brittany asked.
‘I don’t actually know why. We just don’t have tsunamis.’
‘Martyn! The kids!’
Leah was in the doorway in her cool cotton dressing gown, standing hands on hips and aghast at the television. I turned back to the screen and a wave smashed through a wooden house on stilts. ▼
Image: Sonia Sanmartin
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