Sarah Margot Bannister was convinced that if she could just manage to stand perfectly still in the middle of a really violent earthquake, she would learn the trick of flying. It made perfect sense to her. Humanity’s attempts to fly had always involved trying to get away from the ground, and they never worked because — as Sarah saw it — the ground always demanded their return. It was like her relationship with her perennial boyfriend, Ben: no matter how many times she walked out on him, he would always call her, and she would always come back around again to touch down on the airstrip of his saintly forgiveness.
But, she thought, if Ben were to leave her, that would be different. Then she would have the power of choice. And so it must be with flight. If she could stand her ground during an earthquake, remaining upright and aloof as the earth pitched away from her, then when the ground apologetically reached upwards towards her feet, dangling independently in midair, she would have the perfect right to pull them away and say, “No, thank you. I’m really better off without you.”
Her friends, to whom she explained this concept, agreed wholeheartedly that she was onto something — she really should get Ben to leave her, then she’d be better off, stronger, independent at last. “No, no,” she said, “you’ve got it backwards. Ben’s just a metaphor. I’m talking about flying.”
It was with this view in mind that Sarah moved from Baltimore to San Francisco. Ben followed her, which was a disappointment to her friends, but tangential to Sarah, who now dismissively referred to him as, “my little metaphor.” This did not sit well with Ben, who objected strenuously and tried to have serious talks about their relationship. “Yes, Metaphor,” Sarah would reply absently to his incisive questions, while searching Google for information on which tall buildings would sway the most in a really good earthquake.
The really good earthquake Sarah was waiting for arrived on a Tuesday afternoon, which just goes to show. She was walking home from the grocery store, carrying in both arms heavy shopping bags containing oranges, potato salad, and cans of soup. She had just reached the top of a hill, and paused to catch her breath and admire the city spreading out below her. It was a cool day, so she was surprised to see what she at first took to be heat shimmers by the bay, as she squinted across at the Golden Gate. Then the heat shimmers got larger and closer and louder, moving up the slopes of the city towards her, and she realized elatedly that here, at last, was her really good earthquake.
She took a deep breath, straightened her back, and thought of Cleopatra. She often thought of Cleopatra when trying to remain collected, because no other woman in history, to her knowledge, had ever been as profoundly cool. She was wearing a pair of yellow, sequined ballet flats, and slipped them off, wanting to give the ground no excuses for calling her back again. The pavement felt clammy and rough under her bare feet, and the oranges smelled good in the grocery bags.
Then the earth pitched and rolled violently. The ground heaved up with a tremendous rumbling. The hill shrugged and strained against the sky like a giant having a nightmare under his titanic quilt. Sarah’s hair flew up around her face, and still she remained upright, like a surfer, like an ancient and deeply cool Egyptian queen, like a saltshaker. And she no longer felt the ground beneath her bare feet.
She looked down. The rumbling was passing away, the city settling down again. Sirens wailed traditionally in the background, and neighbors called to one another. And Sarah’s bare feet swayed a comfortable nine inches off the ground in the breezy San Francisco air.
She wiggled her toes. She looked down at her shadow, which seemed to be embarrassed by her sudden disassociation with it. Sarah realized that she still held the bags of oranges, potato salad, and soup, and leaned over to set them down, careful not to touch the cool pavement with her warm feet. It was a little like swimming, but more like sitting on a barstool, fully supported but swinging your legs in midair.
The ground and her shadow lay there, quiet in the hubbub of a city which had just suffered an earthquake, looking up at her as if to say, “Well … aren’t you coming back down?” She had done it. She had stood during the earthquake, and the power to return to earth or not was in her hands. She laughed, and ran straight upwards into the clouds.
2 responses to “All She Needs is One Good Earthquake”
i love this.
Cool, I’m glad! It was fun to write!