The Blackberry Bush by David Housholder Page B
Authors: David Housholder
Tags: The Blackberry Bush
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desperately try to paddle and claw up the face to top the crest. No go.
I fall backward, the only true sensation of zero gravity on this earth, and the wave crashes down on me.
In the turbulence, I am drawn deep underwater by the leash attached to my ankle and surfboard. I claw upward toward the blurry light but am pulled downward.
My leash breaks, and I get rag-dolled in the turbulence. The board is my flotation device, and it is gone.
Another twelve-foot wave hits, and the vicious turbulence is repeated before I am able to get a lungful of air between poundings.
But this time the water is hot and smoky. In dreams, some things make sense that don’t make sense in the real world.
All of a sudden I find myself facedown on a carpeted office suite floor that is quaking and heaving. I hold my balance. The roar of what sounds and feels like the concussion of an extended train wreck continues to make laps around my ears. I look up and see, through the strangling smoke, broken window glass and sky off to the side.
I run for the opening as the floor heaves and snaps.
Leaping through the broken window into what turns out to be midair, I grasp for any kind of hold, which isn’t there.
Looking down, I see an urban landscape one hundred floors below my flailing feet....
Screaming, I sit straight up in bed.
Are Mom and Dad okay?
The R OTTERDAM S PARTA soccer shirt I’m sleeping in is soaked. I have to pull it off....
At last the nightmares evaporate, and morning comes.
I’m standing in the living room with my school book bag and my skateboard, staring at the TV news. The World Trade Center towers are crumbling over and over in rerun after rerun.
Dad peered up into the sky when he went out the front door to meet with the community leaders to assess risk to the town of Zarzamora. He looked worried.
Mom left for work at the winery a few minutes ago.
Waves of what Mom calls “vertigo” keep rolling over me. She told me not to walk to school along the top of the wall, just for today.
It will take every one of us a decade, at least, to get our balance back. If we ever do. Once the season changes, the old one doesn’t come back for a long time.
I immediately think of Oma Adri. She would know what to do.
The instant I think of her, the phone rings.
Sure enough, it’s Oma.
________________
* To view this amazing painting for yourself, search your internet browser for: “Vermeer vrouw met weegschaal” or “Vermeer woman with a balance”
PART TWO
2001
9-11 Attack Day
Zarzamora, California
Janine
J ANINE , J OSH’S MOTHER, STANDS ALONE behind the counter of the wine-tasting room of the Zarzamora Winery.
The radio is on, and Janine has been staring for hours at the polished wood floors as she listens to every word of the news. Now she glances at her exotic Asian ring, and memories start to trigger.
For the first time ever, on a beautiful sunny September day, not one visitor has come in all day. The slow season doesn’t usually start until later in the month. She will lock up tonight without having talked to a single person. Even the phone has not rung.
Janine could use the money, so she stays on for the full shift and punches the clock. Having grown up in a prominent, wealthy family, this is quite an adjustment.
She has plenty of time to think about the 9-11 terror atrocities being broadcast through speakers into the wine-tasting room.
Atrocities. Her mind flips to an earlier time—her sixteenth birthday in Holland—when Oma Nellie had taken her to a fancy restaurant at De Bijenkorf Department Store. There Oma Nellie had told her everything that had happened in 1944....
1944
Hillegersberg, Holland
Z WANGER ( PREGNANT )?
Nellie’s mother admits, in the kitchen over afternoon tea, that she suspected as much. Nellie has found it impossible to hide the growing baby, and her mother calls her in to talk about it. Nellie had been playing from Chopin’s preludes on the Bösendorfer piano in
I fall backward, the only true sensation of zero gravity on this earth, and the wave crashes down on me.
In the turbulence, I am drawn deep underwater by the leash attached to my ankle and surfboard. I claw upward toward the blurry light but am pulled downward.
My leash breaks, and I get rag-dolled in the turbulence. The board is my flotation device, and it is gone.
Another twelve-foot wave hits, and the vicious turbulence is repeated before I am able to get a lungful of air between poundings.
But this time the water is hot and smoky. In dreams, some things make sense that don’t make sense in the real world.
All of a sudden I find myself facedown on a carpeted office suite floor that is quaking and heaving. I hold my balance. The roar of what sounds and feels like the concussion of an extended train wreck continues to make laps around my ears. I look up and see, through the strangling smoke, broken window glass and sky off to the side.
I run for the opening as the floor heaves and snaps.
Leaping through the broken window into what turns out to be midair, I grasp for any kind of hold, which isn’t there.
Looking down, I see an urban landscape one hundred floors below my flailing feet....
Screaming, I sit straight up in bed.
Are Mom and Dad okay?
The R OTTERDAM S PARTA soccer shirt I’m sleeping in is soaked. I have to pull it off....
At last the nightmares evaporate, and morning comes.
I’m standing in the living room with my school book bag and my skateboard, staring at the TV news. The World Trade Center towers are crumbling over and over in rerun after rerun.
Dad peered up into the sky when he went out the front door to meet with the community leaders to assess risk to the town of Zarzamora. He looked worried.
Mom left for work at the winery a few minutes ago.
Waves of what Mom calls “vertigo” keep rolling over me. She told me not to walk to school along the top of the wall, just for today.
It will take every one of us a decade, at least, to get our balance back. If we ever do. Once the season changes, the old one doesn’t come back for a long time.
I immediately think of Oma Adri. She would know what to do.
The instant I think of her, the phone rings.
Sure enough, it’s Oma.
________________
* To view this amazing painting for yourself, search your internet browser for: “Vermeer vrouw met weegschaal” or “Vermeer woman with a balance”
PART TWO
2001
9-11 Attack Day
Zarzamora, California
Janine
J ANINE , J OSH’S MOTHER, STANDS ALONE behind the counter of the wine-tasting room of the Zarzamora Winery.
The radio is on, and Janine has been staring for hours at the polished wood floors as she listens to every word of the news. Now she glances at her exotic Asian ring, and memories start to trigger.
For the first time ever, on a beautiful sunny September day, not one visitor has come in all day. The slow season doesn’t usually start until later in the month. She will lock up tonight without having talked to a single person. Even the phone has not rung.
Janine could use the money, so she stays on for the full shift and punches the clock. Having grown up in a prominent, wealthy family, this is quite an adjustment.
She has plenty of time to think about the 9-11 terror atrocities being broadcast through speakers into the wine-tasting room.
Atrocities. Her mind flips to an earlier time—her sixteenth birthday in Holland—when Oma Nellie had taken her to a fancy restaurant at De Bijenkorf Department Store. There Oma Nellie had told her everything that had happened in 1944....
1944
Hillegersberg, Holland
Z WANGER ( PREGNANT )?
Nellie’s mother admits, in the kitchen over afternoon tea, that she suspected as much. Nellie has found it impossible to hide the growing baby, and her mother calls her in to talk about it. Nellie had been playing from Chopin’s preludes on the Bösendorfer piano in
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