DWP - the flood: prompt

the flood

Manila, May 1960
The day started with beautiful sunshine, vivid blue skies and just a touch of breeze. But my mother, having lived in the farm, thought there was something odd in the air. She was supposed to have washed the sheets, but she changed her mind and she said she would do it tomorrow.

We went about our chores around the house and, as usual, at noon, we sat down to eat lunch. Simple stewed fish and boiled rice. Mother kept saying all morning that there was something odd in the air. The skies couldn't decide if they were blue or gray or a mixture of both colours. Then we noticed that water was flowing inside the house. Outside, the streets suddenly became flooded.

Mother said, "The river is rising in the middle of the day." High tide at noon wasn't normal in our place. Also, my mother commented, there is a strange noise with the rising water which by now is ankle deep for her. I was seven and small for my age so my feet were above ground when sitting. Still, we continued to eat.

But within two minutes, the water rose to her knee and almost to the bench we were sitting on. She ordered us to carry our plates up the stairs to the second floor of the house. By the time we finished eating, just at the top of the stairs, the water inside our house was almost near my mother's waist, her skirt billowing in the water as she carried some foodstuff from the kitchen.

By this time, the strange noise that came with the steadily rising water was replaced by the noise of panicking neighbours. The old lady in the house behind us wailed and asked God for forgiveness and to save her soul. She yelled at her grandchildren: "You little pests, come up here and pray with me. It's the end of the world, you sons of a bitch and all you can think of is swim in that stupid flood!"

Another neighbour turned on their radio and tuned in to the news. Apparently, hours earlier, there was an earthquake in Chile and what we were experiencing was a tidal wave, the tail-end of the much larger scale tsunami that formed across the Pacific Ocean.