Earthchapter10

In the morning we stood in the new part of the house, examining the old. In the addition, the floor was still level, the walls were still true. The old house had sunk on one side so that the floor sloped down and away from us.

"Dad? Why did the two parts of the house come through so differently?"

"Bolts," he said.

He showed me how the new addition was bolted to the foundation with heavy threaded steel. Then we looked at the old part, where the wood had jumped right off the concrete with no bolts to hold it in place.

He took me inside the addition and pointed out some heavy metal anchors bolted to the corners of the wooden framing. "Hold-downs," he called them. Those plus the plywood walls kept the addition from shaking apart. The old part of the house had been built without hold-downs or plywood. "In fact," my father said, "I don't think plywood had even been invented yet."

Just a few small changes had made all the difference. I was amazed. Fascinated. I wanted to look at other houses and see which ones had bolts or hold-downs or plywood, but my father said we had work to do. He said he wanted to move everything out of the old house before it collasped.

"Is it safe to go in there?" Josh asked.

"It's safer now than it will be later."

"What if there's another aftershock?"

"If you fell anything, run."

It wasn't safe. It was crazy. But we were desperate. We moved nervously and quickly. Our footsteps shook the floorboards as if we were creating aftershocks. Walls creaked as we passed them. I was scared that the whole house would collapse on top top of me but was determined to rescue my clothing, my photo album, and my junky belongings that weren't worth risking my life for but which I was determined to save because I was angry at the moving earth. I wouldn't give in to the quake.

We gathered everything that was loose by left the furniture. Soon most of our possessions sat in a pile like the remains of a rummage sale on the plywood floor of the new addition. They were protected by a roof, but no windows or doors.

"Will the carpenters come back?" I asked.

"Only to get their tools," my father said. "We can't afford them now."

"Do we have insurance?"

"No. We couldn't get it. They won't insure houses that aren't bolted to the foundation. Part of the plan with this new addition was to add bolts to the old foundation, but they hadn't done it yet. And the new part couldn't be insured until it was finished. If this earthquake had happened two or three months from now, we couldn've been covered."

"What are we going to do?"

"We'll have to do it ourselves," my father looked grim. "We'll have to tear down the old part of the house and finish the new. It will take a long time."

"I'll help," I said. "I'll do what I can."

"So will I," Jon said.

"We'll all do what we can," my father said.

We spoke bravely, but it felt hollow. My father had a job. How much time could he spend working on the house? Did he know how? Did he have all the tools? And how much help could Jon and I give? We weren't carpenters. Not yet.

My father drove to the school, which was now the town's information and gossip center, to see what was new. I went exploring with Josh and his headphones. He wasn't talking to me much. He'd become a silent companion. Jon, of course, tagged along. Suddenly I had become more important to him than my father. He reminded me of a duckling who had just cracked out of his shell and started following the first animal he set eyes on. He still wasn't singing. Stangely, in spite of the content of his songs, I wished he felt like singing again.

The Winnebago was gone. The man and woman had gotten out. By now, they were probably out of California. Yet, their house had suffered less damage than most.

Their house had bolts. The right bolts. I was becoming fascinated by bolts. They seemed as basic as rocks -- and more permanent.

I saw white vans from the phone company. A big blue truck from Pacific Gas & Electric was hoisting a man in a cherry picker to work on a line. I saw an orange dump truck coming to patch the road. These workers seemed like saviors to me. Their houses were probably damaged, too. Their children were scared. But they were out on the job, trying to put our world back together.

My father returned with a case of white cans. Four six-packs. "Beer cans." he said. "Full of water. There was a Budweiser truck up at the school handing them out. They canned water for us."

"Is it fizzy?"

"No. Just plain, pure water."

He said the Red Cross was setting up an emergency shelter at the school. It likely that a couple hundred people would be living there for a while.

"Are we?" Jon asked.

"No," my father answered. "We've got our home."

"But it's broken."

"It's still ours."

We were back at the tent, eating a lunch of jam sandwiches, sipping water from beer cans, when the pregnant woman appeared -- the woman I'd seen in the shed. Her blouse was dirty and torn. She walked toward us slowly, cautiously, her eyes wide and her head bobbing on her neck like a deer's.

She clasped her hands togehter over her belly and leaned forward as if bowing. "Por favor," she said. "Tendrian un poco de comida? Lo que sea..." She looked ready to jump and flee if we so much as cleared our throats.

My father asked, "What's she saying?"

I translated: "She said, 'If you please, could you spare a little but of food? Whatever you have...'"

"Ask her to join us," my father said. "And her husband, too. Where is he?"

I tried, but I wasn't sure how to do the verb tense.

The woman raised her eyebrows. She looked unsure.

Then Josh told me I'd said father instead of husband. No wonder the woman was puzzled.

"Venga," I tried. "Y su esposo. Donde esta?"

"Alla." She pointed vaguely toward some trees.

"Por favor, digale que es bienvenido tambien."

She flashed a quick smile. "Gracias." Then she turned and ran to the woods. She couldn't run fast. She was pretty far pregnant.

"Did you scare her away?" my father asked.

"I think she's getting her husband. I think I invited him. I hope I didn't say something stupid."

A minute later she reappeared. The man walked behind her. He had no shirt. No shoes. Just pants.

My father held out the bread. "How do you say bread?" he asked me.

"Pan."

"Do you want some pan?" He turned to me. "How do you say jam?"

"I don't know."

But the woman understood. "Pan y dulce. Maravilloso! Gracias! Muchas gracias!"

We needed no translation of that. They grinned. The man shook my father's hand. They ate three sandwiches and each drank a can of beer water. My father seemed earnest about something. He was nodding his head eagerly.

Then the man said, formally, "Estoy en deuda con ustedes." I am in debt to you.

I said, "De nada." It's nothing. You're welcome.

My father said, "Ask them if they'll help us. I know they're afraid to go to the shelter. Tell them we have some clothes they can wear. I think your pants, Justin, will fit him better than mine. Ask him if he'll work with me. I can pay him something. Not a whole lot. But we can give them food. And shelter. We have another tent. And heaven knows, there's plenty of work to do."

It took me awhile to figure out how to say all that. Eventually, I got through it.

They agreed -- with a lot of head nodding and flashing of teeth from the woman. The man was more cautious and distant.

I wasn't so sure, either. My father was offering to let these people live with us. For how long? We didn't know them. They seemed nice enough, but we'd just lost half our house -- the livable half -- and now we were going to share our space, our tents, with strangers. My father considered himself an instant judge of character. I hoped he was right. But still...

Slowly it was dawning on me how much we had lost. Not only things -- the windows, the aquarium, the stove -- but our whole life had changed. All of our money, my father had told me, plus a lot of borrowed money had gone into the construction of the house. Now we needed more money to rebuild. I wondered: Are we now poor? Is that why we're inviting strangers to share our house -- that is, our tents?

The man, Joseph, helped my father move furniture from the old house to the new. Joseph was strong. They even managed to push the refrigerator uphill. There was no place to plug it in -- and no power if they could -- but my father wanted to get everything out of the old house. He was expecting the worst.

Meanwhile the woman, Kelly, put together a makeshift kitchen next to the tent. Josh stopped being my silent companion and started hanging around Kelly, watching her every move. He seemed fascinated. Jon and I set up our other tent, the one Jon and I usually slept in when we went camping, for Joseph and Kelly. We put blankets and pillows inside.

For the rest of the afternoon my father and Joseph went to work on the water system. A whole crew of neighbors were trying to patch it back together. Josh sat down with Kelly -- with Jon nearby. Using me as a translator -- and this was hard, even with a dictionary -- Josh asked about the baby. When was it due?

I butchered the question, but Kelly understood. About a month, she said.

Josh asked what kind of medical care she had received.

I tried to translate, but Kelly didn't seem to understand. She shook her head.

"When did she last see a doctor?" Josh asked.

I translated the question.

Again Kelly shook her head. "Nunca."

"Never," I said.

Josh looked shocked. "Never?"

I repeated: "Nunca? Verdad?"

Kelly nodded. "En mi vida." Never in my life.

"Hold old is she?"

That was easy to translate. It's one of the first things you learn in Spanish.

She answered: fifteen.

Now I couldn't believe I'd heard her right, "Quince?" Fifteen?

She wrote the number in the dirt.

She was just a child. Pregnant. Homeless.

How old was Joseph? Josh wanted to know now.

Seventeen.

Where were they from?

El Salvador.

How did they get here?

Kelly lifted her eyes to the sky. She sighed. Long journey, she said. They were robbed. Walking, hiding, begging. Finally they had gotten help from a church. Mostly, she said, it was a pesadilla -- a nightmare. She seemed to shudder at the thought.

I stared at Kelly. This woman, who is really still a child, had walked to California from El Salvador. She had known hardship that I could barely imagine. Fifteen. With experience written in her face by a whole lifetime of earthquakes of the spirit. And yet still from time to time I had caught a playful glint in her eye.

Josh had heard enough. He told me to suggest to Kelly that she lie down and take a rest.

"She doesn't look like she wants to rest," I said.

"I know," Josh said. "She looks stronger than any of us."

I suggested it anyway. Kelly seemed unwilling to try it. She wanted to find work to do. Josh frowned. He took kelly by the hand. He led her like a goat to the door of the tent. I held the flap open. Josh patted the blankets. He unrolled a bag of M&M's from his pocket, shook a few into his hand, and set them on the pillow.

Kelly shrugged. Then she grinned. She crawled into the tent where Jon and I had slept on many a camping trip, ate the M&M's, curled on her side, nestled one pillow under her head, and another under her belly, and -- to my surprise -- went out like a light.