“Yeah, in a way,” Kirby says. “It’s because of the hurricane you were born during. Hurricane Wanda. It was the next name on the list, and then your mother liked it, I guess.”
“Why?” Wanda frowns, and Kirby realizes that she’s angry. And why wouldn’t she be? Frida named her after the storm that mutilated a hundred miles of Florida coast, and then she died before she could understand what a name like that might do to a baby. But it isn’t Frida’s fault. Kirby is the one who could have decided to name her something else. He should have, knowing everything Frida didn’t. The thing was, when it came time to put something down on paper, he couldn’t think of anything better. He couldn’t think at all.
“Because she knew right away that you were a powerful girl and she wanted you to have a powerful name,” Lucas says suddenly. “And Wanda is the most powerful name.” Kirby’s gratitude is immediate and enormous.
“Oh.” She absorbs this, painting grease circles with her sticky chicken fingers on the surface of the table. No one chides her about the mess. “I never thought of it that way.”
Kirby feels he should add something. “She wanted you to know where you come from. And you come from storms, which can be hard, and people don’t always like them, but storms are important. They’re nature. You come from, um…” He looks at Lucas, floundering. “From…” He’s lost.
“You come from the elements,” Lucas finishes. “From the wild.” The three of them sit in silence, listening to the weatherwoman drone on about the cone of uncertainty.
“That’s sort of cool, I guess,” Wanda finally says.
“It is,” Kirby replies quickly, relieved. “It’s very cool.”
If the ocean is a body and the river is a body, then the groundwater is a body, too. The body no one sees. It lies in wait beneath the surface, rising through the cracks and crevices, filtering up and up and up until the limestone above is full and wet. This body sprawls, buried. Sleeping but not. Hidden but not. So deep beneath the earth that it stretches under the ocean floor, so close to the surface that it can tickle the sky when it rains.
Chapter 39
Hurricane Braylen tears through central Florida with sharp teeth and a full-throated shriek—a Category 3 by the time it makes land in Homestead—then pushes out toward the Gulf. On the east coast, people breathe a sigh of relief, but Wanda is less occupied with the news than the adults in her life are. None of this fazes her. She doesn’t listen to the reports about the damage done to Lake Okeechobee’s earthen dam as Braylen passed over, or the concerns about where funding for reinforcing the Hoover Dike might come from. The flood of 1928 doesn’t mean anything to her. Lake Okeechobee is fifty miles away. To Wanda, this distance is enormous.
These days, she is primarily concerned with that which is very small. The organisms she cannot see, or rather, the organisms she cannot see without help. Phyllis has shared the magic of looking down the tube of a microscope and glimpsing the squirming throb of tiny lives pressed between two rectangles of glass. A droplet of water expands beneath Wanda’s gaze and becomes—a world. She can’t get enough. Wandering through each day, she is overcome by her recent understanding that these tiny things are living absolutely everywhere. Inside her, even.
There are other things that interest her, but lately, everything comes back to Phyllis. The activities of her brother and father, the dreaded bustle of her school days, the ever-dire news—all of this pales in comparison to the enchanted expanse of Phyllis’s house. Wanda is enthralled by the things she discovers here. Today, Phyllis shows her the pantry. With a mixture of pride and bashfulness, neither of which Wanda is paying the slightest attention to, Phyllis brings Wanda to a room she wasn’t previously aware existed. Inside, she is astounded. Shelves as high as the ceiling are built into the walls, and there are more shelves, freestanding, in the center. Lining them are hundreds of canning jars labeled with Phyllis’s cramped cursive scrawl, Ziploc bags of dehydrated fruits and meats, gallons of fresh water, jugs of kerosene, big plastic bottles of cooking oil shining buttery yellow like lanterns.
Light from a single window filters in through jars of strawberry preserves, casting a pink glow on the wood floor. Wanda wanders among the shelves; the aisles are narrow, so she moves slowly. With reverence. “It’s like a food library,” she whispers. “You have everything.” Wanda picks up a jar labeled PICKLED RED ONIONS, then another that says TOMATOES. She shakes them gently, as if they are snow globes. The slivered onions spin in their rose-colored vinegary cylinder, dancing.
“Here we go.” Phyllis selects a jar of dilly beans and gets the lid off with some difficulty. “These are the green beans from last year.” She offers the jar to her young friend. Sprigs of dill float among the beans and a whole clove of garlic twirls at the bottom. Wanda selects a green bean from the middle of the jar and pulls it out. Vinegar drips on the floor. “Go ahead,” Phyllis says. “Try it.” The flavor is so strong Wanda’s tongue puckers around it, garlicky and dilly and a little spicy all at once. She has to fold the bean in half to fit the whole thing in her mouth.
“It’s good,” she says, crunching. “Sour.”
“Better than boiling them, don’t you think?” Wanda nods and takes another. This one she nibbles, taking her time with it. Phyllis eats one, too, then screws the lid back on. “We’ll put this in the fridge now that it’s open.” She turns to go, but Wanda doesn’t want to leave just yet. She’s still mesmerized by everything this room holds.
“What’s it all for?” she asks, running her hands along the plywood shelves.
“It’s for…” Phyllis pauses. “Emergencies.”
Wanda accepts this. She knows all about emergencies.
The next time they visit one of Phyllis’s research plots, it’s tucked away in a part of town Wanda’s never been to. Each plot is new to her still. “Eventually,” Phyllis tells her, “you’ll know them all.” They take the car, and after Phyllis parks on the shoulder of a sandy road, she pulls on her waders and checks to make sure she doesn’t need to add anything to her tackle box from the trunk. Wanda waits, fidgeting, sliding her feet in and out of her muck boots, eager to begin.
Finally, Phyllis slams the hatchback shut and they set out, trudging through the forest without speaking, swatting at mosquitoes, carefully brushing aside plants to avoid bruising their tender leaves. Phyllis taught her this—they call it “walking gently.” It makes Wanda feel good to be this quiet, to listen to the birds and the frogs and the wet slurp of her boots in the soggy mosses. Wanda’s boots are tall enough to keep her feet dry if she’s careful about where she steps, but Phyllis can walk practically anywhere with her waders on.
“Don’t you think I should have some waders, too?” Wanda asks, speaking quietly in this delicate place. She is eyeing all the routes across the swamp she cannot take.
“Maybe,” Phyllis says. “We’ll see if we can find some small enough.”
Little metal tags begin to appear on the trees, and this is how Wanda knows they’ve entered the sanctum of the plot. Their progress slows. Phyllis starts taking measurements, checking in on each of her specimens. She keeps meticulous data because she always has. This project of local observation began in earnest when she retired from her teaching role at the community college; it is the work of her remaining years. She loved her students, but she has always been more comfortable out here, in the field. Sometimes she thinks about publishing some of her findings, but that has never been the point. The time for marking ecological change and acting on it has passed, and if she’s honest, there is a relief in releasing those fervent, unfulfilled desires for solutions. Now all that’s left is to behold these environments as they transition. The great rewilding, as she likes to call it. Humans have spoiled so much, but nature is resourceful. It dies and is reborn as something new. Her work now is to watch this occur.