Sisterland

December 1811
New Madrid, Louisiana Territory

The first earthquake wasn’t the strongest—that would
come later, in February 1812—but it must have been the most astonishing. It occurred shortly after two in the morning, and I imagine it awakening the people of New Madrid: the farmers and fur traders, the French Creoles and Indians and American pioneers. More men than women lived in the river town, and few families; the population was probably less than a thousand. The people were lying in their beds on this cold and ordinary night when without warning a tremendous cracking sound interrupted the quiet, a growing thunder, followed by the impossible fact of the quake itself: the rocking not just of their beds or floors or houses but of the land beneath them. Whether they stayed inside or hurried out, they’d have heard their animals crying, heard trees snapping, the Mississippi roaring up; so much fog and smoke filled the darkness that they would have felt the roll of the earth before they realized they could see it, too, undulating like the ocean. In some places, the ground split apart and flung up water, sand, and rocks, entire trees it had swallowed shortly before, and in turn it devoured horses and cows. Rising out of the cracks and holes was the smell of sulfur, like the wicked breath of the devil emanating from deep underground.

For hours, the convulsions didn’t stop, and when eventually their bewildering rhythm changed, it was not to decrease but to intensify: Twice
more, at seven in the morning and again at eleven, the earth exploded anew. And daybreak had not brought light. Still there was the chaos of vapors, the bleats and squawks of domesticated and wild animals, the collapsing trees and spewing land and mercilessly teeming river.

Only around noon did the earth settle, and only gradually. But what was left? The people’s homes—one-story log or frame structures—were leveled, as were the town’s stores and churches. The land was broken, the river roiling. The banks of the Mississippi had simply plunged into the water below, carrying with them houses, graveyards, and forests; canoes and keelboats had vanished under thirty-foot waves, reappeared, and vanished again.

Though it must have seemed, on the afternoon of December 16, 1811, that the world was ending, more destruction would follow. In this same remote area, another powerful quake occurred on January 23, 1812, and two weeks later, on February 7, the last and biggest. In just months, whole towns disappeared not only from the Louisiana Territory—soon to become the Territory of Missouri—but also from the Mississippi Territory and Tennessee. People claimed that the Mississippi River ran backward and that the effects of the quakes were felt hundreds of miles away: that clocks stopped in Natchez, chimneys collapsed in Louisville, and church bells rang in Boston.

But perhaps these myths were merely that, embellishments more irresistible than accurate. Magnitude scales wouldn’t exist for another century, so calculations of the New Madrid quakes came long afterward, and though the highest estimates placed them above 8.0—stronger than the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, the strongest of any continental earthquake in United States history—other guesses were closer to a magnitude 7. Which would have made them frightening, certainly, but not unprecedented.

My husband would say that such distinctions matter, that there are ways of conducting research and establishing hypotheses based on credible evidence. My sister would disagree. She would say that we create our own reality—that the truth, ultimately, is what we choose to believe.

September 2009
St. Louis, Missouri

The shaking started around three in the morning,
and it happened that I was already awake because I’d nursed Owen at two and then, instead of going back to sleep, I’d lain there brooding about the fight I’d had at lunch with my sister, Vi. I’d driven with Owen and Rosie in the backseat to pick up Vi, and the four of us had gone to Hacienda. We’d finished eating and I was collecting Rosie’s stray food from the tabletop—once I had imagined I wouldn’t be the kind of mother who ordered chicken tenders for her child off the menu at a Mexican restaurant—when Vi said, “So I have a date tomorrow.”

“That’s great,” I said. “Who is it?”

Casually, after running the tip of her tongue over her top teeth to check for food, Vi said, “She’s an IT consultant, which sounds boring, but she’s traveled a lot in South and Central America, so she couldn’t be a total snooze, right?”

I was being baited, but I tried to match Vi’s casual tone as I said, “Did you meet online?” Rosie, who was two and a half, had gotten up from the table, wandered over to a ficus plant in the corner, and was smelling the leaves. Beside me in the booth, buckled into his car seat, Owen, who was six months, grabbed at a little plush giraffe that hung from the car seat’s handle.

Vi nodded. “There’s pretty slim pickings for dykes in St. Louis.”

“So that’s what you consider yourself these days?” I leaned in and said in a lowered tone, “A lesbian?”

Looking amused, Vi imitated my inclined posture and quiet voice. “What if the manager hears you?” she said. “And gets a boner?” She grinned. “At this point, I’m bi-celibate. Or should I say Vi-sexual? But I figure it’s all a numbers game—I keep putting myself out there and, eventually, I cross paths with Ms. or Mr. Right.”

“Meaning you’re on straight dating sites, too?”

“Not at the moment, but in the future, maybe.” Our waitress approached and left the bill at the edge of the table. I reached for it as soon as she’d walked away—when Vi and I ate together, I always paid without discussion—and Vi said, “Don’t leave a big tip. She was giving us attitude.”

“I didn’t notice.”

“And my fajita was mostly peppers.”

“You of all people should realize that’s not the waitress’s fault.” For years, all through our twenties, Vi had worked at restaurants. But she was still regarding me skeptically as I set down my credit card, and I added, “It’s rude not to tip extra when you bring little kids.” We were at a conversational crossroads. Either we could stand, I could gather the mess of belongings that accompanied me wherever I went—once I had been so organized that I kept my spice rack alphabetized, and now I left hats and bibs and sippy cups in my wake, baggies of Cheerios, my own wallet and sunglasses—and the four of us could head out to the parking lot and then go on to drop Vi at her house, all amicably. Or I could express a sentiment that wasn’t Vi, in her way,
asking
me to share?

“I believe in tipping well for great service,” Vi was saying. “This girl was phoning it in.”

I said, “If you feel equally attracted to men and women, why not date men? Isn’t it just easier? I mean, I wish it weren’t true, but—” I glanced at my daughter right as she pulled a ficus leaf off the plant and extended her tongue toward it. I had assumed the plant was fake and, therefore, durable, and I called out, “No mouth, Rosie. Come over here.” When I looked back at Vi, I couldn’t remember what I’d wanted to say next. Hadn’t I had another
point? And Vi was sneering in a way that made me wish, already, that I’d simply let the moment pass.

“Easier?” Her voice was filled with contempt. “It’s just
easier
to be straight? As in, what, less embarrassing to my uptight sister?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Don’t you think it would be easier if black people hadn’t demanded to ride in the front of the bus like white people? Or go to the same schools? That was so awkward when that happened!” This seemed to be an indirect reference to my friend Hank, but I ignored it.

“I don’t have a problem with gay people,” I said, and my cheeks were aflame, which I’d have known, even if I hadn’t been able to feel their heat, by the fact that Vi’s were, too. We would always be identical twins, even though we were no longer, in most ways, identical.

“Where’s Rosie’s baloney?” Rosie said. She had returned from the ficus plant—thank goodness—and was standing next to me.

“It’s at home,” I said. “We didn’t bring it.” The baloney was a piece from a lunch-themed puzzle, a life-sized pink wooden circle on a yellow wooden square, that Rosie had recently become inexplicably attached to. I said to Vi, “Don’t make me out to be homophobic. It’s a statement of fact that life is simpler—it is, Vi—don’t look at me like that. It’s not like two women can get married in Missouri, and there’s a lot of financial stuff that goes along with that, or visiting each other in the hospital. Or having kids—for gay couples, that’s complicated and it’s expensive, too.”

“Having kids period is complicated!” Vi’s anger had taken on an explosive quality, and I felt people at nearby tables looking toward us. “And this whole making-life-simpler bullshit?” she continued. While I flinched at the swear word in front of Rosie, it didn’t seem intentional—there was no question that Vi sometimes liked to provoke me, but it appeared she was swept up in the moment. “Children are nothing but a problem people create and then congratulate themselves on solving. Look at you and Jeremy, for Christ’s sake. ‘Oh, we can’t leave the house because it’s Rosie’s naptime, we can’t be out past five forty-five
P.M
.’ or whenever the fuck it is—” I was pretty sure Rosie had only a vague notion of what these obscenities, or anything else Vi was saying, meant, but I could sense her watching rapt
from beside me, no doubt even more enthralled because she’d heard her own name. “Or, ‘She can’t wear that sunscreen because it has parabens in it’—I mean, seriously, can you even tell me what a paraben is?—and ‘She can’t eat raw carrots because she might choke,’ and on and on and on. But who asked you to have children? Do you think you’re providing some service to the world? You got pregnant because you wanted to—which, okay, that’s your right, but then other people can’t do what they want to because it’s too complicated?”