How not to Prepare for a Monsoon

My suitemates get a kick out of shopping with me. Ever since that random person at the Safeway on Seventh Avenue made fun of me for asking about the best crawfish spots in Phoenix, they’ve been on my tail – no pun intended.

Every time I go shopping with them, they laugh as I try and fail to find Louisiana staples. Gumbo filé? No luck. Enjoy some watery soup. After trying that one butcher in town who sells andouille and boudin, I doubt that man has ever set foot anywhere near the Bayou State. My friends’ jokes don’t let up when we go to coffee shops.

“What are you going to do, ask if they have king cake?” Macie said the other day. 

“It’s out of season, anyway,” I grumbled as my new friends laughed.

I expected the culture shock. Lake Charles, Louisiana had been the only city I’d lived in to this point. Part of the point of graduate school was to travel and expand my horizons and get the hell out of the swampy prairielands. What I didn’t expect was for this new horizon to be utterly Camellia kidney beans-less. 

The Valley of the Sun came with more surprises than expected. First, for a place with triple-digit temperatures nearly 100 days a year, I did not expect so many graduate students to be from the Midwest. Second, no one understands the rain out here – especially not drivers. That’s why my new roomies won’t be laughing for long: It sounds like there’s going to be a monsoon this afternoon. It’s my personal duty to help them through their first natural disaster.

I started the (generic grocery store brand) red beans and rice in my slow cooker yesterday evening so that they would be ready by supper. Just in case we lose power, I’ve got a few cans of cheese whiz and crackers in my cart, plus some soup. The cans of Campbell’s won’t taste the best at room temperature, but it’s better than nothing.

My suitemates raise an eyebrow when we regroup by checkout. Their carts of wine, kale, and zucchini noodles shout “unbothered” by the incoming weather.

“Kim,” Macie starts, as she looks between the soda crackers and me. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“No one ever does,” I said, “Until after the storm when we lose power and the stores are completely empty.”

“We’re going to be fine,” Olivia said from her cart of keto-friendly goods – a trend that, to me, reads as a liability if we lose power. I checked, and our apartment complex does not allow generators. “It’s going to be over before we know it.”

“And Kim?” Macie said. “You’re very sweet for taking out your crank TV set, but I think we’ll be good. Love Island is on, and we’re excited to eat your red beans and watch.”

“Well, if I’m wrong, these will last us until the next storm,” I said. 

“Suit yourself,” Macie said as the trio turned into the checkout lane. 

We watched the wind kick up dust and the sky turn a tannish shade of yellow as we drove home. The driest raindrops punctuated our shopping bags as we hiked up to the third floor of the student housing.

The girls poured wine as I mashed tender red beans against the crockpot and listened to the recap of last week’s reality television dispatch. I tried to avoid the sound of the wind, which filled the rare silences from the TV and my friends’ chatter.

It became impossible to ignore when the palm trees that lined our street started hooking impossibly to the right and rain battered the window. I looked up just in time for the light show to find that lightning in Phoenix looks different. Louisiana lightning just hit the ground in a business casual, one-and-done fashion. This lightning, freed by the heat of the Sonoran Desert, spidered in a dramatic dance that only the sky could choreograph.

I slammed down my spoon, ran to the bathroom, and climbed into the bathtub. It was too late to grab a snack or grab the television set. I heard the TV pause as I pulled up the National Weather Service on my phone. Someone knocked on the door.

“It’s OK, Kim,” Taylor said, her light Valley Girl accent coming out as she cracked open the door. “My aunt used to tell me about these storms. They’re really intense for half an hour, then they’re gone.” When I didn’t move, she walked over and sank into the other side of the tub, somehow not spilling the glass of wine in either hand before handing me the fuller one. Olivia and Macie filed in not too long after.

“I thought Louisiana natives were supposed to be a little more used to the rain,” Macie said as she sat on the vanity.

“We are,” I said after flipping her off. “Some storms we still party through, gallon daiquiri and all. But we don’t take big storms lightly.”

I was raised to treat hurricanes like a celebration. Storms were the chance, depending on the time of year, to skip school, eat junk food and hang out in the bathroom with my parents, brothers, and pets. We wrote fun insults on the boards that we put in front of the windows to prevent any debris from costing us a pane. Go away, Gustavo. Suck it, Susan. 

It was a fun exercise in emergency preparation until our neighbors to the east of us got a proverbial Big One. Some of my best friends in Lake Charles, La., were from greater New Orleans. It took me years to fully understand the sadness they carried from the homes where they could never return. They could not have braced their way out of the storm, but even in the years after it happened, I took hurricanes and bad weather more seriously.

“Yeah, but big for Phoenix isn’t big at all,” Macie said. She smiled. “Do you know what our admissions counselor told me when I was stressing about the heat? Eric said the only natural disasters in town are man-made.”

“Like power outages,” Taylor said.

“Or pile-ups on I-10,” Olivia added.

“Or the way Phoenix roads are designed,” I said after a few deep breaths. They laughed – it felt good to have them laugh when the joke was not me. “Clearly I’m not used to any of the culture out here.”

“And isn’t that so awesome?” Olivia said. “We get to stay here for just long enough to experience the culture. Where I’m from, there’s no mountains. In the next two years, I want to climb every single one of them from here to Sedona.”

“I’m with you on that,” I said.

“Good. Because right outside of Goodyear is this place I’m told makes really good jambalaya,” Olivia said. “We need to go there and you need to tell us if my informant is full of shit.”

“You looked it up?”

“I figured you needed a win.”

I smiled. “OK, deal. Now, what did I miss in Love Island?”

Taylor helped me up and Macie and Olivia filled in the sultry affairs. When we opened the bathroom door, the first thing we saw was the sun, shining brightly over the world’s dustiest dewdrops.