Santa Ana

As we clawed our way into autumn, the wind began to whisper my mother’s name. It was so quiet that we mistook it for the movement of the trees at first. Kathleen sounds that way even when spoken by a human tongue, the first syllable a rustling of leaves and the second a whistling breeze. An October sort of name for an October sort of person.

Unfortunately, my mother’s autumnal soul was bound to suburban Southern California, where the leaves turn the brown of old bananas and wait to fall until almost Christmas. She refused to move far from where her own mother was last seen, for better and for worse. Still, every September, she put jars filled with cinnamon sticks in every room in the house, buying us both new sweaters and wearing hers even through the lingering heat waves. When the temperature finally dropped and the skies split open with the season’s first rain, she stood outside and whooped at the dark clouds.

“Come outside, Clara!” she always begged. “A day like today only comes once a year.”

“Then I’ll come outside next year,” I always answered. I couldn’t afford to catch a cold when AP classes and choir rehearsals were both intensifying.

Neither the first rain nor the first leaves had fallen yet when we realized that the wind was saying Kathleen. The winds were usually both a prologue and epilogue to the rain, though they blew warm and dry. The Santa Anas, locals call them, nearly hurricane-force gales that uproot a few sturdy trees every year. An old oak in the park might thrive for decades only to be caught in the air’s tantrum, and the city might take weeks to clear it, leaving it as a fallen soldier on the battlefield. Every year, the chimes in our yard would become crashing cymbals, and we would have to take them down before they fell.

In fact, my mother was perched on a stepstool on the back patio, unhooking the chimes from where they hung by the window, when she first heard the call clearly. She didn’t scream or cry, but she trembled enough that the stool beneath her wobbled along with her. I saw it out of the corner of my eye while doing homework at the kitchen table.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, jumping up to hold the back door open for her as she carried the chimes inside and collapsed into the chair I’d been sitting in. The chimes rang out with a dissonant chord in protest.

“Nothing. I thought I felt a chill in the air and I got overexcited about it,” she said with a hoarse laugh. She hadn’t looked excited at all to me, but I kept my mouth shut and set up my laptop in the chair across from her.

We shared the silence for only a moment before she spoke in a rush. “I’ve been thinking about your grandma a lot lately. You know I wasn’t much older than you when she—” She broke off, her next words trapped in her throat.

“I know,” I said. I didn’t look up from my laptop. I’d known the story for as long as I could remember. It had happened on my mother’s 18th birthday, and mine was in less than a month. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

“Anything, you mean.” Her voice shook just as her body had.

I shut my laptop and looked at her. Her eyes were glassy. Not this again, I thought. “Sure, Mom. I won’t let anything take you, okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered.

I don’t understand why it’s so normal to believe in fate, but not to believe in magic. Fate is resourceful. It will move mountains and level cities to have its way. A little magic is nothing, only a tweak to the laws of nature when it could snap them in two.

However, fate and magic fall outside of most high school curriculums. At the time, I knew for a fact that my mother was delusional. Multiple police reports and even a second-page story in the struggling local paper confirmed that my grandmother had vanished without a trace one November night. None of them mentioned how the daughter she left behind was convinced that she had been carried away in the Santa Ana winds.

           Weeks went by before I heard what the wind was saying. I was studying outside with a mug of peppermint tea, bundled in that year’s cream cable-knit sweater. There had been no wind yet that day, so I assumed I was in the clear. That is, until it rose up out of nowhere, whipping my hair against my face and scattering my handwritten notes across the dying grass.

           As I cursed at the air and gathered up the papers, I heard the strangest noise. Our neighborhood was a quiet one, except on weekends when the neighbors’ little cousins visited. In between a barking dog and the faint hum of the freeway, there was a whisper: Kathleen. Kathleen, come outside. Kathleen…

           “Shut up,” I snapped, storming inside. I could deal with auditory hallucinations after I dealt with my history test. I went back out for the mug later and couldn’t find it, but I figured I’d rinsed it and accidentally put it away in the wrong cabinet.

            The evening the whispers turned to shouts, my mother was waiting for rain. I’d just gotten a C back on my history test and was staving off a panic attack. Like the Wall Street Crash, a dip in my GPA could send me into a long-term depression.

           “Did you smell that on your way in, Clara?” my mother said by way of greeting when I threw the front door open. “The rain’s almost here.”

I wanted to yell at her just to forget how my life was falling apart, and it made me feel 13 again. Instead, I used every shred of patience the day had left me with to answer her. “If you love the weather so much—” so much more than me, I thought “—then why don’t you move northeast?”

“No, I couldn’t—”

“Seriously. I’ll stay here with Uncle Grant and finish out the school year, and if I get into Penn State I’ll join you next year.” I’d never once shown any interest in Penn State. I hoped she’d noticed that and would ask me what was wrong like a real mother was supposed to do, but she didn’t hear any of it.

           “I have to stay here. I have to wait for her.” She recited it like a mantra, and finally I went off.

“Grandma’s not coming back!” I felt like being mean as I flung my backpack onto the couch. “The best-case scenario is that they find her body someday and actually ask your permission before making a true crime documentary about her.”

           Her face crumpled, and it was almost enough to make me regret everything. “You don’t know—”

I’d been telling myself how dumb I was all day, so now I took a shortcut past frustration straight into rage. “I know more than you! You didn’t even graduate.” She’d had to drop out during her senior year to take care of Uncle Grant after that November night.

Neither of us made a sound for a full 20 seconds, sitting with the knowledge that for the first time in years I had gone too far.

She got to her feet, groaning softly as her spine crackled, and turned on her heel to head out the back door.

“Wait—” The door snapped shut, leaving the word hanging in the empty room. I decided to give her a minute. In my current mood, I needed one too before I could wring out a genuine apology for reawakening a 25-year-old trauma.

Muffled shouting came from the backyard. I peered through the glass door to see my mother screaming at the sky.

I couldn’t tell what she was saying, but my best guess was: “Just take me already!”

“What the hell?” I muttered out loud to myself. I opened the door a crack to call out to her. “Come inside, Mom! I shouldn’t have said any of that. I just had a really shitty day.”

She looked like she was in a trance, facing away from the house with her arms thrown wide. “I’m tired of waiting. Please just take me!” Her voice bubbled up out of her in between sobs.

I wrenched the door open all the way and ran towards her. “Mom, what—”

A gust of wind almost knocked me off my feet, and in it was a cry: KATHLEEN. With it, Kathleen herself, my mother, dissolved in front of me. As the wind hit her, she melted into it, her hair and then the rest of her first turning translucent and then losing its shape.

The only sign of her was a green cable-knit sweater lying on the patio and a dying echo of Kathleen, fading into nothingness. The first rain of the season came early the next morning.

In case you were wondering, I did end up moving in with Uncle Grant.

Lately, I’ve sworn I can hear my own name on the wind. Maybe the whispers are just mother calling to daughter, generation after generation, to join her in the rain. I wouldn’t know. Fate loves its mysteries.

           At least Kathleen taught me one useful thing, without even meaning to: if the wind whispers your name or the name of someone you love, there’s no moving on.