A City Tossed and Broken (7 page)

I was afraid to move any farther. I was afraid something would crash on me again. Terror kept me on my knees for long moments.

“Lily!” I whispered. “Please.”

Finally I gathered my courage and scrambled over the plaster and bricks and managed to take hold of her hand. There was no answering squeeze.

I began to toss the bricks off, and the chunks of plaster and the wood slats, sobbing and choking, and finally I found her shoulder, and then her face, staring up at me with sightless eyes.

I can’t think of it now. If I think of it now, I can’t stop seeing it. I’ll never stop seeing it, the horror of her staring eyes, and the blood.

I crawled backward and then rose. My legs were shaking. I was afraid to touch anything — a wall, a piece of furniture. I couldn’t trust anything anymore, not even the ground underneath me. Nothing was solid anymore, and I wonder if it will ever be again.

On the floor I saw something familiar — the cracked red leather, the faded gold script:
RECIPES
. I snatched you up, diary, and hugged you. You were the only thing I had to hang on to.

I picked my way back toward the front of the house. The grand draperies had fallen and the front bow window had shaken loose and crashed into the street. I could not get into the parlor, for the chimney had crashed inside the room. In the grand hall the furniture had shifted and some chairs had toppled. Smashed china and glass lay over the floor. The chandelier looked as though it would fall at any moment — I could see the exposed wire. Mrs. Sump’s big Chinese vases had smashed. As I passed the study I saw books all over the floor but the ceiling was still intact.

I stopped at the bottom of the staircase, afraid to climb. I tried to call to the Sumps, but my voice was hoarse and cracked and I only choked and coughed instead. I stood there for a moment gathering my courage. Finally I made my legs move. I was afraid of what I might find but I was more afraid that I would have to tell them about Lily.

But I didn’t have to tell them.

As I gained the landing and turned, I was able to see to the top of the staircase and I saw Mr. Sump in his nightclothes, his face gray with dust, sitting with his back against the wall. I hurried up the stairs but as I came closer I saw his eyes, staring at me with the ghost of the last great shock of his life. He did not look harmed. It must have been his heart.

He was trying to get to the stairs, that was clear. I tried to get past without looking and nearly kicked his watch, the gold pocket watch he wound with such a satisfied air.

I realized when I turned toward the bedrooms that where the roof and chimneys had fallen at the back of the house was right where Mrs. Sump’s bedroom was. She, of course, had the bedroom with the best view.

I stood in the doorway of Mrs. Sump’s room and there were bricks and tiles and debris everywhere. The chimney had brought down the roof with it and crashed right through the floor of her room.

Mrs. Sump had made it out of the bed. She was lying on the floor. The massive marble fireplace mantel had fallen on her. She was gone, too.

So they were spared hearing that their daughter was dead, at least.

How was this possible, three lives gone? And mine spared? I couldn’t seem to grasp that, I couldn’t seem to make sense of the house now, some of the rooms half-buried and some just rearranged.

I was shaking so badly and suddenly so cold. I went into Lily’s room. The bed had moved up against the wall and a vase had smashed but she would have survived if she’d been here. I took a dressing gown from her closet and put it around me, tucking you, diary, inside.

And then suddenly the terror came back over me, dropped over my head like a black cloak. What if the house just shrugged its shoulders and came down on top of me? What if the shaking began again?

I ran back down the stairs and outside. I took gulps of the air. My legs gave way and I sat on the lawn.

Destruction around me, chimneys down and things smashed but nothing like the back of a house just falling off, the roof caving in. The Sumps have suffered the worst on this block, at least. There are clouds of dust rising from downtown. A thin plume of smoke. Beyond, the tranquil bay.

And silence. Such silence.

I would have been killed if I’d been in my room.

Poor Lily.

I sat there, crying for Lily and holding my journal, and then when the shaking wasn’t so bad I untied the string and found the pencil tucked inside, and I wrote this all down.

April 18, 1906

Wednesday

7:15
A.M
.

Two hours have passed and I have lived through a lifetime. I have found a place to sit in Union Square while I write this next entry. I am safe here in the open square, gathered with others who have fled their damaged homes. They are mostly poor. The damage has been extensive south of Market Street — south of the Slot, they call it. That’s where the cheap rooming houses and hotels and apartments are located. They are fleeing the fires down there. We can see the smoke but we feel quite safe here.

I’m surrounded by people pushing and pulling trunks and carts piled with household goods, anything they could grab by the looks of it, food and quilts and pans and hairbrushes and boots. Some of them are in their nightclothes. I saw a short, stout man in a coat and what looked like pajamas standing there shaking his head, and someone whispered that it was the famous opera singer Enrico Caruso. He left with a few people for the St. Francis Hotel on Powell Street. I hear they are serving breakfast.

There is such a strange mix of the normal and the completely odd. Coffee and rolls while across the square a building’s front is gone. I can see rescuers moving through the rooms, looking for survivors. I hear there are people trapped in fallen buildings on Mission Street, still alive, as the fire approaches. I can’t think of the poor souls. I hope the firemen can put out the fire soon.

This morning as I sat outside the house immediately after the quake I felt I was the only person alive in the world. Then people began to pour out of their houses, some in their dressing gowns, some obviously dressed hurriedly and missing boots or vests. One woman walked by me with a satin evening cloak thrown over her nightgown. The front of a house down the block had simply fallen off. I could see a bedroom and an easy chair. Bricks and mortar were everywhere. A chimney had fallen on a house next door. Once I looked around I realized that there was not one chimney still standing on the whole block.

A man and a woman walked past, holding the hands of two children, and the children looked solemn and calm. You’d expect them to be crying, wouldn’t you? The mother was carrying a birdcage with a parrot in it. The father, a clock. Where they were going, I didn’t know at the time, but I imagine they were heading to the waterfront and the ferry.

The city was so quiet. No clang of the cable car, no noise of the streetcar. The sun was rising, and as it rose I could see more clearly that there was a cloud over downtown, hanging in the air, from the collapsed buildings. I heard a rumble and started in fear but realized it must be the noise of a building giving up and collapsing somewhere downtown.

I wondered what the back of the Sumps’ house looked like — the part that was now collapsed — but I was afraid to look. I did not want to catch a glimpse of poor Lily again. As it is, the sight of her will live in my mind’s eye forever.

An automobile pulled up in front of the house. It was the same Oldsmobile that picked us up from the station. A short man with a beard jumped out and ran to me. He was dressed impeccably in a dark suit and hat, his shirt snowy white. I marveled that he had the presence of mind to dress so carefully on this day. He introduced himself as Mr. Crandall, Mr. Sump’s lawyer, and asked if everyone was all right.

It was that simple question that broke whatever hold I had left on my wits. I burst into sobs. I couldn’t get any words out. Finally between hiccups I got out some words, strewn like the bricks from the chimney — I couldn’t seem to build them into sentences. “Everyone dead,” I said. “Roof . . . chimney . . . awful . . .” The sobs were so violent I felt my chest squeezing like a bellows.

“Compose yourself, my dear.” He took my handkerchief and pressed it against my face. It came back gray with dust. “Are you sure?” he asked, but I couldn’t answer.

He disappeared into the house. When he came out he looked shaken. He said how sorry he was and as soon as he could locate an ambulance or someone he would send them, but of course everyone was still trying to rescue those who were trapped and still living.

Then he noticed the blood on Lily’s dressing gown and asked if I was all right, and I said that I just had bruises and scrapes.

He stood looking at me a moment, and I could tell he was thinking hard, trying to devise a plan through all this madness. “You can’t stay here,” he said. “You’ll have to come with me. You’ll need to dress,” he added, looking away.

Of course I was still wearing Lily’s nightgown. I wrapped my arms around myself and rose. My teeth chattered and I realized my bare feet were icy cold: I could barely feel them.

I was afraid to enter the house alone. He said he’d come with me and so I stepped over the threshold once more and began to cry again.

He smoothed his mustache with one hand and then smiled reassuringly. He said he was sure the house was solid but we must hurry. Together we went up the stairs.

Mercifully he had placed a blanket over Mr. Sump.

The attic rooms were wrecked, so I went to Lily’s room. I was able to find a shirtwaist and a gray wool skirt trimmed in blue velvet. I took Lily’s blue coat, thinking I might need something warm. I found underthings and stockings. Gloves. Lily’s boots were a bit too big for me but I pulled them on.

Mr. Crandall called from the landing. “You should pack a bag. You might be away for a while.”

The small bag Lily had on the train was still sitting on the window seat. I packed another shirtwaist and a skirt and a few other things. I went to the water closet and turned on the tap but there was no water to wash with. When I looked in the mirror I hardly recognized myself. I found the pitcher of water I’d left by her bed and managed to clean my wounds and scrub off the worst of the dust and blood with a cloth. My braid looked like an old woman’s hair, gray and stiff with dust. I used one of Lily’s handkerchiefs to wipe it as best I could.

When I came out Mr. Crandall was staring out the window toward downtown. Clouds of dust still hung in the air and I could see thin columns of smoke rising.

“Do you think many buildings collapsed?”

“Only the Lord knows what we’ll be dealing with this morning. I need to get to the office downtown. I think it’s best you leave the city. My mother lives in Oakland. You can stay there until I get things organized here. I was scheduled to leave on a train on Friday back East. It might be better if you returned to Philadelphia. There’s no telling . . .” He stopped, transfixed by what was outside the window, as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

Home! My heart sputtered with joy at the thought. I could be home within a week.

“This could be but the prologue. I fear the worst has just begun here,” he said.

I could not imagine anything worse than a house almost coming down on top of you.

And he said quietly just one word, very softly, while he stared out at those columns of smoke.

Fire.

We started off down the hill in the auto. I asked him if his family was all right and he said Mrs. Crandall was quite shaken, but though his chimney had fallen, his house was still intact. After that there was nothing to say. There were no words for what we were seeing.

The streetcar tracks were twisted and had heaved themselves up on the pavement. The surface of the road was buckled, and in some places were holes large enough to swallow the car. Mr. Crandall had to concentrate hard on driving through the debris-strewn street. I saw windows shattered, glass all over the street, and stone moldings and cornices smashed into rubble. A building had collapsed and a horse lay underneath the bricks, dead. A crushed body, just his legs visible, on one corner.

The strange thing is that people were out walking calmly like it was a Sunday. I didn’t see any tears or anybody shoving or yelling. They were just walking. When you looked closer you wondered at the assortments of things they carried — a kitten in a pot, a live chicken, a sewing machine, a basket of potatoes with a brocade cushion on top.

“Where are they going?” I asked.

“Same place we are. The ferry.”

Some people tried to get Mr. Crandall to take them, offering him money, but he shook his head and just kept driving.

There was a crush of people at the ferry already. One wall of the building looked to be almost completely destroyed, but I could see a line of people waiting.

“Open for business,” Mr. Crandall said. “God bless San Francisco.”

A mound of baggage — trunks, suitcases, bundles, boxes — were thrown on the pavement as people milled around, waiting for the next boat. Again there didn’t seem to be any panic at all. If they spoke, the people spoke quietly. Some of them stood looking down Market Street as if they were stunned and not thinking at all. It had the feeling of a strange dream. If you looked back down Market Street, you saw death and destruction. If you looked at the faces, you wondered if they saw anything at all.

Then the ferry came into sight, chugging across the bay, and the people came alive, surging forward in a great wave of panic.

Mr. Crandall steered through the people trying to cross and came to a halt a few feet down. He put an envelope in my hand with an Oakland address. He thrust a wad of bills in my bag. I told him I couldn’t take it but he shook his head impatiently.

“Bribe your way on,” he said. “Twenty dollars should do it, start with that but give them more if you have to. I am sorry I cannot escort you. I cannot leave the motor, I have no doubt it will be stolen if I do. And I must get to the office to get the papers out and the accounts. Did you see that fire on Mission Street? It could jump to Market within the hour.”