Nena found out just after she laid down on the beach.

It was a bright, humid summer day. The sun glowed high in the sky, its light coating everything in sight. Nena and Rachel had both slept in until ten, quickly ate breakfast, and then walked the two blocks from Rachel’s house to the beach. They carefully selected their spot and spread their towels out across the sand. Nena lay flat on her back, enjoying the way the warmth of the sun spread across her limbs, staring up at the cloudless, blue Fort Lauderdale sky when Rachel said, “Lina, your town is in the news.”

Nena—for though most people call her Lina, to her family she is known as Nena, so really she is Nena—did not turn to look at Rachel when she said that. She continued to examine the sky, merely saying, “Oh yeah?”

“There was a tornado.”

“Oh, that does actually happen sometimes. They’re never that bad,” Nena said, but now she did turn onto her side, letting her sunglasses fall down her freckled aquiline nose so that her light brown eyes could see better.

“I don’t know. This one sounds bad.”

“Let me see.” Nena grabbed Rachel’s phone and squinted down at it as she began scrolling.

“They’re saying it was an EF-5. Thirty people are dead and 250 are missing,” Rachel said quietly.

And so their beach day was ruined. The two girls packed up their things and quickly walked back to Rachel’s house. There, Rachel and her mom flipped through TV channels trying to find out as much information as possible while Nena paced around the room calling Mami then Dad then Viri. No answer, no answer, no answer. Finally, after an hour of missed calls and watching the death toll climb to forty people and the missing persons list to three hundred, Nena decided she had to go home. Rachel’s mom tried to advise against it, but Nena’s position was firm. Rachel offered to go with her, which was a very good friend thing to do, but Nena felt Rachel would only slow her down. So, at around noon, Nena backed her car out of the driveway and headed home to Key West.

 

Nena had never really understood why her parents had chosen Key West. Both of them had grown up in Miami, a much easier place to get to that did not require the almost four-hour drive across the series of bridges and man-made islands that make up the Florida Keys to finally reach Key West. She had always wondered if it had something to do with the fact that, as the southernmost point in the contiguous US, Key West is actually closer to Havana than it is to Miami. But that was silly. Dad had been six when he left Cuba, and Mami had been only four. It couldn’t have been such a deciding factor in where her parents lived.

Whatever the reason, Nena did grow up in Key West, and despite the fact that she sometimes wished she lived in a more reachable place, she did love everything about it: the clear blue ocean that seemed to extend forever into the horizon around the island, the Key lime trees that dotted her neighborhood and flavored her favorite desserts, the tourism that descended upon the island in the summer and the way it mostly receded in the winter, leaving only the locals to populate the streets. Nena even loved the constant thunderstorms that would roll in quickly, batter everything within their sight, and then, just as quickly, ride out again, taking some of the humidity with them—for a short while anyway. It wasn’t until Nena moved to Maryland three years ago for college that she learned how long and heavy thunderstorms usually were up north. That was more what she associated with a hurricane—those she didn’t love but had become somewhat accustomed to growing up, as all Floridians do. Tornadoes too were considered normal to Nena, though they mostly existed out on the water. They did sometimes hit Key West and rip into people’s homes, but the damage was usually minor. That’s why she couldn’t believe it. An EF-5? In Key West? Was that even possible?

 

Nena drove rather well for someone who kept grabbing her phone to try calling another person. After about twenty times each, it seemed Mami, Dad, and Viri weren’t going to answer, so she expanded her registry to whatever family friends and neighbors she had in her contacts. Half of them didn’t pick up and the other half sent her straight to voicemail. For not the first time in her life, Nena wished she had a grandparent she could easily call. But Dad’s parents lived in Argentina (what time was it in Buenos Aires?) and Mami’s mother had died when Nena was in elementary school, and Mami’s father had opted to stay behind in Cuba all those years ago. So Nena was on her own, trying to remain calm and focus on the road. They’re probably fine, she thought to herself. She would arrive home and it would have been some big misunderstanding. Viri would smirk at her as she lounged on the wicker couch and say, “You’re such a worrier, Nena. I can’t believe you rushed home for nothing.”

“But you weren’t answering your phones!” Nena would protest.

“The cell service is out,” Mami would then shrug from over in the kitchen. “Mala pata.”

Mala pata . . . bad luck. That was Mami’s go-to phrase no matter what happened. You knocked over a cup of water, mala pata. You cut your hand open at the beach on some shards of glass, mala pata. If this were any other day, it would have annoyed Nena to hear her say it considering how often she used it. (“I didn’t cut my hand because of bad luck, Mami! It’s because some moron didn’t clean up their broken beer bottle!” she remembered growling that one time). But today she would be glad to hear Mami say it.

 

Traffic was light heading across the Upper and Middle Keys. It wasn’t until she got to the Lower ones and noticed all the cars heading in the opposite direction that Nena realized maybe that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Nevertheless, she plowed on, her right leg starting to ache from pressing so hard on the gas. She finally reached Key West around four o’clock, and despite her rubbernecking, she had yet to see any real damage from the tornado.

That changed when Nena took the exit off the highway to her neighborhood. Some of the palm tree branches were broken, and the street signs were bent awkwardly. It wasn’t anything too bad, though. The houses were still in good shape. The only real sign of trouble was a state trooper parked perpendicular to the street. Nena slowed to her stop and rolled down her window as he approached.

“Miss, you can’t go this way. You’re gonna have to turn around,” he said rather sharply.

“But my house is just a little ways down there,” Nena pointed down the street.

“Well, I’m sorry, but you can’t go down there right now,” he repeated.

“But I was out of town this morning, and I haven’t been able to contact my family. I need to see them.”

He looked down at Nena and said quietly, “Did you check the list of fatalities?”

“Yes, they weren’t listed.”

“Then I’m sure they’re fine. But they’re definitely not home right now. You should go back where you were and wait for them to call.”

“No, I can’t!” Nena didn’t realize how desperate she was until she heard it in her own voice. She had to hear from her parents and Viri. “I need to find them.”

The cop pressed his mouth together in a tight line and then let out a long sigh. 

“Ok, why don’t you try heading over to the high school? Lots of people are sheltering there. You’re gonna have to walk though; there’s too much debris. You can park your car over there.”

“Yes, ok. Thank you so much.” Nena nodded vigorously.

“Be careful now, hon.” He stepped back towards his car as Nena pulled away.

 

The cop was right; there was a lot of debris. The tornado had only brushed the spot where she and he had been talking, but it apparently had slammed into the street she turned onto to get to the high school. The lawns were entirely covered with shredded pieces of the wreckage. Palm tree trunks were snapped in half like little twigs. Houses looked like they had been beaten with a giant baseball bat: some had parts flattened; others had huge holes punched through them. One house had its front wall ripped clean off, and Nena could perfectly see their kitchen and living room still intact. She suddenly wondered what the damage on her street could have been if she wasn’t even allowed to walk down it, but she tamped that thought down quickly

If none of the damage seemed like it could be real, then the few people she saw seemed even less real. They didn’t talk. They didn’t even really appear sad. They just mindlessly picked at the debris and stared up at their beaten-down homes. Nena wondered if she should go up and talk to them and ask if they had heard anything about her family, but they didn’t seem very up for chatting.

Nena considered the same thing as she reached the high school and saw the crowd of people milling around outside, some talking intently, others standing very still as they smoked cigarettes. If this were any other day, she would have hated to have to go into her old high school, but today that thought didn’t even cross her mind. She scanned the crowd for anyone she recognized, but they were all unfamiliar, so she pushed past them into the school.

The entrance room too was crowded with people. In the front, there was a desk where a young man with his hair in a greasy ponytail sat with a laptop in front of him. Nena forced her way up to him. The man didn’t look up when Nena approached. 

“Excuse me, I’m looking for my family. Is there a way to know if they’re here?

The man sighed, still staring intently at his screen. “What’s the last name?”

“Morales.”

“And the first names?”

“Luís, Silvia, and Elvira.”

The man turned to a clipboard next to his laptop and flipped through the pages on the clipboard. He shook his head, “I don’t have anyone by those names here.” 

“Are you sure? Can you check again?” Nena asked.

He made a show of looking through the papers once more. “Nope. You should try the elementary school. There are more people there.”

Another place? Nena nodded reluctantly, “Ok.” She turned to go.

“Wait! What’s your name in case someone comes looking for you?”

Nena spun through the wheel of names she could give him: “Laudelina.”

“Lala-what-a?”

 

Nena was getting tired now. The rush of adrenaline that had carried her from Rachel’s house through the car ride was now fading. Her long hair needed to be put up in a ponytail again. Her tank top and shorts were soaked with sweat and her cheeks and shoulders stung from the gaze of the sun. She just wanted to find her family. Nena felt the prick of tears rise up through her cheeks, but she took a deep breath and willed them away. No, she wasn’t going to start crying. If she started crying, she wouldn’t be able to stop. And that would be a waste of time. She focused all her emotions on a splintered piece of wood lying in the middle of the street and brought her foot down hard against it as if it was a soccer ball. With a thwack! it skidded across the street. Several people in front of the house next to her shot her look. She attempted to shoot them an intimidating what? in response which maybe wasn’t very neighborly. Their house wasn’t in good shape, after all. But at least it seemed like their whole family was together. That was more than Nena had.

Suddenly, one of the people in the group yelled out, “Lina!” It was the mom, probably. She was in her mid-fifties probably with short, yellowy blond hair and a heavyset build. She was hurrying across the lawn toward Nena. Me? Nena thought. She had no idea who this woman was. She did not recognize her at all.

“Lina! Oh my goodness; so good to see you!”

Without warning, the woman then grabbed Nena and pulled her into a hug. The sensation of being squashed in this strange woman’s arms ignited the memory of a similar feeling last year at a neighbor’s Christmas party. She recognized the woman as Viri’s friend’s mom. Mrs. Rickards . . . Richards . . . something like that.

“How are you?” Mrs. Rickards asked.

“Um . . . ” How was Nena? She didn’t really know. “I’m ok,” she went with. It seemed like the polite, neutral answer. Then she suddenly realized Mrs. Rickards was someone she could ask: “Actually, I was out of town this morning, and I haven’t been able to get in touch with my parents. Have you seen them?”

A concerned look filled Mrs. Rickards’s face. “You haven’t heard from them at all?”

Nena shook her head. “No,” she said.

“Well, the thing is honey . . . ” Mrs. Rickards trailed off.

“What?”

“Well, it’s just Carl, my husband, he’s been volunteering over at the rec center which is what they’re using as the morgue.”

Nena’s stomach instantly dropped at the word “morgue,” and she heard her heartbeat climb up her throat into her skull.

“He said he might have heard your parents are there.”

“Might have heard?” Nena’s head began to thump so loud she wondered if Mrs. Rickards could hear it too.

“Well, he wasn’t entirely sure. There’s a lot going on there. But maybe you should check it out.”

“What about Viri?” Nena managed to say.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything about her.”

Nena just stared back at Mrs. Rickards. Suddenly, all she could think of was how Viri always made fun of people with poorly dyed, yellowy blonde hair. 

“Maybe I could go down there with you now?” Mrs. Rickards asked, glancing anxiously back at her house and the family members trying to clean up.

“No, that’s ok,” Nena said, following Mrs. Rickards’ gaze. “I can just go by myself.”

“Are you sure?” Mrs. Rickards tried, but Nena had already started to walk away, stumbling in the direction of the rec center, desperately fighting the desire to lie down on the street and sink into the steaming, black asphalt.

 

And so there Nena stood fifteen minutes later. In front of the rec center where she used to play soccer when she was little that had been turned into a morgue to pile up the bodies of her neighbors. It was probably six or seven o’clock now. The summer sun was still in the sky, but the day was slowing to a close. The temperature was slightly dropping and a breeze was picking up. Nena stared at the entrance to the rec center and watched a couple exit the small, old building, the woman crying into the man’s arms. Soon I’ll be like them, Nena thought. She would have the answers she was looking for. 

She tried to take a step toward the rec center, but she couldn’t make her feet move. Nena didn’t want to go in. She didn’t want to know. She knew she was supposed to; she knew it would give her closure, but she couldn’t do it. She much preferred to live in the purgatory of not knowing whether or not Mami and Dad were lying in there, tucked under tarps the way they used to tuck Nena into bed. 

Sighing wearily, she shuffled over to a bench across the street from the rec center that sat on a cliff overlooking the beach. The waves were actually splendid today. Bigger than usual. It was the perfect conditions for boogie boarding, maybe even surfing. Nena loved to swim in the ocean on days like this. When she was little, she used to be scared of the big waves, but Dad had forced her to learn how to dive under them. He told about when he was little and learned to swim at Varadero beach in Cuba. She remembered asking him how he could remember that so clearly. He had just shrugged and said that he did.

Suddenly, there was a loud crash of branches breaking above Nena. Nena jumped up and put her hands over her head in surprise as something hit the ground behind her. Her heart pounding, she peered over the bench and then walked around it to get a better view. It was as if Nena’s brain couldn’t compute what she was seeing: the object that had fallen was long and beige and textured like skin . . . A running shoe was fitted on one end . . . A mess of red liquid on the other end . . . It was a leg . . . A human leg. And where the leg was supposed to be attached to a torso was now a bloody stump with the white edge of bone sticking through.

Nena doubled over, focusing her eyes on her own sneakers as the image of the leg seared itself into her mind’s eye. Above her sight line, she heard footsteps approaching. She looked up and saw a very old man standing over the leg now. She had no idea where he had come from. He was small, smaller than Nena. His hair was white and thinning and his tanned, leathery skin was dotted with brown sun spots. 

“It’s a leg,” he finally said, speaking with an accent.

Somewhere in the thunderstorm of Nena’s mind, the thought No fucking duh surfaced. She didn’t say it though. All she did was nod and look away. 

“We should move it,” the man announced, causing Nena to look back up at him in horror. “I’ll put it down by the road so someone can find it.”

“What?” Nena said. Why does someone need to find it? But the man didn’t seem to hear her. 

“Are there any more parts around?” he asked. Nena quickly scanned the area, looking up at the tree the leg must have fallen from, but didn’t see anything else. Could the leg’s owner have lived? she thought, but she quickly knew the answer: No fucking way. There was too much blood.

The old man approached the leg, reached down, grasped it by the ankle, and lifted. His body jerked quickly, though, and the leg didn’t lift off the ground. It was too heavy. With panic, Nena realized that she had to help him. If you’re supposed to give up your seat on a bus to an old person, you’re probably supposed to carry a human leg for them. No! Nena thought. Just tell him to leave it. I’m not touching that thing. But she knew that she was supposed to. So she walked up to the old man and grabbed the leg about halfway down the thigh, trying to avoid touching the broken-off part that was congealing with blood.

“I got it,” she said, and the old man let go. The leg was cold and damp and hairy and much heavier than she thought it would be. It clearly had belonged to a grown man. Just touching it made her skin crawl. But it wasn’t a long walk down to the edge of the sidewalk, and, lifting with all her might, she made it.

“There’s good,” the old man said, and Nena let go. She stepped back, and the two of them stood there for a moment staring down at the leg. Finally, the old man sighed. 

“Qué mala pata,” he said.

From deep within her body, Nena felt a laugh emerge. It started quiet but then got louder and louder. The old man looked over at her in surprise as she nodded at him, laughing. It was the first time she laughed all day, and though it felt wrong in some ways it also felt right. So she kept laughing until all the air left her lungs. Taking deep breaths from the swirling breeze around her, she made her way back over to the bench, still laughing. The old man followed and sat down too. If this were any other day, having to share this bench when there were several other open ones nearby would have annoyed her, but today she couldn’t find it within her to be bothered by this.

“Tomi,” the old man said, holding out his hand.

“Nena,” she replied instinctively, quickly shaking his hand.

“Nena . . .” the old man’s eyes crinkled, “Cuban?”

She nodded. 

“Me too,” the old man said. 

Nena looked over at him. She should have guessed that already from his accent. He spoke the Cuban way, like his mouth was full of water. 

“My sister was a Nena.” The old man’s smile faded. “I haven’t seen her since I was twenty-two years old.” He waved his hand toward the ocean. “She stayed there.”

The wind tossed Nena’s loose black hair into her face and then behind her. A blanket of dark clouds had swept in. She turned to say something to the old man, but he spoke again.

“We weren’t supposed to be here, you know?”

“What?” was all Nena could think to respond.

“People weren’t supposed to live here. This island was never supposed to exist. It was supposed to be a pocket of sand and mangrove trees, not this place. No wonder the winds come.” 

Yet again Nena had no idea how to reply. All she could do was stare quietly back at the old man and then turn to look out at the scene below them. The setting sun poked through the ugly gray sheen of the sky. The tide crawled further and further up the beach below them, each wave getting stronger than the last. Nena’s phone buzzed, and she looked down at it. She had a voicemail from an unknown number. The call must have come earlier while she was moving the leg. She decided she would wait to listen to it. Just five more minutes, she thought. Five more minutes of not knowing what it says. So she leaned back on the bench, her hands lightly dusted with dried blood, and she and the old man gazed south across the rolling sea. If she squinted, her parents had always told her, she could see Havana.