Radio by Chelsea Yates

Radio | Chelsea Yates

I am hunkered down in my coat closet. I’ve shoved my winter coats to the far end, wondering why I brought so many with me to Houston. To make space, I’ve pulled out my shoe rack, the vacuum cleaner, and a box of knick-knacks that don’t yet have homes. This closet cleanout takes just a few minutes since I moved into the apartment only three weeks ago. I spread the comforter from my bed onto the floor, folding it in half like a sleeping bag. I’ve propped my pillows against the closet wall. It’s a cozy little bed, but I know I’m not going to sleep. 

The wind roars outside. The power’s just gone out. I switch on my only flashlight. Its beam gets my cats’ attention. Herschel jumps to catch it, but Oliver is distracted by the tree branches that are now scraping against the window panes. He hunches, and his tail twitches. I curse myself for not buying more batteries. 

Other than the cats, I am alone and three states away from family and friends. I’m used to tornado warnings—common back home in the Midwest, they crop up without much notice through the spring and summer. But I have never lived in a place where hurricanes are a threat, like Ike, which is making its way toward me now. When storm warnings were issued earlier in the week, my new coworkers told me not to worry: hurricanes may hit Galveston and other parts of the Texas coastline, but they never travel as far inland as Houston. Even as the threat grew and the warnings swelled, the weather seemed pleasant—so much so that I didn’t believe anything severe would happen. 

Then, about three days ago, I began noticing signs outside of the gas stations and grocery stores on my route to work: 

TANKS TAPPED 

SORRY OUT OF MILK 

NO MORE BOTTLED WATER 

As Ike approached, panic buying cleared shelves. Many businesses boarded up windows and front doors. Mandatory evacuations were announced in the coastal communities. Colleagues who’d originally claimed the storm wasn’t a big deal began packing their bags and heading to Dallas and Austin to stay with family. Shadows of Hurricane Katrina, which had pummeled the Gulf Coast just three years before, fell across the city.

I didn’t leave my apartment the Saturday before Ike made landfall. I didn’t know anyone in the city, and I had nowhere to go. Only in the early hours of the morning did I finally decide to shelter in the closet. 

I try to force my cats to stay near me, but they are far more interested in exploring our small apartment—anxious about the storm, skittish as the rain pounds our roof. I reluctantly let them roam, though I worry that if a window breaks they will jump out and disappear into Ike. 

My phone says it’s about 1:30 in the morning. I’m exhausted but too nervous to sleep. I want to call my boyfriend back in Kansas City, or my sister in Nebraska, but I know I need to preserve my phone battery, unsure how long I’ll be without power or how bad things might get. I shut the flashlight off and sit in my closet listening to the rain and wind, the cracking and scraping of branches, and my inner critic. What will I do if I can’t get out of my building? Why didn’t I stock up with more provisions? How will I protect myself if shit gets bad? Why haven’t I put the cats in their carriers? What was I thinking, moving to Houston? 

I start crying.

I am thirty, and I’m scared. I took this job and made this move to prove to myself that I could do it. That I could take care of myself. 

But the truth is, I miss everyone, especially my dad. He died just a few months ago. The last time I’d spoken with him was in the Houston airport, on my way back to Kansas City from interviewing for the museum job I now had. The hiring manager called me on the day of Dad’s funeral to officially offer it to me. I told her I’d have to get back to her because my dad had died. A week later I returned the call, accepted the position, and began making plans to move on.  

But ever since settling in Houston, I’d been crying a lot. At my new job, in my car, in the shower, at night before falling asleep. I’d driven to an Episcopal church one afternoon and cried in the nave. I cried in the cereal aisle of my neighborhood Fiesta Mart when an old Ricky Nelson song—one of Dad’s favorites—played on the grocery store’s sound system.

Dad used to sing to me when I was little—Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Dion and the Belmonts. He’d tell me about his days as a disc jockey for his high school’s radio station. And about how in November of 1963, when the halls of that same high school began to stir with unsettling information from Dallas, he rushed from class to his locker. He kept a little homemade radio there, which he tuned to a local news channel. It confirmed the news that President Kennedy had been shot. 

This memory reminds me of the little gray twelve-band radio he’d given me years before when I’d moved into my first apartment. “It’s always good to have an emergency radio on hand,” he’d said. I’d never figured out how to use it, as I had no idea what the different bands beyond AM and FM—such as TV, MW, SW 1-9—were for. But I hung onto it, moving it from apartment to apartment across Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, and now Texas. 

Radios were always humming when Dad was around. On the way to school in the morning he’d turn the car stereo volume up when a good song started, then beat the rhythm with his thumbs against the steering wheel. On potential snow days, he was the first in our house to tune the kitchen radio to one of the local FM stations so we could find out if school had been delayed or canceled.  

He gave me one of my favorite stuffed animals when I was little—a black and white cat from Radio Shack. It had a small AM/FM radio built into its belly, and I named it Nip (short for catnip). When I was twelve, he gifted me an oversized black boom box. It had a cassette tape deck so I could record songs I liked from the radio. My sister and I would often play deejay, taping songs from the Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 and making up our own commercials in between them. Dad made sure we never ran out of blank cassettes.   

Dad kept a CB radio in the car, which he’d let me play with on road trips. And on the nightstand by his side of the bed were ham and shortwave radios stacked on top of each other. As my mom slept, he’d stay awake tuning them to pick up conversations and dispatches. Then the next morning at breakfast, as he drank coffee and I ate Cheerios, he’d recount his successes: the British Navy off the coast of Canada, a Russian submarine, men speaking Chinese. He was certain that once he’d listened in on Air Force One.

I make my way through the darkness to the cardboard box where I’d remembered seeing the emergency radio. I unearth it amidst a stack of CD cases and art books. It’s only about three inches tall and six wide, but it’s a heavy little thing. I check the batteries—two of those 1.5 volt D-cells. How old are they? I’m certain I’ve never replaced them, and I know I don’t have any extras. I return to my little closet bunker and wrap myself in my comforter. I turn on the radio. A dull crack, then silence. I extend the antenna, wondering if doing so will make any difference from inside my closet. I have no idea which direction to aim it. I crank up the volume. I switch through the bands. I fiddle with the dials.

There’s another dull crack, and I hear the tinny sound of a violin. I adjust the knob to hone in on it, careful not to lose whatever I’ve managed to pick up. I follow the lovely melody as it dances across notes. Once the music ends, a soft voice identifies the Bach concerto I’ve just heard. The voice introduces himself and the station, 88.7 KUHF-FM. It’s a local classical music station, and he’s the overnight deejay, playing classics by request from midnight to 5 a.m. The deejay acknowledges the storm raging outside and assures listeners that he’ll be on air playing music all night. 

Outside the hurricane plummets Houston, but inside my apartment, things have calmed. My tears have stopped. Oliver and Herschel have snuggled next to me. I cling to the little radio, allowing KUHF to carry me to sleep. I thank my dad for being there with me.  

Ike made landfall at 2:10 a.m. on Sunday, September 13, 2008, over Galveston Island. A strong Category 2 hurricane, it brought a Category 5 storm surge, which destroyed property up and down Texas’s Bolivar Peninsula. It was one of the deadliest and most expensive storms, the third costliest hurricane in U.S. history at the time, behind Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina. 

Ike traveled north and along the east side of Houston, bringing about ten hours of tropical storm force winds, topping out at 110 miles per hour. It marked the first time a curfew was issued for the City of Houston. Many chemical plants and oil refineries were closed. Grocery store shelves remained empty for weeks, and some parts of the city waited that long for power to be restored.

But Ike moved fast over Houston. As a result, flooding was not as much of an issue as it was with other storms, like the devastating Harvey, which waterlogged the city about ten years later. As Ike continued its drive north, it dumped record amounts of rainfall on parts of Canada. I read somewhere that remnants of the storm were experienced as far as Iceland.

By the time I wake up, the storm has passed. The radio is quiet. I must have turned it off at some point in the early hours of the morning. I feed Oliver and Herschel and return blankets from the closet to my bed. I push the vacuum cleaner back into the closet. I spread the hangers of my winter coats across the clothes rod. I cradle the radio to my chest and carry it to my bedroom, where I set it on my nightstand. 

I dress and head outside to assess the damage. The yards of my neighborhood are a mess of downed limbs and power lines and uprooted trees. But the sky is calm and the air is strangely cool. And other than losing power and a few gutters, my little building seems to have survived unscathed. 

Suddenly my street is alive. Neighbors talk to neighbors, laughing, hugging, helping each other clear debris from cars, roofs, and lawns. I meet the woman who lives in the apartment below me. She invites me to join her and two friends at Rudyard’s, the bar around the corner from our apartment building. It has a generator and cold beer, so I have a few Lone Stars at a picnic table with these strangers who immediately feel like old friends. Later, we watch from my apartment balcony as neighbors stretch extension cords across driveways and front yards, connecting generators and electrical devices down the block. We’re invited to a few impromptu barbecues and cookouts, where folks have gathered to grill and share food before it goes bad. An unexpected beauty reveals itself in the kindness of strangers.   

The next day is Monday. I head in to work. The museum is running on generators and I take my phone, laptop, and other items that need a charge. During the workday, I roam the galleries. I think about how art and nature remind us of how small we are, and how interconnected.

That evening back at my apartment, I pick up a pineapple from my building’s foyer. An old friend has overnighted it to me since reading my Facebook post about how hard it’s been to find fresh fruit in Houston after the storm. I slice into it in my kitchen. It’s slightly overripe but I still savor each piece. I call my mom to check-in. I feed the cats. Once the sun sets I light candles, turn on the little emergency radio, and listen to the classical music station. This will be my ritual for the next five nights until my building’s power is restored. 

Somehow the radio’s batteries never die. So each night as I drift off with Mozart, Dvořák, and Mendelssohn, I think about my dad. I’m the little girl peeking into my parents’ room well after I’m supposed to be in bed, with Nip tucked under my arm. I watch as Dad tunes the dials of the shortwave radio on his nightstand, the volume low so as not to wake anyone, static humming in the dark, connecting him to other souls across distance and, possibly, even across time.

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