Still Shaking [Essay]

Three weeks ago, I was in this very room. I was already counting down the minutes until I could leave work and meet my friend for cake and a coffee to celebrate my birthday, a day late. Instead, I found myself stuck in a seemingly endless moment.

I have tried many times to write about that moment, that day, and the days after. But I have found it incredibly difficult to explain to those removed from it all what it was like. I gloss over the details because it is physically painful to remember, and even when I talk with those who were affected, the shared experience means those details don’t need to be recalled. But they are recalled, every day.

I was just over there, under my desk, watching loose-leaf paper carpet the floor, file cabinets topple over where I had just been sitting. I was clutching my cell phone in my left hand, and in my right I tried to hold the desk in place as it bounced on tiles that shook. Though I felt strangely calm in that moment, even now tears stream down my face as I recall the terror. The earth screaming. The ceiling cracking, falling, choking the air with dust. The wails of fear from those doubled over on the ground, covering their heads. The continuous sirens of emergency vehicles that would soon be joined by the whump-whump-whumps of helicopters overhead. The silence in the snow that fell after each strong aftershock and temporarily hid the cracks.

The English teacher who sits next to me, one I’ve taught with for the past year, was on his feet as soon as the building paused in its shaking. “Escape, escape!” he yelled at me. I obeyed, followed, ducked through the metal emergency doors that automatically seal off each floor in the event of a disaster. The teachers gathered in the roundabout in front of the school, all together but yet alone. Attendance was taken, names called out and repeated until everyone was accounted for.

I didn’t even notice the cold. I just stood there, watching everyone, watching them mash the buttons on their phones while doing the same myself. But it was no use—cell service was down, and there was no way for me to contact my husband. The shaking came in bursts, each one strong and adding to the palpable tension in the air. We waited outside for nearly an hour, waiting for a long enough pause that would allow us to gather our personal belongings and make our way home. I moved quickly, back to the third-floor staff room that had seemed so normal just a short time before. My locker had fallen over, crushed against others with just enough space between the floor and the knocked-open door to pull out my jacket. I put it on as I walked out of the building to where my bicycle lay on the ground.

People from a nearby apartment complex stood in the road, staring at bricks and smashed concrete that had fallen. The streetlights were out and traffic moved at a crawl. I didn’t notice the kaitenzushi restaurant that had caved into itself, or the kimono shop that no longer had any windows. I instead focused on dodging shards of glass, crumbled walls that were no longer freestanding. Pedal faster, I kept telling myself. Just get home and find him.

Our old concrete box of a building was surprisingly intact and I raced up the four flights of stairs, unlocked the apartment, and stepped into an unnatural mess. Cupboards and closets had emptied themselves, tossing their contents into the middle of each room. There was a stench that I couldn’t identify but would later find out was olive oil, cocoa, sake, and rum, all spilling from their broken containers to join the pile of glass and debris. I called out my husband’s name again and again, but there was no answer. The shock was beginning to wear off and I could feel the panic rising in my throat. I ran back downstairs, still calling for him, not seeing him in the small crowd of people across the street. But then I turned and there he was, walking up the driveway with a neighbor, safe. And that’s when I broke down, letting all the fear and worry and adrenaline spill out, exhausted from the weight of what had happened.

Three weeks ago, I was in this very room. And it feels like it’s still shaking.

Submitted by: Angela Shetler
(@asheTLer)
Koriyama, Fukushima