Fishbowl
Roofs and gutters vibrated in the chilly, fall wind. After her drum practice, Helen left the vinyl store and walked up Van Brunt Street. It was the end of October and the sun was setting early. Light rain and dark clouds hung over the city all day. Looking west to the Manhattan Skyline, Helen noticed a couple of unusual light arcs around the sun. “It’s a very rare phenomenon,” Helen thought, taking her phone out of her pocket and snapping a picture. Ethan, her six-year-old boy, would love to see this. By this time, Matthew would have picked Ethan up from school and the two of them should be safe at home.
Two years ago, they moved to the Red Hook neighborhood from Manhattan and opened a design studio. They joked that they were starting their yuppie lifestyle, a throwback term still preferred among old-time Red Hook residents.
Figure 1. A coulple of unusual light arcs around the sun. Reference [1].
Nearing home, Helen suddenly heard noises from down the street. She looked towards the sound and saw a number of cars moving hastily past her. A driver shouted at the people on the street from his car window, “water is coming!” Then quick disappeared. At first, Helen was confused, but soon remembered the weather forecast and hurricane warning from several days ago. She ran the rest of the way home and up the stairs to her cozy apartment.
Figure 2. Red Hook Rowhouses. Reference [2].
“Ethan! Matthew!” Helen shouted.
“What’s going on, honey?” Matthew stuck his head out from behind his computer screen. “Why are you so scared?”
Their son looked up from his Lego skyscrapers just long enough to call, “Mom, you’re back!” His best friend, George the goldfish, swam lazily in his fishbowl next to Ethan.
Figure 3. Ethan's Lego skyscrapers, Ruixuan Li, 2019.
Figure 4. George the Goldfish, Ruixuan Li, 2019.
Video 1. Residents of Red Hook, Brooklyn, were slow to respond Sunday to the mandatory evacuation order for low-lying areas, including much of their neighborhood. Reference [3].
Helen didn’t reply to either of them, instead ran to her bedroom and pulled open the shades and squinted frantically into the dark. She could barely see anything except for the swarm of vehicles moving away from the shore, signaling signs of danger.
“Matthew, we need to pack our stuff and go to my uncle’s house,” Helen called from the bedroom. “The water is coming up from the seaside.” Helen hurriedly started grabbing clothes and documents and threw them into a traveler’s bag.
“Is the big flood coming, mom?” asked Ethan. “Lucy’s family took the bus and left yesterday.”
“Yes, buddy, it is coming. Let’s move. The flood is not fun.” Matthew picked the boy up and carried him to his bedroom. “Put on your clothes and grab your toothbrush.”
Thirty minutes later, the family stepped out of their apartment with packs and bags in hand. They saw a long line of cars waiting to get into Brooklyn Heights. The water bubbled up from the drains and inundated their shoes.
Figure 5. The water bubbled up from the drains and inundated their shoes.
Video 2. Modeled Flloding of Red Hook during Sandy. Reference [4].
“I forgot George!” Ethan cried. “Can I go get him?”
“Honey, he’s a fish. We need to evacuate as soon as we can,” Helen said, pulling him close.
The three crossed the pedestrian path under the expressway and continued northward. They soon exited Red Hook and reached Uncle David’s place in Brooklyn Heights.
Two unsettling days passed. When the news started reporting that the water was receding, Helen returned to Red Hook alone and left Matthew and Ethan at her uncle’s. She stayed on her upstairs neighbor Nora’s sofa, whose floor was saved from flooding. It was hard for Helen to wait, because all she wanted to do was start fixing their home and salvaging their design works. Nora had considered evacuating when the storm began, but how? At that hour, Red Hook was an island separated from the rest of the city by the surging seawater.
When Helen finally got into her apartment, she found that much of their furniture was damaged in the row house’s first floor, which was still under five inches of water. Ethan’s sneakers and Helen’s drumsticks floated up from the basement and drifted in the murky water. Books that were on the floor before the flooding were now on the coffee table, laying next to the bowl that contained Ethan’s beloved goldfish, George.
Figure 6. Shoes floated up from the basement and drifted. Reference [5].
The fishbowl was there, still full of water, but the fish was gone. The watermark on the wall reached almost 5 feet, suggesting that the fish would have enjoyed an hour or two of unprecedented freedom, albeit in water both salty and toxic, before its demise. Besides the fishbowl, the Lego skyscrapers constructed by Ethan were strewn everywhere in the room.
Figure 7. The fishbowl full of water, but the fish was gone, Ruixuan Li, 2019.
Looking around at the destruction, Helen thought to herself, “This is what climate change looks like.”