The Year the Sky Never Stopped Crying

The rain hadn’t stopped for 17 days when the river swallowed our street.

I’d memorized the cracks in our living room ceiling—each one a lightning bolt frozen in plaster—while rain drummed its fists against the roof. Outside, the Willamette River crept past "historic highs" into something feral. Neighbors stacked sandbags like frantic castle walls. My daughter Lily drew smiling suns on the fogged-up window. "When’s the water going home, Mama?"

I didn’t know how to tell her we were the ones trespassing.

*Day 18*. The emergency alert screamed through my phone at 3 a.m.:

> EVACUATE NOW: FLOODWATER BREACHED LEVEE 7

I shoved Lily’s dinosaur backpack with diapers, granola bars, and her threadbare elephant, Ellie. My own bag held passports, a half-charged power bank, and Dad’s old Zippo lighter—useless, heavy, mine.

The road out was already a churning brown throat. Our ’08 Prius choked halfway to the highway. Water licked the door seals.

"Are we swimming?" Lily whispered, eyes wide.

A flashlight beam cut through the downpour. "Out! Now!" A woman’s voice, sharp as broken glass. She wrenched open my door, thigh-deep in water, dragging us toward a battered fishing boat hitched to a stop sign. "I’m Marta. Get in."

Marta’s "rescue vessel" smelled of diesel and dill pickles. She’d been ferrying people all night, her forearms mapped in scratches from dragging pets and panic-stricken grandparents over the gunwales. "You’re my last run," she grunted, steering us past submerged SUVs. "Shelter’s full. You’re coming to my place."

Her "place" was a third-floor apartment above a shuttered bike shop. The stairwell buzzed with voices—a mosaic of refugees: Mr. Henderson from the vegan bakery, Ms. Gupta and her trembling Chihuahua, three college students brewing coffee on a camping stove.

Marta thrust a jar into my hands. "Here. Emergency rations."

Gherkins floated in murky brine. Lily giggled. "Swimming pickles!"

*Day 22*. We ran out of diapers.

Ms. Gupta produced a stack of cotton sarees. "For the baby," she said, demonstrating a fold-and-pin technique older than Portland. The students rigged a rainwater filter using coffee filters and a plastic tub. Mr. Henderson baked "crisis bread" from crushed crackers and peanut butter.

That night, Marta showed me her balcony garden—tomatoes drowning in pots, basil surrendering to mold. "Stupid, right? Trying to grow things while everything’s drowning."

I handed her Dad’s Zippo. "For your candles."

She flicked it open. A tiny flame kissed the dark. "Still works."

*Day 26*. The rain slowed to a weep.

National Guard trucks arrived with bottled water and FEMA paperwork. As we packed, Lily clung to Marta’s leg. "Take Ellie!" She thrust her elephant forward. Marta tucked it into her overall pocket like a sacred relic.

"Next time," she said, her voice gravel, "we’ll plant real tomatoes."

Back in our drained but standing house, I found the pickle jar Marta gave me. Beneath the last gherkin, a note was taped to the glass:

> *Survival tip #1:

> It’s never about the water.

> It’s about who floats with you.*

I placed the jar on our cracked windowsill. Outside, neighbors were dragging ruined couches to the curb. Ms. Gupta walked her dog past Mr. Henderson’s sandbag fortress, now a soggy monument. One of the students waved, holding up a sprouting avocado pit in a cup.

Lily touched the glass. "The pickles look happier today."

Now when it rains, Lily presses her palm to the window and whispers, "Marta’s tomatoes are growing." I don’t correct her. I’ve started saving jars—mayonnaise, olives, artichoke hearts—filling them with soil and seeds on our cracked sill. The house still smells of damp and loss, but in the dark, I see it: not what the water took, but what it left behind. A stranger’s hands pulling us into a boat. A flicker in the downpour. A child who learned that hope floats in brine and broken things.

BY ZIAFAT ULLAH