Everybody my age in Jamaica remembers where they were when Gilbert came. Hurricane Gilbert tore across the whole island in September of 1988, end to end, and when a storm like that passes, it takes the roof off the world and leaves it strangely quiet. What I remember best, though, is what Gilbert left behind. And I don't mean the damage.
When the wind finally dropped and the grown people said it was safe, my sister and I and the other children from the neighborhood did what children do. We went out to look. After a big storm the whole place is a different world, and you have to go and see it with your own eyes. Zinc in the road, big trees lying down like they were tired, everybody's business suddenly out in the open.
And the fruit. Oh, the fruit. A hurricane is a terrible thing, but it is also the biggest tree-shaking the island ever gets. Mango, otaheite apple, guinep, whatever was hanging, the storm brought it down, and it was all just lying there in the road for the taking. So that was our mission, half survey, half treasure hunt. We were walking down the street with our hands full of fruit the storm shook loose, stepping over the mess Gilbert made.
That is when the little dog found me. A little tan chihuahua, no bigger than one of the mangoes we were carrying, came out from somewhere and ran straight to me. Not to my sister. Not to any of the other children. To me. And that was it. She would not stop following me. I walked, she walked. I stopped, she stopped and looked up at me like we had already settled something.
You know how this ends. I took her home. And because she came to me out of that storm, out of all that wind and mess, there was only one thing to call her. I named her Gilbert. A little girl dog named after the biggest hurricane in living memory. It made everybody laugh, and it fit her, because she had storm in her, that one. Small, but she ran the whole yard.
Gilbert was the best dog I ever had. I will not pretend to be fair about it. She was mine from the second she picked me out in the road, and she stayed mine. And she gave back plenty. Over her life with us, that little chihuahua had seventeen puppies. Seventeen. From a dog you could hold in two hands. Half the neighborhood ended up with a piece of Gilbert running around their yard.
She had a good, long, loved life with us, and she earned every bit of it. People talk about Hurricane Gilbert like it was only a disaster, and it was, it truly was. But mi dear, storms are complicated. That one knocked down half of what we had. And then it sent a little tan dog up the road to find me, and I would not trade her for the roof.
So when the old people start telling their Gilbert stories, and in Jamaica they always do, I have one they never expect. Everybody lost something in that storm. I am one of the few who walked out of it holding the best friend of my whole childhood, tail wagging.