Funnel Cloud Baby by Andy Lopez

What a perfect baby, Petra’s baby. Perfect dimples, gummy smile all socialized, customer-service cute. Heartbreaker, that one. Like his mother. Sometimes, he controls the weather, Petra tells me. The morning, a summer day he seared bone-white, we suck in lukewarm iced teas after iced teas only to sweat them out in globs under our bras, and Petra, ditzy with heat migraine, has to cancel our date mid-way, no worries, see ya when the weather’s nice again, in six months, or never. Not that this surprises me. Not after the baby that put an end to our rave-fueled, cosmic late twenties, our supposed season of harvest with actual working HMO and the tight lush bodies our 13-year-old selves would’ve murdered to have. Murdered! Then the baby. Not just any baby; but perfect, weathervane-rocking, satellite-charming baby. My Petra’s baby. She sends me pictures of the cumulus clouds he made over the years. His first tsunami. The two-week habagat that drenched Davao for days, fucking up my fresh perm. Then hail, yes hail, christening balmy, tropical Philippines. I spent the first years of my 30s best friend-less, the sky inside me blackening completely. Then again, who severed the cord of the years? I knew Petra was on the other side, taking her first gory gasp of motherhood while I hovered by the threshold, never crossing. At his first birthday party, I watch her perfect baby in his playpen giggle the beginnings of a cyclone while guests evacuate politely, one by one leaving wrapped gifts by the pancit habhab. The floorboards groan. The shingles switch their throttle. Petra holds down the tablecloth whipping around us one-handed, windswept and still mine. Carefully, she says, did I ever tell you I named him after your father, and I say, you never mentioned. She shrugs, like this happens often, just things falling out of your locus of control. Somewhere the pipes burst, framed photographs shudder on the walls, and the baby—Alon, that’s right, that’s his name—shrieks bright and jangling like a wind chime, while outside the window the funnel cloud whirs, finding lift, finding footholds, its tail finally grasping the ground like an outstretched hand.

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ANDY LOPEZ — Andy lives and writes in the Philippines. She has received fellowships from the GrubStreet Emerging Writer Fellowship, the Silliman University National Writers Workshop, among others. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of The Net, and has been published in Split Lip Magazine, The Best Small Fictions 2021, Underblong, and other magazines and anthologies. Find her everywhere at @andylopezwrites.

Art by DAEGAN LUNSFORD — Daegan is a Toronto-based fine artist and illustrator recognized for his distinctive monochromatic aesthetic. Working primarily with pen and ink, his drawings reflect his own counterculture roots and promote the use of ink as a fine art medium. His artwork exhibits a long-term fascination with strangeness and nostalgia, and is often composed in a tableau style, with an emphasis on graphic narrative and symbolism.