With my family falling apart, could I really claim that everything was beautiful and nothing hurt?
But this one shook. The fake-leather interior, coated with a fine layer of goldfish crackers, was hollowed out by sobs. The big kind. The heaving and the hawing and the bursting that only comes from utter confusion and panic.
Inside the Toyota was a mother, gripping the steering wheel, providing the loudest of sobs, as well as two little boys in Fisher Price car seats, and a girl sitting way way in the back. She had taken out her half-working headphones and the cries shook shook shook the automatic door that refused to open more than a little crack to let the air in. They shook the empty seat beside the mother.
In an hour their 2 p.m. flight to Guatemala City would take off and no one had dared touched a blistering belt buckle. It was the mother’s dream to fly back to her native land, to dive back into the softly winking lights of the volcanoes nodding her to sleep. To hug her mother. O sea, quería estar ahí en su lugar otra vez, de quedar ahí y ver a sus hijos hablar español.
If the empty shotgun seat had been filled by her husband, they would already be waiting at the gate--suitcases guided swiftly by his steady hand as he glided back and forth from Starbucks brandishing apple-pie muffins. He would’ve kept all five tickets in his pocket and gotten them in before the rest of the crowd. Puchicas--ese hombre did have a lot of points.
But the wife was leaving him in Virginia, tucked away in a bachelor pad on the other side of Ashburn. Puros indios ahí. She laughed thickly through her tears. She saw him pacing on the frozen floors and watching planes fly by like little silver birds and waiting for her call.
She also saw the little yellow house that she was leaving. The one that she’d slaved over for years, tearing down walls and sliding couches here and there. Draping manteles from Guatemala over her pockmarked tables, the ones her little boys scratched their names into.
She’d sold it quickly--it was a good house. Odd to watch the carpets peeled back, wrapped and mummified in unforgiving plastic. Even the pianos were gone; lumbering men had tromped on her hardwood floors and carried the leggy things out the door like big dead dogs. Something about those upside-down pianos, and the little green shutters on her yellow house glued her to her seat. Sat her down and pushed bitter juice out of her eyes. Out of my mother’s eyes.
O’Hare International Airport
I couldn’t hear the sobs that creeped out of my clunky Toyota--my teenage sister and I were already miles away from the little yellow house. The Chicago airport grimed and groaned around us with the flurried steps of a thousand people. I didn’t look at them; they were only shadows around me. I was busy thinking about endings and burying my nails into the little comfort I brought with me to college--Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. The little skull on the cover peeped through my fingers, as if asking to be relinquished, but I would not. I would not.
I couldn’t hear the sobs that creeped out of my clunky Toyota--my teenage sister and I were already miles away from the little yellow house. The Chicago airport grimed and groaned around us with the flurried steps of a thousand people. I didn’t look at them; they were only shadows around me. I was busy thinking about endings and burying my nails into the little comfort I brought with me to college--Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. The little skull on the cover peeped through my fingers, as if asking to be relinquished, but I would not. I would not.
This copy I owned myself, unlike the pile of old titles I had hidden in the warm thickness of the basement storage room: stolen copies of The Great Gatsby, Magic Tree House, Animal Farm, Encyclopedia Brown. It would have been so easy to pluck the folded red oyster of a book from Mr. Noland’s AP English Literature class and bring it home with me to love. No one understood strange Billy Pilgrim, his Coca-Cola body, or his unfortunate leaps through time. No one understood being ripped from everything they knew and shoved into a past they only half-remembered.
At least now I was beginning to.
We were leaving it, the yellow house I’d stuffed full of stolen books--the one that whispered back to the chattering cicadas in the evenings. I was heading back to college, sure--but the promise of a return, of seeing the friendly curl of the tree that guarded my neighborhood from change, was disappearing. We were moving to Guatemala. My country--but not not not.
Better to read.
I thumbed through Vonnegut’s little red lips, looking for a distraction.
There. One of Vonnegut’s doodles: a gravestone that swooped across the entire page, decorated coyly with little flowers and vines.
I read the inscription slowly.
"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
my Mom decided to have her finish her learning up in the States--mejor así, no? She would be moving in with my sweet Tía, the one who had my mother’s face, and the Tío we all despised.
I looked back at the little gravestone, and then at the people rushing around me. Knowing nothing about me. Absorbed in their scarves, their screaming children, their incredibly pressing problems.
It was beautiful, wasn’t it?
The little yellow house we were leaving. And all that it meant.
Ashburn, Virginia
By then they were all crying: my mother, my sister, my brother, my brother. The airplanes did not so much as wink as they flew past, low and roaring above them, thinking only of their destinations and not of the little families on the brink of destruction below them.
Mother held the tickets in her hands, glued to the steering wheel. Guatemala, mi lugar, she thought, donde viven mis hermanos. She closed her eyes and thought at once of orange afternoons, of sighing trees, of city smoke, of steaming milk the natives made with corn and wrapped in newspaper. Volcanoes singing her to sleep, muchachas hanging sheets to dry on little licks of string.
America had always been sticky and ugly to her and its honey-coated fingers pressed her hands to the wheel and forced her to stare at its beautiful ugliness.
Three pink bicycles roaring down the freshly black road, honking and screaming and shaking with the pigtail laughter of her children. Little wrists bent and fingers poised on the brand new grand piano. Reading in the sunbeams on the front porch swing.
She remembered the years before the yellow house, before her husband. Even then, the bittersweetness of her first snow tangling into her hair made her hate and love America.
She remembered the years where the house had too many walls, and they watched Disney movies on her husband’s mother’s brown and yellow couch, cuddled tight with three little heads between her and him.
She remembered the years of plenty, where they could run through fields of lemongrass and climb mountains that blossomed with greenness and white flowers, and wake up to the comfortable smell of smoke and the faraway beckoning sky.
She remembered the years when she could not. When she cried at the glass dolls scattered on the floor from her mother, and the knowing and not knowing where her husband was.
America. America.
She saw it as a thing of beauty and she hated it, but she could not leave it.
Markham Place
“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
It was all so beautiful. I rested my eyes on the headstone and watched my life flicker by, unstuck.
I knew why Billy Pilgrim didn’t hurt, even when he saw the whole world screaming and writhing in flames around him. He didn’t want to hurt. He refused to hurt. The only thing left to Coca-Cola Pilgrim was to stare weakly at life on Earth, on Mars, wherever, and accept the so it goes of it. He accepted it, so it didn’t hurt.
A red-haired woman with smudgy brown lipstick motioned us up into line. We shuffled forward, headphones dangling precariously off our ears, and lined up inside the metal box like puzzle pieces--a suitcase here, an arm there. Linked together towards the uncertain future I didn’t want to think about.
The plane rumbled for takeoff and I could feel my mother’s tears in my eyes.
How could I leave the only thing I’d ever known?
It was beautiful yes, all of it--the images of my youth, pressed like flowers in my brain. I could hold them and flip through them—but to leave it? To leave forever?
My sister slumped onto my shoulder, pretending to be asleep, as I tried to have everything be beautiful and nothing hurt.
The flashes of Chicago winked at us like stars under our bellies as we lifted into the air. Beautiful to remember all that I had done, all I had been in each now-gusty-empty room of my old house. Old and gone. Sold and stolen away.
My mother’s tears began to fall from my cheeks as I realized that Vonnegut was wrong.
Everything was beautiful, but the rest wasn’t true. It hurt. I watched the world fade under the clouds, hurting with the leaving, my sister hurting silently beside me. All the beautiful things hurt hurt hurt, because I loved them and because one day what you love is no longer with you. One day the sidewalks your feet love like your own skin disappear, and the leaves that rushed you along to class or to your brick-walled schoolyard are memories in your head. Mountains on the faraway horizon.
It hurt because it was beautiful, even when it felt like big hands reached inside the cage around your heart and squeezed and squeezed its flowers dead.
Vonnegut was wrong—he got me wrong, he got poor Billy Pilgrim wrong. Nothing hurt for Billy Pilgrim because everything hurt, because Vonnegut stole his everything away: his sanity, his wife, his control, his stability. He built up his heart with walls cracked like the insoles of my parents feet, dry and impenetrable. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt could only be if his heart shut down, if the flowers stopped breathing, if he accepted absurdity without a backward glance.
I knew why Billy Pilgrim didn’t hurt, even when he saw the whole world screaming and writhing in flames around him. He didn’t want to hurt. He refused to hurt. The only thing left to Coca-Cola Pilgrim was to stare weakly at life on Earth, on Mars, wherever, and accept the so it goes of it. He accepted it, so it didn’t hurt.
A red-haired woman with smudgy brown lipstick motioned us up into line. We shuffled forward, headphones dangling precariously off our ears, and lined up inside the metal box like puzzle pieces--a suitcase here, an arm there. Linked together towards the uncertain future I didn’t want to think about.
The plane rumbled for takeoff and I could feel my mother’s tears in my eyes.
How could I leave the only thing I’d ever known?
It was beautiful yes, all of it--the images of my youth, pressed like flowers in my brain. I could hold them and flip through them—but to leave it? To leave forever?
My sister slumped onto my shoulder, pretending to be asleep, as I tried to have everything be beautiful and nothing hurt.
The flashes of Chicago winked at us like stars under our bellies as we lifted into the air. Beautiful to remember all that I had done, all I had been in each now-gusty-empty room of my old house. Old and gone. Sold and stolen away.
My mother’s tears began to fall from my cheeks as I realized that Vonnegut was wrong.
Everything was beautiful, but the rest wasn’t true. It hurt. I watched the world fade under the clouds, hurting with the leaving, my sister hurting silently beside me. All the beautiful things hurt hurt hurt, because I loved them and because one day what you love is no longer with you. One day the sidewalks your feet love like your own skin disappear, and the leaves that rushed you along to class or to your brick-walled schoolyard are memories in your head. Mountains on the faraway horizon.
It hurt because it was beautiful, even when it felt like big hands reached inside the cage around your heart and squeezed and squeezed its flowers dead.
Vonnegut was wrong—he got me wrong, he got poor Billy Pilgrim wrong. Nothing hurt for Billy Pilgrim because everything hurt, because Vonnegut stole his everything away: his sanity, his wife, his control, his stability. He built up his heart with walls cracked like the insoles of my parents feet, dry and impenetrable. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt could only be if his heart shut down, if the flowers stopped breathing, if he accepted absurdity without a backward glance.
I had done it too, I had fought against it all day in the chilly waiting of the Chicago Airport—I had fought it back for years. I buried the rotten things down down into myself, ignoring the honk of the garbage truck and letting them sit in the dark.
It is easier to carve into your flowery tombstone that nothing hurt, nothing hurt, I swear to you nothing hurt, because the alternative is cupping handfuls of acrid moldy goop way down from inside of you and feeling it slush under your fingernails as you spew the badness out. Billy Pilgrim kept his moldy pain, his homeland hurt, in the dark, so that he would never have to know how much there was. He would never have to feel it, smell it, see it. Never have to hurt.
I knew then, at that moment, that the walls couldn’t stay forever—my unholy Jericho would have to surrender its rot for the flowers to grow back. I couldn’t be like Billy Pilgrim. Even if it meant leaving everything behind and scooping out the mold, I had to feel it and hurt and accept its terrible beauty in my soul. Let my self crumble. Let myself feel.
I took a stale bag of pretzels from a flight attendent and let the tears pool around my lips.
My home was gone and I would let it hurt. Let it hurt. Let it hurt.
Home
In her head, the catalogs she kept of ticket stubs, hair salons, private schools, and volcanic rocks wavered.
She had clutched them like a lifeline away from all the shadows Virginia had been for her. But she couldn’t push the problem away. She could flee to India con los indios y aun asi the hurt would remain. Not that she would ever go to India.
She smiled a little and sticky America let her hand wipe the tears off of her face.
“Ok vámonos,” she whispered.
My Mom sent me a text I wouldn’t receive for a few more hours, que no me vas a creer, pero no fuimos a Guate! We’re going back home mi Makelita.
She left the plans—the immersion schools, the cramped apartment with her Mother, the crooning cobblestones of Antigua—all on the asphalt of the Dulles International Airport. She left them there in the parking lot and drove away.
It is easier to carve into your flowery tombstone that nothing hurt, nothing hurt, I swear to you nothing hurt, because the alternative is cupping handfuls of acrid moldy goop way down from inside of you and feeling it slush under your fingernails as you spew the badness out. Billy Pilgrim kept his moldy pain, his homeland hurt, in the dark, so that he would never have to know how much there was. He would never have to feel it, smell it, see it. Never have to hurt.
I knew then, at that moment, that the walls couldn’t stay forever—my unholy Jericho would have to surrender its rot for the flowers to grow back. I couldn’t be like Billy Pilgrim. Even if it meant leaving everything behind and scooping out the mold, I had to feel it and hurt and accept its terrible beauty in my soul. Let my self crumble. Let myself feel.
I took a stale bag of pretzels from a flight attendent and let the tears pool around my lips.
My home was gone and I would let it hurt. Let it hurt. Let it hurt.
Home
The Toyota rocked gently as my sister leaned in towards my sobbing mother, her hands still firmly stuck to the steering wheel. She could see the rot leaking out, like a parasite rejecting its host.
The planes rushed by above them, lights flashed, and their flight would leave for Guatemala in thirty minutes. If they ran now, dragging the flurry of American belongings behind them, they could still make it.
But my sister touched my mother on her head.
“Let’s go home, Ma. Let’s go home.”
My mother sighed. The rattling Toyota quieted.
In her head, the catalogs she kept of ticket stubs, hair salons, private schools, and volcanic rocks wavered.
She had clutched them like a lifeline away from all the shadows Virginia had been for her. But she couldn’t push the problem away. She could flee to India con los indios y aun asi the hurt would remain. Not that she would ever go to India.
She smiled a little and sticky America let her hand wipe the tears off of her face.
“Ok vámonos,” she whispered.
My Mom sent me a text I wouldn’t receive for a few more hours, que no me vas a creer, pero no fuimos a Guate! We’re going back home mi Makelita.
She left the plans—the immersion schools, the cramped apartment with her Mother, the crooning cobblestones of Antigua—all on the asphalt of the Dulles International Airport. She left them there in the parking lot and drove away.
Image Credit: Kuster and & Wildhaber Photography. 2018. "Airplane." Jeremy Brooks. 2014. "Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt." Nancy Shepley. 2004. Ashburn, Virginia "Markham Place."
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