Where is What is home

After living in the city away from my parents for three years, the dirt road felt kind of like an adventure. The trees were producing more oxygen than I was used to. I hadn’t driven a stick shift in a long time, so I asked my dad to let me drive the truck up the mountain to my childhood home.

I killed my dad’s truck, Rusty, three times before I remembered how deep the third pedal needed to go into the floor. Even as the dust swept through the windows of the truck, the bumpy ride beat it off us. The windows had stopped going up and down long ago, and now stood mid-way, making no movement in either direction. Butterflies fluttered close to the windshield because we couldn’t really go over five miles per hour.

           By the time we got to the house, dust was wedged between my fingers. I frowned. My parents didn’t have running water, so I wasn’t able to look forward to a shower until I left the mountain.

           When we got in, my mom was cooking a one dollar mac and cheese dinner even though I’m lactose intolerant. I shrugged it off; sometimes she forgets things.

           School photos were hung of me, embarrassing me in front of my boyfriend. My boyfriend to whom I’d suggested that this whole adventure would be fun. But on top of the holographic eyes of my photos staring from every wall, my mom also collected porcelain masks. The house is always watching.

           “Why weren’t you home last night?” My mom asked me in a mumble. I squinted at her suspiciously. She wasn’t acting right.

           “I live in another state now, for college.” I explained to my mother, who should know this. Her hair looked like it was a mess. And her shirt was covered in stains. Her wrists looked thin.

           I was helping her stir when her eyes got flat white, and I watched her heels curve backwards.

           “Dad!” I scream, my tears already streaking down my face like a highlighter for my misery. I stepped back and almost tripped backwards into the wood stove. I looked back at a knobby log of firewood. The wood was scattered all around the kitchen and living room. Which was not safe.

           Her eyes were so white. I didn’t even see my dad catch her. He must have been frantically fast. His arms were almost as frail as hers. “Are you going to help me?” Anger rumbled pleadingly through his throat and into my ears.

           My childhood home swirled like Dorothy in the tornado.

           An unconscious diabetic, my mom’s life was a lucky cobweb just stubborn enough not to fall apart. I had no idea what to do.

           “We have to take her to the hospital,” My reasonable boyfriend, Ed, demanded.

           But he didn’t understand. “We don’t leave the mountain after dark,” My mouth said automatically to prevent having to hear it in my dad’s voice.

           “What!” My boyfriend scratched his head, and I felt so small. My breaking heart felt like swallowing glass, and I was being crushed by what my dad wanted and what the situation demanded. Vomit squeezed up my tubes, and I swallowed it back down as I started the four steps to my mother.

           One step for confidence.

           One step for growth.

           One step to let go.

           One step for clarity.

           My dad’s expectations and stress were a storm circling me, penning me in the eye of the storm. I swallowed my empathy for him. I breathed for strength. I chose my mom.

I held her close like a rag doll toy that had been dragged around too long. I could see my face in her face, and I asked myself if I was finally old enough to stand up to my dad. Watching her breaths get more and more shallow, I pushed back on my heels, and up with my knees.

Tip:

           Good form is the key to lifting your nearly lifeless mother off the filthy kitchen floor. The cracks in the linoleum are going to grow with the combined weight of you, your sins, your whole life, your mom. The too old and too cheap floors will wrinkle, but they will be the solid ground you always looked for in your parents.

           You can trust this floor to host your most important decision yet.

           Her eyes had closed, protecting me from the deathly whites. I wanted to hold her closer, but she was so fragile, I had to stop myself from shaking in my dad’s storm.

           The back of my tongue was lifted, ready to strike. My lungs were pushing, trying to make me scream.

We have to go to the hospital.

            We don’t leave the mountains after dark.

           But my heart was twisted. Knotted around my larynx, forcing me to choose. My heart knew I could only have one voice, and I had to use it.

           “We have to go to the hospital,” I said as only a choke instead of the roar my lungs were demanding. On my next breath I was forced to remember it only as a squeak.

           How do you stand up to a storm? How do you run headlong into a natural disaster.?

        My dad crowded me trying to make me cower. My lip quivered but I straightened my spine. The wood stove was behind me and threatening me with its heat. I was trapped between a storm and a hot place.

           I held my mom like a little bird and shifted to pull her farther away from him. The man who wanted to keep my mom away from doctors.

           “Lila?” My boyfriend looked to me for some indication of how to act. “Move, let her go,” My boyfriend said to my father, who was trapping me away from the front door and pushing me punishingly close to the woodstove.

           Ed’s legs weren’t long enough, his stride not quick enough. His comprehension came too late.

           I felt his arm brush my arm. His chest pushed into her side and I had to make an even harder decision.

           Drop my mom or sacrifice my flesh.

           I wonder now if I accepted it too soon, if maybe my dad hadn’t pushed me into a wood stove to punish me. Maybe he wasn’t trying to hurt everyone. I truly do not know what this moment was like for either of us.

           Sometimes I think I pushed myself back into the excruciating fired iron. I was punishing myself for letting it get this bad. I was punishing my dad by finally forcing him to see my suffering instead of hoping the floor could hold my gaze for 18 years. Maybe I thought it would be a good distraction.

           The burn melted my polyester shirt, and I almost dropped my mom. The smell of burning plastic will always make me shiver with pain. Desperately my knee shot up to catch her with my thigh, her weight and my position caused me to turn and feed more of my flesh to the fire.

           The pain penetrated my mind like a psychic lobotomy. I was no longer human; I was just a blister. My ears were numb.

           My boyfriend hit my dad in the leg with a piece of firewood. Which let me collapse with my shaken mother into my lap.

           Ed reached for me but my dad tried to pick himself up, and he left me to push him down again.

           Feeling so weak, I almost fell back into the sizzling iron. I couldn’t get up, seeing was a struggle, breathing hurt.

           Ed finally made it back to me and took my mom from my arms. He threw her over his shoulder, and I winced. I wished he would have carried her gentler. But he needed his other arm to help get me off the floor.

           I felt my brain press the gas and flood me with adrenaline. I moved, slower than I wanted, but forward. The keyring bent and broke under my swipe. My hand scraped the nail or the key ring, and stung open across my palm. Wiping my face, I stepped out into the dark. I stepped onto the old pallet porch, Ed on my heels, and I dropped a key.

           My dad got up and we just ran for it. The moon was half full, unable to decide to wax or wane. My feet felt the familiar grove of every path leading towards the truck. I could have sprinted through this maze with my eyes closed.

           But Ed was hauling what I hoped wasn’t dead weight, in the dark, on the night he met my parents.

           “Please slow down,” Ed begged me.

           I wanted to scream, but the moment allowed me to feel the one key I had left. I rolled it around, checking it’s length and praying, screaming into the void that I didn’t just have a mailbox key. The fat plastic piece on the end reassured me this was a cheap copy of the truck key.

           My eyes were wide, convinced they could see in the dark. I was looking for any movement, listening past Ed’s shuffling ruckus.

           He shuffled close enough I knew he could sense me and kept going. I was trying to psychically project my footsteps to him. I wished he could be as fast and sure footed, and I was.

           My dad was coming from somewhere.

           My veins were my map to this place. I grew up here, this was my labyrinth. Curated by wild deer. I knew every twist and turn. I slipped up out of my body and looked down at us in the dark. I could see my house with the smoke still curling out of the chimney. The rusted-up truck at the top of the hill.

           The trees kept my dad’s secrets. They always would.

           At a crucial turn, I paused to make sure Ed didn’t get lost. And my ears twitched, A branch snapped, and a gun went off.

           The grainy soil crunched as I ran forward. Away. To a solution.

           The truck.

           “Rusty,” I said, like a key to unlock the driver’s door. Her door opened with a squeak. I chaffed my ass getting over the cracked plastic bucket seat. I slammed the door, and it rang into the night, even louder in the cab. A signal to my dad. That I intended to leave. A gunshot responded.

           I turned the key and it clicked.

           “Oh my god, I know I abandoned you Rusty, but please don’t let this be the end!” I screamed as more tears choked me.

           I screamed as I turned the key again, sinking my foot to the floor. I felt like lightning shot through my fingers. I could see my mom’s white eyes and I forced my eyes open.

           The headlights were ON! The truck was ON! The check engine light was ON! I shoved her into first gear with a wiggle and a prayer.

           It was on.

           No seat belt, I backed out of the weedy parking place and around some boulders and trees. I tried to shine my headlights into the manzanita to try and guide Ed. One breath too many frustrated me. My foot came off the clutch and the other took us forward and the gas down. My blood surged me forward and slightly left around all the big stumps. A new one threw my truck sideways. I screamed so loud I think it bounced me and Rusty just enough off the ground for me to land on three then again four tires.

           Age rears up hard and quick in wild places like these. I pretend that because I’ve eaten the leaves and the fruit and the berries, I’m one with the land. And while I am, I do not command it. I guess all I can wish for it for is to command me sometimes. Particularly now. Please, guide my wheels.

           I saw Ed and my mom coming through the low brush that glowed in my headlights.

           And then I saw my dad.

           My toes were straining the clutch into the floor, and I was flourishing the truck’s wand with every separate fiber in my wrist. But she was grinding and refused to go in reverse.

           “Rusty! Please!” Please give me someone I can rely on for once.

           One inch on the tires and she slid into reverse. I begged her wheel completely to the right. Another gunshot caused me to slip off the clutch and kill her.

           Air hit my lungs like a gust of nitrogen, and I covered my mouth trying to keep it together. Ed loaded my mom into the truck. And a bullet took out my right headlight. Ed threw her in, slammed the door and jumped in the back. I took off and he got battered.

           I used to know this road, but it’s been worn by rainstorms I’ve never smelled. I know there’s shortcuts, and I know where they are. But I don’t know what condition they’re in. I could bottom out and lose my ability to run. I was hunched, but the burn on my back was screaming.

           My mother looked like a fish, just flopped on the crusty dusty bench seat. And I envied her. I wish I could just fall asleep. My heart was thrumming and making me sick. But Ed can’t drive stick, so it’s up to me. It’s fully my choice to run and leave my dad behind.

           We were bouncing so hard from my pace we almost lost the spare tire. Not to mention, Ed. The dust was kicked up and giving my one headlight a run for our money.

           One tire skidded off a cliff as I made a dirt road hairpin turn. One headlight was barely enough to see past the dust.

           I kept hearing gunshots all the way down the hill. My mind was blurry, and they always felt like the rifle was ringing right behind my ear. Maybe I could smell the gunpowder through the dust.

           The end was in sight. I didn’t even use my blinker, I just turned onto the pavement, thankful I could finally drive faster than I felt his anger could run.

           The road was narrow here, and curving. Thank god my left headlight worked.

           Lights and sirens flashed right next to me as they headed into the mountain. Ed kept down to avoid a ticket, and we hurried down the mountain to the hospital.

           I guess someone heard the gunshots and called the police.

           I was finally free.