gothic hometowns

the week

The slush seemed to fall from the sky in my hometown. It was gray, coating the roads in filth, no evidence that the sun touched anywhere. The absurdity that I’d spent almost my entire childhood in that dreary corner of the country is almost comical. It’s everything that I’m not.

A girl of about six or seven was crying as the plane switched altitudes on my cross country flight. The pressure in her ears was evidently causing a lot of agony. She clamped her hands over them and cried out over and over. I was similarly afflicted during air travel as a kid. I remember the pain being awful. One day, a woman on a flight offered me a piece of gum and told me that was her secret trick to get her ears to stay clear of pressure. It worked, and I used to chew piece after piece when I flew. I was able to impart the same wisdom, as well as a piece of bubblegum, upon this girl and the full circle moment felt like a little blessing. Something strangely healing.

I watched Sinners with my Dad, having already seen it twice but wanting to watch it with him so I could point out some of the layers of the story that non-film nerds may not catch. He was riveted. Even at the parts about how the colonizer’s god will never save the colonized.

He’s come a long long way since I was a child but he still believes that a relationship with Christ will save the world. I’m not trying to get him to deconstruct. He is a very smart man but stubborn on the subject of his unshakable faith. I’m not asking him to stop believing, simply to expand his awareness of the violence invoked in his savior’s name. He is cognizant of it, objectively, but he needed the emotional part that the film prompted in order to see beyond the blinders his faith constructs against justice in the here and now.

You can’t heal something with the same violence that was used to break it.

And there was a glimmer of understanding in my father after witnessing this story onscreen. Film is so powerful.

It recalls the time when my sisters and I made our parents watch Rent. Growing up, our parents were proudly homophobic, we’d often get into dinner table debates about gay rights and ‘morality’. When Rent came out on DVD, my sisters and I insisted so hard on seeing it that they finally agreed we’d watch it as a family and discuss. The next day I found my father sitting at the kitchen table, looking humbled. “He really loved him, he was dying of AIDS and he didn’t care, he was in love with him,” he said, speaking of the characters in the second act. The film had changed him.

The power of art should never be forgotten. Nor should the fact that people can change. It is easy to forget sometimes. But I have seen so much proof of it in my life.

At my parents’ house, my uncle’s phone rings ceaselessly. He lets it ring, his wife’s name flashing on the screen. Their strange, codependent relationship, that baffles the entire family, is standard for two aging addicts. Neither are using substances at the moment, which leaves only one another for their fix.

My mother wakes him every morning, begs him to eat. Which is ironic, considering her own aversion to food. It feels as though I visit a starving house when I return home. Almost gothic in its winter state, haunted by my past and the demons of the generation that raised me. My uncle speaks about being belittled by his own father. Being raised in a tiny mill town by adults who had been kids who’d fought in the war. The bones of a POW camp on its outskirts, farmland tilled by children for five cents a day. He was one of them, working in what they called ‘the muck’, picking onions, filling trucks with the biting vegetable.

I wake several times in the middle of the night, unable to sleep in the bedroom of my childhood. I lie awake for hours. The girl I was knocks on my consciousness, asking why we are here when we managed to run away so long ago. I assure her it is but a visit, that we will be gone again soon, that it is ok to be here for a few days. She is still skeptical enough to evade sleep. As I used to do. I’d stay up all night when I was a kid to avoid the man in my nightmares. I would read, journal, gather my stuffed animals in a protective circle around me, pray. The presence of god was more of a threat than a comfort, testing my thoughts for leaks in faith. Readying the devil to rush into the cracks as punishment. My soul just a thing these two celestial men gambled over.

We drove down through several states, South to my sister’s house. Passing flags stamped with the dictator’s name. A truck of living cargo passed us. Hay hung through the holes in the metal, giving the animals a last look of the outside before they’re formulaically killed. I don’t often talk about my veganism anymore. I did a deep dive into the meat industry when I first gave up animal products. What I learned was worse than nightmares. I used to think that if people just knew what I knew they wouldn’t even want to eat meat anymore. It was a painful lesson, realizing that wasn’t true.

American gothic in the form of slaughterhouse victims. The mist hanging over Appalachia. Old houses with clutter scattered around the yards. The billboards speak of the Kingdom of God and insurance companies. Abandoned barns and rest stops with deer heads on display. A baby eagle perched at the very top of a naked tree. My parents listen to political podcasts from the front seats, my sister and her baby sit in the bucket seats, I reside in the back, writing this, with occasional breaks to play peek-a-boo with my niece. Her smile reminding me that a future exists on the other side of the current moment.

The next morning, after having arrived at my sister’s house the previous evening, we took the kids to a diner where they feasted on pancakes, french toast, and breakfast potatoes. There was so much joy around the table and it continued the entire day. My nephew and I played knights rescuing dragons from evil wizards in the backyard when we got back. Passing the time until his birthday party with stories and important questions like ‘what is the difference between a soldier and a knight?’ I answered his inquisitive mind to the best of my abilities, stressing the honor and individuality of knights over the conformity and rule-following of soldiers. The game of pretend was so fun, we played until lunch. His birthday party later in the evening ended with a light saber fight and a book about being a Jedi, which I read to him as we hid under the kitchen island.

After less than 48 hours all together, we packed up the car and headed North again. The following day I got on a plane and flew across the country, happy to be back in the warm weather. My roommate and I watched Tru Blood before I crashed and the jet lag caused me to rise at 4:30am. My tea tasted like life and I watched the sun rise outside my window.