Guadalupe Trail

Guadalupe Trail (in no particular order)

By Killian Luján Crespín

1. 

There was a boy. A scrappy guy on my street who I hung out with. Both of us were bitter for six-year-olds. He wasn't around most of the time. Only staying with his grandma in the mobile home on the lot behind my house when his mom went on trips. When he was there he’d climb over the fence into my yard and we’d sit on the metal t-poles that held up the clothesline. 

He and I had a tendency towards violence. We both swore that our dad could kill the other’s, battling for proof of our fathers' manliness. 

Neither of us lived with a man. 

2. 

My mom laughed. Her head turned down to look at me, curls bouncing, their own dance. I imagined that the coils sounded like wind chimes as they brushed up against each other. She laughed at me while I screamed as a big black dog—a dog I'd never seen before—barreled towards us, barking as we cut through the neighbor's yard from the arroyo to our house. 

I curled myself into her, hoping for a barrier. She said something about me never being scared of dogs before this. I wasn't, and still am not afraid of dogs. But I am scared of the unfamiliar, scared of its ability to lead to failure. I strive for anything but failure. 

3. 

Crying is weird. So much expectation comes with it. Why should I need to verbalize my feelings? Let me sob. It’s truly not your business. If my snot isn't getting rubbed into your shirt as I hug you, you don't need to know. 

I'm jealous, at times, of the freedom babies have to express themselves. I want to scream at the top of my lungs, scream till my throat is raw. 

When my youngest sister (not to be mistaken for the middle child) was a baby, she’d scream till her face was blue. The first time it happened, I thought she was gonna die, and I cried too. I want to get to that point. Maybe afterward I'd get a full night of rest. 

Later, she would laugh. She would laugh till she was the same shade as the sky, cloudless and everlasting. I wonder sometimes if all that joy gave her brain damage. She seems fine enough now. But who knows, life is weird that way. There are always consequences. 

4. 

One of the first times both me and my sister (the middle one) rode bikes down the dirt road together, we crashed. At the same time, due to the same divot, one after the other. Head first into a wall of sunflowers on the goat-head-coated ground. 

They felt like spikes of sun rays. 

Nothing is as glorious as bloodstains. My stepdad came running for us, placing the youngest down on the ground, not noticing the ant pile now beneath her body. They bit at her soft delicate baby skin. Save her, we just have bumps and bruises. We all cried together. 

That is the true meaning of family.

5. 

Everything in my view is green,

soaked through and dripping, water falls off me like rain on leaves. I'm holding a plastic bag in one hand, it crinkles with each movement I make. Weighed down with fruit. 

My hands are sticky 

and grimy, marked by earthliness. The same juice that covers my hands coats my face, and my sister yells at me, saying that we are meant to share. She's up her own tree, collecting her own peaches, so I don't care. She can grab her own fruit. Let me eat mine. 

This is my garden of Eden. My neighbor's orchard. A reprieve from the world. It feels like, even in the winter, it holds permanent life. 

The first fig I ever had was here, at the neighbor's house. She kept the fig tree in a pot outside in the front courtyard with the high walls and elegant doors. There were strawberries planted on the sides of a walkway. Little itty bitty things with enchanting sweetness. If I could taste anything forever, it would be those. 

6. 

A palm kissed and pressed to a throbbing head to ease the pain. 

It falls away, drenched in the red of my blood. 

I wonder what went through my mom's head when the warmth began to spread, leaking between fingers, thick and smooth. When she realized my four-year-old self wasn't being dramatic about the pain. 

We had only moved into the house on Guadalupe Trail that month (she still was sleeping on an air mattress in the living room) and a disastrous event had already occurred. 

Hospitals are expensive. Her wallet certainly felt the pain as much as I did.

7. 

Morning glories weave in twining patterns on chicken wire fences. Petals soft like sun-filled morning dew. If you breathe in the breezy, practically scentless smell of the flower, the suction will pull the petals up to your nose and hold it there, suspended. 

My dad yells at me when he visits and sees me doing this, enraptured by the silky feeling of petals on my skin and lips. Apparently, they're poisonous. I don’t really care, his concern for my safety only leaves me trailing behind him hiding flowers in my pockets and within delicately curled hands.

8. 

Carrots are like candy to us and the horses. Take two with a thank you and bite down hard. The horses get the other. I don't remember the lumbering animals' names anymore, but I do remember they were the sweetest things. Both were injured by past riders, unable to be ridden. Here they get to retire. 

My family and I went up to Colorado once. When we came back home, my neighbor told us their oldest horse had escaped out of his stall and ran down the road into our yard, where she found him, neck raised high to eat leaves from the trees that only get trimmed when storms come.

I hope he didn't do the same thing when we moved. 

9. 

I had a chicken named Colores. She was an Easter Egger, meaning she laid beautiful blue and green and pink eggs. I had wanted to name her Arcoiris, but the pronunciation was too complicated for my mom, so I settled for simplicity. 

On a day as brilliantly blue as her eggs, we found her dead on a pile of glass bottles on the deck. 

Her neck was snapped. 

10. 

I never believe anyone when they tell me something is dangerous. The funny thing is, they are always right. Here I am with my tongue pressed to a frozen pole. 

Off goes the tip of my tongue. 

11. 

The drumming, rumbling of a storm. It's consistent. The house pelted under torrents of rain and skin-bruising hail. It won't stop. A trail of droplets falling from the ceiling down into any pots and pans that we can find. The house will stay soggy for days after this. 

These nights are the only nights our mom lets us climb into bed with her. Scared and still laughing, we take comfort and fall asleep to the breath of one another. 

Waking in the morning feels enlightening. Stepping outside to see the damage from the storm, and not see it like it's a disaster, but like it's a miracle. 

12. 

For my sixth birthday, I went to the balloon fiesta, something we never did before. Living close enough to the fields, able to see it from our windows, we didn't see the point. My mom woke me up when the sun hadn't even touched the horizon and carried me to the car. 

The balloons are for me. They come with my birthday. Raised high, and bright and beautiful. You can hear the burning from down here on the ground.

I had funnel cake for breakfast.

13. 

Growing up in the desert really makes you appreciate the rain. You want to jump high enough to touch lightning, fight against gravity on the rain-drenched trampoline. Pray that if you get struck, you'll end up with superpowers. 

I would tell my sister the thunder was just dinosaurs, and we’d sit there together, washed down to the bone. In one-hundred-degree summers, the cold is a comfort. 

This is childhood. A desperate dash, and the hope that you might end up lucky.