Rock Bottom
The good thing, now that I’d hit rock bottom, was that I couldn’t fall any lower.
The terrible thing, now that I’d hit rock bottom, was that I had to relive the fall a million times over.
Rock bottom was a cold, hard place. It was the closest I’d been to Hell, and the furthest place from home. And although I stared straight into the warm brown eyes I once thought I loved, I had never felt so alone.
It made me wish I’d picked the other option.
Rock bottom was the icy grin that drew on Pablo’s lips as soon as he heard my answer. It was the coarse palm of his hand, as it wrapped around my fingers.
It was the cold blast of his truck’s AC, prickling my sunburnt skin. The car was parked so close, I cursed myself for not hearing it coming.
It was the guilty relief I felt as I sat down in the back seat, and kicked my sneakers off my blistered feet.
Oscar stared at me through the dark curtain of sweaty curls that matted on his forehead. He stood silent, a rifle slung over each shoulder, and the handles of our backpacks tight in his clenched fists. His jaw clenched so hard, his whole face creased with hard, unforgiving lines, I could hardly recognize him.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
I couldn’t help but laugh, and fuck if that laugh didn’t taste like spoiled milk. He swallowed his bottom lip, and I felt tears prickling my eyelids. I shut my eyes to keep the teardrops from falling, and then I saw it.
The abyss. The life I’d wished for, plummeting into an endless void. The terror in Juan’s dark eyes as he plunged to the bottom of the pit, that sickness I felt when I looked down into the depths. My eyes opened and I gasped.
“Do you need something?” muttered Pablo.
“Let’s just go,” I whispered. “Please.”
The engine bumbled and the car lurched forwards, gravel crackled like breaking bones beneath its tires. My words tightened on my tongue, my syllables stretched like a strained tightrope, six hundred feet above a canyon. And at the bottom of that canyon, lay Juan’s dead body.
Every time I thought of it, the man he used to be, lumped up on the ground, his blood staining the dirt brown, I felt sweaty and dizzy, like I was gazing down at the shadows and emptiness again. Except now, he wasn’t there to hold me.
And now what? I wondered. Would we go home, pretend nothing happened, and keep the lies alive, as if Juan still was?
What about the Sandovals, and what was left of their clan? What would happen once they found out? Nothing good, I figured, since Hernan was never quite the forgiving kind. The question on my mind was whether he’d think it was Pablo’s fault, or mine.
Sooner or later, Pablo’s crimes would come back to haunt us, and chaos would take over. Either we’d run, or we’d fight. The former seemed unlikely, as Pablo’s ego would get in the way and deem it cowardly. But if we did the latter, then who would I be fighting for?
I wouldn’t root for Pablo, much less for Hernan. Fighting for myself was a lost cause too, since I couldn’t beat either on my own, much less both at the same time.
In a cartel war, I’d be nothing more than collateral damage. I was a piece of tissue caught between a stone wall and a rogue wave, with no fate other than to be ripped to shreds by senseless violence and bloodthirsty men.
And how would I go on, now that I was alone? I was cornered, with no one by my side but the twisted silhouette of my mangled lover, etched under my eyelids. I was crushed under the ruins of my broken dreams, with nobody left to help me.
I wished I could scream, but didn’t have the strength. So I kept the hurt within, hidden deep below my heart. It felt like I was holding back a sneeze, the kind that makes your eyes water and your chest squeeze in pain.
I wished it was just a sneeze, instead of a lifetime burden of grief. If it was just a sneeze, I could have spat a mouthful of snot in Pablo’s face and called it a day.
It was a beautiful, sunny morning, the start of yet another bright day in a never ending spring, but from where I sat, behind the shaded windows of Pablo’s pick-up, the cloudless horizons might as well have been gray.
Farmers piled up fresh fruit on their roadside stalls. One man bought half a dozen carrots and fed one to his donkey, all tacked up and heavy with the piles of firewood he carried. Children walked to school in their pristine uniforms, skipping along, holding hands, laughing out loud at jokes their friends told them. A young woman kissed her lover goodbye as he set off to work on his motorbike.
The world went on as it always did, happy, peaceful, lively, and yet it felt like mine had stopped just an hour ago. It almost made me angry, how the Earth kept spinning, completely oblivious to my pain.
I only felt worse as the sights out the window grew increasingly familiar.
The busy street lined with rusty trucks, where we’d jumped into the back of a pick-up truck, foolishly believing we were heading towards a new life. The labyrinthian streets where I’d lost myself, and now I wished I’d never been found. The painted letters of a hotel name on an old stucco wall.
I pointed a finger at the building, and the words slipped out. “We stayed here. Just yesterday.”
“Told you,” mumbled Oscar.
“Shut up,” Pablo spat back.
Hours ticked by before my empty stare, and we were back in that godforsaken driveway. Far away in the distance, at the end of the road stood the house, still and tall, as if it had been waiting for me all along.
I tried to look away, but there was the ditch where I’d waited, the red roses I’d watched wither away in my bedroom, the lavender fields I’d desperately crawled through.
In every angle around me, there was a new sight to taunt me. The jacaranda trees were in full bloom, spreading down to each horizon. Their petals blew in the wind, turning the sky so purple it felt like a joke. All the horrors I had endured, everything I fought for, it was all for nothing.
I shut my eyes, seeking some sort of shelter, but all I could ever picture was him, laying in a heap in the depths of a dark pit, a crumpled mass of broken limbs, splintered bones piercing through his grey skin, bugs skittering over his rotting flesh, birds pecking at his lifeless eyes.
The car stopped, the nightmare didn’t. Pablo’s door slammed shut with a loud bang, sending my heart into a frenzy again. Oscar glanced at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes filled with a mix of concern and something else. I hoped it was regret, but it wouldn’t change anything anyway.
I jumped out of the truck with my sneakers in hand, choosing the prickling pain of gravel under my soles over the atrocious burn of rough fabric against my blisters.
Just standing made my head spin, and walking was ten times worse. I felt heavy, feet dragging behind me, gravity pulled my knees inexorably toward the ground.
I knew this had to be rock bottom. Well, I sure hoped to God it was. I’d shot through the roof of the pain scale and every past ache now felt so insignificant. Any worse and I’d drop dead. I’d give up, go limp, and fall flat on my face.
But if this was rock bottom, why was I still falling? I felt numb and helpless, barrelling through emptiness. I felt an unstoppable vertigo and an endless hiccup of the heart. I felt wind wooshing by my ears yet heard not a sound but my own breath.
Now I wished I had jumped after Juan.
At least I would have landed at some point.
The truth is, rock bottom isn’t the place where you stop, where you rest for a minute as you lick your wounds and dust yourself off. It’s the spot where you get stuck, weightless in a cold, dead void, with nothing to catch onto and slow down your fall.
Somehow I’d made it to the top of the great hall, with its blindingly white, sparkling marble walls, and Pablo’s portrait sneering down at me as per usual.
For some reason, I glanced over the banister and looked down three stories. My head began to whirl, my stomach to churn, and my legs went weak beneath me.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying my best to steady myself. But when I opened them again, a single tear slipped from the corner of my eye, rolled down my cheek before plunging six hundred feet into the depths below.
There it was again, that fucking sinkhole, with its sharp ochre bluffs, vines clinging to the edges of the rift, and the screech of a hawk ricocheting off the cliffs.
And there was, Juan, laying at the bottom, his body immobile under the blistering sun. His legs bent in three places they shouldn’t, his elbows twisted the wrong way round.
The air around me turned suffocating, thick with dust and pain. My chest tightened, crumpling my ribcage like a sheet of paper, and I choked on a wail.
“Don’t be so fucking dramatic,” groaned Pablo.
He bent over towards my trembling body, and picked it up from the last step of the staircase. His next words shook me more than the force of his hand shoving me in the back.
“It’s all your fault, anyway.”
Today the corridors of the house’s top floor felt eerily smaller than they did the first time I walked across them. Craning my neck to look at the ceiling, I could sort of tell where it sloped just beneath the roof. The still life paintings lining the walls had never seemed so dead, the colorful clutter on dust-covered sideboards never so bland.
Pablo brought me back to the lavender bedroom, and it wasn’t much of a surprise. I didn’t flinch, didn’t really think to run. I just told myself, ‘Here we go again. Here is where it all started, and here is where it’ll all end.’
“You look like Hell,” Pablo chewed his words. “And you smell like a fucking caveman. Take a shower.”
He left the room, slowly shutting the door behind him, and I obliged. I didn’t expect a long bath could wash away any of my dreadful feelings, but I was fine getting rid of some of the grime.
The water was warm, and yet I wished I was back in that hotel where it was ice cold, and I stood ankle-deep in a pool of gunk and mold and pubes. At least back then, Juan was on the other side of the curtain.
I gave up on counting how many hours I spent under the shower. I wrapped myself in a towel and went to curl up in my bed. The mattress was soft, the sheets were fresh.
I would have given anything to go back in time and fall asleep on the ground, with my head resting on an overfilled backpack, my body shivering with fever and chills, my feet slowly roasting in a campfire Juan had tried to light by banging rocks together like an idiot.
I wouldn’t mind living my whole life like that, out in the wild and left to our slim means, smelling like cavemen and acting like them too, just so he could be by my side forever.
I would have let that horrid spider crawl all over my face if it meant I could feel held by Juan just once again.
But Juan wasn’t in my bed, and he wasn’t in my bathroom, and there wasn’t any kind of masochist penitence that could bring him back to me.
Juan was dead.
And Pablo was right. It was all my fault, anyway. I should have thrown that stupid ring out the car window on the first chance I got.
I woke up to the sound of the door creaking open, still wrapped in a damp towel, my pillow drenched by wet hair and the sweat of my nightmares.
“Aren’t you coming downstairs?” asked Pablo.
“What?”
“The Sandovals are here.”
I slowly sat up. “Which ones?”
“Those that aren’t dead yet.”
I shook my head in disbelief and offense.
“Don’t you want to keep me locked up in here?”
“No, not really,” he muttered. “I’m kind of bored of it. Aren’t you?”
“I think everyone is,” I mumbled.
“Right. Then don’t make me. Come on, they’re waiting.”
He tapped his foot, impatient, as I slowly dragged myself out of the blankets, and turned around before I could drop my towel and start to change into clean clothes. I snickered a little. What a gentleman, I thought.
We were back at square one, for the third time at least. I was stuck between lavender walls, hungry and defeated, Juan didn’t exist, and God forbid Mafer walked through that door and challenged me to a game of Tic-Tac-Toe.
Truly it was square zero. There were no steps after this one, no moves to play, nowhere to go, and nothing to dream of.
“By the way, your Mom is dead,” said Pablo.
“What?! How?”
“Fulminant pneumonia.”
See, that’s the good thing about rock bottom. I could find out my last surviving family member had passed, in such an insultingly nonchalant announcement, and it barely did a thing. Nothing ever got worse, for lack of an ability to feel any number.
“How did you find out?”
Pablo cocked an eyebrow. “Well, officially, you called me. But I don’t know, I just made it up.”
“Why would you make that up?” I cried. “Is my Mom okay?”
“The Sandovals needed an excuse for…” Pablo paused, and his mouth slowly fell open. “Ooh, fuck. Not that Mom, Gordita. The Hungarian Mom. The not-real one.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I sighed, as my shoulders loosened, and yet I felt no relief. “You could have warned me.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think of it. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
That statement alone made me wonder if perhaps he did.
I smoothened the wrinkles in the blouse I’d thrown on and stared in the mirror. These last days at large had dug into my face the same deep wrinkles, eye bags, and sharp cheekbones I used to hate seeing on my mother.
“How is my Mom?”
“The Hungarian one, dead, buried, and likely in an early stage of decomposition. The story is you had to fly back for her funeral,” he mumbled. “The other one, I don’t know. Haven’t checked. Do you really care?”
“Weirdly enough, I kind of do.”
“It’s a good story, the funeral. You won’t even have to hide the grief,” rambled Pablo. “My alternative, in case I didn’t find you, was that you had to stay and take care of your younger siblings. The long-distance relationship wouldn’t work out, and I’d break up with you. And then, once I’d track you down, I’d say I regretted it and fly out to find you. Then I’d shoot you in the head myself, come back and say the truth. That it was too late, and I couldn’t conquer your heart.”
“Clever you,” I said, rubbing two fingers across my beet-red cheeks. “Now how are you going to explain my sunburns?”
“Nobody’s going to ask about your sunburns.”
“If Hernan doubts a single thing you said, we’re all going to die.”
He swallowed his spit and nodded slightly, as his gaze lost itself somewhere out of the tiny bedroom window.
“It’s good to see you have your head back in the game,” he said quietly. “I never doubted you would. That’s why I’m not keeping you locked up here.”
I was doing it for my own sake, not his, but I didn’t bother telling him. I assumed, maybe a little too generously, that he already knew.
“What’s the weather like in New York?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Worst case scenario, you can just tell them her last wish was to be buried in Florida.”
“Nonsense. They won’t believe that. Nobody’s last wish is to stay in Florida.”
Pablo let out a breathy laugh, and a grin crossed his lips.
“I did miss you, Gordita.”
Without a word, I walked past him and out into the corridor. It was going to be a long way home, winding down a lonely road. I had no one to fight for, no one to lift me. I dreaded it already.
But I figured I had to keep climbing, no matter how often I slipped back down or felt like giving up.
Because the only way out of rock bottom, is up.
