Snapshots of Heartbreak
by Pilar García Guzmán
University of the Incarnate Word
Pilar García Guzmán is a writer and occasional poet from Santiago, Dominican Republic. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English with minors in Creative Writing and Finance from University of the Incarnate Word. She is currently working on her first novel and aspires to be a book editor at a publishing house. This upcoming Fall semester, Pilar will begin a new journey at Florida Atlantic University to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.
June 24, 2018.
I stood in the outdoor hallway, the closed bedroom door behind me muffling the mutters of the girls I was supposed to be supervising. Lights out had been called an hour ago. But I ignored it, the sounds of their laughter and scheming bed squeaks grounding me as my heart threatened to beat out of my chest and join the stars scattered in the night sky.
I had a bad feeling about tonight. And I knew why.
It wasn’t a matter of who or what or how anymore.
It was all down to when.
The sound of my ringtone broke through the air and the back-pocket of my pajama pants. The girls quieted from inside the room, probably assuming I would never guess what they were up to from their shallowed, suffocating breaths that puffed out from underneath their bed sheets.
I picked up the phone.
“He’s gone,” my dad said. I could hear the revving of the car in the background and the rain thumping against the windshield. My mom hated driving in the rain, how we couldn’t have the windows down and would be forced to swelter in the heat of the car’s engine. The A/C had been broken for years, but we had gotten used to the sweat that would pool in our lower backs while we drove around.
I wonder where she was, why my dad was in the car by himself. Or maybe she was there? Quietly sitting next to him as he confirmed what I had figured out months before. I know my dad enough to know that he never would have called me to tell me what he told me, and how he told me, with my mom beside him.
“I spoke to your grandparents already,” he went on. “They’ll pick you up in the morning. You might make it to the burial tomorrow if you leave early enough.”
I remember when my mom would take me to swimming lessons after school. How I would cry the entire hour we were there, every day, as I pictured my body heavy with water that would seep into my arms and my legs and force me to become one with the chlorine at the bottom of the pool. She would always try to cheer me up by getting me a brownie from the cafeteria next door.
My favorite dessert, to this day.
We would get in the car, me shivering from the cold and fighting against the water droplets that tethered from my eyelashes, wrapped up in my hot pink, Disney princesses towel. My mom loved that towel. And she would play our favorite CD on the car, the one with that was slightly scratched on the second verse of Paulina Rubio’s Yo No Soy Esa Mujer, and she would sing a line twice. We always sang it with her.
I never learned how to swim.
I did learn that my mom loved that CD because it had some of her parents’ favorite songs on it.
My mom was an orphan now.
“How’s mom?” I asked my dad.
“Not good,” he replied.
**
August 2018.
I stood from the living room couch, looking at my reflection on the mirror by the adjacent wall. My mom had wanted a decorative mirror for our house for the past three years. My dad had finally purchased it for her last Christmas.
My eyes were bloodshot, my nose blushed. I couldn’t really do much about it besides making sure all the lights were off before I went to bed. Maybe the shadows would continue to disguise the pain hidden in the valleys of my smile lines. Still, I rubbed my cheeks, back and forth, my skin wrinkling and blotching against the force. I looked even worse now, but at least the tear stains were not visible anymore.
I made my way to my parents room.
The master bedroom. Soon enough, it would be exclusively that.
My dad laid on the bed, his forearm across his face, covering his eyes. Even the smallest ounce of light, of clarity, would prevent him from falling asleep. For as long as I could remember, my dad covered his face while he slept. I wondered if he picked up that habit along the way, to cope with the bleakness that covered our barren land of a home.
I couldn’t tell whether he was awake or not, and the faint moonlight that streaked through the window only allowed me to see his paced, even breaths.
His arm lifted from his face, and his eyes locked into mine.
My dad has a way about him, of always knowing where I am. What I need. Unlike my mom, my dad always says the right thing. I never have to clue him in. My silence is always loud enough for him to hear.
We have so many secrets. My dad and I. We have never let anybody into our club.
He used to take me to Pepe Tostadas on Saturday mornings, before going around the city for haphazard errands. We would sit together and eat our sandwiches in plastic chairs, their legs slowly stretching into a splits under our weight. Sometimes we would bet which one of us would fall first.
I always guessed right.
We would share pineapple juice from a large styrofoam cup, and go back to the car and blast our favorite merengues, windows down, allowing the rushing wind to wipe off the remnant crumbs of bread from my face.
My dad is the only person who realizes that I always know what will happen next. That my intuition is what harbors and nurtures what others view as inherent strength.
His mouth tilted up, eyes brightening slightly as he gifted me a small smile. He opened his arms as I laid down next to him, resting my head on his chest, forcing my breaths to match the beat of his heart.
“You know I love you, right?” He whispered. An assertion, of sorts, in the moonlight that filtered in through the window.
For himself, I assumed. That was something he never had to reassure me about.
“I know,” I replied. “I love you too.”
“I need to tell you something,” my dad said. “But you can’t tell anyone.” I gave him a small nod. I knew what was coming, it wasn’t a surprise, and my mind framed itself with bulletproof glass that would shield it from any blow, prevent any sort of damage to the calm façade I carefully crafted. My lungs, however, shriveled up in my chest into prunes, devoid of air or life or warmth. I couldn’t breathe.
“You’re the only one I trust, and the only one I’ve told up till now,” my dad kept going. “And I don’t want to do this. But I want to tell you first, so that you understand, alright?”
I nodded again.
“I'm leaving tomorrow,” he admitted.
I do this thing — this self-preservation thing — when I’m nervous. I don’t move. Not a fidget, not a twitch, not a hitch in my breath.
I laid there in his arms, in his hug, in his love… And we both pretended that I would be alright. I convinced myself that if I didn’t move, if I didn’t wrinkle the curtain we hid everything behind, somehow I would be able to grab his words in my hand and shove them under the bedsheets. Let them suffocate under our weight and the summer heat.
My dad shifted, and I knew he tried to look at me then. I couldn’t return his gaze, fearing that my eyes would reveal to him how hard I worked to keep myself together.
“I’m not leaving you. You have to know that.” He hugged me tighter. “But this is for the best. And I will come back. I promise.”
But if you were coming back, and you were sure of it, there was no need to leave in the first place.
“Are you sure that’s the best idea?” I whispered, disguising the trembling of my voice with the rattling of the ceiling fan above us.
“It’s the best for now. At least until we figure things out.”
It wasn’t until long after that I realized there was no intuitive power that I held. It is a simple fact, instead: Children always know. Even if they had tried their very best, which they did, my parents could have never shielded me from the truth. I know more than what they think. More than what I ought to know.
I wish I didn’t know anything at all.
**
July 24, 2021.
The airport was packed. 3:00am flights were always the busiest, parents dragging their children along, the squeaking of suitcase wheels bouncing off each other in a bittersweet melody.
I’ve never liked airports. Every aspect of it, every function, every sound makes me want to sit on the curb and never get up. Hug my legs to my body, tight in a vise, as if that will keep me together long enough for it all to pass.
I wonder, all the time, how so many people could move around at the same time. Where are they going? What are they doing? What are they leaving behind?
That is the sole constant, I’ve come to realize. No matter why or how, if you’re at an airport, you’re leaving something behind.
The line for check-in was long, spiraling across the floor, the dividers not big enough or long enough to keep everyone within the frame. It’s not like they would listen anyway. Dominicans travel a certain way — shopping bags on their hands, bobby pins in their hair to keep it straight, and the unmistakable, thundering sound of our laughter that cautions the world of our imminent arrival, wherever we may go.
A lady in uniform approached me, looked at my sole suitcase and asked if I was traveling alone. I told her I was, and she shot me a questioning glance.
“Are you of age?”
“Yes. I am.” I could see her thinking, the gears turning behind her eyes, and eventually she let me cut the line.
I was grateful for my face-mask — that it covered the tear-stains on my cheeks. And as I sat by the gate, two hours too early for my flight, I continued to cry. I could still smell my mom’s shampoo that lingered on my shirt, and I could almost picture her sitting next to me, holding my hand and telling me how beautiful the stars would be from the plane — gushing about the countless movies I could watch in the thirteen hours of travel ahead of me.
I hate planes. I hate flying even more.
I hate that moment when the engine rumbles underneath my feet and rattles my body until my limbs go numb and my head hurts too much from the noise. I always think I’m going to die, which is probably a little dramatic, but it’s a sensation so akin to when I was thrown off the three meter springboard during my second (ever) swimming lesson — because the instructor was ‘oh so sure!’ that I would learn while being thrown into an abyss of navy blue water that reminded me too much of the moonlight that illuminated my bedroom as I called out to my dad after waking up from chronic nightmares.
It’s a loss of control.
This was my first time flying on my own.
My mom couldn’t come with me to the airport. It was too dangerous. My dad’s friend had offered to take me.
A week before, a family was followed and murdered as they tried to return home after a red-eye flight. A mom, a dad, and three children.
I was happy my mom stayed behind.
I tried to picture my new room, my new home. Piece together the images I had looked up on the internet, find comfort in the new friends I created in my head. I thought about my classes and the opportunities they provided for me. How I was finally on my way to get my fancy, shiny, bigger than life Bachelor’s Diploma.
I reminded myself of the countless sleepless nights working on projects and studying and preparing myself for this moment — how my mom stayed up with me every single time in silent support. I thought about early mornings with my dad, driving to school and competitions and extracurriculars that had become too many to count.
I was ready for this. I had been for a long time.
I cried all through the flight.
**
April 19, 2022.
There were only two people in the room that knew me. Actually knew me. I didn’t know how to feel about that. I wasn’t really sure how I felt about all of it.
I stood at the front of the room as a professor talked about me. I couldn’t hear them, my ears drowned by my pulse thundering away. It felt like my blood vessels would burst at any moment and I would collapse on the spot. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so much at once.
I looked out to the people in the room. I didn’t really understand why I had to stand in front of everyone as someone recounted my achievements. It felt braggy. It felt weird.
But what was even weirder to me, were the smiles and the joy that stared back at me.
I’ve won many awards in my life. I never talk about it. I don’t remember half of them, as privileged as that may sound. But I was synthesized to be ashamed of them. To hide them behind my back and never smile as I collected yet another diploma. Another trophy for the shelf my parents set aside on the living room.
The people around me, the kids and adults I grew up with, rejoiced in flattery. They could lift me up and slam me back down in one breath. With one word.
My mom and dad were the ones who always stood up, even if everybody else stayed sitting down, and clapped for me. They roared with life for me. For every spelling bee, each Mathletics, all of the piano recitals that I messed up — I could count on them to lift me up.
They always showed up.
“I’m sure, once she leaves, I’ll still hear the music and the thunder on the wind.”
The room burst in claps as everyone cheered for me.
The torturous loneliness rooted within me loosened its hold on me. Just a little. Enough for me to breathe. Enough for me to move.
I wished my parents had been there. I wished I could hug them. And there was really no depth or introspection or reflection to look for in this moment. It was silly, primal instinct. I wanted my mom. I wanted my dad.
But it was difficult to ignore the people around me, their genuine happiness on my behalf. How they allowed room for me to be proud of myself, unapologetically, for the first time in my life.
And I loved them for it.