Breathing Room

Past the concrete wall where Jonny tagged his name with stolen spray paint and where Chip and his gothic friends used to yell, "Hey! You wanna get wasted on ecstasy and rum?" Past the bridge where the homeless live and die, past all the various train tracks and dirt fields where Shifty-Fist Renee chose only those fights she knew she could win, we drive past the hockey arena, the record store (if you steal there you don't get caught), and Acacia Park where on that nauseous night Andrew kicked a beggar's face in with his steel-toed boots. That beggar groaned, then asked for more. I remember grazing my lips against the brick wall of Chinatown, remember how gasoline smelled when we were thirteen, remember how in this city there are people and machines and how sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

In the cold uneasy dawn we are driving in a car past all the city's haunts where babies are dropped and souls are bought for Chex-Mix and cigarettes. We are driving out of the city, driving out of the whole mess of it. My eyes are confused, I am cross-eyed and drowsy. It is too early to leave the city, too early to think about breathing, it is too early to give up all my favorite noise: yuppies complaining, chiming clocks, brakes squealing, radios blaring brash Salsa Latino, the Mexicans dancing on their front porches. If I give up the noise, all I will have is silence. I am afraid of silence. I think it might eat away at me slowly. Aubrey was born with stomach acid in her mouth and it ate away at her tongue so now it looks like raw hamburger meat. I think silence might do that to me.

We are driving to the desert, driving there to make sense of the city, to make sense of ourselves. We figure the desert is like a padded room; there's nothing for us to hurt ourselves on, no sharp objects to poke ourselves with. We figure once we get out of the city and pass the clutter of the mountains we'll meet up with our truest selves and maybe God Himself, waiting for us in Monument Valley.

I sleep through most of Colorado, but by the very edge of Utah my brother and I are making up stupid songs about the desert. "We're gonna see sand/ Yeah, yeah we're in a band/ We're crossing this land/ Yeah, yeah we're in a band, we take a stand." We aren't even seven hours out of the city but already we don't miss it and we forget the smell of asphalt and tar melting and the taste of exhaust. We keep driving and driving, curvy roads, steep ones, big highways flanked by Navajo reservations where they gamble and drink and sell sterling silver jewelry. The day is stretching out like a rubber band ready to snap and still we drive. The land is stretching out, too, growing flatter as we go. When will we see the Valley? My brother and I are holding our breaths, we can't wait to see the desert. What happened to our oh-so-sophisticated cynicism, our trademark sarcastic replies? Who cares? Does the desert really look like the calendars on Ms. Foticelli's wall? Do echoes linger like ghosts in its emptiness? We heard dreams are born there; is it true?

And then, on Highway 163 when the road becomes straight as truth, I gasp. All at once it seems, we're there. We're here! I wake up my brother. I think, My God! Sky outweighs land here three-to-one. I could drown in all this openness! All I see is red earth and indigo sky. We're the only car in sight, driving fast on the road laid out smooth.

"Pull over!" he yells. My brother is frantic. We were suffocating this whole time and we didn't even know it! We pull over to he side of the road, jump out of the car, breathe like we've finally swam to the top of a humongous public pool. We drain the city water out of our ears, squeeze its water out of our hair. We breathe. For the first time, maybe. The air is healthy, infused with minerals, laced with the whispers of cowboys and Indians. When we speak, all we can say is stumbling praise to God. In the silence He feels so near, like His ear is permanently bent down toward this place, like He catches every word.

The whole area is warm and bright and in the distance we see the famous cliffs and mesas, the ones seen in a hundred John Wayne-type Westerns, jutting a thousand feet into the sky yet not even close to touching it. The sky! It's bigger here than anywhere else, the land is silent and wise. And the scary silence: it's warmer than I expected. The breeze is soft, coaxing me to be still, be still, know God. Our toxic sludge city sensibility slides off our bodies into the soil, evaporates into the atmosphere and we are now new creatures. God's salvation must be true, His artistry and grace are proven here. Who can deny it? We gladly throw away the insults and jeering we tuned our ears to in the city, trash the savagery and technology of a million reckless souls, for here we understand hope, we understand that God has not forgotten us.

We've been breathing real air now for thirty minutes and we don't want to stop.