When people asked why I left Chile, I alternated between “I needed a job” and “I was tired of reggaetón.”
To be honest, I left because I couldn’t sleep.
Something was off with the apartment I shared with my little brother Andrés in Santiago. Objects kept dropping, sliding off counters. If you were in the bedroom, you’d hear forks or knives making their way to the kitchen floor. If you were in the living room, you’d hear a faint clatter of trinkets in the bedroom.
To make sure it wasn’t all in my head, I invited a few classmates over for Carménère and pasta. They heard it too. And when the last drop of wine was gone, they bolted. “¡Chao!”
*
We moved to Santiago when Andrés turned twenty and declared himself an artist.
We lived on the seventh floor. “Heaven’s number,” an old neighbor announced—mischievously—in the elevator. We’d escaped the mold, the smell of firewood, and the damp walls of our childhood in the South.
It was fun for a while.
But when the Big Sad got the better of him, I caved. I didn’t consult with him before packing my bags. I just left. And later, when he stopped answering my texts, the guilt snuck up on me.
*
In America, years later, a waitress asked Tom and me if we needed refills.
“I’ll have another,” Tom said. He had little scars all over his face, and his left eye was a dim opening, the result of an IED.
I was on the reckless end of depression, in need of novelty or shock. I also wanted to see what a chiseled hero wore off-duty. Charcoal jeans and Converse All-Stars. Feeling buzzed by the bourbon, I let my knee touch his fidgeting leg. Leaning closer—close enough to get a whiff of his scalp.
A fruit bowl in front of us had a Jesus figurine leaning against limes and tangerines. Plastic zoo animals and G.I. Joes crowned the nativity scene. I didn’t tell any of my friends I was going out with him. He’d been deployed several times, and they would’ve seen him as a walking red flag.
He showed me an app on his phone that counted the hours, minutes, and seconds until his retirement.
After his third round of whiskey, he told me he missed the war. He missed the nights in Afghanistan. But I’d seen Restrepo and thought the Korengal Valley was hell. How was that possible?
“In combat, your mind is seriously jammed. You have a mission, and that’s all you can think of,” he explained.
“There’s no room for worrying, being scared or sad. There are no bills to pay, no wife to deal with, and the future doesn’t matter.” Afghanistan was the only place where he slept like a baby, knowing everyone in his platoon had each other’s backs. Ever since his homecoming, he’d felt alone and listless.
He also hated guns. They had no place in civil society, he said. He was so sick of stitching up gunshot wounds from Denver’s rowdy Colfax Avenue that he transferred to a sleepy mountain town. These days, his shifts as a paramedic were mostly uneventful. There were nut allergies, overbearing moms, and, on rare occasions, a hiker mauled by a bear who needed to be airlifted.
We were the same age, born a few days apart. And we both loved hyenas. I told him that the females give birth through their giant clit.
“They’re tough as fuck,” he said.
*
He let me touch his tattoos. It saddened me when he called one of them cheesy.
“One of my buddies did it when we were stationed in Baghdad, and we were bored out of our minds.”
“Looks painful.”
“Very.”
Hovering over his heart was the silhouette of a man pressing a gun to his head. “A reminder of when I hit rock bottom. We were playing Russian roulette, and I pulled the trigger… Twice.”
Without his clothes, he looked like a pitbull. I told him I liked his body. “It’s covered in scars.”
*
The ease I felt around Tom was akin to the camaraderie I’ve only ever found with third-culture kids: people raised between languages and borders, who feel queasy when asked about “home.” The ones who leave.
*
On a day my roommates were out of town, I invited Tom over.
He followed me into the kitchen and grabbed my face. “The mouth is a large brain,” I remembered from Jana Beňová. I led him to the garden, where the air was warm and the moon bold. He asked how I was doing.
“I’m okay.”
“Are you really?”
No. But I didn’t want to sour the evening, so I talked about chimpanzees. “When they’re bored, they gang up on solitary males and beat them to death, just because. And they use sex for favors.” Much like humans. Tom added, “You have no idea how awful people can be when they think no one’s watching.”
I didn’t want to know. I scratched his back, and we stayed in a motionless hug for a while. He broke the silence to ask if he could go down on me. I half-smirked, “Yeah,” and he pulled me closer to the edge of the bench. He knelt on the cool grass and lifted my dress.
*
Last summer, I was in Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico with friends. We were sitting on rocks, waiting for the sun to go down. Waiting for the bats. That’s when I learned that vampire bats don’t actually suck blood. They lap it up like a dog.
*
Back home, in my last year in Chile, my brother Andrés had fallen head over heels for an older woman named Isabel. They were one of those couples who broke up and got back together, over and over: shouting, crying, slamming doors. During a drunken rendezvous, she got pregnant.
Since the relationship was already doomed and neither of them had wanted children, he suggested they “take care of it.” But Isabel decided to keep it, and it took only one look at Aurora for Andrés to become attached to the baby girl. Isabel weaponized his suggestion to keep him from ever seeing her.
He despaired.
He stopped eating. I’d come home and find a zombie version of him, dragging his feet across the increasingly sticky kitchen tiles. Or passed out in the bathroom.
I called my dad and said someone had to keep an eye on Andrés. He accused me of feigning worry so I could steal the apartment.
I didn’t speak to either of them for months.
“I’m not my brother’s keeper,” I kept telling myself as I planned my exit to the United States.
*
Tom traveled a lot and handed me a copy of his keys.
“So you can write peacefully… or what is it that you do?”
“What if I steal from you?”
“I wouldn’t be too broken up about it. Things are just things, you know?”
This time he was headed to Missouri, where they’d add pins to his already busy chest. He acted like it was a drag, and as he packed, he swore he hated wearing his fancy uniform.
“Why?”
“Because some people—people who know nothing about me—treat me with respect.
*
It was already nighttime when I first got off the train near Tom’s place. I quickened my pace and attempted a poker face as I walked past the men drinking on the sidewalk. It was too dark to make them out clearly, but I could tell they were the kind of guys who make the American flag look scary. Like a warning.
By the time I arrived at the building, I was paranoid. What if it was a trap? What if the key didn’t work, and I had to go back out again, in the dark?
But #207 was unlocked, and it was quiet, as Tom promised.
There were a few pictures on the walls and several military decorations. A leadership award for his performance in Iraq. A silver plaque declaring that his sacrifice, loyalty, and performance of duty aligned with the Army’s Warrior Ethos. I cringed when I read that his “selfless service to this nation will never be forgotten.”
*
Tom’s closet was just as meticulous as the rest of his place.
The uniform I’d seen in his photos hung beside a helmet and a pair of boots so heavy I couldn’t imagine how anyone could run in them.
I knew I was intruding when I reached for the metal box tucked in the back. Inside:
snapshots from smoking breaks in the desert, the portrait of him I studied so hard before we met. Standing before a Humvee, Tom’s face was covered in dirt. He was squinting, and it was hard to tell which direction, or what, he was looking at. His pillowy lips remained pink. He looked handsome, in a Marlon Brando type of way, or a less puffy version of DiCaprio.
There were also homecoming shots, Tom kissing a bulldog in his arms. Pictures of him and his ex-wife. She was almost as tall as him and much prettier.
At the very bottom, a Polaroid. A white cake with black icing that spells out:
I’M SORRY I BLACKED OUT, TRIED TO KILL YOU & ALMOST GOT US ARRESTED.
*
In our Santiago apartment, I often caught a shadow slipping at the edge of my vision. I told myself it was nothing, that it was childish. Still, whenever Andrés was out partying, I couldn’t sleep unless the lights were on and 3rd Rock From the Sun or Seinfeld played on a loop.
One night, while working at my desk, I heard footsteps. I felt a stare burning into the back of my neck. Prickly. I turned around, ready to snap at my brother. But I was alone.
*
The last time I invited Andrés out for dinner, I could tell by his white-clenched lips and the pulsing blue at his temples that he wouldn’t finish his meal. He’d hardly touched the ravioli or the glazed Brussels sprouts. He was telling me about political prisoners and why we should write them letters. They’re often a lifeline—a you-still-exist nudge that can mean the difference between hell and a good day. I nodded, hoping to reignite his appetite.
“How’s the mural going?” I asked.
“I fucked it up.”
I knew better than to push, so I steered us back to political prisoners.
“What would I even say?” I asked.
“Literally anything. Tell them about your day, or the last thing that made you laugh. Just don’t ever ask why they were sent away.”
“Okay, if it’s that important to you…”
“It’s not about me.”
“I know.”
“Give them prompts, something to spark their imagination. Would you rather questions are always fun.”
Andrés’s jaw loosened, though his neck stayed vigilant. There were new greys in his haphazardly shaved face.
My little brother had always been sensitive. His doe eyes welled up easily; his voice was a fraught whisper, or else swelling, a boiling timbre.
*
“How can you sleep with a guy like that…? What if he snaps?” my Colorado friends demanded.
Fair enough. There was plenty I didn’t know about Tom. I knew he’d hurt people. But I also knew that he was trying to course-correct, volunteering with refugees.
Most importantly, our bodies liked each other. He enjoyed playing with me until I was left dry-mouthed and raspy.
I didn’t fool myself into thinking we belonged together. I understood the healing aspect of touch. And it was only trapped between him and his new bulldog, Spade, that I felt safe. Sometimes Spade slept awfully close to me. I could feel his warm sighs and the dainty stroke of his eyelashes against my bare back.
*
Several months went by before I felt a sudden urge to see Andrés. A gut-punch that had me panting as I hopped inside the crowded subway.
“Andrés?” I called out when I reached the apartment.
I was met with silence and a chill draft that made me regret my skimpy tights.
“I know you’re in there.”
His bedroom windows were thrown open, and it was freezing. Andrés was lying on the floor, his legs unnaturally bent. Overdosed. He was already blue. When I lifted him, his weightlessness shocked me.
The doctor told me later that if I had arrived a few minutes later, we would’ve lost him.
*
In my dreams, I’m usually back in Chile, in that apartment. The wind cracks my lips, reddens my eyes, and every shape erodes into ash. Sometimes they manage to pump his stomach in time. Other times, Andrés is hanging from the ceiling and I’m a few seconds too late.
Tom lay awake beside me, earbuds in, listening to podcasts. Every so often he rested a hand on my hip or pulled me closer. He said that when he dreamt, he was back in Iraq. They were speeding, fleeing gunfire. “It’s not that easy to stop a Humvee.” He stared into a little girl’s eyes right before they ran over her. Other times, it was a man he shot in the face. The man survived, his jaw dangling from a tendon.
We rested our eyes until five in the morning, when we surrendered, got dressed, and drove to LaMar’s for coffee and donuts. He dropped me off on campus. I suggested we go to the movies, or get dinner sometime. He agreed but never made it happen.
*
The last night I spent at Tom’s alone, the place was a mess, Spade shed fur everywhere. His trash can was brimming with Jameson bottles. A single hair clung to the faucet. Up close, it looked blond. Long enough to suggest a woman. Maybe he had a friend over? But there was nowhere to sit. Then I noticed straight black hairs in one corner.
A ginger curl tangled in the sheets. My heart hiccuped, and I blushed.
My hair was blue.
*
Tom once told me that if I really wanted to understand how he felt, I’d have to read Karl
Marlantes and watch The Hurt Locker.
“Pay attention to the cereal scene.”
“Cereal?”
“Yeah, this whole country is like that fucking cereal aisle.”
*
I finally watched The Hurt Locker only after Tom and I broke up. Inside the grocery store, Jeremy Renner’s character, Staff Sergeant William James, is tasked with picking cereal. His hyper-vigilance is contagious. He’s overwhelmed and rendered useless in front of boxes of Cheerios, Lucky Charms, and Nesquik. The camera’s low angle exaggerates the seemingly endless repetition of labels. It’s unnerving. It’s almost like the hallway in The Shining, but bombed with fluorescent lights.
Then there’s a scene when James is home with his wife, and they’re prepping dinner. He argues that they need more specialists like him out there in the Middle East to deactivate the bombs that are killing so many people. He tells the story of a man in an Iraqi market who offered free candy until he lured enough children and civilians around his truck. When he detonates, he kills roughly 59 people.
His wife replies, “Can you chop these [onions] for me?”
*
It’s 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic keeps almost everyone indoors. Heeding the CDC’s guidelines, I haven’t touched anyone in months. Initially, it seemed like a blessing in disguise. But I was promptly slapped out of my rosy-colored stay-cay.
Baudelaire said society had three kinds of people: the warrior, the priest, and the poet. Each deserving respect, each needing the others. I’m not entirely convinced, but it makes me think of Tom.
Out of the blue, he texts:
“Can I see you?”
“We’re in the middle of a pandemic.”
“I could really use a hug right now.”
“…”
I cuss when I reply:
“Me too.”
When Tom holds me and repeats, “I got you,” I appreciate the sentiment. I run my fingers through his hair, tracing a “C” behind his ear, hoping it’ll soothe us both. But I’ve begun to see a shadowy figure from the corner of my eye, and I know it won’t make any difference.