Message in a Bubble
I sit, staring at the plain white wall. It's been a typical hot and sweaty Texas day, so now I'm sprawled on my bed with wet skin and hair steaming from the shower, my ceiling fan scooping up my moisture and spreading it around the room. My bed and my wall are exactly alike, staring at each other with their clean, white, blandness. No images or frames, no decorative pillows. Just a blank facade in front of me and beneath me, waiting to be marked, begging to remain pure and simple and boring.
I've left it that way for a while. There were girlfriends, somewhere back there in the past, in and out of this room like night terrors. Some were loud, marching in and putting up artistic paintings that read like protests to the simple boredom of my life. They were bold, offensive images that made it hard for me to sleep - confronting me, making me feel broken and confused. Some girlfriends put up quieter images with blue-tones, complimenting my attitude but somehow even more boring than the white wall behind. I'm on my own now, so...white it is.
I have my dreams, and love will just have to fit in where it can. I want to own a Texas ranch, build a car company, maybe be an oil mogul somehow out on the broad ocean. I want to have influence, the ability to make a difference. I want to rule the world. I just don't see how making this house look good on the inside has anything to do with that. So my house and my body are pretty much the same: I dress well, I wear glasses and style my hair. I have flower pots outside that I water everyday and I power-wash the siding once a month. I wash and wax my F150. But my dining room doesn't have any furniture and I eat McDonald's out of the bag on my dusty couch, usually while watching football or The Bachelor. I've flirted with documentaries and health food and other people in here, but I still haven't bought a dining table.
I can see the daytime light starting to fade outside my window, drooping over the small pieces of my small town. There's a church clock tower that stopped running years ago, the tops of houses with patched roofs and old chimneys still puffing smoke, and some guy trying to mow his lawn in the thirty minutes of cool air before dark, even though the mosquitos are hungriest right now. I've been watching his grass grow for a month now, and now he finally tries to cut it in half an hour. He hasn't got a chance.
Even with these glimpses of perfect hick-town life, our little Eden hasn't felt too small lately - the hotel has been full for months. This week people are renting out their extra bedrooms for all the journalists and opening them for free to politicians. I own a few car dealerships in southern Texas, which means I'm too busy to get out much, but it's not hard to know that everyone in the world is talking about the camps just south of us. I can't see them from my bedroom window, but if I had X-ray vision, I could just keep looking forward and I'd see them. Straight through my perfectly blank bedroom wall, through the house and on for about half a mile of patchwork sand and grass, I would see chain-link fences telling me to go away.
I'm thrilled the politicians came. And the reporters. The stink was getting unbelievable. It's hard, even now that the people in camp are taking baths, to forget that smell. I feel it in my nostrils and under my tongue, sticking to my back teeth. When it was at its worst, it was like taking wet trash to the curb, accidentally touching the trash, and realizing there's a dead mouse right about where you touched. Not sure how it got there, not sure how you didn't see it before you touched it, not sure why it felt drier and less dirty than your trash, but now there is a desperate need for a shower.
The sunlight is coming straight at the second-story window of my bedroom now, at an almost parallel height. It's like a spotlight on the wall. I can see tints of older paint lurking beneath the new, threatening to come back to the fore and remind me what's under there. I should've had those pintores get another layer of white paint on there. Deep red is under this white wall. Under that, green, feathery wallpaper with corn-yellow accents. I don't know who put up the wallpaper or the red paint. I found this house white and peaceful, but when I pull the dryer out a little or remove an outlet cover, I learn what used to be. The quiet, unadorned white that I've got now looks beautiful to me. I've never considered another color of paint.
While I'm staring, I see a bubble floating outside the window, trying to slip in with the cool, clean air that pours through the window screen and onto my skin. The air and the bubble can't decide what they want for a minute. The bubble is pushed from side to side, front to back, up and down. Finally, it makes contact, sighing "ahhh" loudly and leaving a perfect, bubble-shaped hole in the screen. I jump up and run to the window, leaving all my skin and chill behind, and feel the hole with my forefinger. It's real. My finger doesn't hurt at all, but the hole is there. I see it, I feel it, it exists. A bubble-hole in my bedroom screen. That sound was weird, too. The bubble didn't pop or crack, it sighed - exhaled, breathed out, released vapor. I push the glass of the window down nice and slow, a little hesitant to give up the cool air I'd been sipping. It's not worth mosquito bites in my sleep, I guess.
As I turn back toward the bed, I see a bright shock of light like a lens-flare and turn to see where it's coming from. As soon as I do, I run back to the bed, flip up my twin-size, and hold it up portrait-mode, kicking aside the ghost-white blanket as it falls. Peeking around the mattress, I see 1000 bubbles closing in on my window. One slips directly through the hole in the screen, pops - cracks - shouts in anger on my window, and it shatters into a million tiny pieces, spraying the wall and the mattress along with everything else in my bedroom except me, hiding and praying, wishing I knew how these bubbles got here. All of the other bubbles pour in through the one small hole in the screen, but they don't pop yet. They hang in midair, piling in, bumping each other further into the room, but never into the wall, the mattress, or the floor. I watch the first one reach out and touch the wall. It sings as it pops and peels the white paint, displaying the deep red paint underneath in a perfect circle. In this waning light, getting darker already with the sun beneath the window now, it looks like blood - pure blood, not like paint at all. It doesn't look tacky or like it has ever dried; it looks like it is fresh blood with fresh metallic smell and dripping texture. The look of the red isn't as surprising as the voice that sings out of the bubble: "finally, soap!"
It is not a mean sound. It's not threatening. It is a soft hallelujah chorus. The sound reverberates through the 999 bubbles left and they respond in silent harmony, shuffling toward the wall and away from me and my mattress and all the broken glass. I follow them, sneaking out of my hiding but bringing my shield with me.
POP
"Gonna get you clean, son."
POP POP POP
"Ahh that's better - blankets too!"
"Tonight will almost feel like home, sis. Promise."
"I wish mom was here."
995 bubbles are still left, and I can already seen the wallpaper beneath the blood-red paint. In one spot I can even see an older paint, one I've never seen before but one which makes me understand why someone chose wallpaper instead of paint. It's a black layer. Hopelessly black. It doesn't look like the color black. I can't see it, actually. But if feels like a deep and emptying shame. I filled with a rage I can't describe and I want to knock the wall down myself - attack it with this stupid mattress and my stupid steaming skin until the blackness is gone and this wall is in pieces in the basement.
Instead, I do nothing but stare in self disgust as the next 40 bubbles are spent exposing this black layer, and 150 more are spent stripping it down. It was at least three layers deep. Once this last vestige of the wall is removed, the next 805 bubble ravage throughout the house, tearing down walls and floors and shout-whispering:
"This could've been avoided."
"I'm so glad we made it here."
"I hope we make it out of here."
"I thought I left death threats at home."
"At least we got soap."
"We had to beg for soap? We only got showers because that lady showed up."
"Be quiet, there are guards here. Someone might understand what you're saying."
"No. They only speak languages that'll get them something."
Their voices are old. And young. Masculine and feminine. They're sad. They're hopeful. They are every emotion that populates the American Dream and every emotion that recognizes that Dream as a false promise. They are the great cacophony of grief.
My house cannot stand much longer. There was far more space than I knew in this house. Insatiable appetites are hidden within the too-wide walls. Every kind of owner has lived here and made their own touches - new wallpaper, new paint, same black undertones. I am only the most recent heir, watching its hollowing. The bubbles are all popped now. I'm standing on the final flimsy floorboard, my mattress looking like the discarded plastic rings of a six-pack dangling from my white-knuckled fists.
I am cold.
I am alone.
The white light of the moon, now at its apex, does not reach into my darkness.
I've left it that way for a while. There were girlfriends, somewhere back there in the past, in and out of this room like night terrors. Some were loud, marching in and putting up artistic paintings that read like protests to the simple boredom of my life. They were bold, offensive images that made it hard for me to sleep - confronting me, making me feel broken and confused. Some girlfriends put up quieter images with blue-tones, complimenting my attitude but somehow even more boring than the white wall behind. I'm on my own now, so...white it is.
I have my dreams, and love will just have to fit in where it can. I want to own a Texas ranch, build a car company, maybe be an oil mogul somehow out on the broad ocean. I want to have influence, the ability to make a difference. I want to rule the world. I just don't see how making this house look good on the inside has anything to do with that. So my house and my body are pretty much the same: I dress well, I wear glasses and style my hair. I have flower pots outside that I water everyday and I power-wash the siding once a month. I wash and wax my F150. But my dining room doesn't have any furniture and I eat McDonald's out of the bag on my dusty couch, usually while watching football or The Bachelor. I've flirted with documentaries and health food and other people in here, but I still haven't bought a dining table.
I can see the daytime light starting to fade outside my window, drooping over the small pieces of my small town. There's a church clock tower that stopped running years ago, the tops of houses with patched roofs and old chimneys still puffing smoke, and some guy trying to mow his lawn in the thirty minutes of cool air before dark, even though the mosquitos are hungriest right now. I've been watching his grass grow for a month now, and now he finally tries to cut it in half an hour. He hasn't got a chance.
Even with these glimpses of perfect hick-town life, our little Eden hasn't felt too small lately - the hotel has been full for months. This week people are renting out their extra bedrooms for all the journalists and opening them for free to politicians. I own a few car dealerships in southern Texas, which means I'm too busy to get out much, but it's not hard to know that everyone in the world is talking about the camps just south of us. I can't see them from my bedroom window, but if I had X-ray vision, I could just keep looking forward and I'd see them. Straight through my perfectly blank bedroom wall, through the house and on for about half a mile of patchwork sand and grass, I would see chain-link fences telling me to go away.
I'm thrilled the politicians came. And the reporters. The stink was getting unbelievable. It's hard, even now that the people in camp are taking baths, to forget that smell. I feel it in my nostrils and under my tongue, sticking to my back teeth. When it was at its worst, it was like taking wet trash to the curb, accidentally touching the trash, and realizing there's a dead mouse right about where you touched. Not sure how it got there, not sure how you didn't see it before you touched it, not sure why it felt drier and less dirty than your trash, but now there is a desperate need for a shower.
The sunlight is coming straight at the second-story window of my bedroom now, at an almost parallel height. It's like a spotlight on the wall. I can see tints of older paint lurking beneath the new, threatening to come back to the fore and remind me what's under there. I should've had those pintores get another layer of white paint on there. Deep red is under this white wall. Under that, green, feathery wallpaper with corn-yellow accents. I don't know who put up the wallpaper or the red paint. I found this house white and peaceful, but when I pull the dryer out a little or remove an outlet cover, I learn what used to be. The quiet, unadorned white that I've got now looks beautiful to me. I've never considered another color of paint.
While I'm staring, I see a bubble floating outside the window, trying to slip in with the cool, clean air that pours through the window screen and onto my skin. The air and the bubble can't decide what they want for a minute. The bubble is pushed from side to side, front to back, up and down. Finally, it makes contact, sighing "ahhh" loudly and leaving a perfect, bubble-shaped hole in the screen. I jump up and run to the window, leaving all my skin and chill behind, and feel the hole with my forefinger. It's real. My finger doesn't hurt at all, but the hole is there. I see it, I feel it, it exists. A bubble-hole in my bedroom screen. That sound was weird, too. The bubble didn't pop or crack, it sighed - exhaled, breathed out, released vapor. I push the glass of the window down nice and slow, a little hesitant to give up the cool air I'd been sipping. It's not worth mosquito bites in my sleep, I guess.
As I turn back toward the bed, I see a bright shock of light like a lens-flare and turn to see where it's coming from. As soon as I do, I run back to the bed, flip up my twin-size, and hold it up portrait-mode, kicking aside the ghost-white blanket as it falls. Peeking around the mattress, I see 1000 bubbles closing in on my window. One slips directly through the hole in the screen, pops - cracks - shouts in anger on my window, and it shatters into a million tiny pieces, spraying the wall and the mattress along with everything else in my bedroom except me, hiding and praying, wishing I knew how these bubbles got here. All of the other bubbles pour in through the one small hole in the screen, but they don't pop yet. They hang in midair, piling in, bumping each other further into the room, but never into the wall, the mattress, or the floor. I watch the first one reach out and touch the wall. It sings as it pops and peels the white paint, displaying the deep red paint underneath in a perfect circle. In this waning light, getting darker already with the sun beneath the window now, it looks like blood - pure blood, not like paint at all. It doesn't look tacky or like it has ever dried; it looks like it is fresh blood with fresh metallic smell and dripping texture. The look of the red isn't as surprising as the voice that sings out of the bubble: "finally, soap!"
It is not a mean sound. It's not threatening. It is a soft hallelujah chorus. The sound reverberates through the 999 bubbles left and they respond in silent harmony, shuffling toward the wall and away from me and my mattress and all the broken glass. I follow them, sneaking out of my hiding but bringing my shield with me.
POP
"Gonna get you clean, son."
POP POP POP
"Ahh that's better - blankets too!"
"Tonight will almost feel like home, sis. Promise."
"I wish mom was here."
995 bubbles are still left, and I can already seen the wallpaper beneath the blood-red paint. In one spot I can even see an older paint, one I've never seen before but one which makes me understand why someone chose wallpaper instead of paint. It's a black layer. Hopelessly black. It doesn't look like the color black. I can't see it, actually. But if feels like a deep and emptying shame. I filled with a rage I can't describe and I want to knock the wall down myself - attack it with this stupid mattress and my stupid steaming skin until the blackness is gone and this wall is in pieces in the basement.
Instead, I do nothing but stare in self disgust as the next 40 bubbles are spent exposing this black layer, and 150 more are spent stripping it down. It was at least three layers deep. Once this last vestige of the wall is removed, the next 805 bubble ravage throughout the house, tearing down walls and floors and shout-whispering:
"This could've been avoided."
"I'm so glad we made it here."
"I hope we make it out of here."
"I thought I left death threats at home."
"At least we got soap."
"We had to beg for soap? We only got showers because that lady showed up."
"Be quiet, there are guards here. Someone might understand what you're saying."
"No. They only speak languages that'll get them something."
Their voices are old. And young. Masculine and feminine. They're sad. They're hopeful. They are every emotion that populates the American Dream and every emotion that recognizes that Dream as a false promise. They are the great cacophony of grief.
My house cannot stand much longer. There was far more space than I knew in this house. Insatiable appetites are hidden within the too-wide walls. Every kind of owner has lived here and made their own touches - new wallpaper, new paint, same black undertones. I am only the most recent heir, watching its hollowing. The bubbles are all popped now. I'm standing on the final flimsy floorboard, my mattress looking like the discarded plastic rings of a six-pack dangling from my white-knuckled fists.
I am cold.
I am alone.
The white light of the moon, now at its apex, does not reach into my darkness.
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