Chaos Theory
It
was always the windows that drew her attention. Nearly spanning the length of
the wall, this one afforded an attractive view of the city with a church
cathedral as its centerpiece. Tonight the lighted spire backlit by dense fog
caused an eerie blade-like effect. It was the same fog that had hung overhead
as they had driven methodically to the hospital. She was always surprised at
how spacious the building felt, as if even the walls were backing away from containing
her problems. Her son had an entire room to himself again and the staff had brought
out a heated blanket when he’d hollered about the cold. Not that he was aware
of any of it. He was so stoned that he’d mistaken the nurse for her and thrown
up over both of them twice. Looking at his emaciated body, it was a wonder he
had anything left to discharge.
The
window provided a welcome relief.
“Laura,
he can’t help it,” Her husband’s voice whispered into her ear as he stood
beside her. “The drug has taken over him completely. It’s not our son that’s
chasing the high any longer. You have to separate the addiction from our boy.
You know he would never do these things to us if he had his own way.” Laura
leaned in further toward her husband’s shoulder, the curve of his arm seeming
to be formed just to contain her back. She couldn’t look into his eyes, knowing
the pain she would see mirrored there would send her into another round of
tears. Though she found herself nodding her head, it wasn’t out of agreement
but habit. She wasn’t ready to release her hurt.
Back
before any of this—before the toddler and the swollen belly and the twisted
sheets and the handsome professor—she had been young, hungry for adventure. Graduating
university had taken her by surprise. She had expected there would be more time
to decide upon a future. It was midway through a restless summer when the
colorful advertisement to teach abroad had caught her eye. She responded almost
reflexively. A phone call, a reference and a quickly updated resume were
exchanged. A month later she found herself in a new country, not fully understanding
the language nor what she had gotten herself into.
When
she looked back, her first memory of Honduras was of landing on the stunted
runway and how she had spontaneously grabbed the hefty floraled thigh of the missionary
next to her. “It’s okay, dear,” the woman had said kindly. “It still gives me a
little scare.” As the plane descended, it came so close to houses built into
the side of a mountain that she could make out individual pockets of the
laundry hanging to dry. Taxis and buses raced her heart even faster. She soon
learned to close her eyes, as watching the chaos unfold gave her more anxiety
than just letting things happen.
Laura
had assumed that this release of life allowed one to enjoy it more fully.
But as she studied her son lying in the hospital bed, she wasn’t so sure
anymore. His gaunt legs poked through the sheets and Laura marveled again how
easy it had been to lift him into the car. It was over eighteen years since
she’d last been able to lift him up in her arms. What had she failed to provide
that he had sought elsewhere?
“Laura… come back to me.”
Having been numbed by her reverie she
was now able to look at her husband. Tim’s piercing eyes were lately accentuated
by red veins and puffy eyelids.
“Where were you?”
“Honduras, mostly.”
The corner of his mouth turned upward and Laura swooped in to kiss it.
“You know we may not have been able to
do anything differently. We lived simply. We loved him. We still do.”
“I know,” she said, not meeting his
gaze.
In
her drafty middle school library she had once read that the world was so sensitive
to change that one beat of a butterfly wing could cause a hurricane weeks
later. This had bothered her—could stepping on the wrong snow bank shift a
tectonic plate? Or perhaps one jump too many on a trampoline might form an
earthquake thousands of miles away. Her fantastical imagination was adept at
creating hundreds of doomsday scenarios.
She
had always been a quietly troubled child, her spacy air belying a frantic
interior. This anxiety continued throughout high school and college; a
perfectionism that drove Laura to the top of her class while remaining
completely miserable and unsatisfied. So it was with great surprise that her
family and friends witnessed the dramatic change that Honduras had produced in
her. They never knew how hard-won it had been.
Things
began easily enough. The students were initially curious and pleasant; the
co-teachers helpful and everyone gave her grace for being new. Soon, however,
demands began to increase. Her dissatisfaction with the school curriculum led
her to spend hours recomposing it. The novelty of a new teacher soon wore off
on the students, and little rebellions grew to mutiny.
She
began to dread the routine and thus she was perpetually late in the morning. From
her front door she would clatter down the twist of stairs, race across the
gravel strip to the blackened front gate, frantically unlock the latch and
clang the iron door shut behind her before sprinting to the grassy corner where
she could spy the bus heaving around the sharp angle of a house.
One
day as she packed her bag, she felt a familiar gurgling in her lower abdomen.
Other teachers had jokingly referred to it as the “Honduran Welcome”, though it
had been several months since her arrival. The unpleasant sensation morphed
into a vice-like grip that had her clutching a chair for support. She
eventually made her way over to the telephone and dialed the school secretary. Laura
felt a wash of relief surpass the nausea. She was so glad to have an excuse to lie
in bed. The next day she could no longer detect feeling ill, yet she remained home,
staring at the blank cement wall. For the rest of the week she did nothing but lay
in bed with no motivation to attempt any other activity. She stopped eating.
She stopped caring. She didn’t want to die, exactly—she just couldn’t bring
herself to face her students and the demands of the job. She was completely
overwhelmed and her response was to withdraw from life.
When
she finally returned to school after a lengthy absence, it was a different
teacher that emerged. She switched into survival mode and her sole goal became
to make it to the last bell at the end of the day. Letting go of her need for
perfection helped her to get out of bed each morning. Laura began to accept the
idea that her role was rather insignificant, and this was enough of a release
to help her continue.
But
as she stood next to her husband, she reflected that it hadn’t been so easy to
wash her hands of everything. Traces of her withdrawal from difficulty had caught
up with her, culminating with the young man in the hospital bed in front of
them. She could no longer ignore the sinking possibility that she had been too
quick to retreat from life. Perhaps in accepting things as they had come, she
had relinquished the right to change course.
The
doctor entered. Laura and Tim were made to understand that their son’s body was
shutting down. Too many cycles of abuse on its system had taken a toll. The
doctor expressed hope that if their son was able to stay sober, his body might
be able to repair itself. What the doctor didn’t say, but what Laura already
knew, was that the likelihood of her son staying clean was slim. He had done
this to himself and he was going to keep getting high until it killed him. No
amount of rehab or treatment or prayers was going to stop him from chasing
escape.
Tim
was the first to speak once they were left alone again. “Let’s go home,” he
said simply. There was so much relief in the exhale of his sentence. Even the
air around them felt liberated.
Laura
had been so excited to leave for Christmas break. A colleague’s brother whom
she had never met happened to be heading to the airport as well and it was
arranged that Laura would travel with him. The two strangers set out before
dawn since their destination was several hours away. She spoke little Spanish
and he spoke even less English, but they were able to make small talk and
filled in gaps with encouraging grins. He introduced himself as Jose and
managed to tell her about his wife and two daughters. It was half an hour into
the trip before Laura realized she had left behind her money and passport on
the kitchen table. She felt terrible. Though her companion willingly turned
around and assured her it was no problem, Laura remained upset with herself
even after the items had been recovered. Jose paused before starting up the car
again. “Shit… happens,” he declared seriously, before breaking into a grin.
Their laughter ricocheted off the glass windows and pushed out all feelings of
guilt.
This
was the moment Laura loved to recall. It was no accident that one of her happiest
memories was of leaving. Everything was raw in Honduras. Pinioned between
breathtaking terrain and a vibrant culture was a coarseness that refused to be
subdued. Plastic bags of trash filled the streets and spilled out into the
gutters. Barefoot children with ragged clothing and large eyes sold mangoes to
her uniform-clad students, a fence separating so much more than the physical
space between them. Everyone knew someone whose life had ended violently. Even
the dogs traveled in packs for protection. It was devastating to witness how
many beings desperately needed help. The only way of coping was to withdraw, to
turn away from the skeletal dogs, from the hungry eyes.
“Thinking about the mangoes again?” Tim
teased.
“Mmhmm.”
“Why is Honduras on your mind so much tonight?”
She considered this for a long
while.
“I think it’s because it’s the last time I felt so helpless. I was stranded in
a foreign territory. And now I don’t know how to handle our son. I don’t know
what I did wrong and I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Honey, you know I’ve said this before.
But you have to believe me. We worked to provide structure for him. We were
home base. But ultimately, he’s his own creature.”
There
had been other happy memories. Once a few students had invited her to a
birthday party at a resort. Mango trees enclosed a courtyard with a large
wooden patio and a pool. Pleasant formalities were dropped as the evening wore
on and everyone became comfortable with the teacher in their midst. It was impossible
not to revel in the infectious joy of the gathering. After playing a barefoot
basketball game and dancing under the twinkling lights of the patio, she
gathered with some of her students and their parents to dip their toes in the
cooling pool. Suddenly, Andrea, a straight-A student with a devilish grin, ran
up from behind and tossed Laura’s startled body into the water. The guffawing
continued as Andrea and several other students spontaneously jumped in together,
splashing water at each other and the onlookers. Laura couldn’t remember the last
time she had felt so uninhibited. As she watched her students’ faces under the
glow of the moon, she realized that in spite of herself, she had somehow formed
a connection with them.
It
was late when they all piled into the back of a dusty pickup truck. Even in the
darkness, the brightly colored houses stood in contrast to the dirt covering
everything else. “Stop the car!” Andrea screamed suddenly. Everyone was thrust
forward as her brother complied with a squeal of the brakes. “Here! Pull in
here! I want to show Miss Laura el marañón.”
No sooner had he pulled in the driveway indicated than Andrea hopped out of the
truck and pulled a fruit from the branch of a tree in the middle of the yard.
“Here Miss,” she said, handing the harvest to Laura. “Can you guess what it
is?” Laura examined the object in her hand, holding it under the streetlight.
Never had she seen anything like it before. She might have guessed it was a
pepper had she not observed it pulled off of a tree. From a distance it had looked something like
one of the large Christmas lights her parents used to string in their pines,
but up close she could see that it was rounder and had a strange object
attached to its base. The bulb of the fruit was bright red and soft while the
piece that was attached looked disturbingly like a small green fetus. It curled
upward on both ends and smelled fragrant and vaguely familiar. “Give me a
hint.”
“You can use both parts.”
“The fetus too?” Everyone had burst out laughing. “No Miss, it’s a cashew!”
Laura
realized she had never known how cashews were grown. It was so strange. The
bulb was tender and easily bruised but the nut itself was firm. She wondered
what function such a fragile fruit could serve. As she held it carefully in her
hands, she considered that perhaps providing support for the cashew was purpose
enough. It added perspective, connecting the nut to the tree to the earth.
