Shut Up, This Is Serious: Chapters 29-32

An oil diffuser sputters out a stream.

My ma nods seriously, like she is mentally savoring the name, turning it over in her memory.

When we pulled into the pediatric center of the hospital, I didn’t really feel anything either.

I unfold it and read a bullet-point list about panic attack symptoms: sweating, heart palpitations, intrusive thoughts, constant worrying.

It reminds me of the pamphlets by the counselors’ office, equally as condescending and diagnostic.

I remember all the red flags in my student file, vibrant reminders of my truancy.

We’d eat on the peeling, green picnic tables by the bird observatory that I always mistook for a huge soccer post.

We park and stake out a spot near the pergola, its columns wrapped with tree branches, its roof streaming in the light in a crosshatch.

She glowers at me.

“But it made me worry. Because I felt like I was always reminding myself of someone, like I was always behaving like someone. I couldn’t put my finger on it, until that night on Thanksgiving, and it felt like something inside of me snapped. I had this, like, strange déjà vu in the kitchen and I finally realized I reminded myself of Pa.”

She’d cried so often, tears lapping against her body until she was almost eroded, almost gone.

My ma approaches us, expertly cradling paper plates covered in tinfoil in her arms.

“My mama says salt water can purify wounds, so it should also purify our hearts. You know, Mom shit.”

In a moment of them shutting, I am confronted by my reflection.

She shifts in her chair. “What do you think seeing your father provoked in you?”

“Everybody says we’re the same. And the person I’m supposed to be like abandons me? It makes me wonder if I’ll ever do that to myself.”

“Your parents are a big part of who you are, but you are not them. There are some parts we can’t change, but you can control who you become. It isn’t always symbiotic.”

“Some of it, like your appearance, is genetic. Some of your behavioral patterns are genetic as well, and we can talk about that more. But the interesting part about behavior is that a lot of it can be shaped. I know you all hate when adults say this, but you’re so young. There’s so much time to become who you are and make your own choices.”

“You think you would cry indefinitely?”

“Well, Belén, it sounds like you’re thinking of this as a dichotomy: either you feel the sadness and you become it, or you distract yourself from it. Is that right?”

“You did not fail. Trust me when I say that this was going to happen eventually. Distracting yourself from pain doesn’t always work the way we think it might. You cannot meander around your feelings.”

“Yes, like anger. But maybe also perspective, reflection.”

“It’s not out of the ordinary,” Ms. Barrera says, “But it’s not great. The baby is a few weeks early, but it shouldn’t complicate anything too badly. At least that’s what the doctor said.”

A pang of pain presses against my stomach.

We start for the door together, and I hear Leti shriek.