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It begins with a
tickle in the back of my throat. I pull the sheet up over my
head. Dear God, please don't let it come tonight. But the
tickle turns to a wheeze as I catch a faint whiff of
sulfur.
I close my eyes
and picture the sulfur smoke billowing out of the smokestack
down at the smelter. When it's released, the sulfur smoke
almost always comes to Morenci and fills our bowl-shaped
town to its topmost hill.
I imagine it
creeping up the mountains to Morenci. "Suffer smoke." That's
what my little cousin Tomí thinks we call it; and
"suffer smoke" it truly is.
I cover my face
with the pillow. I don't want to wake my parents. The
wheezing gets worse. Think about something else; anything
else, but don't think about wheezing.
Sometimes suffer
smoke starts slowly; trickling in at the bottom and working
its way up to the top. Other times it comes in all at once.
It can be just a misty veil so only people like myself know
it's there, or so dense, you can't see your neighbor's
house. Either way, the result is the same. It makes me
suffer.
I peer out from
under my pillow and look through the screen door at our
neighbors' houses perched on the hillside. A full moon
bathes their tin roofs in silvery brightness. Suffer smoke
wraps itself around the houses like thousands of ghost
snakes crawling from the bowels of the earth. Suffer smoke
has a life of its own. It knows I'm here and it's writhing
its way up to me. It's coming to attack me with its
poisonous venom.
The wheezing is
worse now. I struggle to breathe. My lungs ache. Frustrated,
I start to cry. No, don't. It'll make it worse. Think about
something else, anything but breathing. I bury my face in
the pillow.
School. Tomorrow
there's a test in history. I studied hard this evening. My
homework is all done. I'll do good on the test. I always do.
I've got to get "A's" to go to college. It's the only thing
that'll rescue me from suffer smoke. No way I'll get stuck
here married to a miner.
My throat closes.
I pant;hungry for air. Every second feels like eternity. Air
squeezes into my straining lungs. Oh, God, the noise! The
wheezing is a roar in my ears. I hope my family doesn't wake
up, especially Mamá. I crawl into a ball with the
pillow in my stomach.
Think about
something else. Forget the wheezing. How can I? Damn it!
Sorry, God. I didn't mean that. It's so hard to breathe.
Relax. Breathe
slower. My tía says it works when she has an asthma
attack. Okay. Here goes. Hold this one longer One. Two.
Three. I can't hold it. I have to breathe! I scratch my
throat and cry. Now I'm a mess; sobbing, wheezing, not
breathing. Please Lord, don't let me die.
Mamá enters
my room. "Why didn't you call me?"
She sits on the
edge of the bed and pulls me chest down on her lap. Her
cupped hand pounds my back. The slow rhythmic movement works
on my lungs. I calm down. I stop sobbing; still wheezing but
not so bad.
"Ya, ya,
está bien," my mother croons as she pounds.
How many times has
she done this? As breathing becomes easier, I shudder. How
many more times before I finally escape the suffer
smoke?
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