Hothouse

By Lucia Llano

I grew up in the kind of town that made you think of your past lives often. It was a little orange city, melting, pouring over the Mexican border. It never knew of anything but itself. A West Texas town breathing within an egocentric vacuum. A living city amongst the walking dead. It made you lust after what else you could have, or rather what else you might’ve had in other lives you couldn’t quite recall. But this town. It had the kind of charm that you would never understand unless you grew up there too. The kind of charm that would sink its teeth into you. There, it’s a well-known fact that no one ever leaves. You will find generations of families living in the same yellow houses by the churches, never having ever touched the skies. This town. With the warmth of the dust storms and city lights and orange skies and punch-hole stars. It holds me like a domestic dog, on a short leash. Even when it gives me some slack, even when it lets me loose, I always find my way back in. 

I grew up here, terrified, because all the kids would say that this town was rabid. That it dug its claws into you. It was that adolescent, desert lore. We were all far too familiar with that young itch to leave and that old, beckoning ache to stay. The older I get, and the more I try to make a run for it, the more I come to believe it. Because I have tried, and tried, to cut myself free, but the truth is, no matter how far I manage to stray, I don’t think I can ever properly leave. 

This town had always demanded performance. With its red sand stage and spotlight sun. It begged you to squeeze some nectar from the wastelands. You would never understand unless it bit you, that kiss of death. Here, you woke up in the mornings and grabbed a scarf, a leather journal, some sunglasses, a cigarette, and a tall, cold bottle of Mexican coke. Just to go drive around the pavement desert. Just to wander around local corner stores with a cassette and some earbuds and ripped tights. There was not much else to do but play the parts handed to you. Today, I stumbled my way back home again, back to the city on fire, back on stage, back into my old roles. I would know it blind. Here, the heat of the Texas sun exhales off the adobe walls as you walk home, half somnambulant in the evenings. I wandered home feeling entranced, enamored by the once again familiar pebble lawns and morse code city lights. But I knew all too well that this was not the kind of town you fell for, but rather, the kind of town that grabbed you in its hands and pulled you under, the town that gave you no other option but to starve in love for it. It came with a loyalty so strong it was nearly akin to religion. And you knew no other choice but to defend it with that feminine anger, that motherly venom. And I always did. You could say it was all folklore. Told by desperate teenagers. Told by the stench of a stifled adolescence, something like the hint of vodka on your breath as you stumble past your mother into your childhood bedroom. 

Tonight, back at home, I found myself a child again. Slipping into my baby blue hand-me-down sheets. Once again, a little girl in a little yellow house pouring out by a church. And here, it’s easy to close your eyes. Between the warmth of the dust and the dirt. It’s easy to forget all else. This town, plays along, ignores the fact that I have grown far too big for it, and instead wraps me in its long, hot arms, and like a mother, tells me I am safe with her. I still find myself performing for this city. For the blue, endless sky. For the way the clouds scatter like lovers in the mornings. For the fire in the sky every evening. For the winding suburban roads and dead-end streets stopping cold at the feet of the Franklin Mountains. I am always performing. Even here, writing alone, I feel a subtle audience, somewhere inside my mind. There is always a voyeur peering over my shoulder. I write this now, to you, because I know quite well that no one else would understand. Only you could see this charm too. The appeal to the cult of the mountain valley. With these tree-lined streets. With their rock walls and mountain backdrop. They are heavy. I feel like a visitor with too much baggage stumbling down Camille Street. I sit in the red of my old teenage car, drive down the streets bordering my old high school, and find myself no longer knowing its walls. I’ve got to pull over to cry. I don’t know when this city turned ghost town. I always felt it breathe, even then. Now, I drag the old, empty shell of who I used to be after me, through the landmarks and the metaphors, the infinite sky. Like a snake that shed its skin only to crawl back in again, I park in the same spots I used to, just to sit in the hurt for a little while longer. And under this desert sun, the memories ripple. The iridescent shapes of the past still linger, sitting on the same benches, standing on the same intersections and street corners. I reckon traces of my skin are still lying there. Clear as day. I want to hear it say goodnight to me once more, that’s all I want, for it to yell at me, once more, “don’t let the desert get to you, girl, it’s only a mirage.” Only you would understand.