by FRANCESCA D’ARISTA
Temazcal
My baby was born with asthma and athleticism. She is my most precious contradiction.
I keep Strella’s baby-blue inhaler in my chest pocket as she sleeps, as she plays, as she cries; a nebulizer in the kitchen, our room, the bathroom; a dry powder inhaler in each of my bags. I remind Emperatríz of this each weekday before I leave for Jamaica Hospital. The pumps take up space to provide the air our home cannot hold—we live on the left side of a house with one triangle roof, two thin front doors, and two scratchy welcome mats. These are the “duplexes” we can afford in Queens.
I have grown used to the routine that comes with Strella’s frequent asthma attacks. I hear the cough that signals, “an inhaler is not enough,” and rush with Strella to the bathroom to blast on the tub’s hot water. She gasps like a fish out of sea, a deep thundering in her chest with each inhale, involuntary tears streaming down her face. I shut the bathroom door, line towels along the floor and window, and wait until thick plumes of water vapor rise towards the ceiling. I shove my hands under Strella’s armpits and raise her above my head so that she can catch the warm, humid air. Sometimes, she’ll rest her feet on my shoulders, bold, steady. I flex my arms until they lose feeling. Other times, Strella suspends herself, levitating until her head meets the ceiling, breathing deeply, on her own. An astronaut floating through space, muffled inhales, whistling exhales. I wait patiently below her, arms outstretched, until she falls back down to me.
The room is grey and wet, and it is always a hard drop. Always.
Complicated Love
Eating rip-off Subway sandwiches on the floor of a dorm room that is not your own on a campus that you are not a student of in a town whose distance forms an equilateral triangle with your home and your actual institution of higher education should not feel comfortable. You came unprepared, damn you— your sneakers are frozen solid from the Ithaca winds, necessitating a second layer of cotton socks. A third. And those were the only two extra pairs you brought. Yeah, I can bring everything in one bag, you thought. Asshole.
Now you’re in Yuuto’s triple. “No shoes inside,” he says. You take off your ice blocks for footwear, toeing one heel and sliding your triple-socked foot out, then the other. Nus stares down at you, grimacing. “You can borrow my boots for the weekend,” she whispers. You give an embarrassed nod and lay on the sadly carpeted floor, using your coat as a cushion. The smell of sliced meat wafts through the tight room as you stare up at Yuuto and Nus, playing bad emo songs from the early 2000s on your phone. And as you listen to Yuuto explain how one of his professors specializes in stalking through his rows of students before exclaiming a question into one of their faces, something within you melts. The shaking from the cold turns into shaking from laughter. You scrunch up the wax paper for your sandwich and sink into the folds of your coat on that vomit-green carpet, your eyes closing, the laughs of your middle school friends tucking you in. For some reason, it is hard for you to remember the last time you felt this way.