Threshold

Words had escaped me—the ability to bind them into narrative lost for an evening, a weekend, before months had blurred away as I raced toward an ever-distancing finish line that no one ever crosses. 

Since returning to New Mexico, I’d attempted to recover fragments of what I’d lost. But like piecing together a shattered mirror, the gaps in the mended portrait remained glaring—a distorted image reflecting what was and what will never be. So, in the wake of one life chapter’s grand unraveling, I identified the stronger elements that remained—the familiar, malleable threads to weave into a protective shawl to stave off the chill of yet another new beginning. 

Before I knew it, winter had set in; I wrapped into myself—and wondered what a pandemic-plagued future would look like, and where I’d be. And then, one day at my computer, I felt a sudden heaviness heaped upon my shoulders, and was exhausted, utterly depleted. I knew. Days later, awake in a pool of sweat, my legs on fire, head throbbing, I, again, wondered what future there would be. A week later, my legs felt extinguished; I wobbled less. Again, words escaped me.

Tolls climbed, the political landscape fractured further, and my apartment walls closed in—with each night punctuated by my neighbor’s drunken cry-moans bleeding through our shared wall, until, one night, I found him face-down in the front yard amidst scattered pots and broken plants: his downward spiral had bottomed-out.

I’d reached down, nudged him—asked if I could help him into his apartment. Glassy-eyed and somewhere far afield, he stared up.

“Oh. No. I’m ok here. Night night.”

I eyed a broken garden light’s globe slowly spinning atop the sidewalk, and tracked my gaze down the darkened windows of the adjacent apartments; no one, save him and one other tenant, remained.

Without prompting, he muffled into the dirt.

“I’m ok here.”

I sighed, turned, and walked back into my apartment.

I’m not.

***

GoogleMaps bellowed, “Make a u-turn!” as I pressed my ear into the phone, cradling it against my chin, and pulled up to a curb in an unfamiliar neighborhood—my loan officer waiting patiently as I scrambled to find paper in my glove box and a pen whose ink hadn’t been dried out by the desert heat.

I asked her to repeat the time-sensitive next steps and what I had to do to lock in my interest rate. A litany of figures and percentages later, I hung up, cut short my plans to deliver the cashier’s check for earnest money to the title settlement company, and headed home. Hours later, I’d e-signed another compendium of mortgage papers and completed a required online course for prospective homeowners.

For a year, I’d watched as houses around the neighborhood got snapped up by Californians, Texans, Washingtonians, New Yorkers, and Coloradans. Prices soared, and I challenged myself not to lose hope. As a kid, I’d envisioned living in a rambling Gothic mansion in the woods; as an adult, that Gothic mansion transformed into a 1977 RV. And while I’d worked on my RV and convinced myself then that I’d never again focus on a “sticks and bricks” house, my chronic pain made me recognize that insulation and hot water were not overrated.

Still, I remained conflicted. Private property and capitalism and all of the pervasive, unjust systems of colonialism were anathema to the future I wanted to help shape. I also knew that my current housing arrangement was unhealthy, and that, if I moved, I’d be paying as much if not more in rent than I would be for a mortgage—and would be in less of a position to help build community power.

I debated for months before recognizing that what I wanted to do was steward a home—hold space to create a nexus for community building and mutual aid—while taking care of myself. As with most decisions, it was an imperfect one—shaped by compromise and the reality of our times.

I knew snagging a property in such a highly competitive market was not possible for a single nonprofiter with little savings. So, I bided my time and trusted my instincts; I kept saving what I could and waited until the depth of winter—when real estate markets typically slow.

***

It was an odd-looking home that I first noticed on my way to physical therapy. Perched on a corner, it appeared architecturally distinct from the other low-slung, stuccoed forties-era homes—with mid-century lines and large windows. And it happened to be in one of my target neighborhoods; it seemed empty, and there was no sign in the yard. But one night as I scoured listings, it popped up. I wove through the virtual tour and stopped at the photos of the back yard: an expanse of sandy undulations bounded by a concrete block wall, with a small shed plunked off-center. I added it to a list of two other homes I’d come across, and reached out to my realtor. The next day, I walked through them all.

Crossing the weathered threshold, I didn’t hear bells chime nor did the clouds part; I didn’t fall in love. By the time I’d gotten to the home-touring stage, I’d begun humming a reminder to myself.

This isn’t a love affair. It’s an investment. Take your time. Make it count. Listen to your gut.

Viewing each home became a decidedly emotionless process—training an investor’s eye on the pros and cons each home afforded. And while I acknowledged charming aspects, I focused more on the main systems, flushed toilets, investigated cabinets for mold, and assessed its equity-building potential. I couldn’t get attached, and let a charming facade detract my focus from the skeletal roof, or a price point obscure the fact that I’d probably be a hate crime inside of a month. With my retirement wiped out in the early months of the pandemic, any home I stewarded would be both a community-building center and a reserve piggybank.

At the end of the day, I’d made a decision—on which I slept, before pursuing next steps.

Multiple inspections, negotiations, and bouts of second-guessing later, I walked into the title settlement office and sat opposite the officer—partitioned by a Plexiglas shield: a sign that the pandemic was far from over. I left with a binder of documents, and would receive the keys to the mid-century days later.

It was done.

I closed my car door and screamed—a mixture of joy and exhaustion.

***

Movies always made moving into a home appear to be a romantically fluid process: a little dusting and mopping and, suddenly, all of the boxes were unpacked and life continued. But the pandemic remained, and I wanted as few people traipsing through the house as possible; so, my Virgo self made trip after trip in my truck, and performed spot house maintenance as I could.

One night, I returned to my nearly empty apartment and heard the familiar sounds of my neighbor reeling from their latest bender: pots crashed to the floor and something shattered. And that was it: the final straw.

Minutes later, I dragged out my mattress topper, tucked JoJo and her crate into my front seat, and spent the early hours of the night settling into my new home.

JoJo sniffed every dusty corner while I, bat-in-hand, investigated the source of bangs and clanks coming from the utility closet. But instead of finding someone ripping out copper piping or a rabid raccoon nesting for the night, I became acquainted with my 20-year-old water heater.

I went back inside, pulled out my “to update” list and scribbled a star beside “hot water heater.” Shortly thereafter, I installed a new shower head and leaned into the warm spray.

That night, for the first time in months, I slept through the night.

***

Lamplight fuzzed from a corner of the living room and my avocado tree’s leaves danced alongside the curtains—heat billowing from the vents as snow drifted down outside the cracked, reliable windows and soaked into the parched desert floor.

For a moment, it was quiet—with JoJo tucked into her beloved blanketed bed down the hallway, and few cars buzzing along the avenue. As my knees pressed into the cold concrete pad and ground into the remnant linoleum flecks, I pursed my lips and whisper-sang a familiar song—a lullaby of sorts to make the hallway’s darkness and the blood-like stain I’d just uncovered seem less foreboding.

For whatever reason, I’d decided at 9PM on a Friday to remove the broken, likely asbestos-laden linoleum from an awkward partitioned section of the house that included a half bath and laundry area. And under one strip, an irregular stain radiated from beneath the baseboard. I paused and assured myself that, no, there definitely wasn’t a body stuffed inside the wall above. No way. Nope. Nope. Nope.

As timing would have it, earlier in the week I’d come across an old folio stuffed in a dark corner of the garage—and in it were meticulous records of systems updates; the original blueprints were tucked beside it, and included the workshop addition, where I sat in a pile of broken linoleum. Knowing it was a workshop, I kept scraping the floor. A few tiles over, there was a similar stain, and beneath more, others. It appeared that the workshop pad received a fair number of oil and solvent spills. I could deal with those with much more understanding than a decaying corpse inside a wall.

I reached the end of the linoleum, and swept up the aftermath. I ran my hands along the floor to free any stubborn remnants and dislodged torn note scraps tacked into the unpainted sheet-rocked wall; I wondered about their messages—for whom they were reminders. Behind me, in predictable cadence, water dripped from a stripped valve into the washer’s outflow basin.

Another to-do.

The house was built in 1958. I’d probably never know how many people lived here, called it home—celebrated, mourned, and just existed within it.

Now, though, it was my turn.

***

Seeds clung to the stained paper towel scrap—stored in an old hair conditioner bottle during my time in Alabama; I’d remembered folding them into one another, a vessel tightened with hope and a longing to be reopened as another, more fruitful chapter was being written.

I tore off a corner and sunk it into the warped raised beds I’d brought over from my apartment.

Wind danced through the chimes hanging from a rusty eye hook set by a former tenant—someone who may have peered over the sandy backyard and tossed one of the hundred or so cigarette butts I’d collected and tucked into old, sun-bleached Cheeto bags along with broken glass and rusted car parts.

Around the sawed-off bases of the last tenants’ ad hoc windscreen, desert globemallow grew in tiny tufts. I mounded berms around each patch until sections of the backyard looked like a mole went berserk. But within each depression, flecks of green cast small shadows against the sand—as ants scurried beneath and finches and doves eyed me suspiciously from overgrown branches.

Out from the sand I’d cajole and shape a mini ecosystem, one that I hoped would bear fruit for me, the community, and my feathered and scaled and insect neighbors.

For years, I’d felt trapped; my mind clouded with darkening, fragmented thoughts: jagged edges curving inward, making a circle—a maze navigated simply by a mouse or linear ruminations, flowing along a predictable, entropic path. After multiple setbacks, I’d minimized my voice and goals and vision for the future to a collective point of obscurity.

As the sun cleared the last of the neighbors’ roofs on its downward track, I stood with my toes in the sand, and acknowledged that there’d be many more twists and turns ahead. And that, of the many voices in this world I imbue with power, mine must be one.

I took a deep breath, smiled at JoJo laying out on the heat-emanating patio.

You’ve got this.

Back inside, I tuned the radio to a familiar station as Beyonce’s Halo queued up. It’d been an ode to self-care and self-affirmation—to which I’d listened repeatedly as I sat collapsed in a field across the country two years prior, having lost what I’d carefully built.

“I know you’re my saving grace. You’re everything I need and more…”

As the melody drew on, I rounded the corner into the hallway and caught a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror propped against the wall. My hair was a mess and my arms were tanned by hours of yard work.

After a few more lyrics, I turned out the light, a smile creeping across my face as the light’s mirrored refraction dimmed and the room grew dark.

***

Sweaty, I drove across town in my dented pickup with one mud flap and three hubcaps and a crackling speaker that zoned in and out blaring a horrible pop song that I hollered out the open windows. I coasted through my old neighborhood, past the darkened rooms where I used to live, and rolled to a stop.

The speaker crackled a new song to life, and I flicked the turn signal—and rattled down the avenue, into the night, back home.