Your Suitcase Is Heavy

Elizabeth Weld

In Massachusetts, if somebody doesn’t want you, they leave you standing on top of a hill. They do this. There are certain requirements, of course, such as a giant supply of private funding—i.e., a rich grandmother—and a suitcase in your hand, and secret arrangements that have been made beforehand.
    You do not know what is happening. You were taken out the night before this and given lobster. Your father gave you a small wrapped box with a gold necklace inside, and you are wearing it now.
    When you are left on the hill, you yell obscenities at the back of your father’s car. It is a Volvo, and the taillights spark a strange fit of yelling in you, an obscenity stream.
    You asked your father just before he left what the hell was happening here, taking certain liberties with language because of your circumstance, and he said to relax and look at the house. Your great-great-grandfather built it. Why? To give his wife a place to die. She had Alzheimer’s.
    You will not die here, you think. You make a quick note to yourself to die at home. If your fire is going out, which you never thought it would, it will happen in your home.
    Home is chaos. He is newly unemployed, and she no longer interested in being married. What will people say? They are talking about you, hearing updates. It is a pity, a shame, terrible, it breaks their hearts. Their hearts go out to you. A star magnified by absence, you are light-years away.
    When they leave you on the hill, your ancient secret fear that they are criminals steps up, ripe. Is he a cruel man, your father? You have had this dream before. This is life for you, starting over on a hill.
    Before he left, your father led you toward the house that your dead relative built, but he did not enter. He stopped at the porch. So did you. He told you your brother would start school on Monday. You told him he was already in school, and he shook his head. Boarding school, he means. They are trying something new this year. What’s its name? He can’t remember. Anyway, you should write him.
    Your heart won’t process. It spares you.
    You should call home, he says, and tell how it is.
    How what is?
    And then the drama of him leaving: instead of answering, he climbs into his car, backs up whining, spins gravel from under the old ungrateful tires, and sets off down the hill. You are a witness. You thought you were taking part in this mystery, but you can do nothing but stare. This is not your plot. You thought he would roll down his window and you could tell him to let you back in, and instead you are listening to him crunch away down the drive. And so you unloose your wicked obscenities.

After cursing your father you note that many people are watching you, people you feel afraid of, adults in housecoats and men in the wrong size pants. These people are standing on the porch of the wonderful house your relative built, smoking cigarettes. You feel strange, not full of great emotion, like in the movies, where children yell and chase their fathers down the road. You are stunned and curious, and you want a cigarette. At nearly seventeen you are a smoker, and this becomes your thought: get a cigarette.
    Getting a cigarette is not always one two three. You are nearly seventeen, a girl used to being in school at this time of day, and now you are standing in the driveway in front of oddly dressed adults smoking on a porch, and so you pause. There has just been a scene that seems embarrassing now, given your yelling and the thought that these are not people with parents but parents themselves.
    You are afraid and lonely. You feel very young for the first time in your life.
    You look at the house, huge, brick, four floors, white balconies above the porch, and rows of windows lining each story. This is an old building, what looks like a mansion, and the white balcony matches the white wooden ornamentation on the roof. The driveway you stand on is circular and passes under the foliage of the large tree in front of the steps, then curves back down the hill. The steps lead to the porch, where your audience stands smoking.
    This does not look like a hostile situation. It looks like a mistake. You decide to strike out on your own for a cigarette, and you check your pocket for money and walk down the driveway, down the hill.

Another person joins you. He says he is Jim.
    He is huge; the biggest, tallest, widest person you have ever seen. He has red hair and red skin. He seems to wear normal clothes, but you cannot tell, because he is so much bigger than you.
    You keep walking. Jim walks too. Can he come along? he wants to know.
    You say okay, but you are only going to buy cigarettes.
    Well he doesn’t smoke or he’d give you one. But he knows where a Walgreen’s is. And he feels like walking.
    Okay.

You walk with Jim, who wheezes beside you, because you don’t know what else to do and because he is definitely an adult and will be able to buy cigarettes. The road is black and steep, much steeper than you thought driving. There is a dark pine forest on each side. Things are not unpleasant, though with every step your foot smacks the ground and jars your knees. Between the trees the sky is blue and empty.
    Jim doesn’t press you for talk, and you appreciate this. A plane crosses the clear light between the high, dark sides of pine and drags its contrails over you.
    It is okay, you think. Things are okay. You don’t know what things.
At the bottom of the hill is a huge iron gate, painted black and left very open. This concerns you. Why is there a gate? Beyond the gate the sidewalk and street hum with importance, calling you. Across the street is a cement square surrounded by four roads, so that there is a bus stop just across from you and then a Walgreen’s on the far side, all the way across. This is the world, you think. I am fine.
    You ask Jim what the gate is for.
    Oh, it’s so old, he doubts they could close it if they wanted to. It’s from long ago, when things were different, before you were born. We’re all free here to come and go.
    You hope he doesn’t mean you. You hope he didn’t mean you when he said we. You can’t seem to get him all in one view; he blows your perspective, and you follow him across the square to Walgreen’s.

Coming back is not easy. Climbing the hill, you smoke one of the cigarettes he bought for you, fiddling with the blue lighter he bought for you, and walk a short distance before noticing his breathing.
    Hang on, he says. He needs a minute. He has asthma, the kind that’s exercise-induced.
    You stop and pace around. It is embarrassing to watch him gasp. The trees seem incredibly tall now. They are pulling your silent core from you. The black road is too empty and the sky too far away. The contrails have faded.
    You whistle, then remember you don’t know Jim, and you stop. You wipe the road with your foot, then do it again.
    Soon he is ready to go. But soon he needs to stop again. He looks odd, purplish in this light. You wonder if he has ever done this before.
    He just wants to stop for a little while, to rest. It is a bitch getting old. He’s not young, sprightly like you, a gangly youth. You’re so fit. Just look at you.
    You feel odd when he says bitch and gangly and sprightly and fit. You smoke again. A bad panicky feeling gathers power in your chest, and you pay attention to it.

When you reach the top of the hill, where the old house now seems familiar, you are relieved. Only one person is left smoking on the porch. Regardless, coming out of the trees makes you feel good.
    Your suitcase is gone. You do not know why you left it in the driveway. You did not know where to put it. You are not familiar with thievery.
    The smoking person on the porch is wearing a purple sweat suit. She has badly cut hair, brown, that sticks out on one side. You stop and light another cigarette, hoping she will see it and speak to you. You do not look up. You want to shake Jim, who thinks you are young and sprightly and fit and wants to look at you and makes you nervous, although you do not know why.
    The woman on the porch points at you with her cigarette. Here you are, she says. You’re new.
    No, you say, my suitcase is missing.
    Oh, they brought that inside.
    The panicky feeling takes over. Your stomach threatens your breathing. You have to go in the house now, but where is your father? You are willing to apologize; what is he doing? It has been a while.
    You hold the black pipe rail and climb the stairs. The porch has benches around the edge and ashtrays in each corner, great industrial ones with fish tank gravel. Everything here seems painted black, except for the door, which is white and huge. The shiny steel knob is surrounded by a steel plate that looks newer than the door. You are already noticing that certain things are newer than the rest of the house.
    The door opens outward. You step into a foyer and push open the next door and step onto a soft, maroon carpet. Plush, you think. This is plush. You are in a large open room with a wide carpeted stairway leading up to the left, the dark wooden banister posts ornately carved, and open French doors on the right, their grid of small squares reflective and shining. In the room beyond the French doors, a chandelier hangs above wheeled desk chairs that line the walls. There is a chandelier above you too. Directly in front of you is something like a wooden concession stand, and behind it a hall crosses left and right.
    You feel sick. You turn around. There is a person next to you. You turn away and see the room with many desk chairs. You turn back and see the person.
    He is tall but not huge. He has dark hair and khaki pants and a button-down shirt. His hair has been cut recently, and he is cleanly shaven.
    He is standing next to you. He wants to talk to you. His name is Greg. Don’t worry, they have your things. He wants to show you your room, the place. You’ll find that it is nice here.
    You want to yell where is my father, but you are too afraid. You want to tell him you do not want or need a room, but you are unable to. You look out the window by the door, and the driveway is empty.
    Greg walks to the stairs and stops, his hand on the banister. He needs to tell you something.
    You look at the carpet. You do not want to hear anything else; you have heard enough. But you do not say this.
    You are very young, he says. You are younger than the usual resident. They don’t normally allow people your age to live here, but you are a special circumstance, and the others don’t mind. Live. Special circumstance. Live.
    Given this, your older neighbors will have their own issues, which he is not inclined to share with you. But in one case he wants to be blunt. He is legally required to be. It is about Jim. You should not be with Jim. Jim is a pedophile. It is Greg’s job to inform you of these things, but on the other hand, he doesn’t want to frighten you, especially given the shock he’s sure you’re already experiencing. This is a nice place where you will feel safe and free. Pedophile. Safe and free. Pedophile.
    Do you understand?
    You nod, although you do not, not really. Pedophile is a word you have heard at school. You want your mother.
    Can I call my mother?
    Of course. Let him show you your room first, and then he’ll show you the phone. The phones are standard pay phones, but they’re in private booths with comfortable—
    Can you call right now? Can you call a different state?
    You can use a calling card or credit card, or call collect.
    You have twenty-two dollars and change in your pocket. You will call her collect. Could you please call now, and then you’ll see your room?
You find yourself alone in a wooden phone booth, or what seems to be a small phone closet. You try to shut the door and pull too hard and feel it slam. Then you have to read the directions three times before you can actually place your call.
    When you call your mother collect, she answers and sighs and says your name.
    You find that her voice, the very second you hear it, inspires tears, causes the panic in your chest to rush up into your mind, so that you have to pull on the cord and grip the cord and huddle close to the cool phone, as if the phone were your mother. Your mother smells like lotion. You tell her what he did, leaving you here, no, first taking you out for lobster—
    She interrupts to tell you that that was nice.
    And then leaving you here. She sighs.
    You wipe your nose on the back of your hand and breathe out. Then, because you are shut in an airless phone closet with your mother and no tissues, you wipe your hand on your jeans. You wipe your eyes with the heel of your palm again and again. You wait in her silence.
    She eventually comes up with this: she wants you to hang on, okay? Just hold on. Everything is crazy right now.
    What does that mean?
    It means it is complicated; you should be having this conversation with your father.
    What about until then?
    She reminds you that you like to read.
    Because you are nearly seventeen and shut in a small airless room with a phone and your mother, having lost track of your father an hour or so earlier in the driveway, him traveling into the horizon in his car, having lost track of your suitcase soon after that while getting cigarettes with your pedophile companion, you panic. You lose it right here, on the phone.
    You say, What’s going on, Mom? This is illegal or something. She tells you to calm down, you need to be calm. You say, Where is my father? and she tells you she will have him call you. This is a giant clue that your future is bleak: he is in this state with you, returning to that state, without you, where he’ll call you here.
    Mom, you say, Mom. Please, Mom, please. Don’t do this to me. Then you stop, unsure of what she’s doing. You try to calm down. Mom, you say, this isn’t fair. This isn’t fair.
    You hear yourself and begin to understand how stuck you are. You look at the phone, which looks like a pay phone. You say, Am I supposed to sleep here?
    She is quiet.
    Then your nearly seventeen-year-old desperate penchant for exaggeration takes over and causes you to say, There are pedophiles here! You have pluralized Jim, but who knows who else is here? This fact will cause her to remove you.
    Well thank God, she says, they’re off the streets. Don’t you think?
    The rest of this conversation does not matter. Mom please, Mom please, the full-fledged weeping, your repetitions of Please and This isn’t fair, all lead to her saying: Now I love you, but I’m hanging up now.
    This does not cause you to exit the phone closet. Even though there is no air in here, you know that out there is Greg and your room, and in here is hope. You think you were being too insistent, probably, and you decide to calm down and try again.
    Your collect call is not accepted.
    This doesn’t make you leave the booth either. Because you are terrified and desperate, you try again four or five times. And even after that there is the collecting of yourself, wiping your face with your hands and sucking in through your nose and wiping your hands on your thighs and taking deep tanky breaths, until you can find a tiny respite from tears and open the door.
    Your suitcase is heavy. It is yellow and hard, the old-fashioned kind. It does not occur to you to open it until Greg has left you. This is not actually your room, but it is half your room. The other half has a bed with a blue comforter on it, heaped by the wall, with plastic bags of Sweetarts sitting crooked in the folds; a wooden dresser and wooden night table; and framed pictures of a man and a woman, a dog, and a family playing football. Jeans and sweatshirts and tennis shoes are strewn around the floor.
    Your half has a wooden nightstand, just like the other person’s; a wooden dresser, just like the other person’s; and an identical twin bed. The mattress on the bed is covered in thick plastic. Your suitcase is here, sitting heavily on the thin mattress.
    When Greg leaves you to your privacy, you grab the suitcase and drag it off the bed. This is when you notice its weight; it took two hands to pull it to the floor, a task that you had no reason to perform, as you will probably put it back on the bed to open it. You have never felt such a quiet in your mind before. Your thoughts are absent, ticking fog. You do not know what to do with yourself. Time stops and starts, over and over. You don’t remember if it always does.
    After crossing the room in order to stare at yourself in the mirror above the dresser, you turn back to your bed and consider the suitcase. Certain questions appear in your mind for the first time, forming in the static taking over there.
    Who packed this?
    Across from you is a round window, the old kind. This house would be nice if only it were a house.
    When you arrived last night, you had lobster. You pulled your pajamas out of a backpack. Where is that? You dressed in these jeans and long-sleeved Pixies shirt this morning because you had packed them in your backpack. You should have a backpack. This suitcase did not appear until your father hauled it from his yawning trunk and left you both on the hill. It is your suitcase, though, or your mother’s. A family suitcase, one you have seen since you were little.

The door is open. You cross the carpet and close it. No one is in the hall. The door shuts well.
    Then the door opens. You jump afraid onto your bed. You lie still with your arms crossed over your trembly heart, keeping your ankles crossed and lying on your side, staring hard at the wall. You move into this white wall. Every wall that you have ever stared at from any bed in your life has looked like this, thick paint, white, sluggish, and beneath it, this wall topography.
    The person who opened the door has a cold perfume smell that she drags around the room. She breathes heavily through her nose. You feel her watching your back, and you close your eyes. This is better.
    Your brother breathes through his nose. You heard him when you were kids and slept in the same room, and he muttered and grit his teeth all night.
    You turn and see that she is old, with gray, frayed, short, doll hair, undone. She is turned around humming in a lavender coat.
    You look back at the wall.
    You can ignore anyone. This wall is something. Surely, surely you will be fine. What is important now is that you do not cry, and you won’t. These things take decisions.
    Soon you hear whispering music from her Discman, and you turn and see her sitting on her bed adjusting her headphones, writing on stationery paper on a cardboard box sitting in her lap. She sits like someone in a pew.
    You open your suitcase. Your pajamas are right there, on top.
    You will not make eye contact. She wants to ask, you know, but you cannot talk here. You do not know a single thing about yourself. You are surprised to see an envelope with your name on it, written in blue ink with a bic pen. It is a sealed letter from your mother, tucked neatly beside your socks.
    What you will not do is read this letter. You will end this day. It is not time to unpack.
    The woman leaves, and you pull your pajamas out, pink and periwinkle, flannel, and feel suddenly horrified by the woman’s absence. You miss her. It is not fair.
    You kick your shoes off and yank your jeans to your ankles, then push them off with your feet. You have clicks and whistles for thoughts, like the old cliché you never understood. You never understood the one about glass houses either.
    You don’t remember if this is how things normally feel. You peel off your shirt and twist into your pajama top and hop twice into your pants. When she returns you are dressed, breathless, and twisted.
    She is holding sheets. She turns and closes the door behind her, then turns to you, offering the soggy pile. They are heavy and white, and under them is a white woolen blanket.
    She has wet, brown, anxious eyes.
    You take the sheets and try to nod, but she waves you off and turns back to her bed. You watch her rummage through the packages of Sweetarts. Old people are better at these kinds of things than you. They have had so much more practice meeting people. You want to say thank you, but you cannot. Your words are gone, and your mouth is dry, and your mind is full of static.
    You make your bed carefully. You fix hospital corners the way your grandmother taught you. Your mother and father do not care about things like made beds and hospital corners, but they are very important to you. When you slide in, your legs feel pressed and heavy, and the sheets feel cold and sullen. You put your feet together and press to take the pressure off your knees. You hold them together for warmth.

Watch the wall. This is not a time for crying but for even breathing. The wall is white, the white swimming out in even blurring. There are hypnotists and meditators in the world, and you would like to meet them. Maybe you could become one.
    As long as you keep breathing, this pain will ease away. When your brother was little, his sweat smelled like pee. This seems important now. This clamping in your throat will ease off soon if you keep breathing, and you do. This matters. You lie still.

Elizabeth Weld lives in Tempe, Arizona. Her work has appeared in Arts & Letters, Crazyhorse, Fourth Genre, and Shenandoah.

“Your Suitcase Is Heavy” appears in our Summer 2004 issue.