Throat of the Americas

“hhhhhhhhrrrrrrrr…”

Little bits of rocky debris, collected over many decades laboring in the Americas, twister about beginning their journey. They rumble alive. The earthy bits are brought up through squishy canals dusted by the fields of New Jersey. Near the completion of their migration upward, the rocky bits brought up from the depths rumble at the edges of the dusted throat—they clear, almost clear, but never clear. Mere rumblings, not there yet there in the sound of my father’s body, his attempt at—

“hhhhhhhhrrrrrrrr…”

This is the only sound produced in my father’s truck when he drives me home from the train station. He does not tell me about his day, neither do I. He does not tell me how work is going, nor do I. He does not tell me he has severe anxiety from worrying about immigration catching him and deporting him, and I do not tell him I worry for him. He does not want to burden me with his life, he sees his life as a burden, his burden alone to bear, and I feel the same about mine. Like father, like son.

Near the beginning of the journey, I want to make contact. It has been months since I have seen him, months since I have heard his voice.

“Te traje esos bizcochos Domincanos que te gustan.”

“Gracias.”

Our conversation ends there. There is no musicality in our exchange, no harmony, no duration. They are brief and weighted. They are friction and eruption. Alive, so alive, yet dead upon impact. They thrive in impermanence. We say what we say when we have to say it. We say what we need to say by not saying it. This is our inheritance. The silence his mother gave him, the silence he gives me, the silence I give so many. Nuestra América.

I can only deduce this generational silence as a tactic. A tactic we have forgotten was a tactic, done purposively throughout these centuries on this changing continent. We can no longer remember our ancestors having been forcibly silenced, and those ancestors who used their silence as a means of resistance, interception, preservation, sabotage, communicating. We no longer know—

“hhhhhhhhrrrrrrrr…”

It is these attempts at clearing which comprise our forty-five-minute ride home. The van’s atmosphere doesn’t help either. Every surface is coated with a thick dust. Grains of sand whirr about. The must of mulch from the back wafts into my nostrils. The overwhelming scent of burlap and steel and vegetal life saturates my skin. The air coming in through the window does not nullify the smell like I always believe it is doing but instead circulates it, strengthens it. My father’s life compromises my New York City sensibility, my urbanized body schema which no longer can stave off this rural New Jersey terrain. My body sounds out just like his. I try to clear my throat in vain, clear it in the name of—

“hhhhhhhhrrrrrrrr…”

There he goes again. His efforts at clearing out the Americas accumulated in him. The rocky bits bounce against the soft tissue. I can hear what will not make itself visible. The visual component of our lives tells me but half the story, if even half. The visual tells me my father is strong, he does not get exhausted, he has not suffered. The visual tells me his bosses do not stiff him of money, he does not grow nervous when a police car passes us on the road. The visual tells me he is a good, composed, and a quiet immigrant who in no way shape or form threatens the whi—

“hhrrrrrrrrrrrmmm…”

This van, this toxic environment produced by my father’s labors, mutates me. The insufficiencies of the eyes, the inadequacies of the ears, the deficiencies of my other sensory perceptions are done and over with. I am attuned, tuned into, tuning my body to the motions and nuances and momentums and uprisings of my father’s body. For the first time, I am in my body in full and I can perceive his body in full. Everything a closeness. No detail goes unobserved, no relation abstract or invisible or distant goes unanalyzed. Past and present and future, Mexico and United States and the Americas—all is presence in my mutation, all is col—

“hhhhhhhhrrrrrrrr…”

The clearing of the throat tells me the story of my father he cannot tell me, and, yes, even those stories he does not want to tell me. It is the story of the disintegrating body. The body under duress, the duress of these Americas lived out through the body. The aftermath of those voyages and conquests and conversions and discoveries all embodied, the body a history and a testament and a proof of a continental transformation. The utopic vision of those conquistadors from yesterday a scheme grand and magnificent and planet changing, this utopia they named the Americas is our most unremarkable dystopia. It is no classic epic, no six-figure book deal, no Hollywood blockbuster. It does not demand our attention because we have been trained never to see it as worthy of attention. It is the disintegration of a body overworked, unable to rest, the ongoingness of anxiety and stress and worry, continuing on behalf of cultivating a utopia we do not reap but the—

“hhhhrrrrmmmmm…”

The flesh maps the maps of flesh map the flesh flesh map the flesh mapping out the map of my father fleshing out this American dystopia.

—

Marcos Gonsalez is an essayist living in New York City. His essay collection about growing up a gay son of an undocumented immigrant in white America, Pedro’s Theory: Essays, is represented by agent Lauren Abramo and is currently on submission with publishers. His essays can be found at Electric Literature, Catapult, and The New Inquiry, among others.