Overwhelmed

What is fear? What does it feel like when it wells, and pushes at the seams and into bones and corners and is so thick, like heat, like bananas, like couches with wooden feet...
Anthony didn't want to come out of this room when the tutor came. His mom tried to reassure the tutor: "oh, he'll be just a second..." she said, "...oh, just a minute... I can't imagine what could be the issue." And the tutor sat in the tile living room by the bouquet of dried flowers, by a bright turquoise wall, watching on Telemundo as a Florida family cried, begged a brother to quit shooting up. The addict cried, silently, not looking up. In perfect fashion of the immigrant community, the younger siblings didn't speak spanish, and the show's host had to translate for the sobbing audience.
I sat there and watched with my student's grandma, drinking water, thinking about how clean and new everything always seems to be in latino houses. Wall-to-wall cream tiles that smell like Tilex, dangerously slippery. Floral print high-backed couches. Polished glass-inlaid dining table. Finally Anthony came out of his room, puffy-faced from yelling, crying- holding it all back and not knowing- shoulders at his ears, telling me his name through closed lips.
I had gotten off the train a few stops early and walked twenty minutes to get to the house. It's 40 minutes outside Manhattan, a world away. I walked by parking lots, down sidewalks squeezed by five-foot-tall weeds, past paint cans dumped on a corner. There were as many police as civilians on the street. It's so airy, spacious after weeks in Manhattan... industrial and bodegas and graffiti. I turned right at the McDonalds into a residential area, passed a Catholic school, two Green Thumb gardens, an outreach center, lots of halloween decorations. From the piles of pink plastic shit leaned against buildings, it seems that Wall Mart was having a sale.
I had been nervous outside the Capellan house, pausing at the gleaming silver and gold gate, feeling out of breath. I ate a fun-size Butterfinger and that was delicious. Then I went in, ready to scare tears into Anthony's bones.