Black Lung

When the dust settles, it settles right in your lungs. Black lung will never let you forget that.

Coal is a carbon sink. Why is coming home at night always the worst part? The warm yellow that sunrise promised is no longer; instead, the moonlight produces a kind of darkness that eyes stop receiving color from. I feel my face begin to morph into the negative space of the window and gray fabric interior of my mom’s car. I know I won’t make it to school the next day. All my energy had been burned away. When did this fuel form? Hundreds of millions of years ago. Plants began to rot, drooping, slowly contorting themselves into the ground. Over time, the decomposing remains pressed deeper into the Earth, covered in new soil. Hardened. I spent the car ride home drifting off into shards of thought about my classes that day. Brief moments of the dull constant produced by my brain are interrupted with disjointed ideas for my 4th period presentation about pneumoconiosis, a disease caused through the repeated inhalation of various forms of dust. Black lung, the most common form, is from coal. The disease, once developed, only continues to progress. Carl Bailey, a miner of 28 years, had black lung. The pressure and heat overwhelm the remnants of water in the dead plants. Every day, slight change: deeper and deeper, and what used to be a cornerstone of ecosystem, a form of life which brought more life, turns to black. Unrecognizable, irreversible damage turns the fleshy green plant into the coal which killed Carl Bailey. When burned, the fuel source releases carbon dioxide, and I am reminded that coal is a time sink. The lungs wear your heart out. The work is just so tiring. Going to class isn’t difficult; it’s the performance that is. I used to love learning, and school was an escape, a place that promised future. Depression flares. Everyone keeps moving, though. The movement is exhausting, keeping focus, acting normal. I drift through the day with the weight that is expectation, not that it’s heavy, just loaded. I have to be normal, I have to keep focus, but worst of all, I have to keep moving. I spend the night working, researching for my presentation. His day began before sunrise. An hour drive, Central Appalachia, deep within the mountains. He operates the mining equipment, all colored a stark, blinding yellow, which remains brightly visible, even in the darkness of the caves. He wears a yellow hard hat and a neon yellow vest, for safety. The yellow is supposed to protect him. The yellow tells everyone around him that he is safe, and no one minds the dust any longer. The job pays well. He provides for his family. Mining was a future that flowed smoothly through to him, like plants absorbing the soil’s nutrients below. But when the noxious remnants of hard metal made their way into the Earth, a plant with foundations as deep as his had no choice. I wake to a buzz from my phone, an email response from my teacher. It reads: “Dear student, I’m sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, I cannot offer you an extension at this time.” The lungs inflame, attempting to free itself of the tiny foreign invaders making a home of its skin. It fails. Instead, the lung’s inner walls fill with scratches, then wounds, from its failed defenses. Cuts begin to scar. Back to work. On the way to the pit, he rerouted when the road’s bloodied surfaces were too much to drive through. He never once stops to think that the hard, asphalt black he moves over will one day match that of his own lungs, or that maybe the red spinning on his tires was a sign he should have stopped. Empty, heavy, grief-less. I can’t remember how I used to breathe. I show up to school, all forces pushing me to believe there is no other choice. My teachers seem to look at me with impatient disdain, and as I tell myself it’s all in my head, I can see the dust all over my body. I realize they aren’t looking at me, but the trail of black I’ve left behind. What they can’t realize is that washing it from my skin does not free it from my lungs. The warm yellow sunrise on the way to work was breathtaking. The normal silence he drove with was interrupted with painful coughs and tightness, like a hug of barbed wire. Eventually, by the time he reached the pit, the coughing ceased and so too did the thoughts that something was wrong. He worked as he usually did, avoiding trouble from his boss for slowing down, and drove home in darkness, pulling over to catch his breath. He worked in the mines for 7 more years. Your scar tissue is not preferred. The greatest destruction came from a life that was supposed to provide. I mostly keep to myself, my brain and body scarred from overexertion, unable to perform regularly. He no longer has the chance to talk, each phrase punctuated with a sharp, gasping inhale. The green, metal tank that supplements his oxygen only seems to scare people away. He stays in bed mostly, relying on his wife and children to support him now. I think of Carl Bailey as I stare at my window, a slit of light between my curtains, highlighting millions of pieces of dust floating carelessly in the air. With all my better judgement, I can’t help but resist the thought that all the dust will soon settle in me. Continuing to breathe became his fight, but remaining the person he used to be was even harder. The person he used to be worked until he was breathless. So now, in bed, the life he was promised drifts away as he exhales, finally, and slumps towards the blinding yellow. ■

 
Layout: Amyan Tran
Photographer: Ximena Hernandez
Stylist: Shreya Ravi Shankar & Grecia del Bosque
HMUA: Varshini Byreddy
Nails: Isha Manjunath
Models: Anaid Gonzalez &  Aleya Abdullah

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