On Friday, May 15, a pipe burst in our bedroom wall. It happened while we slept, quietly and without drama. I noticed when I stood in the bathroom brushing my teeth, poking at my swollen under-eyes. I haven’t slept more than four straight hours in over a year. I hear dripping—gentle, musical—inside the wall that separates our bedroom and our bathroom. I stand quietly and listen for awhile.

Within the hour, our house is invaded. Clomping work boots traipse in and out. I see a nursing bra laying in the middle of the bedroom floor and feel embarrassed for its dowdiness—big plastic clasps at the shoulders to be undone with fumbling hands to quiet a hungry baby. 

We need to leave, the wall to be gutted. We pack quickly—our baby, Wolfe, wailing as we pass him back and forth. Fleeing in the middle of a global pandemic feels wrong. We’ve been carefully sheltered in our home and now we are being thrust out into the world against our will. 

We head North to my parents. The streets are abandoned, the city of Los Angeles still sheltered in place. We fly up the 5 north. I feel like crying.

Eventually we make the transfer from the 5 North to the 118 West via a big sweeping bridge that takes you up and around in an almost complete circle before gently depositing you into the right lane. After a few miles, we begin the slow climb up Rocky Peak—I remember a decade ago my old Volkswagen Beetle would sputter and stall coming up this hill. It was always after a night out in LA, after crashing on someone’s couch or sharing a full-size bed with three girlfriends. I would reek like cigarettes and cheap beer and shut off my air and pray to god that my car would make it to the top.

Now, in 2020, my husband glides our car easily up, up, up the mountain. It’s not as exciting. 

We loop around Rocky Peak and descend into Simi Valley. My hometown. 

Simi Valley is a town of yellowing grass baseball diamonds and fast food restaurants and thrift stores and horses. At night, trains rumble quietly through it and coyotes howl from its sleepy hills. The 118 West grips to the side of a mountain covered in prehistoric-looking rock formations and descends into town where you are greeted suddenly—JARRINGLY, like a disfigured ghost appearing around the corner—by a garishly huge smiley face burned into a hillside. There’s different folklore about how it got there. I’m still not sure of the answer. 

My parents live off of Kuehner Drive, in old Simi Valley. Nestled in the rocky hills—rising up and grazing the stringy white clouds that seem omnipresent—there hides old Western movie sets and Charles Manson’s former haunts and an old defunct train station. There’s no place like Simi Valley. It’s yellowed and sun bleached and always smells faintly of cigarettes and gasoline and frying animal fat. It seems to fight actively against the natural beauty that surrounds it, shaking it off and boldly growing jarring stucco strip malls and overly remodeled gas stations. 

We greet my parents who for months we’ve seen only through windows. It’s a reunion—sudden and clunky. We’ve been quarantined since early March. Suddenly we are all together, without masks. It feels wrong. A clandestine rule breaking. We have no choice, I tell myself.

After several slow and lazy hours, I feel itchy. I have to get out. My husband is sitting at my parents’ desk editing his last round of isolation portraits.

“Do you want to shoot some more while we’re here?”

“Portraits?”

“Yeah.”

“Who do we know here?”

I think. I grew up with a huge and sprawling group of friends in Simi Valley. We bonded over feeling different, as many adolescent friendships are formed. In this case, however, we were right. We were different. Simi Valley is painfully conservative with a dark history. The Rodney King trial was held here, a black man brutalized by police officers with his fate resting in the hands of a predominantly white jury. The Ronald Reagan Presidential library juts out of a mountain top on Simi Valley’s west end, his body buried in the soil—a grotesque reminder of the thousands of gay men who lost their lives to AIDS under his watch. I went to a homecoming dance there. 

We have our own stories too—I remember in 2003, I sat in Algebra 2 wearing a scratchy shirt that declared George W. Bush an international terrorist. Before class ended, the boy sitting behind me took his pencil and dug it into my ribs. He later enrolled in the army. That same year my high school principal blared “We’ll Put a Boot in Your Ass” over the crackly loud speakers on the second anniversary of 9/11.  

Many of us scattered as soon as we could—landing in San Francisco and Seattle and Los Angeles. Our hometown became a punchline at bars, on first dates—“you won’t BELIEVE where I grew up!”

Most of us have stayed away, but a few have settled down here. I scroll through my Instagram followers, sending messages to those who live in Simi Valley currently.

Responses roll in and we make a map and a schedule. I drive this time—I still know this town by heart. I used to go on long drives through Simi alone when I was a teen, smoking Camel Lights and listening to Jenny Lewis’ warbling voice.

Driving the streets, I notice it feels as though the current pandemic doesn’t exist here. There are few masks. No lines outside of grocery stores. I wonder if this is what the rest of the country feels like. Los Angeles has been a bubble of anxiety and protocol—all hand sanitizer and cloth masks and long lines outside of markets. 

Our first stop is Ashley and Levon. They’re at an abandoned elementary school. Ashley is making big uncertain loops in the empty parking lot on her brand new red roller skates. She’s shaky but looks incredible—long wheat-colored braids and perfect white teeth. Her new boyfriend, Levon, rolls around nearby on his skateboard. His pug Norm chases and yaps. No Doubt is blaring out of a Bluetooth speaker. They have the bubbling and sweet energy of new love. It’s infectious.

We’re hungry and the baby needs to sleep. We roll through a drive thru and eat grilled chicken burritos and crispy fries as “Baby Shark” plays on a loop over the car speakers. We’re parked in front of an abandoned tanning salon. “Life’s a Beach!” it proclaims loudly. I tell my husband I used to go tanning there once a week. He laughs. Our masks are dangling from the rear view mirror.

Throughout the day, James and I remark on something I’ve never quite noticed before. Every street we’ve driven down has boasted dozens of what seems to be the exact same house over and over and over. It’s hard to describe—like a cheap fusion of Greek and colonial. It’s always a boxy two-story house in a faded pastel with these hideous pillars in front of it. We can’t figure it out—and I don’t understand how I’ve never noticed. They’re EVERYWHERE—so much so that it’s beginning to feel like that horrible panic when a sound is looping and you can’t make it stop. What is this style? We’re flabbergasted. It’s like a fallen Grecian empire— these pillars repeating over and over and over.

“Another one,” we say when we see a pillar house.

“Another one.”

For our next shoot, we head clear across town and wind through the Santa Susana Knolls. We arrive at Holly and Herman’s house.

It’s perched on a steep gravel road. They have a new baby, Sunny, who sleeps peacefully in Holly’s arms. James shoots them standing in the middle of the street. We chat briefly, commiserating on lack of sleep. Holly’s long hair is pulled back into pigtails, and she looks young. In their garage, a checkered floor and two vintage cars are on display. We drive away and my husband remarks that there are really cool people in Simi Valley. He’s surprised. I laugh.

We stop back at my parents house as the sun begins to dip behind the rocky hills. We eat barbecue chicken sandwiches and cold coleslaw as we pass the baby around—we forgot to pack a high chair. I drink a sticky glass of lemonade while their dog, Jem—the only surviving member of a trio of dogs I grew up with named Jem, Boo, and Scout—licks my toes.

I’m exhausted, but invigorated by the day. I love Simi Valley. I can’t help it.

After dinner, we head back out. We arrive at Jay and Kristina’s—they lived tucked away in a bottom floor apartment on Alamo Street. We chat with them as they stand on their balcony. Jay is flourishing in quarantine—he’s bursting with ideas and projects and plans. Kristina is fading a bit. She tells us in her soft voice that she’s considering changing career paths—the salon she works at is shuttered indefinitely. When we leave, we make a big swinging left turn onto a wide empty road.

“Special magic,” I say. 

My husband smiles. It’s a secret phrase we use. He reaches out and squeezes my arm. 

We set out for one final shot, Kenita and Brian. I haven’t seen Kenita in years. She and her sister Danielle—called Woo—were my best friends in high school. They were intoxicating to me, breathtakingly beautiful and cool and funny. They used to live in a house with their mom and youngest sister. They were like dolls—the whole family with long dark hair and thick eyelashes and tanned skin. I remember their home was so overwhelmingly feminine. It was full of mirrors and always smelled like vanilla. I loved being there. 

Kenita just bought a house with her husband, Brian. It’s nestled right next to the 118. When we arrive, they’ve just completed a day of ripping up their front yard. The driveway is lined with blue cinderblocks and trash bags full of mulch. Danielle is there too. It feels so good to see them. They exclaim over my baby and he waves and laughs. We catch up and James’ camera clicks away. I’m suddenly struck with the overwhelming urge to move back to Simi Valley. I’ve grown fatigued with Los Angeles, and the day has felt so peaceful and quiet. Maybe I want to live in a pillar house.

We return to my parents house and retire for the night. Our landlord calls—it will be days before it’s safe to return home. 

We give Wolfe a bath and he screams—he’s terrified of this bathtub. We pull him out as fast as we can and he sighs and shudders, tears glistening on his eyelashes. 

That night, we three sleep together on a pull out couch in the living room. It’s uncomfortable and cramped. The open window lets in a breeze, but we’re still all sweaty. James falls asleep in minutes, holding Wolfe in his arms. I’m up and down for hours—eating a cold piece of chicken in front of the fridge and itching a bug bite on my ankle with my foot. I can’t sleep.

I go to the bathroom, the door clicking loudly behind me. I didn’t grow up in this house—my parents moved here a only a few years ago. I don’t know how to be quiet in this house yet. 

I rummage through the medicine cabinet and find a bottle of sleeping pills. It’s 1:30 in the morning. I take one, swallowing it dry. 

I ease back onto the pull out sofa. The creaking wakes up my husband. He opens his eyes and reaches his hand out, softly brushing my forehead.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

I close my eyes and pray for sleep. 

That night I dream of rows and rows of pillar houses.