Architectural Plans
Aria Dominguez
Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest 2025 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Nonfiction
I am a woman who knows how to select wood. I married a carpenter, Mau, and like wives of yesteryear took on his trade, his name, and built a family business. There were other things I could have done with my life, but there aren't many positions posted for philosophy majors, and I have always loved the smell of sawdust, and working with my hands.
Choosing the right pieces is essential. I revel in the ritual of sliding boards off the stack, looking down their length, twisting them this way and that to assess whether they are warped. I love the musical clacking of slabs striking each other as I shift the heaps. I enjoy how my muscles flex against the weight of a tree's heavy heart, the way my hands wrap around the edges, as if fingers were made for this embrace.
It's important to have a vision of the project so you know what you need. In some cases, a bowed 2x4 won't be problematic; in others it will push on the drywall and make the screws pop. Sometimes one marred side of finer wood is acceptable if it will be against the wall behind a built-in shelf. Knots can be aesthetically pleasing artistic whorls in a beautiful grain, or sap-leaking, hole-making complications to avoid. A twisted board is never good news and gets set aside in the stack of flawed ones, no better than firewood. I always feel a little bad for those rejects. It's not often I consciously appraise something and say, You are not good enough. I'm hesitant to mete out that judgment after spending my childhood on the receiving end of it.
When we finally realize the long-deferred dream of building a house of our own in my husband's homeland, my years of knowledge and experience feel useless. The species I am accustomed to working with do not grow in the tropics of Costa Rica, nor are they appropriate for the humid climate. There is no Home Depot on this Caribbean coast, remote from the capital. The local codes are a mystery, best practices unlearned. I picked up Spanish on a construction site and should know all the vocabulary, but that crew was mostly Mexican and I am unfamiliar with this local lingo. I realize how much I took for granted knowing what I need, how to ask for it, where to get it.
Mau isn't much help because he hasn't lived here since he was young. His entire career has been spent in suburban American subdivisions. Luckily, one of our nephews, Mainor, has done much building and gives us a crash course in this type of construction. We have always known we want a house formed of fiber, not rock. We will not be opting for the squat, dark concrete boxes so common in the area. I want to be surrounded by wood above and below and around. I want height. I want light. Mainor is delighted that my desires align with their Bribri tribe's traditional homes.
The architecture is completely different from what we are accustomed to. In Minnesota, every structure has to be on a foundation 42 inches below grade, reaching under the frost line so it doesn't buckle and heave as the ground shifts through the seasons. Here, the house must be lofted off the soil so it doesn't get devoured by termites, or weakened by the moisture of the earth. In Minnesota, insulation is a primary concern. The subzero temperatures must be kept at bay. Here, we want as much outside air as possible to enter for ventilation. Here, wind whistling through walls is welcome. We will make openings to usher it in.
We have spent so many years building other people's visions. We have put up divisions, taken down walls, added to what exists, started on fresh foundations. We have worked for free for those in need and charged a pretty penny to the few who have it to spare. We have helped homeowners revamp their spaces to fit families that are growing, and those that have splintered. Time after time we have manifested the desires of others, and finally—finally!—we are building something for ourselves. For our family. For our future. Mau has vowed that things will change, be better in a new environment. He'll be home more, share the childcare, finally keep all those promises like he's been meaning to. My stepdaughter will visit on summer break from college, and maybe the endless push and pull between her parents won't matter so much, away from their battleground. Maybe Mau will stop driving himself so hard—he's been uncharacteristically tired and barely eating. He says it's nothing, just the heat. Too sudden of a shift from frigid midwinter. Maybe everyone just needs a change of pace, a break from our hectic American life.
I spend a lot of time mulling how to prevent rot. It's a natural process, the way fungi fall upon trees that are no longer alive, decomposing cellulose into nutrients that feed the ecosystem. Microscopic organisms invisible to our eyes can turn a massive deadfall that would challenge a chainsaw into soft, crumbled loam. Anything can be disintegrated given enough time. It doesn't matter to the fungi whether they come upon a branch on the forest floor or a floorboard in a living room. I research wood treatments, the merits of stain vs. paint, how far the eaves should extend to shelter the sides. I neglect to notice the forces eating away at the supports of my own life.
I'm used to driving the truck over to our favorite local lumberyard for wood, then heading to the nearest big box store for other supplies. Here, the process is far more organic. More connected with the earth all materials come from. Mainor swings his machete at the bamboo stand on our lot, cuts the correct lengths, and deftly winds rope around the pieces—next thing I know, we have tall green ladders. We fell a few of the straightest laurel trees of the right girth to become the posts that will support the beams the floor joists will be laid on. They will keep their naturally round shape—none of that modern machine-squared uniformity.
For the rest of the lumber, we tromp into the jungle and choose trees a landowner is selling. A land "owner" who has bought into the colonial concept of possession. Who believes they have the right to exchange the lives of our arboreal relatives for monetary gain. I am uncomfortable participating in this, but the materials must come from somewhere. It forces me to face the reality of my consumption, like buying meat directly from the butcher in a bloody apron instead of from a supermarket, wrapped in clean plastic.
My favorite tree is a regal, red-barked giant up on the mountain behind us. Mainor tells me the Bribri name, kölò, and that in Spanish it is called indio pelón. I like that I don't know the English or scientific names for this species. That it has been introduced by a neighbor on a first-name basis, that I already know its nickname. Their tribe has long known its medicinal properties, and when he lists them, cicatrizar heridas stands out. In proper translation, this would be "to heal wounds." But it literally means "to scar over wounds," which is more honest.
The day Mainor fells the tree with Mau's help, I keep my six year-old son Kamu well out of the way, taking a video both because I am impressed with Mainor's skill and to remember where the tree came from. It means so much to know I will sit in my home and remember the provenance of the timber that supports me, shelters me, protects me. As chainsaw teeth bite their way past the phloem, cambrium, and xylem into heartwood, I whisper over and over, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Now the unneeded branches must be removed, the trunk cut into sections of proper length, sliced on the rented planer into beams, planks, studs, and joists. By lunchtime, the most interesting part is over and Kamu is getting bored. I can't let him romp around in the brush because of venomous snakes. I decide to take him back to my sister-in-law's home in the small town of Cahuita, where we are staying until we have our own. I wish Mau would come too—he looks peaked, worn in a way I haven't seen before. I notice he has punched a rough hole in his toolbelt—can he have lost that much weight? But he brushes me off, irritated at my concern. Mainor walks us back to the dirt road, points me down the mountain, says someone will surely come by and give us a ride to the highway. We start off under the hot midday sun. Kamu happily skips down the road, stopping to point out birds and other animals. We thrill to see a rare toucan. He follows a long trail of leaf-cutter ants hauling fragments of green to their nest, wishes he could see the fungus they are growing underground to feed on. He lays on the road and watches a group of different ants at their labors. We marvel at these tiny creatures carrying petals and stems many times larger than their own bodies. It doesn't seem like it should be possible for such minuscule legs to tip tap along without collapsing under the weight of the items hoisted overhead.
Mainor's prediction proves incorrect—we do not get a ride. I am forced to exist in the moment for once, as I have no idea how far we have come or how much farther remains. I can only put one foot in front of the other, continuing in the direction I must go. Finally we reach the highway, and I curse my luck as a bus roars past. Kamu says he would rather start walking toward Cahuita than wait with no shade for the next bus, which could be an hour. He always prefers to be in motion. I am already tired and hot and drenched with perspiration.
"You don't understand how far it is. We're miles away from town."
"Please, Mama. I don't want to sit and do nothing. That's so boring. I want to see what's on this road," he pleads. Finally I give in, figuring he will soon tire of this. I am certainly tired of it. We start off again under the relentless tropical sun.
Kamu does not tire, and hours after we first started down the mountain, we pass our plot of land. As drained as I am, it seems fitting that we have traced with our feet the route the tree will take from its birthplace to its last place. Twenty minutes later, as the sun is giving up and drifting toward the horizon, we finally arrive and I greedily glug water and splash my face. I collapse onto the bed, dizzy and sunburnt and worrying about heatstroke. Over the throbbing in my head, I hear Kamu run out to play soccer in the yard with his cousins.
When we built a friend's cabin in Vermont, a lumberjack came before us to fell hemlocks and take them to the lumberyard to be dried in a huge kiln. Here, there is no kiln, just the hot equatorial sun we trust to transform wet cellulose into something that won't warp. The same sun I sometimes feel persecuted by, that fries my unprotected skin, is necessary for the wood's seasoning. Mainor and Mau carefully stack the cut lumber, ensuring proper airflow, and leave it in the care of the sunbeams shining down. The rays will heat it until water molecules within begin to move so fast they escape in evaporation. Until it is ready to become what we need it to be.
One difference in milling our own lumber is that the sizing isn't deceptive. In the U.S., lumber is sold in "nominal sizes". A 2x4 is not actually two inches by four inches. It used to be, once upon a time, when there were still endless forests available to feed the machine of colonial progress. But now they are 1.5x3.5 inches. We all agree to pretend that what is being sold is more than it is, is what it used to be. We tiptoe around the fact of disappearing resources; we settle for less. No one states the obvious, and that could be a matter of practicality. Or it could be a shared delusion.
We are supposed to work on the plans together as the wood is drying, but it becomes increasingly apparent something is wrong with Mau's mind. He can't understand my preliminary sketches, can't comprehend conversion of feet to meters. He doesn't recall decisions we made, changes his mind, argues with everyone, gets angry when anyone corrects or questions him. We planned to hire a family friend, Beto, as a sort of low-key foreman, someone who has tools and experience, knows local codes, has local connections, and is familiar with local building materials. I am relieved to find someone to help us navigate an unfamiliar situation and keep things moving when we have to spend time visiting family members in other towns, doing paperwork, or procuring materials. But Mau is having a particularly bad day and blows the meeting meant to end with a contract and a plan to start the next morning. He is making no sense, and flips out when Beto has the gall to point it out as politely as possible. He is so rude that Beto leaves and never speaks to us again. Instead of apologizing, Mau rails the whole way home about what an idiot Beto is.
His sister is disgusted when we return. She takes me aside to admonish, "You've got to put your foot down. I don't know what's wrong with my brother, but he has no idea what he's doing. He's going to waste all your money and you'll be left with nothing. Even if you don't care about yourself, you have a responsibility to your children. You have to think of them." I am cornered in the laundry room with this woman I look up to, this woman who is housing me. Her dark eyes flash like mica, as beautiful as her brother's. Silver is starting to thread her black hair; the lines on her face mementos of hard years. She is twenty years older than me, has seen enough to speak her mind. I know she is right, but am paralyzed.
I am too ashamed to admit: I have never stood up to him.
I am trapped between my husband, losing his reasoning more by the day, his family, who have front-row seats to the implosion of my life and no shortage of opinions, and our young child, whom I want to protect but who is growing increasingly unnerved by the strangeness of his father. Buried somewhere under all that is the small stifled voice of my self, the one who came here to live out her dream.
I end up drawing the plans by myself. At night, after everyone is in bed and the only table is not being used for family meals or children doing homework, I spread out large sheets of paper, sharpen pencils, lay out the ruler and chunky eraser and the calculator for translating distances from inches and feet, which I think in, to meters and centimeters, which is what people here need to know. Even the measurements of this endeavor are bicultural and bilingual, like our family. The plans I put on paper are the ones I have long sketched upon my heart. A room for my marriage, another where my growing son will finally have his own space. My 19-year-old stepdaughter hasn't even met a boyfriend, let alone husband, but I know she will, and demarcate the spacious guest room this imaginary future family will inhabit when visiting. So far I've drawn in a double bed and a pair of bunk beds. If she has more than two kids, we'll make more furniture.
I've made sure there is enough height under the house to hang hammocks in the shade. Family visiting from their traditional territory, which the government calls a reservation, will prefer them for socializing, and some of them for sleeping. I leave enough room for tall gringos like me to not hit their heads on the beams. I hate the feeling of being watched, so I make all the windows facing the dirt lane transoms, high on the wall to let in light and air but not prying eyes, and have the large ones with a view face the green hill inhabited only by grazing cows, their necks bent down to the earth's delicious carpet. A lofted deck will salute the sunrise; I will sit and look toward the ocean before the heat of the day hits. I have never lived somewhere I felt truly secure, at ease, that was my sanctuary. I am trying hard to imagine what that would mean and make it real.
Finally, it comes—the day the hired truck delivers our piles of lumber. I know this will be my favorite part—carpentry is both of our favorite trades, and what we work best at together. I don't have Mau's nimbleness at heights, the ability to dance across a top plate like it's not three and a half inches wide, the power to wield a hammer and deftly drive a nail quickly into place with one swing, but I am an ace at measuring and cutting. He doesn't have to tell me which side to cut from, which direction the angle should go, because we have equal spatial reasoning to visualize how a piece of lumber will need to be turned to fit in its designated place. We both know that accuracy to a sixteenth of an inch results in a better finished product.
But I notice he can't hold multiple numbers in his head like he used to. Sometimes he forgets a measurement before he can get it out of his mouth and has to take it again as I stand at the saw, waiting. I say nothing, seeing how frustrated he already is with himself. But the pit in my stomach grows. I secretly call our doctor's office back home, and they tell me what I already know—he needs to be seen. But he won't let me take him to the clinic in the provincial capital. He won't go back to Minnesota. He is derisive when I suggest we call off construction, snaps at me, "Isn't this what you always wanted?"
Mainor laughs to see his American aunt wearing work boots and a tool belt. Women here don't do that. He's still smiling but no longer laughing when he sees how fast we move together. Soon there are floor joists, walls raised, the rib-like roof trusses showing the shape this house will take. The sawdust plastered to my sweaty skin itches terribly, and somehow makes its way into my waistband and down my socks. My hands have splinters, and rather than a farmer's tan, I have a farmer's sunburn. But I have never been so satisfied to be on a job site. To be laboring on the home we have been trying to make happen for thirteen years.
Kamu sits on a stack of lumber as we work, shirtless in the heat, his head bent over a book. A book, which is another type of stacked wood. Next to him, a hummingbird builds a miniature home on a small branch. I feel a sense of kinship with this tiny flash of iridescence. Our needs are so different, yet our drive is the same. This little neighbor and I are both investing in a future here. One day it stops fluttering about, and I am worried it has died. Mainor explains it has probably finished its nest and is incubating an egg. Mau and I lift Kamu up, staying several feet away so as to not scare it, so he can peer into the nest above our eye level. He gasps with delight to see the glint of its eyes in the shadow, where it sits sheltering its encased offspring, waiting for it to grow.
There are other animal kin sharing this space as well, some more welcome than others. People tell us we need to drastically cut back or even remove the large bamboo stand because one of that size surely harbors poisonous snakes and rats, but I keep putting it off because I am drawn to its beauty. I love the deep emerald of the stalks, am astounded that something that is technically a grass can tower far overhead, can be made into ladders and fences and furniture. We see other snakes darting in the grassy lot, which Mainor tells me are harmless to humans and useful to keep the rodents under control. I vow to finally memorize the different serpents so I know which ones are helpful or harmful without asking, but there's not much hope for my untrained eye because the most venomous ones have nearly identical imitators. Kamu is enchanted by the colorful poison dart frogs hopping near the stream. He wonders what fish may live there. Howler monkeys fling their booming calls down from a nearby hill, and Kamu calls back to them until he is hoarse. A neighbor reports that sometimes people try to dump in the creek and we have to work together to keep it clean. I feel a deep sense of responsibility that I do not with our city lot in Minneapolis. This is symbiosis rather than ownership. Relationship rather than domination. This piece of Earth will be my refuge, and I will be its steward, making sure the stream is clean and the garden is organic and that I behave as part of an ecosystem rather than its master.
I panic when Mau makes another hole in his toolbelt. He didn't have any fat to lose. He's wasting away, but that only makes his ripped biceps appear all the larger in comparison. They flex as he climbs the bamboo ladder, lifts a board into place. I wish we were alone, that the walls were already enclosing private space, so I could pull him to me. My mind wanders down a lustful path until he calls another number down from on high and I move to pencil it onto the length of board before me. I am torn between disgust at his behavior and the attraction I have always felt towards him. Between anger at his actions and my longstanding devotion to him. Between not being able to stand him and not being able to stand the thought of losing him. It feels like the middle ground I'm balanced on is shrinking by the day.
Mau insists on pushing forward with construction despite his confusion, even though it becomes clear there is something seriously wrong with his body as well as his mind. He still refuses to let me take him to the clinic. He continues to ignore his sister's begging. I try to manage his chaotic behavior and rash impulses as best I can. I tell him I forgot the debit card PIN too, and hide our dwindling stack of colones. I lie awake in the dark listening to his labored breathing, feel him drench the bed with night sweats, try to chase away the terrifying term running through my brain on repeat: Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. There comes a moment, after we complete the outer shell of the house, when I feel in my own flesh that Mau's is close to ending, and know I must take him back to the U.S. if he is to live. By then he is too weak to argue. I almost lose him on the way, but manage to get him on and off the airplanes, through customs and immigration, and into the ER and emergency surgery, where they are incredulous that he made it. From then on, our life becomes chemotherapies, surgeries, specialists, a whole shelf of medication, a slew of side effects, moving near the Mayo Clinic for his bone marrow transplant. He is diagnosed with one cancer, then two, eventually three.
Everything becomes survival; any dream beyond that is shelved. Moving to Costa Rica is out of the question.
I left my nephew tending the fruit trees I planted. The coconut, mango, avocado, banana, plantain, water apple, grapefruit, orange, breadfruit, lychee, yucca, and chestnut. He texts me photos as they grow over the years I am gone, the seedlings I had so carefully transported from my other sister-in-law's garden on the reservation, hoping to have a piece of her and her farm close to me. When they bear, he shows me the harvest, and I am glad to know he is taking it home to nourish his girls, that what I had sown is not entirely wasted.
But have eighteen years of love and dedication been misspent? I fertilized the last five years with medical caregiving, tried to nourish everyone else's needs with crumbled pieces of my own, and ended up with nothing but a rotted root. Mau refuses the mental health recommendations of the neurologist, the oncologist, the psychologist, our family doctor. The steroids that suppress his cancer fan the flames of his anger. I back away as it flares hotter and hotter, but can't imagine leaving. Not until professionals talk about shielding my child. Not until having my son feel safe in his home becomes more important than my marriage, than public opinion, than fear of losing the life I spent my entire adulthood creating.
Mau says he can't stand me, and I ask him to leave. He doesn't. He sneaks off to see other women and I ask him to leave. He doesn't. He later claims to have no memory of these conversations, and I have no way to know if this is an instance of suffering from dementia or hiding behind it. When his behavior becomes more erratic, and I worry CPS could be called, I finally find a well of strength that might simply be desperation in disguise. I tell him he has seven days to move out. He is gone in three, determined to prove he didn't want to be there anyway.
It's not until I don't hear his footsteps on the stairs anymore that I understand how I had come to live in dread of them.
Later I find out that before we left Costa Rica, Mau told two of his sisters, separately, that he was going to go home, dump me, and come back by himself. He was going to let me spend our life savings to build our dream, going to let me design it for our children, our family's needs, up at night with my tracing paper, my pencil and ruler and eraser, planning. He was going to let me sweat in the tropical heat, salty rivulets running through sawdust sticking to skin, imagining I was building a future. He stood there and let me tell our son, This is your bedroom, this is where your sister will stay when she comes, this is where you will park your bike and keep your soccer balls, knowing the whole time none of it was true.
I thought his cancer destroyed my fantasy, but it turns out my dream was a delusion and I was always going to be left with nothing. Some people have no idea what lies behind the decorative covering on their foundation walls. They're shocked when the sheetrock is removed to reveal black mold, decayed studs, buckling concrete blocks. They don't realize that rainwater seeping down along the wall will exert hydrostatic pressure until it weakens it, forces its way through, becomes a slow trickle of destruction.
Once, back in our house in Minnesota, I saw an ant with wings. I ignored what should have been a red flag. Soon I saw more, googled them, and learned that they were carpenter ants. Learned that when you see a handful, it means the colony is already so large they are sending scouts to start a new one. I did nothing except smash the ones I saw, hoping they would magically stop appearing. When they started swarming, I couldn't deny the problem any longer. I had to rip out the wall and expose the damage to the light. I gagged at the sight of the masses that had taken root, gasped at the destruction they were causing. The thick 2x4s cut from old-growth trees, which had held steady since 1900, were riddled with holes. I was afraid the bathtub would fall through the ceiling. I fixed the plumbing leak and aired out the wall and poisoned the ants, but it wasn't the only time I was in denial about what was happening in my home.
I want to take my son back to Costa Rica to see our family soon after I leave Mau, at long last free to travel unconstrained by his medical limitations, but the pandemic hits. When we finally make it back, vaccinated and with the negative COVID results required to cross the border, it has been six years since we left our project. I find my dream disassembled, the pieces carefully stacked in my sister-in-law's yard. The boards I measured and cut and screwed into place support nothing now, not even wisps of wishes. The corrugated zinc shelters nothing. Bribri teaching is that houses need to be lived in. The energy of the inhabitants keeps them intact. Left abandoned, they will quickly rot and disintegrate, and not just because there's no one around to spray for termites. These bones of once-living trees require synergy with human energy. I tell her to use the materials to build something else. Something useful. Something real. For someone else. My energy no longer belongs here.
I spent so much time calculating the load-bearing capacity of various beams and joists. I asked about seismic load, was reassured that earthquakes don't cause damage this far down the coast. That the rising tension and eventual release caused by the meeting of two tectonic plates would not affect our foundation. I overbuilt out of concern for dynamic load, anticipating stronger hurricanes as the climate changes. I prepared for catastrophic winds, rising waters, and trembling earth, but never considered what else could bring my home to ruin. My computations didn't account for dishonesty, duplicity, contempt, betrayal. I didn't anticipate that the destructive forces would come from within.
I survey the rubble of my life, adrift and exhausted. I have survived the storm, but not unscathed. What now?
What I know how to do is build things, so I will have to fashion a new life. Frame an entryway to a different future. Hang a solid door in it, sanded, stained, and sealed to perfection. Make sure the hinges don't squeak and the knob turns smoothly. Select wood with the most beautiful grain to trim the opening. Not settle for any materials that won't last, won't serve me well. I have always loved the smell of sawdust, and working with my hands.
