The End of Eve Page 7

  At the farmer’s market at the railyard we stocked up on kale and apricots, green chile mustard and red chile raspberry jam. Maxito tapped his foot, tried to sing along with the one-man band – a bejangled old guy who played his accordion and twanged Loretta Lynn and Drifters songs.

  “Santa Fe is cute,” Maia promised. “When I first got here I was like, Why have I even heard of this town? It’s nowhere. But it’s all right.”

  ALL OVER TOWN, plaques and monuments bragged that Santa Fe was the oldest capital city in the United States, the oldest European city west of the Mississippi, home of the oldest public building and the oldest community celebration – a merry autumn fiesta commemorating colonialism and reconquest. We laughed at the signs. They may as well have just said, Eat it, New England. The streets had names like Avenida Cristóbal Colón and Paseo de la Conquistadora.

  Maia had hoped to convince my mother to come with us to the hot springs an hour out of town, but my mother said she didn’t have time. Maia shrugged. “Who needs miraculous healing waters when you can shop for tile with Ronaldo?”

  No matter. I was happy to spend the day alone with my two kids who hardly ever got to spend a day together.

  We drove the old highway south out of town, listening to the Native radio station that played songs about dusty dashboards and expired tags. Maxito pointed out cactuses and giant birds as we cruised through half-ghost towns with their abandoned mines and their Old West art and anarchy. We circled back north, past the casinos and the sandstone rock formations, through the towns full of double-wides with low riders and old luxury sedans parked out front.

  We crossed the Rio Grande and then the Chama, those red-brown rivers still rushing from the spring’s late snowfalls.

  The three of us had never been some idyllic family in a soft-focus Sears portrait, but I appreciated the ease of no-held-breath in Gammie’s old car, no insults and nothing burning. Just Maia driving, Maxito babbling his Spanglish and counting cacti from the back seat, and me watching out the window, that desert highway dotted with cemeteries and wooden crosses decorated with plastic flowers.

  We got to Ojo Caliente in the blue heat of afternoon and Maia and I took turns soaking in the arsenic tubs and playing with Maxito in the lithium swimming pool where he was allowed to float and laugh far away from the relaxing yuppies with their eye pillows.

  “These are our Native waters,” a woman in the lithium pool was saying. Her grandson bobbed up and down next to her. “It’s offensive that these white people from San Francisco with their Kokopelli tattoos claim to ‘own’ it. They charge us twenty dollars to get in and tell us we can’t bring our children?”

  Her friend sat poolside, feet grazing the water’s surface. She pointed her middle finger toward the main office behind us. “Kokopelli this, bitches.”

  We laughed, and it all seemed so normal – this world of blatant conquest and rebellious submission.

  Maxito stuck his face in the water and blew bubbles.

  “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” Maia whispered as she approached.

  It was. Beautiful.

  Afternoon faded into evening and Maia took Maxito into the restaurant for a buffalo burger while I soaked the last of the day away alone in the arsenic tub, watching the cliff swallows dart overhead while stars began to appear, at first one by one, all bright and quiet in the darkening sky, then as if by the hundreds.

  IT SEEMED IMPOSSIBLE, how many stars. I held my breath and wished on the falling ones and almost thought that something important and holy was about to happen to us. Almost had the nerve to hope. But right there on the verge of hope I felt the muscles around my heart contract and I felt something more like panic. All those stars.

  11.

  Trends in Bleeding and Dying

  AFTER THE LAST SNOW FALL IN MAY AND BEFORE THE monsoons of early summer, Maia repacked the big red Oldsmobile with all her earthly belongings and headed west to her new studio apartment in Pasadena to catch up on her junior year.

  My mother had commandeered the turquoise trailer and was living in it out behind the gutted duplex. She complained that Ronaldo was slow and an asshole to boot; complained that a mountain lion came down from the hills in the evenings and paced outside the trailer door. “A sham of a contractor,” she sighed, “and a lioness stalking me.”

  Sol and I opened our candle shop/veterinary clinic/writing studio on a bright Tuesday and I guess there wasn’t much else going on in Santa Fe that week because the newspaper ran a huge color photo of us on the front page of the metro section and people stopped by to pick up their seven-day Guadalupe candles and their Saint Christopher car statues and their blue glass evil eye beads. They stopped by to find out if Doc Sol could cure their dog’s ragweed allergies, stopped by to ask about memoir workshops and announce “I’ve always been told I should write a book.”

  In between customers I worked on editing projects and Sol studied rodent anatomy books. Maxito had just started a new Spanish-immersion preschool and it seemed like we might win this game after all. What if we lived here? Look at us manifesting a life out of stardust and panic.

  A poet I’d once heard of stopped by the blue shop to introduce herself. “I saw you in the newspaper,” she said. “I’ve read your books.” She had long, dark hair that was just beginning to gray, wore peacock-feather earrings. “Ariel?” She cocked her head to the side. “Do you know that you’re bleeding?”

  At first I thought she was talking metaphorically, the way poets do, but I’d been bleeding a lot since we got to Santa Fe. Nose bleeds, ear bleeds. I hadn’t been particularly accident-prone back in Portland or California, but here I cut my fingers and stubbed my toes. Here I tripped on jagged stones and ripped my skin. I grabbed a tissue from under the counter, held it to my nose.

  The poet looked worried for me. “Be careful,” she said. “The desert wants your blood. I’ll live here all my life, but I won’t die here. I don’t want to be buried here. Not in the desert. The star beings are waiting.”

  I nodded like I understood.

  “Believe me or don’t,” the poet said. “I’m Indigenous and Italian, so I’m a witch on both sides.”

  “I believe you,” I promised. “Do you mind watching the shop for a minute? I need some coffee.”

  Sol had ducked out for a miming class.

  IN THE CAFE across the street, I noticed the barista had raw wounds on her wrist like she’d been cutting herself.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said when she noticed my tissue, “the bleeding.” She had gothic script and a few stars tattooed on her neck. “If you don’t let the blood on purpose, you’ll bleed when you least expect it. The only way to stop it is to harvest an elk.”

  “An elk?”

  There were paintings of crescent moons and adobe houses on the café walls. Santa Fe paintings.

  “Yeah,” the barista said. “You eat the elk’s organs. Raw.” She pushed my soymilk latte across the counter. “I mean, if you want to stay here and not bleed.”

  I grabbed my latte and nodded like I might actually do it – harvest an elk. I mean, why not?

  I’D AGREED TO meet with my mother and a hospice intake nurse at the shop that afternoon. My mother still didn’t need much in terms of care, but I was trying to make the calls friends told me I should make, trying to plan for a future I didn’t understand. I figured our first day open at the shop would be slow. So just after the poet left on that bright Tuesday, a fifty-something woman dressed in pink came ballet-stepping in through the French doors.

  I leaned across the counter to chit-chat with our pink hospice fairy, explained that my mother really didn’t have many symptoms, but she did have this diagnosis and I was trying to get ready for we-didn’t-know-what.

  “You never can be too ready,” the intake nurse chirped. She had fuzzy blonde hair and a fuzzy rose-colored sweater. “How wonderful for your mother that she has you, Ariel. It’s going to be quite a journey.” She leaned toward me and whispered, “One thing to watch ou
t for is when she starts coughing up blood. Promise me that you’ll call us when she starts coughing up blood.”

  “Sure.” I didn’t ask if she expected my mother to start coughing up blood without warning or what. I just nodded. “Of course I’ll call.”

  A CUSTOMER STEPPED in. “Greetings from the north, south, east, and west–” She wore flowing sage linens and amber jewelry. She reached her arms out like a scarecrow – or maybe like a crucified person. “Ah,” she said, turning her palms upward. “I know and feel that I am in the right place. My co-worker has placed a curse on me. Do you perform curse reversals?”

  “No,” I had to admit. “I do not personally perform curse reversals. But I have a Marie Laveau candle here if you’re interested. She’s the problem solver. Or you could try Santa Barbara. She’s known for her protective qualities.”

  The hospice lady squinted at me, like are you a witch or what?

  The cursed customer spun around three times, grabbed both candles, dropped a ten-dollar bill on the counter, and rushed out, calling over her shoulder “blessings and thank you from each of the four directions.”

  “Any time,” I called after her.

  The pink hospice lady scanned the candle shelves for just a few minutes before my mother crept in looking particularly pale and tired.

  It occurred to me that maybe my mother could just turn this illness thing on and off at will – transmutation at her fingertips. Snap and she could be misdiagnosed or terminal, seductress or victim, abusive mother or old woman in need.

  The pink hospice lady whispered, “She’s beautiful.”

  I’d brought three folding chairs out from the back room, but the hospice lady dragged the giant Mexican equipale chair from the corner of the shop, like maybe she thought it looked more comfortable than the folding chairs. She motioned for my mother to sit down in it, but when my mother did sit, the image was all wrong, my tiny mother in that giant pigskin chair. She was maybe 95 pounds now, but she looked even smaller in that ridiculous chair, feet not touching the floor. Lily Tomlin as aging cancer patient.

  The hospice lady didn’t seem to notice. She and I sat in our folding chairs and she shrugged and smiled, shrugged and smiled. “People are really into conscious dying right now.”

  Who knew there were trends even in dying?

  “I don’t want to know anything about dying,” my mother said.

  “You don’t want to know?” The intake nurse smiled a wide white smile like she’d never heard such a thing, but she was going to be nice, like some preschool teacher pretending that sucking on one’s own knees might be in the realm of the socially acceptable. “It’s important to be conscious as you decline,” she tried.

  “I’m not declining,” my mother said. She inspected her manicure.

  “Are you in pain?” The hospice lady asked.

  “No,” my mother said. She sucked in her cheeks and looked more gaunt.

  “Because if you’re in pain we can help you with that, Eve. We’re here to help you. Whatever you need. As you know, you’ve been automatically admitted to hospice because of your diagnosis and your lack of insurance outside Medicare and here we are to help, help, help. You might not be in pain now, but as you decline you’ll be in bone-crushing pain, Eve. I mean bone-crushing. Conscious, conscious. At this point we’ll just come and visit you from time to time. You’ll meet your nurses. You’ll love those little gals. Now, are you sleeping well enough, Eve?”

  “Yes,” my mother said.

  “About how many hours each night?”

  “Five. Maybe six hours. I worry.”

  I didn’t pipe up. Maia had mentioned that when they were staying in the casita my mother slept two, maybe three hours a night.

  “We can give you something for that,” the pink hospice lady offered.

  My little mother in her giant chair. She rolled her eyes. “I would never take your medication.”

  The hospice intake nurse nodded, unfazed. “Are you into alternatives?”

  “Yes,” my mother monotoned. “Alternatives.”

  “Well,” the pink lady smiled. “Here’s the alternative, Eve. Every evening – every single evening just before sunset – you go outside and you bathe your eyes in the sun. You bathe them, do you understand? It’s called sun gazing. Have you heard of it, dear? It’s ancient. You gaze at the sun. Every evening, Eve. Do you hear me? Every single evening. That will cure your insomnia and, well, you never know what else it might cure.” The pink hospice lady with her fuzzy hair giggled. “Those ancient Egyptians knew a thing or two about immortality.”

  When the hospice lady finally stood up and placed her hands on her pink hips and said, “We are here to ferry you to the other side, my beautiful little sun-gazing Eve,” and smiled wide and side-stepped out the door and let it close behind her, my mother looked at me with a mixture of terror and trying-not-to-laugh and she said, “Ariel, you are not allowed to parody this.”

  12.

  Curses

  OUR CANDLE SHOP HAD BEEN OPEN A MONTH THE DAY a white girl with dreadlocks ducked in. “Are you Ariel?”

  “I am.”

  She smiled, already pleased with herself. One of her front teeth was broken in half. “Well, well,” she said. “I just thought you should know. Your girlfriend, Sol, is leaving notes for Bipa at the mime school.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know the master mime? Bipa?”

  “Sure,” I shrugged like I couldn’t care. “I know who she is. I didn’t realize she still lived in Santa Fe.”

  “Yeah,” the dread girl said brightly. “Bipa moved back here last fall. She lives in that earthship at the edge of town.” She looked around at all the candles like she’d just noticed them. “Cute shop. Well, good luck.”

  Santa Fe suddenly felt small like that, everyone hungry for some fresh morsel of gossip or betrayal.

  “Thanks?”

  But the dread girl was already gone.

  Bipa.

  Amy Winehouse sang from the iPod behind me.

  I picked up the phone, called the café across the street and ordered a soymilk latte and a pile of enchiladas without cheese. Maybe I just needed some calories and some caffeine.

  “Red or green chile?” the barista on the phone wanted to know.

  “Christmas.”

  “You got it, honey.”

  I recognized her voice. The girl with the neck tattoos. But it was one of the waiters who stepped into the shop ten minutes later with my plate of enchiladas. “I could use your help,” he whispered as he set the plate on the counter. “My girlfriend. She may be cursed.” He had smooth skin and a boyish smile.

  I hated to think his girlfriend was cursed. Hated to have him believing that. “Why do you think that, Amador?”

  He looked over his shoulders, made sure we were alone. “I can’t get her pregnant,” he confessed. “She really wants to get pregnant. Do you have a candle for that?”

  I pointed him to the hummingbird candles. “Light that pink one. She could also try acupuncture.”

  Days at the shop were like that. Just waiting to see who’d come in next and what they might want or need.

  THE DOOR OPENED. A woman with gray hair walked in carrying a cardboard box, set it on the counter in front of me. “Will you sell these candles I made?” She took a seven-day candle from her box. Onto the glass holder, she’d glued an interesting color Xerox collage of an old witch in front of her house on chicken feet. “Are you acquainted with Baba Yaga?” the woman asked. She had a little bit of a mustache.

  “Sure,” I said. “The old hag who flies around in her mortar kidnapping children?”

  The woman with the mustache frowned. “Dear goddess, Baba Yaga is much more than that. She helps people on their quests. She inhabits the worlds of both life and death. She offers guidance to lost young souls. Think of the old Russian story Vasilisa the Wise. Of course Baba Yaga requires that Vasilisa works for her, serves the irrational, sorts the poppy seeds from the dirt, p
repare her feasts – but Vasilisa completed her tasks without asking too many questions, without asking the wrong questions, and she was rewarded with light and wisdom. Vasilisa got a better life.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll take a dozen.”

  “You won’t be disappointed,” the woman promised as I forked over twenty four bucks.

  THE DOOR OPENED again. My landlord. He wanted the rent.

  No problem.

  So I was sitting there eating my enchiladas with Christmas and writing the check to my landlord when my mother threw open the French doors.

  When my landlord looked up at her in intricately embroidered Mexican cottons, his mouth kind of fell open.

  “Ariel? As loath as I am to admit it,” my mother announced. “I may owe you an apology.”

  I couldn’t recall my mother ever apologizing to anyone for anything. But who knew? Maybe my mother was experiencing some late-life transformation. “How do you figure?” I asked.

  My landlord stared at her. Here was my mother, the very last modernist turned frail old woman.

  She looked into him.

  His hair was white, too. He wore a bolo tie. “Is that you, Eve?”

  She cocked her head to the side. “Are you?”

  He nodded slowly. “Far, far out.”

  I pushed the rent check toward him, closer to the edge of the counter, wanted him to take it.

  One of my creative writing teachers used to say that when an object passes between two people in a story, you should slow the narrative down because it’s more than an object passing between them, it’s energy.

  But before I could slow down the narrative, my landlord pocketed that check and scurried out of my shop like some so-busted teenager.

  My mother bowed her head and whispered, “That man dropped a lot of acid with your father in the sixties.”

  I nodded. “I’ve heard.”