“Mama says the sand massages your gums and makes them soft and then your teeth fall out and you chew them up in dreams when you’re anxious you’re anxious arencha Claire?”
“Who told you I was anxious? Do you even know what anxious means?”
“Momma says you’re anxious cause you’re tyin soon and you loose everything and your teeth fall out.”
“How old are you Darren?”
“I’ll be eight soon.”
“And your mother told you I was nervous…”
“No she said anxious.”
“Right. Anxious, because I’m…”
“Because soon you’ll be pregnant and fat and you’ll start dreaming your teeth is falling out.”
“Are falling out.”
“Are falling out.”
Claire regarded her nephew and for a moment considered telling him everything just to spite his mother, but instead she grabbed the green and purple Supersoaker from the middle of the table and abruptly ended timeout in favor of distraction. Darren shrieked and took off across the gravel yard headed for the back gate. Claire arched the stream of water up but it was too late, he disappeared through the gate and into the desert.
It was too hot to give chase. Claire walked out into the gravel yard swinging the squirt gun from her finger and stepping carefully between barrel cacti and Cholla, the nastiest of the Sonora’s spiny, rather unfriendly inhabitants. The minute she emerged from under the slatted patio cover she could feel the midday sun seering her pale skin. She glanced at her arms as if they might have already, in five minutes time, began to burn. She called out to Darren but heard nothing. Probably he had gone down the street to his friend’s house.
Darren’s mother was looking out at Claire from behind the sliding glass door, she waved from behind the glass, comfortable in her air conditioned cocoon; Claire smiled and waved back stifling the urge to mouth bitch at her. Claire’s aunt lived just outside of Tucson, the patio was atop a small hill overlooking the Catalina foothills and the vast expanse of desert just west of them. Finding an relatively clear, cactus free area Claire leaned her head back and shot a stream of water straight up in the air. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth with her tongue extended waiting for the water to return to earth, which it eventually did, splattering her face and causing her to cough, choke briefly and start laughing.
Claire had heard the chewing sand story about a million times, from her aunt, her uncle, her mother, the whole damn family, the only one of them that never seemed to tell the story was the one person who had actually chewed sand. It was a story told so many times it had ceased to have any meaning, it had been reduce to words, sounds formed with mouths and lips but completely divorced from comprehension or understanding. Claire had always felt bad for the story, like it was blushing every time it heard itself start, sort of how Claire felt when her father introduced her again to his neighbor whom she had known for the better part of a decade. Claire could never decide whether her father actually thought she hadn’t met the man or whether he was simply too excited to introduce her to his friend to consider that he had already done so many times. And she had long ago decided everyone telling the sand chewing story was simply too excited to stop themselves. It was the best story the family had. In some ways it was the only story they had.
Claire walked back to the table and lit a cigarette. She took another sip of the now almost hot wine that remained in the plastic cup her Aunt had thrust in her hand earlier. it tasted a bit like peach juice, but in the heat it had the desired effect rather rapidly. She decided to see where Darren had gone and wandered back through the yard and out into the river gully running just beyond the back fence.
At the end of the street the river bed disappeared mysteriously into a drain pipe and was not seen again above ground for twenty miles or so. Claire picked her way up the embankment and climbed a small hill where she sat down and finished her cigarette. The desert below was sketched out in watercolor hues of sand and rock that surged together over the rolling canvas until all that remained was the sensation of washed out pink with only the river and its groves of Palo Verde and Mesquite standing out from the blushing sand. Claire felt the river as an after thought, an architect’s final over-the-top push on an otherwise sedate and monochromatic palette. She could hear the committee, we simply must have water, you have got to put water in there somewhere, and so the frustrated and overworked architect picked up a muddy green brush and simply drizzled it Pollack-like on the ground. The desert had countless hidden details not visible from the observatory position Claire occupied.
Claire watched the river and wondered what its name actually meant. It seemed odd to her that she had lived next to or around the Rialto River for so many years without ever wondering what the word meant.
She felt as if she were herself a desert only recently become aware that someone had flung a river down on her. Or with desert ambivalence she had always had a river running around her but had simply never noticed it. What then does the desert make of the river? This was the thought that had propelled her outside, away from couch bound relatives, inquisitive nephew in tow. As she studied the scene that was cascading down the slope and away from the organization of the manicured patio and yard, she decided that the desert seemed to ignore the river entirely. The river was starting to flood, somewhere far upstream three days rain had been feeding until it swelled like a Christmas ham, but ten yards on either side and it was sand again. Stagnant pink sand interspersed with prickly plants and clumps of sagebrush and Mesquite trees, ironwood her grandfather called it. The sand didn’t care for the water, didn’t hold onto it, didn’t even try, just let the water flow right on over it, puddle and collect, run off and feed into the river. Farther in the distance there were the mountains ringing the desert, keeping watch over it, making sure it behaved in some general way.
This entry was posted 1 year, 8 months ago from Dover Drive in Newport Beach, California United States.
Childred, Deserts, Motion, Mountains, River, Sand
Right on man, I love the new design and there's a ton of stuff in here. Are you planning to travel again any time soon?