11.
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 out 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.”