Land of Enchantment

I saw every dusty town from Abilene to Tucson from the passenger seat of our ’87 Ford Ranger. My skin boasted sunburns from seven different states. When I close my eyes and imagine nothing I can never clear everything, the smell of hot rubber always manages to creep in after that summer.

Mom moved us to New Mexico when I was twelve. I’d have given my left arm for that truck to take us back, but mom had the flexibility of an anvil.

Aliens landed in New Mexico because it reminds them of home. I know because that place made me wish I was back home too. Mom said you could see anyone coming for miles and we’d be safe. Back then she was skinny and smoked three packs a day.

Silence is never louder than in the desert. In the first days my mind constantly yelled at me. Nothing needed my attention when we drove and I guess my brain was trying to give me something to do. There isn’t an organ in your body that doesn’t respond to Southwest weather. My lungs were like bellows in a smithy shop and my eyes were hard boiled eggs.

I hated that place until one evening I sat cross-legged on the porch by her feet. Coral streaks softened the sky and her cigarette butt looked like the fiery engine of a space shuttle. Our house used to be a temporary hideout for bootleggers in the twenties. She smoked and I’d watch the sun make mirage waves across the sand dunes.

Whatever color her nails were, that’s what color my aliens would be. And that’s when I understood the desert. When you can see in a straight line for fifty miles and the sky is a small barrier in between you and the moon, your alien can be as big as you want. Mom never wore makeup and her hair was a curly auburn mess, but those nail were sheer art. Dad used to tell her they were a waste of time so I did too—that’s what men of the family do. Now that he wasn’t around I waited every Sunday to see what skin the monsters in my front yard would have.

Color and skin texture came first, I couldn’t help that. But bone structure was next. If aliens had bones. Sometimes they were cartilage or made solely of gelatinous materials. I tried so hard to come up with the whackiest tentacles. Noses on their feet, fingers on chins, kneecaps on all eight spleens. In the end though, I always came back to silver skinned people with long black fingers. They were extremely disappointed in us.

We drove and those yellow stripes came at us for ten days. My thoughts displayed themselves on green fluorescent signs and if I never see the words ‘Rest Stop’ again I’ll die happy. Finally mom decided on a lonesome place in the black hole. You see, no matter how many miles you’re driving in New Mexico it takes twice as many hours as it should; time gets swallowed up there.

I ripped open the white trash bags containing my clothes. Everything we owned had been stuffed into trash bags and thrown in the back of the truck. My toothbrush was tangled in shoelaces and mom wrapped my snow globe in underwear. Still, it was all there at the bottom of the bag.

We left the door open all the time and latched the screen. Piles of dirt blew through, but it was too hot otherwise. I stood in the hallway looking into the kitchen where mom unpacked two plates, two bowls; just two of everything. If I wanted to know anything I’d watch her. She’d sooner smoke than say good morning but eventually I liked it that way. I never knew how much a person could take pride in reading a face or a body.

Mondays we drove to town for groceries. She handed me a list and a hundred bucks and we’d meet back at the truck in an hour. My weekly sixty minutes of freedom and all I could think about was what she did every week. One time dad’s brother said mom was pretty enough to be on a pole. Dad agreed, but said she was too stuck up to make anyone happy.

A month in The Land of Enchantment drove me to bored fits and I screamed at mom for the first time. She sucked a drag from her cigarette, took it out of her mouth, and pushed the butt against my forearm.

“There. Now you have a birthmark like me.”

I stared at her, holding my arm.

Mom belly laughed. Her brown eyes gleamed and she bent over, dropping the cigarette. I saw the mark on her arm and how there were at least ten more besides and I began to laugh too. We laughed until my skin didn’t sting anymore and it was supper time.

Next morning I woke up and she wasn’t there. I made myself a cup of coffee like she showed me and an hour later the truck pulled up to the porch. She called me outside.

“Brought you some toys.”

She leaned over the pickup bed and tossed me a shovel.

Using the tire as a boost, I jumped into the bed. Paint cans, chalk, and varying lengths of pvc pipe were tied down with ropes and tarp.

“There’s a tool box in the front seat.” She shaded her eyes from the orange sun. “If it’s in your room or on the back wall outside you can do whatever the hell you want.”

For ten months I didn’t set foot in a school, bank, or someone else’s house. Mom sat on the porch smoking and painting her nails after dinner while I dug. Mazes were my speciality. I mixed sand and paint in a kiddy pool and colored my forts. She gave in and let me paint the East side of the house blue and gold and I planted the pvc pipes in the ground. Winding strings of lights up the rods made me think of space ports on Neptune. Of course they didn’t exist but it looked pretty at night.

I realized why people lived out here in the middle of nowhere. It’s all consuming. The wind blew away memory of the lumpy couch dad used to live on when he wasn’t out with his friends. Half-dollar sized suns burned out the smell of beer and tequila and weed.

One week before my thirteenth birthday the Ford sputtered to a stop. I went down to the cellar for a can of gasoline. The house was nothing special, but the cellar was a quarter of a football field: benefits of an old gangster shack.

It was darker than nighttime and I tripped flat on my face. I sat up, shaking dirt out of my hair and staring at a black crate in the corner. Crawling on my hands and knees I yanked the tarp off. In a plastic bag there was a small stack of money. Dad used to have bags like it under his bed, but filled with far more. Next to it was a gold wedding ring—his.

I saw the Grand Canyon twice that year. Mom threw everything into more white trash bags one morning and we left. That dumpy truck saw us safely to Arizona and then Utah the year after.

In Utah we left dishes and my tools.

Mom jammed the keys into the ignition saying, “That son of a bitch can have them, we’ll get more.” We sped away.

On the highway to California bending around the cliffs, I thought I could see dad in my rear view mirror. If I could, it was the last time I ever saw him.

JESSICA LEWIS is making her publishing debut with Bridge Eight Press. She believes that her time spent as a farmer, professional musician, international traveler, and full-time member of a strange family give her all the material she needs as a writer. She currently lives in North Carolina.

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