Now our quiet house, this empty desert, the many barriers we’ve built between us and others—it’s all Frosted Flakes on sale.
Dad glances up at me and forces a smile through his sweat and strain. I smile back, trying to assure him with my expression that I’m not worried, that he’s doing just fine.
Mary says Dad and I have built walls around ourselves. She says our walls are made of all the unhealthy things—guilt and shame and fear and anger. She says we haven’t fully processed or accepted what happened.
But how could anyone accept such a thing? Why shouldn’t we build walls to protect ourselves? Mary says the walls are weak, leaky, full of holes that constantly drip and seep pain.
I think maybe we just need to build stronger walls.
SIX
Dad waves from the bottom, and I pull the rope up. Threading the end through my belay loop, I tie my figure-eight knot. Then I thread the rope through again, following the same path, duplicating the pattern, my hands relaxing, my stomach unclenching a little bit. At home I keep a length of rope next to my bed. Sometimes I sit and tie the figure eight for hours.
I grip the rope in my gloved hands, sweat dripping down my back. My hoodie is already too warm. My breath hitches as I step backward off the edge.
“On rappel!” I shout, pushing my legs against the stone, beginning my descent, using my guide hand to feed the rope through the rappel device. The harness straps dig into my lower back and bare legs, and I wish I’d worn long pants instead of jean shorts.
Dad is my belayer, holding the rope at the bottom. He helps keep me steady as I walk backward down the wall, my feet pressed against the rock, the rest of my body leaning into a seated position. One step at a time. Down the wall. My body senses the danger in what I’m doing, and I freeze.
Fear fills me, churns my insides, overwhelms me, makes my mind want to escape to somewhere else, into my poetry. I don’t look down. Instead, I focus on the wall in front of me:
Layers, layers, and layers.
Smooth pale seams
upon rough spatters of rainbow red
upon pitted and pockmarked pink
upon veins of gray.
Layers, layers, and layers.
Mary’s words break through: Identify what you fear, Eleanor.
“Dying,” I whisper.
Are you likely to die in this situation?
“No.”
Don’t leave until you’re calm. Facing fear is a skill that must be learned.
I breathe in deep and steady, trying to slow my pounding heart, willing my frozen limbs to move.
“Everything okay up there?” Dad calls, sounding winded from his descent.
Taking another deep breath, I shout, “I’m coming down.”
He won’t, can’t, climb up to help me right now. And I don’t expect him to. In the Before, I once froze against another wall. In the Before, Dad climbed up to meet me. In the Before, Dad put his forehead to mine and told me It’s okay. I’m here. Whatever’s coming, we’ll face it together.
In the After, Dad doesn’t have the strength. In the After, I face this by myself.
SEVEN
Dad pats my helmet and removes it. “I was worried about you for a second. Everything all right?”
I gaze around at the tall, layered walls in every shade of red imaginable and breathe in the cool canyon air. “Yeah.” I remove my helmet and clip it to my backpack. “Everything’s good.”
We change back into our hiking boots. Leaving the bright red rappelling rope in place so we can climb up later, we set off to discover whatever secret things might be hidden down here in the canyon.
I stretch my arms out wide and gently run my fingertips along the canyon walls while I walk. Small embedded pebbles tickle my fingertips and gently chip at my bitten nails. “Hey, Dad.” I stop and press my palms against the cool, rough surface. He turns around. “Look, I’m as wide as a canyon.”
“As wide as a small canyon.”
“Well, I didn’t say I was as wide as the Grand Canyon.”
Every passing minute brings more light into this narrow crack in the desert. Rock surrounds us and colors transform, light pink blending into deeper maroon like someone swirled cream into the stone but not very well. Sunlight gradually creeps down one wall of the canyon, the rock shining so brightly above us, it seems the canyon is making the light instead of reflecting it.
“Do you think anything lives down here?” I ask.
Dad points at a small, shallow cave, at the white stains running down the rock. “Bats. Probably smaller animals, lizards, snakes for sure.”
“What about bigger animals? Like a mountain lion?”
“I suppose a mountain lion could climb down here.”
“Have you ever seen a mountain lion?”
“Yes, but only from a safe distance.”
“Is there anything you’ve never seen in the desert you think would be cool to see?” Mom and Dad spent so much time out here together, it’s hard for me to believe there’s anything he hasn’t seen.
“Oh, sure. Lots of animals.” Dad stops and thinks a moment. “Never seen a ringtail. Never seen a fox. That would be pretty neat.”
Making our way through the canyon, I gaze up at the pale green jojoba and brittlebush lining the edge and spot a barrel cactus growing out of the wall, where no plant should be able to live. Nothing could ever hurt us down here. Down here we are safe. Alone.
But I’m not sure all this safety is worth all this aloneness.
Dad picks up a rock. “It’s shaped like a heart,” he says and places it in my hand. “A heart for you, my dear.” I roll my eyes at him, and he laughs.
When he turns away, I pocket the heart-shaped stone, the only gift Dad has given me today for my birthday. And this canyon is the only place he can take me because Dad no longer feels any place is safe if people are there—not stores, concerts, festivals, schools, and especially not restaurants. That’s why he found us this canyon—because nothing can hurt us when no one is nearby.
We didn’t die with Mom one year ago at Café Ardiente, but we’ve been slowly dying ever since. Alone.
I pat the heart-shaped stone in my pocket and watch my father’s beaming face as he points out a small gopher snake hiding under a ledge. When he continues walking, I realize he’s humming. I stop and listen, finally making out what it is: “Across the Universe.”
Maybe today we begin to come back to life.
EIGHT
We stop after several hours of hiking and exploring. I remove my backpack and stretch my arms above me, take out my hair tie, and run my hands over my scalp, sore from my tight ponytail. I toss my hair tie in my pack.
Dad’s already munching on some beef jerky, so I grab a protein bar and make my way to an outcropping along one canyon wall where the rock juts out like a small stage a few feet high and wide. I pull myself up and sit cross-legged, eating my bar, running a finger along a deep crack in the stone surface. When I’m done, I take off my hoodie and bunch it up under my head. I lie back on the flat stone surface, just large enough to hold me with my knees bent, and gaze at the slim river of blue sky above. It must be around midday because the desert is quiet and sunlight shines down pretty far into the canyon. Lifting a hand, my fingers nearly touch the beam of light, sparkling with dust, but it’s just out of reach.
Pushing off the outcropping and walking over to my backpack, I remove my notebook and sit down next to Dad. He peers over my shoulder, and I pull my notebook up to my chest so he can’t spy on what I’m writing. He smiles. “Are you ever going to let me read what you write?”
Hugging my notebook, I tell him, “Maybe.”
Dad stares down at me. “Maybe?”
“What if it’s not good?”
Dad puts his arm around me. “If it came from your heart, then it can’t be anything but good.”
“You have to say that. You’re my dad,” I say, my voice hoarse.
“I mean it. Plus, I have some great lines f
or you to write.”
Raising an eyebrow, I look up at him. “What?”
“What’s brown and sticky?”
I squint at him. “What?”
He picks up a small twig from the canyon floor and places it on my knee. “A stick.”
Scrunching up my nose and covering my smile with one hand, I brush the twig off my leg.
“Seriously, though,” he says, “I used to like writing haikus.”
“I like haikus.”
Dad scratches his stubbly chin. “If I tell you one, you have to tell me one.”
“Okay.”
Dad taps a finger to one pale cheek, already turning pink from the morning sun. A mischievous grin builds on his face, and I know whatever’s coming is not going to be a serious haiku. “This canyon is small,” he says. “But it’s way way way bigger,” he counts on his fingers as he talks, “than shrimpy Nora.”
I roll my eyes. “Seriously, Dad?”
“What?”
“How can you expect me to share my writing when you make a joke out of it?”
“I’m sorry.” His grin fades. “I’d still like to hear one if you’re willing to share it.”
I don’t have to make one up on the spot; I have several written in my notebook. The truth is I love writing haikus. They feel orderly… patterned. I often use them to remember the things Mary tells me. Flipping through my notebook, I find one. My choice is not random. My choice is entirely deliberate.
“Hypervigilance,” I say. “Dad won’t let me go to school.” I slowly look up at him. “He’s protecting me.”
Dad gazes down at me, eyebrows drawn together, questioning, though he doesn’t speak. I know he was expecting me to make up something on the spot, and now he’s waiting for an explanation.
“I want to go back to school,” I say so softly it’s nearly a whisper.
Dad’s arm falls from my shoulders. He gets up, walks to a canyon wall, facing away from me. He presses one hand to the stone, leans forward, head down, his shaggy hair falling in his face. He breathes in and out as if it’s a tremendous effort, then slowly begins to shake his head. He turns to me, not even a trace of smile left. “No.”
NINE
My heart pounds and rage swells. That’s how my emotions work since Mom died. I go from fine to anxious to depressed to angry to numb in split-second bursts. I grit my teeth. “Can’t we even talk about it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You know why. You read the news, even though I tell you not to.”
“So is this how it’s going to be? Just me and you, hiding forever?”
“We’re not hiding.”
“Then what would you call it?” I snap.
“Staying safe.”
“Staying safe alone.”
“We’re not alone,” Dad pleads. “We have each other.”
“I need more than just you.” Dad looks hurt at my words, but he must, he must, understand that I can love him and still need more than him in my life. “I want to have friends again.”
“I told you you should have invited Danielle,” he says, voice rising, accusing.
“Danielle doesn’t want to be my friend anymore!” I cry. “I have to go where I can make new friends. Where people won’t just see the shooting when they look at me. I want to do more with my life than hide. I want things to go back to normal.”
“Normal, Nora?” He stares at the ground, his shoulders slumping. Then he lifts his eyes to mine. “How could things ever go back to normal?”
“Maybe if you let me go to school, then—”
“You are never going back to school!” Dad yells, making it clear that I have no say in any of this, that I’ve completely lost control over my own life.
Everything around me turns to a red blur as my eyes fill with tears. “Please, let’s—”
“Just stop!” he shouts, the words echoing through the canyon over and over again.
I’m shaking now. I feel my anger growing out of control, and I know what I’m supposed to do when that happens—take a walk or a shower, do some yoga, write poetry, tie my figure eights, knead my balloon of flour. And I know what I’m not supposed to do.
I stare at him, heart pounding, hands trembling, eyes spilling. I don’t want to take a walk or do some yoga. I want to fight and scream and cry and lash out. So I do. “I hate you.”
His face fills with anguish before he turns away from me, picking up his backpack and latching it to his body, making it clear he’s done with this discussion, which was hardly ever a discussion at all.
I’m not done. But when Dad whips around, his face stops me. The anger, the hurt has all drained out of it like the blood from his shot leg. His eyes widen. His mouth opens. All that’s left is fear. Tremendous fear.
I don’t understand.
Then I feel it.
The ground vibrates beneath our feet. Small pebbles and sheets of sand break free of cracks and crevices in the shuddering canyon walls. They tumble to the ground. It must be a stampede or an earthquake. But how could there be a stampede down here? And we don’t have earthquakes in the desert. Not like this.
It’s behind me. I’m terrified to look. But I need to know. I need to know what it is. And so I turn to face it.
My brain can barely understand what it’s seeing, and so
I
send
my
mind
to
another
place.
BLACK WATER
An enormous wall
of black water
heads straight for us.
It carries
all the desert:
uprooted ironwoods,
ocotillo wands,
cholla balls,
animals,
rock,
mud,
and death.
EIGHT SECONDS
Eight seconds
I am frozen again in fear.
Seven seconds
Dad screams at me to climb.
Six seconds
I reach for my backpack,
but he grabs me,
the strap slipping
from my fingers.
Five seconds
Dad throws me on top of the outcropping
where I lay a few minutes ago.
Four
I search for anything I can hang on to,
a crack, a small indent in the wall,
an embedded rock.
Three
Dad pulls himself on top of the outcropping
as I struggle to climb the wall.
Two
Dad pushes me up to where I find
a foothold above his head.
One
Dad grabs a crack in the wall
while I grip the same vertical crack above him
and brace myself.
HITTING
The water
hits like a
train
I grip
the
wall
not wanting
to fall
and get crushed
underneath its
wheels
the water
rises as quickly
as the
bile
shooting
up
my
throat
sweeps away
my backpack
and every supply
I look
for more
footholds
climb higher
and slip
and
nearly
plunge
down
into
the
foaming
water
I grip
any
hold
I can find
with my trembling
fingers
in my
panic
to get away
fro
m the
water
splashing me
spraying in my
mouth
covering my
tongue
with its
salt
more like the
ocean
than a
river
TOO
Dad clings to the crack
below me, the water
now flowing over his legs,
stronger than the force of gravity
moving in the wrong direction,
doing everything in its power
to break him free of the wall.
I look down at his
tense, red face,
clenched teeth,
white knuckles
straining to hold on.
He can’t.
He doesn’t have the strength.
I’m going to lose him
too.
THE LAST THING
I love you
and
I’m sorry
and
Hold on
are the last things
he says to me,
though I barely
hear the words
over the
screeching
screaming
in my mind
over the
roaring,
rushing
black water,
which finally
accomplishes its goal
of tearing him
from the wall.
He’s carried away,
lying on his back,
floating on his backpack,
hands folded over his chest,
trying not to drown,
trying to flow with the water.
I watch him
until he disappears.
I didn’t have time to say,
I love you, too.
The last thing
I said to my dad was
I hate you.
LIVING WATER
I’ve seen
rivers and ponds
form instantly
when the heavy monsoons
dump inches of water
The Canyon's Edge Page 2