The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  Early May. On blue paper white and gray pastel clouds and the words in turquoise ink:

  Welcome to the first rain clouds of the summer. I hope they linger while I draw them. On beige paper in white pastel nimbus and cumulus clouds and the words in black ink:

  Some believe the smallest clouds are babies and small children who died.

  Then one cloud’s constant transformations all alone in the bright blue sky got my attention. In white pastel on the beige paper I drew a sequence of this cloud as it changed shape and shifted over ten minutes. The sequence begins at the top of the page. I stopped a moment to smear the white pastel into wispy tendrils of the cloud in the six forms it took. When I looked up again at the sky the cloud was gone.

  Clouds in white pastel on beige paper and these words in black ink:

  More clouds.

  In purple ink these words:

  It was as if the clouds were communicating with me by changing shapes in the high winds above.

  The clouds changed shapes so rapidly the thought occurred to me this might be extraterrestrials contacting me.

  Two nimbus clouds in white pastel on beige paper. In purple ink these words:

  The clouds were teaching me how to communicate with them.

  It requires long periods of watching the sky in stillness. I seem to have the most interesting encounters with single clouds. Large masses of clouds pay no attention to me.

  As I walked into the room I share with the one-legged macaw, I was surprised by a fresh light scent. Sandino had shredded a big red apple that smelled of spring flowers, not apple.

  Spring comes to the desert again and again with each rainstorm. The rain I smell in the wind leaves me exultant to be alive in that moment. What I like to do after a rain is go outside early in the morning as the sun rises above the mountains to see the night-blooming cactus flowers; their double and triple blossoms are the shapes of comets and supernovas incandescent with celestial light. Their perfume is hypnotic. In the backlight of the rising sun, the dried seedpods appear as exploding stars—dazzling with their reflections.

  Later that morning I noticed a bushy tailed squirrel intent on teasing or attempting to frighten something by flicking his tail and fluffing it—fully extended, the hairs made a halo of the shining sun. He didn’t mind me watching him, he was so focused on his adversary. At first I looked around the ceramic water bowl and saw nothing, and almost gave up. Then I looked more closely and saw a small rattler curled around the water bowl next to a fence post. The rattler ignored the squirrel that kept looking to see if the rattler was still there. Did the squirrel have a batch of babies nearby? The doves are like me, they don’t see the small snake curled up against the fence rail when they land on the water bowl.

  The bushy tailed squirrel came back a third time to wave and shake his fluffed up tail in the small rattler’s hunting area—that is probably the plan—to ruin the hunting for the snake with his squirrelly dance that alerts all in the area of the hunter.

  This late May morning Sandino sensed the approach of the rain and bathed himself with much enthusiasm. Four hours later a petite rain paid us a visit. The palo verde, mesquite and ironwood are all in bloom. The true garden is the desert outside my yard.

  Two days later in the big arroyo, I found two pieces of turquoise rock both the size of a small button. An orange butterfly with arabesques in black on its wings greeted me with kindness and ceremony on the trail.

  I have a dozen or more sketchbooks and notebooks only partially filled, then abandoned for years only to have me find them and start using them again for drawing and painting and writing as well. The linear time line is thus tangled and confused as it deserves to be.

  The pack rat is trying to move into the barbeque grill Charlie abandoned when he left a few years ago. Is this the same rat that was inside the engine compartment of my car despite the light bulb that burned there all night?

  A few years ago I might have tried to kill it with a rock or stick, but right then I didn’t feel like killing anything, not even a pack rat. Now that I’m older, I can’t bring myself to kill anything except assassin beetles—I even help scorpions reach safety. But I kill assassin beetles, my karma be damned, because their bites almost kill me.

  So I showed the old pit bull dog the burrow where the pack rat ran. The dog sniffed the barbeque grill where the rat fled and now the dog is vigorously chewing the steel frame that holds the bottled gas under the grill.

  The raven couple called back and forth to one another along the big arroyo. I listened for the voice of their raven child but I wasn’t sure I heard it or one of them. I hope their chick survived the attention of the owls and red-tail hawks. The old pit bull is still chewing the grill’s door, trying to reach the pack rat that’s long gone.

  The big black collared lizard king I nicknamed “Godzilla” is out and about this late May morning hunting the golden cockroaches I disturbed by moving flowerpots around. This dark mesquite lizard rules all the shady area under the tree and front porch including but not limited to the damp flowerpot bottoms and all the golden cockroaches hidden there.

  I saw a light brown lizard without a collar and hope it is the same lizard that was inside the oak barrel debris. I couldn’t see the lizard when I started to move the debris in the macaw cage, and the lizard got knocked unconscious. I thought it was dead. I almost threw it out into the desert. But when I went to pick the lizard up, I saw that it was alive, barely, so I took it to a safe shady spot under the mesquite tree. A short time later when I looked, the lizard had regained consciousness and was gone. I kept a lookout in case it just crawled off to die, but never saw any sign of it until I saw the light brown lizard today.

  CHAPTER 41

  I read that the way to distinguish real turquoise from chrysocolla is to lick the stones and your tongue will stick to the chrysocolla but not to the turquoise. I licked all the turquoise stones I had on my writing desk. My tongue stuck to nearly every one of the turquoise rocks except for the two big nuggets. With further reading I learned the two cabochons are probably “chrysocolla-impregnated chalcedony” with the hardness of seven—chalcedony is harder than turquoise, and heavier and denser than turquoise.

  I found another turquoise ledge off the west side where we throw biodegradable items. A turquoise ledge of very blue, sky blue chrysocolla but soft as calcium carbonate from fossil seashells. So the house I live in sits on top of a chalky turquoise ledge of brightest blue.

  I try to leave the house before the sun rises over the Catalina Mountains across the valley to the east. When the sun breaks over the Catalinas, the Tucson Mountain peaks catch the first light and glow an incandescent yellow gold that makes them look purple then orange. The early morning air of the desert is incomparable—it is delicious—the air is cool with the least hint of moisture that holds the scents of clay and stone and even the perfume of the late-blooming catsclaw bush. Later the heat parches the air and the scent will be of wood about to combust. Early in the morning is the time all creatures in the desert move about; the pack rats are light-sensitive and must be in their nests by dawn. The night hunters, the bobcats, pumas and the snakes, begin to head for their day shelters from the sun. The cactus wrens and thrashers call; the doves begin to fly to water.

  Sometimes it is completely silent. No human sounds (unless you count my breathing), no engines, no trains, no barking dogs, no airplanes, just the sound of the wind moving through the palo verde and saguaro and for a moment even the desert creatures are quiet. I might be standing here a thousand years ago, or ten thousand years ago.

  The ancient people stood here and looked at the Catalinas with the sun rising over them; they watched for any clouds that might come. Clouds from any direction were always welcomed.

  During the 2007 snake season, the mastiffs finally managed to kill the big rattlesnake that lived under the dog shed. One evening when I brought them in at bedtime, I saw that Snapper and Lyon had been bitten though they weren’t swollen much; Lyo
n was bitten on the foot and Snapper on the lower lip, but they both had developed immunities to the venom, so were barely affected by the bites. The next morning when I fed the dogs I wasn’t paying much attention and when I walked past the dog beds I got a big shock. There was the dead rattler, its huge head smashed flat, and its four foot long body torn into three pieces.

  Now the squirrels are excavating a huge cavern under the dog shed which now teeters on the edge. That’s what we get for the killing of the big snake.

  I blamed the manuscript of my memoir for the anxiety, the ringing in the ears and the poor concentration I had; I’d never had such a strong visceral reaction to writing before. But now I’ve realized the true source of my symptoms—it wasn’t just the childhood recollections that started to get to me as I wrote this book.

  Over the past months, I’d managed to poison myself with a strong electromagnetic field in my house electrical wiring. I had plugged in a gizmo to drive away rodents about eight months ago. I didn’t leave the device plugged in all the time because I had a pet mouse I called Mystery Mouse. I worried the device might irritate her so I called the 800 number on the device and spoke with a polite man who could tell me nothing about the device or how it worked except that it was safe for humans and pets.

  I was familiar with the research done on the dangerous effects of alternating current’s electromagnetic field on the cellular development of zygotes. But the desire to find an easy fix to the rodent infestation in my attic led me to delude myself with the false assurances the device was safe for children and pets. I threw caution aside when I plugged in the device. It caused all the wiring of my house to give off an electromagnetic field that slowly destroyed any creatures unable to escape its force field.

  Mystery Mouse died in late April. Once she was dead I left the device plugged in all the time because I didn’t have her comfort to consider anymore. I thought large creatures like myself were not affected by the field.

  Within five days of leaving the device plugged in, I was ready to go to the emergency room. My ears were ringing loudly, my heart was pounding and my blood pressure was uncharacteristically high. I felt anxious and unable to sit down at my laptop to work on the memoir. I blamed writing the memoir because my symptoms got worse when I worked on the computer due to all the electricity required to run it and the peripherals.

  About that time the roofers came to fix the front roof of the house. The roofing foreman noticed the lights we use in the engine compartments of our cars at night to keep away the pack rats. I told him about the plug-in device, and he said his roofing company used the same plug-in device. It worked great, he said, no rodents, not even birds would fly inside their warehouse anymore.

  That was when I let go of my self-delusion and realized what was wrong—it wasn’t the writing of the memoir that set off my pulse and blood pressure. The anti-rodent gizmo’s electromagnetic field utilized all the electrical wiring in my house to create a strong wave signal twenty-four hours a day. No wonder the spiders indoors had virtually disappeared; even the assassin beetles were gone. The rattlesnakes didn’t leave because they lived under the floor below the grid-work of electrical wiring in the walls.

  CHAPTER 42

  The Quicholi festival for Mixcoatl, the Maize Mother, is a celebration that uses a great many arrows which are made and offered to Huitzilopochtli, Lord Hummingbird the Warrior, and to all warriors who died in battle to commemorate the descent of the stars into the interior of the Earth.

  On the turquoise mosaic, the outer band represented warriors who are war-like star deities such as Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli and Huitzilopochtli; so the Star Beings are linked to turquoise, which shows their status as the highest. Now astronomers say that great ice comets collided with the Earth and brought all the water there is. So the comets were the Star Beings that brought life to Earth; without water there can be no life as we know it, and no turquoise.

  I thought the rattlers wouldn’t climb up the tall clay pots but my neighbor found a big rattlesnake in one of her large clay pots on her wooden deck. About that time I watched a really big rattler crawl over—not around—a stack of bricks by a flowerpot which means the snake could easily climb into my tall flowerpots if it wished. Fortunately the snakes seem to prefer the dirt that dampens between the flowerpots under the mesquite tree to the flowerpots themselves. My neighbor’s wooden deck gets too warm and is probably the reason the snakes crawled up into her flowerpots. The snakes here haven’t done that yet. Not yet. But I now look before I reach in the flowerpots to test the dampness of the soil.

  The big rattler was lying in the shade in wait for a mourning dove. He was on the other side of a big pot with gourd sprouts in it. I couldn’t see him. I was wearing my sound cancelling headphones when I stepped outside to the porch; I think the cockatoos had been screeching so I left the headphones on.

  Although I barely heard it I felt the vibration of the rattling. I took off the headphones and located the snake before I stepped around the big pot and found myself face to face with the big snake. I don’t like to be surprised by snakes; it means I’m not paying enough attention to my surroundings.

  The light! The light! This first morning of June on the stretch of the big arroyo just above the old iron culvert that resembles a coffin, bright in the sunlight I found a small cabochon of turquoise in the shape of a heart on a gravel bar I’ve walked past a number of times recently but never saw. Was it there those other times? When did it appear? Was it visible only in the 6:20 a.m. light? Maybe the light at 8:30 a.m. is brighter but the wrong angle, and so bright the turquoise stones appear to be enameled.

  Now the misty breeze smells just like the ripe prickly pears boiled for syrup. The rain smells of wet cactus. The wind came from the east and there was little thunder or lightning. It was a gentle rain that soaked into the ground. The air had been so hot but now suddenly the breeze off the rainstorm feels almost icy. The palo verde covered with dainty yellow flowers sway in the wind; at their feet the drifts of fallen blossoms swirl.

  The cooler air lingers in the low-lying places, the arroyos. It feels delicious on my face and is lightly perfumed with the late-blooming catsclaw bushes in the arroyos. The wild flowers that bloomed in February, March and April are dry stalks, their seedpods the shapes of spiders, bees and stars. They are luminous—backlit by the rising sun—as lovely in this light as they were in flower.

  At 5:15 a.m. the sun is up but not quite over the Catalina Mountains. To walk or not to walk? I tell myself the more walks I take the more material I will have for the manuscript. Yes, no. I decided yes, a slow walk. I didn’t have any coffee. I left the dogs indoors but I uncovered the one-legged macaw’s cage.

  I started out and felt a bit odd on the first hill from not eating. But I can think of no better place to die than out on the trail in these hills with the saguaros and all the other beings I love. But after the first hill I get warmed up and feel better the longer I walk.

  The low angle of the rising sun through clouds filters the light through a yellow shimmering haze that makes the early morning golden. The dry stalks and leaves and the seedpods were backlit by the sun and transformed to flora of light in another dimension.

  I saw a set of large boot-prints on the trail. A big man. Size 13 DDDDD. I see little tracks of night insects and night rodents in the fine dust inside the boot-print; he was here yesterday.

  After the Gila Monster Mine the boot-prints stopped, and I saw only rabbit and javelina tracks and those of insects on the trail which filled my heart with relief and happiness. At the javelina dance place I found no dancing tracks. They dance here because the soft sand feels good and there are no pebbles or stones to stub their cloven hooves. They take their dirt baths in select spots where the runoff moves the rocks and pebbles and leaves only the finest soft sand and clay which they carefully prepare by pawing it with their hooves and rooting it up with their snouts and curved incisors.

  The morning after the first rain I will be sure to walk
to see what sorts of gatherings went on here last night. From the fresh tracks in the damp sand, I can tell the deer reared up on their hind legs and danced in mock combat with one another. They frolic because the rain fills them with joy and erotic excitement.

  For years I rode my horse along the trail I now walk. The horse watched the footing and did all the work while I enjoyed the view from the top of the horse. Now I walk and I keep my eyes on the trail while scanning up and around from time to time. I stop now and then to listen as my father taught me for deer hunting.

  I am losing my hearing from all those years of my childhood when I happily watched my parents fire high-powered rifles and large hand guns without ear protection so I probably miss a great deal but still I can hear the happiness of the curved beak thrashers and speckled cactus wrens over the recent rain and the wild flowers.

  CHAPTER 43

  I like to think about the interesting things I saw on my walk. The round orange rock on the hillside north of the Gila Monster Mine pit is one of those “arresting” things. It is a bright orange granite that is not abundant but still present here. The shape is nearly round and I imagine I’m not the first to notice it. Someday I want to detour from the trail and hike over to the orange hillside to look at the bright orange round rock close up.

  The rain made the desert trees and brush so lush and thick I have difficulty locating the round orange rock on the hillside these days.