Owen's Daughter Read online

  To

  Judi Hendricks,

  Lois Gilbert,

  &

  to my son, Jack,

  who inspired the first book, this book,

  and no doubt what will come after.

  Thank you for listening.

  You must find grace within the calamity—

  that’s where all the beauty lives.

  —Alice Anderson

  “The Birds”

  The Watermark

  Contents

  Dolores

  December 2009, 32 degrees

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Dolores

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Dolores

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Dolores

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Dolores

  Acknowledgments

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  Dolores

  Just as pollen becomes a passenger riding the wind’s coattails, a spirit, too, can travel great distances. One day you may find me at 103 Ave de Colibri, a place I’m quite fond of because I lived there, once, and in that way, I always will. I’ve watched people come and go, tearing down the stables where beloved horses lived, the Appaloosa mare, her chestnut foal, as well as the chocolate-eyed bay stallion.

  I see everything.

  I watch the new owners whitewash the walls in the traditional way, using lime and water. Later, a traveler shows a man how to make glue so that he can apply wallpaper. Wallpaper inside an adobe house? Don’t forget the turpentine, he warns, turpentine is an insecticide. The fumes are terrible, and anyone who sleeps in that room is plagued with bad dreams.

  Time is fluid, flowing both ways.

  Some years later the wallpaper comes down, and others paint the rooms sky blue. Still others think red walls are a good idea, but not for long, and they argue about color, but actually they are arguing about something much deeper than paint, and come apart, sell the house, and then move. The latest is diamond plaster, a mixture of white clay, ocher pigment, and crushed mother-of-pearl. When the sun shines in the kitchen window, the walls wink as if they are holding back the stars.

  But next door, at 105, there are worse secrets.

  One summer an Englishwoman stands outside, wishing on a star. The famous Santa Fe wind blows restlessly through the trees. Left alone by her trader husband, who travels for business, she feels lost and alone. No babies have arrived. Her Spanish isn’t good. Her Navajo is nonexistent. Using sign language, her maid shows her how to keep a house, how to use beeswax to keep the furniture from drying out in the high desert climate. One morning, she stands alongside the maid and learns to make tortillas on the comal, a smooth clay griddle. The trick is to remember that lard itself is an ingredient, and as such is dependent on the condition of the animal from whence it came. One must adjust the amount of masa, sprinkling it slowly, dripping in the water, and use both hands to mix. She is quiet while the dough rests under a flour sack dish towel, hoping her new skills will please the husband, who comes home from his travels unhappy, and drinks, and sometimes, though she tells no one, he hits her. The maid rubs salve on the bruises but says nothing.

  She wished on that star every night.

  Wishing is the business of children.

  Once the woman was in love, with a farm boy who worked her father’s land. She and her lover couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Her father forbade the union and arranged a proper marriage to a man who would elevate his family’s status. The newlyweds took a boat all the way from England, over that rolling sea, and then a train through the dust, only to arrive here to what the woman called a mud hut. She cried. This so-called town was overrun with gamblers and drunks, Spanish men fond of harassing women, Native men who looked so frighteningly different that the farthest she ventured was the estable, or the stable, where the horses were kept. Her family shipped her grandmother’s English sideboard to her, across that ocean, believing familiar things would help her settle in. Waiting for it to arrive, the woman imagined where to place it and how it might look when it was filled with her blue-and-white china that had come all the way from the Orient, her husband’s gift to her when they married. The hired men struggled bringing the sideboard in the front door. Her trader husband, cheated out of money from a deal he’d been working on all week, returned home. There stood his formerly unhappy wife, smiling as she pressed coins into the hands of the hired men. She was taking coins out of his purse, his hard-earned money, to pay men who couldn’t speak English. He slapped the purse onto the floor, demanding to know how much she had paid them. Take the money out of the grocery budget, she said. How much? With his hands around her neck, she confessed. Three dollars. At dinner, she was not allowed to eat. That night he hit her again. When she woke on the floor in front of her beloved sideboard, she realized beauty meant nothing in the face of sorrow. The next time her husband went on a trading trip, she decided to sell the sideboard. It would bring enough money that she could return to London or head west, to California. All she needed was a buyer. A chance to arrange her travel.

  But no one wanted to buy from a woman. They had no rights.

  One night, her drunken husband threatened to push it over. Bust it into pieces. Burn it for firewood. Burn everything she had. Her horses, her linens, the pearl necklace of her grandmother’s. He lunged forward, and she did her best to stop him, rushing to save at least her dishes. He hit her with a piece of firewood and sent her to the afterlife. He took a drink of snakebite—whiskey—before he dragged her body to the barn. He placed her in the stall of the horse she loved best, the sweet-natured mare. He finished his drink before going in search of the sheriff and the doctor. The sheriff declared it an accident. Horse must have got spooked, kicked her to the ground. What a shame, the doctor said. She was such a pretty woman. Pretty but stupid, the husband said. They hauled her body away in a horse-drawn wagon. He shot the mare and had her carcass dragged away.

  Only the maid suspected what the husband had done. She didn’t show up for work the next day, but she came a few days later and continued to cook and clean the way she always had. Actually, she cooked a little differently, because quite soon the husband went a little mad, and then he became ill, bedridden. Her recipes came from her ancestors. Foxglove salad. Delphinium tea. The cherry laurel made into a jam. Yew berries.

  A lingering punishment, accompanied by suffering. Only then, the peace of death.

  The sideboard stayed with the house whenever it sold. Too heavy to move, it fit the room just right. Generations of families used it to store their treasures, and there it stands still. In the year 1966, a young couple painted it sky blue. Imagine the history! they said to anyone who visited. What stories it could tell, said the next owners, and finally, the old woman who owned it last hired a furniture maker to restore it to its original state, a walnut stain. Now her niece uses it to hold woven baskets, books, and toys for the child she sometimes babysits.

  History is trapped in every object, no matter how small. Story lurks in empty spaces.

  Over generations, I’ve watched women burn meals here, and cry. Bake cookies to decorate, to prove to the grandchildren that holidays are sweet times, exempt from whippings. Women smiling while their hearts are breaking over their husbands’ secret lovers. Planning a Christmas meal that takes three days to prepare. They believe that a sumptuous feast, with everyone gathered around the table, will make everything better. They run themselves ragged, then slump at the table, too tired to
enjoy the meal. Unhappy that the children are fighting, or the men are drunk, again, or that one of her sons, she is positive, has stolen her mother’s sterling silver Chantilly spoons and sold them to purchase drugs.

  A wall’s purpose is to separate and to hold things in, so why should it surprise you that rooms contain secrets? In these various rooms, people make love, give birth, miscarry, weep silently, rage inwardly, consider leaving, break the law, commit adultery, force unwanted sex upon each other, contemplate suicide, murder, and eventually die. Some of them go so off course in life, it makes sense that people are mortal.

  I was once that sort of person. Earthly. Salt water and flesh.

  With my limited abilities, I remind people of the reasons to stay. They are the main characters in this never-ending play. Don’t they know they can change the ending? I pop open the cupboard latches. Blow out the candles. I press hard enough to make the beams groan. I turn the bathroom tap so it will drip. On certain days, when the conditions are just so, when it is essential, I may appear, but not for long. It’s exhausting to project a corporeal form, to get the features in the right places. Another day, in another home, I peer over the shoulder of a writer in his office on Upper Canyon Road. When he falters, I whisper in his ear, Don’t stop now. I want to hear more.

  Other days I feel too confined indoors and ride the wind to Navajo Lake, to get away from these messy, stupid people, and I swim with the fish. I pluck the bait from a fisherman’s hook. Farther north, I perch atop Shiprock and commune with those ones—what the Navajo call their dead—who unfortunately don’t speak English or Spanish. Their Navajo is so formal, I often don’t understand. I never stay long. We all have our work to do. Today, it’s up to me to whisper into this young mother’s ear as she writes to her long-lost father. She’s so angry that the room she is in cowers around her. Anger has its time and place, but stay there too long and it will chain you to a stake in the ground, like a mistreated dog.

  Dogs, by the way, can see me just fine.

  December 2009, 32 degrees

  Dear Daddy,

  Part of the program at Cottonwoods Rehab is to work the Twelve Steps, and that’s what I’m doing writing this letter to you. I hate all the Steps, but Step Five particularly sucks. By comparison, Step Four is Yay! We’re having cherry pie for dessert, but not until you eat the liver and spinach. Step Five is Sorry, we’re having textured vegetable protein loaf from now on, and don’t expect ketchup, just clean your plate. Duncan, my group leader, and FBI (Full Blooded Indian, Navajo), says working the Steps is the only way to get out of this hellhole so I don’t have a choice. Just so you know, I’ve written dozens of letters to you, but this one I’m actually going to mail.

  The problem is, I have no idea where to send it, so I’m going with the last address you gave to Mama, that P.O. box in Blue Dog, New Mexico. Sounds like made-up Hollywood movie towns with dirt roads, dust devils, fake Indians war-whooping all over the place, and one bar that never closes. Duncan says that it doesn’t matter if the letter never reaches you. He says the reason to write you letters is to forgive you and to clean my own house.

  As if I had a house to clean! Or even a pot to pee in.

  I do forgive you, Daddy, when it comes to you bailing out on Mama. I understand why you left. But the part I have trouble forgiving is that you left me, too. Mama’s no easier to put up with these days. When Howie, the real estate baron with the blond toupee, fled Colorado, Mama bought a plane ticket to Phoenix, pounded a “For Sale” sign into the lawn, left me ten thousand dollars, the keys to the Mercedes, and a note that said, “This ought to get you through school. Try not to get pregnant.”

  She headed for the airport, and adios, childhood.

  Which is my way of telling you that you’re a grandpa, and that Mama made up all those updates about me being in college because she never could face the truth. My daughter Gracie is nearly four years old now. I haven’t seen her for some time. I’m going to miss her birthday. No family visits are allowed at Cottonwoods, plus Rocky (her dad) is on the pro rodeo circuit, so he’s always traveling. All my life I was good at things. I broke barrel racing records in my age division. I got an A in chemistry. My science teachers all told me I should go to medical school. I chose early acceptance to Stanford. I could have been a large animal vet.

  But I had hormones, and those eggs that drop like a lottery ball every month. I got pregnant.

  Rocky and I did the “right” thing and got married. I tried to make dinners with the four food groups, and learn to clean house and be a good mom. Life in a doublewide just wasn’t for me. At first it was pain pills for my broken elbow. Then it was a glass of vodka for me, because that makes a colicky baby totally tolerable. Rocky drank all the time, so why shouldn’t I? Then it was a countdown to five P.M. before I hauled out the vodka, mixed with Gracie’s grape juice, not a bad taste, really. From time to time I worked a waitress job. All that free alcohol made me a better waitress. Fifty-dollar-bill tips, and once I got a free ski weekend, even. Other times my tips were a handful of oxy, which from the start made me feel like a better version of me. Like I could do figure eights on ice cubes. Pretty soon I was snorting it three times a day and powering down the drinks. Rocky loved me partying with him. When we weren’t partying, though, marriage wasn’t much of anything. I moved out and took Gracie with me. Everything seemed manageable, and we’d even started sharing custody. Then I got in a wreck with Gracie in the car. She was fine, but I got arrested for DWI and a bunch of other stuff, old news in New Mexico. The judge was up for reappointment and wanted to make an example out of me. He said he’d drop the felony child endangerment if I went to rehab. Otherwise, it was straight to jail, but that wasn’t the worst thing.

  He gave Rocky full custody. No matter what I said, he wouldn’t budge.

  Getting sober is way harder than I imagined. Not even three months in, this cook who had a crush on me smuggled in a twelve-ounce bottle of Mexican vanilla extract filled with Jack Daniel’s. I chugged the whole thing and ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning, where I had a seizure and had to be put on dialysis. I was afraid I’d get kicked out of rehab. Never occurred to me I could’ve died until I was back in the world. Are you sober, Daddy? Living under some freeway overpass? Down in Florida working on a fishing boat? I haven’t seen or heard from you in ten years, but I feel closer to you than ever, now that we have common ground beyond our love for horses, namely drinking. Speaking of Lightning, he is fourteen. Sometimes I think I should sell him, but what if he missed me as much as I’d miss him? Every night here I shut my eyes and see him so clear. I smell alfalfa, hear his deep, whispery nicker. I feel his warm breath against my neck and tears run down my face like one of those chains that make music just from rain and I want to be out of this place so bad.

  You I can’t picture at all.

  They’re big on religion here. I ask questions nobody can answer. If God created humans in his image, why are humans such fuck-ups? Does that mean God is also a drunk, a bad parent, and an idiot?

  When I think about Step Five, admitting to our wrongdoings, et cetera, I wonder about you, Daddy. Maybe you’re the one who needs to work that step. I was a spoiled rotten child, and I used that to my advantage, playing you and Mama against each other because it helped me get my way, whether it meant overpriced movie theater candy or an electric guitar I played twice and then abandoned. But I was a child. Things got worse after you left, and I’m positive that’s where I started going downhill. I am working hard on changing my life. It’s taking a while. Duncan says that every day is just one day to get through, and worrying how long it’ll take is “stinkin’ thinkin’.” Yeah, but when you’re a hundred miles from a Walgreens and sitting in group therapy with people you wouldn’t otherwise give the time of day, it’s hard not to dwell on the past. Daddy, I apologize for using passive-aggressive behavior on you. Maybe I learned it from Mama, but I’m the one who did it. I guess I thought getting whatever I wanted would make up for all t
he fighting you two did. I was mad at Mama for kicking you out.

  But I was furious at you leaving me.

  You could be in Timbuktu for all I know. Maybe you have another family, with better kids. Life goes on. But even when I was hammered drunk or high on the pill du jour, not one day went by I didn’t think of you. And miss you. I don’t care why you disappeared on me. I love you anyway. Wherever you are, I hope you are doing all right, staying sober, and won’t think too poorly of me for turning out like this. I hope you got that sheep ranch you always talked about, and that you are flush with friends. Out riding fences at sunrise, your favorite time of day. I hope that sometimes you think about me. Even all messed up I am still your little girl. Remember me sitting in front of you on your horse? You reciting cowboy poetry? I loved those times.

  The future’s up for grabs, but nothing will ever change the past.

  Love,

  Sara Kay

  P.S. I go by Skye now.

  P.P.S. I still love you, Daddy.

  P.P.P.S. Gracie is adorable.

  Chapter 1

  Thursday, April 1, 2010

  Seven a.m., 59 degrees

  People say there is nothing more romantic than a New Mexico sunset. Clearly those people have never witnessed a New Mexico sunrise. The sky starts out purple and then is streaked with gold and pink before blue starts to sneak in. The colors of the sky thread through tent rocks, fairy chimneys, and hoodoos. The rock formations could only be the work of a drunken, celestial hand. Skye will never forget them rising out of the desert floor. Or the lake-blue sky overhead with the cottony clouds lined up like soldiers. When she’s back in the world, gainfully employed and reunited with Gracie, this place will haunt her dreams.

  For the last nine months as she tried to get sober, the rocks were the first things she saw every morning. In high school her science teacher taught that the rocks near the Four Corners were made up of volcanic ash, earthquakes, and time. Some, like Shiprock, which is miles away from Cottonwoods Rehab but visible in all kinds of weather, loom taller than skyscrapers. Minerals and weather can’t explain everything. Over and over she listened to Duncan tell her the story of how his people—the Anasazi/Navajo/Diné—came to earth: