I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness

by Claire Vaye Watkins

  Next she came as pain during childbirth. My doula said, Breathe, and I said, But I’m so tired, and someone said, So rest.

  Rest, my mother said. I’ll meet you on the other side.

  I liked OxyContin the time my mom gave me some of hers. I liked it a lot. It made me feel melted and borderless. After my c-section I liked Percocet, needed more at my follow-up. I washed my hair and enunciated the magic nouns—professor, wife of a doctor—got the pills and thought, a shimmer at the corner of my eye, of taking them all at once, my fearsome matrilineage, then I flushed them.

  Jesse, I do not want to hurt the baby or myself. I am not choosing darkness but darkness is choosing me. I am on this dingy beach at Malakoff Diggins. I need waterfalls, hanging lakes tinged pink by tailings. At least the deep worshipful divots where the glaciers used to be. Donner, Marlette, Tahoe’s open eye. I see it draining down through the foothills, into Reno and out, disappearing into the Great Basin from which no water escapes, unless you count as escape transmutation into hay, steak, sagebrush, mustangs, bighorns in the Ruby Mountains and beyond those the little town of Ruth.

  Here I am with another heartsick lover beside a stinking, almost-gone pond. Gray reeds and cigarette butts and wads of garbage. Smoke from whatever wildfire wherever. I needed us naked, swimming in sun. I needed clean water. But summer’s over. There is no such place anymore.

  I look east across the hundred-mile desert, over range and prairie. The sky gets lower and lower. In Iowa cicadas drip screeching from the trees. In Michigan it is winter. Five o’clock and dark. Toxic plumes and algae blooms. Lead in the water, fire retardants in the breast milk. Theo getting Ruth from the nanny.

  In the now my mother shows me.

  * * *

  —

  I like it in Sparks, sad and drunk before noon in a Mexican restaurant on a rainy day. I like it in a booth with an inflated Corona hovering overhead. I like it when the poet says is this a message, finally, or just another day?

  I like it when Noah says, “I can’t do this anymore . . . it doesn’t feel right . . .”

  —oh yeah. “I’d like another, please—sí, Corona.”

  I like it when Noah cries, when I cry, when anyone cries.

  “I really thought we were going to ride off into the sunset together,” I say.

  “I know you did.”

  I want to hate him. I eat chips and try. But I like him best not liking me, love even his widow’s peak, its ambivalent crest and healthy boundaries.

  “I get it,” I say, not at all getting it. “If I were you, I never would have let me into my van.”

  * * *

  —

  Pull my hair. Be kind to all plants and animals and children. Leave me alone. That’s how I like it.

  I like it in Ruth, Nevada, in the sacred vestibule of the Mormon church. I like it when it rains in the desert, when it rains in the mountains, when it rains on the coast. Basically I like rain. I like it hungover and heartbroken the morning after a rain, sage smell rising, Noah carrying my tote bag to the airport.

  “Careful, it’s heavy.”

  “What’s in here, rocks?”

  Special ones. That’s what I’m into.

  Kiss me hard in the airport parking lot, aspens gold and trembling. Release me to the terminal where everyone can see. The teeth inside me pulse with longing and lostness. That’s how I like it. That’s where I’m at.

  1970

  Dear Denise,

  A weird thing happened to me today. For a long time nobody liked me. Judd never wrote. Bill wouldn’t talk to me. And Brad Neilson gave me dirty looks all the time. But today I fainted in P.E. and Brad helped me into the hall. Then Bill put his arm around me at lunch. And Judd wrote me a letter telling me how much he loves me! Speaking of Judd, enclosed is a picture of him. Please return it.

  Have to cheer at a game tonight. Blah! Don’t ever become a cheerleader, it’s a drag. Better go now. Bye.

  Love + Peace,

  Martha

  P.S. Write back

  Dear Denise,

  What’s happening? I’ve got good news. Don’t tell Aunt Nancy but I’m going to save up my money until I have $35 then I’m going to get a two-way plane ticket to come and visit. I’ll call or write and tell you when I get it all saved up.

  We went to Rancho to see Viet Rock. It was an anti-war play. They sang some songs. My favorite one was called the “Brand-New War Machine.” It goes, “Have you seen the brand-new war machine? It looks real clean but it’s evil . . .” something like that.

  L & K,

  Martha

  P.S. Say hi to everyone and write back.

  Dear Denise,

  I just came back from my “end of grade” school trip. The whole class went to Disneyland. We also went to a whole bunch of museums. It was fun. We passed right by your house! I tried to get Mr. Busdriver to stop, but he couldn’t. We didn’t get home until 12:30 at night but when I got out of the bus, sure enough, there was Brad, Tony & Monty (they didn’t go on the trip). Tony took my suitcase, Monty took my hatbox, and Brad took me. They walked me home.

  Don’t tell anyone but on the bus I was with Monty’s little brother, Jeff. The first night of the trip Jeff was with Cynthia, the second with Marcy (a friend of mine) and the third (on the bus) with me. He really hurt me bad. Cynthia too. Oh well.

  I better go now.

  Love + Peace,

  Martha

  Hey Dee,

  Cynthia likes this guy named Kim Smith. She was supposed to meet him at the jayvee basketball game but she was out on the field having a smoke. I was already stoned so I went in the gym and Kim was sitting by himself, waiting. I went up and sat with him and waited for Cynthia. I had just washed my hair and it really looked pretty and smelled like love. Kim started playing with it. Cynthia came in. She sat between me and Kim. After a few minutes, he got up and sat above me and started braiding my hair. Naturally Cynthia got mad. I admit it was bad to take him, but he liked me and that wasn’t my fault. After a while, me and Cyn made up.

  Friday night Kim was babysitting his sister’s kids and he called me. We must’ve talked for two hours. It was really mellow. Saturday I went downtown with Cyn. On the bus home there was this guy who was a real freak. He had a silver cap on his front tooth. I decided to tease Cyn. I went over and sat down next to Joe Cool and whispered in his ear, “Kiss me baby, my tonsils itch.”

  * * *

  —

  Sorry I haven’t written for so long. I’ve been busy (with Kim, of course). I think this is the first time I’ve ever wrote two letters and been going around with the same guy in both of them. Amazing! Just between you and me, I think Kim is going to ask me to go steady. I hope so. Sunday night Dern asked Cynthia to go steady. I’ve been hinting around a lot lately and I think Kim is finally getting the hint.

  Dear Denise,

  I’ve got to tell you what happened last night. Last night Cynthia and I were over at my house and Mike, Jay, and Steve (seniors) came over in Jay’s car. They asked us if we wanted to go to the Garble House with them. The Garble House is this old house that is supposed to be haunted by some old man. Well, we went down there and man, was it ever scary! Me and Cynthia and Suzette almost peed in our pants when we got out of the car. The house had a big front yard, all dirt, with an old, broken down fence. We climbed it easy. You walk up the steps to this castle door with a lion knocker, really heavy door. Mike pushed it open without knocking and we walked in. Big spiral staircase. We walked up the stairs into complete darkness before we saw the roof’s ripped off. We looked around a little more and then went out back. There was a big swimming pool and horse stables! After that we went down to Winchell’s and sat around and talked. The house was fantastically beautiful but obviously haunted. Me and Cynthia decided greed is a disease. Mike said we’re weird.

  Love and miss you, />
  Martha

  Loafing Along Death Valley Trails

  And so once again I boarded flight 4325, the very same midday Reno-to-Vegas commuter flight I’d forced my way off months before, same Los Angeles–based flight crew. I recognized them during boarding, when I handed my extremely expensive ticket to the flight attendant I’d shoved. Worse, the attendant recognized me. Her colleague, the angry one with the exacting facial hair who’d opened the door for me, frowned my way as he patrolled to close the overhead compartments. I got a little panicky but took a Dramamine and fell asleep.

  I woke forty-five minutes later in Las Vegas, a city I had promised myself I would never again step foot in, as long as I lived. I staggered groggily through McCarran—the only airport where I have ever heard the intercom say, Sir, alcoholic beverages are not allowed on the jet bridge. The airport was playing “Leaving Las Vegas” by Sheryl Crow, as always. I’m not complaining. “Leaving Las Vegas” is a perfect song, although the airport people, in cahoots with the all-powerful tourism bureau no doubt, ruined it by cutting the final lines:

  No I won’t be back

  Not this time

  I chanted this lopped-off coda to myself as I bought a Cinnabon at Cinnabon, found the gate for my connection and waited to go home. I had tried to book another flight, any other to avoid connecting in Vegas, but it wasn’t possible, the ticket agent in Reno had said, not on the same day, not so close to the holidays.

  “No worries!” I’d told the agent, handing over my credit card and in fact brimming with worries. That I’d be unable to escape that city, that it would grasp me as it had my foremothers and sisters. So, it was the city’s hand I felt close around me when the monitors announced my flight home delayed an hour. I tried not to panic, browsed a gift shop, bought a book called Uncommon Characteristics of Common Wildflowers of the Mojave Desert, and returned to the gate to read it. Our new departure time came and went. Folks pawed frantically at their phones, beating the rest of us to the cold hard truth of our situation. Soon enough an announcement admitted the flight delayed again, this time indefinitely, by a storm in Chicago. People called their people and cursed Chicago. I considered calling Theo. He was expecting me.

  I considered messaging Nate, still a bouncer at a bar on Trop where we met fifteen years ago, though by the looks of his social media he now also trained UFC fighters and sold tubs of supplements. I recalled Nate’s huge and expressively curved dick, which I had used over the years to commemorate UNLV vs. UNR sporting contests and to annihilate the emotional aftermath of my brief visits to my family.

  I did not call Theo, but neither did I message Nate. For this I rewarded myself with a trip to the international terminal for a massage and a pair of Uggs. Noodly and slick with oil, I wore the Uggs out of the store, walked in them from terminal to terminal, sheepskin wombs I used to ward off the babies all around me. I ducked into a bar and in no time was fairly drunk. The bar had plenty of TVs. It was almost Christmas, the local news all toy drives and house fires. Outside was the Strip, the physical manifestation of every bankrupt ideology of the twentieth century. Though I could not see it, I heard the young city’s psyche crying out from deep in the bowels of its gaudy icons, struggling for breath inside the tightening fists of the rich men who owned them. As I’ve said, I was quite drunk. I could not help but wonder what sort of ill culture births, almost overnight, a vice capital of such grotesque scale and such shallow memory? What future could there be in a city whose sparkling lore was all violence and infrastructure? Hoover Dam, atomic bombs. America’s most rapidly warming city, the news said. “Planners here are searching desperately for a replacement for pavement.” Furthermore, I learned from Uncommon Characteristics it was true what Noah said about the birds of the Mojave—half gone, what’s left mostly corvids.

  Finally, a message: my flight canceled. Act of God the text from the airline said. I admit I interpreted this completely routine fuck-over by a tax-dodging monopoly as the hand of Fate. Las Vegas makes you think this way. Ask anyone not from here who lives here how that happened and I guarantee you’ll hear a harrowing saga writhing with the cruelest twists of fortune, highly questionable decision-making and the very worst luck. Drive off Strip in the morning, before school, witness the city’s daily migration, a beleaguered shuffle of women and children from one unstable housing arrangement to another, their luggage a distant cousin to the matching wheeled sets loaded and unloaded by shuttle drivers and bellhops all across a city where the population regularly doubles with visitors. See these belongings on their backs and piled on shopping cart wagons and stroller rigs. A decade after the massive upward redistribution of wealth that was the Great Recession, this city running out of water was still in survival mode and always would be.

  Yet I knew it as well to be a city alive, ribald and shameless, embracing of grime and sex, each body therein a site of filth ready to receive the purifying fires of the sun. Maybe that was just me. You have to be careful in Las Vegas—the place will be whatever you need it to be. For me it was a thirsty city joyously screaming the song of the unbearable now. For me it was my mother’s city, and for this reason I had to get out.

  I wanted there to be a place for me. That is what I’d said on the phone to Theo at the beginning of this day, the day after Noah broke my heart in Sparks. I’d said, “Maybe could you put me in a place?” I told him about this idea I had of sitting and looking out at a lake, a wool blanket draped over my legs. Theo thought there could be such a place, but it required prior authorization. We’d have to make a place ourselves. He promised to look into cabins on the lake. A “Yellow Wallpaper” scenario, that felt like now, my shoulder already in the groove. I thought of calling Lise, but knew she’d say if I had been to visit our mom in any of her “places” I would know there was no such “place” for me.

  Maybe not, I thought. But also—driving a rented car (the cuboid model driven in commercials by husky rapping hamsters) over the mountains toward Tecopa—maybe so.

  * * *

  —

  It is unrealistic to expect even fossil water to pull you back into your body, yet this is a frequently documented effect of very hot springs. I admit I had impossible needs driving out to Tecopa, needs inflamed through Spring Mountain pass and down into the Joshua tree forest on the other side, combusted by a passing glimpse of the Christmas Joshua done up as it is every year in sacred trash, its arms draped in garlands and tinsel, tines speared with glittery ornaments.

  According to my book, the Joshua tree, Yucca brevifolia, used to be cunnilingued on the regular by the ridiculously long tongues of giant ground sloths. I’m paraphrasing. Its sloth lovers extinct, the Joshua tree now finds itself in a loveless marriage to a common, dirt-colored moth. My book called this a miracle.

  I pulled up to the public baths in Tecopa, open twenty-four hours and bicameral, separated by sex. As girls, my sister and I often followed my mother into the women’s side, eager to gawk at the secret bodies in the waters there. These were bodies you could read, stories on the skin in sun and scars, stories of pain, deformity, malignancy, the evidence of many operations. I remembered the awe I felt for those old naked women, my neighbors. I never saw bodies like them anywhere else—as marked, as resilient, as expressive. You could see time on them, their rippling fat, wrinkles, their hair everywhere. I remembered vividly how each woman seemed impossibly sturdy, an effect perhaps of the refraction of light through the mineral water, or of their big old bushes. Their bodies were the first books I read and those books were mostly about work. Child-rearing, housework, yard work, waiting tables, prospecting. Markings of birth about the breasts, thighs, belly and—though I did not know this then—inside. Most deformed of all were the feet, mangled by one long story—centuries long—in which a girl brings a man a drink.

  But now it was the middle of the night and just me at the baths. I stuffed some bills in the coffee can at the entrance and went in. I turned off the lights a
nd undressed in the darkness, feeling my body, reading by Braille the scar threaded across my lower abdomen, smirking above my pubic hair. I stroked my stretch marks, a weathering of shimmery purple across my stomach and thighs and hips.

  The water’s murmur bounced off the cinder blocks. I sank into the scalding pool and floated.

  I wanted to take everyone I knew and float them in the hot springs, starting with everyone hurting. Everyone clenched against winter. Everyone bent from work. Everyone on their feet all day. Everyone floating outside their body. I wanted to look at death, to know it, to feel in my bones that it came for me, yes me, so that I might act accordingly.

  It is not uncommon to fear dissolve while floating.

  It is not uncommon for lost people to return in dark skies and minerals.

  Cancer served me very well. It was as though I got grabbed ahold of by the neck, like God grabbed me by the neck and said “You want to look at your life and, uh, get it back in the productive mode? You want to really live it, or do you want to continue to rape, pillage and plunder?”

  I wondered, watching the steam rise all around me, up and out the open roof of the bathhouse and toward the insane stars.

  * * *

  —

  The first thing to leave you in the desert is time. Dawn found me sleeping in the backseat of the cube in the bathhouse parking lot. My soak had brought on the sleep of the dead, even though it was freezing and the back of the Cube was surprisingly cramped for such a dumbly bulky vehicle.

  I checked the time—a few more hours until my rescheduled flight to Detroit. I might have gone by the Tecopa house, might have checked on it, but instead I drove up the road, past the tufa caves, to Shoshone. In front of the Crowbar I was greeted by a nine-foot stalk rising from a massive dusk-violet agave. Agave deserti, commonly called the century plant, another misnomer. It sends up its stalk not after one hundred years, as most assume, but a measly thirty. Its bushy yellow panicles spread open to the desert air and then it dies young. Oldest trick in the book.