THIS WAS THE THIRD early morning in a row that a Scott’s oriole had perched outside Mother Mary’s bedroom window, singing. It was rare to see these tiny yellow-and-black beauties anywhere but in the arms of a Joshua tree, so Mary had been delighted the first dawn when the distinctive, gentle song stirred her and she had opened her own eyes to find the jet-black eyes upon her, the shy little shadow of a head swiveling and questioning on her windowsill, just inches away. But three days in a row? And uncharacteristically, unnaturally even, before any true morning light. She wasn’t one for omens. She left the interpretation of signs and wonders to Bro’ and his peep stones, but this seemed like God was slapping her upside the head. What could it mean?
She looked over at Yaya sleeping beside her. Who was this old woman? This woman she had come to love deeply and completely—the source of such physical pleasure and companionship—was old. She remembered the Talking Heads song—“this is not my beautiful wife.” Sometimes her mind was like an oldies radio station (for the music that she grew up loving would surely be oldies by now). It had been years since she’d actually, physically heard any of the songs on her daily mental playlist, only Beatles Beatles Beatles, and yet still her mind played deep tracks in familiar rotation, the groove of her memory imagined like the spiral groove of a vinyl record.
One little bird. She recalled Bob Marley sang of three. She missed reggae. She missed Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, wondered if he was still alive. She’d seen him in concert, so frail, colorless thin blond hair framing the big teeth, sneering but gentle; he was ugly and pretty up there, fully in command, barking, “You don’t have to live like a refugee.” Maybe Bro’ was right, maybe songs were Trojan horses, shiny shells overpacked with marauding significance. Was she living like a refugee? She had learned over the years to be vigilant about smuggling evils unaware into their spiritual paradise, but contaminants crouched in her memory, waiting.
“The waiting is the hardest part.” Oh, shut up, Tom. The oriole flew away, her job done, her indecipherable message delivered. Mary got out of bed quietly so as not to disturb her sister-wife.
’Twas fuckin’ chilly. She’d never gotten used to how cold and sharp the mornings were in the desert. She’d never admit it, but it hurt her bones more and more. She felt her face as she brushed her teeth; the lines by her eyes and in the grooves around her mouth felt deeper today than yesterday even. She knew this could not be so, change did not happen so quickly, and that such a thought must be an indication of some sick state of mind or weakness. There were no mirrors here or anywhere in the home. Sure, there were windows from which she could coax a reflection, but that was a swimmy, unclear, forgiving image for the most part, or easily dismissed as a funhouse mirror obviously warped. Even so, Mary could tell she had gotten old too, like Yaya. The drying out and destruction of her youth by the relentless Mojave sun and time were almost welcome to Mother Mary. Almost. She drove a fingernail questioningly into the lines around her eyes, trying to put a human measurement on time, to plumb the depths of change.
So Mary knew that without mirrors, or boys her own age for that matter, her child Pearl had no idea how beautiful she had become. There were times when Bro’ was out in the desert communing with his uncommunicative God, and Mary would brush Pearl’s hair by the big window in the kitchen, angling the girl so she might see herself, tempting her to behold the power of the postadolescent beauty announcing itself, sculpted as if by a great artist out of stone as the baby fat left her face. Mary waited to punish the girl for her vanity, but Pearl would only stare blankly, mind elsewhere, unreadable, and then her reflected eyes would shift to meet Mary’s in the clear glass, the big empty desert still visible in the frame beyond. Asking. Asking what? Am I beautiful? Why am I beautiful? Where did your beauty go? What does beauty mean? What is all this beauty for?
The magnitude of Pearl’s beauty felt dangerous to Mary, like a temptation of God himself. Mary was both proud and terrified of it. She wanted Bronson to bring back sunscreen from one of his trips into the city, to protect against damage, but she refrained from asking for fear he would interpret it as this pride for herself, or for the children. She was so grateful to Bro’ for this life, for his vision; she wanted him to know this, and her devotion to him, to Mormonism, was her daily, living evidence. Now she was a Christian again as she had been as a child; that’s what she was, what she had become to save herself and her child, Beautiful. And unlike Yalulah, she had never once ventured beyond their property in the intervening years. She knew herself better than to do that. She had never had any boundaries, as a child or adult, such concepts were all or nothing to her; if she left, if she colored outside the lines she had been given, there was nothing but chaos on the other side, and drugs. And if she sometimes looked at a cactus and thought, How the fuck can I make tequila out of that? she could be forgiven. She was forgiven.
But it was a health issue too, the sun, wasn’t it? Skin cancer. If it be Thy will, she supposed. A hard pill for a parent to swallow. As often as she could, though, she made Pearl and Beautiful and the other kids wear wide-brimmed hats. All the kids, but especially Pearl. Pearl didn’t like to wear one. Pearl didn’t like to be hidden, in shadow.
Mary slipped into her ancient, tan, fleece-lined Ugg boots, her one extravagance. She demanded that Bronson bring her new ones from civilization whenever a pair shredded after several years of active mornings. Silently, she padded through to the part of the house she called the ‘kids’ wing.’ There they all were sleeping, the whole brood, except for Hyrum, of course. That wild child might’ve slept outside for all she knew, looking in the rain-shadow desert for rattlesnake eggs that he would fry for a breakfast none of the other kids would eat. Lovey, Beautiful, Little Joe, Little Big Al, Effy, Palmyra, Solomona. All ten accounted for and breathing the new day, except for Hyrum. And Pearl. Deuce, yes, but no Pearl. Maybe Pearl was a-milking. She was “an American girl.” Okay, okay, Tom, I hear you, now fuck off.
Mary glided as silently as a ghost on her soft Uggs, thinking of Pearl and the uncanny collages she used to make from the colorful paper coverings of the canned goods Bronson would bring back from his trips to town. Those familiar, even nostalgic, labels were mere background noise to Mary but magical to the girl, her only contact with the world, and you could see her puzzling through the images that had no referents for her—gluing them, recombining them, painting over them, looking for clues and expressing her desires like in those hostage notes made from magazine snippets in the movies. The impressive kid had kind of reproduced a Warhol Pop Art sensibility without ever having seen a Warhol. Mary didn’t know what the girl was trying to say about the world, but she knew she was interested in it. Maybe that’s what she was saying.
Mary found herself approaching the back bedroom where Bronson spent his nights alone more and more the past few years, and, as quietly as she could, opened the creaky door. She was surprised to see Pearl first, on her side facing the door, sleeping. That was curious, and as her eyes adjusted to the dark and took in the rest of the room, she had the sense of a dread prophecy being fulfilled. The meaning of the oriole’s song. For beside Pearl in bed, incongruously, was an old man. That was her first thought. There’s something wrong with this picture. The old man she knew was Bronson Powers.
Pearl opened her eyes and looked at Mary, sleepy, guiltless, and free. The girl’s face was radiant, flush, the skin on her chin chafed a bit and red, not from sun, but from kissing maybe. Pearl held her mother with clear, challenging eyes, unblinking, seeming to communicate—There is nothing wrong with this. What did you expect? What else is there for me? He saved us both. There is no other. I am a woman now, a beautiful woman. This is not my father. This is as natural as the sun rising right now, and the animals eating each other and fucking each other. As natural and real as blood, as the blood that flows from me monthly. I love and I am loved. This is no lie. This is the covenant. This is the truth. This. This. This!
This is what all this beauty is for.
Mother Mary lowered her gaze, took a step back, and closed the door. It was a while before she could move. She felt hypnotized, and gone away to some place deep and still in her mind. When she came back to herself, she was in the kitchen in the middle of making breakfast. For the first time in years her hands were shaking uncontrollably. She cut her finger slicing the bread. She watched it bleed.