We live in a three-story apartment building in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is about as high as Scottsdale gets. We’re on Via Linda. That means “pretty road” in Spanish, inaccurately. On the plus side we have a shared pool, which gets cleaned, oh, ABOUT EVERY THREE YEARS, and if you continue walking on Via Linda you get to the desert in about a half hour, which is awesome.
That last bit isn’t meant to be sarcastic, by the way: I love the desert. Whenever I can, I go out there and just climb a hill or something. When I say “when I can” what I mean is, when I can persuade Mom to come with me. From my description of her ass in the pajama jeans you can guess that this is not a frequent occurrence. But sometimes, once every couple of months maybe, she’ll give in and haul herself, sweating, up a hill with me, and then at the top through panting breaths she’ll admit that, yes, it is beautiful.
Anyway, the mountains. There are loads of them. Then you can see to about infinity in every direction, all sandy flatness covered in scrub and cacti, and pale little hills sticking up under the endless wispy-clouded sky.
It’s possible to imagine, then, that you’re standing in five hundred years ago, before the settlers came, when the Apache and the Navajo and the Yavapai wandered the desert. Now they don’t wander so much—they stick to the Yavapai Nation reservation up in the hills near Flagstaff. Not that I’ve seen it—that would mean an actual honest-to-goodness trip, and Mom is never going to sign on for that. I don’t think there’s much there apart from a casino anyway.
Mom and I lived in Alaska till I was four—not that I remember it. South Alaska, not the full-on North Pole. Then we were in Albuquerque for like a year, I only vaguely remember it, and ever since then we’ve been in Scottsdale. Here. Once, I asked Mom why she came south to the desert, and she said, Alaska has fingers of rain and its eyes are always half-closed.
It is maybe relevant that Mom had a cooler of wine on board at this point, but she does say strange things even when she’s sober. For instance, she talks a lot about rain—she says I’m her daughter, and she loves me, and if she wants to keep the rain from falling on me, then what’s wrong with that?
Uh, nothing, I say when she comes out with crap like that, because the important thing is to agree with her.
Although, I kind of know what she means. That is, I only remember Arizona and New Mexico, so I don’t have anything to compare them to, but it’s true that it never rains here and there are no shadows, and you couldn’t call it sleepy or half-awake. It’s light all day, then the land closes its eyes and BOOM, it’s night. It gets cold at night—it’s because of the lack of moisture in the desert. Apart from that it’s almost always warm. Right now it’s spring and it’s like mid-seventies all the time. That’s another thing that Mom likes about it. She says, The cold in Alaska gets into your skeleton, and you can never shake it.
Right now, Mom is mainly trying to shake it by walking surprisingly fast down the street, her ass rippling in her, ahem, pajama jeans. That’s not subliminal anymore, by the way. It’s just description. No one walks in this part of Arizona—no one besides us anyway, because we don’t have a car. I mean, it’s just houses and strip malls.
And even though she’s overweight, she’s twenty feet ahead of me now, passing the Apache Dreams restaurant, a low block of a building with floor-to-ceiling windows. As far as I know it serves mainly waffles, which is a weird thing for an Apache to dream about.
I hurry to catch up. I’ve got jeans on—NOT pajama jeans—and there’s sweat trickling down my back, but it’s either that or show my scars, and I’m not doing that. My hair is pulled back in a ponytail, like always. I am wearing a T-shirt with a band name on it; it’s kind of a joke between me and my mom.
I read a load of books—Harry Potter, Twilight, but also George Eliot, Dickens, Faulkner—whatever. My mom taught me to read when I was, like, four. She’s pretty proud of it, and you know, I don’t really blame her. I’m glad, anyway—reading is awesome. Just escaping into someone else’s life, into another world. In books, everything is possible.
And … it seems that in girl books there’s always some description of the girl so you know what she looks like, but here’s the thing, I don’t KNOW what I look like. I mean, I have seen myself in mirrors, obviously. But okay, you tell me what you look like.
Not so easy, is it?
But, fine, to get it out of the way: I have brown hair. I have eyes. I have a nose, and a mouth. My mom says I’m beautiful, the most beautiful girl in the world, but she would say that, wouldn’t she? I guess it’s possible I’m pretty. I’m five-five. One hundred and fifteen pounds. Athletic, you could say.
Moving on.
Ice cream for dinner after, honey? Mom asks when I’m walking beside her.
I nod. That’s what we do every Friday, of course, but she likes to ask, and what does it hurt? Anyway I love Ice Cream for Dinner Night. I always have. Me, I’d happily have Ice Cream for Dinner Night every night, like forever. I think Mom would too, but even though she shops in the plus-size section herself, it’s important to her that I stay healthy.
I like that—even more than I would like ice cream for dinner every night.
I step out into the street to cross over, and there’s a Chevy station wagon I didn’t see and—