To Dance in the Desert
Release Date: May 1, 2007
RiverOak
Chapter 1
The woman stood atop the cinnamon bluff, her arms stretched to the horizons, her face dry as sandstone, her silver hair blowing like the grass at her feet.
“She thinks she’s Moses,” muttered Dara, peering through a gap between drawn blinds.
She had meant to have no neighbors. The realtor had played up the view of the bluff and the hills beyond, but Dara had noticed the unmarked dirt road that led there. Just a break in the piñon pines along the highway, the road was hard to find, even if you knew it was there.
Once found, it led nine miles through the hills to a valley cloistered from all mankind. So Dara had bought the house.
Now there was a woman on top of the bluff—smack in the middle of her aloneness. What in heaven and earth was she doing there?
Twirling.
She was twirling!
She stretched herself on tiptoe and with those outstretched arms, began tilting and wheeling, wheeling and gliding, doing a limping reel with one foot flat and the other on tiptoe, first one way and then the other, stretching to the sky, crouching to the earth, tilting, gliding, and laughing.
“Go away,” Dara whispered.
But the woman danced on, brushing the wind, stroking the sky, without once bothering to look where she was going.
“If she falls, she’ll be blood and bones on the rocks below,” Dara said. “Fine with me … the trespasser.”
Still, every time the woman’s feet edged nearer the brink, Dara’s hands flew like birds around her mouth and eyes.
She’d just decided she would have to get out there and save the fool, when the woman stopped dancing and fell to her knees, laughing still and talking to no one there.
“Trespasser,” Dara hissed.
The kettle whistled, and she went to make a cup of tea. When she returned, the woman was gone. She glanced at the rocks below the bluff, but the woman hadn’t fallen. She was simply gone.
“Huh!” Dara said. “Don’t come back.”
But she did. The next day she was back again, skimming and reeling as if the sky would catch her to its bosom.
The day after that, as well, and day after day for an exasperating week.
The morning came, at last, when it snowed, and Dara blessed the snow, for surely no one would dance on the bluff that day.
She parted the blinds. The desert glistened undisturbed. She took her tea outside.
It was all she wanted. Nothing but sunlight and meandering snowfall. No one to hurt her and no one to hurt.
She rested against the porch rail, breathed the cold cleanness, and attended the silence.
And the silence spoke.
It said, “Dara, my Dara.”
She straightened. Till now she had never heard it in the middle of the day.
She’d first heard it in a dream. No—that wasn’t it. She’d felt the tenderness behind it. She’d lain in bed, floating in an unexpected peace—a caressing tenderness, night after night, that one night called her name.
Really, this came as no surprise, in a dream. But it hadn’t stayed there. One morning she’d heard it as she lay awake in the blue early light:
“My Dara, I’m here.”
A voice. Not a voice, but the silence talking, as if the air were whispering tenderness to her.
Not a ghost. Some might have said it was if she had told them, but at the pivot of her soul, she knew better.
However, there were candidates. Her father used to call her “my Dara,” but differently, in a stern voice born of pain. “It’s not a safe world, my Dara,” he had told her again and again.
It wasn’t Kevin, who’d never called her “my Dara.” “Mine” he had called her, but that was different, for it preceded other names that held no love in them.
No, it was the air now that kissed her, stroked her face, and whispered, and she didn’t know how to answer.
So, she set her cup on the porch, shoved her hands in her pockets, and snuffed a great breath. She tramped down the steps and looked around. Get busy. But how?
The snow had picked up. Already a puddle of slush had formed under the dripping faucet by the porch. Maybe she should fix that, but that would require a trip to town to buy a washer. She pushed the thought from her mind.
Anyway, she’d heard on the radio that a serious storm was on its way. She could use more firewood, and there were logs to split. If she got down to business and moved quickly, she might not hear caressing voices she didn’t understand.
So the evening found her well prepared, and so she stood at her window, warmed by an extravagant fire, gazing at the storm outside. The snow had gained focus, rushing sidelong in waves, ruffling the piñon pines, and obscuring the bluff in the twilight.
She was about to shut her curtain against the cold when she saw movement and color in the storm, something that wasn’t wind or snow or blowing trees. She peered closer and groaned.
It was the woman. There she was, fifty feet from the window, her hair frosted stiff, her arms outstretched—dancing!
Dara paced. “Not a safe world,” she said.
But if the woman had driven there, there would be no driving out until the storm passed. Besides, a woman who danced in blizzards maybe shouldn’t drive at all.
Not a safe world. But she didn’t have a phone, and anyway, from the end of a long and hidden road, it would do little good to call the police on a night like this.
Not a safe world, but Dara saw only two choices: get her inside or bury her in the morning. She put on her coat.
When she turned the knob, the wind slammed the door open, wrenching her right arm and twisting her wrist. She yelped and let go. The door flapped the other way and caught her on the elbow.
“Ow!” She lashed out with her fist, but the door swung again and she hit it on the edge.
“Gaaaaawd … bless!” she cried. Her father had never allowed her to curse.
She stepped outside, out of the way of the door, and yanked it shut. The woman was a gyrating shadow, spinning further away with each turn.
“Let her freeze,” Dara grunted, moving into the storm.
She made her way down the steps, holding the rail with her left hand, taking care not to fall. An icicle pointed from the faucet to the slush puddle she’d noticed earlier, now hardened to ice.
She had to veer left to walk straight in this wind, her coat useless against the cold. When she finally reached the woman, she tried to catch an arm midtwirl with her left hand. She missed and forced an effort to catch it next time around.
The woman jumped at her touch. She couldn’t have seen her coming because her eyes were closed, and she couldn’t have heard her above the screaming wind.
But when she did see Dara, she graced her with the smile of a duchess at a ball. “Helloooo!”
“What are you doing?” Dara shouted.
“Isn’t this splendid?”
“No. It’s cold! Would you come inside?”
The woman spotted the house as if for the first time. As if, thought Dara.
“Oh!” she said. “I’d be delighted.”
She took Dara by the arm, and they ducked their heads and walked toward the house.
They were almost to the porch when the woman’s foot found the ice from the dripping faucet. Dara went down with her, slamming her ankle on the bottom step. She swore for real this time—but the duchess seemed to find it funny.
Once inside, the woman bustled about, taking off her sweater (only a sweater!), pulling off her boots, rubbing her arms, and crouching by the fire. All the while she chattered, like a guest come for tea, about the “lovely snow” and the “wonderful fire.” “So kind of you to invite me in!”
And yet, look at her! The frost had made white dreadlocks of her hair. Her lips were blue.
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen such a snow. My husband, Max, didn’t like cold weather.”
She prattled on while her melting dreadlocks soaked her shirt. Dara left to get a towel.
“… My brother and I used to build the grandest snow castles when we were young …” She barely took a breath, but when Dara handed her the towel, she stopped midsentence and said, “Thank you, dear. My name is Jane Cameron.”
“You have a British accent.” She took a chair.
“Yes. All my life.”
Dara focused on her folded hands. The babble had ceased. She looked up.
“I’m Jane Cameron,” the woman repeated.
“I’m Dara.”
Then, sure enough, “Do you take your tea by the fire?”
Take your tea! She’d want it in a porcelain pot—dreadlocks or no.
“Too bad,” Dara groused in the kitchen, bobbing tea bags in chipped mugs. The duchess would need a place to sleep, but Dara hadn’t thought of that, had she? Dancing women: Did they know when to leave? How would she get rid of her in the morning?
Her hand throbbed, and she pressed it to her lips. She supposed she could at least throw the bags away, instead of leaving them in as usual. She poised them over the trash can, then snorted, and plunked them back into the mugs.
When she returned to the living room, Jane had dried her hair and wound it into a bun. She sat with knees and ankles together and smiled at Dara. Still she talked: “And Max and I would take our tea in the tops of trees …”
She accepted the mug with both hands, and said, “Thank you so much.”
For the time it took to sip their tea, there was peace. Dara wondered if she’d have to talk. Maybe not. She’d heard enough to know that this lady could carry a conversation by herself.
But Jane showed no such intention. She propped her mug on her knees, and asked, “Have you lived here long?”
“No,” answered Dara. “Have you danced here long?”
“Ha! Danced! No, not long. I’ve only lived here a month.”
“Lived here? Where?”
“Just the other side of that bluff there. I’m delighted to have a neighbor. I thought there was no one here. You look surprised.”
“I didn’t know there was another house here,” said Dara.
“Oh yes. I’ve owned it for years. My husband and I were missionaries, and we used to stay here on furlough. This house was always vacant, though.”
“I moved in last month.”
“You’re not pleased to have a neighbor.” Jane eyed her gently.
Dara was stuck. No, she wasn’t pleased, but there was at least a house to send the woman home to.
Jane smiled.
“Uh—no,” said Dara. “No, it’s fine.”
“It’s my little show on the bluff you mind.”
“No! You’re good—actually.”
“I really didn’t know I had an audience, or I might have spent more time on my costume.”
Dara glanced aside.
“You know, something with veils. Orange and pink and red ones, I think. Maybe a belly button ring.” She lifted her shirt and tugged at her waistband to regard a freckled stomach.
Like a sack of Jell-O, Dara thought, and her laughter burst like fireworks. It felt good to laugh. Who could not like a woman who danced in blizzards?
She wanted to say something just as funny, but she didn’t know what. To fill the silence, she asked, “You live there alone?”
“Mm. I came back after my husband died.”
“I’m sorry.” She stirred the fire.
Jane smiled. “You live alone too.”
“Yes.”
“Do you like it here?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “It’s quiet.”
“And you want quiet?”
“I need it.” Dara winced. It was more than she’d meant to say.
“So do I,” said Jane.
“So do you what?”
“I need the quiet too.”
“Ah.” She rubbed her sore hand.
“Where did you live before?”
“Los Cuervos,” Dara answered, as casually, she thought, as the question had been asked.
Jane’s eyes locked onto Dara’s for just an instant, but Dara knew the look and the particular silence that followed. The dancing woman had read the papers.
“Brogan,” Jane whispered.
“I go by Murphy now.” She had just decided. “My maiden name.”
“You’ve had a hellish time of it.”
“That’s not missionary talk.”
“It is if it’s the truth.”
She looked away and ran a hand across her nose.
“Oh! You’re bruised.” Jane stood.
“It’s fine.”
“Dara, what’s happened to you? You’ve got to get some ice on that hand; it’s quite swollen. Do you mind?” She went to the kitchen and returned with a bundle of ice in a towel.
Dara flinched as she pressed it to her hand. It took several tries before she could leave it on. Worse than that was the duchess hovering with that worried frown of hers. It was too much attention. “Where were you a missionary?”
“Mexico,” Jane said, returning to her spot by the fire.
“Did you like it?”
“Enormously.”
“Why don’t you go back?”
“You’re still trying to get rid of me!”
“I didn’t mean …”
She grinned. “It’s all right.”
“I’m not good at talking to people.”
“You’re quite good. Wrap the ice around your hand. If you’re going to be my friend, you’ll have to be candid.”
“I didn’t come here to have friends.”
“Well you’ve got one now, so you may as well learn what to do with me.”
“Could you find someplace else to dance?”
“There. Like that. Just say what pops into your head.”
“No, really. I mean it. Could you?”
“You want to be alone.”
“Yes.”
“Because something terrible has happened to you.”
Dara didn’t answer.
“Because you’re grieving and frightened, and … fairly remorseful too, I imagine.”
“Stop it.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I won’t find someplace else to dance. Do you have some aspirin? It’ll help the swelling. Don’t get up. Just tell me where it is.”
***
Oh, she had no experience with friendship.
Jane had exited into the storm and most likely pirouetted all the way home. Dara washed the mugs and put them away, then returned to the hearth and fingered the bruise on her hand.
“Not a safe world,” her father had told her, and she had learned and kept her distance from it.
Still, she lived in a small town, and even at a distance, the people you see every day become familiar. You think they’re your friends because they’re familiar.
Then one day you’re told you are beautiful. Someone whispers in your ear, and his breath arouses you because no one has ever stood so close. He calls you “mine,” and you clutch at the word. Now you note the distant nods and greetings at the supermarket where you work, at the church where you sit beside your father. And you realize it has never been enough.
So you marry him. He calls you “mine” and it’s the truth: You are his.
But he’s had a tough life, and he can’t keep a job—his temper gets him in trouble.
Your father says people think you must have been pregnant, to quickly marry such a man. He asks if it’s true. It’s not, but now the dispassionate smiles at the checkout counter seem to accuse, and you want to go home.
At home, that word mine begins to rot, because it’s bellowed now between insinuations about what you do with the men at work. He has stopped calling you beautiful. He says you look like a slut but still he calls you “mine.”
At work, when people whisper in line, you imagine they’re looking at you. Then you hear them. One says you had an abortion, that everyone knows it. When the register falls silent, the man looks at you and shuts his mouth. But you did hear. You feel brittle as thin glass, and you don’t know how to work the register anymore. You bolt out of the store, you run home, and he is there. You want him to whisper to you, to tell you not to listen to them. You want him to call you “mine.”
He calls your paycheck “mine.” He calls you “worthless.” Why are you home in the middle of the day?
He hits you. It’s the first time.
No, Dara thought when she climbed into bed. She had no idea about friendship.
She dreamt that night of an earthquake—a wobble that convulsed to a shattering pulse. She was pitched off balance and fell down a chasm, her face slamming on rock, slamming again, and again …
She woke up weeping, as she always did when she had this dream.
Then she heard it: “My Dara, I’m here.” She reached to touch the voice, and her hand closed on air.
“Stop it!” She scrambled out of bed, reeled, and sat on the edge. She turned on the light, and when her eyes adjusted, she checked the clock. It was after two, but if she went back to sleep, there’d be the dreams—and the voice. She had to find something to do.
She could unpack another box. A stack of them leaned in the corner.
She carried the top one to the bed. It was full of linens, wadded and stuffed. She’d fled her father’s graveside service, decided to leave town on the drive home, and was gone before Kevin’s funeral the next day. It didn’t make for careful packing.
She pulled out a fitted sheet. She began refolding, corner into corner. She felt something hard, and turned a corner inside out. It was a pink pearl pendant on a silver chain.
She remembered. She’d hidden it in the back of the linen closet when Kevin started selling things to raise more money. Her father had given it to her—as a wedding present, she supposed.
He’d met her in the parking lot at work five days after her courthouse wedding, and two days after she’d wished it hadn’t happened. Her father had cleaned up like he was going to church, and she wept at the sight of him. They climbed into his truck for some measure of privacy, and he pulled her to his shoulder and rocked her till her tears were dry. Then he gave her the pink pearl in a little box. He lifted her chin so she faced him and said, “Remember the story.”
She did remember, now seated on the bedroom floor with the fitted sheet rumpled in her lap. She held the pearl to the light and watched it dangle, gently flawless. “The particular golden pink the sunset wears on the first day of spring,” the story had gone. She opened the clasp and fastened it around her neck.
The box of linens could wait. She stuffed the sheet in, put it back in the corner, and climbed into bed. She turned off the light, wrapped a fist around her pearl, and fell asleep.
***
In the morning, she peered out to see if Jane danced on the bluff. She wasn’t there. Dara turned from the window and slumped onto the couch. She inspected the bruise on her hand. The swelling had gone down, and it hurt a little less. Jane, with her ice and aspirin.
Ridiculous how a visit from an imbalanced, prying old woman who caused such irritation at the time could cause something like pleasure when she remembered it.
Ridiculous how she almost wished the duchess were out there now.
A knock sounded at the door. “Dara, it’s Jane.” She sprang to her feet and rushed to let her in.
“Look at you,” Jane said. “Still in your pajamas! Did I wake you up?”
“No.”
“Oh, Dara, it’s marvelous outside. Let’s go worship in the desert.”
“What?”
“The air’s just filled with gladness out there. Come on. Let’s go!”
“I don’t want to dance, Jane.”
“You don’t have to dance. Just being there will be glory enough. You could wear your pajamas. Who would know?”
“Don’t be nuts. I’m not going to do that.”
“You don’t have to dance, Dara. You don’t have to do anything but be there.”
Dara parted the blinds.
Oh, the white light! Her house did feel so dark.
So she put on her boots, and they went. The first rush of wind was cold, but the sunlight was warm. They wound through the snow and mesquite to a bright spot near the base of the bluff. They turned to look around, their hands pushed in their pockets to brace against the buoyant light. This gleaming world was a joy meant for them, and as they turned, Jane took her hands from her pockets, turned her face to the sky—and twirled.
Dara walked away.
She felt its breath before she heard it speak. “Dara, my Dara.”
Oh, it wasn’t “mine,” this, not the way Kevin had meant it. This was tender love. The breeze brushed her cheek. The wind sounded gentle drums in her ears. She felt fragile as thin glass, but at the moment, she could shatter in this white light and it might be a good way to die.
She gazed at the candescent hills, and her inside began to sway like a silk ribbon. She heard the air say, “My beloved. You are my own.”
She took her hands from her pockets and twirled. Just once. Just a little turn.
***
Her name was Dara Pearl Murphy, so the story was about a pearl. Her father had told it so often she might have forgotten the first time, if he’d told it on an ordinary day. But oh, how she did remember.
She’d been eight years old. It had been four weeks since her mother had wandered off, clutching the family photograph her father had thrust into her hands. “You’ve got to think of Dara!” he’d shouted, and Dara still remembered standing in her darkened bedroom, flinching at the fierceness in his voice. Worried, she’d peered down the hallway into the kitchen as her mother pushed herself up from the table, then stepped out the back door. Was she barefoot? Dara remembered her barefoot, though it had been January. It was like she just needed to get some air and dry her tears. Who could’ve known she’d walk through the darkness out the gate and never return? Her father couldn’t rightly be blamed for not pulling her back, but the night he told this story, it had been a month, and Dara blamed him.
“It’s all your fault!” she’d railed at him. “You made her run away.” He gripped her with his arms, but she flailed loose. Trying to calm her, he offered a glass of milk, but she threw it in his face.
She stopped crying and stepped back. He sank to the floor, covering his head with both hands. Milk dripped from his hair and the tip of his nose. She climbed into his lap. “Don’t cry, Daddy!” He held her, and together they wept to exhaustion.
He tucked her in that night, and she lay in her bed, limp and heaving from too many tears. He wiped her face with a washcloth, and hesitantly, he began:
“Once upon a time, there was a pearl.” His voice shook, but he brushed her forehead, and continued.
“This was no ordinary pearl,” he said, stroking her cheek. “The color of this pearl was the particular golden pink the sunset wears on the first day of spring.” He attempted a smile.
“But an evil wizard had thrown the pearl into a foul sea, and as long as she could remember, she had been there.
“When I say she was in a foul sea, I mean the kind of water Daddy gets when he leaves dishwater too long. What kind of water is that?”
“Like snot,” she managed between the heavings in her chest.
“Yes! Exactly like salamander snot!” He made a face, and she smiled a little.
“The very ugly thing this water did was that it caused her to calcify. Like the pipe under the bathroom sink, remember?”
She nodded.
“Well, the water put layers and layers of this calcifying stuff on the pearl, and it made her look like a rock and not like a pearl at all. And the trouble was she didn’t remember ever being anything but an ugly rock in foul water.
“Now, there was a prince who wanted to save the pearl. He dove into the foul sea, and the bad stuff in the water burned his milky skin, but he swam right through it. Way, way down to the deepest, darkest depths he swam, till he found the rock, which he knew was a pearl, and brought it to dry land.
“The pearl was happy to get out of the foul sea. Still, some of the bad water clung to her, so she asked the prince if she might have a bath.
“The prince gave her a good bath in his own crystal clean water, and when he was done, she felt like … a new rock!
“The pearl wanted to put herself to good use to show gratitude to the prince, so she decided she would be a cobblestone on the road that led to the prince’s castle. But no sooner had she placed herself on the pile of stones to be used for the road than the prince picked her up and put her in a bucket with other rocks.
“The prince began to shake the bucket, and it hurt her to be tossed around like that. The pearl was confused and upset, until one of the rocks explained—in a hurry as she tumbled by—that they were being polished. Because, you know, when rocks tumble around together they knock the rough edges off one other, and then they all come out smooth and shiny.
“And that’s what happened to our pearl. She looked in the mirror at herself and rejoiced at what she saw. She dared to ask if she might even adorn the castle itself, since she really did seem to be a very pretty, shiny rock.
“Well, what do you suppose the prince did?”
“Put her on the castle?” asked Dara.
“You’d think, wouldn’t you? But that’s not what happened. The prince did the last thing the pearl ever thought of. He took his hammer and chisel, and began to strike her again and again.
“At first she was so shocked that she didn’t know what to think. Then she blamed herself for being so proud as to ask to adorn the castle.
“She cried, ‘I’m sorry!’ but it seemed the prince must be very angry, because no matter how many times she said she was sorry, he just kept hitting her with his chisel.
“She wailed, ‘You’re killing me!’ Because of course, she didn’t know she was a pearl. She thought she was a rock, and it was big pieces of rock that flew off with every blow of his chisel. She thought she must be a very bad rock to make him so angry.
“Then one day, as quickly as he had started in with his chisel, he stopped. She looked up to see only tears and the sweetest love in his eyes. The prince handed her a mirror, and she looked. There, shining in the chinks where the rock had chipped away, she saw a particular golden pink like the sunset on the first day of spring.”
It was Dara’s favorite story, so he told it often. Once, when she was older, she’d thought to ask what happened next. Did the pearl adorn the castle, or did the prince place her in his crown?
“I don’t know,” her father said. He turned away and shrugged, as if embarrassed. Then he looked at her and smiled. “I only know rocks.”
|