Ofelia Zepeda

The scent of burning wood holds the strongest memory. Mesquite, cedar, piñon, juniper, all are distinct. Mesquite is dry desert air and mild winter. Cedar and piñon are colder places. Winter air in our hair is pulled away, and scent of smoke settles in its place. We walk around the rest of the day with the aroma resting on our shoulders. The sweet smell holds the strongest memory. We stand around the fire. The sound of the crackle of wood and spark is ephemeral. Smoke, like memories, permeates our hair, our clothing, our layers of skin. The smoke travels deep to the seat of memory. We walk away from the fire; no matter how far we walk, we carry this scent with us. New York City, France, Germany— we catch the scent of burning wood; we are brought home.

Cuk Son is a story. Tucson is a linguistic alternative. The story is in the many languages still heard in this place of Black Mountains. They are in the echo of lost, forgotten languages heard here even before the people arrived. The true story of this place recalls people walking deserts all their lives and continuing today, if only in their dreams. The true story is ringing in their footsteps in a place so quiet, they can hear their blood moving through their veins. Their stories give shape to the mountains encircling this place. Wa:k is the story of water memories of this desert. Citizens gravitate to Sabino Canyon. The humming, buzzing, clicking of water life, the miracle of desert streams on smooth boulders. Rocks, sediment older than life itself serve as reminders. It should be unnecessary for sticky notes to remind us what a desert place is. A place dependent on rains of summer, light dusting of snow, the rarity of dry beds as rebel rivers. It is real desert people who lift their faces upward with the first signs of moisture. They know how to inhale properly. Recognizing the aroma of creosote in the distance. Relieved the cycle is beginning again. These people are to be commended. It is others who lament the heat of a June day, simultaneously finding pride on surviving the heat—a dry heat. These individuals should simply be tolerated. Opposed to those who move from one air-conditioned environment to another, never acknowledging the heat of summer. Being grateful for November, when temperatures drop below eighty, complaining of the lack of seasons in the desert, heading for mountains to see colors— these people—well, what can we say. We must feel for the dogs of Tucson. Who bark as if they belong to somebody and who, before the rain, wish they were a color other than black.

I Every day it is the same. He comes home. He tells her about it. As he speaks, his breath condenses in front of his face. She goes about her business; every now and then she looks over. She doesn’t hear his voice. She sees the soft fog that continues to form a halo. She knows he is still talking about that place. He never tires of it like she does. Only on summer days when the air is hot and moisture is still a long time in coming, she asks him to tell her about that place. She sits facing him. Waiting for the first vocalic, non-stops, the push of air from his lips. He tells her of the place where clouds are formed. The cool dampness of his voice is rich. Even on a dry June day her face beads with wetness as he talks directly to her. Each aspirated sound a gentle burst of coolness. “Tell me again, tell me again,” she teases. If he knew she only wanted relief from the heat and not the story, he would stop talking. He begins, “The first time I saw the place where clouds are formed was from the window of a train . . .” Another time was in a mirage in the heat outside Tucson. Once he thought he saw it in the dry light of stars. The place he remembers best was when he saw it in the eyes of a woman he spoke to. When he first noticed it, she hid it by lowering her gaze. Soon she let him look freely. There were times when she opened her eyes wide, allowing an unobscured view. Sometimes he saw her eyes smolder with dryness on a summer day. Other times she was rich with moisture. Clouds came in succession. The earth’s shadows muted. “You know the forty days and forty nights? I was there. I’ll be there when it happens again,” she said with a slight smile. Like a child, he rushed to look into her eyes at every opportunity. If he could, he would hang on her eye socket, peering inside, marveling at her displays. II An unusually cold December day right around Christmas; clouds, mist find solace in the canyons of the Santa Catalina Mountains. White moisture quietly moving amid the cactus. Truly, clouds, wind, and rain are the few elements that can touch the saguaro from head to foot. Oblivious of spines, needles. Rubbery hide surrounded, soothed by elements. Contact triggers stored heat of remembered summers. Moisture beads roll forward, unstoppable. From the city below we see mist rising, mist rising. III We sit close in the cab of the truck. The weather is cold, wet outside. Too messy to stand in waiting for a school bus. My father’s truck is warm inside, having been at work since four a.m. The sound of the engine is soothing, heater working to capacity. Inside the cab we are silent. We don’t need language. We listen to the regular hum of the engine, rhythm of the windshield wipers, soft rain on the hood. Aware of the cold air surrounding our temporary shelter. We look out over the fields where fog clings to the soil. Every now and then with the back of his gloved hand he wipes the windshield. “Is it coming yet?” The three of us sit quietly, breathing clouds. Clouds condense as they contact the coolness of the windows. My father appears to breathe air with temperature in balance. He forms no clouds. He watches us. We continue to breathe gray, soft mist, waiting for the school bus.

She always got mad at him every time he came home in the middle of the morning with his pant legs wet. She knew he had fallen in the ditch again. His legs were not strong enough to be straddling ditches. He was too old to be walking over temporary dikes. She wished he didn’t do that, but sometimes he had to. She sometimes imagined him falling over backward in one of the irrigation ditches, his head hitting hard cement, his body slowly sinking into the water. Water that was only three feet deep. A harmless three feet of water, where children played, and ladies sometimes sat and dipped their feet, especially on hot summer evening. She knew he would drown, she knew it was bound to happen sometime. As far as the eye could see, flat, green fields appearing to end at the foot of distant mountains. Mountains, a reminder of what the fields once looked like. Fields saturated with water pulled from its secret storage place beneath the earth’s surface. We are called “the people of the cotton fields” because of the labor our families did. For us there was no reservation, no Housing & Urban Development, no tribal support. We were a people segregated in row houses all lined up along the roads of our labor. It is a muggy summer evening. My father, my sister, and I sit on the east side of the house finding shade against the still-hot setting sun. The change from brilliant white sun to blue and gold sunset and finally, to warm darkness, a change we anticipate for brief relief. On this evening the anticipation is shattered. A boy comes to the house. He gestures for my father to come to him, out of our hearing. With what the boy says to him my father moves quickly. As quickly as his stiff back and legs can move him. Back and legs broken and fused from when he was a cowboy. He rushes by, throwing the kitchen door open, grabbing his hat. He gets into his truck and drives away. We pay him no mind other than for the fact that he is rushing. A second later my mother comes out of the house and with a single motion pulls her apron off. In a tone I recognize as signifying something is wrong, she instructs us to come with her. She starts in the direction of a cotton field a few hundred yards from our house. My sister and I walk beside her. Saying nothing. Her hands wring the towel she carries with her. This towel, a multipurpose kind of thing. Women carry it to fan themselves, to wipe sweat, to cover their heads and eyes from the sunlight, to shoo away kids, dogs, flies. I remember once a student of mine, out of habit, brought her towel with her to summer school at the university. Whenever we see each other on campus during a summer session we always laugh about it. We continue to walk, stepping over the ends of rows of cotton. Rows of cotton my family and I know well. In early summer we walk the rows to thin out the growth, and later we walk to chop the weeds somehow immune to chemicals. And in the winter, at least before the machinery, we pick the cotton from their stalks. Now I can’t begin to imagine how many miles we have all walked, up and back, up and back along these rows. We walk alongside her. The setting sun maintains a continuous pounding on our backs, the humidity from the damp fields is warm, it rests on our shoulders like tired, sweaty arms. She heads toward the irrigation ditch. The ditch is dirt, not cement, it is wide, muddy, and slippery. The water is shallow. I see my father’s truck pulling up on the opposite side. In the front seat there are women, and in the back, men. The men wedge their feet in between plastic and aluminum irrigation pipes, mud-caked shovels, boots, and hoes. Equipment in the back of his truck all for the purposes of working fields. I remember the hoe he carried. It was big, with a blade that held an edge well and got the work done. I recall purchasing a hoe for my home and being particularly unsatisfied with the craftsmanship. “They call this a hoe?” I said to my husband. It had a skinny neck, and no blade to speak of. The handle was too thin, causing blisters. Once in awhile I look around for the type of hoe my father carried. I found one once, but didn’t have money to buy it. In slow motion, weighed down by the heat, the women begin to slide across the bench of the pickup truck. They slowly step out of the cab, appearing as a single long strand of woman, emerging. In cautious unison they walk toward the edge of the ditch. My mother, as if connected to them by an invisible string, is pulled toward them from the opposite side. Their movement is dreamlike. They peer into the muddy water. And as if with a shared nervous system, their hands motion the towel each is carrying, motion it to just above their eyes, covering their faces. With a single vocal act they release from their depths a hard, deep, mournful wail. This sound breaks the wave of bright summer light above the green cotton fields.

Question: Can you tell us about what he is wearing? Well, the hooves represent the deer’s hooves, the red scarf represents the flowers from which he ate, the shawl is for skin. The cocoons make the sound of the deer walking on leaves and grass. Listen. Question: What is that he is beating on? It’s a gourd drum. The drum represents the heartbeat of the deer. Listen. When the drum beats, it brings the deer to life. We believe the water the drum sits in is holy. It is life. Go ahead, touch it. Bless yourself with it. It is holy. You are safe now. Question: How does the boy become a dancer? He just knows. His mother said he had dreams when he was just a little boy. You know how that happens. He just had it in him. Then he started working with older men who taught him how to dance. He has made many sacrifices for his dancing even for just a young boy. The people concur, “Yes, you can see it in his face.” Question: What do they do with the money we throw them? Oh, they just split it among the singers and dancer. They will probably take the boy to McDonald’s for a burger and fries. The men will probably have a cold one. It’s hot today, you know.