We washed our clothing in the irrigation ditch on a stone worn flat by all the others who had been beating their woolen ponchos, their patched trousers and hand-loomed skirts at this very place, ever since the canals first filled with water, three thousand years ago.
News came out of his battery-powered radio, rarely in English. The U.S. invaded Granada. The Argentine army deployed to the Malvinas.
He led me to the ice field in time to see a single star falling before melting snow in a tin cup. Then left me and went the rest of the way alone.
Condors nested in the rook above our campsite and when the largest birds flew away at dusk, the current from their opened wings – a span so wide I wished for more light so I could see – dislodged pieces of the rock face. The debris landed in the cavern below, producing a hollow echo.
I strained to hear the sounds of the tiniest birds that had been left behind.
Inside his two-person tent I fell into a deep sleep and woke to the muffled cries of what sounded like a child in pain. I crawled outside and looked into the woods surrounding our campsite but was unable to trace where the cries were coming from. Then the snow began to fall in lines, making it difficult to see even the nearest trees.
When the storm passed I saw our tiny barn below, a lone building in a place of barley and wheat, where the landscape, even in the rainy season, was never more than a washed-out-beige, the llamas and alpacas that same color, too.
Evangelical music from a nearby village played, broadcast by Oklahoman missionaries who had toilet paper and a flush toilet. They built a megachurch that towered above the mud huts with thatched roofs, none of which had electricity or running water.
When sunlight streamed through the stained-glass windows it cast an eerie green-blue shadow on the whitewashed walls. Disciples mounted a radio transmitter and antennae to a pole that soared higher than the steeple.
The blonde man bought me a green typewriter at the market and a kitten with fine black hairs around both eyes. It shook so violently we tried to warm it in our homemade oven. Still, it died that same night.
We were in the habit of sleeping entwined in our woolen hats and handknit socks we bought in the market, the heavy flannel from home. But the draft whistled through the cinderblocks and we would wake most nights shivering from the cold.
It was his idea to plant the apple trees behind the school, which, when I returned years later with my son were producing red and yellow fruit.
The Narnia Chronicles were the only books he brought with him. I was never able to get beyond the first chapter. He tried reading to me each night but after the first week I asked him to stop.
Years later when my husband read the sports pages out loud, this too, I did not appreciate.
We took a helicopter over an ancient glacial field and as the ice deepened the layers became dark blue, almost purple. Over time the steep banks receded and now appear on the map as nothing more than a needle’s drop of water.
He was on a trek when I packed until I could fit nothing more into my duffel bag. I hitchhiked a ride with a trucker transporting wheat to the capital. Had I stayed any longer it would have been far more difficult. Already, I had postponed leaving for too long.
As soon as he entered the house and saw that the books had been picked over, he would know. In the next room I imagined him closing the empty drawers I had left hanging, half-opened.
Likely he looked for a note, but would soon have realized I did not leave one. Later in the evening he might have taken a walk along the abandoned railroad tracks. The memory of the smell of eucalyptus burning for the evening fires almost made me want to turn back.
He sent a letter telling me he sold my blue bicycle. Someone else must be riding it now; her feet stuck out horizontal to the pavement as I learned to do, after being bit by one of the mangy dogs that rushed into the street. For two months I underwent rabies vaccinations and feared the dosage wasn’t correct or the serum had expired, losing its potency. I saw my body floating above me and when I looked down what remained was an outline of a human form sheathed in white.
Gathered in a banquet hall I remember the trip to Peggy’s Cove and the sensation of my body leaving me. Prematurely the bride’s dressing room door opens and a whirl of white floats into the room, filling the aisle. It is not Peggy, but her sister wearing Peggy’s wedding gown. A man coaxes her inside.
Eventually Peggy enters as the bride. In a Jewish wedding the groom is required to walk seven times around the seated bride to be sure she is the woman he has chosen. The night ends without any of us seeing Peggy’s sister again.
Other toddlers put my son’s toys in their mouths. When they leave I boil everything they have touched in a large soup pot. He is too young to have a favorite so there is no risk of melting any particular one.
The day we move into the dark pseudo-Tudor in the suburbs we find fresh piles of shit in our bedroom. Raccoon feces emit noxious fumes, sometimes so concentrated with the rabies’ virus no bite is needed.
The shudder of the appliances, the wind howling through the eaves, a falling branch. I am sure the raccoons will return, open our windows, turn doorknobs, pull down our sheets and get into our bed and his crib.
The previous owners dumped camphor in the crawl space to disguise the smell of feces and urine, replacing one toxin with another. I hire a man to sand the attic floor and another to varnish it. During the winter, so the fresh air can circulate, I keep the attic windows open. When my husband complains about the draft I do not tell him I am responsible. He would have insisted I close the windows.
My son stops sleeping. Each night he stands in his crib and cries. Eventually if he is able to drift into his partially slumped, partially standing sleep, his screaming wakes him and the cycle begins again. The doctors do not know what it is or how to manage it.
Raccoons or flying squirrels, I am convinced, must have returned to breed in the crawl space above his room. I hire exterminators, trappers and animal experts but no one finds any evidence.
The nurse’s job is to let us sleep. I can’t escape the sound of her pacing, her slippers shuffling along the pine floor. Even when I leave my room and go downstairs, I hear her. I should tell her that continuous walking does not lull him, that I have spent nights on my feet, but then I realize his crying has stopped.
Does she exhale without thinking where her breath will fall, or does she channel the marijuana smoke towards his face? When she leaves at the end of the week, the price of our sleep too costly, his crying starts again.
A doctor prescribes medicine I administer with a dropper but will not authorize a refill. I can’t convince myself it is acceptable to smoke marijuana or burn it in my son’s room as if it is incense.
If I put him in his car seat and drive at a steady thirty miles per hour, he sleeps, but if there is traffic he wakes up screaming. The trick is to keep going. I take the same route each time, convinced he has memorized the intervals of straight road, the stop signs, the duration of each light.
In his insomnia his eyes sink further into his head. His skin turns grey. The sound of lullabies, the turning of the black and white zebras, none of it has any effect. I play Brahms. The Rolling Stones. Mahalia Jackson.
Mother had us pack an overnight bag. The launch took us to father’s new sailboat moored at the far end of the harbor. A strong current pressed against the starboard side, pushing us farther from shore. Crammed in my bunk I hoped for sleep, but as the waves picked up I was sure the boat had become untethered.
I rocked back and forth humming. Maybe I dreamed. I was lost and running through a swamp blanketed by rot. Tree branches reflected on the water’s murky surface appeared as swords drawn from their sheaths. A dense canopy of moss crisscrossed the sky.
Underneath my bed I stashed books and shoes so