Gravel uncertain, stuffs its bones into the bottoms of my shoes. Adobe walls, mud-born and crumbling remind me of my mother, back in Oklahoma. The Taos Pueblo is full of free roaming dogs and remains, the way her body is its own graveyard. It is an unusually rainy spring in New Mexico. Run-off from the mountains causes the Red Willow River to rush wildly. Alfred, our tour guide, said he’s been drinking water from the creek since he was a child. His people have been drinking from it for hundreds of years.
The closer I get to the river, the lonelier I feel trying to commune with ghosts. Trees remember every photograph taken. My soul, if that’s what keeps one panic-ridden, tries to leave my body as I cross the log bridge. There is nothing to hold onto, but my cracked cell phone and thoughts of my mother being alone if I fall in. The smell of burning cedar and sage wants to cleanse my grief. The wind smells damp and uncompromising.
***
There are tornadoes and flooding in Oklahoma. I am freezing here. The grainy backdrop of New Mexico mountains covered in snow and cloud. Would the bones buried underneath old wooden crucifixes make a sound? Would they speak Tiwa? There is no electricity on the Taos pueblo; only artists trying to feed their dying language by selling turquoise jewelry to window-shopping tourists. The tour guide says not to take photographs inside the church. Guadalupe is adorned with pink ruffles, a sign of spring. Her dressing gowns change with the seasons.
Saints stand in bold colors on either side of the corn-mother. Jesus is still a white man. The pews are hollering in mixed metaphors and broken English. Frayed bibles don’t ask us to stay, but demand that we stand away from the altar, away from Guadalupe. Three white taper candles burn below her feet, longer than we will be in this place. Longer than people with pale skin and open mouths, tour the remains of Taos Pueblo still inhabited with what the tour guide says is “The Red Willow People.” Approximately 150 indigenous people live on the Taos Pueblo at least part of the year.
***
At Taos Pueblo, Monday, May 20th, 2019, the sky is detached from any semblance of sun. It has been an unusually rainy year. An abandoned cathedral bell sways, it rains on and off as we drudge through the ruins. I want to know its voice, but can’t hear anything. I take pictures of hilly graves. Looking for signs of haunting, outside fresh footprints and eye rolls of pueblo natives.
Small fires and fry bread don’t help us grow more respectful or understanding of grief settling in mud. Large crows play hopscotch in front of abandoned buildings. Convening, plotting. Pecking sidewalks full of half-burned cigarettes. Yellow roses trampled, low enough to kiss the ground.
***
After my father died on Friday the 13th 2015, I saw yellow flowers and butterflies everywhere. I felt him listening to the echo of my voice in confused silence. He would’ve loved Taos pueblo. Once, he showed me desert photographs, telling me stories of when he spent time in New Mexico as a 20 something.
If my parents were here, maybe we could fix his broken turquoise ring. The one I carry on my keychain. My father loved telling me the story of how he met my mother on a blind date at a friend’s barbeque. How my mother basically threw him on top of the hood of his car one night and, “went to town.” They enjoyed embarrassing me. Mom was 105 pounds, 5ft2, and brown hair down to the backs of her legs. My Dad, 5ft9, chubby. Somehow she became a superhero, and after 30+ years of a tumultuous marriage, he still delighted in the telling. Mom blushed like it had happened a few days before. They could hold hands and pretend they’d just met. Cool and smooth like the adobe houses. None of us would have ashes to spread. Our soft mouths would be watering, hoping to be coddled by the sun.
***
Cicadas don’t sing on the pueblo, only rivers and wild dogs. I saw a lone cicada mid-morning land on a path in front of me. It didn’t make a sound. Its presence made me miss Oklahoma, when the nights were humid and a chorus of cicadas chirped me back to life, momentarily.
***
On Taos Pueblo, ornate drums and rattles are made to sell to outsiders. There is a thrum on the bottoms of my feet. Cold rain spits on my backpack. I can’t afford to buy any of the jewelry or artwork. I take photographs to remember; they have little else I can take.
***
My mother is alone during tornado season in Oklahoma. She is probably smoking a pack of Timeless Time Menthol cigarettes a day, living off of Cheetos and generic Pop Tarts. She buries herself in Farmville and ID TV. I step onto the back balcony of Sagebrush Inn; I see a prairie dog poking an empty beer bottle. I name her Gertrude Stein. Gertrude heard a shift in the air, looked up at me briefly, and ran back into her hole. My hands stained with nicotine and my lukewarm cup of decaf coffee slumped between them.
***
Prairie dogs are considered pests, small pack rodents that take over land and eat all the vegetation. They are prey animals that survive on prairie grasses and instinct. Snakes, ferrets, hawks, feast on the prairie dogs. I’ve only seen crows circling and owls in the distance. Humans are intrusive, laughing and slamming doors to hotel rooms. A prairie dog’s only real defense is an alert system consisting of barking noises. They bark to warn others of the danger, and then hide in their burrows. The warnings echo across the landscape, a chain of hyper vigilance.
***
Taos, mid-afternoon. I am sitting on a deck with a view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Very near I can smell the spent cedar from last night’s fire pit. Four crows squawk and circle overhead. The cool Taos breeze carries the birds but barely holds me. A small fly buzzes past my face; I can hear his wings singing gently, my bottom lip twitches. Mountains tousled with snow. Sun spits freckles onto my pale skin; the vast cumulus-blue sky makes my worries weightless for a moment. Cars speeding past in the distance, trees outreach towards the sky.
***
My father was a salesman. He drove all over the state of Oklahoma 5-7 days a week. He kept my mother, sister, brother, and I mostly fed, and mostly warm. He sold cheese and deli meats to grocery stores. All his customers loved him; they saw a vibrant and extroverted side that he rarely showed at home. He had big brown eyes, dark brown hair; his shirts striped and always tucked in, stuck to his round belly. When he laughed, his entire body shook.
At home, my father was often checked out. The television was more important than anything I had to say. When he met with deli managers, he hugged and doted on them like family. Watching him joke around and loosen up around them made me see my father like more of a stranger.
***
My father had a melanoma removed from his forehead once; I was in my late 20s. We all shrugged it off as unimportant, something that came with age. He continued to drive long distances around Oklahoma. We both went back to smoking a pack or more a day.
***
The smooth adobe walls and turquoise doors glow of springtime, of now. I want to be present for prairie dogs and the Yellow Throated Warbler. The scent of lilacs and sage, honeysuckle lingering from tourist traps. I watch a nest of fire ants wandering the cracks between pueblo-paved sidewalks. Running errands for their beloved queen. The weight their small bodies can carry, how do they survive the winters? Build colonies, burrow deep into the gravel desert and sand.
***
When my father lost 60 pounds in the fall of 2014, we all assumed it was his diabetes. He told me he loved me and was proud of me for the first time in my life. He hugged me for so long I became anxious. I sobbed in my car for half an hour. I don’t know whether it was fear or growth that made him act this way. Maybe it was a little bit of both.
***
In Taos, there are depictions of saints. Hoping to find one that signified grief or hope, I discovered a tall metallic sculpture on a sunny walk down the main drag in Arroyo Seco. Her pirate smile and wingspan reminiscent of faery lore I’ve spent a great deal of time consuming for the better part of my life. She was surrounded by a clay depiction of Pan, with his pipes in hand. The gravel beneath me crunched as I wobbled attempting to photograph her with my cracked cell phone. I didn’t want a glare; I just wanted the illumination of her body. I want to feel what it means to be still, silent, and beautiful.
***
When my father collapsed in the matchbox of an apartment he and my mother shared, I was reminded of frailty. My mother called me frantically, telling me he had been rushed to the hospital. I hated that I knew we were running out of time. I have never told anyone about that first day, it felt selfish. My father, in his weakened state, tried to set me up on a date with a very attractive EMT. He made that grown man blush with his insistence. The doctors ran tests, and peddled cure-alls. They made promises. My father signed his hope away on medical release forms.
***
My sunscreen is tucked away in my backpack. I do not own sunglasses. I left my sweater in the trunk of my car. I have spent a lot of time in the last several months, driving long distances, especially around Oklahoma. I drove from Oklahoma City to Taos in a several hour stint, sun beaming on the left side of my body and face. Sitting mountainside, I don’t think about the sun. I just sob about how beautiful the weather is, how warm. My mouth slightly hangs open, I think about smoking a cigarette.
***
A month after his hospital visit, just before Thanksgiving 2014, came the diagnosis. Squamous cell. I had to Google it because I’d never heard of such a thing. The doctors said the left side of his jaw was disintegrating, gums rotting, teeth crumbling into gravel. My once boisterous and round-bellied father was skin and bones. Doctors swore he could be cured. Radiation. Multiple bouts. Then, they said, we can do reconstructive surgery. He was convinced. I pretended to be. He hated that I always made him laugh at my stupid jokes. It hurt him to laugh, but he loved me anyway.
***
My mother reminds me regularly how much I am like my father. I don’t take it as an insult. I wear it like I’m a prized pig that won a blue ribbon.
***
Just before Christmas 2014, my father was about to undergo the last bit of radiation they said he’d need. I bought him a pair of Superman pajamas and a t-shirt with the recognizable S on it. I told him, “You can beat this.” I knew he wasn’t going to. I didn’t want to be the one who took his last bit of hope. A few days later the doctors gave him 6-12 months to live. He and I’d grown so close the last couple of years, there wasn’t enough time, and I guess there never is. I had never seen my father so vulnerable and helpless. He hated it. I hated it. His eyes had always been deep brown but were becoming honey.
***
I am fascinated by the emotional and instinctual intelligence of crows. They trot around Taos fearlessly. Crows don’t ask for permission or apologize too much. They peck at the dirt and circle the dead. They admire their reflections in hot asphalt.
***
My father and I found ways around suffering. There was grace in silence, in the way he held my hand and mumbled how much he loved me. By late February 2015, he was bedridden. He was on oxygen 24/7 and a feeding tube in which my mother and I gave him pain medication. Once, while we were watching an old John Wayne movie, Hatari as we often did to pass the time, he stared at me. I could see him in my periphery, but said nothing. “Aren’t you tired of spending so much time with a dead man?” That broke something inside me. “Never,” I smiled and we went back to watching the movie. The only thing I truly regretted is that it took so long for him and I to connect. He was dying, and in a lot of ways, so was I.
***
The wind finally calms and the birds are singing. A pen tip of blood pooling on the top of my right foot, I didn’t feel a sting or a bite. I look at my dry, calloused feet and the bunions I inherited from my father. A source of shame, I hide them because aside from my ears and wide forehead, very little of my father’s image is present. The patio is covered in tiny dead leaves, owls are starting to hoot, and crickets are calling the sun into soil.
***
Friday, the 13th, 2015 around 1:30 am I checked on my father. By now, he was in a coma. He was in the bed he shared with my mother. She slept on the couch during the day so she could watch over him at night. I told him I loved him; I combed his thick white hair. He smelled sweet, like honeysuckle. Like the backyard of the house I grew up in. I kissed his forehead and told him it was okay to leave. I didn’t mean it. I turned off the lamp and left the TV in the bedroom on. My mother played Farmville, and then got up to check on him 20 minutes later. “Jenny. Jenny. Your Dad is gone.”I melted into the old tan recliner. I got up, walked into the bedroom, and with his left eye half-open, I waved my hand over it. Just like the movies. She left the room; I turned the oxygen machine off. I pulled the sheet over his head.
***
I keep driving and praying that I die more painlessly than my father did. I miss the sounds of cicadas and frogs chirping in Oklahoma. I even miss the mosquitos. Prairie dogs bark at each other from across the desert and clouds flatten, moving west. They give chase and bask in the beer bottle strewn landscape. I’ve named them Gertrude Stein and Betty White. I imagine the tunnels underground that lead them all over the desert. I wonder how they survive the constantly changing temperatures, predators, and garbage. I light another cigarette.
***
Two hours after my father died, his hospice nurse came and cleaned him up. She changed his clothes and gave him the last bit of dignity possible. She stayed with my mother and I until the funeral home worker came to pick up the body. The two small-framed women put my father’s frail corpse onto a gurney. His hand slipped out as they attempted to maneuver him around the corner of the small apartment.
He had such big hands. His knuckles were thick and olive. My father’s body was still warm. My mother told me to let go, the nurse had to peel my hand away from his. Upon his last gasp, his last exit from the front door of the apartment, he took everything good with him.
***
On Tuesday, the student group went to Bandelier National Monument. I was last to trek up the mountain. I smoke too much, have asthma, and am fat. I struggle to fit in, anywhere. As I huffed and puffed my way up the side of the trail, the sun seeped through the pastel pink baseball cap I got on clearance at Wal-Mart in Taos. It has a kitten wearing rainbow glasses, sitting in front of a pink cupcake with sprinkles. The cupcake rested in a bed of spring flowers.
I got lost in the woods. The red wood trees intermingled with piles of cedar. I spotted a hummingbird flitting between trees. Past several red woods there was a view of the pueblo ruins and the skyline through mountains. I took a deep breath and become overwhelmed by how small I am, how insignificant. It’s been years since I’ve felt this connected to anything. I passed my right hand on a red wood with black burn marks. When I thought of how something can withstand fire and still managed to grow, I wept.
***
My father and I had been quite distant until the last few years of his life. He was part of my every day and I honestly enjoyed spending time making him laugh. Years later, I still hate sitting on the sofa in the apartment he died in. He sat on the left side, which was his spot. If anyone sits in his spot even now, I ask them to move. My mother wants to get rid of the sofa. I still haven’t gotten rid of a pair of his black tennis shoes and a great deal of his clothes. I told her that I donated them, but they’re in my broken-down Ford Focus. They’ve been there since he died four years ago. The Focus has been in a friend’s driveway for a few years.
I keep intending on junking the car, but have no place to put my father’s belongings. I reluctantly scattered most of his ashes with my mother last November. We took chunks of ash and bone in our small hands and tossed them in places he loved going. There’s still a bit of his remains left in the white cardboard box on one of my many bookshelves. It is labeled David Hudgens, my father was never David, he was Dave.
***
I have been in Taos for almost two weeks and I misjudged the amount of money I’d have available to spend on food and souvenirs. I bought a postcard with Guadalupe on it, and one with a picture of a woman in a pink skirt with a missile pointed upward, positioned between her legs. I never got my father’s turquoise ring fixed. I roll that and his wedding band between the tips of my fingers and feel guilty. My mother doesn’t understand why he gave them to me to take care of. I honestly don’t either.
Once, when I was substitute-teaching at a high school in Oklahoma City, the chain I wore his wedding band on, along with a round tiger’s eye I’d had for twenty years, broke. It was as though the weight was too much around my neck. I frantically searched for both, asking everyone to keep an eye out for them. A few days passed, I was angry and devastated that he’d trusted me. He trusted me to take care of his rings, and of my mother.
A student came up to me after class. I was still in a daze from the guilt. He said, “I hear that you’re looking for a wedding band.” I sat up straight, and locked eyes with him. He pulled his hand from behind his back, “is this it?” My father’s wedding band was in between the kid’s thumb and index fingers.
***
It has only been a week and a half away from Oklahoma City. Away from my mother and our shitty one-bedroom apartment. I normally sleep on my father’s side of the bed, because we can’t afford to move. New Mexico has been a whirlwind of adventure and getting to know my classmates. I still feel isolated. As though I am constantly trying to navigate the strange forest of Bandelier, and of my grief.
I stand outside on the second story balcony of room 248 at Sagebrush Inn. I hear an owl starting conversations with the night breeze. I can almost touch the constellation of Pegasus, as it’s tipped upside down against the desert sage. I light a cigarette, and choke a little, thinking about my father’s disintegrating body. I take another deep drag and blow the smoke towards the stars.
About the Author:
Jennifer E. Hudgens (they/them) is a disabled writer from OKC. Jen holds a BA in Creative writing from University of Central Oklahoma as well as a MFA in Poetry from Oklahoma State University. Jen watches the sky the way most people watch television & is obsessed with their yellow lab Penelope Garcia. Jen has been previously published in some poetry & fiction (print/online). Jen hates talking in third person but really hopes you like their work.
*Feature image bye Mohamed Nohassi at Unsplash
Isele Magazine 