Arizona

Somehow, we stopped noticing the static of the radio. This probably happened between our fourth and fifth hours on the road, but I could be wrong. I'd stopped wondering where we might be headed long before and took to watching as the clouds passed by. Cumulus and Stratus were the only names I could remember from class, but those boundless ghosts didn't really look like either kind. They were of the purest white and barely blemished the endless sky. Hanging my elbows out the open window, my eyes followed every movement in Arizona's canopy of periwinkle blue and ignored the green road signs bringing me back down to Earth. I wondered if the sky was any different at the Grand Canyon, where I half-expected us to be headed. We'd always gone south on these kinds of trips, never north.

I knew today would be different when I woke up to find my drawers emptied and the car's trunk filled with most our belongings. My dad was frantic in every movement and looked just about as wild. He'd grown increasingly disheveled over the past months- hair grown long, unshaven and pale from fear of our hot summer sun. Even now, he shied back to the shadows and hid under his winter shirts and an old University cap. My hair wrapped around my face in the wind and my eyes began to hurt. I tried my best not to really look at anything anymore, just thinking as I played at the little blonde hairs on my arms and felt the birthmarks of my skin. What if we were never going back?

I could remember a time when home was the most beautiful place in the world to me. The sunsets were every shade of orange and pink, the mountains were purple and vast, and the hummingbirds would flutter across our back porch and drink the nectar hanging from the trees. Now, Tucson was just a town of dirt and dust storms, orange construction cones, filthy buildings, harsh winters, worse summers, and I felt like nothing could ever take me back.

As the sun rolled across the sky, time was vaguely present in my mind. Maybe it was noon, maybe two or three. These days, weeks could pass and I would hardly notice. Nothing changed. My hair might pass my shoulders or my jeans wouldn't fit anymore, but I'd hardly acknowledge the little speed bumps in my routine.

These days, the only change I ever saw was in my dad. Every morning at breakfast I'd notice his cough get rougher and more gravely. He was afraid of doctors now- refusing to attend any of his check-ups and ignoring the small concerns I had for his health. His memory might've been going, too. I think I learned to entertain myself in the quiet from all of the times he'd forgotten to pick me up from school. Being two hours late had slowly become a standard- far past when any other kids were left behind. He also seemed to forget to go to bed every once in a while. I'd had a few restless nights when I would find him asleep in his armchair with his clothes and lights still on. I couldn't even really remember the last time his eyes didn't look so deep and weary.

Against my will, I turned to look from where I was resting on the window's edge. Watching from under my arm, I could see his hands moving against the gear stick and the steering wheel, I could see him clutching at the handkerchief he hid any evidence of a cough in, I could see that far-away disconnected look that made my eyebrows and nose wrinkle in concern.

I remembered when we used to take more trips like this, back when there were three of us. I would be sitting in the back seat, fascinated by my father's every gear shift while they sat in front arguing over which direction to take. That was when he used to sing along to the radio, to those cheesy songs of his youth, in his strong deep voice and, whenever we went walking, he'd carry me on his shoulders if I ever got tired. Back when he would play songs from Les Miserables on the piano and tell me stories of the wild adventures he'd had at my age. He would make this hotdog and scrambled egg mixture on Sunday mornings and, at night, he'd lie down next to me and I would try to match our breaths until I fell asleep...

My brows furrowed and my eyes withdrew from studying his face. That was a long time ago.

A long blue rosary hung from the rear-view mirror and swung with every bump in the road. I could remember when we spent night after night in one of those generic sanitized rooms saying the rosary in hushed melodic voices. I would hold that necklace in my hands and feel the little flowers engraved in the beads and the little Jesus hanging on the cross, chanting a single prayer in my head. Clearly, wishful thinking just wasn't enough.

By that time, the sun had become both her greatest enemy and her lifelong friend. Arizona's sky was a cherished reminder of everything she had loved in life, but maybe it's those things we love that will kill us in the end. Sometimes I would visit her and find her out of bed, sitting in a chair just out of sunlight's reach. There was a strength in her spirit unblemished by her health. She could never forget the summers she'd spent at the pool teaching me how to swim or the blistering visits to the giraffes and rhinos of the zoo, even those afternoons getting sunburnt from watching me run through our backyard sprinklers. She never blamed any of them. She wouldn't ever dare...

And just as quickly as I remember it escalating, she was gone. After all of our sleepless nights of prayer and pleading, after all of the time spent sitting and speaking and helping her, after all of the missed school and never wanting to leave, she was gone. If I let myself go even a little, I can still feel this constricting pain in my chest making me unable to breathe. Something unbreakable was stuck in my throat- living there even today.

I looked away from the swinging cross and buried my face quickly in the curve of my elbow. My dad surely wasn't looking, but I couldn't take the risk. Maybe my tears would evaporate before reaching my cheeks.

When we'd left Tucson this morning, I'd imagined we were running from the law. Maybe my dad had committed some heinous crime in the middle of the night and we were deserting everything we knew for sanctuary. It pained me to watch his frenzy and agitation- I had to hope we had more of a reason for running away than what our lives had become.

But, in that moment, I knew I was wrong. I glanced back at his face- at his stubble, his high cheekbones, his dark eyes. The man who had once saved me from the rush of a flash flood, who had taken care of my burns from a scalding stove, who had found me after hours lost in the woods of Mt. Lemmon- he would never have let this mourning hurt me. That man whose impulse and instinct live inside of me still existed- no matter how lost he might have been.

You could never lose your will to live here in the desert. The terrain is so harsh, the sun so brutal, the desert so overwhelming- you always have to fight. As I watched his sunken eyes sweep the landscape, I saw just the slightest hint of the man he once was. And it was enough.

Even in your darkest hours, there will always be someone who would do anything to save you. I wiped at my cheeks one last time, turned from my place at the window, and took my seat. I put my seatbelt on and pulled my knees close to my chest.

Slowly reaching forward, I turned the radio off. Suddenly, as if broken from a trance, he glanced at my tiny wrist then at my face. For that one moment, we were okay.