A Desert Flower

I opened my groggy eyes and looked out the window of my dad's ‘91 indigo civic. The burning sun was high in the cloudless sky, I could feel its rays toasting my skin through the car’s tinted glass windows. The road that he drove on was desolate and barren. There was nothing to be seen but dust, cacti and the occasional passing tumbleweed.
I turned my attention to my siblings who had taken to leaning on me in their sleep like fallen dominos. Frank’s long, thin frame had curled into itself, reminding me of an armadillo. His dark hair was tousled, his glasses sat askew on his pointed nose and his mouth ajar as he softly snored on our younger sister’s small frame. Alyssa’s cheek rested on my shoulder. Her short, wavy, cinnamon coloured hair tickled my chin and her eyelashes fluttered on my left cheek as she mumbled senseless nothings in her sleep. Ever since she was a baby she could never last five minutes on a drive without her eyes drooping. Frank always placed second to her and I seemed to become drowsy only when we were fifteen minutes from our destination.
I looked to my father who heaved a deep sigh before taking a swig of Coca-Cola from a shining glass bottle. His dark brow shone with sweat as he mussed up his hair with a beefy hand. Though he’d never show it, long trips like these always took a toll on him. Ever since his accident he could never travel far from home without feeling intense pain in his back and joints. And when the pain did come in intense rolling waves, he would constantly refuse medicine. He was stubborn that way. The calm to his storm, my mother, sat beside my him in the passenger seat. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she slept deeply. Her dark head of hair was low in her chair, I could see it lolling to the left and hear her breath coming out in small puffs of air.
I sat up a little straighter, adjusting the scratchy seat belt that strapped me to the car’s rough tan seats so that I could breathe easier.
“Daddy,” I softly called. “Can you turn on the radio, please?”
He started and shifted the rearview mirror to look at me.
“There's only static now,” he said. “When did you wake up?”
I shrugged, we went another few miles before either of us spoke again.
“Are we almost there?”
“Almost, just go back to sleep. I'll wake you up when we get there.”
“But I can't sleep,” I whined. “I'm already awake.”
“Just close your eyes. That way you'll be rested when we get to Grandma's house, okay?”
“Okay.”
...
He woke me up just as the car pulled up beside the sturdy household. It was two stories tall, made of brick and wood, painted the colors you might see on a spanish hacienda. The rustic porch was littered with various cacti, flowers and succulents. A white picket fence tipped over from the weight of the shrubs that outlined the front yard. My dad pulled the key out of the ignition and I hopped out of the car, running to see my tíos and tías who had lined up to greet her while their children, my cousins, ran around the trees and pens scattered around the land.
Great Grandma Anna sat in her wheelchair on the porch with her crippled legs covered by a handmade blanket sewn with the colours of dusk. She was exactly as I remembered, plump and wrinkled like a prune, with curly silver hair that reached her jawline and round, gold rimmed glasses that always sat high on the bridge of her button nose. The evergreen eyes for which she was once known were glazed over, fixed onto the distance as if they’d been waiting for the return of memories that she had lost over the years.
My mother reached out kissing her cheek and gently grasping her withered, bony hand. She spoke in their native language and grandma rasped out a hesitant response. Mom was beaming as Dad stepped forward to shake her hand and greet her. Grandma’s eyes cleared and Dad smiled. She peered at my siblings and I, then asked something of my Mom. I knew enough of their language to register that Mom had began re-introducing us. We kissed her cheeks one by one and stood tall to receive her enthusiastic welcoming.
After some more light conversing, she patted our heads with a shaky hand and sent us off to play with our cousins. Frank strode to the back of the house to look for the chicken coop where he knew the older children would be. Alyssa and I scampered off to find Jessica, our most familiar sandy haired cousin, so that we could scale the fruitless trees in the front yard together. She had always been the troublemaker of our trio. She was the only one of us who was small enough to shimmy through the teeny gap in our neighbor’s fence to pick the lemons that we needed to refresh ourselves in the midst of Summer’s heat.
We three were taking turns swinging in a rope hammock in the dark of a setting sun when everyone was called inside to warm up. Five women, my tías and my mom, gathered in the kitchen preparing dinner while my tíos sat in the dining room talking and drinking. Not being a big fan of alcohol, my father opted instead to keep Grandma company while twenty-five children sat crammed together like sardines watching Pippi Longstocking on her small TV.
Dad half spoke, half laughed out a comment in spanish, gesturing to the television. Grandma chortled in response. After a moment his face turned grave and he took his time asking a seemingly serious question. Grandma took a drawn out swig of her Corona before answering him in an equally serious tone.
Mom called us to eat seconds later.
Everyone scrambled to the kitchen. Everyone except Grandma, whom I noticed slowly tottering in the opposite direction. I thought that maybe she hadn’t clearly heard that dinner was ready, so I followed her. She made her way down the hall, to the bathroom where she left the door ajar. I opened my mouth to call out to her, but before any noise came out of my throat I heard her wheezing and coughing like she couldn't breathe. I stood right outside the door, paralyzed, unable to call out for help. When her hacking ceased she spat and I slowly peeked through the small opening to see her wash something down the sink. In my confused terror I didn't dare knock, I didn’t dare speak. Instead I scrambled to the kitchen saying a word to no one as I accepted a plate of food from my Dad.
Three hours later it was decided that everyone should start packing up and help clean the house before the long drive home. Outside men rounded up noisy animals into their pens while the women cleaned up in the kitchen and children napped by the windows in the dining room. I walked around cleaning any trash left on the floor. In the living room, next to my grandma's chair were children’s discarded candy wrappers and crumpled napkins tinged with dark, carmine hues that I tossed into the trash without a second thought.
Twenty minutes later we drove away. And waving goodbye to Great Grandma Anna I watched her disappear behind us in the dust.
I woke the next morning to the sound of sobbing. I slipped out of bed and crawled silently to my parent’s room where I saw my Dad sitting with my Mom in his arms, stroking her messy hair as tears streamed endlessly down her face. They stayed that way for hours, but I couldn’t understand what was wrong. It was a vacation day, a beautiful day. We had planned to go to the zoo, the sun was shining, birds chirped in the trees outside. It seemed like a perfect day.
I was deep in thought when, suddenly, the phone began to ring. Mom wiped at the tears that spilled down her face and picked it up.
“Hello,” she sniffled. “Yes, Dad told me this morning.”
My Father kissed her forehead.
“Okay, we’ll be there.”
Grandma's Rosary took place in a squat grey building. It was set up like the inside of a church with long wooden pews facing her casket. Through the thick sea of black sorrow I could see her portrait framed with red roses beside a mahogany coffin. I knew what it meant, and yet a big part of me stubbornly refused to believe that she was really gone.
We walked up to her open casket, I kissed her on her forehead, Mom held her hand. Her gold jewelry glinted in the pale light that shone through the tall, wide windows and her rosy silk gown seemed to glow. She looked relaxed as if she were still sleeping. Her cheeks had the same rosy glow, her hair was the same silver that I had admired a mere week ago. We walked away, and all the while I was thinking, No, it’s impossible, she can’t be gone. The crowd of mourners that surrounded me seemed to think otherwise.
I watched from the back of the room as relatives I had no recollection of walked up one by one to kiss her and say their adieus. Some shed not a single tear, others had to be pulled away from her resting form. It was hard to believe that any of these strangers loved her the same way that we did.
My mother held my right hand as she wiped her brown eyes that glistened with diamond tears. She flipped through the pages in one of grandma’s old photograph books pointing out different pictures and people. There were pictures of her on her wedding day, there was one where she stood outside of a tall building covered in vines with two children beside her, but the most well preserved picture was on a page fiftythree. She and her husband, my Great Grandpa Jesus, stood proudly front of a newly-built house wearing old-timey clothes. It was in this picture that her eyes shone the brightest. I felt a pang deep in my chest.
I turned my head to the left where children ran in circles eating sweets out of her old candy jar and pastries from big pink boxes. The smell of butterscotch wafted past, reminding me of the Easters we had spent hunting for eggs in her front yard. We’d scrape our knees looking for sweets in her cactus plants and rose bushes and she’d cover our wounds with band-aids. For the remainder of the rosary I sat in the pews amidst grief with a yellow butterscotch in my hand.
My cheek pressed against the car door. Frank and Alyssa had fallen asleep on me during the ride to the church. Mom stared at the rose that she twirled over and over again in her hand.
Dad caught my eye in the rearview mirror, and taking a swig from a cup of black coffee ordered me to close my eyes.
“You don't want to be sleepy when we say goodbye to Grandma, right?’
“No,” I shook my head. “ I guess not.”
I spent the rest of the ride counting the droplets that fell from the sky.
The church that they brought her body to was more grand than any other that I had entered before. Its arched ceiling stretched to the heavens, stained glass windows depicted Jesus’s crucifixion, statues of Saints lined the walls, their feet covered in flowers and burning incense, candles dimly glowed at the foot of a large wooden crucifix and a statue of the Virgin Mother.
I didn't pay much attention to the ceremony. I was distracted not by the grandeur of the church, but by the weight in my chest. It was a feeling that I knew all too well. It was a grief, pain, the harrowing pang of loss. It never seemed to heal in me, it only grew more intense with each day.
The hollowness doubled when the ceremony ended and we followed a long black car to the hills.
They laid her under a tree beside her husband. The drizzle grew heavier with each rose that was placed on her casket, and in the air the only noises were that of sorrow and the shoveling of the Earth.
Years later I still remember her face vividly. Her squinted eyes, button nose and portly cheeks are forever imprinted in my memory. Even now that she has long been gone I remember her fondly. Her land stands as a memory of a time when families would gather and feast while their children frolicked in open fields.