I chuckled like the coyotes of the arroyo.
The sun through the window painted his body with evening light — brushstroked hairs thickened on his arms and the tuft of his chest was exposed. “Shall we move outside?” he asked.
I watched his silhouette darken against the dripping sun.
He opened the patio doors, where my pack of American Spirits rested on the small table. His arms rested on the low stucco wall. I rested mine next to his and we surveyed the land together. He was more beautiful than I could have imagined. He was the white knight we Indians yearned for. He was a trophy — a first-place trophy with blue eyes, blue ribbons. Jordan could be my winner, my prize to take home to my family. His eyes defined the desert sky.
He lit a cigarette from the box. “It’s been years since I’ve smoked,” he said. He closed his eyes as he took the first drag and the tobacco curled in embers. He tilted his head back, extending his throat. Smoke escaped his mouth and crept into his nostrils. “Oh god, I’ve missed this,” he said. He opened his eyes and looked toward the fading sun, emptying his lungs.
Together, we blew clouds into the evening sky. The wind licked the dark hairs of his arms as the ash fluttered into the east, toward the arroyo, toward the ground, away from us.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Jordan whispered.
We walked the edge of Santa Fe High School, and along the Arroyo de los Chamisos Trail — a trail I knew from running daily.
My knees ached with memory.
“Do you know the story of this arroyo?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“La Llorona walks along this bed, they say, each night.” Jordan placed his hands in mine. “They say she cries each night, howling with the guilt of drowning her own children. They say she caught her white husband with another woman; he had another family.”
The sun sank farther behind the Jemez Mountains, and the night sky tipped itself with fire.
The story ran through my head as we walked through the arroyo. It reminded me of a story my dad shared with me once. The woman in my dad’s story had no name, although she committed the same acts as the woman Jordan mentioned: she silenced her babies when she learned of her lover’s betrayal — the Bilagáana, the Naakaii, the foreigner with bluish-green eyes who broke her heart, who walked eternally when she, too, was silenced by Tééhoołtsódii — the water monster.
Jordan laughed.
As we walked through the dim arroyo, Jordan nestled his head against my shoulder and the trees darkened around us. We turned around when finally the orange glow slipped into darkness. The wind sang softly around us, and leaves shuddered, as the ghost dance of night began.
At Times Square, I jumped off the R train to wait for the oncoming 2/3 train.
A voice teased from the crowd: “Are you following me?” It was the blond, who stood behind a woman, who stood next to me. “The 2/3 train,” he said, “maybe we’ll see each other again.”
I shrugged.
The woman rolled her eyes.
The 2/3 train squealed and came to a halt. The doors hissed open. I squeezed into the subway car where passengers stood face-to-face, front-to-back, crotch-to-face, ass-to-ass, and my arms slunk into one of the straps dangling from above, while the blond disappeared into the jungle of bags and scarves and gloves — “Guilty Party.”
I chose Northern Arizona University because it was within our Four Sacred Mountains of Diné Bíkeya. At the base of Dook’o’oosłííd, the sacred mountain of the West, I finished a bachelor’s program and obtained a psychology degree. My parents were happy because I was the first in the family to get a college education. I was older than the other students, but I was glad I’d waited and decided on a career in mental health. My parents threw a big party when I returned to the northwestern part of the reservation.
For months, I looked for a job in my field, but nothing came up in Farmington. I waited tables at the local Applebee’s until finally I got a call about a job at the recovery center. They hired me as a counselor’s aide and I began to learn the stories of Shidine’é who’d succumb to their weaknesses for alcohol. I watched as Shidine’é admitted themselves or were forced to submit to mandatory recovery — many of those, my former customers at Applebee’s, didn’t look me in the eye. For months, I listened to the white practitioners talk among themselves about the abuse and neglect of the Diné Nation and their lack of support to help those walking the streets of Farmington. It was embarrassing to hear them squabble and complain about people like me. Shidine’é were judged and mistreated by the educated white men of the recovery center. The ghosts of the addicted followed me home at night when I listened to their pain speak through my sleep. In secret, I cried with an ache of their trauma — it spoke to me. I felt them. I heard them.
I worked at the treatment center for a year before I had the gall to apply to grad school. My acceptance was to Smith, a private school in Massachusetts. I was nervous to leave the Southwest. I was nervous to be so far away from my family, so far from the land I knew as home. I was scared.
I mentioned the voices to my dad.
He suggested I needed a ceremony before leaving the Four Sacred Mountains. “It’s something we do,” he said, “especially if we leave our lands.”
I laughed.
“Son,” he said, “those voices will follow you if you don’t take care of yourself.”
I shrugged.
“You laugh now, son, but what you don’t realize is that the pain of others will become a part of you. You need to see a medicine man.”
I neglected my dad’s advice and left for Massachusetts.
The voices followed.
I could hear them through my headphones even now. I could feel the pressure against my chest as the subway car began to sway. The woman next to me thought about her baby at home with the nanny. Was the nanny the right choice? she thought. Was the iron left on? I sensed the fear in her. She gripped the railing tighter. She closed her eyes in thought. The man asking for change was ex-military. He was discharged dishonorably because of misconduct with an officer who lied for his own self-promotion. The ex-military man was relieved of his duties before he could rescind his story. I felt his embarrassment. I felt the blond, somewhere. He was thinking about me — “Anyone’s Ghost” played.
Jordan and I spent the rest of the monsoon season together, most nights at my apartment even though he lived just four miles away — off Governor Miles Road. On occasion, after one of my long runs, I’d find myself at his doorstep, dripping with sweat. I was a monsoon who trapped Jordan in my arms. We curled into his living room — sometimes near his bed, or in the hallway — never in the same place, and never in his bed because sweat dripped where it dripped, and we puddled upon one another and melted into our happiness.
As summer came to an end, our evenings began with Jordan and his bottle of wine. He knew I loved the reds — the dry ones because they echoed down my throat when I drank that dryness. We crumpled onto the floor before our evening light show. Each night, we awaited the Male Rain’s arrival. With the apartment darkened, we watched the evening light muffled by clouds. Sipping our wine on the floor, we watched the Male Rain begin his dance with a crash of the drum. Silver-lined clouds sparked, and the scent of dirt loomed at the balcony door, whispering to be let in.
The Male Rain performed for an hour or so before the clouds cleared and the roads glimmered. The arroyo roared with rainwater, creating a chocolate river that ran from the Sangre de Cristos. We sipped wine and spent the night stretched out on my apartment floor, drenched in our own wetness, drenched in wine, drenched in each other.