A murky haze settled into the hollow as cicadas thrummed from their perches among the layered canopy. Sunlight dappled the moist, fern-covered ground; I stepped carefully, eyeing my prize: a cluster of chanterelles peeking through the dense leaf litter.
Dirt-speckled, the mushrooms’ uneven, wavy caps cradled morning dew—soaking a few snail hangers-on as I gently nudged them onto the ground and tucked the orange blobs into my weathered garden hod. A few steps later, I startled a deer and watched it bound, crashing through high brush and melding into a thicket. Far afield, a turkey gobbled back at cawing crows.
I exhaled, and surveyed the mounded mushrooms. Cooked down, they’d last a meal or two—reminding me of the constant work it took to reap what I, or nature, sowed. Still, I felt a needed lift rise within me—what with the pandemic’s existential weight; racial liberation uprisings erupting nationwide; my bank account zeroing out; unemployment stuck in processing limbo for months; my business venture scrapped; bills piling up; job opportunities closing left and right, in sync with the plummeting economy; temporary, high-cost, useless health insurance ending; and my damaged RV becoming more a haven for rain and mice than me and JoJo.
Reversing course, light filtered across my tanned arms, my blonding curls; I breathed deeply.
Keep moving.
Setting my bounty inside my clay-caked car, I reminded myself not to explore the wealth of accessible mental rabbit holes, down which I’d plummeted for weeks—where self-questioning and deprecation exacted a depressingly high emotional toll.
I turned the key in the ignition and inched uphill.
The Check Engine light illuminated, its accompanying sensors flashing; I lay my head on the worn steering wheel.
Each day, something reopened an unmendable wound festering within me.
***
A month prior, I sat in the rental car’s absurdly low driver’s seat and held my breath behind my mask, all the while turning toward the window and away from the unmasked rental technician—who recited a litany of unnecessary add-ons for my cross-country trek.
I pressed my gloved finger to the iPad screen and scrawled an illegible signature.
“Have a good trip,” she said, promptly exiting the vehicle and coughing into the wind.
I doused my hands and the steering wheel in hand sanitizer, shifted the car into drive, and breathed out. Adjusting the rear view mirror, I mentally recited everything I’d packed as I locked New Mexico in my sights. I had no idea how far I’d make it each day or where I’d sleep; all I knew was that the two-door coupe would serve as my makeshift bubble whilst navigating through COVID-19-racked states.
Twelve hours later, just outside of Oklahoma, foreboding storm clouds shrouded the moon—lightening pulsing through the darkened masses, as my phone’s weather radar tracked a solidly red line descending on Norman. I rolled into my friend’s driveway as the wind picked up, and we exchanged socially distanced greetings before the rain poured down and I ran back to my car—the seat declined, a pillow on the headrest. Bouts of hail and furiously loud thunder punctuated the night as I tossed and turned, feeling my neck and back muscles tighten.
Veiled by dawn, I peed into my ad hoc toilet bottle and lodged it in the passenger-side door’s storage cubby—ensuring I’d tightened the lid.
Along the highway shortly thereafter, I watched the officer approach as I pressed my mask’s nose guard and rolled down the passenger-side window. Before he appeared, I flushed with anxiety and anger—recognizing that if I were BIPOC, my frenetic attempts to mask up could’ve been construed as threatening, an act of aggression. Maskless, he leaned in through the window; the added weight on the frame caused the full urine bottle just below his forearm to shudder. Amid a pandemic, it seemed even more unnecessarily bizarre for such a stop—much less without PPE; but part of me was glad he honed in on me, rather than the Black and Brown drivers who’d flanked me. A warning later, I pulled off the shoulder and merged back into traffic. Even though my hands were gloved, my face covered, I slathered myself in sanitizer—feeling wholly unclean.
New Mexico’s intense sun broke through the lone tree’s branches and fell upon the collection of pots and listing plants. I’d stepped into the yard so many times before, each of which had been fueled by excitement—the expectation of seeing him framed through the open door ahead, hearing his laugh. But there, as the heat rose from the baked earth, I knew the vibrantly blue door would never open. I collected what remained of my plants and stowed them in the trunk of my dirt-covered Subaru—a bittersweet reunion.
That night, as I walked with my friend along water-filled arroyos, I felt New Mexico’s familiar pull—and mourned the finality of its loss and all of the frayed, loose ends therein, which only intensified as I crossed the state line the next morning, reflected on my abruptly ended life chapter there, and sent a final text.
Thank you for making New Mexico worth it.
***
Never did I imagine I’d be standing in a line at a driver’s license office during a pandemic. The attending clerk scanned my temperature and nodded toward the largely vacant waiting area—the few seats separated by a number of blue X’s.
“Have you ever had an Alabama driver’s license before?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When I last lived here, fourteen years ago.”
“Wow. Why’d you come back?”
Her probing question surprised me, much like the sentiment expressed by my childhood hair stylist when I’d stopped by months before to say hello, to tell her I was back.
“And is that a good thing or a bad thing?” she’d asked, a knowing smile curving at the corner of her lips.
Given the extent to which my plans had unraveled, I recognized my honest answers to both questions remained debated by the jury in my head.
“Please remove your mask,” the intake clerk said from behind her plexiglass shield.
I repeated her request slowly, feeling my anxiety rise.
“I totally get ya, man,” my neighbor said from behind his mask, nodding as I fumbled to remove mine and muster a smile in front of the green square on the wall.
Outside, I faced a completely empty carnival setup—the carousels and Ferris wheel at the corner of the cracked pavement creaking in the wind. I folded my temporary license into my wallet.
A rain shower broke as I eased off of the county road, back onto the gravel driveway and dodged Zebra Swallowtails fluttering through the air; around the curve, nestled atop the hill, my RV came into view.
Heat rippled across Bertie’s roof while I ruffled new okra leaves. Bush beans dangled from flowering stems, and tomatoes blushed red. And from an unlikely nest-filled perch above a carrot bed, a tiny, feathered bluebird chick raised its head to meet mine.
Amid the chaos, life continued to unfold.
From my back pocket, I removed my license—my pixelated smile visibly fake. Comparing my hole-punched New Mexico license with it, I bore little resemblance—my hair longer, facial hair fuller, the lines around my eyes noticeably longer.
That evening, as I tarped over garden beds, I craned my head toward the nest—now empty, save a dud egg and a flight feather. The fledgling had flown. I smiled, and watched pink hues fill the sky.
I thought back to my licenses—the photos taken so close in time, and still, they felt years apart. Between then and now, I’d become a stranger unto myself.
But deep within my strained eyes, I recognized the faintest glimmer: the desire to fly.