Adaptation

            All desert plants know how to be desert plants. Doesn't sound like much, but you can't say the same for people. Desert plants know how to homestead. Chamise'll start a fire like a match-- flammable oils. Burns out everything, so the next generation has space, ash for fertilizer. Creosote, on the other hand-- creosote makes a toxin and puts it in the soil so nothing else can grow, not even other creosote plants. Can't figure out how that works-- how the plant itself keeps living, if it kills the other? Sheer stubbornness, probably. The best is the stunted, runty pines, in the washes. Those cones need fire to open. Destroys the tree, releases its children. The only other trees out here are the windbreaks. Long, perfect lines, like a fence. They stop looking like trees when you plant them like that. More like bodyguards, big foreign types.

            The Santa Ana winds know when to start but not when to end. October means brush fires up in the mountains. The rest of the nation digs out scarves, blankets, pilling sweaters, and we go to sleep with wet towels laid on us like form-fitting gowns. In October, people go unfound for weeks when they die, if they're living alone. The drought keeps the smell down, I think. Then an article about it gets in a major paper because everyone's scared of going unfound and they always, always mention in the second paragraph how here the liquor store is next to the funeral home, both of which are across from the middle school. I guess they would rather put the middle school across from the titty bar, or something.

            The dust is worse than usual when I pull into the drive. Just from the car to the front door, I kick up enough of it to start a cough. I dump my bags on the couch, head to the fridge. "Hello," I say, the kind when you know there's someone at home for you. I'm settled in with the beer when I realize Cere never said anything. Napping, probably. Half a Friends later I get up and shuffle through the thick carpet to her door, Chandler still asking whether something could be any more something. Cere's latest thing is some shit called Gregorian chant music, and yes, it's still playing, what I swear is the same mournful ten minutes that's been playing for the past month. I ease the door open. She gets mad when I don't knock, not understanding that it's about the element of surprise. She could be doing lines of cocaine off that closed door. What do I know about what kids learn in school. Last week I flung it open and she was knitting the absolute most terrible scarf I've ever seen. Ran out of mustard-colored yarn halfway through and switched to olive green. Probably my Christmas present. Your kid might know how to knit and you might never know if you're a knocker parent, is my point. 

            Her hair is spilled all over the pillow, like always, and I'm withdrawing my head from the crack in her door when I realize it's spilled on the floor too.

           

            If I were one of her boy friends, I can see myself being very proud of her right now. I'd ruffle her baby bird feather head and hug her tighter than platonic and we'd just holler at the sky for awhile, laughing about how like pillows under blankets our bodies were, feeling free. And then I'd give her crabs, or a pregnancy, and we'd have a shotgun marriage and move to a town in the foothills off a highway in California.

            I hold that in my head and pace and rub my eyes, hard, push my hands into my face like I'm kneading dough, yell a lot. This is unacceptable. How could you do this to me. Not after your mother. Not like this. What were you thinking. You know what can happen.

            Eventually I find myself back in her room, pulling her long blonde hair between my two hands, cat's cradle for one.

            The last time I snuck out of my childhood home was to meet Willa. Her parents had a cabin in the mountains and we'd been talking for weeks about how I was going to take her virginity up there and then we would fall asleep and wake up and we'd do it again. Sounds so crude now. Sounded nice then, a nice thing to do for somebody.

            I didn't do the trick Cere pulled. Too fond of my hair, for one. Just snuck out, didn't even have to try. Me and Willa went up and she had the key, which she brought out like a smile, and now it's that smile I see someone giving Cere.

            It's not nice, I yell, out loud, stomping into the kitchen.

            Sound of the door opening. We look at each other. It's buzzed, her head. "Hi," she says, and drifts in the door so happily I can't quite--

            "How was your day" comes out of my mouth, and maybe that's enough.

            "So great. Really great." She drifts to her room and leaves the door open, just a crack, then comes out to get the broom and dustpan. "I spilled the Cheerios from yesterday."

            Oh, child. What if I am this stupid.