The Savior
After the universe gave her multiple hints, Joan finally realized that she was Jesus Christ. Her children and husband blamed her for everything—lost backpacks because they were sure they set it on the kitchen counter and she cleaned it up; being late for school, even though they were the ones fumbling about in the house while she sat in the car waiting; being critical and “mean” when she asked about their grades; not having an auto insurance document filed because she apparently was the one to keep track of paperwork. She was certainly taking on the sins of the world.
She’d had a dream. In the dream she was sitting with an audience, and on the stage was a Buddha. He was wearing an orange robe and sat cross-legged on the concrete floor. He was humming “Om,” and somehow Joan knew that if she joined him, she would feel all the pain in the world and die.
She figured Jesus and Buddha were the same person, even though Jesus was depicted as white with long brown hair and a brown robe and preferred eating last suppers to meditating. Also, when her father committed suicide by flying head-first out of the 2nd floor window of the homeless shelter, he’d left a note that he would return to Jesus.
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And he did return to her, in dreams and in her daily life because he had basically bailed on her dear demented mother, and Joan felt like she was being nailed to a cross, which then led her to become a drunk and landed her in jail, where her apostles complained about the watery beans and in general were quite unpleasant to her, rolling their eyes when she talked about her troubles, even though she praised their tattoos. One woman named Dawn had a tattoo of Jesus on the cross, the red ink of blood dripping into her hands, and Joan even then knew that image was like a mirror: her blood, her pain. Then again, maybe she was just hung-over.
That day had been an especially grueling day of taking on other people’s sins. Her son had broken the first commandment by killing a spider in his room; then her daughter lied to her about the bottle of wine in her closet; both her children were not honoring their mother and father; and her husband was lusting after Karen, the neighbor’s wife (a commandment that often confused her, because wasn’t Karen a neighbor too?) and coveting their new truck.
“As Joan Approaches Infinity”
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Joan had just finished swimming after visiting the Social Security office for the tenth time to try to get Medicare for her dear demented mother. She smelled like chlorine and carried with her the womblike embrace of the water that always helped pull her through the day. Her stomach was empty, and instead of eating lunch, she drank a martini. Then another.
When she drove to the grocery store to buy chicken and pasta for dinner, she sideswiped a green Subaru, and when the cops came, she resisted arrest and kicked one of them in the shin.
“You have the right to remain silent…”
Joan interrupted him. “I’m sick of being silent! I have a lot to say.”
He finished his reading of the rights in a tired voice and said, “I will have to charge you with assaulting a police officer.”
Joan slumped in the back of the police car, shackled and lonely, her wrists hurting, her mind spinning. Who would pick up the kids for the orthodontist appointment?
When her husband bailed her out the next day, she shed herself of the orange jumpsuit two sizes too big for her, put in her nose stud and slid her rings on her fingers—her wedding ring, the garnet ring from her mother, the ring from her husband with all the birth stones of her family. Hers was aquamarine blue like the pools where she swam while somewhere someone learned how to walk on water. But she didn’t need to because she was a good swimmer, and she would swim through a pool of tears all the way to heaven. That’s what Jesus did.
In the Big, Hungry Skies
Joan wanted to reupholster her life. She wanted to get rid of the greens and blues and replace those colors with bright red, patterned with purple pansies and white daisies. She also wanted to burn all her journals and rid herself of her wardrobe, her old dusty manuscripts, her house, and her past. Joan wanted to start over, but she felt that somehow her world needed her in the way an engine needs oil, she the invisible element tucked in a car to help it run.
Yet oil needs to be changed every three months, and Joan didn’t get replenished. After pondering this dilemma, she decided to get a pedicure.
Her father had never loved her, but he had loved her feet. Small, with high arches and delicate toes, her feet were beautiful. Joan also respected her feet for their tenacious ability to be grounded, unlike her mind—a tangled bundle of live wires zapping tongues of fire into the sky.
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On a sunny spring day, she and her daughter, Michele, drove to the salon, where they sat and drank diet Coke and ate M&Ms and had their feet bathed in warm water, covered in oil, and massaged. When the kind Tibetan woman cradled Joan’s feet in her hands as she trimmed, filed, and painted Joan’s toes bright red, Joan looked at her beautiful feet and cried.
The woman looked up at her. “Are you alright?”
“I’m just having a long day,” said Joan. She looked at her big toe and it looked like a colorful worm.
Michele touched her arm. “I’m sorry, Mom.” She handed her the entire bowl of M&Ms. Joan took it and cradled it in her lap. She decided to eat all the red ones first.
When she ate the last one, she choked and coughed, and the whole room of the polished and trendy women stared at her. A kind small woman with green eye shadow gave her a glass of water, but then with all the crying and snot, it didn’t help. Finally, she collected herself and commented on the print on the wall of a black cat next to a smiling, Asian woman. The cat had hungry eyes.
“What a great picture,” she slobbered. Then she cried again. Cats were so loyal, even though they weren’t loyal. Joan loved cats.
The pedicure just hadn’t been enough, though Joan admired her feet every day afterward, the way the red popped out and claimed the world.
The next week, when the red polish was already beginning to chip, she was driving home from Costco, her car stuffed with energy bars, coffee, juice, salmon, cheese, and every kind of food imaginable that somehow her teenage children consumed in great quantities, when she saw the exit that would take her on the highway toward I25 going North. She took the exit, her mind buzzing with visions of wind, grass, orange rock, buffalo, and cowboys. She was heading to Wyoming.
In the car, feeling elated, she contemplated her destination. She’d been to Yellowstone with all its geysers and buffalo and tourists; she’d seen a rodeo in Cheyenne; but she had never been to Thermopolis, and Joan loved hot springs. In fact, the only things she liked about cold weather were hot tubs, blankets, and tea. It was a cold, cold world they lived in, with all its guns and dying planet and morons for presidents–cold enough so that every chance she had, she sought out heat.
The drive was relatively uneventful, as was any drive through the nothingness of Wyoming. Joan chewed an entire package of peppermint gum, sang to the radio, belting the lyrics to Alice Merton’s “No Roots,” stopping occasionally at Rest Stops to snack on her Costco provisions of Cheez-its and peanut butter-filled pretzels, and gazed at the cattle and rolling yellow landscape. She wondered what her husband would make the kids for dinner, since the dinner plan of salmon and spinach was slowly rotting in the back of the car and beginning to smell like an Alaskan fishing boat.
Once she arrived in the town, she checked into the Days Inn, a hotel filled with more dead animals than a slaughterhouse, which, considering she was in Wyoming, was saying a lot. Covering the walls were the heads of buffalo, deer, antelope, and mountain lion heads. On the blue carpet an entire mountain lion stared at her with yellow marble eyes. Joan felt like they were following her, and she began to worry, but she couldn’t think why, so instead she went into her room, watched television, and slept after sending a quick text to her husband: “Just getting some space,” then turned off her phone. She dreamed about leading a lame horse as it limped down a steep, rocky hill.
The next day she ate the make-it-yourself waffle covered in syrup and drank the weak coffee into which she dumped a packet of hot chocolate powder. In the car she poured a shot of cognac into her coffee, thinking hell, I’m on vacation. Then she went to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center.
In the past, she had brought her son, Jeremy, to the Natural History Museum in Denver numerous times to gaze at the dinosaur skeletons. Like all toddler boys, he especially loved the Tyrannosaurus Rex with its giant, sharp teeth, since he was in that phase that many young boys experience where they want to kill every ant, worm, friend, and mother. As then, she felt mostly awe. She gazed at the 27-foot placoderms, huge fish suspended from the ceiling, and Demetrodon, which had a gigantic sail along its back. They had no idea why it had a sail: swimming, camouflage, to attract a mate? She remembered how frustrated Jeremy had been that T-Rex had such tiny arms and nobody could tell him why. Once he asked her and told her she was the mom so she should know, and she said no one knew, so he hit her shins with his tiny fists and told her she was stupid. She wondered whether he won the ultimate Frisbee game the day before. She took a deep breath and took in all the ribs, femurs, and mysterious sails. She liked looking at bones. Joan thought of her bones, which made her think of her beautiful feet, which made her happy.
Her phone buzzed and she looked at it. Darren had written, “Where the hell is the can opener?” She answered, “In the top right drawer next to the sink.”
Joan practically had the rinky-dink museum to herself. There was a family with a young boy and a baby in the stroller wrapped in a flannel blanket, and an older woman wearing turquoise earrings in the shape of feathers. One old man with a badge that read “Volunteer” guarded the place. He was wearing brown pants and a green T-shirt with a slogan “Jesus and the Dinosaurs,” with Jesus in a white robe lifting his hands and surrounded in light, circled by four dinosaurs.
When she saw the bones of the Archaeoptergidae embraced by the sunset-colored stone, she got herself in a bit of trouble. The fossil had a second toe, which provided evidence that it was almost avian, and Joan knew it right away: she was meant to fly. It was set in orange stone, and the bones reminded Joan of herself, delicately placed in all its dying. She was staring at its claw-like feet and thinking of flight, of dinosaurs cruising the skies, of a world with no people, just giant creatures and rocks and air and bone and before she knew it, she climbed over the rope and grabbed the fossil, and she turned and ran toward the exit.
The overweight old volunteer walked toward her and yelled, “Hey, stop!” He shuffled behind her as Joan ran. She tripped and glanced behind her. He was yelling, “You will go to court for this!” Joan ran but his lumbering body began gaining ground, and anyway, her left ankle hurt. She tripped, but her sturdy feet found the ground again, and she made it to her car. She unlocked it and glanced behind her, where the man was still yelling, “Thief! Filth!” She didn’t even fumble with her keys. She was used to holding her ignition key between her two fingers to gouge out the eyes of someone who might sexually assault her. It took her very little time to drive away.
Later, while soaking in the hot springs after staring at the Big Horn River from the Swinging Bridge, its water meandering like her thoughts, she thought about her dead parents, the advantages and disadvantages of indica versus sativa, and what color her aging dog’s aura was (she figured green; he was very social). She wondered how Michele did on her math test, and whether Jeremy ever asked his crush out. She contemplated where she would put her fossil if she returned home. She decided next to her bed, where she had a collection of crystals Michele had given her.
The next day she got in her car, which smelled like rotting salmon from the Costco visit. She was feeling a little guilty and decided she would just drive smelling the rot, punish herself for abandoning her family, who was probably faltering, starving, desperate without her. Michele probably couldn’t find the ketchup and needed money—she always needed money–and Jeremy needed band-aids and couldn’t find socks, and Darren was probably watching porn and weeping since all the women would make him think of Joan. The dog would be dehydrated since only Joan filled his water bowl, and the plants, too, would be thirsty, wilting and yellow-leaved. She also felt a little guilty for stealing the dinosaur bones. Kind of.
As she breathed in the rotting stench, she gazed at the landscape. The day was sunny, and the Wyoming sky large and blue. She thought about California and its Pacific, its skies over the ocean bigger than any creature that ever existed on this Earth. As she drove, a hawk dived over her car and flew toward an orange butte. It looked like it had a purpose, like it was hunting for something in the yellow landscape–in the big, hungry skies.
When she returned home, it was dark, and she peeked into the dining room window. Her son was eating a hot dog with no bun and scrolling on his phone, and Michele was scowling at Darren, who was laughing and picking his teeth. The dog was lying in the corner, chewing on a bone.
She thought again about California. She had failed to become a wrangler of anything but bones in Wyoming, but maybe in California she would surf, glide on the giant waves, befriend the dolphins and whales and learn their language. Her beautiful feet would hold her steady on the board, and she would fly.
Kika Dorsey is an author with a PhD in Comparative Literature. Her books include the poetry collections “Beside Herself,” “ Rust,” “Coming Up for Air,” “Occupied: Vienna is a Broken Man” and “Daughter of Hunger,” which won a Colorado Authors’ League award. She has also written the novel “As Joan Approaches Infinity.” She is a lecturer at the University of Colorado.
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