MARCH 2019
WINGS
LOIS RUSKAI MELINA
WINGS
LOIS RUSKAI MELINA
By then she knew that when she was scared she invented stories: The red maple in the front yard would fall when the wind came from the north. The red-tailed hawk roosting in the fir tree would snatch the cat. The acetone-soaked rags would ignite, and the easel and the canvasses and the brushes would flame red then settle into gray on a moonless night.
The fear would become fire and she would write it on her skin.
All that spring, her skin had burned with worry. She put ice on it. She rubbed cocoa butter into it. She cooled it with liquor. Lots of Scotch. She peeled off the scorched flesh at night and stuffed it under her feather pillow. Then she lit a candle and wrote again on the raw, pink pulp left behind, a story to explain and soothe.
One morning she awakened in the coral light of pre-dawn certain the maple tree had fallen so hard its roots were exposed, shredded by the upheaval. She sniffed the air for smoke, listened for the click of flames engulfing her studio. Her skin prickled. Panicked, she called the cat.
Enough.
She laced up her hiking boots.
*
She hit the trail hung over, weaving up switchbacks on a sandstone monolith the color of salmon swollen with the ache of ripe eggs. She left heavy footprints in the soft stone powdered under thousands of boots like hers, pilgrims who had come to the desert for rebirth, thirsting and fasting and longing. Beside the path, she saw the vestiges of spring’s wildflowers, cliffrose and paintbrush, withered in the occasional patches of shade.
Her mouth was dry. Her teeth held grit. As she climbed, she licked the inside of her cheeks.
She climbed for an hour, or maybe a day, or maybe longer, before coming to a broad, false summit before the trail narrowed, a slice of stone that connected the massive body of rock she had just ascended with another that rose nearly vertically from the canyon floor. Hikers stopped on the flat, sat in small groups to eat their sandwiches. They swallowed water and made excuses for not going on. She stood, looking at the scene as an Impressionist might have, the Sunday afternoonness of friends and families picnicking together, oblivious to danger and love.
Her breath was shallow from the elevation gain and groundless fretting. She wanted a cigarette. She hadn’t smoked in years. But she thought if she sucked on a cigarette, the muscles in her lungs might remember how to expand and fill, and she could exhale the anxiety that settled in the space below her sternum like dirt in the corners of a room.
She sat away from the others, took off her hat and swept her face with her white bandana, which then looked bloodied from the rust-colored dust and sweat streaked in the crevices etched by dread.
She ate a grape.
Took a sip from her water bottle.
Something fluttered. A bird. Her stomach.
Below, the river wandered through the desert canyon, shaded even at mid-day. She watched from above as a falcon rode a thermal, then stooped in what looked like a free fall. The bird brought its prey up to a narrow outcropping on the wall that rose from the river to the point she could reach only by the slender trail—the point, the map said, where angels land.
She marveled at the vision of raptors. She couldn’t fathom seeing with such precision—to be able to discern a mouse or a ground squirrel from 1500 feet. She wondered what would be different if she could see that clearly.
After resting on the flat, she stood, hoisted her pack onto her back and turned to the rocky spine that led to the apex. She waited until the hikers descending from the top were off the single track. At the end of the queue was a woman, her gray hair poking out of a khaki fishing hat. The grosgrain ribbon that served as a hatband held a brown and white striped feather—not a feather that came with the hat, but one she must have found. The skin on her face was worn and sunburned, like a snake ready to molt. The old woman stopped beside her, reached up to her hat and plucked the feather, then handed it to her, as though returning something to its rightful owner, before continuing down the path.
She tucked the gift between her breasts and stepped onto the bony path. Below, on her left, the river twisting through the valley. On her right, hikers making their way from their cars to the switchbacks.
She picked her way gingerly, one boot in front of the other, one sandstone vertebra at a time. When she reached the end, the sweat on her skin felt cool.
After the spine, a climb up steps ground by the soles of strangers. She boosted herself over boulders and through crevices. At the top, a few trees sculpted by wind.
She walked to the edge. Across the canyon, red rock layered with white and gray. Over time, sediment had been transformed by time and pressure into stone: ancient seabeds to limestone, clay into shale, desert sand to sandstone.
The afternoon sun lit the uppermost stratum. She sensed an updraft. She inhaled deeply and stretched her arms to their full wingspan. She knew if she leapt, she would fly.
The fear would become fire and she would write it on her skin.
All that spring, her skin had burned with worry. She put ice on it. She rubbed cocoa butter into it. She cooled it with liquor. Lots of Scotch. She peeled off the scorched flesh at night and stuffed it under her feather pillow. Then she lit a candle and wrote again on the raw, pink pulp left behind, a story to explain and soothe.
One morning she awakened in the coral light of pre-dawn certain the maple tree had fallen so hard its roots were exposed, shredded by the upheaval. She sniffed the air for smoke, listened for the click of flames engulfing her studio. Her skin prickled. Panicked, she called the cat.
Enough.
She laced up her hiking boots.
*
She hit the trail hung over, weaving up switchbacks on a sandstone monolith the color of salmon swollen with the ache of ripe eggs. She left heavy footprints in the soft stone powdered under thousands of boots like hers, pilgrims who had come to the desert for rebirth, thirsting and fasting and longing. Beside the path, she saw the vestiges of spring’s wildflowers, cliffrose and paintbrush, withered in the occasional patches of shade.
Her mouth was dry. Her teeth held grit. As she climbed, she licked the inside of her cheeks.
She climbed for an hour, or maybe a day, or maybe longer, before coming to a broad, false summit before the trail narrowed, a slice of stone that connected the massive body of rock she had just ascended with another that rose nearly vertically from the canyon floor. Hikers stopped on the flat, sat in small groups to eat their sandwiches. They swallowed water and made excuses for not going on. She stood, looking at the scene as an Impressionist might have, the Sunday afternoonness of friends and families picnicking together, oblivious to danger and love.
Her breath was shallow from the elevation gain and groundless fretting. She wanted a cigarette. She hadn’t smoked in years. But she thought if she sucked on a cigarette, the muscles in her lungs might remember how to expand and fill, and she could exhale the anxiety that settled in the space below her sternum like dirt in the corners of a room.
She sat away from the others, took off her hat and swept her face with her white bandana, which then looked bloodied from the rust-colored dust and sweat streaked in the crevices etched by dread.
She ate a grape.
Took a sip from her water bottle.
Something fluttered. A bird. Her stomach.
Below, the river wandered through the desert canyon, shaded even at mid-day. She watched from above as a falcon rode a thermal, then stooped in what looked like a free fall. The bird brought its prey up to a narrow outcropping on the wall that rose from the river to the point she could reach only by the slender trail—the point, the map said, where angels land.
She marveled at the vision of raptors. She couldn’t fathom seeing with such precision—to be able to discern a mouse or a ground squirrel from 1500 feet. She wondered what would be different if she could see that clearly.
After resting on the flat, she stood, hoisted her pack onto her back and turned to the rocky spine that led to the apex. She waited until the hikers descending from the top were off the single track. At the end of the queue was a woman, her gray hair poking out of a khaki fishing hat. The grosgrain ribbon that served as a hatband held a brown and white striped feather—not a feather that came with the hat, but one she must have found. The skin on her face was worn and sunburned, like a snake ready to molt. The old woman stopped beside her, reached up to her hat and plucked the feather, then handed it to her, as though returning something to its rightful owner, before continuing down the path.
She tucked the gift between her breasts and stepped onto the bony path. Below, on her left, the river twisting through the valley. On her right, hikers making their way from their cars to the switchbacks.
She picked her way gingerly, one boot in front of the other, one sandstone vertebra at a time. When she reached the end, the sweat on her skin felt cool.
After the spine, a climb up steps ground by the soles of strangers. She boosted herself over boulders and through crevices. At the top, a few trees sculpted by wind.
She walked to the edge. Across the canyon, red rock layered with white and gray. Over time, sediment had been transformed by time and pressure into stone: ancient seabeds to limestone, clay into shale, desert sand to sandstone.
The afternoon sun lit the uppermost stratum. She sensed an updraft. She inhaled deeply and stretched her arms to their full wingspan. She knew if she leapt, she would fly.
Lois Ruskai Melina's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Colorado Review, 2016 Best of the Net Anthology, Chattahoochee Review, Entropy, and others. Her essay, “The Grammar of Untold Stories,” was a Notable work in Best American Essays, 2018. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she participates in the Corporeal Writing community founded by Lidia Yuknavitch and the weekly writing group, The Guttery.