The wind gets through the screen
before I do.
It lifts the corner of the cloth
under my daughter’s hand.
“Tell him Saturday is my turn,” she says.
My son looks up from cutting bread.
“You had last Saturday.”
“That was work.”
“It was still Saturday.”
They are both grown,
both tired,
both sure that I remember
every hour I have watched their children,
and which hours should count.
My husband stands beside the stove.
He has bought enough potatoes
for everyone to stay.
“You could settle this,” he tells me.
He wants a full table.
He wants the good plates used.
I want the wind
which has come through our screen
without taking a side.
“I’m going out to the mesquite,” I say.
“I’ll be back before supper.”
My daughter opens her mouth.
“I heard you,” I tell her.
“I haven’t answered yet.”
The screen snaps shut.
Behind it, knives and voices
pick up where they stopped.
Past the gate,
the path is pale and hard.
My shoes have kitchen flour on them.
It falls into dust
where no one can ask
which is which.
The mesquite grows beyond the shed.
One branch bends low enough
to make me bow beneath it.
I have ducked here for years.
Today I lift the branch
and take my time.
The shade is narrow,
cut by small leaves
into pieces that shift across my arms.
I stand with one shoulder cool,
one shoulder warm,
and do not move to make them match.
A dry tumbleweed catches at the fence.
It rocks there, held by a thorn,
while another rolls past
with the fine loose rattle
of spoons in a drawer.
I know that sound.
I know which drawer sticks,
which child once hid a marble in it,
which grown child now says
I worry over nothing.
But this rattle comes nearer,
passes,
and needs no drawer opened.
The wind pauses.
The caught weed keeps its shape.
For a moment the leaves
are small green hands
with nothing to ask of mine.
From the house, someone laughs.
I almost turn.
It is a good laugh,
one I would like to enter,
but I have only just arrived.
I sit on the low flat stone
where my husband used to mend the gate.
He still means to carry it away.
I am glad he hasn’t.
A beetle crosses the toe of my shoe.
It takes the whole small hill
at its own pace.
I hold my foot still
until it reaches the ground.
The far hills look closer
as their blue fades into brown.
I can see the shed’s bent roof,
the water tank,
the empty road.
I have no need to go farther.
At the fence the weed comes free.
It rolls toward me
and stops against the stone.
I move my skirt away.
The wind takes it again.
I do not follow.
I watch its brief, uneven dance,
one side rising higher,
one long stem dragging,
until it joins the others
down the dry wash.
My daughter’s voice reaches me.
She is calling to her child,
not to me.
I hear her soften at the end.
She can do that without my help.
The shade has moved.
My knees are in the sun.
I get up slowly,
brush grit from the back of my skirt,
and rest my hand on the rough branch
while I step beneath it.
I am hungry now.
That is reason enough
to walk toward the house.
The gate swings open.
Through the screen I hear
“Next Saturday, then,”
and “I didn’t agree to that.”
My husband lifts the lid
and steam rises past his face.
He sees me at the door.
“Potatoes?”
“Yes,” I say.
“A large helping.”
Before I go in,
I take one breath
of the cooling air.
Then one step,
with both my hands empty.
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