I wore a mustard yellow sundress with white flowers embroidered on the bodice, I remember because Michael loved sunflowers, and the dress I wore was my way of acknowledging that since I found out that he had died before turning forty, we now communicated through the row of seven towering sunflowers that had inexplicably popped up in my back yard. They grew the week that his sister, Susie, and I found each other through social media; the week she was tasked with the undesirable job of telling me, “We lost Michael in 2004.” I pulled up along the side of the Garcia’s house, and parked the rented Jeep in the same spot I has always parked as a teenager, and wondered if his spirit was there, admiring the dress I wore in his honor.
Entering the house was fine, but I dreaded walking into that hallway bathroom and shutting the door behind me because I realized that action was part of facing the reality that I would never see Michael again. I expected my legs to tremble, but instead, I felt slightly nauseous. We didn’t discuss why Michael died because some subjects are better left unbroached, and though I had a hunch, it wasn’t worth suggesting in case I was wrong. I believe that even if I was correct, his family would still say I was wrong. All I knew for certain was that his dad found him collapsed in the bathroom we always used as kids, and the ambulance took him to the hospital where the doctor told his mother and sister that there was no hope.
I call Michael and Susie’s mother, “Tia,” but her name is Mary Helen, and she isn’t my real aunt. She was the woman that took me into her home when I was a teenager; when my own mother, too ill to take care of me, became a missing person in my life. Mary was much thinner than she had been when I was in high school, and her thick, naturally curly hair which she had always kept blonde and bouncy had five inches of white showing. She looked frail, or maybe just tired, but her personality, that wonderful smile and explosive firecracker of spunk was still her trademark.
She was a rescuer. It was obvious by the two mutts that were scratching on the sliding glass door for attention, but it wasn’t only animals she rescued. She explained to me that when her husband had a stroke and it seemed like he was giving up, she would start an argument with him. She’d make him mad so he’d get the fighting spirit, and that’s what made him decide to live. She saved him then as she had rescued me so many years ago. “Michael wouldn’t have had it any other way,” she swore.
I found myself drifting back in time to an afternoon when one of the neighborhood boyshops the school fence and helps themselves to lemons from the neighboring orchard. He lobs them back over the fence, showering us with fruit. Michael, Susie, and I, we carry those juicy lemons home like kangaroos, using the bottom of our t-shirts as pouches. We go in, plop the plump yellow citrus in the middle of the rug, grab a knife and a saltshaker and suck on the tart juice as we watch TV. Mary comes home from work and yells, “You’re all going to ruin your teeth, and I’m not paying for the dentist!”
The TV’ still in the same place (not the same set) but the wall between the living room and kitchen has been removed and the antique piano has vanished. Michael is now reduced to a collection of photographs resting on a table in the living room, and a hole in our hearts.. Susie’s two boys, who I’ve never met before, sit at the kitchen table, looking up from their homework to stare at me and Jacky as if we’d come from Mars, not California. “That is your Tio Michael’s best friend. I want you two to stop with the looks,” Mary scolds.
Susie took us in her SUV to the Skating Rink at South Mountain so Jacky can look out over the Valley of the Sun. Central Avenue this far South looks as it always did, lined with ranches and large homes and a few businesses that dwindle away as we approach the sprawling park preserve.
This was where we used to come on Sunday afternoons to check out all the lowriders with their custom paint and interiors on display, Whichever car had the best sound system would blast the jams: the funk, R&B, lowrider oldies, the music they don’t make anymore. Some people would dance and some would just walk around and talk to people. That song gets stuck in my head, “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll,” and I hear the boys in the yellow Monte Carlo calling, “Hey, Garcia! Michael! Michael!” I see him turn and smile so broad his dimples show.
I gaze in the other direction and the music fades. It was just Susie, Jacky and me again. I wondered if maybe once the area had been used as a skating rink, and the name just stuck. Just like the skaters, I was sure the car clubs don’t drive to this place on Sundays anymore, either. Now it’s just people like us, who come for the panoramic view. We stared at the valley for a few minutes, the Phoenix that had risen out of this perpetually thirsty and unforgiving land, then agreed to meet Susie at her mom’s house the day after next so we could visit Michael’s grave.
Tuesday
I showed Jacky the brick tract house that my parents rented in Scottsdale for many years. It seemed smaller than I remember. The whole block seemed condensed, or maybe it’s just my adult perspective. It didn’t feel like home anymore, and even though we spent ten years in that house, there was no rush of nostalgia that flooded my consciousness. I actually felt a bit numb standing there.
There was little about Scottsdale that I appreciated when I was growing up, and that hasn’t changed. Now, most of the commercial buildings sat empty, filled with anticipation for a productive future, because the university had plans to expand, and then didn’t. Oops! I chose to stay at a hotel in “The West’s Most Western Town” for the first three nights of our trip, it’s because I considered it a safe place – though not as safe as it was when I was Jacky’s age. I actually worried about her being with me at all because it was during this time that Arizona’s xenophobic law, SB 1070, was in full force. We could have been stopped, questioned, arrested and detained if a police officer believed one of us might be Mexican, and Jacky’s family hailed from Puebla. I was mortified by the political leanings of my home state.
The one thing I always loved about Scottsdale is the mall, Scottsdale Fashion Square. It used to be two competing malls, but at some point, they grew into one gigantic shopping extravaganza. Who could not love this upscale retail overload? I took Jacky to Dillard’s so she could shop for clothes to wear to high school. She would be starting at Los Angeles’s new Visual and Performing Arts High School in a few weeks, and I wanted to be sure that she was dressed the way she wanted to be rather than how her mom thought she should be.
As soon as we returned to our hotel room, it hit. A monsoon. A torrential downpour that erased the sunset and deafened us with angry thunder and brutal wind. We were supposed to go to the movies, but only the desperate and the idiotic would attempt to drive in such conditions. When I was in college, I would get in bed and throw the covers over my head to hibernate until the storm passed. The tension of a monsoon is like a top wound too tight, but the aftermath brings a clearing of energy that, if you are sensitive to such acts of nature, happens internally as well as atmospherically.
When the storm passed, there were no streets, just rivers, shallow, deep and deeper. I knew what I was doing when I rented a Jeep. Jacky took out her cell phone and made a video of every puddle and splash to show her friends and family back home. “This is so cool! I’ve never seen anything like this.” By the time we exited the movie theater two hours later, the raging water had vanished. Such is the magic of the desert.
Wednesday
Susie stopped at the store so we could pick out the best bouquet of sunflowers available before we made the drive to Resthaven. We then stopped at Sonic because the day was unbearably hot, and we needed something refreshing to distract us from perceiving the gravity of our outing.
I read the headstone at least ten times, Michael R. Garcia 1965 -2004. The stubby heel of my sandals dug into the grass above the grave, and I wondered if Michael can feel it. Does he somehow know I am here? I stared at the headstone a while longer, realizing that whichever of his parents died first would be beside him for eternity. That is not the way it was meant to be.
Thursday
Jacky and I packed our things the night before, so once we are showered, we took our luggage to the car and begin our 200-mile trek across Southeastern Arizona to the mining town that I still consider home. It used to take an hour to get out of the Greater Phoenix area, but now the freeway has been extended all the way through Apache Junction, so almost 45 minutes has been shaved off the four-hour drive to Clifton, or Cliffy-ton, as some of the old-timers used to say.
Once we hit the two-lane highway, one in each direction, the feeling returned to me of having each turn of the highway engraved in my heart. The first mining town we passed was Superior. I pointed out the cliff to Jacky, “This is where the Apache warriors road their horses over the ledge to avoid being defeated by the cavalry.”
“Really?”
“Legend has it that their wives and daughters went to the ledge and cried every day. They cried so much and so hard that their tears turned to obsidian. If you hold one of the rocks up to the light, you can see the tear trapped inside.” Back in L.A., I had just finished teaching the Legend of the Apache Tears to my summer school students, so I happened to have an obsidian stone in my purse. I fished it out and handed it to Jacky. She stared into it for miles.
The mountain passed between Superior and the subsequent towns has always been one of my favorite parts of the trip. The giant, jagged boulders that line the road and stack one on top of another to form the mountainous terrain are breathtaking, and the tunnel cut through the hillside speaks to the tenacity of the human race. Nothing stopped people from getting where they wanted to go. Beyond the tunnel was the altar where we often stopped to light a candle and say a prayer so long ago. Then there were those clouds casting half-mile-long shadows on the road. I’ve made this trip, literally, hundreds of times, and never do I recall cloud shadows. There was something surreal about them, and I still don’t understand their significance.
The next town was Miami, and the decline in copper mining hasn’t been kind to it. The stores along the highway were mostly closed, the windows broken out, the signs marking what each building once was were fading into oblivion under the scorching sun. “Is this a ghost town?”
“I’d like to think the people still live here. The businesses will come back when the economy is good.”
We passed through Globe, where the freeway makes a wide turn overlooking the city and entered the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. “There’s only one police car. Once we find it and pass it, we can speed.”
“Are you sure there aren’t two now? You’ve been gone a long time.”
“You have a point.” I took my chances anyway, but I didn’t get crazy about it.
Once we left the reservation, we passed Thatcher and Safford, then turned North to take the 40-minute drive to Clifton. Once I was through the straightaway, I noticed that the curves were all wrong. I used to be able to drive that stretch with my eyes closed, and now, it’s different. What have they done to the highway? The hills were still soft and rolling, the town still hidden from view until we were right upon it, but the road was a stranger to me. It had even been renamed as State Route 191, since the original Route 666 had obvious connotations attached to it.
We rounded that last bend, and there it was, revealing itself slowly: Shannon Hill, the old smelter, the San Francisco River, the billboard, the high school, the homes perched precariously on the cliffsides. I felt my heart pound differently, as if it were suddenly filled with warmth overflowing. Of all the places on earth, this one is mine.
“Where did you used to live?”
“On Third Street.”
“Show me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“The house burned down… Listen, Jacky, there are some things I just can’t talk about, and you may have lots of questions, and maybe once we leave, I can answer them, but not now, not while we are here.” To divert her attention, I turned off the main drag called Coronado Boulevard, and drove through the historic business district, Chase Creek. It looked like a ghost town, crumbling territorial Victorian buildings lining each side of the street. Ever since I can remember, it looked that way, but at that moment, some of the old buildings were housing new businesses. I notice a gift emporium and an ice cream parlor. The union hall had been sold, and the bar, The El Rey, remained closed.
The sign on the door read, “No Minors,” but someone cleverly changed the ‘o’ to an ‘e’, which made me laugh because almost everyone in the town was a copper miner. I sat at the bar and ordered a Coke. A man got up and walked over to the jukebox, dropped a coin in the slot, and made his selection. The version of “Las Nubes” that I liked best was this one, where Little Joe sang the verses in English, and then in Spanish. I thought of “him,” sitting all alone across the street, wondering what would become of this town once the strike was declared over. I thought of him. I always did. It was more than a crush, but he was much too old for me, and I never acted on it, and I think I tasted whiskey in that Coke.
We continued down the road, passing the Sacred Heart Church where the old-timers standing in front of the building smile and wave at me. “Do you know them? Do they know you?”
“Maybe, at one time many years ago.”
At the Rode Inn, the woman at the desk gave us our room key as I tried to engage her in conversation. “I haven’t been her in so many years. Do you remember Leslie Cooper? She used to own the little store down the highway.”
“Who?”
I didn’t explain. Her answer told me that she was not the same person that used to run the motel. She was a newcomer, and the newcomers didn’t particularly like the people who lived in town before they arrived. Clifton was a Phelps Dodge mining town, a staunch union town, a town where the Mexican American residents, once terribly discriminated against, empowered themselves and wrestled away control of the town government from the white minority during the 1950s. They never gave it back… until they moved away.
In 1983, the unions went out on strike against the company, and that labor dispute was never settled. In 1986, the unions were decertified by the National Labor Relations Board, and the temporary laborers who had been hired to replace the strikers became permanent employees. They went to work at the mine every day without the labor and safety protections it had taken the strikers over 100 years to earn, and they wouldn’t dare live in this town. They’d even get nervous at shift change if they had to stop for the train.
Most of the residents were strikers, and they moved to Phoenix, Tucson, New Mexico, Texas, and California, wherever they could find steady work. They were forced to leave their beloved town, but their essence was still here, and when I looked around town, I could still feel an invisible presence, their words riding the wind, raising the hair at the nape of my neck, causing an occasional chill. I can hear their chants floating in the atmosphere, “Huelga! Huelga! The people, united, will never be defeated!” The heart-wrenching strains of the woman’s voice that sang the song on the flipside of the strike song’s 45, “Por un amor…”
As night fell, we drove up the hill to Morenci, the company-owned town, where Andrew was working at the Chinese restaurant. We walked in and there he was. He wound up being the easy-going one. I hadn’t seen Andrew since 1995, when he was seven, when his dad was still alive and I was driving him to chemotherapy every two weeks in Tucson. I hugged Andrew with all my strength, and we sat down to talk and eat. “What about Jaime?” I asked.
“He’ll probably stop by.”
We waited quite a while before the door opened at Jaime walked in. He was still sandy-haired and had his mom’s pointed chin. I wanted to tell him that when he was born, I loved him as if he was my own. I loved them both that way. I wanted to apologize for ever leaving to go on with my life, but I understood that Jaime held a deep resentment that I hadn’t stayed to help raise him after he found his mom unresponsive in her bedroom when he was seven.
I would never bring it up now, about what or who killed her. He already knew what I thought. He thought it, too, at least at one point, because that’s what he told the police when he called 911. He loved his father despite the suspicions because what can you do when you know you will lose the only parent you have left. Love is always the best choice.
Friday
Jacky and I tried to go fishing. We drove through East Clifton out to the farthest fishing spot, and when we got there, we found a huge black bull lounging under a tree. We decided he might not like us, so we turn around and go to eat fish and chips at PJ’s Big Dipper. The owner of the restaurant remembered Leslie and Ronald, and me. Suddenly, the town felt more alive to me.
Saturday
We got stuck in the hotel room. The door didn’t open. We called for help. My cell phone started ringing from the number 666-6666. I used the room phone to call the front desk so they could send someone to rescue us.
We drove to the cemetery in Morenci first to visit Ronald’s grave. We started at the wrong end, so along the way, I found many more friends, Tomas, Eduardo, Mike, many people that had seemed so young when I knew them. Life really is short. Finally, Jacky called out, “Ronaldo B. Guerrero? He’s here.” His grave is decorated with a symbol recognizing his military service. “Ronald, I may never be back to see you again, but I want you to know that I appreciate that you raised Jaime and Andrew to be good boys… men.”
We immediately left for the small town their mom was from, 30 minutes away, where we easily found the grave that reads, Leslie Anne Cooper. Someone had left rocks around the headstone. Maybe quartz, left by visitors because rocks last forever and flowers don’t. I stared and fell speechless. She was my best friend. I didn’t cry, not outwardly, because Jacky was present. We climbed back in the Jeep.
“Will you tell me what happened now?” Jacky was hopeful. “When we get back to California.” “Will you come back here again, Andrea?”
“I will live here forever in my heart.”
Sunday
I took a slow cruise through Clifton, remembered the faces, heard the voices, the laughter, the memories forming and popping like bubbles inside my head. I stopped to take one last picture of Maud’s, Mike and Steve Guzzo’s restaurant. It belonged to their parents once. It’s where so many people said, “My mom met my dad there.” The sign reads, “Guzzo’s Famous Hot Sauce.” I tasted it for a second, and then the flavor faded away. I gave one last nod to the town I love, and we climbed back in the car to start for Tucson, where we would stop to have lunch with a friend before heading back to Phoenix.
Monday
Before returning to the airport for our flight home, we stopped back at the Garcia’s house. The kids were at school and Susie was at work at the new high school. Mary and I looked at each other. It was so difficult to say goodbye.
“I got mail for Michael today,” she shows me, “three pieces.”
I nod.
“I haven’t gotten mail for Michael for years. It’s because you’re here.”
I wondered if I should tell her about the sunflowers in my backyard. I decided to try.
“That’s Michael,” she nodded. “We both know it.
—
As the plane taxis down the runway, I gazed at South Mountain in the distance, and then at Jacky sitting beside me. I felt tears building in my eyes. The radio towers atop the mountain blinked their red lights as always, signifying, “This is South Phoenix.” L.A. waited to the West. I felt confused about which state was my home. I was not sure about much. Maybe distance would bring clarity. Maybe my ghosts would finally rest.
Andrea Mauk earned a B.A. in Theatre from Arizona State University, and a teaching credential from California State University -Los Angeles. She has worked in the music industry and has taught elementary theatre for LAUSD. She currently sells real estate and has just completed the USC Summer Institute in Heritage Conservation. She is a first-year MFA student in Creative Writing at Mount St. Mary’s University.
Her work has been published in the La Bloga Online Floricanto; Mujerez de Maiz ‘Zine; Hinchas de Poesia; Our Spirit, Our Reality: Celebrating Our Stories; Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice and Soñadores: We Came to Dream.
Andrea also enjoys singing jazz, restoring vintage homes, organic gardening and playing with her dogs.
On The Edge 
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