Dot

The mountains looked folded, like the paper cranes Joy and I used to make out of gum wrappers or old receipts. Snow still stuck to the tops, April keeping the air cool up in the alpine meadows. Old wooden fences penned small sheep and large herds of black and brown cows. I was near the border of Washington and Idaho, driving south and slightly west. Montana felt far behind me, although I had only left this morning. Soon I would need to find a place to stop, rest and spend the night. It was not even 2 o’clock in the afternoon. But I was an old woman now, my stomach lumpy and bumpy, and remaining sedentary in the car seat was making my hips ache. I hadn’t figured out where I would sleep but the trunk backseat was always an option, though an uncomfortable one. It wasn’t like me – taking off with no plan, no safety net.

Carla hadn’t taken the news well. I knew I was going against company policy, putting in a vacation notice so late. A month and a half late, a “two days” before I intended to leave kind of late. She pursed her lips at me and shook her head slowly. It wasn’t like me, she had said.

“It’s not like you, Dot. It just isn’t.”

Carla sighed. I stood in front of her desk, feet planted firmly on the stained office carpet. I knew was a reliable worker, always going above and beyond to solve any problem patrons of the hotel had. I was always the first to arrive, and stayed long enough to pop cookie dough in the oven for dessert. The hotel was my only focus, my baby, and Carla knew that too. It seemed like everyone in town knew, “Dot the daughterless” I imagined they called me. I did carry the loneliness around with me everywhere I went. It filled my life with emptiness, giving me too much idle time. Sometimes Carla even used it to her advantage. I was a near manager with a secretary title, busting my butt and always playing by the rules. This was the one time I’d put my foot down. That evening I packed my trunk with essentials for the journey ahead; wool blankets and a pillow for the back seats, extra strength Tylenol, instant coffee and Dolly Parton CDs. The dog Goat would come too. He was good company, a part of what once was that still remained in my present day.

He watched the mountains with me now, sitting in the passenger seat, the seat that used to be Joy’s. He resembled those cows with his rusty reddish brown and white spotted fur. Goat was the only dog I had met that was either brave or stupid enough to stare down a mountain goat. We couldn’t call him by his old name after that camping trip. He had to be called Goat, Joy decided firmly. He had earned it after defending us during that summit hike. It was so silly, so like her mother for her to decide that. I laughed out loud a little at the memory, and then my mouth settled back into a straight line.

I had always wanted a daughter. I imagined she’d have my chestnut colored eyes and light brown hair, and a nose that pointed upwards just slightly. I hoped she’d be tall too, not short and squat like me, although I used to be thin. I never pictured myself with a husband or someone to be her father, I supposed someone would come along eventually. Nothing ever really stuck. But nine months after a girls trip to Bozeman during Labor Day Weekend, I had her. And oh, she was beautiful. It was like you could feel the warm sun on your back when she opened her eyes, see the daisies open wide and the swallows sing. Joy. That was the overwhelming feeling I had when I watched her yawn or laugh or smile or furrow her brow the same way I did. I decided it should be her namesake too.

Joy was my girl. We did everything together when she was young; made fairy houses in the woods, had campfires in the garden and chanted, played farm in the old barn down the street, made cupcakes every Sunday until our counters were filled with the squishy domes. It was just us, and some chickens at one point, a bunny at another. Goat didn’t come along until Joy was a sophomore in high school. She had found him in some alleyway in Missoula, by the college campus. What she was doing there I didn’t know but I didn’t approve. She was supposed to have been at school. Goat’s introduction into our home was a verbal sparring match between a mother and daughter. He looked at us from underneath the red kitchen table with those sad big eyes. It wouldn’t be the last time.

…

On the second morning, it had been two hours of driving and I was already tired. The evergreen trees seemed to pass by in slow motion. I was almost too old for a drive this long. Or maybe just plain too old. My damn neck was developing a tweak on the right side and my eyes felt hot from straining to look to the freeway ahead. Despite breaking it up into four days, eighteen hours was a long time. And that might not be the end of it. I didn’t even know if I was headed towards the right spot. I wonder if those Canadian geese really know where they are going when they fly overhead, squawking louder than Goat barks at them. Do they have a specific place in mind, or is it just Canada? I felt like a goose just going to Canada, could’ve been anywhere within those borders and it would’ve seemed right.

It had been Luz, one of the younger girls at the hotel, who had shown me what Facebook was. I didn’t think I was so ancient until I realized there was a whole web of people looking into other people’s lives. I hadn’t realized I could finally try, finally try to find Joy. I assumed she was gone, that because I didn’t have her address, even a phone number, I could never find her.

I looked for hours, staying past my clock out time to sit at the front desk computer. I felt so nosy. But being nosy is justified when it’s your kid. How many Joy Harmon’s could there be? I shook my head, cursing those baby name books for stealing my special name for my special girl. I scrolled through old women’s pages, young women’s pages, aunts, grandmothers, a hooker’s page, and some substitute teachers, but no one was my Joy. It must’ve been nearly ten o’clock when I was ready to give up, and then I found her. Not Joy, not even Harmon, but J. Harm. There were blue streaks in this person’s hair, hair looked mangled like some degenerate rock star’s, but it was her eyes. I clicked open her page. She had graduated from Humboldt University it seemed, was living in Northern California now, a specific location not given but a faint blue circle on a map listed a general radius. Wow. She had gone far from her mother. It could’ve been all the way across the country I supposed, but the Bay Area was about as far as you could get culturally from rural Montana. I wondered if she still made mud pies or fairy houses in the woods. What woods were out there, I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about my Joy anymore.

But it had been a long time since I had known her. She started to change as soon as she set foot in Missoula for her last three years of high school. One day she was wearing her pretty white cowgirl boots, her blouses with bows, and the next, she got uglier. She used my craft scissors to cut a crooked line of hair across her forehead, to shorten boys t-shirts and who knows what else. I know mothers shouldn’t call their girls that but I’d spent good money on a full size shirt, not half of one. Now all those chopped up tops were gone, the cabinets drawers collecting dust in her room I kept closed.

I had supported her change in environment at first. God knows I moved around a lot when I was only a few years older. Transferring high schools after one year didn’t feel like the biggest deal, other than the extra twenty five minutes driving her to school every morning. And I figured I’d be teaching her to drive any day now, and then she’d take our neighbor Earl’s old truck that he could no longer drive, his hands giving out from the arthritis. Then she’d be picking up her girlfriends from school in Missoula, taking them to see her mom’s cool house, with the red kitchen table and the chickens in the backyard that was more of a prairie than a lawn. Maybe in a couple more years, a nice boy who I’d grill before deciding his fate with my daughter. And she’d laugh about it after he was gone, and fall into my arms, my little girl. She’d know that her mama always knew best.

Remembering all I had dreamt of for us only made the truth hurt more. She stopped talking to me, stopped trusting me too. The house in even warm afternoons had a cold chill hanging about. And one day, she left me behind. Didn’t even take her dog with her. Goat sighed deeply as he settled in for a nap beside me. Lucky dog. My elbows ached, the way they bent while holding the steering wheel. I noticed my hands were white and I loosened my grip slightly. I looked on ahead, waiting for the forest to change again.

…

The road was opening now, just flats in every direction, with cracks so deep they looked like little ravines. Settlements were few and far between now. Goat panted hard next to me and I became increasingly aware of how scratchy my throat felt. I awkwardly reached my arm back to grab a water bottle and for a moment could sense Joy sitting in the backseat, handing me the tin container. But she wasn’t there, and after five more painful minutes I was able to reach it.

I remembered when we had been out to the Arizona desert. Just Joy and I, a plan to see ghost towns and those cactuses with the bright pink flowers. Joy had been obsessed with the desert when she was about twelve. Neighbor Earl had gifted her some of his old black and white western movies on DVD and Joy chewed through them all in one weekend. She began speaking with a twang and wearing my vests, like a real cowgirl did, she said. She begged to see the open land and once her spring break came around we set off on another one of our mother daughter adventures. We saw rust colored canyons and wild horses, remnants of old movie sets, eerie empty towns that we walked through, Joy’s fingers laced in my mine.

It hadn’t been the dry desert air or heat that left our throats scratchy, but singing the whole way down. She had requested Johnny Cash the entire eight hour drive there and I had happily complied. We shouted the lyrics as loud as we could, and Joy’s infectious laugh made my heart sing too. I’m not sure either of our voices recovered until we crossed the Montana state line, back in moist forest air.

I could smell Goat’s breath before I heard his heavy breathing. I pulled over at the nearest rest stop and parked the car away as far as I could from the family whose children had dyed streaks in their hair. Opening the side door, I fetched and filled a metal dog bowl for Goat, who lapped the water up happily. I touched the base of my throat with my pointer and middle finger. I could feel the dryness again.

It had hurt to drink cold water the day after. I had been so angry my cheeks were purple and I could remember the screaming gripping my throat like it had its own jaws. Joy moved around her room, strewing books and clothes on the floor as I watched. It was as if my yells were background noise – her expression was still and never changing. Then Joy had lugged two enormous duffel bags with sport team logos emblazoned on the sides to the front door. She hadn’t said anything that time. She didn’t shout or yell, cuss me out or scream through sobs. She didn’t even slam the door. She just left. She left me with no explanation. It would be six years to the day tomorrow.

…

I rolled into a campsite in the middle of the afternoon, the sun highlighting the white and auburn boulders that made up the desert landscape. There was maybe one tree in sight, and its branches looked like they would break off at the touch of a butterfly’s wing. Some dusty shrubs lined circular campsite spots, with picnic tables and fire pits surrounded by cinder blocks. It might never be fire season here, there was nothing to burn. I had heard of Black Rock Desert before, but wasn’t very impressed. It wasn’t anything special, not like Arizona had been with Joy. It was hotter than one of my hot flashes too and that wasn’t helping my mood. Neither was the fact I had time to kill now, with hours before I needed to think about dinner. A whole lot of nothing around me worried me. I didn’t need my mind to tracing back to the past again right now.

Goat led the way as we strolled around the site, identifying where the garbage bins and bathrooms were located. I hadn’t been out of Montana so long I forgot some states didn’t need to invest in bear proof dumpsters. There weren’t even bear bins I noticed, as I kept walking by the sites. There were a fair amount of people though, a few young families with small children, a young couple, a strikingly handsome boy with a very ordinary looking girl, as well as a lone man with a bike and a small backpacking tent. He waved sheepishly and I nodded back, watching as he unpacked some canned soup for a late lunch. I smelled chowder seconds after I heard a lid pop open. I immediately patted my thigh to remind Goat to stay close, not seek out this man’s meal, but I realized he was nowhere to be seen.

“Goat!” I called gently.

I waited as I looked back on the trail, expecting to see a white brown flash.

“Goat!” I shouted, with more urgency now, my annoyance bristling.

I didn’t want to think about what kind of snakes could be out here, but now Goat had made me. At times like these I questioned why I let Joy bring that dog into our lives. He was more often than not a nuisance, always waking me up at night to put his snout under my arm. He could tell I was lonely, too.

I saw an arm waving in the distance and a woman’s voice calling out gently. Beside her Goat wagged his tail happily, those rounded ears curved as if he was expecting a treat. I increased my speed, power-walking towards them, trying to keep my cool.

“Hello!” I said, hoping that my feign enthusiasm would mask my anger.

But I didn’t need the mask. I felt my irritation dissipate when I looked at this woman. She was tall and slender, black hair falling just below her chin, her almond eyes serene. Her bright blue puffer stood out against the beige surroundings.

“Hi, there,” she replied happily. “Does this guy belong to you?”

“Yes, yes he does,” I answered, patting my thigh as Goat rushed towards me. “Sorry he loves girls, I mean young women.” I smiled politely as I caught myself.

“Oh a ladies man?”

This time it was another young woman who spoke, one with dirty blond hair that spiraled down to her waist. She appeared behind the camper van, which I noticed was adorned with stickers and a hand drawn smiley face on the dusty window.

“I’m Angela,” she said, extending her hand. “And this is Sam.”

I reached out my hand in return and looked into her green eyes as I shook down hard. Her hands were tattooed with lines and dots. A small woven bracelet of pink, orange and white circled her wrist.

“Pretty bracelet!” I remarked. “Where abouts are you two from?”

“Oh thanks,” Angela replied, blushing a little. “We live up in Oregon, in Eugene. We just needed to get out for a weekend. What about you?”

“Oh from Montana, outside of Missoula. The name’s Dot. And that’s Goat, by the way.”

I watched Goat outstretch both paws onto Sam’s forearms as she crouched down to his level, his tongue dangling out of his mouth happily.

“He’s a real nuisance,” I said, rolling my eyes slightly.

“Oh no not at all,” Sam said good-naturedly. “He’s a sweetie.”

Angela smiled at the pair of them. They seemed nice, these two. It would’ve been quite the adventure to camp out with your gal pal in the desert, meeting some old lady’s lunatic dog. I was a little surprised when they invited me, and Goat too, to come on a sunset hike with them. I had mentioned I wasn’t sure what to do with myself in this land of nothing but silt and sand. It would be nice, to be around people for once. They didn’t look much older than Joy would be either.

The jagged cliffs grew shadows that crouched and leapt in the evening light. Every inch of the desert was glowing a golden orange hue. Some bats flew overhead and Goat barked at them, running up and down the cliffs while the three of us laughed. I found out Sam was an engineer, working with the city’s water system management. Angela taught at a preschool, and was taking night classes to finish her secondary teaching degree. They asked about where I was going, and when I didn’t say much, they didn’t pry. They just looked at me with open faces and nodded their heads as they listened. I couldn’t bring myself to mention Joy.

I walked them back to their campsite, Goat leading the way. We exchanged emails and wished each other a good night. After Sam gave Goat a last pat on the head. I felt a warmth inside me, tingling my scalp. As we trudged back to the trunk, I turned my head to look at the two. And I saw Sam embrace Angela. And I saw Sam kiss Angela, quickly but passionately. And I looked away quickly, my face getting hot, and I walked even faster.

And now I was seeing Joy, seeing her in the passenger seat of a car I hadn’t seen before, parked down the long driveway. Looking through the living room window, I saw her, choppy bangs and all, lips locked with another girl. And my stomach churned, bile rose in my throat, as I saw their hands work their way up to their bodies, their faces, and I pulled the blinds shut and I looked away. She came in a few minutes later, a smudge of lip gloss on her chin branding her. So I asked her what was going on. I told her I had every right to know, because I did, because I was her mother. I told her I had seen her, that I had seen everything. She looked at me the way Goat did sometimes, the way Goat did under the red table.

“It’s not like you Joy!” I shouted. “This wasn’t the Joy I know, the Joy I raised.”

Joy looked stared at the floor, her feet pointed inwards.

“You were going to find someone the way I didn’t,” I continued. “A man good enough to stick around, to have a daughter of your own with one day.”

I was pleading now. And Joy’s lips twitched, the way they did when she saw someone squish a harmless bug, the way they did when she was angry.

“You haven’t been yourself!” I cried out, as I crashed around in the kitchen, shoving glasses in the dishwasher. “You just haven’t, Joy!”

I didn’t hear her when she said the word gay, I didn’t listen.

“That’s a word for a kind of man,” I said hotly, “it’s not for you.”

Then Joy erupted like a gas stove did when a lighter touched it, sudden and blue orange.

“I’m just not like you!” Joy screamed back. “I never wanted to be like you. This, this is
who I am.”

Then the silence fell. Then the grinding of the dishwasher commenced. In all my rushing I had put two glasses close together and they hit each other, sounding a rhythmic clink.

“And you don’t let me breathe,” Joy said hollowly. “You don’t let me speak, even now, even tonight when you fire questions at me. I hate you, I fucking hate you!”

Goat trailed behind her with his tail between his legs as she stormed up the stairs and slammed her bedroom door, sounds of crying still passing through the oak. And I collapsed into the soapy sink, my body shaking as the sobs passed through me.

…

This was where Joy had arrived, young and so far away from her mother. I closed my eyes and breathed in salty damp air. We were in Northern California now, heading south down the small coastal highway. The ocean sounded like both a distant storm and a rocking chair. As I drove, I saw small pebbly beaches nestled in between towering coastal cliffs, windblown trees emerging from the rock. Some cows were grazing in a field on the other side of the road, in between small houses sprinkled in the woods. We kept rising in elevation, driving alongside large sleek ravens almost as big as Goat. The water below seemed like an abyss and blue earth that went on for eternity.

I remembered the last time I had seen the ocean. It had been a special trip, the Pacific Ocean hours and hours away from Montana. Joy must have only been six years old, with eyes as wide as sand dollars at the sight of that much moving water. We had made a game out of jumping over waves, counting as we went. Joy could already count to fifty, and once we reached this number the game began again. She tried to mimic the calls of the seagulls, chasing them on her stubby little legs as I doubled over with laughter. Even the foreign ocean swept up memories of my Joy.

As we scaled the cliffs in our beat up truck, gulls were gliding along above us. A herd of elk had nestled in beds of marigold yellow wildflowers just off the road and peered up at us calmly as we drove by. We were up on a highland, a bay with farmland to our right and the open water to our left. Eventually the road dead ended at a small parking lot in front of a trailhead. My body moved as though it was not under my control, my motions no longer made sense to me. Goat trotted on next to me as we started the trek out on this peninsula. The only other people we encountered were a young mother and her little daughter, her feet swallowed by her clunky hiking boots. We waved at each other kindly, and I felt Goat’s muzzle against my palm and a single tear trickle down to the corner of my mouth.

What was I doing out here? I stared at Goat and he stared at me, my own hopelessness reflected in his eyes. I didn’t know where Joy was, really. I didn’t even have an address. I just took off, prayed we’d find our way back to each other, like two people who belonged together. We belonged together. Or I wanted us to belong together. I never even considered that my own daughter might not want to see me. That I could have been the one to blame, the one that drove her away, all those years ago.

I stood at the edge of those cliffs in Northern California and I screamed out at the sea. I screamed knowing Joy would never hear me. I screamed not knowing if anyone could hear me. I didn’t understand the ocean, why each crashing wave was so loud, how winds could build in the middle of that slate cover, how they blew into my mouth with such force and how I was powerless to control it. It wasn’t like anything I had ever known. But I stood out in front of it, I faced it, howling and crying, trying to find what I knew in the indigo swells.