CHAPTER 1
The sign: WELCOME KNOCKOUT STUDENTS! flaps against a gray iron gate. Stone steps lead into the basement of a small pink and gray church. I stand at the top, thinking about going in.
The air is cold and foggy.
This is not New Mexico where hot sun twists through piñon pine, cedar, cottonwoods, spicing it golden. They will want me to speak. California is all about talking. I have two tones: quiet and anxious. They will want me to speak when what I know how to do is hide.
People here run their lives in color; mine has long been a shadowy stream of black & white: background hum. I am comfortable with half moons of dirt rich and dark under my fingernails, feathers and stones on a clean windowsill. My spirit knows how to breathe where bright skies bloom day and night dotting land the acrylic colors of chili stands, adobe pueblos, and Taco Bells, acequias bringing water to thirsty crops from Taos to San Felipe, Santa Ana to Picuris.
It is a land afraid of nothing.
I stand before the iron gate at the top of stone steps leading down into the basement of a pink and gray church in San Francisco.
The sign flaps.
I have not come here to talk.
Anything I would say is so crazy, my life so not finished, there is no way to begin to tell it.
Just fear, Nani would laugh at the bird-beat of my heart.
Grandmothers are afraid of nothing.
No rules, no tricksters, no snakes, no men with beer ever keep her from a walk up the mountain on moonlit nights.
But living is easier when you’re old.
By then pretty much any bad thing that’s going to happen to you already has.
