SandScript 2020

them, all the way back, for generations. That
house is made of adobe, it is made of the
earth of this place, with a history extending
back uncounted eons.
“It feels to me as if none of us really
own it—it’s truer to say that it owns us. And
it, and I, and everyone who is a part of this
place, including Holly’s spirit, all the way
back to my ancestor Olivares-Ramirez, who
came with de Anza, all welcome you as the
next Mother Superior of our—your and
my—house.”
She sighed and moved closer to me. I
pulled her even closer, crushing her against
me, and I put my hand low on her abdomen,
still flat today, but soon to become swollen
and round.
“When are we going to tell people?”
she said.
“I think who we tell is the question.
Beck, and…”
She thought for a moment. “Hey,
Easy,” she whispered, looking at the horses.
Easy lifted his head at just that moment,
looking at us. “I’ve got some news for you.”
“Oh, please. That guy’s a
blabbermouth. Tell François-Marie instead.”
“Our friends are pretty smart. They’ll
probably figure it out when they start
hearing a baby crying in the house.”
“They might just think it’s me—you
know I cry all the time.”
“Hmm… True. How about the shitty
diapers? Will that differentiate you and
your son?”
“My son, you say? Ah, yes, our son,”
I said, tasting the words as they rolled
over my tongue. “He was proven to be well
endowed on that last ultrasound.”
“Just like his father,” she whispered,
holding my head close with her hand.
“Remind me again about that…”
*
Our clothes made an adequate bed
on a clean spot of desert sand—no withered
cactus skins with a few stray thorns left; I
checked—and we melded together with an
urge as powerful as an ocean wave, with a
force as gentle as a late autumn sun, with a
mutual care and technique that kept most
of the sand off us and out of us—but with
enough sand to keep us grounded in this
smooth-rough world.
She didn’t let this interrupt our
conversation. “I know I can’t be Rebecca’s
mother,” she said.
I gazed into her eyes from an inch
away, smiling.
“But I don’t think I need a title to
pour love out on all those that I call mine.
And I call you mine,” she said, snuggling
closer, even as we were making love, even in
the very act, her lips touching mine as she
spoke, breathing her words and her ideas
with our rhythm, breathing her love and her
life into me. “I call you mine, you and all of
yours, and I make myself yours, me and all I
have.”
“And I, you, likewise, to include us
all,” I said. “We are all of them…”
“…united in love and purpose, for you,
for me, for everyone…”
“Amen.”
FICTION
57