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As the sun sets, Coral returns with a large pot from the kitchen, and everyone cheers. The pot steams. When Coral lifts the lid, inside is a beautiful display of tamales. “My family grew up eating these,” she says. “Everyone in Arizona does, it seems, even if you don’t have Mexican roots. The peppers are from the greenhouse.”
“So you grew up here?” Lenna asks.
Coral plunges tongs into the pot. “With my adopted family, yes.”
She dishes out portions. After she’s finished, she settles down with Matilda, Amy’s teenager in the thick glasses. Their friendship is incongruous—Coral seems so much more responsible, and Matilda is still a child. It’s hard to remember that Coral is nearly just as young. They sit close together, preening one another, laying their heads on each other’s shoulders, eating off each other’s plates. It fills Lenna with longing. It’s a teenage friendship she wished she’d had: that draping laziness, those blurred boundaries. At onepoint, Coral looks up at her, catching her watching, and smiles. Coral’s phone tweets again, that same birdcall. Lenna has never heard that ring before. She almost asks Coral where she might be able to find the same tone, but then Matilda grabs Coral’s arm to tell her something.
Carefully balancing Jacob on her lap with one hand, Lenna loads up with fresh guacamole with the other. Maybe it’s the desert air, but she’s hungrier than she’s been in a long time. When she takes her first bite, she closes her eyes and moans. The tamales are simple and perfect. Combined with the vibrant colors of the setting sun, it really is magical.
After some time, Rhiannon raises her half-empty wineglass. “To Lenna!” she calls. “Welcome, again!”
“To Lenna!” they all echo, raising glasses of various liquids, too. Lenna blushes. No one has ever toasted her before.
For a while, the only sounds echoing are the noises of their chewing. As the sky darkens, some sort of insect creature starts to chirp in earnest. It’s so scrubby and wide-open out here, Lenna can’t imagine where bugs might lurk. Maybe in plain sight.Shake out your shoes.Scorpions are probably here, too.
“Okay. Someone tell Lenna how amazing it is here and why she needs to join,” Marjorie announces, mouth full of a bite. “Amy?”
Matilda’s mother, Amy—the woman with the braids—stands. There’s a warmth to her smile, a sort of honestness and straightforwardness that puts Lenna at ease. At least someone here isn’t a total enigma.
Amy pauses dramatically, then stretches her arms out to encompass the sky and mountains. “It’samazing,” she states. “I hope to live here forever. And you should, too.”
Everyone laughs.
“How do people find this place?” Lenna asks Amy.
“Referral,” Marjorie interrupts, almost cutting Amy off. “People are called here for different reasons.”
Amy clears her throat, then says that she was called here because after she got divorced, her daughter, Matilda, had health issues. Autoimmune problems, stomach pains, paineverywhere.
“Girl was miserable.” Amy sighs. “Couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded. Everything hurt. Isn’t that right, baby?”
Matilda nods. “I went to so many doctors. No one had answers.”
“Which is why we came here,” Amy says. “Matilda’s health issues have really turned around. It’s miraculous.”
“That’s amazing,” Lenna breathes.
Marjorie swings her arm to Ann, the quiet, freckled woman who works with the animals. In fact, a dog has his head resting on her lap, like he’s waiting for food. “Ann and I met shortly after I started the place. Think I was still living in the trailer back then.”
“Yes,” Ann says simply. She strokes the dog’s head.
“When I told her I was starting a community in the desert but didn’t know much about sustainability, I think a blood vessel popped in her forehead.” Marjorie chuckles. “I suppose you could say I needed her as much as she needed me.”
There’s an awkward pause, a space perhaps for Ann to explainwhyshe needed Marjorie. Ann instead says, in monotone, “She had a septic system that didn’t work and a well that was dried up.” There’s something so morose about her. But also robotic.
“Ann got us not only composting more efficiently, but now we create very little garbage,” Marjorie says.
Rhiannon turns to Lenna. “The whole community produces maybe one bag of trash a week. It’s so gratifying to use so little.”
“A week?” Lenna glances guiltily at her son’s bottom. Nowonderthey don’t believe in disposable diapers. And maybe someonehadgone through her things?
“Melissa and Naomi?” Marjorie goads. “Want to share?”
Melissa sits up. “Well, we’ve always been close. And we were hoping for a different sort of life. And we desperately wanted to have children.” She glances nervously at her sister, then touches her hand. “And we bothwill, eventually.”
Naomi, Lenna notices, doesn’t look back at her sister. Once again, Lenna wonders why they’re a unit. And why Rhiannon said they might not be able to separate because the land won’tallowit. She’s been eyeing Naomi, too, almost waiting for her to make another snide remark about what shedidto Rhiannon. Her choice of wording still rattles Lenna. So does the gleefully scandalized look that flashed across Naomi’s face when she registered Lenna’s reaction, as if to sayOoh! What have I uncovered?
Marjorie sits back expansively, glancing at Lenna. “It takes a village, you know. This is our village.”
