Deserts and Secrets

The first time I saw a desert I was 15.

My parents took me and my sister and cousin to the American Southwest: Zion National Park, the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon.

It was so different from the Northeast; the sky was so wide, the colors so strong, the mountain shapes against the sky so harsh.

Also, it was really hot.

My sister and cousin ran down the Grand Canyon and then back up, while my mother and I panted and sweated and poured water on bandanas and put them over our heads and then didn’t have enough water to drink. Each step was an effort.

I can’t say that I fell in love with the desert then, but I did fall in fascination. Saguaro cacti and prickly pear cacti syrup, black king snakes and javelina—found equally in the desert or inside the cities and towns! While I’d had run-ins with raccoons and opossums back home, back east, that’s nothing compared to a whole herd of javelina crossing the road in front of you.

Later I lived in Tucson for two months and a coworker taught me how to shake the seeds out of the fruit from a barrel cactus and eat them. They’re about the same size as poppy seeds.

At night, when you cross a bridge over an arroyo with water in it, you can feel it—the air temperature is cool and damp on your skin for a delicious moment and then the moment is over and the dry air snatches that moisture off your skin.

The desert in The Desert Wall is not exactly the same as the Sonoran Desert. But a desert is full of secrets: the living things that only come out in the dark, the seeds hidden behind long cactus spines, the waterhole you smell but don’t see until you almost step in it. And that’s why it seemed like the perfect setting for Malenie whose life is filled with secrets, some she’s keeping from others, some others are keeping from her.