Our Own Making

move. On the road I check the box periodically, and when we stop to stretch for the first time I
pick some grasses for Whiskey to eat. When I peek inside it scuttles from one end of the box to
the other, and I smile.
__
For the next two and a half hours I drift in and out of sleep. My head rolls on my mother’s lap, my
whole body swaddled in quilts. Between dreams I watch the different tones of the sky rolling by
the window above my head. Sometimes tree branches brushing the glass; sometimes the nearness
of the side of the mountain, dripping with rainwater and small white blossoms on vines; or on the
other side, the expanse beyond the drop of the cliff, the undulating greenery looking soft enough
to swim in. As we enter the agricultural region the air turns a little acrid: the smell of machinery
processing palm seeds for oil. Everything is beautiful still, dense and rich and earthy.
The next time I open the box the beetle is dead.
—
There is a small chapel by the side of the road, on the cliffside, close enough to look as if it might
slide over the edge at any moment. We stop here, as we had done so many times before on trips to
and from the hacienda—only this time we will go much further, and there is no way back. The
chapel itself is white with a red-tiled roof, and its door anciently heavy, built of dark wood and
inlaid with bits of iron, all of it damp with the rains of the last few hours.
Inside all is candlelight. I hold my little box in one hand and my mother’s hand in the other. As
I did in the antique shop, I sense the warping of time—gentle, but heavy. We take in each other’s
warmth in the small space, cross ourselves, and light candles. We pray that we will make it the
rest of the way without trouble: we know these lands of mudslides and wilderness are merciless.
Before we turn to go, I leave the little box with the beetle inside it beside the altar.
I wanted the soul of this valley to belong to me in a way that it never did.