GILA BEND

On Leaving Home

Home is where one starts from. T. S. ELIOT, "East Coker"

It was in the desert that I realized I was far from home.

I sat on the curb of a small-town gas station, listening to the buzz of a failing fluorescent lightbulb and the hiss of cars passing by. It was late. Close to midnight, I think. The desert sun had long descended into darkness, but it was still hot. One hundred and twelve degrees hot. And I'm going to be honest with you — the back sweat situation was widespread and alarming. I pulled my shirt away from my perspiring torso like gum from a shoe.

I was in Gila Bend, Arizona. "Home to 1,700 Friendly People and 5 Old Crabs," according to the whitewashed sign near the highway. Inside the convenience store was an array of souvenirs ranging from fermented rattlesnake and porcelain cacti to an entire aisle of creepy-crawly knickknacks that would thrill a nine-year-old boy. Hot dogs were two for a dollar and cigarettes were on sale and Mexico was only eighty miles away.

Our bright yellow moving truck was parked nearby, speckled with kamikaze bugs smeared across the windshield. I had followed my husband here, and that husband had followed the Marine Corps here, obeying his first set of military orders all the way to the outer fringes of Arizona, the sunbaked miles of almost-Mexico. He was being stationed in Yuma, Arizona, at a small air station ten miles from the border.

Do you know where Yuma is?

Yeah, I didn't either.

* * *

Our engagement was spent on the phone, as Mike trained in Quantico and I finished college in Colorado. When it came time to wait on military orders, Mike spoke confidently about the options. He said that San Diego was likely where we would be stationed — that's what he requested, after all — although Hawaii or Japan were possibilities as well. Since we had not yet lived under the discretion of the military, Mike and I mistakenly assumed that the military would cooperate with our best-laid plans, that perhaps it would consult our thoughts and feelings before making arbitrary decisions about our future, as though it were a waitress taking our order and offering helpful suggestions before ultimately giving us what we wanted.

For the record, the military is not at all like a waitress. It's more like a cafeteria lady — a domineering force with hair netting, bushy eyebrows, and heavily perspiring forehead — scowling at you from behind a cloudy sneeze guard. She puts on your tray whatever's available, whatever she likes, a menu predetermined in high-up, unseen places. And your job is to say thank you, to make the most of it. Your job is to keep moving.

But Mike and I didn't know this yet. We were just a couple of twenty-two-year-olds, idealistic and hungry for adventure. So in the waiting period of engagement, Mike and I discussed the luxury of living near an ocean, the possibility of learning how to surf, the prospect of living in Asia. I told my girlfriends about these exotic locations while twirling my engagement ring and awkwardly pronouncing the word fiancé.

Mike's orders came on a Friday afternoon in November. He had been in the field for the past two weeks mastering skills of land navigation, which basically meant he was learning how to use a compass while wearing camouflaged face paint as I waited for him to call. When he finally did, I was quick to answer.

"Hello?"

"Hi," he answered. "I got orders." His voice sounded quiet, calculated.

"What? Where?" I demanded.

"Arizona." The verdict sounded rehearsed, as if he had practiced it over and over again, rolling it around his tongue and speaking it aloud until the word drained itself of emotion.

Somehow I could sense the aftertaste of disappointment on his tongue, the discouragement he was trying to conceal. Somehow I knew that it was bad news he was trying to spin into good.

"Arizona." I repeated it aloud. First as a statement. Then as a question. My eyes darted side to side as I took a mental inventory of everything I knew about Arizona: Phoenix, golf courses, cacti, rattlesnakes, suntans, retirees, prescription deodorant.

"I can do Arizona," I said, more to convince myself than him. "Where in Arizona?"

Silence.

I heard him breathing, procrastinating.

One second.

Two seconds. Three. Four.

The silence sounded distinctly like dread.

"Where in Arizona?" I prompted.

He used to do this. He still does this. Mike takes an enormous amount of time to break big news. He is a careful decision maker, thoughtful and impossibly thorough. I'm certain that he organizes his thoughts before thinking them, aligning them squarely to one side and alphabetizing them when time allows. He reveals a decision slowly, feeding details one by one and waiting for me to chew, swallow, and digest before giving me more.

"MIKE. Where?" I yelled into the phone.

"Yuma," he whispered.

One word. No context. Mike delivered the news reluctantly, driving it like a flag into the space between us. We both stared at it in the distance as it waved frantic and final against a cloudless sky.

Yuma. For three years.

I opened my laptop and searched "Yuma, Arizona," frantically skimming the top results: Sunniest place on earth. Hottest city in America. Home of Yuma Territorial Prison.

Sun. Heat. Prison.

Sun. Heat. Prison.

SUN! HEAT! PRISON!

It was late fall in Colorado when I absorbed these words. The notion of Yuma arrived while I was wearing a sweater and wool socks, while I was sitting on a twin bed cloaked in flannel sheets and a down comforter. I owned nine jackets at the time and only one pair of flip-flops. The flip-flops were incidental leftovers from summer camp. I called them "shower shoes."

Colorado was home to me because it was where I grew up. The outdoorsy, casual persona had been nurtured into me, and I was proud of it. Mountains were my everyday companions, tall chaperones that waited outside all ordinary places: grocery stores and gas stations and suburban backyards. My lungs had a sense of athletic superiority because I grew up at high altitude. "Sea level" was a term you used to feel sorry for people who lived near natural disasters.

Yuma was at sea level. And when ranked alphabetically, it was basically last. Did that matter? I wondered.

Sun. Heat. Prison. I turned the words over and over.

"Wait," I said to Mike with growing panic, "you are moving me away from home. To the hottest place on earth. To live among...