Their home has been on Zillow for 3 days. Xine keeps looking at the number of viewings, the saves, and the bold text that says their home is likely to sell faster than 99% of near by homes. Yet, there are no offers. No showings. Not even a text from Shelly. Xine reaches out to see if she has possibly missed a text or a call. Technology can never be trusted.
Shelly doesn’t sue the word “crickets” but reminds Xine that she has a nontraditional home. They are looking for the right buyer. If Xine is motivated, her and Josh could reduce the price.
Xine and Josh decide they aren’t that motivated.
Xine puts the house business on the shelf and prepares for a trip with her mother. In lieu of Christmas gifts, they are gifting trips. Xine thought it would help achieve their mutual goals of traveling more. Not that it would minimize costs–only that that it would cut costs around Christmas time.
Xine’s mom, Judy, has selected the destination for this trip: New Mexico and Arizona. They will be traveling for 10 days. Xine refuses to pay for a checked bag or carry-on, so she is stuffing everything she needs into a single backpack that adheres to the dimensions of a “personal item.”
She has also applied for a new job: a salaried position for a nonprofit. It wasn’t necessarily her plan to get a full time job. She still wants to be a kept girl. But this time, they reached out to her and talked her into applying. She’s never been recruited before. She’s in the final stages, having progressed past the initial interview. Xine predicts she will hear their final decision while she is living out of a backpack in the desert.
At least she won’t have to consider a new job and an offer on a house all while trying to appreciate the Grand Canyon.
***
The air of New Mexico is warm not unlike the heaters that blow down on the threshold of a Walmart superstore. Traveling is like that, isn’t it? Everything encountered is new and shiny, and the traveler’s base mindset is “gimme.”
Xine points to what gives her pleasure: the spanish style architecture of the court house in downtown Sante Fe; the Navajo street vendors with storyteller statues and jewelry displayed on colorful blankets; the traditional dress of the street performers with bells on their ankles and sprays of feathers cascading down their backs.
In pastel pink pants and a stylish tanktop, Xine feels good. She feels pretty and warm and mostly her self. Dry heat and sunshine does wonders for her. She hasn’t even thought about not getting an offer on the house.
Xine is so overwhelmed by the impulse to fuel this machine of wonder, awe, and infatuation, she buys things. She spends $50 on a ring for her sister-in-law. She spends $300 on a small sculpture of a Navajo Storyteller for her mother-in-law. Xine second guesses her ability to buy something her sister-in-law will like. She buys a second ring.
She is splitting a Tamale with her mother in the Sante Fe square when she feels the warmth of menstruation.
Shit, she thinks. She has nothing on her person, no tampons, pads, or even underwear.
“I need to find a bathroom,” she tells her mother.
There is a bathroom in an old style 5 and dime shop. It has two stalls but one is broken. She waits in line. Smiles at the women waiting in line behind her as she feels the thick blood amass. Xine considers asking one of the women around her for a tampon but can’t bring her self to do it. She asks herself but can’t explain why.
Finally, she makes it behind the door stall and drops her pastel pink denim jeans to see a burgandy Rorschach test between the meat of her thighs. Blessedly, the amount of blood that has transferred to her denim is manageable. Not ideal for someone who only has two pairs of pants for the next ten days but manageable.
Xine pees. When she reaches for the toilet paper to clean her thighs, there is practically none. Even if Xine is stingy, she knows that she will leave too little for anyone else. She needs enough to clean her thighs, wipe the piss from her crotch, and also roll a makeshift tampon and shove into her vaginal canal.
The murmur of women in line reaches her ears like the roar of a crowd antsy for the start of a rock show. Even if it starts on time, there will be a mosh pit. There will be elbows to cheekbones. She will not come out unscathed. Best she quietly and quickly proceed forward, find her escape like a sengi. She can neither ask for assistance, nor let the women know the toilet paper is low. She is 33 years old.
Xine brings her mind back to the 5 and dime‘s half-functional restroom. She cleans herself up the best she can with four squares of toilet paper. She folds three squares of toilet paper and plugs herself up like a bathtub drain stopper.
When she emerges from the store, it crosses her mind to ask her mother to walk back to the hotel, or hop in their rental car and go to a drug store. But Xine finds her mother waiting and smiling in the Sante Fe sun and can’t bring herself to ask for anything. Plus, she’s plugged for now. She’ll be fine.
***
After two more public restroom visits and six more squares of toilet paper. Xine relents and asks her mother if they can head back to the hotel.
“Oh, I was just getting hungry again,” Xine’s mother says as she looks around for a place to eat. “Do you want to eat and then head back?”
“I just want to chill in the hotel for a moment. Then maybe we can walk back for dinner?” Xine says, instead of ‘I need a tampon’ or ‘I need to clean myself’ or ‘I need to put on underwear to keep this wad of toilet paper between the lips of my labia’.
Xine’s mother isn’t really buying it but agrees to walk back. Plus she could use the bathroom at the hotel since it will certainly be cleaner than the public bathrooms. She has refrained from excessive hydration and real sustenance just to avoid using the public restrooms.
They walk 15 minutes back to the hotel. It is a condo/suite style hotel with long meandering hallways with nooks and crannies that have lounge chairs and side tables. Once Xine makes it into the restroom of their hotel room, she assesses the damage to her lovely pink pastel denim jeans. She cleans herself, pisses again and finally asks her mother through the barely open bathroom door if she can ask the front desk for a few tampons.
“Oh no!” Xine’s mother says, “I don’t have any myself. I don’t have to worry about that now , you know? Do you want me to run to Walmart for you?”
“No, just ask the front desk. They should have some.”
“Are you sure? I’m not sure they will have anything like that.”
“I used to work for a 2 star hotel and we had just about everything back behind the desk. Surely, this place has toiletries.”
Judy isn’t convinced but says she’ll check.
Xine thanks her mother and closes the bathroom door. Her hand lingers on the door knob. Her tank top is burnt orange, polka dotted, and puckers out just above her belly button. It has wide straps over her freckled shoulders. Together the two components remind her of a summer dress. The kind of summer dress that gives her breasts a little breathing room and could fool anybody into thinking she actually had breasts. Even she thinks it’s flattering on her.
Otherwise she is naked from the waist down. Her blood stained pants carefully laid on the tile floor so that the period mess doesn’t spread on the inside of her jeans.
When Xine hears her mother exit the hotel room. She peaks out to confirm the room is empty and she pulls her backpack into the bathroom with her. She slips on a pair of underwear and cotton sleep-shorts. Carefully, she gathers her pink pants in her hands and begins to blot their red spotted crotch with a washcloth.
She is still blotting when her mother returns.
“They didn’t have any tampons,” her mother says.
“You’re kidding!” Xine stops blotting.
“But the front desk clerk had some of her own. Said this was all she had.”
Xine is bewildered that their $250 hotel room doesn’t have toiletries for women. Whatever. She’ll make do. She always makes do.
She takes two pads from her mother’s hand and tries not to wince. Considers for moment why plugging herself like a leaking barrel is more desirable than soaking up her period in a small scale diaper pad.
***
On day 3, Xine is in the lighter days of her period. Her skin is rosy with sunshine. She sees the Earth Ships of Taos, the wildfires of Angel Fire, and the miraculous staircase of Loretto’s Chapel. She finds many beautiful sculptures of the storyteller that are cheaper than $300 and feels a constricting of her chest. She considers returning the one she purchased on day one. She considers returning everything she purchased. She has spend $600 and it’s only day three.
Her mother convinces her not to. Says it’s a beautiful work of art. It’s worth $300. Xine’s mother-in-law will love it. It will mean so much to her. Xine retains her doubts, cries to herself in the bathroom. Wishes her heart would stop restricting.
The day before, she received an email from the nonprofit, requesting a “sample” communication plan with social media graphics for a very real upcoming event. The whole request smells fishy, like a request for unpaid work, but it is the final stage of the job application. She tells herself she wants the job and is willing to give up an afternoon of her vacation to finish the assignment.
She finishes a book called Clean: The New Science of Skin in the early morning hours before her and her mother head out on Route 66 to Flagstaff, Arizona.
“I think I’m going to stop using soap,” Xine says aloud.
Xine’s mother laughs and then raises an eyebrow, “What do you mean?”
“I just finished this book and it talks about how we don’t know that much about skin. It’s our largest organ but there’s not enough research to really understand it.”
“Hmph,” Judy says while looking out the car window.
Xine continues, “And there is no organization that monitors what we put on our skin. Like, no one makes sure our make-up, soap, shampoo, or deodorant doesn’t give us skin cancer.”
“What about the FDA?”
“The FDA only monitors Food and Drugs.”
“Hmph.”
“Apparently what we do know, is that the skin has a microbiome just like our guts. You know like, you eat a probiotic to improve gut health?”
“Oh yeah. I can’t have yogurt with my gut problems but I’ve heard of that. You know, I can sometimes eat some dried yogurt in a granola bar but that’s about it.
Xine quickly continues, “Yeah, exactly. It’s the same for our skin. We have good bacteria on our skin and soap strips it away.”
“Well,” Judy interrupts, “We also have bad bacteria. That’s why we use soap.”
“But we only have bad bacteria because we’ve stripped away the good bacteria that would otherwise take up that space.”
“Hmm.”
“Did you know, that at birth, we are covered by the natural and self-sufficient microbiome from our mother’s vaginal canal?”
Judy is silent at the words vaginal canal.
“Like all the good bacteria we need, we get from the vaginal canal and breast milk. Breast milk, especially human, is, like, the best super food in the history of foods.”
Xine is losing Judy. Xine is staring out at Route 66 as it cuts through the desert, and is thinking about how her skin feels like a desert after every shower. How the book she just finished has empowered her to leave the commercialized world of hygiene behind her.
Judy is wondering how worried she should be that her daughter is becoming a hippy.
***
At a desert themed general store, Xine and her mother are waiting to drive to a place where they will get into a helicopter and take a very quick flight over the Instagram-famous Horseshoe Bend.
Xine gets an email from the nonprofit requesting a phone call.
She calls them immediately. Her knees are bouncing under the tabletop of the picnic table as she is offered the position. Her mom can tell by her smile what has happened before she even gets to ask.
“How quickly can you start?” Her new boss asks.
“Right away.” Xine doesn’t think, just responds automatically.
Caught up in the rush of accepting the first full-time salaried position with full health benefits of her life, she doesn’t even consider giving herself time to reset between her trip and this new job.
Her microbiome goes crazy.