A Desert Rose

When it snows in the desert, time ceases. A landscape always so stark with lonely cacti and red dirt becomes bleak with a thin coat of white paint. The desolation of the desert is restless. Towering rock formations—nearby but somehow always out of reach—inspire dreams of mystery and nomads and the incessant journey for shelter. The barrenness of the desert in the snow is silent. Evidence that nothing ever moves here becomes worrisome, and painful.

        Delilah hates the snow the way she hates curling iron burns and the cold, silky feeling of her grandmother’s wrinkled hands. It’s tolerable, but barely; frustrating, nervous, and the source of a unique sense of in-betweenness. The curling iron hits her forehead between getting ready and being ready, her grandmother’s hands between vivacious youth and the cold unknown. Liminal spaces where sameness rules but everything feels so uncomfortable.

        Deserts are liminal too, but in a way that makes Delilah calm. She can control her life here; it’s hot and dry, but everything else is whatever she makes of it.

        Now, Delilah is trying to make gingerbread cookies out of her busy, antsy snow anxiety. Katherine down the street—Dale’s second wife, fixated on her perfect family and her nuclear happy ending—is throwing a holiday cookie exchange. Delilah doesn’t care much for Katherine, but she does care for a distraction. Though her late RSVP will rile up the neighborhood, she hopes her cookies will make up for it.

        Thus far, success in that department is doubtful. Delilah runs her finger down the list of ingredients again.

        Egg, butter, flour, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, molasses, ginger—what could she possibly be missing?

        She lets out a bitter laugh when it hits her—the sugar. Such a simple oversight of the most important part of any cookie, its sweetness. Delilah reckons a metaphor could be drawn between her sugarless cookies and her sour mood, but she pulls the pink sugar bag down from the top shelf of the cabinet before she can dwell on the comparison.

        Before long, she’s done it. Delilah shakes her head as she pulls the pan out of the oven. Funny how remembering all the ingredients makes cooking so much easier. Delilah pulls her hand out of a red oven mitt and reaches to inspect one of the gingerbread men but cries out and shrinks back from the heat. She brings her burnt finger to her mouth and sucks on it a moment, a habit she’s never been able to break, even after she discovered aloe.

        Looking from afar, Delilah’s gingerbread cookies are perfect. Crisp, warm brown, cleans edges. Once they’ve had a few minutes to cool she makes quick work of decorating, squeezing red, white, and green frosting from bags and making a mess of sprinkles on the counter. Despite the debris, the gingerbread men turn out just as well as she hoped. Sprinkle buttons and frosting smiley faces stare up at her as if they’re grateful for her handiwork.

        Delilah looks out the window at the white scenery. She shivers, more from a strange sense of sickness than from a chill, and tucks a russet curl behind her ear.

The air on Katherine’s front step feels colder than the air that berated Delilah when the left the warmth of her car. Her home is the most well-lit on the street, with ice sickle lights hanging from every eve and a rainbow of bulbs covering every piece of trim. Even every tree on the property is wrapped in tinsel Christmas lights, even though most of them are small and shrub-like.

        Delilah rings the doorbell. She shifts on her feet as she waits, trying to shake the feeling of being watched from behind. A minute passes. Then five. When Katherine finally opens the door, Delilah is shaking.

        Katherine smiles, a show of friendliness that feels oversized and plastic. Her blue gaze analyzes Delilah up and down, pausing on her skirt, but finally settling for direct eye contact.

“Oh, Delilah, you look darling! Like a desert rose, brightening up this storm.” Delilah starts. Surely this is only and turn of phrase? The gleam Katherine’s her eye makes Delilah shiver.

“Thank you,” Delilah manages, “You know I got this skirt on sale.”

Katherine laughs, hollow and a little too loud. “I know a fellow bargain hunter when I see one! It’s just darling.”

Delilah pauses, uncertain before crossing the threshold. Katherine stands directly between the Delilah and the party, like pearl-clad gatekeeper. She lifts her plate a tad higher, emphasizing the cookies in her hands.

“Oh, I’ll take those!” Katherine snatches the plate of cookies from Delilah’s hands. She inspects them for a moment. “Gingerbread men! How quaint.”

Delilah holds back a grimace. She follows Katherine inside, shrugging off her jacket and hitching it on the coat hanger—also wrapped in Christmas lights.

Mingling isn’t Delilah’s forte, and she knows it. She wanders the room, standing between points of warm conversation, laughter, and mirth as if she is an asteroid stuck in orbit between stars. Liminal and in between again. She moves around, to avoid feeling stuck, but worries her unsettled pace draws too much attention.

Delilah jumps when Katherine’s voice whispers in her ear.

“I know your secret.”

Delilah swallows hard. She turns around. The shimmer in Katherine’s eyes seems brighter somehow. Delilah’s palms begin to sweat. No one here knew about what had happened in Minneapolis. There was a reason she’d chosen a tiny New Mexico suburb when she’d been displaced.

Delilah plays it cool. “Oh, do you?” she teases Katherine. “I hoped no one could tell I almost forgot the sugar in those cookies, but you have an eye for everything, don’t you Katherine?”

Katherine narrows her eyes, vengeful and suspicious.

“You’re a liar!” she shrieks.

Delilah’s heart pounds and the floor bends. The deluge of panic and terror is sudden, piling over her like an avalanche. Dale, tall, lean, and clean shaven, drops a plate of sugar cookies, and after the shatter the parlor is motionless and silent. It reminds Delilah of the snow outside, and she knows she is on the precipice of “in between” and “arrived.”

Delilah clenches her teeth. “You don’t know what happened in Minneapolis, you don’t understand what I had to do—,”

Katherine interrupts her, tears welling in her eyes. The vein in her neck bulges. The ball of mistletoe hanging above them swings languidly back and forth.

“You’re sleeping with my Dale! You’re probably sleeping around with all these men! Ruining the good ones and hurting innocent women.”

Delilah blinks. She isn’t fooling around with Dale, and she’d never try. She prefers the limits of friendly conversation with her neighbors, hesitant to get involved in any of their dramatic lives. Her heart drops into a pool of pity. She doesn’t doubt Dale is cheating with someone, and Katherine is lashing out at the only person on the block who isn’t married.

“Katherine, I’m not sleeping with your husband!” she exclaims.

“Then who is?” Katherine demands, eyes wild, “Then what’s this about Minneapolis? Did you sleep around with someone there, too?”

Dale clears his throat. “Katherine, sweetheart…”

“Don’t sweetheart me! You know full well the entire reason we’re throwing this goddamn cookie exchange is so that I can get my justice! So that I can save this marriage!”

Delilah shifts on her feet, unsure of how to placate Katherine. The last time she had to prove her innocence, she moved across the country.

“It’s not Delilah, Katherine,” Dale rumbles.

Katherine whips around, focusing her attention on the tall buzzcut that has dared to cross her.

“You said it was Delilah!”

“I lied,” Dale retorts. “It’s…it’s Cindy.”

Katherine screams, guttural and agonized. Cindy, Katherine’s best friend. The godmother to her children. Delilah wants to act on her sympathy, but the confrontation has left her dizzy, shaky, and unstable. The panic is stronger. She needs to leave. Now.

As Katherine sobs and beats her closed fists on the cookie table, sending crumbs and chunks of frosting flying, Delilah bolts for the door.

Cindy calls after her. “Delilah, wait, this is all my fault!” But Delilah is already outside, the door slammed behind her.

She runs until she reaches her car, then leans against the passenger side. Her breathing is heavy. The cold of the snowy air is refreshing. She shakes her head, rubs her eyes, and tries not to think of her old life—when she was Rose, from Minneapolis. When her husband was a little too controlling and a little too violent. When, the day of the biggest snowstorm of the year, she shot him.

It had been self-defense. She knew it. The judge knew it. The jury knew it. The neighbors knew it. But a fresh start had seemed like the only option. A little town just outside of Santa Fe? Where it’s quiet, the neighbors are friendly, and it never snows? Perfect.

Now, under the oppressive glow of the Christmas lights, with ice crunching under her feet, Delilah realizes that no matter how far she runs or how warm it gets, she will never escape the snow or the past.