Martha and Louise's Daughter

The wheels of my car turn like clumsy cartwheels in the weeds next to a perfectly manicured soccer field. I am the child who cannot sit still, and these wheels are my feet. The glass Coke bottle on my dashboard reflecting the sun is the feeling I have of wanting more, so much so that I risk being broken. My license plate is a cheap tattoo that tells you only where I have been, not where I am going.

It’s dusk now. I’m sitting by the Lake of the Woods in the Northwest Angle, a desolated town toned down by the stillness of the lake that encloses it from the rest of the state and country. I’m kind of embarrassed to lay out the details of what it took to get to this point from the Minneapolis airport. But I remain, at 36, the child who cannot sit still, and that same feeling sits inside of me like vodka on an empty stomach, burning and begging for acknowledgement.

I am Martha and Louise’s child.

They call it “The Chimney” or the “Top of the Nation,” if we’re ignoring Alaska, of course. I spend a couple of days here in an old motel run by a lady who seems like she could be Louise’s age, if she were still here. I rent old boats with chipped paint and row out in the lake for most of the time, sitting and taking it all in. My toes curl when they touch the cool and stagnant water at the bottom of the boat. The air is cool but warmed by the hypomania of springtime. This is the very top, the beginning. So, naturally, I start thinking about my own beginning.

I am Martha and Louise’s child, and I began like a sudden thud in the middle of the night or an abrupt stop at a red light. Martha always told me that she knew I would accomplish great things in my life because of the way I took charge of my own beginning. That was a nice thing to say to a child whose entrance could have been the end of us both.

She was 2 weeks away from her due date with me, her first and only child, and still working as a labor and delivery nurse in New Mexico on a reservation in the Four Corners region. She’d been tending closely to a young girl named Enola, who was just 17 years old and in active labor with her second child. The girl’s blood pressure was dangerously high and required frequent monitoring.

“Martha, Dr. Suarez is in an emergency C-section.” Another nurse popped her head out of the room next door, one of two rooms for laboring mothers in the whole hospital.

I can picture Martha if I try hard enough, making the photograph that I have come to life and move like a motion picture in my own mind. Living, breathing, hurting. I can see her squatting next to the bed, dressed in those impractical white scrubs, rubbing the girl’s shoulder. Determined. Stubborn. Selfless.

“I’m right here with you.” Martha soothed the young girl while her own contractions tried to weigh her down like bricks. She winced, unaware anyone was watching.

“Martha, you need to step back. Let someone take care of you.” The unit secretary was the only other person around. But Martha’s eyes widened as she saw the latest blood pressure reading: 170/95. She smiled politely at the unit secretary but shook her head.

So Martha exchanged her pants for a long white skirt and continued to coach Enola through it through her own pain, her own suffering, and her own grit. They let out primal noises, sometimes synchronously. And Martha gave birth shortly before Enola did, standing up and then squatting down, the unit secretary cutting the umbilical cord. She pulled out her own placenta - who was she? I shivered at the thought of ripping my own insides out like that. But that was Martha, strong-willed to a fault, maybe. She delivered Enola’s baby all by herself with her own newborn wrapped in hospital blankets and in the arms of the secretary.

Martha taught me by example how to push through absolutely anything. She would get this look in her eyes of pure fiery, raw determination. And that’s when you knew nothing would stop her. It lit a flame inside of me that I have sometimes tried to put out. But, suddenly, in this rickety old boat in the middle of Lake of the Woods, I know: I can’t let this ember burn out. I can’t let this end with me.

I am Martha and Louise’s child.

The sun has already set over the flat and homogenous land in front of me. The People of Iowa Welcome You. I squint to read the fading sign a few yards ahead. There really are corn fields in Iowa, and I have found myself among them and at 5 miles to empty. I’ve never taken it this far before. Just like that, my car stalls, sputters, and comes to a slow stop. It is just me and the cornfields.

But Midwesterners are known for being particularly friendly; I did not embark on this trip naive to the stereotype. It is not long before I end up in a car with a family of four, singing along with their karaoke tunes while they take me to a gas station to pick up some fuel. We eat at the dive bar attached to the gas station together, and I shovel down sweet corn and a hamburger. I find myself feeling more alone than ever in the company of this close family, wondering what Martha and Louise would have done in this situation. Would they have flagged down the first car they saw themselves, unafraid? Would they have made the trek to the gas station by foot, alone? Or maybe they would have simply rolled down the sunroof, waited for night to fall, and spent the night in the cornfields gazing at the twinkling sky. I find myself longing to know the answer, suddenly full of emotions racing across my brain’s ceiling like shooting stars in the night.

“Tell us more about you,” the Iowans wanted to know.

And all I can think to say is, “I am Martha and Louise’s child.”

Minnesota is definitely The Man’s hat: full of wrinkles in the land like the folds of crushed velvet, tall like one of its many trees, and with thousands of lakes like a pattern woven into its fabric. But Iowa is clearly the face, with all that it produces. Most towns blend together, but the farmland stands out, its crops springing above ground. The face produces so much: emotional expressions that speak silently, words that sting and heal, and hot tears that offer sweet release. Even the word “Iowa” requires coordination of many facial muscles to even say - a mouthful. The ears of corn. The Hawkeye state. Iowa is The Man’s face.

I grew up in Northwestern New Mexico in a small town called Taos, not far from where Martha worked on the reservation. Scorching, dry, and barren New Mexico. Here, I was raised by Martha and Louise, the only parents I ever knew: my mother and grandmother.

Louise was a woman with a dirty mouth, a love for wild canaries, and a tendency to fall for men who could list off the names of ten types of tequila. Martha was a woman who spoke her mind freely, never stayed with any man longer than a night, and had the same breakfast every morning: two cigarettes and a hard-boiled-egg. Martha and Louise. Two matriarchs. Two women who were as hard to bend as a metal curtain rod but as easy to break as a rotting tree branch. The truth is, the world has not been kind to the women in my family.

They were dedicated to each other and to me, almost to a fault. They loved hard and rarely fought, except when it came to men. I realized at a young age that this topic should be avoided at all costs, as it became quite apparent that they both had major qualms with the way the other approached her love life.

“Wilma, did your mother ever tell you about her lifelong dream of taking on The Man?” Louise had asked me one night, changing the subject quickly during a tense discussion.

“What man?” I remember asking. I was 5 years old. “Mommy has a boyfriend?”

“Ma –” snapped Martha, glaring at Louise until she couldn’t be serious anymore. She started laughing and laughing until she fell over on the floor. Louise got down on the floor with her and squeezed her. They laughed until they cried over the chaos of my anxious squeals, wanting in on this joke.

“The Man,” I learned, was the shape that was formed on the US map by Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana. It was never clear how this collection of states had garnered their attention so intently. But I clung onto “The Man” just as they did, using it to change the subject when the air was thick with tension. This was partly because I got to hear the chorus of their joyful laughter, like the melody of back porch windchimes on a windy New Mexican day.

“I sure hope I can run a train through The Man one day.”

“Once I flatten out The Man from head to toe, I’ll have done all I need to accomplish in this life.”

They didn’t subscribe to including Tennessee and Kentucky in the schema, though; some have said that there is an alternate version of The Man, in which he is holding a pot of chicken. They refuted this each time it came up, presenting their arguments against it like they were on a debate stage, the kitchen counter a makeshift podium and the chili ladle a microphone.

I pull over on the side of the two-lane highway, in a patch of grass where it is probably illegal to park. The city of St. Louis glistens ahead of me, a patch of shining silver in the midst of open sky and grazing cows. Missouri is the chest. Missouri is the beating heart of The Man, with the rate of St. Louis and the contractile strength of its farmland. I’m sitting at a dive bar near the famous arch, looking out at the waterfront when a man with thick curly black hair, toned arms, and light green eyes smiles and takes the barstool next to mine. I’m inhaling his scent but trying not to make it obvious. The small talk begins, and the next thing I know it, I’m checking into my hotel room for the night, just as I have the past several nights that I’ve been driving through The Man. But I’m not alone this time. It feels right to do this in The Heart of The Man. I have nothing to lose but time.

When he leaves in the morning, we kiss goodbye one last time, and I watch his silhouette exit through the back door, my heart still pounding in my chest and my stomach still queasy with butterflies. It’s the rush that does it for me, I have to admit. I am a thrill-seeker.

I am Martha and Louise’s child.

I’ve passed through the heart and lungs and reached the legs; I am now more than halfway through The Man. Arkansas is supposedly known as “The Natural State,” and now I see what they mean. I finished the boring part, where I was driving through no-name towns full of hate symbols and American flags and shuddering to myself about what might be lurking behind their closed doorways. And now I’m in the Ozarks, trekking through a beaten path overgrown with weeds and wildflowers as far as my legs will take me.

It really is beautiful here in the Ozarks. Some of the bodies of water are more crystal-clear than I could have imagined, and others are a cloudy but stunning bubble-gum aquamarine. There are misty waterfalls, complete with lush, leafy canopies and the musical sound of water racing over rocks and tree branches. It’s just me. And my legs have carried me 20 miles to this perfect, desolate paradise. Stripping down to nothing but my shoes, I wade in until I’m right underneath the falling water. And I let it pour down on me.

I can see now why Arkansas holds up the head and the heart of The Man. It’s tough like bones and muscle. Full of naturally occurring stones and minerals like quartz, diamond, novaculite, crystal, and wavelite. Legs will take you farther here than a car ever would.

Martha and Louise were big believers in walking to where you needed to go. We’d play pretend together, walking through the New Mexico sands in summertime. My favorite game was always “meteorology,” which was only possible when the high winds came, blowing dust in the air. Of course, we had to report on these “dust storms” to our viewers across the state.

“Take cover!” Louise yelled, jumping into the bush nearby, causing Martha to laugh that open-mouth laugh and inhale dust in the process.

I remember she was coughing, Louise was laughing, and I was protesting, reminding them we were still on live television in the middle of a weather report.

Louisiana is the boot of The Man. Working boots in some parts of the state and thigh-high in others. Cowboy boots, hunting boots, and stripper boots. Dancing. Strutting. Wading through deep waters to fish. The boot is the first part of the body to be hit by the mud beneath, but it kicks back.

I admit that I drove through the majority of the state and only stopped to eat, fast food wrappers glimmering like treasure in the sun on my dashboard. I realize now that I started getting antsy, ready to reach the end. When I reach New Orleans, I feel magic in the air. So much potential energy wavers around me that I feel this deep itch inside of me that I cannot scratch. And I spend the night trying to do just that, cheering from balconies that overlook Bourbon Street, dancing to jazz from a street musician, and taking a stranger back to my hotel room after hours of dripping sweat on the dance floor.

New Orleans is the toe of the boot, nose-diving first into chaos and kicking the whole way there. In New Orleans, the boots are sprinkled in purple, green, and gold sparkles, beignet dust, and cheap vodka. I’m sticky in sweat with alcohol still on my breath, feeling the coffee move through my veins like electricity as I watch steamboats peruse the Mississippi. Bad decisions are often made in boots, I realize. They always wanted me to ride life like a mechanical bull in a dive bar, a few cheap drinks in and holding on for dear life with a mix of utter fear, joy, and reckless abandon.

I am Martha and Louise’s daughter.

I have finally reached The End of the World, as the locals call it, a little port town called Venice, Louisiana. I gaze out at the Gulf and breathe in the scent of sea water. But there is something throwing off the equilibrium: I'm late. I’m late, and I’m not all that surprised. Precaution has not been a part of this journey, and I am at peace with that.

I take my pregnancy test in the bathroom of a local dive bar, the customers staring at my entrance like I am quite the spectacle to see. I will give it time and be cautious just in case, wrapping up the test in some toilet paper and sticking it back in the plastic covering.

I order a Sprite to-go and find a spot to sit where shrimping boats are docked. I sip the bubbles from the styrofoam cup, staring out at the endless waters and gazing at the occasional ripple from a creature below. I take a deep breath and pull out the test, still bundled up.

And there it is. Two pink lines.

It’s a girl. I just know that it is. Even though I know that scientifically, it is not a boy or a girl yet. It will be a girl. She’ll bring with her the spirit of the women I’ve lost without even trying to. She is Martha and Louise’s granddaughter. She will never know a father, just as Martha’s daughter and Louise’s granddaughter never did. I have carried on generational trauma in this way, perhaps, in my relentless quest to preserve our lineage of women.

I am Martha and Louise’s daughter, for better or for worse.

And just like that, it is time to return to New Mexico. Martha and Louise are gone now, and I had to grieve that somehow in a way that only made sense to me. If it weren’t for you, who doesn’t even exist yet in this world, our family would be gone.

This is the end of The Man. And I don’t see myself returning for a long, long time. But a new beginning is around the corner. And if you are Martha and Louise’s granddaughter, your beginning will be something to marvel at.

The wheels of my plane turn like peristaltic waves in my stomach, nausea bubbling up like cheers in a soccer field stadium. I am the woman who is no longer running. But I am carrying within me the child who won’t sit still, and these wheels will be her feet. The glass Coke bottle on my tray reflecting the sun is the feeling I have of wanting more for her, so much that I risk being broken. My luggage tag is a tattoo that tells you only where she and I have been, not where we are going.