I started having flying dreams about my neighbor’s white mare, Belladonna, when I was a girl. She infused my dreams like ether, and her whinny was electric. I drew and painted pictures of her, mysteriously bonding us beyond the seen world. I had never ridden her, nor did anyone else. Bella was a rescued horse, and she had run wild at one time.
      I loved to stroke Bella’s muzzle, feeling her warm breath. She ate our red roses, growing along our adjoining chain link fence. I fed her peaches and apples fresh from our trees. Out in her corral, I braided her mane and tail and brushed her coat with oil.
      When I was fifteen, Bella lay in a pool of muddy water, suffering in the Arizona sun. Deva Hill tried to coax her up with water and food. It circulated amongst the horse people that Bella had gotten hoof rot from standing in water. Watching from my kitchen window, I could only hold on tight to my tiger cat for comfort. I knew the most humane thing would be to put Bella down.
      After a couple of days of Bella being sick, I went out to feed our chickens and didn’t see her. Instead, I saw Deva’s peacock standing in her back pasture by a large dirt mound as big as a horse. My throat felt dry. Bella was buried just about dead center in the county island where we lived. I made a bouquet from our climbing roses and Deva’s Queen Anne’s Lace and dropped it on her grave from the back irrigation ditch. I knew I would hold her forever in my dream diaries, tattooed in my body’s memory.
      I miss you forever, Bella.
      I was on the ditch crying when I first saw Dom. He was a couple of years older than I was. He was smoking and walking his black Lab on a leash. He reached in his jeans’ pocket for a rubber band, pulling his dark gelled hair back into a ponytail. He had calm brown eyes and wore a white t-shirt.
      “Cool hair,” he said. “Pink.”
      “Thanks.” I pulled my white lace camisole up some to dry my face off. “I soaked it in Kool-aid.”
      Chinese Elms canopied with soft pink trumpet vines shaded us. Dom moved in on the goat farm behind us with his mother and his current stepfather in a rental guesthouse. He was on house arrest for violation of probation. I pulled off some blackberries growing on the fence in the back of Bella’s grave. I threw some out to the chickens. I just about freaked when I saw a bark scorpion on the fence since I’d been stung a couple of times. Dom broke out his lighter and set it on fire.
      “Want some blackberries?”
      “Sure,” he said, lightly touching my hand.
      My cat sauntered through the overgrown grass and rubbed against Dom’s leg. His Lab just sniffed her. Dom picked up my cat, stroked her tiger striped fur with his thumb and fingertips, holding her close to his face. There was just something so sexy in his gentleness. I’ll never forget that.
      “What’s your kitty’s name,” he asked, smiling at me.
      “Sage.”
      “There was this big biker dude with long gray hair on a backhoe, digging the horse’s grave,” he said, stroking Sage behind the ears.
      “That’s Ray; he lives next door to Deva. He’s been after her a long time. She won’t have anything to do with him.”
      “He scooped the horse up in the bucket,” he said, handing Sage back to me. “He was the only one out there.”
      “It’s not like her,” I said , hugging Sage.
      I don’t know if it was legal to bury a horse where we lived, but people did pretty much what they wanted on our county island in Tempe. Some neighbors grew their own dirt weed. When there were problems, it took forever for the sheriffs to get there.
      When I heard horses whinny, I always looked for Bella and sometimes still do. She has haunted me like Fuseli’s horse in The Nightmare. I wasn’t sleeping as much as I should have: up mostly drawing and daydreaming, and Sage kept me company.
      A change came over Deva during Bella’s sickness and got worse after her horse died. In broad daylight, she wandered out in her back pasture in her sheer nightgown, and acted like she didn’t know anybody. It was worse than when her husband left her, and I imagine she was driving Ray crazy. Wide-eyed, she looked like she was not in this world. A mane of her long dark hair blew around ecstatic in the wind. New strands of white light weaved through it. I waved and tried to talk to Deva, but she would not see me. Wandering, she reminded me of the lost pigeons, strolling aimlessly that Deva and I had rescued when storms blew them out of our palm and cottonwood trees. Sometimes the birds pulled through with a cornmeal mixture we fed them with an eyedropper. Before Bella died, I helped Deva clean out the irrigation ditch and helped her with her garden. We baked pies and bread. After Bella’s death, I called Deva, went over and knocked on her door, but she wouldn’t answer. I was afraid she wasn’t eating, so I dropped food over at Ray’s to give her. I left flowers and a drawing I color-penciled of Bella. At about that time, I started going out at night to talk to Dom on the ditch.
      The last time I was out with Dom, my father and his fiancé were still up watching TV, which meant I had to go out my bedroom window. It was about that time of month for me, I had cramps, and chamomile tea wasn’t much relief. In my bedroom, I thought about Dom cutting his hair for court, and a hickey some girl sucked into the back of his neck. I felt powerless over my emotions and just couldn’t stop meeting him.
      In my bedroom, I hung my night vision around my neck. I felt for the back gate keys in my black pants along with my battery black light. Scorpions glowed florescent green beneath the light. I tore a page from my sketchbook, folded and slipped it in my back pocket. I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants, slid out of my window, landed on my Chucks, crouched down, and grabbed my stashed flashlight in our flowerbed, smelling sweet alyssum and stalks. I froze and waited until headlights passed.
      I waved the black light over a grapevine, covering a gate by our ranch house. The gate was tangled shut by the tendrils of the vines. Working against the vines’ tenacious fecundity, I rocked the gate back and forth, tearing it open.
      Orange blossoms infused the air; the waxing moon illuminated my Chinaberry tree house. Sage’s luminescent eyes flashed beneath it. Frogs croaked for their mates, and dogs barked in the distance. Half running and walking the length of the back pasture, out of breath and sweating; leaning up against an Ash tree; chickens flapped their wings, roosting in the limbs. Breathless, half holding onto my cramping belly, I reached the back gate. The padlock was stuck: wrong key. I tried another, knocking the lock against the metal pole with a loud vibrating clang. Deva’s peacock wailed, and I could smell the goats.
      Pacing on the concrete ditch, waving around my black light in the tall grass, huge sewer roaches scurried. I wanted to scream, but just stomped my feet. Looking through my night vision, no Dom, only the landlord’s ornery old goats standing around, bristling with long coats. Dom had to make his way through this obstacle. Looking over at Bella’s empty corral, my chest felt heavy. Something fluttered by me; I shuddered: a bat.
      Meeting Dom would’ve been worse on irrigation night because someone on the ditch could’ve caught us. Everyone sloshing around in water, getting water in their irrigation boots. Stories circulated about adult neighbors sneaking around: somnolent zombies knocking on windows. Married neighbor men and women having affairs in the middle of irrigation night. Their spouses in a dead sleep, mouths wide open. Now I understood their desperation. I kept trying to make things better by seeing him.
      I saw Dom’s flashing light. He climbed over the chain link fence, jumped across the irrigation ditch, grabbed and kissed me.
      “Brisa, baby,” he said, stroking my arm.
      I felt better hearing his voice and hugging him.
      “You feel good.”
      “Right there,” he said, as we pressed our bodies up against each other. “Baby, you’re hot.”
      I reached to stroke his dark ponytail, but felt emptiness. I could feel his probation ankle bracelet against my leg. He smelled like alcohol.
      He picked some berries off the vine, looking over the fence.
      “I can’t believe she buried her horse in her back pasture,” he said, laughing.
      “It’s nothing to laugh about.”
      His comment along with his hickey really pissed me off.
      “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
      “Bella could be in a bottle of Elmer’s glue or in a can of dog food as we speak.”
      We heard some barn owls screech. Dom and I took turns watching the owls lighting between our palm trees. My father never cut the palm fronds, so it was awesome nesting for the owls and hawks. We talked about climbing up to my tree house for the neighborhood view.
      With our flashlights pointed down, we walked beneath the stars and trees through my back pasture.
      “Careful, you first,” he said, flashing the light around. “I’ll catch you,” he said, slowly climbing a couple of wooden rungs behind me, holding onto the flashlight and me.
      I grasped the rungs. Sure. I wondered what else he had done with the girl.
      Inside the tree house, I turned my black light on.
      Florescent rose and violet horses leapt out at us; metallic and green primordial symbols spiraled; and a peacock feather waved on the wall.
      “This is dope up here.” Lascaux , Surrealism, and my flying dreams with Bella had been my inspiration.
      “Do you wanna paint?” I asked Dom, handing him a green paint pen. “This is what the graffiti artists I know use.”
      I pulled the sketch of Bella out of my pocket, picked up a florescent rose pen, and started drawing her on one of the walls.
      I felt the faint whinny of a neighbor’s horse shudder through me.
      Dom grabbed an art book from a stack, flipping through it. “This guy must smoke the same shit I do,” he said, pointing to a Marc Chagall.
      “That’s him and his wife. She was Bella too.”
      “They’re tripping in this picture,” he said. “I’ve seen a rose colored mist coming from the horse’s grave.”
      “Rose. What’s that shit cut with?”
      “Nothin’. Just what everyone smokes around here. The goats, horses, and dogs were breathing it out.”
      “See if it’s there now.”
      I handed Dom the night vision.
      “The rose mist was like spiritual.”
      He’d been locked up in detention a couple of times; all they had to do with their free time was lifting weights, writing, and reading. He liked reading spiritual books.
      “So do you see it now?”
      “No,” Dom said.
      “Take a look,” he said, handing the binoculars to me.
      Through the lenses, Deva fluttered across her pasture in her white gown.
      “She’s sexy for an old lady,” Dom said.
      Deva was a saint as sweet as Lady Godiva.
      He reached behind me, touching my breasts over my t-shirt. I was in no mood and moved away. I could’ve easily slapped him.
      “Come on Brisa, you never give me anything.”
      “Yes, I have.”
      “We haven’t done that much,” he laughed.
      He really pissed me off by trivializing our relationship.
      Looking through the night vision, I saw Deva out by Bella’s grave. Then I saw Ray, climbing over his fence. He wrapped his arm around her and led her back to her house. Sweet Ray. I heard her back screen porch door slam shut. I told Dom I was tired and walked him back to the gate.
      Dom’s UA came back dirty, and he got locked up. He wrote me, and I didn’t write him back. Everything got worse, I went between not wanting to do anything to being up all hours of the night making art. Sometimes all I could do is hold Sage.
      My dad took me to a psychiatrist. She and the other practitioners in her practice worked with me using psychotherapy and minimal meds. I did yoga and art with other girls in therapy. In group, we talked about our problems, and I didn’t feel so alone. Girls told stories that broke my heart. I wore a small glass flask knotted necklace my father gave me. I filled it with lavender oil and untwisted the amulet to inhale, calming me.
      At the end of the summer, I trudged across my back pasture, in about a foot of water, wearing my black rubber irrigation boots and cutoffs. I slipped a fallen strap of my camisole back on my shoulder and saw Deva. She was wearing a straw hat, t-shirt, and jeans, splashing through the water in her boots. She carried a rake, holding it with her cotton gloved hands. I pulled on my pink ball cap, touching my amulet, afraid to wave, but took a risk, and she waved back for the first time after Bella’s death. I was elated.
      Standing on the ditch, I watched the water swirl into the irrigation ports, while I hung onto the chain link fence.
      “How ya doing, Brisa?” She opened her gate, walked out on the ditch, leaning her rake on the fence.
      “Good. How ‘bout you?”
      “Better,” she said, taking her hat off, fanning herself. “Ray and my nurse practitioner helped me get through a hard time.”
      She stretched her arms out to me, and I hugged her tight. Around us, some trumpet vines weaved through Chinese Elms, bursting pink. Silver threads flashed through her long dark hair. We turned and faced Belladonna’s grave. The flowers I left for Bella were still there–singed by the sun.
      “Along with losing Bella, I just about lost myself,” she said, wiping sweat off her brow with a handkerchief. “My mother called it the change.”
      “You seem too young for that.”
      “It took me by surprise,” she said. “Thanks for the food and flowers. I framed the picture of Bella.”
      “Awesome.”
      We talked and raked up leaves and various fruit in stages of decay. Some of the goats chewed on grass, watching us. A couple of goats rammed and butted heads, making a loud smacking noise.

The End

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