Free The Salt God's Daughter by Ilie Ruby

the Joshua trees. Finally, my mother got up and grabbed her almanac. She paced while she read. Dolly handed her a pen from the glove compartment, and my mother scribbled a note. She drew her finger across the right-hand page and landed on something. The moon and sun had conspired to create a solar eclipse, which we’d wait for. This was something spiritual. “Someone does give a lick about my life,” she said.
    A few minutes later, we watched the moon blot out the sun’s blinding rays, darkening the daylight for a few minutes. My mother stood up suddenly. “Someone get me my lipstick. I want everything perfect when I tell you where we’re going next.”
    I ran to the car and rifled through the glove compartment. I found the silver medallion of St. Augustine, pictured with a flaming heart. I had shoved it in there months earlier after a nun put it in my hand. I would later learn that St. Augustine was the patron saint of brewers, and this medallion was sometimes given to folks struggling with addiction.
    We watched my mother gulp down the last of the whiskey. “I don’t know if Jews are supposed to wear patron-saint medallions,” she said. Still, I hooked the silver chain around her neck. It dangled beneath her Jewish-star pendant.
    â€œHe’s the saint of a good-luck life,” Dolly lied.
    My mother peered into the side mirror and applied a layer of bright red lipstick. Beauty—it was her greatest vice.
    She gazed out at the sprawling desert. “Do I look okay?” For what , I wondered. We were all drenched in sweat. “No one’s gonna steal my husband from me again. Ruthie, run back and get my guitar. I don’t want to leave it in the sun.”
    I ran back and grabbed my mother’s guitar. Sometimes she called it “the husband” because she liked to curl up with it at night.

    â€œWell,” said Dolly, hands on her hips, “there’s no one on this farkakte road, so we can’t hitch.”
    â€œYou girls,” my mother said, passing us with her guitar case, her pink muumuu billowing in the heat.
    That afternoon we walked for ten miles, until we hit a gas station. As we passed by the cacti, dirt, and rocks, I imagined a hillside of burning Joshua trees.
    Our beautiful mother met a mensch. We had watched his wife get out of their red Camaro, stamping off to the side of the gas station to smoke a cigarette. She had kicked off her black high heels and leaned her back against the wall. She blew her cigarette smoke out in a long straight line. My mother said it was a hot day to be wearing that heavy red suit. And in heels, no less. “She not happy. I’m going to talk to her.”
    She was an angel, my mother.
    I could see the woman running her fingers through her straight brown hair. I ran over to my mother, who had bummed a cigarette.
    â€œIt’s not that we can’t afford that car. He got a deal—he says—from a friend. You know, he doesn’t make squat as a health inspector. It’s just that he spent all our vacation money on that car but he can’t scrape together two nickels to take me out to a proper lunch. One vacation, that’s all I wanted, and he takes me to In-N-Out Burger for a Double-Double. It’s all the way in Baldwin Park, the flagship store with two drive-thrus. I said, ‘Take me to the Sands Restaurant, for the love of God. I want to sit in a nice dining room with cloth napkins and look out at the ocean!’ Is that so much to ask?”
    My mother’s ears perked up. “Health inspector, what a fascinating job.”
    â€œI wouldn’t want to do it. By the way, my name is Sasha.” She shrugged and took a long drag of her cigarette. “I’m sorry. I just unloaded all this on you, poor thing. You go on. I’m going
to smoke another cigarette and figure out where I want to go for my vacation.”
    â€œNo, no. I completely understand. My husband is