Among us, her…Kuskuska, otherwise known as Jane. In Hopi, it means Lost: named after the locus of our previous existence, the world from which we’ve just fallen; known, don’t ask why, as Kuskurza. She waits in the line, which is according to many, if you ask them and even if you don’t, the longest, most crowded arm of the swastika, to the liquorstore and from it, impatient for it to open after its enforced Shabbos closing, sitting sidesaddle on the recliner in the flatbed its tire now replaced, her feet surrounded by wildflowers, sienna and sepia dead. She stops her singing only to mock a yodel at Kokuiena, also known as Dick, her kin at the wheel and not going anywhere, idling, wasting gas, exhorts him to just honk the horn, will you, spook the horses, those strawberry roans and pregnant rasps she’s sure are to blame for slowing everything down up ahead; how she won’t turn around, though, and face front to get an idea of what lies in store, or else to envy, to covet those closer: how she only faces the rear and smiles her fortune despite bad dentistry at the poor parching behind her. A noxious wind’s up, waft of el chupacabra’s stank breath, the icy abrego of a season displaced, thick with sand and debris, fear and hate, and, God, when you think about it, the next world isn’t the last of the worlds or her problems, they won’t be…there are more to come, too many, she’s had it already, enough. We’ll never make it, not us. Kokuiena leans out the window and turns to Kuskuska and asks her with his sorrel eyes, pleadingly, like I know all that myth shtick and the government and the wars, hymn, unemployment, privation, martyrology’s ganze geschichte but, nu, sis, how’d we ever end up like this. Worlded. Take a number. Get in line. But Kuskuska’s lost in her own, thinking maybe, just maybe, give me one good why not and she’ll light out for Phoenix: temping receptionist, secretary, maybe get into the hospitality racket, a moon or two getting settled and who knows she might even make waitress or maid, the aboriginal who checks coats; anything to get out of here, far enough away from Hotevilla and environs and, gevalt, she has no idea how to even begin telling her brother a thing like that.
