Deming, New Mexico
by Jean-Marie Saporito
I’m driving on a diagonal road that latches Hatch to Deming on my way to a Best Western Hotel. I need to break up the 900 miles between Taos and San Diego, where I’ll attend a conference with three thousand other women. There, we’ll chew on our powerlessness and a god that none of us understand. A palette of winnowed ochre colored earth, silver sage, and withered cholla floods the miles around me. Low dried grasses shiver from the desert’s constant exhale. In the distance, volcanic plateaus sketch a horizon of stillness across the sky.
A train, destination unknown to me, sweeps alongside, traveling in the opposite direction. Its box cars are splattered with thick whips of paint. Blue, red, orange, and black streak through the dusty sky—a momentary reprieve from the bleakness. Creosote oozes from the railroad ties beneath an unblinking sun.
My car’s tires rotate on the smooth asphalt and send a low-level hum to my inner thighs. The seat warmer is turned up and the windows are rolled down. The parched air irritates my eyes. My book club’s pick, All Fours by Miranda July, plays on my car stereo. July reads in a monotone voice that reminds me of the spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle. Her masturbation scenes are especially well-written. I crave relief from this forlorn landscape and wonder how long until I arrive at my hotel.
The Mexican border is thirty-five miles south. I fall behind a dilapidated cargo van with a cracked back window. The van moves five miles below the speed limit which is 15 miles slower than I’ve been traveling. This involuntary pacing gives me the opportunity to observe a field of massive concrete slabs, several stories high and wide. One after another, they line up erect like dominoes in this barren eternity. These slabs, seemingly purposeless yet menacing, could crush bone and hope without a thought.
The tread on the van’s tires is worn thin. The men inside crowd next to one another. They wear the wide-brimmed hats of field laborers. Through the back window caked with dirt, I wonder if I actually see the wet of their toil dripping from their faces’ creases or if I just feel it. I wonder if wondering if these men are Mexican makes me a racist or a realist. I wonder what these men think about walls.
The van turns south and I continue west. I pass dozens of abandoned train cars, their tops decapitated, their wheels rusted to death.
I scribble notes for this essay on a coffee filter, the only paper I find as I drive, but now I can’t read what I’ve written. Something about these miles being leached of color, something about the shrunken soul of god.
Once, my brother Richie scribbled a note. This was in September 2020, six months into Covid-19, and right before he attempted, but did not succeed, in committing suicide. He called from the ICU in New York and tried to convince me that he’d merely gotten messed up on some medications he’d taken. But his doctor came clean. Richie had been unconscious for three days with rhabdomyolysis, a condition of bodily decay. It was then that I knew he’d meant to kill himself. After Richie was released from the psychiatric hospital, he destroyed this scribbled note. I called him often to check on him. In one of these phone calls, he told me about the note he’d written. In it, he’d disparaged the state of our diseased country, our decaying planet, and Trump. But an election was coming, and I clung to hope, the color of blue. My brother did not. That following January, in the weeks that followed Richie’s successful suicide, not by the train in Deming, but by another, my only comfort was that Trump had been voted out of the White House.
Today, in 2025, Trump is back. Richie is not.
At the Best Western, I ride the elevator and notice its last inspection was in 2024. Scuff marks mar the elevator’s aluminum walls. Pebbles clog the doorway’s molding.
My room’s carpet is infested with history: mysterious food bits, toe jam, dried fluids, some carnal, and some not. This clashes with the room’s Keurig pods of echinacea tea. Or maybe the idea is to give immunity from this history in the making.
I google the internet for images of the wall that’s being erected at the border. I discover it’s not made of concrete slabs, but rather chain link topped with big loops of razor wire. I don’t know if I can trust google because it’s been misnaming bodies of water. What’s next? Land?
While searching for photos of the wall, I learn that here in Deming, in 2013, a colonoscopy was performed on a man to search for drugs—a cavity probe in the extreme. Coincidentally, this man’s last name was Eckert. Different spelling, though, and no relation to the spiritual teacher. According to the several accounts I read, the officers alleged that this medical procedure was warranted because Mr. Eckert’s butt cheeks were clenched.
I ride the elevator down, then up, then down to ferry all my bags from the car to my room. I don’t travel light. While waiting for the elevator car, I overhear two housekeepers praising Jesus. I don’t have anything against Jesus, per se, and believe if he walked among us today, he would be appalled at the White House’s choices that consistently use his name in vain, break Moses’s Ten Commandments, and misinterpret holy words. As I listen to these twenty-somethings, a fist of fear jams into the back of my throat, worrying that their version of Jesus might be the same as the White House’s. I force my butt cheeks to stay loose.
I call a nurse friend to discuss this colonoscopy drug search. She asks me if I think they used anesthesia. Jeez is all I can say. Mr. Eckert sued the Deming police department for 1.6 million dollars. A colonoscopy without anesthesia is a sobering thought.
Any arousal that I’d felt earlier in the day, thanks to July’s descriptive writing, has disappeared. There’s nothing titillating about a colonoscopy.
The Sunrise Café’s menu is on my hotel room’s desk. Though I won’t venture out into Deming, I peruse their selections. One of the breakfast offerings, oat meal, is spelled with two words. Was this misspelling intentional or accidental? Will some government official call this an act of treason? Use it as a cause for a butt search?
I’m convinced that not everyone in Deming is unhinged. I base this on the echinacea Keurig pods found in my hotel room.
The next morning I eat almond butter smeared on rice cakes while looking south through the hotel window foggy with filth. I let bits of rice fall into the carpet. I intentionally grind them into the pile with my shoe. Whether or not I like it, I’m part of this history.
I have little to do on my drive on the 10 freeway besides listen to All Fours, so I practice clenching and unclenching my butt cheeks. The muscles involved are adjacent to the ones I squeeze when I do Kegels to strengthen my pelvic floor.
When I worked as a nurse, I learned that the release of CO2 from a patient’s colon post-colonoscopy can be facilitated by kneeling on all fours and then stretching into the yoga position of child’s pose. I’ve had patients shiver sweat over the discomfort of gas in their colons.
The semi-famous artist in All Fours checks herself into a nondescript hotel room in Monrovia, California, and then spends $20,000 redecorating the room. The room’s palette of beige and brown reminds me of the landscape I’ve left behind. Pink, burgundy, and a dash of salmon morph the room’s feeling of desperation into one of hope. The sumptuous carpet caresses bare toes. Italian tile is grouted onto the bathroom floor. I picture myself holed up in that Deming hotel room looking through the dirty window at the barren landscape and decide god’s palette must have gone dry. I wonder if I’d eventually write as well as Miranda July, if I had stayed in Deming.
In book club, we discuss the semi-famous artist who lied to her husband and child for two weeks while redecorating the Monrovia hotel room. We examine her character and morals and why she did, what she did. I’m disappointed that no one wants to talk about the masturbation scenes.
Most of the book club women don’t like this character at all. I, on the other hand, could see us as friends. I understand the desire to be godlike, to transform despair into faith simply by the stroke of a brush saturated with color.
A train, destination unknown to me, sweeps alongside, traveling in the opposite direction. Its box cars are splattered with thick whips of paint. Blue, red, orange, and black streak through the dusty sky—a momentary reprieve from the bleakness. Creosote oozes from the railroad ties beneath an unblinking sun.
My car’s tires rotate on the smooth asphalt and send a low-level hum to my inner thighs. The seat warmer is turned up and the windows are rolled down. The parched air irritates my eyes. My book club’s pick, All Fours by Miranda July, plays on my car stereo. July reads in a monotone voice that reminds me of the spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle. Her masturbation scenes are especially well-written. I crave relief from this forlorn landscape and wonder how long until I arrive at my hotel.
The Mexican border is thirty-five miles south. I fall behind a dilapidated cargo van with a cracked back window. The van moves five miles below the speed limit which is 15 miles slower than I’ve been traveling. This involuntary pacing gives me the opportunity to observe a field of massive concrete slabs, several stories high and wide. One after another, they line up erect like dominoes in this barren eternity. These slabs, seemingly purposeless yet menacing, could crush bone and hope without a thought.
The tread on the van’s tires is worn thin. The men inside crowd next to one another. They wear the wide-brimmed hats of field laborers. Through the back window caked with dirt, I wonder if I actually see the wet of their toil dripping from their faces’ creases or if I just feel it. I wonder if wondering if these men are Mexican makes me a racist or a realist. I wonder what these men think about walls.
The van turns south and I continue west. I pass dozens of abandoned train cars, their tops decapitated, their wheels rusted to death.
I scribble notes for this essay on a coffee filter, the only paper I find as I drive, but now I can’t read what I’ve written. Something about these miles being leached of color, something about the shrunken soul of god.
Once, my brother Richie scribbled a note. This was in September 2020, six months into Covid-19, and right before he attempted, but did not succeed, in committing suicide. He called from the ICU in New York and tried to convince me that he’d merely gotten messed up on some medications he’d taken. But his doctor came clean. Richie had been unconscious for three days with rhabdomyolysis, a condition of bodily decay. It was then that I knew he’d meant to kill himself. After Richie was released from the psychiatric hospital, he destroyed this scribbled note. I called him often to check on him. In one of these phone calls, he told me about the note he’d written. In it, he’d disparaged the state of our diseased country, our decaying planet, and Trump. But an election was coming, and I clung to hope, the color of blue. My brother did not. That following January, in the weeks that followed Richie’s successful suicide, not by the train in Deming, but by another, my only comfort was that Trump had been voted out of the White House.
Today, in 2025, Trump is back. Richie is not.
At the Best Western, I ride the elevator and notice its last inspection was in 2024. Scuff marks mar the elevator’s aluminum walls. Pebbles clog the doorway’s molding.
My room’s carpet is infested with history: mysterious food bits, toe jam, dried fluids, some carnal, and some not. This clashes with the room’s Keurig pods of echinacea tea. Or maybe the idea is to give immunity from this history in the making.
I google the internet for images of the wall that’s being erected at the border. I discover it’s not made of concrete slabs, but rather chain link topped with big loops of razor wire. I don’t know if I can trust google because it’s been misnaming bodies of water. What’s next? Land?
While searching for photos of the wall, I learn that here in Deming, in 2013, a colonoscopy was performed on a man to search for drugs—a cavity probe in the extreme. Coincidentally, this man’s last name was Eckert. Different spelling, though, and no relation to the spiritual teacher. According to the several accounts I read, the officers alleged that this medical procedure was warranted because Mr. Eckert’s butt cheeks were clenched.
I ride the elevator down, then up, then down to ferry all my bags from the car to my room. I don’t travel light. While waiting for the elevator car, I overhear two housekeepers praising Jesus. I don’t have anything against Jesus, per se, and believe if he walked among us today, he would be appalled at the White House’s choices that consistently use his name in vain, break Moses’s Ten Commandments, and misinterpret holy words. As I listen to these twenty-somethings, a fist of fear jams into the back of my throat, worrying that their version of Jesus might be the same as the White House’s. I force my butt cheeks to stay loose.
I call a nurse friend to discuss this colonoscopy drug search. She asks me if I think they used anesthesia. Jeez is all I can say. Mr. Eckert sued the Deming police department for 1.6 million dollars. A colonoscopy without anesthesia is a sobering thought.
Any arousal that I’d felt earlier in the day, thanks to July’s descriptive writing, has disappeared. There’s nothing titillating about a colonoscopy.
The Sunrise Café’s menu is on my hotel room’s desk. Though I won’t venture out into Deming, I peruse their selections. One of the breakfast offerings, oat meal, is spelled with two words. Was this misspelling intentional or accidental? Will some government official call this an act of treason? Use it as a cause for a butt search?
I’m convinced that not everyone in Deming is unhinged. I base this on the echinacea Keurig pods found in my hotel room.
The next morning I eat almond butter smeared on rice cakes while looking south through the hotel window foggy with filth. I let bits of rice fall into the carpet. I intentionally grind them into the pile with my shoe. Whether or not I like it, I’m part of this history.
I have little to do on my drive on the 10 freeway besides listen to All Fours, so I practice clenching and unclenching my butt cheeks. The muscles involved are adjacent to the ones I squeeze when I do Kegels to strengthen my pelvic floor.
When I worked as a nurse, I learned that the release of CO2 from a patient’s colon post-colonoscopy can be facilitated by kneeling on all fours and then stretching into the yoga position of child’s pose. I’ve had patients shiver sweat over the discomfort of gas in their colons.
The semi-famous artist in All Fours checks herself into a nondescript hotel room in Monrovia, California, and then spends $20,000 redecorating the room. The room’s palette of beige and brown reminds me of the landscape I’ve left behind. Pink, burgundy, and a dash of salmon morph the room’s feeling of desperation into one of hope. The sumptuous carpet caresses bare toes. Italian tile is grouted onto the bathroom floor. I picture myself holed up in that Deming hotel room looking through the dirty window at the barren landscape and decide god’s palette must have gone dry. I wonder if I’d eventually write as well as Miranda July, if I had stayed in Deming.
In book club, we discuss the semi-famous artist who lied to her husband and child for two weeks while redecorating the Monrovia hotel room. We examine her character and morals and why she did, what she did. I’m disappointed that no one wants to talk about the masturbation scenes.
Most of the book club women don’t like this character at all. I, on the other hand, could see us as friends. I understand the desire to be godlike, to transform despair into faith simply by the stroke of a brush saturated with color.