What the Moon Saw (14 page)

“Mommy!” I called inside. “How come I only have Grand-mom and Pop-pop, and Allison has four?”

“You have four also, hon,” she called back. “The other two live far away.” She started loading the dirty dishes from the sink. Her hair was long then, and she wore it in a high ponytail that bounced around as she moved.

“I want to see them!” What I really meant was
I want presents from them!

Her ponytail stopped bouncing and she walked to the sliding glass door, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Tell that to Daddy, Clara,” she said softly. “They’re his own mommy and daddy. He hasn’t seen them for almost fifteen years.” She looked at me through thick glasses that made her sad eyes look twice their normal size.

Imagine not seeing your parents for so long! I sat outside on the balcony, watching water drip from the rail, sipping my orangeade. The smell of rain blended with the shoe polish odor from the box of stained rags that Dad kept under the lawn chair.
Poor Daddy.

Every once in a while another wave of sadness would hit me, usually at times when Dad was hurt. Once he slipped on the ice in the driveway and couldn’t get up until I came over and helped him. Another time he got twenty-three hornet stings from a nest he disturbed out back. He ran into the house with panicked eyes, and his whole body grew redder and more swollen by the second. Or, the most recent time, in May, when I walked in the sliding glass door at four a.m. and saw him standing in the shadows, his face wet. For the past couple of years, whenever a feeling of tenderness would float up to the surface, I’d try to push it back down again, like an inner tube that you jump on, and for a moment it goes underwater, but it always rises up again.

Here’s the last thing he said to me, at the airport, while we stood by my pile of bags, waiting to board: “Clara, from the moment I crossed that border, I put all my memories of home in a box and sealed it shut. For almost twenty-five years the memories moved around inside, pressing on the walls, leaking out here and there. When you left the house that night, the box exploded, and all the memories shot out and lodged themselves all over—in our house, our yard, our furniture, on me, on you. And since then I can’t look anywhere without seeing a memory, and I know I will never be able to collect them all together and shut them in again.”

Over the loudspeaker, they announced rows fifteen through twenty-four. I was row nineteen. Mom hurried over from the gate where she’d been giving the flight attendant special instructions about me and began picking up my bags. “Get your ticket ready, sweetie. You’ve got your wallet? Your travelers’ checks? The credit card?” and on and on, while Dad hugged me and whispered, “Clara—you’re my pathway home.”

Abuelita yanked a giant weed out of the soil, then paused to wipe the sweat from her forehead. Her hand left a small streak of mud just under her hairline. I didn’t say anything about it—I thought it looked nice. I pulled out a few small weeds, careful not to disturb the roots of the chamomile flowers. I tossed them onto our pile of wilting leaves, which was growing into a small mountain.

Yesterday I’d felt like one of these uprooted weeds, but this morning I’d helped fix a tasty breakfast and washed the dishes and fed Loro and done a pile of laundry, and all this made me feel useful. I didn’t even care that the harsh laundry and dish soap made my hands red and swollen and sore. Today, I decided, instead of wandering around the mountains, I would help Abuelita. And of course there was another reason: I was afraid of seeing Pedro, afraid he would say hi in a cold voice with a cold face, or worse, that he might not say hi at all.

I glanced up at Abuelita again. With the soil on her forehead, she seemed part of the garden. I imagined her when she was a girl, ripped away from her land, an uprooted plant in the city without a single person who cared about her.

“Abuelita.” I paused and sat on my heels. “How did you get out of the city?”

She wiped her forehead with the other hand now. It made a matching streak. She sat back on her heels, facing me. “I left alone, in the moonlight.” She laughed, tilted back her head, and looked at the sky for a moment.

Moonlight. I smiled and picked some dirt out of my fingernails and waited.

“First, Clara, you must know more about Silvia. More about doña Carmen. And most of all, you must know about a particular three-toothed woman. And then,
mi amor,
the moonlight…”

Helena

W
INTER TO
S
PRING
1938

“I
wish that bird would hush up!” Silvia was in a dark mood.

Loro ignored her and kept whistling his good-morning song.

“It’s not even lunchtime yet and I’m already bored.” She pushed her lips out in a pout.

“¡Ánimo,
Silvia!” Loro shrieked. Lighten up!

I tried to hide my laughter. I was feeling happy, humming and washing the breakfast dishes in the yard. Breathing in the freshness of the morning. Watching light bounce off bubbles. It reminded me of the forest by my village, the way the sunlight shone through the leaves at this time of day.

Silvia stomped over to Loro and held her fist up as Uncle did when he was angry.
“Hush! Up!”

Loro opened his beak wide and let out a cackle of laughter. A cackle like the shriek of a trumpet. Silvia jumped and backed away.

“Silvia, why don’t you like Loro?” I asked. “I’d be happy to have a bird like him.” I scraped my spoon at some hardened rice stuck to the bottom of the pot.

“He’s a devil bird. He makes my nerves twitch, the way he screams.” After a pause she added, “Papá gave him to me as a gift. At first I liked him. Then I found out that Papá had a new mistress—the woman who sells birds at the market. Why should I be nice to a bird that came from her?” She made a face at Loro. Curled up her lip, bugged out her eyes. How ugly she could make herself look.

“But Loro’s not to blame,” I said.

She shrugged. “I can’t wait to leave this family. Like my older brothers and sisters did. I’ll leave and never come back.” Everything about her was sharp. Her nose, her eyes, her pointy chin, her narrow lips. The words shot out of her mouth like hard bits of hail.

“You’re lucky to have a mother and father at all,” I said, putting the last of the dishes into the rack. “My parents died.”

She ignored me. “Thanks to Papá I have skin like a coat of dirt. People think I’m from the country. That I speak an Indian language. Someone thought I was a maid once. That’s why I always wear fancy dresses at the market now. And powder my face white.”

She smoothed the ruffles of her skirt. The satin sash had come undone. She turned her back to me and snapped her fingers. “Tie it,
muchacha.
”

I wiped my hands on my
huipil
and tried to even out the bow. She’d been making me tie her sashes more often lately. And braiding her hair. Why, I wondered. To be close to me? Uncle used to do something like that. He would stand by the kitchen door and criticize Aunt Teresa’s cooking. The tortillas were always too small, the meat too salty, the sauce too spicy. Really, I think he was lonely. Lonely because people kept a distance from him. But he wanted someone to listen.

Silvia kept talking. “Every time I pass a beggar child I think,
That could be a half brother or sister of mine.
You,
muchacha,
you could be one.”

“I am not,” I said quietly. My parents’ love for each other was famous in my village. Two lovebirds. One could not survive without the other.

Silvia craned her neck around to check the bow. It must have looked good enough because she didn’t make me redo it.

I turned from her and tore up a leftover tortilla for Loro. In Mixteco I whispered to him, “Don’t mind that girl’s harsh words, Loro. I could listen to you sing for all my life.”

“Don’t talk about me!” Silvia snapped. “And stop speaking that Indian language!” Into the house she stormed.

“¡Ánimo!”
Loro called after her.

Oh, there was so much evil air inside that house. I had to give myself
limpias
to clean my spirit. I used leaves from hidden
ruda
bushes I’d planted next to the avocado tree. Really, I should have given a
limpia
to the house, but Silvia protested. “Mamá! Don’t let her do those devil Indian things!”

Little by little, Silvia and doña Carmen were pushing me into a corner. Something was going to happen. Just before a storm begins, the air smells of thunder. This is what I felt. The first drop of the storm was when doña Carmen started paying my wages late. The tenth month she did not pay me at all.

One afternoon in the eleventh month, I decided it was time. Time to demand my money and stand up for myself. I brought her a bowl of rice pudding she’d ordered and set it down in front of her. Politely, I said to her, “Doña Carmen, excuse me, but you haven’t paid me this month.”

“Ay, girl, leave me alone now. Can’t you see I’m eating?”

There I waited, outside the door of her bedroom. I waited and waited, until she finished every last bit of pudding. My heart beat fast as I took her empty bowl. “Now, could you please pay me?”

Her jaw dropped at my boldness. Then her lips twisted into a smirk. “Later. I’m taking a nap.” She stretched her mouth into a fake yawn.

A week passed. Every day, doña Carmen fanned the coals of my anger more and more. She fanned the anger I had tried to bury under ashes, hoping to smother it. And now the anger threatened to burst into flames. When I talked to another maid about it at the market, she said, “Be glad the
señora
doesn’t beat you.” I couldn’t help smiling at that. Imagine the effort doña Carmen would have to make just to haul her body out of the armchair! Then imagine the effort it would take for her to raise up her great arms and hit me. No, she would collapse in a pool of sweat, gasping for breath.

“I won’t let her treat me this way,” I said. “She’s no better than me. We all eat from the same tortilla.”

“What are you going to do?” the maid asked.

“I’ll think about it.” And I thought. The next morning, I washed the piles of clothes that never stopped coming. And as I washed, I whispered to Loro, “I could just take the money she owes me. But then I’d be fired. Or worse.”

Then, even though it made me shudder, I thought of the curses I’d heard of in my village. “I could put a sharp rock into her belly. Make her roll with pain. Or I could steal her soul so she’s left with no will. Or make a snake bite her.” All the herbs I needed were with me. If I saved chicken bones from the next meal and collected blood from the fresh-killed goats at the market, then I could do the curse.

Loro gave a shrill cry, a cry that pulled me out of the dark hole I was sinking into.

“You’re right, Loro,” I said, feeling ashamed. “I’m a healer. I harm no one.”

At that moment doña Carmen came out of the house. She was huffing like an old burro under her load of dresses and shirts. She dumped them on top of the pile. “Do these. And make them white this time.”

I took a deep breath. “Not until you give me the money you owe me.”

She looked at me as though I’d slapped her. “Never…
never
tell me what to do, girl. You are nothing. You are”—and she looked around the ground—“you are this ant under my shoe.” She raised her fat foot over a long line of ants. Each ant carried a piece of yellow petal ten times its size. She smashed down her foot. “That is how little you mean to me. How little you mean to this world. Now wash the clothes, girl.”

I obeyed her. But the blood rushed to my face, blood full of heat and fury. Again, I began planning the terrible curses I would put on her.

The next day, I came back from the market carrying a basket of meat. I opened the gate, swatting the flies away. Inside the courtyard were doña Carmen, don Manuel, and two policemen, one short and round like a hog, and the other lanky as a hungry horse.

Before I could say a word, doña Carmen snatched the basket from my hands. The policemen grabbed me by the elbows.

“You’re under arrest,” the stout one said. He forced my wrists behind my back. With a rope he tied them together.

“For what?” I had trouble finding the words in Spanish.

“You know what.”

But I’d decided not to curse her! Had my powers spun out of my control?

“For stealing,” the taller one said finally.

“Stealing what?” I thought of the leftover tortillas and meat scraps I’d brought to the prison. My pulse quickened.

“Don’t play stupid,
señorita,
” he said. “Stealing the
señora
’s ring. She found it hidden in your bag of herbs.”

“But I didn’t.” I looked around for help. My eyes rested on don Manuel.

He shrugged. “My wife says you did.” His gaze moved to his boots.

I looked at doña Carmen, but she, too, refused to meet my eyes. Flies buzzed around the meat basket she held. What a vulture she was, what a fat vulture.

I tried to keep my voice steady. “I don’t know how her ring appeared in my bag. But I did not hide it there.” Desperate, I searched for a kind face. Loro stayed quiet and solemn, as though he were praying at Mass.

“Doña Carmen says your actions have been suspicious for a long time,” the thin policeman said. “She says you’ve stolen pastries from her too.” With dull eyes, he watched my reaction.

I bit my lip to hold back tears. No one believed me. I was as helpless as an ant after all.

“First the pastries. Now the ring,” the short one grunted. He nodded, and the rolls of skin beneath his chin jiggled.

With that, they led me to the gate. I looked back at Loro. Beyond him, Silvia stood in the shadows of the doorway. Half hidden, she watched us, with narrowed, bitter eyes.

“You will stay here until your trial,” the guard said. He guided me down the hallway toward the cell. His face looked pale and sickly. Crescents hung, deep and purple, below his eyes. The building smelled cold, like death.

Stay calm,
I told myself.
Stay calm. Remember the spirits of your mother, your father, the jaguar. Remember that all the time, they are here, protecting you.
“When is the trial?” I asked.

“Who knows.” He hacked up a glob of phlegm and spit it onto the floor. “Depends how fast the judge hears all the other cases. Could be a week. Could be a month. Six months.”

Six months? “And what if they find me guilty?” I asked quietly.

“For stealing a ring? Who knows. Depends if the judge is having a bad day. One year. Ten years.” He coughed and spit again. The packed-dirt floor was spotted with mucus.