What the Moon Saw (17 page)

I spit out the toothpaste, rinsed my mouth, and wiped my face on the sleeve of my sweatshirt. Through the banana leaves, the wind made a soft rushing sound, light as someone’s breath. The
shhhhhhhh
made me think of the hidden waterfall. One month left to find it. I walked to my room slowly, following my long moon shadow, looking back every few steps, back toward Pedro’s house.

In bed more words of his songs came to me.
Nighttime flowers.
Flowers that you can smell only at night. The scent of flowers like souls, something you can’t touch, something hidden in the night, something you find if you are brave enough to go into the darkness, into strange territory. I had found Pedro’s soul and he had found mine, but then, somehow, we’d lost track of them. All these thoughts and words and songs darted around my head like hummingbirds until I fell asleep.

The next morning while we were sipping chamomile tea after breakfast, Loro
sang
! I’d heard birds sing with whistles and chirps before, but never with words. And best of all, I recognized the words—it was the rabbit-in-the-moon song.

“Dad sang that song to me when I was little,” I announced, once Loro had finished.

“He probably learned it from Loro,” Abuelo said, grinning.

“Or from me,” Abuelita said. Her voice wavered a little. Her gaze sank down to her cup. “I used to sing it to him. Before I’d put him to bed.”

“Where did you learn it?” I asked her.

“Doña Three Teeth.” Abuelita took a deep breath, raised her head, and offered us the next piece of the puzzle of her life.

Helena

S
PRING
1938

A
fter my first night in jail, I awoke to a square of light shining through the window, right onto my cheek. Doña Three Teeth slept soundly beside me. I stood up and stretched my back, stiff and sore. I pressed my face against the bars and breathed in the fresh morning smell. People breezed by on their way to market. A mother pulled her curious children away from the bars. “No!” she warned. “Dirty!” A few people I recognized passed—three maids I knew from the market and two vendors.

And then, Silvia walked by. She wore a white ruffled dress with small yellow flowers. Her braid was perfectly curled around her head, every hair in place. Under her hat, her skin was powdered white, as though a sack of flour had burst in her face.

“Silvia!” I called.

She stopped in her tracks and stared ahead. I could almost hear her thoughts: Should she ignore me and keep walking, or come to the window? With every bit of strength, I willed her toward me. Oh, I willed her so hard my body shook.
Silvia, turn your head. Come over.

And she did. With her feet dragging, she came to the window. She most likely couldn’t see my face in the shadows, but she knew my voice.

“Silvia,” I said. I wished I could reach out and hold her there.

“I know you didn’t steal the ring,” she said flatly.

“Your mother planted it there, didn’t she?”

“Yes, and I hate her. What a coward.”

“Silvia. Tell this to the police. Please.”

“It’s not my problem. She doesn’t matter to me. Neither do you.” She turned to leave.

“Silvia, wait!”

She paused. The thinnest thread held her there. Oh, I had to be careful, very, very careful not to break it.

“Silvia, if you don’t tell the police,” and here I tried to keep my voice from breaking, “if you don’t tell them, I could rot in here for years.”

It seemed that a veil lifted from her face. Her eyes, for a moment, saw outward, not just inward. From her basket she plucked out a cherry pastry and handed it to me. “I’ll
think
about it.”

I gave the pastry to doña Three Teeth. She pretended to drink hot chocolate with it. There she sat like a rich lady, sipping at her imaginary cup with her little finger raised. She helped herself to imaginary seconds and thirds. You know, watching her eat the pastry was better than eating it myself. Oh, how she savored it! She licked her fingers, and laughed and laughed at such a small, rare pleasure.

That night, I decided to enter the dreams of another for the first time. When I was a child, Ta’nu had told me stories of drifting in and out of others’ dreams. After two years of training, and many soul flights, I asked Ta’nu to teach me how to enter dreams. He laughed, his eyes twinkling. “Oh, Ita. So eager, you are. But entering the dreams of another, now, that is not easy. I learned to do it much later in life, as an old man. Even now, I need two cups of sacred tea to do it. If, one day, you have a great need, you will find a way.” I had no sacred tea in the cell with me. But I did have a great need. More than a need. A desperation.

I took a long breath and looked inside myself, into my calm center. How to do this? First, I decided, I would slip out of my body. My spirit animal would know what to do after that. I had slipped out of my body many times since my first soul flight to the stream, sometimes with the sacred tea, sometimes without. Every time, I remembered the warnings Ta’nu gave me while we were eating
pitayas
under the tree. “Soul flights are dangerous, very dangerous, my child. When your spirit leaves your body, there is always the chance it will never find its way back.”

Once doña Three Teeth was snoring softly, I closed my eyes and began chanting. Very softly, I chanted. The words circled around me like a gentle whirlwind. In time, they lifted my spirit up. I hovered over my body and looked at it. There it lay, in its cotton
huipil
and skirt on the dirt floor. As always, I was surprised by the tenderness of the eyelids. The strength of the cheekbones. The full, pretty lips.

With ease I slipped through the bars, out to the deserted street. In midair I floated, calling to my jaguar spirit. A moment later, he bounded down the center of the road and stopped just beneath me. He panted, his tongue hanging out between glistening white teeth. I lowered myself and stroked his ears, smooth as fine velvet. I wrapped my arms around his thick neck and buried my face in his fur. Soon, I felt myself sinking into him.

I let myself
become
the jaguar.

On four legs, I ran down the street, around the corner, down a few more blocks, to the García López house. I sprang over the gate and landed in the dark courtyard. Loro slept soundly; he didn’t even stir as I breezed by his cage. I leaped onto the windowsill of Silvia’s bedroom and crept softly across the tile floor, my claws
tap-tap-tap
ping. Then I lay down, panting, on Silvia’s white sheets.

All night I let her soak up my presence. All night I oozed into her pores, slipped through her fluttering eyelids, came in and out of her breath, until just before dawn, when I bounded out the window, through the courtyard, up the streets, back to the prison.

Hours after the sun had risen, my eyes opened to a small patch of light through the window. Footsteps had awakened me, footsteps coming down the hall. Iron keys rattled. The door unlocked and creaked open.

“Señorita Helena,” the guard announced. “The charges are dropped. You’re free.” He cleared his throat and added in a low voice, “My apologies for the inconvenience,
señorita.
”

Doña Three Teeth was just waking up. She gave me a sleepy, sad smile.

Before I could say goodbye to her properly, the guard took me by the elbow and led me to a main room. There, doña Carmen, don Manuel, and Silvia sat in a row of wooden chairs. In a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, Silvia whispered, “Well, Mamá, aren’t you going to offer your apologies?”

Doña Carmen glared at her husband. Like a venomous snake, she spit out, “Keep your daughter under control…maybe if you were at home more…”

Don Manuel squirmed in his seat as though he’d just stepped on a red-ant hill. “Let’s go,” he mumbled, and stood up.

“Wait,” said Silvia. “My mother owes the girl some money.”

The guard rubbed his eyes. “Is this true?”

“Yes,” I said, watching doña Carmen’s face grow red as a chile pepper. “Sixty pesos, she owes me.”

“Pay her now,
señora.
” The poor guard looked tired, in no mood to argue.

“But I have no money with me. At home I’ll give her…” Doña Carmen’s voice trailed off.

“Now,”
he said. His voice was raw and hoarse.

Doña Carmen pulled forty pesos out of a pouch around her neck and looked at her husband. He sighed and pulled a few coins out of his pocket.

“Less money for you to spend around town,” she hissed at him. She snatched the money and shoved it toward me. Out the door she stormed, cursing under her breath. Don Manuel and Silvia followed her at a distance, don Manuel with his head hanging but Silvia with her head high and proud.

On the way out, I paused and whispered to the guard. “
Señor,
boil some oregano, chamomile, and garlic, then add juice of a whole lime and three spoonfuls of honey. Drink a cup of it three times a day. Your cough will be gone in days.”

He gave me a strange look.

I reached out my hand. There I held it, waiting. After a moment he touched it with his own. “Thank you, señorita Helena.” The corners of his mouth turned up in a puzzled smile. “I’ll try that.”

Outside I tilted my face to the sky and soaked up the sunshine like a lizard. Then I walked down the street to the market and bought three mangoes. One after another I ate them. How delicious, to have mango juice dripping down your chin. Yellow sunshine, blue sky, food in my stomach, and freedom.

Back at the García López house, doña Carmen went straight to her bedroom. “Pack your things and be out of this house by tomorrow morning,” she snapped at me on her way upstairs.

I smiled calmly. I unbraided my hair and brushed it out with my fingers. In a tin of cold water, I bathed myself and washed my hair, scrubbing away the stale prison odor. I slipped on my
huipil
and skirt and thought about what to do next. I could go door to door, searching for another family who might hire me as a maid. But a wave of weariness hit me, and even though it was daytime, I spread my
petate
on the kitchen floor. There I lay with my eyes closed.

“Helena,” a voice whispered just as I was floating off to sleep. I opened my eyes. Silvia was kneeling beside me, a shadow against the rectangle of bright sunlight in the doorway. “You’re not going to leave us, are you?”

“Of course I am,” I said without a pause. Did she expect me to stay?

She sighed. Her eyes looked tired, too tired for someone who had never lifted a finger to work. “Take that bird with you.”

“Silvia!” I cried, surprised. “Thank you!” I threw my arms around her. My arms wrapped around her skinny shoulders and thin neck. Her body felt stiff as an old tortilla, but she didn’t pull away. For a few moments, her face rested in my loose hair.

“Anyway, the bird would just grow ill and die without you here,” she said, standing up.

I noticed that her face looked softer somehow. She walked out of the kitchen, then stopped and turned back to me. “Your hair, Helena. It feels like fur. The fur of a cat.” She looked into my eyes for the first time. And for the first time, I saw her truly seeing me. How startling life is, sometimes. That souls can touch for a moment, like a flash of light. I wondered: Could a soul pass on a piece of its flame to another, and on and on, forever? Was my soul made of light from the souls that had touched mine? I hoped that some of my light had gone to Silvia. I was certain that doña Three Teeth’s soul had passed light to me, and that I would pass it on.

All afternoon I drifted in and out of sleep and dreamed of my grandfather. Not dreamed, exactly, but had visions. I saw him in the room with me. There he stood by the hearth, sitting in the corner, watching me.
Something is wrong with him.
He was entering my dreams the same way I’d entered Silvia’s the night before.