What the Moon Saw (18 page)

When I awoke, it was dark. Everyone else had gone to sleep. I gathered my sack of herbs and my extra clothes. Then I packed some leftover tortillas in a basket along with limes and salt. Fruit I could pick along the way.

I walked through the dark courtyard, past the flowers and trees. “Helena Helena Helena!” Loro called, shifting his feet on his perch, his feathers bristling with joy. I unlatched the door of his cage and kissed the top of his head. Piece by piece I fed him a tortilla. Then he climbed onto my arm with thick, firm claws. He shuffled up to my shoulder, and there he sat, on the long journey back to my village. And, as you know, he’s been with me ever since.

On the way out of town, I walked down the deserted street toward the jail. The full moon was rising in front of me. A long moon shadow stretched behind me. Music drifted toward me, someone singing. The voice grew louder as I grew closer. It was doña Three Teeth. At the corner of the prison I stood and listened. The song told the story of how the rabbit ended up in the moon. I watched the form of the rabbit in the moon as she sang. Oh, how sweetly she sang. How sadly. You see, when people think no one is listening, their song reveals their soul. And her soul took my breath away. It glowed as strong as a thousand hearth fires.

When the song ended I walked up to the window, where doña Three Teeth peered out. In Mixteco, I whispered,
“Ton kuaa!”
Good evening!

“Helena!” she cried. The moonlight made her face shimmer. She reached her hand out and smoothed Loro’s feathers. “And you are Loro, no?”

“¡Ánimo!”
he creaked.

She widened her eyes and smiled.

I pressed thirty pesos into her palm. “For when you leave here,” I said. Gently, I squeezed her hand.

Before she could refuse the money, I left. From behind me she called out, “
Nku ta’a vini,
Helena.” Thank you.

Much later that night I realized something. Much later, when the moon was high and small in the sky, when I was outside the city, walking along the road through the mountains. With a stab of regret, I realized that I had never asked her true name.

Ten days it took me to return to my village. Ten days, walking. Most likely there was a faster way, a shortcut through the forests, but I only knew the road we’d come on. During the days I slept. During the nights I walked. Oh, I loved this. The moon gave me enough light. And it was cooler at night, no blazing sun to sap my strength. Night-blooming flowers like
huele de noche
filled the air with their scent. I saw no man, no woman. All was peaceful and quiet except for Loro’s whistling and talking. Of course I had heard the stories of evil creatures of the night. Creatures of this world and other worlds, creatures that attacked innocent wanderers. Yet there was nothing for me to fear among the trees. This I knew. Remember, the most powerful animal of the night forest, the jaguar, would leap to my defense if anything threatened me. With this knowledge I walked with courage.

At sunrise on the tenth day, after a full night of walking, I arrived. From the mountain that towered over our village, I could see thin streams of smoke rising from the roofs in the valley. Up they rose and disappeared into the clouds. Inside the huts, the women would be starting tortillas and chamomile tea for breakfast.

I ran the rest of the way, smiling, then laughing and hollering. The basket bounced on my back and the sack bumped my thigh, but I barely noticed. My heart felt so full of joy, I thought it might explode.

I burst into the kitchen. Sunshine came through the bamboo walls and lit up María with stripes. She held a half-formed tortilla in her hand. When she saw me standing there, breathless and filthy, in the doorway, she screamed, tossed the tortilla over our heads, threw her arms around me. Both of us were laughing and crying.

Her hair pressed into my face, and I breathed in her clean, sweet smell. Over my shoulder, she screamed,
“Mother! Hurry!”

Aunt Teresa came around the corner with an armful of firewood, and when she saw me, dropped it all to the ground. She ran to me, wrapped her tortilla-dough arms around my shoulders, pressed me against her big, soft stomach. Imagine how I felt to be suddenly surrounded with so much love. It was like coming inside from a bitter rain, inside to a bright fire.

They fed me a huge breakfast, enough for three men—piles of eggs, beans, tortillas, chile sauce. “How thin you are!” they kept saying. “A sack of bones!” They heaped seconds and thirds in front of me until I could eat no more. I told them everything: about the García López family, my time in jail, doña Three Teeth. They had a thousand questions. Oh, even the tiniest details, they wanted to know. “How do the women in Oaxaca wear their hair? Where do they collect water? Where do they urinate?” And you can imagine how much they adored Loro. In minutes they’d taught him their names. They screeched with delight as he said, “Marííííía! Tereeeeeeesa!”

Finally, I grew serious. “And Ta’nu…how is he?”

“He’s very ill, Helena,” Aunt Teresa said.

“He says he’s going to die soon,” María added, somber now.

“Well, I won’t let him,” I whispered.

We sipped the hot milk in silence. Above us, in the rafters, Loro moved back and forth. Outside we heard Uncle’s footsteps, his loud yawning.

Aunt Teresa’s eyes grew big. “
Ayyyy!
We forgot to make breakfast for your father!” she said to María. “Quick, help me make more tortillas.”

Uncle José appeared in the kitchen doorway. For a moment I thought he might welcome me home. Maybe even embrace me. I should have known he wouldn’t. Still, my heart sank at his cold eyes. “What are you doing here?” he growled.

“I came to cure Ta’nu.”

“Too late. The old man says he’s going to die. Nothing you can do.”

“We’ll see,” I said. No longer did I fear Uncle. I had been in jail. I had been alone in a city where no one cared about me except for a bird. I had walked for ten days with little food. For the first time I saw Uncle clearly. Now that I no longer lived in his shadow, I saw who he truly was. A coward who bullied his daughter and wife.

“You shouldn’t have come back. You think we’re going to feed you now? That you’ll live here for free?”

“José! The girl’s tired from her journey!” Aunt Teresa said in her brave mouse voice.

He shot her a threatening look that silenced her quickly. It silenced her the way the sight of a broom makes a dog crawl away on its belly to escape a beating. My fury was rising. I pressed my lips together.

“Where’s my breakfast?” he demanded.

“Almost ready, Father,” María said.

“Why isn’t it ready?”

“Well, Helena just arrived,” Aunt explained, “and we fed her. She was hungry…and we haven’t seen her for so long….”

“Already eating our food, I see, and distracting us from work.”

I pulled out my money pouch and took out two coins. I dropped them onto the table. “This is for your food, Uncle. And don’t worry, I’ll take no more of it.”

“Don’t leave again, Helena!” cried María.

“I won’t.”

“What will you eat then? Dirt?” Uncle challenged me.

“I will cure,” I said, hearing my voice strong and certain.

“I will help Ta’nu cure.”

In his room, Ta’nu lay on the
petate,
covered in blankets. Only his face showed. A pale face, nearly a ghost’s face already, the light shining through. I could almost see right through him, to his bones and blood and veins. He looked strangely peaceful. Some people, you see, struggle with death, but not Ta’nu. He lay there, tranquil, breathing slowly. His eyes followed me as I walked into the room. He smiled.

I knelt at his side and stroked my hand across his forehead. “I’ll cure you, Ta’nu,” I whispered. “I’ll brew you teas, do a
limpia,
fly to whatever is making you sick, fight for your spirit. No matter if it kills me…” I felt his skin warm under my hand. I wanted it never to turn cold.

“It’s my time to die, Helena,” he said.

“Ta’nu. I don’t want to live in this world without you.” If only I could sink into him, become part of him, die if he died.

“My body will not be here. But my spirit will. My spirit will visit you always,” he said.

What could I say to make him change his mind about dying? “Ta’nu,” I pleaded. “No one else in the world cares about me the way you do.”

“Ita, one day you will marry. You will have children, grandchildren. They will love you very much.”

“I will never marry. I’m a healer. No man wants a wife more powerful than himself.”

“You have not met him yet, love, but you will. Ita, I give you my room, my curing hut and the altar inside, and the herbs, and my garden. I wish I could offer you more—”

“
Ta’nu.
I only want you to stay alive.
Please.
”

“Helena. They say that deep in the middle of the earth is a chamber lit by candles. Thousands of candles. White candles. Some tall, some short, all different heights, standing in pools of wax. Each of these candles is a person’s life. The tall ones are the newborn babies. They have a whole lifetime yet to live. The short ones are mostly very old people. People whose flame of life is just about to go out. And watching over these candles is the spirit woman in charge of life and death and healing. When a short stub is about to go out, she places a new candle over it. A tall candle. She presses it into the pool of wax. And a new life begins. There must be death for life to happen.”

Ta’nu’s breathing was strained now. He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

“I understand,” I said, not bothering to wipe the stream of tears from my face. “I’ll let your candle go out, Ta’nu.” And I watched him all day and all night. Beside him I sat, holding his hand as he slowly faded. Just before dawn, his flame went out, and somewhere, a new candle was lit.

Clara

T
he sun hung low in the sky like a squashed mango. I circled the spot where the waterfall sounded loudest. Sunshine was pouring between the leaves and making moving spots of light on the forest floor. Next to me loomed a high rock face draped with vines, and nearby sat a pile of rocks. But no waterfall.

Maybe Pedro knew where it was. I wished I’d asked him. At first I’d wanted to find it alone—my secret mission—but now I wanted to find it with him. Tonight I would ask him, tonight when I went to his house, if I got up the nerve.

I missed watching his fingers weave palm and fold origami and smooth the fur of the goats. If he’d been here, I’d have asked him about the waterfall.
This mountain is our body,
he’d told me.
The streams are our blood, the waterfalls our pulse
.

I walked up the trail along the side of the rock face to a small peak, from which I had a view of the valley below. Suddenly, I heard my name. It echoed through the whole valley, bouncing back and forth and up and down and everywhere.

“CLARAAAA-Claraaaa-Claraaa-Claraaaa…”
Until it faded.

Where was he? I scanned the valley. My heart pounded.

“DIIIIIIS-CÚÚÚÚL-PAAAA-MEEEEE…,”
he called out. Forgive me.

There he was! On the next mountain over—a little below the peak! He was just a speck of red surrounded by white and black dots, which must have been goats. I stood on a rock, waving my arms over my head.

“DIIIIIIS-CÚÚÚÚL-PAAAA-MEEEEE…,”
I shouted back.
Discúlpame…
My voice came back in waves from the farthest mountains.

The next day, I was wading in the stream, watching tiny fish flicker around my ankles, when without a word, Pedro sat down on a rock and played. It was a song I hadn’t heard before. The words painted a picture in my mind: Pedro opening a door and watching me come toward him, out of the shadows and into the light. And then came the lines that made me quiver inside.

I give you a song when you appear,

The mystery of love…

He watched me closely while he sang. He had to stop for a second in the middle to call out
“Chchchchchivo”
when he noticed that one of the goats had wandered, and another time, to brush away the dragonfly that kept landing on the neck of the guitar. Toward the end of the song his voice grew louder and stronger and the strumming grew harder. The veins in his neck stood out, and beads of sweat formed on his forehead. When he finished, we looked at each other as though a tornado had just whirled by.

After a minute I asked, “What did the words mean, Pedro?”

“What do you think?”

“Were the words for me?”

He smiled. “You and only you. Because I miss you.”

That heat went through me again. “It sounded nice.”

I waded out of the stream, trying not to slip on any stones. I pulled out a little package from my backpack. “Here are some coffee beans for you and your mother.”

“Thanks.”

“I roasted them with Abuelita. I was going to bring them to you.”

“Do you want to walk with me and the goats?”

I nodded. “I miss the goats.” I miss
you,
I wanted to say, but I wasn’t quite brave enough. I put on the sandals—now they fit my feet perfectly—and slung the backpack over my shoulder.

“Sorry about Diego and Felipe and Chucho,” he said.

“Those guys at the market, they’re just jealous.”

“Of what?” I thought of what Abuelita had told me about the streets paved with gold and the diamonds on the trees.

“That you chose me. As your friend, I mean.”

“Oh.”

“They should have known better than to talk about my dad.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “My dad left when I was a little kid, to go work in Chicago. He was supposed to send money back to my mother and me. He told us he’d come back to visit every couple of years.”

“And what happened to him?” I asked.

“He stopped sending money after a few years. Then nothing.”

“Do you think he’s dead?”

“Sometimes I wish he was.” He paused. “A few years ago Diego and Felipe’s father came back from Chicago to visit. He said he saw my father there. He was married and had children. He has a whole new family now. He forgot about us here.”

We rounded the bend, out of the sunshine, down into the shadows. Here moss hung from tree branches.

“See, Clara, whenever the men who have lived in your country come back here, they show off their video cameras and CD players and cell phones.” Pedro grabbed a handful of moss from the tree and began tearing it into pieces. “My father chose all those things over our village. Over my mother and me.”

He threw the rest of the moss onto the ground.

“He got distracted,” I said. “By the jewels and the reflections and bright colors.”

“You were listening,” he said, smiling. He climbed onto a high rock covered with light green and white lichen and reached down to give me a hand. From above we had a view of the small, shady valley, of the goats wandering on beds of soft grass.

“But, Clara, you don’t get distracted by those things. You’re different.”

“Different?” I asked doubtfully, thinking of the CD cases and clothes strewn over my bedroom carpet, of my shiny stereo system and waist-high speakers, my closet full of shoes and gadgets that had seemed so important when I bought them at the mall. Not exactly jewels, but definitely distracting things, things without souls.

“You pay attention to what’s important,” Pedro said.

“You let yourself hear my music, really hear it. And you’re looking for the waterfall, like me.”

“How did you know?” He was so much like Abuelita; he knew things that most people would never have guessed.

“The way you listen, the way you look.” Then, almost shyly, he added, “And because I’m looking for it too.”

Pedro and I spent the next few days following the goats, on the lookout for any nook or cranny that might lead to the waterfall. He suspected that it was underground, and I thought he was probably right.

During those days we talked excitedly, to make up for our time apart. We talked about God, the universe, souls, life after death, ghosts, spirits, aliens. He told me tales about the rain serpents that live in lakes in the mountains, the lightning and thunder gods who send storms out of the caves, the little frog goddesses that announce the rain, the moon goddess, the sun god, and their children, the stars. He made me tell the plots of all the extraterrestrial movies I’d seen. He had some ideas about spirits and aliens actually being one and the same. He sang songs, and I sat close to him, strumming the guitar at the wide part as he moved his fingers along its neck. Then I breathed in deeply the strange sweet smell that clung to him.

One afternoon, we were huddled under a rock shelter, watching the sheets of rain come down. The goats were gathered near us, sopping wet, pressed against the rock.

“That day at the market, you spoke in Mixteco to my grandmother,” I said. “I didn’t know you spoke it. Before that, I only heard older people speak it.”

He was sitting next to me, wearing a black plastic garbage bag to keep the rain off. I was wearing the yellow plastic poncho Abuelita had given me.

“My mother always speaks Mixteco to me,” he said.

I thought for a second. “My dad doesn’t speak it. At least I don’t think he does.”

“That’s because he went to school. When he was young, the teacher smacked children’s hands with a stick if they spoke Mixteco.”

“That’s horrible!” I shivered under my poncho and rubbed my hands over my goose-bumped legs. “How come your mother speaks it?”

“She never went to school. She worked at home with her mother and grandmother.”

I imagined five-year-old Dad on his first day of school, his skinny legs in goatskin sandals and a little palm hat. I saw him speaking his own language and then
smack,
being hit on the hand. The shock, the sting, the red mark, his eyes welling up with tears.

And Dad years later, with his mustache and a few silvery hairs, wet eyes, watching me come in shamefaced through the glass doors at four a.m. Dad speaking Spanish to me in front of my friends:
“¿A qué hora regresas,
Clara?” When will you be back, Clara? He would not let me out the door until I answered in Spanish.
“A las nueve,
Dad.” At nine, Dad. And I’d sigh and roll my eyes and slam the door behind me and wait for my embarrassment to slowly fade.

I began asking Abuelita to tell me the names of the herbs in Mixteco whenever we made medicines. Every time we prepared an herb, she had me rub it between my fingers and smell it and feel it.
Pericón
with its tiny yellow flowers—
yuku taxini
in Mixteco—for women giving birth. Sweet
sauco—ita tindoo—
for colds and flus. Bitter
hierba amarga—yuku tuchi
—for stomachaches and anger. Some herbs we hung upside down from the rafters to dry for teas. Others we dropped into glass bottles of
mezcal,
where they’d stay until next year, when she’d strain out the leaves.

Maybe I would be here next summer to strain the leaves out myself. But as soon as the thought surfaced in my mind, I pushed it down again. I didn’t want to think about this summer ending. I didn’t want to think that all this could go on without me. The dishes would get washed, the tortillas made, the coffee beans ground. And I was afraid that when I went back to Walnut Hill, the old Clara would come back, the foggy moon, clouded and confused.

Early one morning, while I was outside at the sink splashing cold water on my face, Abuelita called my name. Her voice sounded urgent. I dried my face on my shirt and ran to the kitchen. She was picking out dried oregano leaves and
carrizo
roots from the rafters and dropping them into a basket with other herbs.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I need your help,
mi vida.
Listen.”

I heard the
clip-clop
of a burro. Usually they just plodded along, weighed down with sacks of corn or firewood, but this one seemed to be galloping. Its footsteps were growing louder, closer.