The Lightning Queen Read online

  “Teo,” Esma said, glancing at him warily, “the boria was mad about his outburst yesterday. They told my uncles. They wanted to leave town, but my grandmother convinced the Duke to stay. At least until the Romani Business Appreciation Event.”

  “Good,” I said, relieved.

  Her eyes pierced into mine. “But we have to make sure your uncle doesn’t make another scene. If it happens again, we’ll leave the Hill of Dust forever. We can’t stay in places we’re not welcome. The police look for any excuse to arrest us.”

  I chewed on my fingernail, glancing at Uncle atop his pile of pipes.

  Grandfather shuffled over. “Look at your hand, son.”

  My wounded hand. I’d forgotten to hide it. Quickly, I set down my drink and tried to cover the welts. The agua de papaya spilled all over the letters we’d just traced, turning them to mud.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said quickly, watching the liquid absorb into the dust.

  Grandfather nodded. He would have let it go. At least until I was ready to talk to him about it. That was his quiet way.

  But not Esma. “Your hand?” she asked. “Are you hurt?”

  Seeing my troubled expression, Grandfather said, “I’ll make a poultice for you, son.” And he shuffled to the herb garden behind the kitchen.

  Esma grabbed my wrist. Her eyes widened as she took in the angry welts. “What happened?”

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  “I’m your best friend for life. You have to tell me.”

  “This doesn’t change things, Esma. I’m still going back to school tomorrow.”

  “This happened at school? Did you get in a fight?”

  She wouldn’t relent, so I told her. I told her about the teacher insulting my language and people, about her hitting the boy, about me taking his place.

  Esma’s face reddened; her eyes turned to fire. Her entire body was smoking, flaming. Lightning shot out of her every pore, like the sky during a ferocious storm, all wild electricity.

  When Esma finally spoke, it was with unwavering certainty. “That teacher will never hurt you or any other child again. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “Esma,” I said softly, “forget it. She hates Gypsies even more than indios.”

  “Good. I’ll use that to my advantage.”

  “Esma,” I tried again, “you can’t stop her. She’s been like this for years. She’s even worse than the Heartless Woman. It’s hopeless.”

  Her eyes burned. “Nothing is impossible, my friend for life.”

  I eyed her hesitantly. “What do you have planned?”

  “Oh, I’ll come up with something.”

  My skunk sniffed out the spilled papaya drink and scrambled over, trying to lick it up, and then just deciding to roll in it. Da, Ga, and Ba laughed.

  After that, I tried teaching Esma more sounds, but the mood was broken, and although her teeth were biting her lower lip, now her concentration wasn’t on the letters but on her plot against Maestra María.

  Soon, Esma said she had to go, gathered the toddlers, and called back, “See you tomorrow at sunrise, my friend for life.”

  “Sunrise?” I sputtered.

  “Oh, yes! I’m going to go to school with you.”

  A tingle shot through my chest. Part of it was a jolt of happiness at the idea of walking to school with Esma. And part of it was dread over what Maestra María would do to her. I swallowed hard. “How will you get away from your family?”

  She shrugged. “I’ll leave before they wake up. I’ll do some creative storytelling when I return. They’ll probably smack me and call me squash head for it, but they do that anyway.”

  I watched her and her cousins leave as a muddy, sticky Flash tried climbing up my leg. Grandfather stood at my side and offered me a new glass of agua de papaya.

  “That teacher of yours had better watch out,” he said, chuckling. “She’ll meet her match in the Queen of Lightning.”

  So, what do you have planned?” I asked Esma nervously the next morning on the way to school. I’d tried questioning her after the movie last night, but she’d insisted I go straight home and rest up for our big day.

  She grinned as she dance-walked beside me. “I’ll know when I see her.”

  I bit my cheek and tried to focus on the simple miracle of walking over the hills with Esma in the early light. Now she was singing out the letters of her name in rhythm to our steps. I could pretend we did this every day. The only thing missing was my entourage of animals. Cringing at the thought of duck stew, I’d made them stay home with Grandfather.

  But I couldn’t forget what was to come, her face-off with the Heartless Woman. “Really, Esma, what are you planning?”

  She swirled in a circle. “Probably I’ll just give her a big whack and call her squash head.”

  My insides jumped. “What?”

  “Kidding. I’ll think of something.”

  “I have to admit,” I said, hopping over a rock, “when she was hitting Benito, I did imagine grabbing the ruler and whacking her myself.” And then I confessed all the misfortunes I’d envisioned befalling the teacher, including stinkification by skunk.

  Esma plucked a leaf and smiled devilishly. “I think a curse is in order.”

  I frowned. “You know how I feel about curses.”

  “Oh, Teo, this won’t be a real curse.”

  “But if your victim believes in them,” I argued, “they’re still bad.”

  “Teo,” she said firmly, “this curse will be glorious! You’ll see.”

  And she gave another lopsided twirl for good measure.

  Little Benito was in the school yard, clinging to the tree, with his older brother Marcos patting his back. “He’s scared to go inside,” Marcos whispered in Mixteco, glancing warily at the maestra through the doorway.

  Benito loosened his panicked grip when he saw Esma. He stared, taking in her layers of red and pink and purple flowers and beads and shells and coins and braids. “Who’s that?”

  By now a small, curious crowd had formed. “This is Esma,” I said, “Gypsy Queen of Lightning.”

  “Gypsy?” the boys echoed.

  “But aren’t Gypsies bad?” one of them whispered.

  I was conjuring an indignant response in my head, when Esma did something that took my breath away.

  She opened her mouth wide and sang. She sang softly enough not to announce her presence to the maestra inside. Her song was only for us, the small crowd of boys around her, drinking in her voice, enchanted.

  When she finished, the boys exchanged glances, speechless.

  “My people have a saying,” Esma announced, silver eyes glinting. “Bad people don’t sing.” She waited a moment, letting it sink in. And then, “Decide for yourselves who’s bad, amigos.”

  At that moment, the teacher rang the bell. Immediately, the other students filed inside.

  Esma waited just outside the doorway, hidden around the corner. I hovered beside her.

  “Go on in,” she insisted.

  I had the nearly irresistible urge to tug her braid. “Be careful, Esma.”

  “Go,” she ordered.

  I did. I found my seat and pulled out the water-stained notebook and pencil stub. My heart drummed in anticipation.

  We’d just finished pledging allegiance to the flag when Esma strode in like a force of nature.

  “Buenos días, Maestra,” she declared, as if onstage.

  Standing behind her desk, Maestra María regarded her headscarf and coin necklaces with suspicion. “Who are you?”

  “Esma,” she responded coolly, putting her hands on her hips, “Queen of Lightning.” She moved toward the maestra.

  Understanding dawned over Maestra María, and she took a step backward. “Are you—are you a Gypsy?”

  Esma nodded, enjoying this. “But we call ourselves Romani.”

  An uncomfortable hush had fallen over the class.

  “You’ll have to leave,” the ma
estra said, raising a bow-and-arrow eyebrow.

  I sucked in a breath. Maestra María had overcome her shock and was readying for attack.

  Esma raised her own eyebrow, making no move to leave.

  The students watched with bated breath.

  Maestra María reached for the ruler on her desk, but Esma snatched it up first.

  And then, the Queen of Lightning loped over to the nearest empty desk and climbed right onto it. She towered over us like a statue in a church alcove. Her headscarf grazed the ceiling. She raised her arms like bird wings. “I have come to place a Gypsy curse on you, Maestra María.”

  The teacher glanced around, unsettled. “Get down from there!” Her voice was shrill, laced with fear. “Get out, you horrid girl!”

  Esma smiled, as if the teacher had paid her the highest of compliments. “My dear maestra, here is your curse.” She narrowed her eyes and pointed the ruler at the woman.

  “Lice!” Esma boomed. “Thousands of them! They will dwell in your hair, make a meal of your scalp.”

  The children gasped. The maestra clasped a hand to her mouth.

  Esma continued. “Bedbugs! Thousands of them! They will crawl over your sleeping body, sucking your blood and leaving a red sea of bumps.”

  The students murmured to one another in giddy disbelief.

  Her voice rose again. “Fleas! Thousands of them! They will dance over your flesh, make you scratch until you bleed, even after you’ve shaved your head and burned your bedclothes.”

  The maestra stumbled backward against her desk.

  Esma kept going. “And as you are lying in the dirt, miserable and bald and itching, a skunk will wander over and spray you. Liberally! And there you will wallow in your miserable cloud of stink.”

  The maestra tried speaking, but she was drowned out by Esma, who raised her chin higher still. “There’s more! Every tear you produce in a child will be another link chaining this curse to you.”

  More whispers rippled through the students.

  “HOWEVER!” Esma thundered. A hush fell over the room, an electric silence.

  “However,” she continued, in a now eerily quiet voice, “each teardrop you prevent will cut another chain in the link. And if you prevent enough teardrops, one day, you may free yourself of the curse.”

  There was silence as Esma punctuated her speech with a dramatic pause. And then, dignified, she climbed down and placed the ruler on the desk. With a sideways glance at the maestra, she said, “I suggest you use this wisely.”

  Then she did her lopsided walk-dance out of the room.

  After Esma left, the maestra locked the door and called out the window, “And don’t come back!” before locking it, too.

  The rest of the day was hot and stuffy in the closed-up schoolroom, but the atmosphere among the students was exuberant. All day, the maestra trembled, though she tried to appear composed. She lost her temper quickly, but checked herself before yelling too much. And she didn’t smack a single child all day.

  The ruler stayed exactly where Esma had left it on the desk.

  Kicking up dust, whizzing past agave, I raced home from school, unencumbered by my animals, hoping Esma would be waiting for me again. But no, I saw only Grandfather in the courtyard, rubbing Spark’s ear with one hand, and with the other, sprinkling colored sawdust onto the mosaic beneath the tree. Esma must be back at her camp, I figured, eating the peppery stew I’d smelled while passing her camp.

  On seeing me, my animals and Grandfather hobbled and waddled and scampered toward me. “It wasn’t an easy task,” he said, laughing. “They kept trying to sneak away and run after you.” Then he listed everything Flash had gotten his sharp little teeth into—sacks of beans and corn, junk in the storeroom, crates of fabric scraps, and even my mother’s box of treasures. But no lasting harm done, he assured me.

  As I petted the animals, I told Grandfather about Esma’s visit to school.

  “Well, son,” he said slowly, “I still don’t approve of curses, you know. Even pretend ones.” He broke into a grin. “But this one sounds pretty glorious, all right.”

  I couldn’t wait for night to fall, to see Esma at the movie, the last one her people would show this year. Tomorrow would be the Romani Business Appreciation Event, and the morning after that, they planned to leave.

  At sunset, I was sipping chili-laced atole with my cousins in the courtyard when a car—an actual car, curvy and shiny and sky blue—wound up the Hill of Dust. I’d heard the unfamiliar hum of the motor, and then Chucho had spotted the car chugging up the mountain. Within moments, my entire family except my mother and grandfather was ogling it. Even Uncle Paco paused in his shoe shining to stand up on the abandoned sewage pipes and squint down the valley.

  The car stopped at the cathedral, where the road ended in the dusty plaza. Since there were still a couple hours till the movie, the stretch of dirt was empty. But now a crowd was forming around the car, mostly kids and curious adults.

  Out of the driver’s seat stepped Maestra María.

  Panic exploded through me. Quickly, I ducked behind a tree. What if she’d come to exact vengeance on Esma and her people? My heart thundered; sweat trickled like rivers over my skin. I gathered my animals close, made them huddle beside me, hidden.

  Meanwhile, people oohed and ahhed at the maestra’s beauty—surely people who’d never met her before. “She looks just like the Heartless Woman!” they murmured in Mixteco, excited. “She must be a movie star!”

  As enthralled as they were, they were also too intimidated to approach her. Of course, the children who’d been to school hung back like cowering animals. A survival instinct.

  I sucked in a breath and poked my head around the tree, hopefully hidden by low-hanging leaves. The maestra was looking around, probably for the Romani camp.

  Of all the people to come to her aid, Uncle Paco stepped forward. “Señora, you look lost. Can I help you?” He was attempting a gentlemanly voice, but it came out sounding oily.

  The maestra resisted shooting him her usual evil eye. After all, she needed his help.

  “Yes, señor,” she said, all business.

  I strained to make out her words.

  “I was told there was a”—her lips pursed—“brujo—a witch—of some sort in this town.”

  “A brujo?” Uncle repeated, confused.

  “Yes,” she said, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other. “Someone who could remove a curse.”

  “You mean a curandero? A healer?”

  “Whatever. An elderly señor by the name of Teodoro.”

  Uncle’s face lit up. “That’s my father, señora!”

  “Good.” She gave a quick nod. “Will you take me to him?”

  Eagerly, Uncle nodded. He tried to take her elbow but she shrugged it out of his grasp, with a threatening arch of the eyebrow. They walked slowly, thanks to her high heels and his too-pointy shoes.

  This gave me time to take a back shortcut to warn Grandfather that the Heartless Woman was coming—of all places—to our home.

  “You can’t let her in!” I argued with Grandfather, glancing furtively over my shoulder across the courtyard. It was hard to see down the path in the twilight, but it still looked clear; thankfully, the maestra was taking a while. “You know how many kids she’s terrorized? Probably hundreds over the years!”

  “Oh, Teo, it takes strength to move past your hurt to help someone.” Grandfather spoke calmly, unrushed. “Especially someone you think you hate. But sometimes that is the very person who needs your help the most.” He paused, cocked his head. “Perhaps this teacher is ready to change. If you lift up one soul, she will lift up others. And on and on it goes. This is what you do as a healer.”

  “I’m not a healer,” I said bitterly. “I’m just a translator.”

  “You’ll rise to the occasion when needed, son.” Grandfather patted my shoulder. “People tend to do that. Surprise you. If you give them a chance.”

  “But, Grandfather, she�
��s evil!” I insisted. “There’s no heart there to heal!” And then, quickly, I closed my mouth. She was walking up the path in the evening shadows beside Uncle.

  Grandfather invited Maestra María into the healing hut and lit some candles. Uncle followed her in like a devoted puppy. I hovered at the door, about to slip away, when Grandfather said, “Stay, Teo. Translate.”

  Reluctantly, I walked inside, folded my arms tight across my chest.

  In the flickering light, the maestra eyed me uneasily. “You’re the new boy at school.”

  I breathed in the beeswax and herb scents that always calmed me and tried to meet her gaze. It was like looking into the eyes of a snake. “I’m Teo,” I said flatly. “I’ll be the translator. My grandfather speaks Mixteco.”

  She hesitated, wringing her hands. “I don’t know about this …”

  “I’ll translate,” Uncle said, stepping closer to the maestra.

  She recoiled, even less enthused about that option. “I’ll go with Teo.”

  Uncle’s shoulders fell and he glared at me. “I’ll just watch, then.”

  “We can handle it, son,” Grandfather said, ushering him outside and shutting the door.

  “Have a seat,” I told the maestra and motioned to a wooden chair. She sat on the front of the seat, ready to hop up and run out at the last minute.

  I positioned chairs for Grandfather and me across from her. She wore a sour expression, as though she smelled something bad. Leave, I wanted to hiss at her. Get out of my home.

  “Señor,” she said to Grandfather, “I came to ask you to remove a curse.”

  He nodded as I translated. “Tell me more about this curse.”

  She shrank down, embarrassed. “Go ahead, Teo, tell him.”

  Of course, he already knew every gory detail of the glorious curse, but I repeated it anyway, relishing the stinky, itchy details.

  Grandfather watched her with sympathy, and when I finished, he patted her shoulder.

  At his touch, she buried her face in her hands and crumbled into tears.