What the Moon Saw Read online

  “Pedro wrote that letter?” I felt myself smile, even though I was trying not to. I liked the idea that there was a connection between Pedro and me before we ever saw each other. It sent a shivery thrill through me to think of my hands holding the same piece of paper that his had held.

  Abuelo nodded. “Your grandmother said you would come in June on the full moon. And Clara, when I heard that, my heart soared like a bird. I went into Enrique’s old room and aired out his mattress and blankets and scrubbed the walls and floor. And on the way to the airport, I kept pestering your grandmother, ‘What if she’s not there? What if she decided not to come?’ Oh, I was just like a child!”

  I laughed. He had reminded me of an excited little kid when we first met at the airport.

  “And as you were coming off that plane, Clara, my heart was so flooded with joy, I thought I would burst!”

  After each day of hard work, I’d lie on my mattress and listen to rain beat overhead on the tin roof. I’d feel my tired legs and exhausted shoulders. And all the while, bits of Pedro’s music ran through my head, flitting around like butterflies—they entered my dreams and stayed with me until morning, when I found myself humming his songs as I got dressed. I started taking short afternoon walks in the mountains and scanned the trees for a glimpse of his red pants. I listened hopefully for the scuttle of goat hooves. I sat by the stream at the spot where we used to meet, wishing he’d show up. He was avoiding me, that was obvious.

  At the market on Saturday, Abuelita and I were picking out avocados when I spotted Pedro in his orange T-shirt. He was over by the clock tower, where a bunch of women in long braids and checked aprons sat behind low tables. The tables were spread with half-gourds full of wet cheese. The women were swatting away flies with palm fans and stirring the cheese with wooden spoons. Next to them, Pedro was cutting chunks of solid cheese into squares and wrapping them in banana leaves.

  Something inside me jumped. Tingles spread over my skin. He must have felt my gaze because he looked up at me, straight into my eyes, right through the crowd of people and the piles of chiles and the bundles of flowers. He handed his knife to the woman next to him. She was small and fragile-looking, with thin wrists and pointy shoulders. He said something to her and pointed in my direction. Then he wiped his hands on his pants and began to weave his way toward me. I tried to look interested in the avocados, but my heart was beating fast.

  When he reached us, he greeted Abuelita in Mixteco and touched her hand. Then he said to me in Spanish, “Hello, Clara.”

  “Hello,” I said coolly.

  “My mother wants to meet you.” It was hard to tell if he was still angry at me or not. His face was empty of expression. Even so, the way he said my name sounded nice. It rolled off his tongue like tiny crystals.

  “Here I will wait for you, by the tomatoes,” Abuelita said.

  I followed Pedro as he wound back through smells of frying meat, simmering corn soup, hot cinnamon coffee. A warmth moved through me like bathwater, and it amazed me that just being near a certain person could make me feel this way. We reached the cheese section.

  “Have a spoonful of cheese,” Pedro offered. “It’s from our goats’ milk.”

  The cheese looked disgusting—snotty and goopy, with a damp, moldy smell. And even with the women fanning, a few flies were managing to land in it here and there.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  “Please, go ahead,” urged the fragile woman, who I guessed must be his mother. She would have had a nice smile if two of her teeth hadn’t been rotted.

  After a deep breath I took a nibble off the spoonful she handed me. It was rich and creamy. “Not bad,” I said, licking the spoon clean.

  His mother touched my hand lightly, the way people here shake hands, like they’re afraid you might break. “My son thinks very highly of you,” she said.

  So he must have said good things about me. He must have been thinking about me.

  Pedro pretended not to be listening. He acted completely absorbed in fanning the flies. But I noticed his cheeks growing pinker. His mother gave me a square of cheese wrapped in a banana leaf to share with my grandparents. “Come visit us soon,” she said. “Our house is your house.” After I thanked her, Pedro and I made our way back to the vegetables. But Abuelita wasn’t by the avocados and tomatoes anymore. We walked all the way to the end of the row, scanning the crowds. The nasal sounds of Mixteco surrounded us—people bargaining, chatting, calling to wandering children, soothing babies, joking and laughing. Salsa music blared from a giant speaker at a CD stand nearby, where a group of boys had gathered.

  “Eh, Pedro!” a boy in a baseball cap called out. “Introduce us to your woman!”

  “I’ll just go back to Abuelita,” I mumbled. I tried to spot her in the crowd of dozens of other women, who all had long braids woven with ribbons.

  By this time three of the guys had walked over to us. “Hola, guapa,” the biggest one said. The one in the baseball cap whistled and looked me up and down.

  This was only the second time in my life when any boy had looked at me that way—the first time had been the year before at the Ocean City boardwalk. And the boys might have been whistling at Samantha rather than me. We’d felt giggly and flattered then, but now I just crossed my arms awkwardly, then uncrossed them, then held them stiffly by my sides.

  “How does she like it here?” asked the big guy. He wore baggy jeans and a black T-shirt and two gold chains. Even though he was right in front of us, he had to yell to be heard over the music.

  “Ask her yourself, Felipe. She speaks Spanish,” Pedro said. He kept looking over his shoulder, like he wanted to get away as soon as he could.

  Felipe said to me, “Marry me and take me back to your country.”

  I wanted to shrink or hide or become invisible.

  “Let’s go,” Pedro said. He walked away and I turned to follow him.

  “Ah, Pedro’s the one she’ll take with her,” said the boy in the baseball cap.

  “Pedro’s going to disappear from here, just like his dad,” the youngest one added, smirking.

  As soon as the words were out, Felipe gave him a shove. “Shut up, Diego!”

  Pedro stopped in his tracks. He turned around and slowly walked up to the younger kid.

  “Pedro, calm down,” Felipe said. He backed up, pulling the younger one with him. “Diego didn’t know any better.”

  “If he ever says anything like that again…” Pedro’s fists clenched and unclenched. Was he going to hit someone? But no, he turned and ran away, disappearing into the crowd, leaving me alone with the group of boys.

  I straightened up and lifted my head high like a heron’s. I hoped I looked graceful. That was how I felt, at least, and it surprised me. I looked each one of them straight in the eyes. My stare wasn’t as strong as Abuelita’s, but it seemed to work. They glanced at each other sheepishly and hung their heads.

  On the way to the sink that night with my toothbrush and toothpaste, I noticed the moon, perfectly full. I could see the shape of the entire rabbit inside the circle. A song that Dad used to sing came back to me, the song that told the story of how the rabbit got stuck in the moon. A farmer was angry that a rabbit kept nibbling at his crops, so he rolled a big ball of candle wax toward it. The rabbit got caught in the wax ball, which rolled faster and faster until it left the earth and flew into the sky.

  A full moon. It must be July then, exactly one month after I’d gotten here. Now I understood why Abuelita hadn’t given a calendar date in her letter, but moon time instead. Here, times and dates didn’t matter. There were rhythms—of the moon, the sun, the afternoon rains, hot chocolate at night, patting tortillas in the mornings.

  One month left. Suddenly I missed the strumming of Pedro’s guitar so much, I felt a sharp pain in my stomach. I stood in the cool air with toothpaste foam dripping down my chin, halfheartedly brushing. I looked past the cornfield to where Pedro’s house was just a little point of light.

&n
bsp; Should I walk over there, barefoot, like Abuelita did more than two full moons ago? The only thing stopping me was some kind of pride mixed with shame. Maybe it was the same thing that kept Dad from visiting his parents, or at least writing them a real letter. Maybe what people really wanted was to touch souls with other people, but the problem was that other things kept getting in the way. I thought of doña Carmen and her husband, and Silvia, and Uncle José—who would be my great-great-uncle. What each of them really wanted were threads of love like a spiderweb connecting them with other people, but they couldn’t quite get it right.

  But I was going to get it right, I decided. I could go to Pedro’s house with an offering of roasted coffee beans. Yes, I would do it. I would go tomorrow night, when he’d be at home with his mother, having hot cinnamon-chocolate milk. After all, she had invited me.

  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

  SPRING 1938

  After 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-tapping. 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 m
ain 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.