The Lightning Queen Read online

  At that moment, a squabble broke out among Thunder and the turkeys. As I went to calm them, Grandfather leaned in to Esma, speaking softly.

  I grabbed Thunder from the chaos of feathers, tucked her beneath my arm, and shushed her. Secretly, I strained to overhear Grandfather’s conversation. After some mumbling, I heard, “I have a favor to ask you, Esma.” His Spanish was thickly accented, barely understandable.

  “Anything,” she replied.

  I inched closer, ears perked, looking in the opposite direction and feigning interest in Thunder.

  “After I’m gone, keep an eye on Teo’s spark. If it leaves, put it back. Even if it seems impossible.” He spoke slowly, deliberately, searching for the right words in Spanish. “You brought him back from the dead last year, Esma. Never doubt your power. Or your fortune. You two will be friends for the rest of your long lives.”

  A woman’s voice rang through the morning air. “¡Buenos días!” And then, a greeting in accented Mixteco, asking how I was. “Nixi yo’o?”

  Maestra María.

  I raised my hand in welcome, and answered, “Yo’o sunii.”

  She was smiling, heading toward us, carrying a cloth bag. “I came by to thank you for last night. I picked these up for you at the market.”

  She opened the bag to reveal hundreds of plump, red, glistening berries.

  Esma and I exchanged wide-eyed looks.

  When I could find words, I said, “Let’s give them to Esma’s people. As a farewell gift.”

  Grandfather and the maestra nodded in approval, and I dumped the berries into Esma’s pail.

  Grandfather smiled with his eyes. “Now there will be sweetness to add to the sorrow of their parting. All partings have a hint of sweetness, if you let them.”

  Along with the other folks on the Hill of Dust, Grandfather insisted on seeing off the Rom. I held one elbow while Uncle held the other, and we made our way down the dusty road to their camp. The horses were already hitched to the wagons, stomping their feet, ready to go. The toddlers were strapped onto women’s backs, munching on berries, their faces stained and sticky and happy.

  Esma and her grandparents approached us just before leaving. The Duke’s mustache shone with fresh wax, spiraling up at the tips. Warmly, they shook Grandfather’s and my hands good-bye.

  Uncle stared sheepishly at the ground, muttering good-bye, and then whispered, “Sorry about everything.”

  The Duke grasped his hand and said, “Let us offer you a gift to show there are no hard feelings.”

  Esma translated this, her voice suspicious, unsure what her grandparents were up to.

  The Duke slipped his hand into his jacket pocket. No raw onions, I silently pleaded.

  But no, it was the little diosito statue that I’d given them last year, to ensure their return. He placed it in Uncle’s hands.

  “This did indeed give us good luck last year, and now we’re passing it to you, so that you, too, may have good luck.”

  I wasn’t sure what to make of this. It was a kind gesture of forgiveness, but there was something more to it. He was also ridding himself of the supposed curse, ridding himself of the need to return next year.

  Worried, I looked at Esma. This was a surprise to her, too, judging by her scrunched-up expression.

  “Will you come back, Duke?” I asked, steadying my voice.

  He shrugged, twirling the ends of his mustache. “We go where the wind takes us. Of course, we do love your village, but you never know what the wind will blow away and what new things it will bring.”

  Translating slowly, stretching out our last moments together, Esma locked eyes with me. Friends for life were the unspoken words between us. No matter what, friends for life.

  She held up her hand in farewell, and I held up mine. Lightning zapped from her palm across the air into my own, an electric surge of confidence that only the two of us felt.

  Yet, a few minutes later, as I watched the caravan wind down the valley, doubts crept in. What if Esma’s people didn’t return? What if other kids taught her to read, and she didn’t need me anymore? What if she left to become a famous singer? What if Uncle’s rudeness had made the Rom never want to come back? What if her father forced her to marry that man? What if she ran away to escape the marriage?

  I filled my mind with little what-ifs to fend off the biggest ones: What if Esma left me? And Grandfather left me? What if I couldn’t save either of them? What if I were left truly alone?

  More dark yellow storm clouds rolled in after the Rom left. Zigzags of light ripped at the horizon. Far-off thunder moaned, low and sad. For a long time, I waited for a raindrop, but it never came.

  You all right, Mateo?” The voice sounds far away.

  “Huh?” I clear my dried-out throat. “Yeah, fine.” It takes me a second to remember where I am … even who I am. It’s like when you’re so absorbed in a movie that when your friend says something, you feel like he’s speaking a whole different language, even like he’s on a whole different planet.

  I force my mouth to form words. “Why, Grandpa?”

  “You’re squirming.”

  I bring myself back into my body, feel the wooden seat beneath me, the coin necklace in my hand.

  Yup, I have to pee all right. My mind’s been ignoring it, but my legs are shifting around like crazy. Just like at the movies, when you gotta go, but you don’t want to leave the magic, so you just sit tight and hope the pee reabsorbs.

  “I’m okay, Grandpa.”

  “You sure, mijo?”

  Rain’s dripping on the roof, which isn’t helping me ignore the urge to pee.

  “Yeah, you can finish the story.” Then a fear strikes me. “But you did see her again, right?”

  His lip quivers like a leaf, and his eyes fill, and I want to look away, but I don’t. Oh, man, I’ve never seen Grandpa like this before.

  I swallow hard, clench the coins in my hand. Grandpa told me he needed my help. And in order to help him, I have to know this story. Somehow, I have a role to play here … I just need to find out what it is. “Then what happened, Grandpa?”

  He takes off his hat and looks up at the ceiling, wood and palm woven into a giant spiderweb pattern. He gathers a breath and holds very still, like the heavy silence before a storm. A hush falls over the room. Even my stomach quiets down.

  I twirl the coins around my fingers, one way and the other and back again. Softly, I say, “Grandpa, did she come back?”

  Finally, he speaks, and once again, I leave my body behind and let the movie suck me back in like a tornado.

  Alone in the rain, I perched atop the highest point of the Hill of Dust. These days, it should have been called the Hill of Mud. In the rock shelter beneath me, my goats were huddled with Spark and Thunder and Flash, safe from the storm.

  But there was nothing between me and the lightning stabbing the sky. I raised my face, willing it to strike. No such luck.

  Rainy season had been here for weeks already. The third anniversary of Lucita’s death had come and gone. Esma and her people had never arrived. And this year, more than any other, I needed my best friend for life.

  Out of habit, my eyes went to the base of the hill, the curve where her caravan used to come into view, in all its colorful glory, at the end of dry season.

  Nothing. Only the sluice of water down the mudslide of a road. No cars or horses, much less wagons, would venture through the rivers these valleys had become.

  Was that why the Rom hadn’t come? But they usually came before the rains started. Had Esma left them already? Had she learned to read and write, then contacted the agent? Was she already a famous singer? Or had they married her off to that old man? What had happened?

  I’d let loose so many screams by the river, there were none left. Something about that scared me. Maybe that’s why I was here, inviting lightning into my veins. Real, deadly lightning.

  When the storm ended and the last flashes vanished and the booms faded, I was still alive. Soaked
to the bone, but alive. I gathered my animals and trudged home through the mud, walking too close to the river, raging and wild.

  But Thunder stopped me. She shrieked with alarm until I moved away to a safe distance.

  I headed up the path toward home, past the dripping leaves, and then stopped. This was the hardest part, coming home without Grandfather to greet me. I gathered a long breath and what little strength I had, then forced my legs to walk past his closed-up healing hut. Rain drummed on the thatched roof. It had been empty and unused for five months now. Who knew if it even smelled like Grandfather anymore. I couldn’t bear to open it up to find out.

  Uncle Paco called to me from the edge of the bean field, where he was installing water pipes. After a year of trial and error, they actually appeared to work. “Oye, Teo! Want to help?”

  I could barely muster energy to shake my head.

  Lalo, playing ball with Chucho by the irrigation ditch, called out, “Teo! Come play soccer!”

  I kept walking past Grandfather’s room. That was where I’d found him that morning, five months earlier. I’d gone in his room to offer him a cup of atole. He hadn’t responded to my voice, or to my gentle nudging, or to my desperate shaking.

  He’d died in his sleep, a peaceful half smile lingering on his lifeless face.

  “Teo!” Aunt Perla poked her head out from the kitchen, baby on her hip. “Come inside! Have some atole! You’re soaking wet! You’ll catch your death of cold!”

  I didn’t feel the cold. My belly was empty—I hadn’t eaten all day—yet I didn’t feel hungry or thirsty. And the idea of catching my death? Well, it didn’t feel bad. It felt like relief.

  My mother was inside the kitchen, an untouched cup of atole before her, its steam making her face ghostly. She studied the box of shiny things in her lap, not looking up as I entered.

  Yes, catching my death would be a relief.

  The next morning I woke up with a sore throat and sneezes and a cough. Aunt Perla fussed over me, the baby slung on her back. “What did I tell you about catching your death, Teo?” she scolded. “Now stay inside and rest,” she ordered, tucking the wool blanket around my chin.

  Any other time I would have shrugged her off and gone to pasture the animals anyway, but not this time.

  I didn’t touch the new notebook that Maestra María had given me to use as a journal. Every page was blank. She’d helped me apply for a scholarship to the secondary school in the nearest town. During the last months of the school year, after Grandfather’s death, I’d held myself together, barely. I’d focused on schoolwork, hung on to the daily comfort of Maestra María.

  Over the year, she’d become a beloved teacher to all the students, especially me. After Grandfather’s death, she stayed after school to talk, soothing me with the very words in Mixteco that he’d taught her. Taxiini … sikita’an … kuu ini. She even came by our house on weekends to check up on me and bring us fruit, or vegetables, or beans.

  But for the past two months that school had been out, she’d been away visiting her relatives. Now every day had become an empty page of an empty book.

  I picked up one of the books she’d lent me—poetry by Gabriela Mistral.

  If they could, the trees would lift you

  And carry you from valley to valley …

  My eyes couldn’t focus on the words. No, not even the maestra’s precious books held my interest. Instead, I stared at the bits of corncobs and dried leaves poking out from the adobe walls. What a relief it would be to join Lucita and Father and Grandfather. Was this how my mother had felt for the past three years? I buried my face in the crook of my elbow and burrowed beneath the blanket.

  No, I couldn’t live the rest of my life like her, mostly dead.

  No, death would be a relief.

  I walked toward it with open arms.

  The days and nights blurred together, with my aunts bringing me atole and soups and helping me walk to the outhouse, my eyes half-closed because it was too bright outside.

  “Oh, Teo,” they said, in worried, distant voices, “your fever’s so high.”

  They forced me to sip teas, asking desperately, “Teo, what would your grandfather have given you for your illness? Which herbs?”

  I shrugged and rolled over.

  Lalo cared for Flash and Spark and Thunder, who were often at my side, whistling and baahing and scuttling and trying to make me play. I ignored them.

  One day, Uncle Paco came in and said, “Teo, there are some people who traveled far to see your grandfather.”

  I kept my eyes closed, said nothing.

  “Teo, talk to me.”

  “Turn them away,” I murmured.

  “I think you could take a look at the patient. It’s a girl your age, Teo.”

  A crazy hope. My eyes flew open. “Esma?”

  He shook his head slowly. “No, not the Gypsy girl. A girl from a village three days’ walk west over the mountains. No other doctor has been able to help her. The journey was hard on her.” He paused. “Teo, your grandfather taught you everything he knew. You can help her.”

  I shook my head. “I’m too weak. I’m not wise.”

  Uncle Paco put his hand on my forehead. “You healed me, son.”

  “Grandfather did.”

  “You did. And you can heal yourself, too. You can heal this girl.”

  At the door appeared Aunt Perla, leading the girl inside. She shuffled slowly, hunched over, thin and sickly, a wilted flower supported by a couple who must have been her parents.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not my grandfather. I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself.” Inside, I thought, And I don’t want to.

  I turned over and shut my eyes tight.

  Time passed. Snatches of conversation drifted in and out of dark dreams. It was mostly my aunts and uncles, fretting that they couldn’t fetch a doctor; mudslides had blocked the roads. One voice I never heard was my mother’s.

  One day, a husky, elegant voice stood out from the rest. Maestra María, murmuring sweet things in Mixteco and stroking my cheek. “Taxiini, sikita’an, kuu ini.”

  I opened my eyes, and there she was, like an angel.

  But she was swimming in and out of focus, her lovely eyebrows waving like wings of a distant bird, lost in a cloud of rose perfume. Her voice was far away, but I tried to listen.

  “Teo,” she said, her eyes shiny. “I had no idea you were sick … I’m so sorry I didn’t come sooner … your uncle Paco came to find me … oh, Teo.”

  She kissed my forehead, then wiped away the lipstick mark with delicate fingertips. In my ear she whispered, “You need a mother, sweet boy.”

  She read me books as I drifted in and out of consciousness, grasping at her words like darting silver fish. But they were too slippery, and I was too far gone. I sank into darkness.

  At one point, Uncle’s voice said, “What do you think, Maestra?”

  I struggled to catch their minnow words.

  “He needs a doctor now,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’m driving to the city to fetch one.”

  “But the roads are closed, Maestra. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Paco, your nephew could die.”

  Uncle sighed. “What doctor would risk his life to come out here? What doctor cares that much about a poor family of indios?”

  “I have money,” she said. “I’ll say Teo is my own son.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Uncle said after a pause. “I’ll bring shovels to dig out the car.”

  Maestra María gave me another cool kiss on my forehead. More comforting murmurs in Mixteco. “Taxiini, sikita’an, kuu ini.” Grandfather’s voice spoke through her, feathers and petals that floated around me like spirits, like echoes. Perhaps he’d known that one day I’d need them, and she’d give them.

  More time passed. Worried whispers of uncles and aunts.

  “He’s not moving.”

  “He’s burning up.”

  “Dios mío, his pulse is weak.
”

  “Ay, no! His breathing is so slow.”

  And then, the voices faded, and there were hands shaking me, but not me … my body … I could see it there below. How it shook as the hands moved it, but then flopped still, as if empty.

  I was drifting outside my body, near the ceiling. I could see every detail of the room, the people in it, their faces distraught in the lantern glow. The frantic eyes of Aunt Perla with her baby on her back, the child’s fingers in his mouth, shiny with saliva. Aunt Perla was the one shaking my body. My other aunts and uncles were huddled around, watching, their hands on my neck, my wrist, my chest, searching for signs of life.

  I turned away.

  I turned away from the movie of my life.

  I saw another world, a world that had always been there, if I’d only turned around. A place of greenness and lushness, a thousand colors, an infinity of petals, sparkling water, dazzling reflections off leaves and stones, a sky the deepest blue … music that was really water and birdsongs and violins and voices dancing together … and it made me think of Esma and her caravan.

  I moved toward the beauty.

  There was Lucita. Beautiful Lucita, with her dazzling smile and her arms outstretched as if she wanted me to come play, as if we were still little children.

  Behind her appeared Father, his strong hand resting on her shoulder.

  And at her other side, Grandfather, his own wrinkled hand on her other shoulder. My powerful grandfather, before he’d grown sick. He bent down, whispered something to Lucita. Her face fell and her hands lowered.

  Grandfather put up a hand as if to say stop. Wait.

  But no, I wanted nothing more than to race into his arms.

  I floated toward him, and he waved his hands, insisting, “No, Teo, go back.”

  Still, I flew to him, taking one last glance behind at my weak little body. It grew faraway, so tiny, a sad little heap of flesh and bone beneath my sobbing aunts and uncles and cousins.

  There was the thinnest, silvery, spiderweb thread connecting me to that body. It stretched thinner and thinner the closer I moved to Grandfather and Lucita and Father. In a moment, just a moment, it would snap and I would be free.