The Lightning Queen Read online

Page 18


  She moves her dried, wrinkled lips to my ear and whispers, “Why, then I’ll be free.”

  Aunt Perla pats her shoulder, then scoops up another cup of atole for me and changes the subject. She’s used to the Other Grandmother’s quirks. “Teo, did you know your uncle Paco won an award for lasting contributions to the Hill of Dust?” She speaks Spanish in the choppy way of old people who spent most of their lives speaking only Mixteco. Tossing a white braid over her shoulder, she pulls out a plaque from the shelves of spices, shines it with the hem of her blue-checked apron, and holds it up proudly.

  “Congratulations!” Mom says.

  Uncle Paco waves away the compliments and starts in on his other shoe.

  Aunt Perla explains that the award was for installing the community water system nearly single-handedly, years ago, long before any villages in the area had plumbing. Some still don’t. Every time I take a shower with hot water here I feel grateful, knowing that people in nearby villages are taking cold bucket baths and peeing in an outhouse.

  Grandpa Teo pats him on the back. “What would we do without you, Uncle?”

  “What would we do without you, Doctor?” Uncle Paco says with real fondness.

  It’s true, Grandpa is the real celebrity around here. “El Doctor Teo,” everyone calls him, with voices full of respect. Whenever people around here find out I’m Doctor Teo’s grandson in el Norte, they tell me stories of how he saved their kid or brother or mother … seems like he’s saved everyone in a hundred miles of the Hill of Dust. He is definitely the head of a mouse in these parts.

  Modestly, Grandpa shifts the conversation to the weather—specifically, the storm today, and how Mom and I had to slip and slide up the Hill of Dust, which should be called the Hill of Mud, he jokes.

  Then Aunt Perla tilts her head at Grandpa and says, “Remember the mudslide that summer you died, Teo, dear? How terrible it was?”

  The other viejitos nod and murmur in agreement. Mom frowns and shifts in her seat. She’s a scientist, through and through, and doesn’t know how to react to these stories. But I’ve always soaked them up like a dried-out sponge.

  For the hundredth time, they tell the story of Grandpa Teo’s death, and the Gypsy Queen who sang him alive, because for her, nothing was impossible! And then they launch into stories about the Gypsies’ fortune-telling and movies. Every summer, I’ve heard stories about the Gypsy Queen from the viejitos, but until my talk with Grandpa today, she just seemed like a fairy-tale heroine, not a real, live girl. I mean, I always used to picture her like some kind of superhero or goddess, living in the sky and shooting out lightning from her fingertips.

  I glance at Grandpa. Usually, when the viejitos tell these tales, his face never reveals any clues. But now, he gives me a secret wink.

  I keep my hand in my pocket, holding on to the electrified coins, and it’s all I can do not to take them out and tell everyone, “Esma’s real! Somewhere she’s alive!” But Grandpa must want to keep this quiet, so I just let the necklace buzz and hum in my hand.

  When Grandma was alive, she didn’t like hearing these Gypsy stories, even less than Mom does. Grandma came from a town a couple hours away, where Grandpa was interning in a hospital. She was doing midwifery training there, learning how to deliver babies. I always figured that since she was from a bigger town, she just didn’t believe in hocus-pocus stuff from the village. Now I get it: She felt threatened by this real, live Lightning-Queen-Goddess-Superhero, her husband’s first love and supposed friend for eternity.

  I used to tell my friends back home about the Queen of Lightning, and they made faces and said, “Dude, those old people are nuuuuuts!” Over the years, I learned to keep the mystical parts of the Hill of Dust to myself. But I wish I had someone to share them with, to wonder with, especially now that I’ve promised to find Esma, especially now that magic and real life have collided.

  Once los viejitos grow too tired to continue the storytelling, they yawn and drain their last drops of atole and tea and say good night. Soon enough, I walk outside, too, where the moon is a bright, fuzzy circle, and the air is damp and cool. The mist wraps around me like a blanket.

  Mom disappears into the bathroom to brush her teeth, and Grandpa brings the baby fox into his room to tuck it into its crate of rags. I linger outside, watching the cornstalks that look like people waving their leaf-arms to say good night.

  A hand rests on my shoulder. It’s Grandpa. I turn to face him, noticing we’re the same height this year. He looks closely at me. Although his lashes have thinned and grayed, it’s true we have the same eyes. Like mud puddles in reeds, he always says.

  When I tell my buddies about my trips here, they get impressed with the scorpions and ancient artifacts and machetes … but that’s not the thing that makes it so awesome. It’s the hard-to-capture details—how my hair smells like wood smoke for weeks, how the tortillas taste when they’re cooked over a fire, how mysterious los viejitos’ voices sound when they talk about the Gypsies. And most of all, it’s being with Grandpa Teo, collecting herbs by the river, wandering in el monte, and sometimes—thanks to his creature-in-trouble radar—even saving animals.

  Mostly I’m okay with being an only child, but I wish there were someone back home—some kid—who got my new mission to find the Queen of Lightning, who got this part of my life, who got the magic of the Hill of Dust, who got that my grandpa isn’t just some old geezer in the boondocks of Mexico, but more like—I don’t know, a knight or king or someone really noble and important.

  Someone I’d do anything for. Like find his long-lost friend for eternity.

  I hug him good night, then take out my phone and start searching.

  A month later, on the ripped-up backseat of an ancient bus, to the annoyingly cheerful blare of ranchera music, I watch the Hill of Dust grow smaller. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I pull the coin necklace from my pocket and let it dangle in front of the storm clouds. Once the hill has vanished from view, I tuck the necklace back into my pocket, carefully, like a piece of magic I’m bringing home.

  My forehead falls against the window. Saying good-bye to the Hill of Dust always sucks something out of me and leaves a lonely space. And now there’s the added disappointment of not finding Esma. It was a bummer saying good-bye to Grandpa Teo this time, even bigger than usual, knowing something important was left unfinished.

  Last month, the night of our arrival, I’d felt sure I could find out something about Esma online. I figured my cousins had spelled her name wrong when they searched for it, since it’s pretty long and confusing. But when I typed in Esma’s full name, I got nothing but a bunch of random links. Nothing about a singer. Dejected, I realized she probably uses her married name now, and who knows what that could be. For hours, I kept searching, but the cell connection was so spotty, it took forever and turned up nothing useful.

  Then, on the second day, my phone dropped in the stream and stopped working. Even though Mom let me use her phone, it was so old and grumpy, I got nowhere. I tried a couple Internet cafés around here, but the computers were so slow I nearly bashed my head into the screens. I’d just have to wait till we got back to Maryland to make any real progress. If only Grandpa and I could get together in front of our superfast computer at home with high-speed wireless.

  “Hey, Mom,” I say suddenly, lifting my head from the window. “Why hasn’t Grandpa ever visited us in Maryland?” It’s never occurred to me to ask before; he’s always seem tied to the Hill of Dust, like a kite on a string that could only go so far.

  “Well,” she says, glancing up from her ebook, “I used to ask him and my mom to come, but she was scared of flying and he’d never leave his animals. And he worried someone would get sick and there’d be no one to heal them.”

  “But now there’s that new clinic nearby, right?”

  “Yup. And you know, today when I was saying good-bye, he mentioned he might visit us sometime.”

  My eyes bug out. “No way!”

  She t
aps her ebook screen, distracted. “I told him we’d pay for him to come with one of my cousins. Of course I wouldn’t feel comfortable with him flying alone. He’s never even been on a plane before.”

  “That’d be awesome, Mom.” My heart speeds up, new possibilities exploding inside me. If I can find Esma, Grandpa could come to the United States and see her … and me. It would be like bringing the ultimate, giant piece of magic back home.

  Mom goes back to reading, and my hand grazes the old silk string and silver coins of the necklace. Zap. Something’s rushing in to fill the emptiness—a lightness, a liquid gold. My hands tingle and my blood screams the words: Nothing is impossible!

  I close my hand over the necklace.

  Silently, I tell myself my fortune.

  I will find Esma.

  Back in Maryland, a few weeks after our Mexico trip, I’m lying on my bed, covered in dried sweat from soccer camp, messing with my new phone. Esma’s necklace is hanging from the end of my curtain rod, and a breeze through the window is moving the coins, making a weird, tinkling music. Most of my weekdays are filled with camp, and my weekends with the pool and Xbox with friends, but in the in-between times—like now—I search online for clues about Esma.

  So far, no luck.

  Last week, I mentioned Esma to my buddies because it seemed like a cool mystery, detective stuff they could get into. But they were all, “Dude, you’re, like, obsessed with these old people. Give it up.” And for the next few days, “Gramps” was my new nickname. Luckily they forgot about it, and I haven’t reminded them.

  I flip onto my back and, for the thousandth time, tap in esma romani singer and scroll through link after link, but it’s all the same—hundreds of entries on some other singer named Esma, from Macedonia. I’m ready to throw my phone across the room. There has to be something about my Esma online, even if she ended up taking her husband’s last name or failing at her career or even dying young. After all, she was on her way to fame when she wrote that letter.

  Dully, I check my e-mail, eyes glazing over at the usual celebrity headlines on the home page. Musicians and actors, most of them with crazy names. In the corner of my room, the coin necklace is making a strange, light melody in the wind, like a secret song just for me. It’s as if the notes seep into my brain and zap new electrical paths from cell to cell.

  I’m staring at a freaky photo of Lady Gaga on my phone when it hits me—maybe Esma has a stage name. Actually, she sort of already had a stage name back when Grandpa knew her.

  I type gypsy queen of lightning.

  The results pop up.

  And my mouth drops open.

  No way.

  I sit up, tuck a pillow behind my neck. My heart is thudding like crazy. The first website that comes up is a Wikipedia entry for “Esmeralda, Gypsy Queen of Lightning.”

  There’s a black-and-white photo of a beautiful woman in some kind of coin headdress, with more coin necklaces covering her shoulders and neck. She’s standing on a chair, holding a violin. Her chin is raised proudly, and her eyes are piercing, traced in black lines that curve up at the corners like Cleopatra’s.

  With shaking hands, I scroll down, reading more.

  ESMERALDA RAYOS, best known as Esmeralda, Queen of Lightning, is an acclaimed singer/songwriter of Gypsy, or Romani, origin, known for her soul-searing music. Born in 1947, she spent a nomadic childhood in rural Mexico as part of the cine ambulante, or traveling cinema, popular in rural Mexico in the mid-20th century. At age thirteen, she left her family and signed with well-known music agent Antonio Reyes Salazar, who is credited with beginning her successful and long-lived career. She has produced seven critically acclaimed albums, and continued live performances until the early 2000s. Known for her colorful life, she has married and divorced four times, and performed internationally.

  I click on a link to hear one of her songs. The first notes are sad and fierce and beautiful, a warbling, passionate, wordless song-cry.

  The air fills with a kind of electricity, speeds up my heart and tingles a place inside my chest. It’s a strange feeling, deep as a cave and towering as a mountain and wide as a starry sky.

  For some reason, it makes me think of Grandma.

  Afternoon sunlight streams through the window, sparking off the coins, and I can almost feel my grandmother here with me, as though Esma’s song has opened a path to somewhere hidden. A pathway to another world, right here in Maryland.

  I have to tell Grandpa. I wipe my sweaty hands on my shorts, then scroll through my contacts, looking for his number. Hopefully he’ll answer. He never set up voice mail, and couldn’t care less about texting or e-mail or the Internet in general. Half the time he forgets his phone somewhere random, like the grain storehouse or the turkey coop.

  But the number’s not even here. Why would it be? Mom’s always the one who calls him. I’m just about to text her at work for the number when my phone rings.

  MOM appears on the screen.

  Quickly, I answer. “Hey, Mom, this is so weird—I was just—”

  “Teo, hon, are you at home?” She sounds shaken up, her voice on edge.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “My dad just called me. He’s at the airport.”

  My forehead wrinkles. “Huh?”

  “I could kill him! He came all the way here, all by himself, without telling me. Said he knew I wouldn’t let him come otherwise. Can you believe it? Good thing we’re even in town. I mean, this isn’t like the Hill of Dust, where you can just drop in and everyone’s waiting for you with atole and …”

  She rambles on for a while, and I let it sink in. Grandpa Teo … here? Now? Why the urgency? And so soon after we saw him? It has to have something to do with Esma. Of course, that’s not something he’d tell Mom about. Too irrational.

  “Listen, Mateo, I’m coming to pick you up now, then we’ll go get Grandpa together, okay?”

  “Sure,” I say, jumping off the bed. And then, “Hey, did he say why he was coming?”

  She makes a pfft sound. “I asked him, of course, and all he said was, ‘It’s time.’ ”

  An hour later, beneath the fluorescent lights of baggage claim, I spot Grandpa Teo in his palm hat. The little kid in me escapes, and I run toward him, hurling myself into his arms.

  “Careful, Mateo!” he says, laughing.

  Once I loosen my grip, he sticks his hand in his suit pocket and pulls out a tiny bird. A live bird.

  A sparrow? Now I’m laughing. Of course he’d have a live sparrow in his pocket.

  But Mom, clicking toward us in her heels, gasps. “Papá! You brought a bird? All the way from Mexico? That’s illegal! How’d you make it past customs?”

  He smiles in that soothing way that makes you feel like you’re sipping hot chocolate by a fire.

  “Oh, mija, I found her here in the airport.” He presses his cheek to her feathers. “She must’ve snuck in somehow. Raindrop, that’s her name. Tiny as a raindrop, fallen from the sky. She hurt her wing, probably slammed into a window.”

  “Ay, Dios, Papá,” Mom sighs. “This is so like you!” She gives him a long hug, careful about the sparrow.

  On the highway, inside the car, as Raindrop lets out tiny peeps, Mom grills Grandpa about why he came, and if everything’s all right back in Mexico, and whether he’s going senile. Calmly, he reassures her, stroking Raindrop the entire time. His calloused fingertips ease her shivering like a magician’s spell.

  Mom takes the exit to our suburb, passing clusters of big gray and beige houses, interspersed with giant block stores and parking lots. I watch Grandpa Teo look out the window, sunlight flashing over his face like a strobe. I wonder what he thinks of our neighborhood with its rectangular lawns and neat hedges. His eyes don’t reveal anything; they just have their same relaxed, curious expression.

  We’re nearing our cul-de-sac when Grandpa Teo raises a hand and says, “Stop, please.”

  Mom slows down, puts on her blinker, pulls to the roadside. “You okay, Papi?”
r />   Nodding, he says, “Momentito,” then opens the door and walks back along the curb, shaded beneath the tree canopy.

  “Go see what he’s doing, Mateo,” Mom says, squinting at the rearview.

  I hop out and see Grandpa Teo bending over something … a baby box turtle, mottled orange and yellow and black. It’s struggling to climb up the curb. Grandpa picks it up, examines it, then searches the underbrush near the sidewalk.

  “See his mother around, Mateo?”

  I shake my head. For a while, we look through brambles and sticks and bushes and leaves, with no luck. The air’s steamy hot, even in the shade, and within minutes, I’m sweating in my shorts and T-shirt. Grandpa’s dripping in his suit.

  Mom honks, impatient, and calls out the window, “Let’s go!”

  “¡Ahorita vengo!” Grandpa Teo responds. Be there in a sec. With a wink, he sticks the baby turtle in the suit pocket that’s not occupied by the sparrow.

  “What should we name this little guy?” he asks, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. “How about Flame? See how his head sticks out, orange and yellow?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I say. And then, heart hammering, I ask, “Grandpa, why’d you decide to come here? Why now?”

  “Last week,” he says, “the lightning in my blood started screaming. Shouting that there was no time left. ‘Find her! Save her!’ ” He gives a little shiver. “Any leads, mijo?”

  A grin spreads over my face. “Just found her online, Grandpa.” I pull out my phone, open the Wiki page, zoom in on her photo.

  Grandpa fumbles with his glasses and squints at the tiny screen. For a long time he drinks in her picture, cradling the phone in his palms like a long-lost treasure. Raindrop flaps and chirps in his right pocket, and Flame tries to climb out of the left one, but Grandpa is oblivious to everything but Esma.

  “She did it,” he says finally, under his breath.

  I take the phone and scroll down, reading the Wiki entry aloud, translating awkwardly to Spanish. When I click on the link to her song, it rises up like a wild storm over the beige houses and identical lawns. Suddenly, there’s a rain shower of magic over my neighborhood.