What the Moon Saw Read online

  Now the hills were growing green and shady, thick with pines and flowering trees. Along the roadside, two boys my age strutted along without shirts. They looked tough, with faded red bandannas wrapped around their heads. They were laughing and casually swinging machetes as long as their arms. I wondered what they used the machetes for—hacking through jungles, maybe? An old barefoot woman passed by, leading a sheep tied to a piece of rope. The boys stopped swinging their machetes and stepped politely out of her way. A little farther on, three girls in too-small dresses and plastic flip-flops giggled and tried to keep their goats out of the path of our bus.

  When we reached a town of low buildings painted sherbet colors, the bus lurched to a stop, clanking and rattling. It sounded like a bowling ball was rolling around in the engine. We were in front of what looked like a big garage full of blue plastic seats. TERMINAL DE AUTOBUS was stenciled on the wall with orange paint. The bus station. We gathered our bags, shuffled off the bus, and waited on the plastic seats, which turned out to be as uncomfortable as they looked.

  At the curb, a three-legged dog was sniffing for scraps near a food stand with a torn cardboard sign. Tacos with head and tongue, I translated silently. My stomach was already beginning to turn. Tongue of what?

  “Are you hungry, mi amor?” Abuelita asked.

  “Not really,” I said, imagining the whole head and tongue of some animal wrapped up in a tortilla. Were the eyes in there, too?

  A boy walked by waving ice pops in the air and carrying a cooler streaked with mud.

  “Would you like an ice pop?” Abuelita asked.

  I nodded. The ice pops looked safe enough in sealed packages. Anyway, I was almost too hungry to care. At the airport, when it was too late to change my mind, Mom had given me a long list of things not to do: Don’t drink unboiled water; don’t eat street food; don’t eat raw fruits or vegetables; don’t eat without washing your hands for thirty seconds first. The last thing I’d eaten was the lasagna I’d nibbled at nervously on the plane.

  Abuelita called to the ice pop boy.

  I liked watching my grandmother. Her braids were woven with an orange ribbon and tied together at the ends. Her hair reached down to the small of her back, and it looked like she’d never cut it in her life. And another thing about her—even though she was shorter than me, she seemed tall. The way she held her neck long and her head high reminded me of a cat I had years ago. There was something catlike and graceful in the way she moved, even though she was so sturdy.

  She gave three coins to the boy, and he handed her an orange ice pop.

  His hands were filthy. The plastic wrapper dripped muddy water as Abuelita passed it to me.

  “Here, Clara,” she said, and settled back down in the seat.

  I wiped the wrapper off on my shirt while she wasn’t looking. The ice pop turned out to be mango-flavored and good. I licked it and tried not to worry about germs. I hadn’t even been able to wash my hands after I’d peed behind a cactus at our last stop. I didn’t see any sign of a bathroom at this stop, either. I wondered if I’d get Montezuma’s revenge. That’s what Samantha’s cousin got when she went to Cancún and had ice cubes in her Coke. She spent the whole vacation in the bathroom.

  Abuelo bought the tickets for our last bus, which would head toward the coast. The coast! Just when I started imagining a beach complete with snorkeling and palm trees, he said we would get off hours before the ocean, probably at around dawn.

  What? A whole night of traveling? This was unbelievable.

  Abuelo showed me the route on a map hanging on the wall by the ticket counter.

  “It can’t be that far,” I said, looking at the key, wondering if I’d entered a land where time and space worked inside a different set of rules.

  “Oh, but it is all narrow mountain roads,” he said. “The bus must crawl slowly around the curves. Like a snake.” He moved his hand like a snake and laughed.

  I laughed back to be polite, but I didn’t like the idea of any winding mountain roads. It sounded dangerous.

  A half hour later, at sunset, when the sky was streaked with pink and orange, we boarded the bus. It started up after a few tries and made its way up the twisted road, snorting and wheezing as though it had a terrible cold. The houses along the side of the road were patched together from scraps of metal and plastic. We swerved suddenly around a little girl riding a rusted bike with a toddler in a diaper on the handlebars. I hung on to the seat in front of me. Chickens flew up, squawking wildly. I noticed they belonged to the same old lady who had been on our last bus. I wished I were back in Maryland in Mom’s new Toyota with AC and airbags, riding along a wide, straight highway lined with clean rest stops and fast-food places. I wouldn’t even complain about the talk radio she always made us listen to.

  Abuelita rested her hand over mine. My fingers were still sticky from the ice pop, but she didn’t seem to mind. The weight of her hand calmed me. It felt comfortable, like a winter blanket.

  After darkness fell, drops of rain began to splatter the windows. The chicken lady’s chickens settled down into her lap. I liked how peaceful they looked sleeping, all breathing together in a pile. Abuelo snored lightly. The rain pounded the windows harder by the second, and soon I could barely see through the sheets of water.

  “What’s out there?” I whispered to Abuelita.

  “Jungles, mountains,” she replied. Her voice was soft.

  “Banana trees, a tree called huele de noche. It smells lovely, you see, but only in darkness.”

  Huele de noche. Smells at night. Or, smells like the night. I remembered how the night smelled in the Maryland woods at three a.m. “And what else is there?”

  “Oh, streams and rocks.” She looked out into the darkness and cocked her head, as though she were listening very carefully to something. “A jaguar.”

  “A jaguar?” I didn’t know whether to be scared or impressed. “Really?”

  She nodded. “I feel it there,” she said after a pause. “I feel it.”

  I strained to look out the window through the rain. No streetlights. Only the winding road, and next to it, a steep drop-off. Past that, darkness.

  “What’s below the cliff?” I asked.

  “A big river, wild and high. It is the time of the rains, you see. Every afternoon, the storms come out from the caves. Like feathered snakes, they move across the sky. They move over the trees, over the fields, and bring us water.”

  Her voice sounded cozy. The way her words came in waves reminded me of how Dad used to tell me bedtime stories. As I began drifting off, she wrapped her shawl around me. It smelled like wool sweaters and fireplaces. In and out of sleep I swam, while the bus jerked this way and that, and the brakes slammed at the sharp curves. I dreamed that I dove deep underneath the ocean’s surface, into the currents that move in the dark.

  Sometime later my eyes flew open. It took me a few seconds to remember where I was. My eyes rested on my grandmother next to me. She was sitting straight up, her eyes wide open, staring at the driver. Her hand was squeezing mine tightly.

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered.

  “Hold my hand, mi amor. You have nothing to fear.”

  What was she talking about? I looked past her, through the window, and saw rain streaming down the plastic pane. I couldn’t see much through the watery darkness, only the edge of the road that dropped off at a cliff. Everyone else on the bus seemed to be asleep, wrapped up in shawls and blankets with their chins nodded off to the side. No one but Abuelita seemed worried. The bus twisted around the curves, jerking us from side to side while Abuelita kept her firm grip on my hand.

  Suddenly, the bus skidded sideways with a screech. The bus lurched and my body slammed into the seat in front of us. Now the bus was tilting on its side, and I braced myself for it to fall all the way over. But it seemed to settle there in the mud. The floor of the bus was slanted down like a ramp toward the windows on our side, which were facing downward. The chickens were crying out and flying up
in a confusion of feathers. People were starting to wake up, murmuring and dazed.

  I rubbed my shoulder and peered out the window. Instead of seeing the ground, I saw something reflecting light. It was the river way down below, at the bottom of the cliff. It was churning and spitting up foam. It took me a moment to understand what was happening, and that was when my confusion turned into real, cold fear.

  Our bus is clinging to the edge of the cliff.

  My grandparents and I were sitting on the right-hand side—the low side—the side that would crash down into the river first. All kinds of thoughts flooded my head. Will I ever see Mom and Dad and Hector again? Why did I even come here? I can’t die now. I still haven’t ever kissed a boy or painted a masterpiece.

  Abuelo was awake now. This was the first time I’d seen him without any trace of a smile on his face. He pulled down the window and stuck his head out into the rain, holding his hat. He craned his head to look ahead to the patch of light from the headlights; then he tilted his head up and down and moved it back inside. Water dripped off the rim of his hat, and underneath, his eyebrows furrowed together. “We must leave the bus,” he said. “Before it slips down more.”

  Most people on the bus didn’t seem to know what was happening. They yawned and stretched and sighed as though we were just stuck in traffic. Abuelo stumbled to the front of the bus.

  “We must move people off the bus,” he told the driver.

  The driver just sat there in a daze, pressing the gas pedal, switching gears. He tugged at his mustache and muttered, “Don’t worry, don’t worry.”

  Abuelo moved past him and tried to open the door. He pressed his body against it, but it wouldn’t budge. It must have been stuck in the mud of the embankment. Anyway, it would have only opened to the cliff’s muddy edge.

  Soon other people began to realize we were trapped. Their voices grew louder, as though someone were turning up the volume with a remote control. Still, the driver insisted, “No problem.” He pressed the gas and the engine revved while the wheels just spun in place.

  Without warning, the bus skidded a little farther down and threw us all sideways. That set children screaming, babies crying, an old man praying, a piglet squealing.

  Abuelo and Abuelita said a few things to each other in a language I didn’t understand, then quickly gathered our bags and moved over to an empty seat on the other side of the bus, where the windows pointed high up.

  Abuelita unlatched the window and slid it to the side. “Now,” she said to Abuelo.

  He climbed out the window until he was grasping the edge with his hands. Abuelita took his hands in hers and leaned out the window, lowering him down slowly. Abuelita’s strength was unbelievable! When she let go, Abuelo landed on his feet in the mud below with a splat.

  Next was me. I climbed to the window frame and squatted, holding my breath. The sharp metal edge of the window frame dug into my bare feet. I remembered over a month ago, balancing in my bare feet on the metal edge of our sliding glass door in Walnut Hill.

  I turned around until I was facing inside the bus, looking at Abuelita.

  “Let your legs out, mi amor,” she told me. Her face looked strong and shiny with rain or maybe sweat.

  I froze. I wanted to close my eyes and click my heels three times and be home.

  “Clara!” Abuelo called up. “I will catch you!”

  I didn’t move. How far was the fall? I couldn’t tell. What if I broke my leg jumping out? Or worse?

  Abuelita looked at me calmly. “You can do this, Clara.”

  I let my breath out slowly and lowered my body outside so that I was pressed against the cold metal side of the bus and hanging by my hands. The edge dug into my fingers and I felt myself slipping. But Abuelita had a firm grasp on my wrists. She bent over, out the window, and lowered me slowly. My feet dangled in the space between the bottom of the tilted bus and the ground. The rain was drenching me and pounding the metal bus so loudly it filled my head. Exhaust fumes from the bus mixed with the smell of wet trees and something sweet—maybe huele de noche.

  “Now!” yelled Abuelo, and I felt Abuelita let go of my wrists.

  I closed my eyes and slid down the slick metal. As I fell, time slowed down and I saw things, heard things. The jaguar, sleek and spotted. The white bird high in the branches. Both of them watching us from the forest. I saw the little plastic doll and the plastic houses and plastic trees sucked under the rushing water. I heard the rain drumming out a deep, low song. It was the rhythm that had pulled me past the edge of Walnut Hill. It was the deep song that seemed to come from underground, or maybe from somewhere inside myself.

  And boom, I landed in Abuelo’s arms. He staggered, then stood still, holding me. I felt his heartbeat, strong at my shoulder.

  When he put me down and the cold mud oozed between my toes, I remembered I was barefoot. My sandals were lying, forgotten, under the seat on the bus.

  Abuelita tossed down our bags and Abuelo caught them. I expected her to follow, but no, she lowered the chicken lady, and after that, the three chickens in an uproar, dangling from the string. My grandparents seemed to be the only ones with clear heads. Soon the bus driver and the other passengers followed their lead. Within moments, at every window people were lowering babies and children, old women and men, and animals, until finally everyone was out, including Abuelita.

  We stood together in the rain, goose-bumped, shivering, watching the bus barely holding on to the edge.

  “No problem,” the bus driver said, shielding his eyes from the rain and smoothing his dripping mustache. “In one hour the sun will rise and another bus will come. Don’t worry.” All of us passengers huddled together under damp blankets underneath the trees. The chicken lady sat on one side of me, and Abuelita on the other, with Abuelo on the other side of her. It felt kind of cozy, and I didn’t mind the smell of wet wool and chickens.

  I dozed until the rain let up and the sky turned lilac. People were starting to stand up and stretch, ready for the next bus. I dug my shiny black shoes out of my suitcase. I slipped them on and tied the ribbons carefully around my ankles. I hoped they wouldn’t get too muddy.

  The chicken lady looked at my shoes and smiled. She seemed to like them. She pulled a bunch of little reddish purple bananas out of her sack and offered some to me and my grandparents. When I said gracias—thank you—Abuelita translated into another language so that the lady could understand—nku ta’a vini. It sounded nothing like Spanish—more like Chinese. The words were choppy, some high-toned, some low. Abuelo explained that Mixteco was the language people here spoke before the Spanish explorers arrived, hundreds of years ago.

  I tried to repeat. “Nku ta’a vini,” I said slowly, a little embarrassed.

  The chicken lady threw back her head and laughed. She patted my shoulder and offered me another banana.

  I took it. These red bananas tasted better than regular bananas. Or maybe I was just very hungry. “Nku ta’a vini,” I repeated. My mouth was full of banana mush.

  She shrieked with joy and piled banana after banana onto my lap, while I smiled and chewed and wondered what other things I would encounter—besides the Mixteco language and red bananas—that I’d never imagined existed.

  The next bus came along about an hour after sunrise. I had to leave my sandals behind in the other bus, since it was still stuck in the mud, waiting for a tow truck to pull it out. I climbed into the next bus in my ribboned shoes, which were giving me blisters on my heels after only a few minutes. Passengers already filled the seats, but they let people from our bus stand in the aisles. At the curves I shifted from one foot to the other, trying to keep my balance as people fell against me. My feet ached.

  After an hour on that bus, the chicken lady got off. I was sad to see her go. Abuelo grew talkative, explaining the names of the villages we passed. The Hill That Flew. The Land of Hornets. The Place of Glowworms. Finally, with a huge grin, he announced, “We have reached Yucuyoo! The Hill of the Moon!”

/>   It could have been the moon, for all I knew. There was nothing that looked like a town. Not a single house. Only hills thick with trees, and patches of fields and meadows in the distance. We were smack in the middle of a huge valley of light that fell through millions of moving leaves. Sounds of birds and insects nearly drowned out the bus engine’s rumble. On all sides, green mountains surrounded us, and far above, at the peaks, clouds drifted slowly. It was like a dream that leaves you breathless but makes your heart pound once you realize there’s nothing familiar to hang on to.

  I swallowed hard. “Where is it?”

  “We must walk a bit,” Abuelo said brightly. He slung his bag over his shoulder and jumped up.

  I hoped we wouldn’t have to walk far. I wished I’d brought my tennis shoes. I’d been able to fit only one extra pair of shoes in my bags (since there were CDs and DVDs and other things that I was beginning to doubt I’d get to use). The ribboned gypsy shoes had won over the tennis shoes and hiking boots. And now the gypsy shoes were the only ones left.

  As soon as we stepped off the bus, it chugged away around the curve, leaving us at the roadside, surrounded by my bags. For a minute I had an urge to run after it.

  I picked up a suitcase and started walking along beside my grandparents, limping a little from the blisters. After about four steps, Abuelita stopped, slid off her sandals, and handed them to me. “Here, mi amor. You don’t want to ruin your nice city shoes.”

  “But what about your feet?”

  “Mine are already tough,” she said. “Like a jaguar’s.”

  “Not even a thorn could enter your grandmother’s paws.” Abuelo laughed. He skimmed his hand over her back.

  Her sandals were well-worn leather with some kind of animal hair still clinging to it. The soles seemed to be cut from pieces of tire and attached to the leather with small nails. They fit me lengthwise but were too wide. I was glad she’d made me wear them, though, because we had to walk on a muddy path dotted with sharp rocks. For a while we walked through woods, through light that swam and flashed between leaf shadows. Soon we entered a clearing, a stretch of hilly meadows. My legs fell into a rhythm. Each step made it harder to go back to the bus stop, take a string of buses to the airport, and fly home to Walnut Hill.