The Lightning Queen Read online

  “Oh, we’ll add … some creative storytelling.”

  I tilted my head, waiting.

  “We Rom are experts at it. Of course, we usually use it on you gadjé.”

  I gave her a look.

  She bit her lip, thinking hard. “So, Teo, you’ll give them the diosito and here’s what you’ll say.” She climbed onto a rock mound—what was once part of an ancient temple. She held up the statue, threw back her shoulders, and boomed, “Dear Romani friends, please accept our gift to you. If you return in one year, this diosito will bring you the best of luck. Your food will taste especially delicious. Your movies will have extra magic to entrance your audiences. People will flock to your shows like ants to honey. You will be showered with money like a rainstorm.”

  I climbed up beside her on the rock and straightened tall. I shouted, “Good fortune will follow you like a baby duck follows its mother. The largest and sweetest onions will be yours.”

  She grinned. “But if you don’t return, dear Romani friends, your entire family will be cursed.”

  “Cursed?” I recoiled. Grandfather always warned that healers never use their powers for evil.

  “It’s just pretend!” Esma assured me. “Listen, tell them this.” Her voice grew ominous, and her eyes shifted like shadows. “If you do not return within a year, your voices will change into croaks of mournful toads.”

  She let out a belch. I stifled a laugh.

  “Your hair will turn into spikes, like a cactus.” She stretched out her braids, widening her eyes.

  I couldn’t resist adding, in my spookiest voice, “Your tongue will shrivel like a worm in a desert.”

  Her voice rose in a creepy howl. “Your sweat will smell like an angry skunk.”

  I widened my own eyes. “Your poo will turn greenish yellow and goopy.”

  At this, she collapsed into laughter, and once she recovered, gasped, “Oh, they’ll do anything to avoid that curse. I know it.”

  The night air was thick with the promise of rain, rich with the smells of sweet tamales and cinnamon-chocolate, smoky with a hundred flames of beeswax candles. Everyone in town, Mixteco and Romani alike, had gathered at our home for Lucita’s cabo de año. People overflowed from the courtyard, spilling into every corner of our huts, out past our squash and bean patch, to the edge of our milpa and the fringes of our herb garden. An expanse of stars hung over the fields and mountains around us, with my home at the warm, golden center.

  The Rom seemed to be genuinely enjoying our refreshments. At first they kept to themselves in a cluster, but then the chocolate and sugar and candle smoke and mist conspired to make everyone light, happy, brave enough to mingle with strangers … who were no longer strangers after a week here. In broken Spanish, Rom chatted with Mixteco, and Mixteco with Rom, and the language was just broken enough that the Rom didn’t realize this was actually an event for my sister, and the Mixteco didn’t realize that the Rom thought they were honored guests for a Romani Business Appreciation Event.

  Grandfather put his hand on my shoulder and said, “They are like us, outsiders in Mexico. Both of our people have little voice in the government. City folk consider us backward. We live on the fringes, the wilds of our country. So it is with the Rom.”

  He nodded to himself, watching our guests. “Duke Ivan told me the Rom have traveled for many centuries and scattered around the world, yet they speak the same language and keep their traditions strong. Our people, the Mixteco, were here before the Spaniards came, before this place was even called Mexico. We too survived, our language survived, our customs survived. And perhaps that is why our village welcomes these Rom with open arms, because we see ourselves in them.”

  I looked at Esma and her grandparents, who were admiring the sawdust mosaic of the flowered caravan. And I wondered if the key to her people surviving had been separating themselves from outsiders—gadjé. Maybe that’s what bonded them together as they danced around their bonfires, night after night for hundreds of years.

  Esma and her grandparents met our eyes and ambled over. In his flowery speech, Duke Ivan thanked us, offered us some of the onions—which we all politely refused—and bid us good night as he took an enormous bite of one.

  Esma shot me a pointed look.

  The statue! I had to give it to them before they left. Esma and I had decided this would be the perfect time to give the gift. The curse would seem spookier in the flickering candlelight and ghostly mist.

  I pulled the little diosito from my pocket, my palms damp. I tried to channel Pedro Infante and all the other bold actors I’d seen on-screen the past week. I said, “Dear Romani friends, my sister died a year ago today. She would have loved the movies you’ve shown. She would have loved the aliveness you’ve brought. She would have loved … you.”

  I placed the statue in the Duke’s free hand, the one that wasn’t occupied by an onion. “Please take this ancient diosito that our ancestors made many years ago.”

  Glancing at Esma’s eager face, I launched into the speech I’d memorized, about the good luck the statue would bring. By now my cousins had gathered, sensing something exciting was happening. Lalo understood enough Spanish from his year at school to do a rough Mixteco translation—a word here and a word there.

  Esma translated to her own people while Duke Ivan nodded and smiled, extra big at the mention of onions. In return, Grandfather nodded and smiled.

  I’d told him about this part. But not the next.

  I took a deep breath and, trying to make my eyes scary and my voice haunting, explained the curse that would befall them if they didn’t return.

  On hearing Lalo’s choppy translation, Grandfather gave me a strange look, but I kept going.

  Duke Ivan must have understood some of my ranting; I could tell from the way his mustache fell into an upside-down arc over a deep frown. And as Esma translated, making her voice eerie, Duke Ivan’s face darkened more with every gory detail. With effort, he swallowed his mouthful of onion and put the remaining half onion in his jacket pocket, looking woozy.

  Here was a man who did not like curses. His hand went to his throat at the part about the toads, to his mustache at the part about the spiky hair, and to his paunch at the part about the duck poo. He now held the statue at arm’s length, thoroughly disturbed.

  Maybe we’d overdone it. Maybe we’d ruined everything.

  Roza, on the other hand, wore an expression of skeptical amusement, at least when Duke Ivan wasn’t looking at her. While she watched Esma’s theatrical translation, the Mistress of Destiny’s nose twitched, as if trying to hold back laughter. It was like a volcano, bubbling up and threatening to explode. Finally it gushed out, this lava rush of laughter, but she covered it up, feigning a coughing fit.

  She made such a commotion that Ivan patted her back, concerned. Eventually, she calmed down and wiped her eyes and sniffed. Beyond the giant nose, her moist eyes crinkled in enjoyment. She tapped Esma’s head, tugged her braid, and whispered something to her, which I could only guess involved the word squash head.

  Then the Mistress of Destiny turned to her husband. I figured they must be debating whether to accept the statue. With a sigh of exasperation, she grabbed the statue, kissed it, pressed it to her bosom, then issued a firm and unshakeable order.

  Duke Ivan grimaced, sighed, and turned to Grandfather and me. “Thank you for the gift, my friends.” He shook our hands, leaving sharp traces of onion juice. “We will be certain to return next year to avoid the unpleasantness of the curse.”

  His wife elbowed him. He added, “And of course, we look forward to enjoying your company once again.”

  Esma brightened and declared, “I would like to play a song in honor of Lucita.”

  She wedged her violin beneath her chin and eked out a melody, mournful and beautiful, something that brought to mind caves and candles, beams of light cutting through the night, white sheets waving like magic in the breeze. Her voice rose in an open-mouthed, wordless song, as though she’d conver
ted lightning and stars into spiraling notes, waves of sorrow and waves of joy, waves of losses and waves of wishes.

  I looked at my mother, sitting with my aunts outside the kitchen, and wished she could feel it, too, this aliveness all around us. I wished she could feel my sister’s presence in the music and mist. I could. It was a soft and whispery presence, something comforting that would always be with me.

  The next day, beneath a heavy white sky, the Rom packed up their camp and loaded their wagons. Everyone on the Hill of Dust came to see them off.

  Esma walked over to me and Grandfather, under the guise of thanking us for the Romani Business Appreciation Event. “Well, my friend for life, this is it. The roots of our friendship are planted deep.”

  I nodded, my lip quivering. If I opened my mouth, I might crumble to bits.

  She looked furtively behind her, and seeing that her family was busy packing, she leaned toward me. For one heart-thrumming moment, I thought she might hug me good-bye. Instead, she bent toward my sling, cupped her hands over Thunder, and kissed her downy head. In return, Thunder peeped and nibbled at her ear.

  Esma giggled. Still standing close, she stared at me, as if memorizing my face. And then, “Teo, before we leave, can you ask your grandfather something important?”

  “Sure. What?”

  “Ask him if I’m going to be a famous singer one day.”

  Confused, I said, “Why don’t you ask the Mistress of Destiny?”

  Esma lowered her voice. “Here’s a Romani secret, never to be divulged. Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “As far as I can tell, most Romani women aren’t true fortune-tellers. They just pay close attention, make good guesses, tell the gadjé whatever they want to hear.”

  I swallowed hard. So this whole friends-for-life thing was invented? Crushed, I asked, “The Mistress of Destiny made up my true fortune?”

  “No!” Esma cried vehemently. “Here’s the strange thing! After paying so much attention, my grandmother sometimes sees glimpses of real things, real fortunes. Like she did with you.” Esma paused. “Once she told me my true fortune.”

  “What was it?”

  “She said I’d be a famous singer. That was a long time ago, when I was little, before—before the lightning strike. I asked her about it later and she said, ‘No, squash head, you imagined it.’ But, Teo, I remember, I remember she had that same look in her eyes that she did when she saw your true fortune.”

  “Why would she lie?”

  She lowered her head. “Because if I become a famous singer—it means I’ll be marime. I’d have to leave my family forever.”

  After spending a week with Esma and her people, the gravity of this decision sank into me. Becoming a famous singer would get her disowned. Becoming my friend for life would get her disowned. I remembered how joyful she looked, dancing and singing and playing music around the fire with her people.

  “Esma, do you really want to make these fortunes come true? Do you really want to be a famous singer?” I forced myself to continue, my voice raw. “Do you really want to be my friend for life?”

  “Yes,” she said, without hesitation, her chin jutting, determined, in the air. She glanced at Grandfather. “Your grandfather, he has powers like my grandmother. That’s how he knew she was hiding your true fortune. So please, ask him, will I be a famous singer?”

  Once I translated, my grandfather regarded her. Then he took her hand—the one with the curled-up fingers—and gave a deep bow, a gesture of true admiration. “Queen Esma,” he said, “it doesn’t take a divination to see that whatever it is you want, you will make it happen.”

  And then, Esma’s stepmother called out for her and stomped over, smacking her head, then pulled her away by the ear.

  Moments later, the horses were hooked to the wagons, and the Rom were walking beside them, loaded with packs of their own. They waved good-bye, and we bid them farewell. The Mistress of Destiny pulled something from her pocket—the diosito—and held it up as she waved, looking directly into my eyes. In broken Spanish, she said something along the lines of, “Here’s hoping none of us is croaking like a toad or pooping like a duck next year.”

  Somehow Grandfather caught the gist of her words and laughed a deep belly laugh.

  The caravan began its descent down the mountain, with Esma bringing up the rear, carrying a satchel in front and Da on her back and holding Ga’s and Ba’s hands. “Good-bye, my friend for life! Until next year!”

  “Good-bye, Queen of Lightning!” I called after her.

  As she grew smaller, loping away in that crooked dance of hers, my eyes burned and my chin trembled. Once she turned the curve, I ran up into the hills, into el monte. I perched on a high lookout, where I could watch the caravan wind down into the valley, on to their next village. At the horizon, clumps of stone-gray clouds were rolling in, and a deep rumble sounded in the distance.

  Lightning illuminated the entire sky. I tucked myself farther back against the rocks, under the overhang, watching the first storm of rainy season draw near. The rain came, first a few drops, then walls of water. Safely under the overhang I sat, feeling the air’s new coolness. Bolt after bolt of lightning crackled against the dark sky, flashes of wild energy.

  Water slid down the mountains, gushing mud, and far below, the river swelled and roared. Tucked far above in my mountaintop nook, I imagined Esma and her people taking refuge inside their wagons, sheltered from the howling and pounding. I heard Esma’s shouts in the crashes of thunder, her screams in the wind, alive and whirling with possibility.

  And I screamed, at first wordless, open-mouthed screams. Dozens, maybe hundreds that I’d swallowed over the past year. Then, when I was all screamed out, words formed, words for Esma. “I will see you again. And one day, I will save you, too.”

  Mateo, how about some food?” The question comes from a distant place, some other world.

  “Huh?” My voice sounds strange and hoarse.

  I blink and focus on Grandpa’s head, which is tilted in concern. “Food?” he repeats, making an eating gesture.

  It’s like a spell has been broken, like there’s a glitch in the movie I’m watching and it’s suddenly just … stopped.

  “Food,” I echo, staring down at the coin necklace in my hand. It feels almost alive, something with a heartbeat. “Why food?”

  He grins. “Thought I heard your belly rumbling.”

  “Oh.” I listen, embarrassed. Yup. My gut’s making a storm of its own.

  “And, mijo,” he says, “there are some strange noises coming from your pocket.”

  “What?” Oh. Right. My phone. It’s sounding message alerts in the form of my favorite guitar riff. I silence it without even seeing how many texts I’ve missed or what time it is. This is the longest I’ve gone without checking my phone. Well, at least outside of sleeping, plane rides, and school.

  The weird thing is, I don’t care. I still have one leg in the world of his story, and I want to climb back in. All I can think about is Esma, somewhere out there. I pool the coin necklace from one hand to another, like a deck of cards. “Did she come back, Grandpa?”

  He stands up slowly, without a word. Then he takes some new candles from his altar, lights them, and smushes them over the ones that have burned out. The room brightens.

  He sits down again, and his eyes shine with reflections of flame, like tiny mirrors. And my stomach grumbles fade and he starts talking and the movie plays on …

  One year later, the Rom came at sunrise, when the sky was a riot of pink and gold, when the air was fresh and cool and full of hope. For months, I’d been glancing at that bend in the road, far down the valley, at the foot of the Hill of Dust, waiting, waiting, waiting. And at the moment their trail of wagons and horses and scarves and coins rounded the curve, the sun peeked above the mountains and shone long rays across the valley, through wisps of hearth smoke, onto their caravan.

  I’d been crossing the courtyard for breakfast, but at the
sight of the Rom, I sprinted down the road.

  Until a flurry of whistles flew at me.

  Months earlier, Thunder’s cute peeps had changed to piercing whistles. Her beak had bloomed bright pink with a yellow patch, like a slice of rosy mango. Her feathers had grown in a rich coppery brown on her neck and back. Black feathers had sprouted on her belly, and a patch of white feathers spotted her now-black wings. Her neck stretched long and proud, and she strutted around on tall legs as though she were boss of the world, even though she barely reached my knee.

  Her high-pitched twitters were easy to translate. Slow down, Teo!

  Reluctantly, I slowed down.

  In her whistle language, she scolded me as she waddled up. Don’t you dare leave us behind!

  Yes, us. There were two new members of my rescued-animal club.

  Spark, a baby goat born blind, whose baah of protest was barely audible over Thunder’s scolding. Please slow down, please? Spark was saying in her timid voice. What about little me? She meandered along, her nose and ears quivering in the breeze, trying to compensate for her lack of vision. She was white with honey speckles and the softest ears I’d ever felt, a tender velvet that your fingers couldn’t resist smoothing.

  And then there was Flash, the newest member: a three-legged skunk, just a few months old, who I’d found as a baby caught in a trap. When it was clear he’d never survive in the wild, Grandfather removed the skunk’s stink glands so that he could live with us. Now, Flash scampered back and forth along the road, curious about every twig, every bug. He was a slippery, roly-poly thing, always on the move, devilishly weaseling here and there. He was only still when sleeping, and only then could you fully appreciate the beauty of his shiny, coal-black fur with the perfect, milk-white stripe running down the center of his back to the tip of his bushy tail.

  Relenting, I slowed even more, letting all the animals catch up. Sometimes it felt as if each of them held a little piece of Lucita’s soul—Thunder’s bossiness, Flash’s playfulness, and Spark’s tenderness. I was bound to them, and we were as loyal to each other as family.