What the Moon Saw (11 page)

Later I would realize that this fighting was nothing unusual in the García López household. And Silvia, it turned out, would be far from a friend. She would treat me like a cockroach. A slightly useful cockroach who could cook and mend clothes, but still an insect.

My days were the same: wake up in darkness, fetch water from the pump, heat the water, make tortillas and beans, serve breakfast to the family, eat their leftovers, wash the dishes, heat more water, wash the clothes, hang them to dry, sweep the courtyard, mop the floors, dust the furniture, shine the wood, polish the glass, go to the market for food, make lunch, clean up, mend their clothes, and on and on until they finished their hot chocolate at night and went to sleep. I would sip the leftover hot chocolate, wash the dishes, and then, past midnight, unroll my
petate
and sleep. For a few precious hours I slept, until the church bells woke me up before dawn again. My body felt worn out, like an old grandmother’s. And I was only eleven!

During that time I learned to love dawn, the moments before the chores of the day had begun to weigh heavy. At dawn the world was all fresh pathways, waiting to be followed. There was only a whisper between the living and the dead. Sometimes at dawn I felt that I could reach out my hand and touch my parents. That just outside the firelight, there they were, sitting in the shadows, watching me.

At dawn the
loro
fluttered with excitement. He greeted me with whistles, with
“¡Buenos dias buenos dias!”
Good morning good morning! How good it felt to have some creature happy to see me! When I’d first seen him, he’d looked sickly and sad. Droopy eyes, droopy head, droopy wings. He had been a gift from don Manuel to Silvia. Yet she barely looked at him, barely fed him. She never spoke to him with kind words, only shouts and curses.

Oh! But I loved that bird! I whispered to him as I washed dishes in the courtyard. I sang him songs in Mixteco. I told him stories about the rabbit and the moon, about the coyote and the snake, about the devil in the cave. And would you believe it? He started speaking Mixteco! In the mornings he greeted me with
“Naja iyo nuu?”
How are you? And I’d answer,
“Iyo va’a nii.”
I’m fine.

Sometimes I practiced Spanish with him.
“¡Ánimo!”
I taught him to say. Have courage! One morning, I had a dream about the mountains where I used to gather herbs. A dream that made me ache for my village, that left the taste of cool springwater on my tongue. My body felt heavy as I stood up, rolled up my
petate,
and walked into the courtyard to start working. My eyes filled with tears, so I couldn’t see the pot or the firewood. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep and never wake up. I let myself collapse to the ground. I pulled my knees up to my chin and buried my face in my
huipil
and tried to enter my dream again, with the mountains and springwater. At that moment, a shrill whistle broke the silence.

“¡Ánimo!”
Loro cried.
“¡Ánimo,
Helena!”

I wiped my eyes, stood up, and started working. You see how important it is to have one true friend in the world? Later I learned that
ánimo
also means soul. Spirit. And really, Loro had seen my spirit empty of hope, slipping away into the shadows. He called to it, called to me, and yes, my spirit stayed. For that, I always thank him.

Within a few weeks, the market changed from a place that frightened me with its noise and commotion to a place I enjoyed. A place of colors and songs and smells and so many people! Old and young, pale and dark, so many people with their own worries and hopes. There at the market, our paths all crossed. I began to greet the vendors and the other maids who came to the market, toting their baskets like me. I learned the names of the children dressed in rags who picked through the garbage for food. Always, I set aside a bit of my wages to buy them pastries.

Every day, on the way to the market, I passed by the stone jail. Every day I stood outside the barred windows and unwrapped a small bundle of food. Leftover tortillas, scraps of meat, cheese, soft fruit. I never stayed long, for fear that Silvia or don Manuel or doña Carmen might walk by and forbid me to give away their food. Because of the dark shadows inside the prison, I never knew the prisoners’ faces, only their hands, their voices. Voices pleading and thanking. Hands grasping and clutching whatever I offered. Then stretching out again, empty, asking for more.

But one pair of hands stood out from the rest. One pair of hands moved with grace and dignity. The hands were held out tenderly, cupped together, as though they were waiting for a dove to land in them. They were a woman’s hands, with thick brown fingers. They were hands of a woman who had worked hard in her life, a woman like Aunt, a woman like my mother. The hands held wisdom, like the hands of Ta’nu, who loved tending to his herbs and patting soil gently over seeds. I had the feeling that those hands belonged to someone I would like to know. I remembered what Ta’nu had told me about learning from teachers who crossed my path. Yes, those hands could teach me something.

Ta’nu was also right about learning Spanish. At first I thought I’d no sooner understand Spanish than the language of birds. I couldn’t imagine my tongue making that strange trilling sound. I couldn’t grasp the rhythm, a cricket song rising and falling. But little by little I found myself understanding a word here, a word there. And little by little I heard myself stringing the words together. And yes! People began to understand me. Instead of pointing to fruits and vegetables at the market, we used words.

And as I understood more and more Spanish, I understood the García López family better and better. I understood why don Manuel often returned home at dawn smelling of perfume and liquor. The maids at the market always joked about how he juggled mistresses the way a street performer juggles oranges. Whenever he stayed out all night, doña Carmen would order me around more than ever the next day. In a voice like a knife in my ear she’d call from her bed, “Bring me a dozen cherry pastries!” And when I returned from the market, “No, these are cherry. I asked for lemon, you fool. Go back and bring me lemon. And this is coming out of your wages, girl.” I said nothing and did as she said, trying to bury my anger like hot coals under ash.

One morning, I was in Silvia’s room, making her bed. Doña Carmen stood in front of the mirror, behind her daughter. She was arranging Silvia’s hair into a fancy bun that looked like a woven basket.

“I wish my face were whiter,” Silvia grumbled. “It’s Papá’s fault. His skin is so dark. Why did you marry a man from the country?”

“A handsome man from the country.”

“Ayyy! You’re pulling my hair.”

“I was hardly older than you when we married,” doña Carmen said. “Your father talked so smoothly. Like rich custard.”

“He still does,” Silvia said. “Yesterday I saw him talking that way.” She narrowed her eyes. “With the beef lady at the market.”

Her mother stiffened.

“You’re weak, Mamá. You let him make a fool of you.”

Doña Carmen gave Silvia’s hair a tug.

“Ayyy! Go away, Mamá! I’ll have the maid do my hair!”

Doña Carmen heaved her body up. She dragged herself toward the door. I pretended to be busy smoothing out the bedspread. On her way past me, she commanded, “Bring me a cake. Chocolate cake.”

For the rest of the afternoon she devoured the cake, piece by piece. Like a wild dog she attacked the food. She ate and ate, barking orders and spewing bits of chocolate and saliva everywhere. She devoured it, trying to fill the emptiness inside her. By nightfall her belly was full, but her heart was still empty.

Clara

E
ven the birds flying close overhead didn’t notice me hidden in the shadows between two boulders. I could be just another wrinkle in the stone, or a patch of moss. Without watches and mirrors, I could be someone else, someone from another time. I could be Abuelita, before she went to the city—just a girl in the timeless mountains, resting on a rock for a moment.

With my eyes closed, the sound of the waterfall became clearer. And other sounds stood out. It was like listening to a song on the radio and picking out the guitar, then the piano, and the violin, and all the other instruments, one by one. In this song there were insects’ wings drumming in waves, and about seven different bird tunes, calling back and forth.

Little by little I noticed something else blending into the song. A person’s voice. It was faint, but it grew louder as the person grew closer, until he must have been right above me, on top of the rocks. He sang in Spanish, to a tune I liked but had never heard before. The singing stopped and I heard
“Chchchchchivo,”
and then the scuttle of goat hooves.

The footsteps grew closer until there was a goat next to me on the rock. It was caramel-colored with a skinny neck and a long nose and ears that stuck straight out. I’d never been this close to a goat before, so close I could see the sleep in the corners of its eyes. It watched me for a while, as if to say, What are you doing here? Then it seemed to shrug and started chewing at a shrub by my foot. I breathed in that same sour sweetness that clung to Pedro. The singing started again—a sad song about nighttime flowers. I stood up slowly, very careful not to startle the goat, and tilted my head back.

“Pedro!” I called. “Your goat’s down here!”

The singing stopped. His head peeked over the cliff and then disappeared. I heard him skid down the trail along the side of the boulders. He was a burst of color, like a tropical bird. He wore an orange T-shirt and the same red pants and carried a guitar with a green and yellow woven strap slung across his shoulder.

Would he act embarrassed? If someone caught me singing when I thought I was alone, I’d turn bright red and stumble over my words and run away the first chance I got. But no, he looked happy to see me. His teeth glowed white next to his rosy cheeks. He swung his guitar around and sat down on the rock. He motioned for me to sit, like a waiter at a fancy restaurant pointing out a seat. Without a single word, he pulled out a few notes.

And here’s another amazing thing: He looked at me as he sang. Really looked. At first my eyes flickered away, the way they sometimes do during a movie that makes my skin tingle because it feels like
too much.
But he kept on singing and I let myself look back at him. An ocean was filling me, and I felt like something flimsy, a Tupperware container maybe, something that couldn’t possibly hold an ocean. The salt water rose up inside me, higher and higher, until it nearly over-flowed. Once, early in the morning on Mom’s birthday, Dad and I filled the bedroom with daisies, and when she woke up she smiled and cried and tried to talk but couldn’t find words. She must have felt the ocean too.

The words to the song, in Spanish, formed a vivid picture in my mind: galaxies, the Milky Way, planets, jewels, brilliant colors, love, beauty, a soul, a kiss. Everything swirling around. I couldn’t tell you what the song was
about
or how the words all fit together. I just felt each word’s power, the way the words flew from his mouth, like pieces of a mosaic that my mind caught in midair and rearranged into its own creation. My fingers itched to draw it all in my sketchbook. After three songs, Pedro stood up. He moved his eyes away to the wandering goats. I realized I had been holding completely still, barely breathing. I wondered if he knew how he’d made these waves swell up inside me like the moon tugging at the tide.

“The goats are ready to move on,” he said.

“What do you do with the goats?” I was stalling. I didn’t want him to leave.

“I make sure they don’t get eaten by coyotes or mountain cats. I take them to places with shrubs to eat and keep them out of the cornfields and make sure none wander off. Very exciting.” He laughed.

“Oh.” The waves were still moving inside me. There was a silence while I searched for something else to say.

“Well, thank you for listening, Clara.” He slung the guitar across his back.

“Pedro.” I stood up. My legs felt shaky. Why was my body acting this way? “Can I walk with you?”

He nodded and smiled. His teeth were as straight as if he’d just gotten braces off, although I doubted his family could have afforded braces for him. “You know my name?”

“My grandparents guessed it was you,” I said. “You know my name too.”

“Your grandmother told me she was inviting you here. And every time I saw your grandfather, he told me exactly how many days left until you came. Then last Saturday at the market, everyone was talking about the American girl. I knew it must be Clara Luna.”

I felt my face grow warm. “That’s weird you think of me as American. Back home when I meet new kids, they ask if I’m Mexican. Or they just say, ‘What
are
you?’”

We were quiet for a moment as we climbed up a steep part.

“What do
you
think you are?” he asked.

I thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I can only see myself from the inside.”

“What do you see?”

“A person who likes to draw maps.” I laughed. “And who likes chocolate and birds.” I paused. Something about the way he listened made me want to tell him things I wouldn’t think about telling anyone else, things I used to tell Samantha before she changed, things I used to tell Dad before
I
changed. “I’m more than that,” I added. “I’m someone who swims in the forest when everyone else is asleep.” I wondered if he’d think I was a lunatic.

He nodded like that was the most natural thing in the world. “And maybe there’s more that you haven’t figured out yet.”

I gave him a sideways glance. “What about you? Who are you?”

“A smelly goat-boy from Yucuyoo. Almost fifteen years old, with no father and no money and nothing. Nothing except for my mother and my guitar.” He was smiling a little, so it was hard to tell if he was serious.

“Is that what you see from the inside?” I asked.

He paused. “Here in Yucuyoo we have a saying: The land is our body and its streams are our blood. And its waterfalls, our pulse.” He stretched up and brushed his hands through the leaves over our heads. “That’s what I see from the inside.”

It seemed like a good opportunity to ask him about the waterfall sound, but then I reminded myself that finding the waterfall was my own secret mission, so instead I said, “You’re a singer, too.”

“A listener,” he said, after a moment. “I listen to things and try to turn them into music.”

I lay in bed that night trying to untangle Pedro’s smells. There was the sour goat smell and the clean fruit smell of his soap. There was the smell of damp wood soaked up from nights sleeping in his cabin and morning trips to gather firewood for his mother. Maybe that was why bits of bark clung to his hair. And there was a brown sugar smell that his skin just seemed to give off.

Pedro’s pointy shoes with that decorative fringe looked like something my American grandfather might wear Friday nights out at the Budget Buffet. Pedro wore them with white sports socks that bunched out over the sides, exactly the kind of thing that kids would tease him about if he spent even one recess at Walnut Hill Middle School. Since he was almost fifteen years old, he’d be going into tenth grade. This fall would start my first year of high school, so I couldn’t imagine what high schoolers would say about those socks, but I suspected they wouldn’t be any kinder than middle schoolers. Pedro must have shined the shoes that morning, because they still gave off the faint smell of polish. That smell made me want to hug him.

Of course, I wouldn’t hug him. He didn’t seem like the kind of boy I’d have a crush on. At school, there was a circle of popular boys who nearly every girl drooled over. Those boys only went out with the popular
girls
who nearly every
boy
drooled over. In my case, I’d chosen Mark G. to like, and Samantha had chosen Mike M., and we both knew that since we weren’t popular, they’d never like us back. All the same, Samantha and I passed notes all day long, in code, with the guys’ names backward.
Kram looked soooo good today!
or
I’m soooo in love with Ekim.
It’s true, I admired how they strutted around in their name-brand clothes, how they slouched, impossibly cool, in their chairs and flirted with teachers. But crushes on them were like crushes on movie stars: fun, but hopeless.

Once I said to Samantha, “What if the unpopular girls and unpopular guys went out with each other? Then we could all have real live boyfriends.” She rolled her eyes at me. “Clara, the unpopular guys are all dorks!” She would definitely write Pedro off as a dork.
Friend material, maybe,
she would say.
But a boyfriend? Ugh! With that stinky shoe gunk?

It was the pungent smell of Pedro’s shoe polish that made me think of Dad. He polished his shoes every morning too, only he wore big clomping boots. Every morning he smeared them with brown goop and then rubbed them hard with scraps of old sheets. I loved watching the way his wrists gave the rags expert flicks. Then he would carefully scrub his hands with soap in the bathroom sink and leave for work in his red truck. He spent his days planting and digging in other people’s yards. By the time he came home, the boots would be dull again and he’d stick them in the garage. He’d come in wearing socks and slippers, hug me, and give me a smooth stone or a single flower or a dried cicada shell or a broken blue eggshell, whatever small thing he’d found that day. When I was little, these presents thrilled me as much as a trip to the toy store, but as I grew older, I saw that my other friends’ parents got them highlighter pens or dry-erase boards or little sticky notepads, all with fancy company logos on them. Dad’s wilted flowers and bug carcasses started to seem pitiful.

All last year I’d wished for a father like Samantha’s, who left for an office every weekday at 8:20 in a silvery four-door car with plush seats. Not a father who came home from work in a red truck with
LUNA LANDSCAPING
stenciled on the door, a father with soil under his fingernails, grass stains on his jeans, burs and thorns stuck to his socks.

Mom loved this about him, how he always brought bits of nature into the house with him. That was what made her fall in love with him. I loved hearing the story of how they fell in love. When I was little, I would ask to hear it as a bedtime story. It sounded like a fairy tale to me. Dad did lawn maintenance at Mom’s apartment complex while she was in graduate school. When he found out she was studying to be a teacher, he asked her if she could tutor him in English. He worked as a dishwasher at night, he said, so he only had Saturday mornings off, and could she teach him then? She looked at the burs stuck to his pants and breathed in the fresh grass and earth smell that clung to him, and saw how sincere he was and said yes.

Every Saturday he showed up at her door, freshly showered, smelling of shoe polish and soap. She smiled at the neat comb lines in his hair and the ironed creases in his button-down shirt. Every Saturday he brought her a small present—a bouquet of wildflowers, a woven wreath of daisies, an abandoned bird’s nest. Sometimes they went for a walk after their lesson or had brunch with Mom’s parents. When Dad asked Mom how her parents felt about him being an immigrant, she looked him straight in the eyes and said, without a pause, “They admire you. My ancestors came from other countries too. France and Norway and Wales. Most Americans have immigrant roots, you know.”

All week long she counted the days to their next lesson, and during the lesson, she wished she could stretch out time. One day, Dad offered her a pinecone and said, “Look at how perfect the spiral is.” She watched his face watching the pinecone. And she realized she wanted always to feel the way she felt when she looked at his face. That was my cue to end the bedtime story: “And then you were in love!” I shouted triumphantly. “And then we were in love,” she whispered, and kissed me goodnight.