What the Moon Saw (5 page)

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.

We reached a small stream, and Abuelo slipped off his sandals. He rolled up his pants and waded right in. “It’s only knee-deep,
m’hija,
” he said. “Easy to cross.”

I took off the sandals and stepped into the cool water. It wasn’t easy to hold my suitcase above the surface. Halfway across, I shifted the bag to my other hand and looked back at the hills we’d walked over.

Abuelita paused next to me, balancing the heavy duffel bag on her head, one hand steadying its weight. Her other hand rested at my back, urging me forward. “We have almost arrived, Clara.”

I’d never seen an eighty-year-old with this much strength. When we stepped onto the opposite bank, her hand brushed a branch of small white flowers which leaped up at her touch. But they weren’t flowers after all! They were butterflies, and as they rose, they seemed to emerge from her hand, one for each finger, flying up like magic.

A few minutes later, after we had turned a sharp bend in the trail, Abuelo set down the bags and pointed to the cluster of wooden and bamboo shacks that had just come into view. “This is our home!” he said. “And your home!”

One shack was the kitchen, Abuelo told me as we drew closer, one the bathroom, one the bedroom, one a living room with a little bedroom attached. They looked like run-down toolsheds. They were old and small, but that was about all they had in common with my imagined house. I peered into the living room to see if there was a DVD player. Not even close. Only three wooden chairs and a table. Not even a TV, not even a sofa or rug or armchair. None of the things that made a living room a living room. My stomach sank.

The farthest shack was the tiniest, just a few boards pieced together, with a torn sheet hanging over one open side. That was the bathroom.

I tried to say something but couldn’t find any words.

“There is a market every Saturday at the next village over,” Abuelo said. “If we leave at dawn, we arrive before the heat. Two hours walking.” His voice was hopeful, trying to please me, but now I barely noticed his effort.

I said nothing. Two hours?

“But what a pretty walk it is,” he added. He glanced nervously at Abuelita, who watched us in silence.

He motioned to a field of green stalks with big leaves moving in the breeze. “Our cornfields,” he said. “We grow beans and squash, too. And in the woods, coffee plants.”

I hardly heard his words. All I could think was,
How can I live here for two months without suffocating from boredom? How can I live in a place without even a sofa?

They led me through a patch of weeds to a wooden shack with a tin roof.

“Here you will sleep,” Abuelita said. “Your father’s old room.”

Inside it was cool and dark. There was no furniture except for a thin mattress on a rusted bed frame, and some broken crates piled against the wall. What creatures lived in that heap of scraps? Mice? Snakes? Definitely spiders; I spotted one crawling casually across the floor, as though this were his territory, not mine.

“Would you like to eat now or rest first,
mi amor
?” Abuelita asked.

“Rest,” I said, trying not to let my voice shake. I let my bangs fall into my face to hide the tears welling up.

“You will be happy here,” Abuelo said uncertainly. “You can take walks in the woods. You can help us with our work….” His voice trailed off.

Abuelita patted his hand and led him out. “Rest now,
mi amor,
” she told me, and closed the door, leaving it cracked.

Once they had left, I lay on the blanket and breathed in the musty air. Everything was a little damp—the planks of the floor, the scratchy wool blanket beneath me. I heard a noise under the bed, the faint rustle of tiny footsteps.

Sixty days stretched before me, empty and endless as sand dunes. No movies, no computer, no entertainment. My portable CD player’s batteries would run out soon, and then there wouldn’t be music, either. It was a naked feeling.
Who am I without all these things that fill up my life?

I closed my eyes tight and tried to imagine my bed at home, the fresh flannel sheets, the down comforter, the pile of pillows. But it was impossible to ignore this lumpy pillow stuffed with balled-up fabric scraps. Or the springs inside the mattress that jutted into my back. Or the ancient, moldy odor.

I turned onto my side and pulled my shirt over my nose. I breathed in the last remnants of fabric softener. When I was a little kid, at sleepovers, sometimes everything would suddenly feel wrong, and I’d call Mom at midnight to come get me. Wishing for a phone, I fell asleep.

A patch of light on my face woke me up. It was coming through the crack of the heavy wooden door. I got up and walked outside and squinted in the bright sunlight, only half knowing where I was. I stood, dazed, rubbing my sore shoulders. To my left, fields of leafy stalks waved in the breeze. Behind them towered green lumps of mountains. Over the peaks, a few clouds spotted the deep blue sky.

I slipped on Abuelita’s sandals and walked to the back of the hut. From here, the plants—corn plants, maybe—stretched over the hills. There were a few shacks way in the distance. I walked farther around the building, skimming my fingers along the rough plank walls.

When I turned the corner, I faced a garden overflowing with petals and leaves of all shapes and sizes. Their scents mingled together on tiny breezes—a honey-sweet smell, a sharp spicy one, a cool mintiness. All of a sudden, the urge to explore this place swept through me. It was the same feeling I had that first night I went into the woods in Walnut Hill. The feeling that something was calling to me, something waiting to be discovered.

I reached the front of the hut again, and there stood Abuelo, in the big patch of dirt and weeds between the four shacks. Chickens swarmed around him, pecking at the corn he scattered from a sack.

“Finally,
m’hija
! You’re awake!” he called out. “Do you know you slept all morning?”

I shook my head.

“Why don’t you go into the kitchen and meet Loro?” He motioned toward a bamboo shack where smoke rose from the roof. Who was Loro? A neighbor, maybe? Someone my own age might be nice. Maybe he had a TV.

Inside the kitchen it was dark and smoky. Once my eyes adjusted, the first thing I saw was a giant green parrot, perched on a rafter. He opened his beak and screeched,
“¡Hola hola hola!”
Hello hello hello!

Abuelita, holding a big tortilla, stood underneath him. “This is Loro,” she said, “and Loro, this is Clara.”

Abuelita showed me how to feed Loro bits of tortilla. He plucked the tortilla pieces from my hand, one by one, and I laughed at the way his beak tickled my palm.

“Loro has been on this earth nearly as long as I have,” Abuelita said. She turned back to the fire to stir something in a clay pot with a long wooden spoon. Her bare feet seemed to merge with the packed-dirt floor beneath them, like aboveground tree roots.

Suddenly, Loro shrieked.
“¡Ánimo! ¡Ánimo!”
he cried.

I jumped, not only because it was so loud, but because that was what Dad would say to me when I felt upset. It meant something like “Cheer up” or “Have courage” or “Get your spark back.” Whenever I acted pouty or grumpy, rolling my eyes and stomping around, he’d grin and say, “
Ánimo,
my daughter!” and I’d roll my eyes even more, trying to hide my smile. Or, the times I felt truly sad, he’d smooth my hair lightly and whisper,
“Ánimo.”
It did cheer me up, but I never told him that.

Again, Loro opened his beak and screeched,
“¡Ánimo, Silvia! ¡Ánimo, doña Carmen!”

“Silvia? Doña Carmen?” I asked Abuelita. “Who are they?”

Abuelo breezed into the kitchen. “Old friends of your grandmother’s,” he said, looking at her with a devilish grin. “Right,
mi vida
?”

Abuelita raised her eyebrow.

She motioned for us to sit on the wooden chairs, and began serving hot milk with cinnamon and chocolate, rich and foamy. I waited for her to explain, but all she said was “They were threads in the web of our lives.” Talking with Abuelita was like diving for pennies. She’d drop some words that flashed like coins. Maybe it was up to me to dive down to find them.

She handed us thick tortillas folded in half, filled with orange squash flowers and melted cheese, cooked over the fire on a clay plate—a
comal.
Then she perched on a wooden chair, smaller than the ones Abuelo and I sat on—kind of a doll’s chair. She seemed comfortable with her legs drawn up under her and a tortilla balanced on her knees.

I took a small bite, chewed cautiously. “Good,” I said, surprised.

“Your father’s favorite food, squash flowers,” Abuelo said.

I didn’t correct him. It might make him sad that now Dad’s favorite food was marshmallow brownies.
But is it possible,
I wondered,
that deep inside, Dad does like squash flowers best?

Abuelita rested her hand on my shoulder for a moment. Her touch made me remember what had been nagging at the edges of my mind all day, even in dreams during my nap. “Abuelita. Before the bus wreck—why did you squeeze my hand?”

She and Abuelo looked at each other.

“Your father has told you about me, no?” she asked.

“Well, a little.” I searched every cranny of my brain, trying to find a story, a quote, any piece of his past with Abuelita in it. When I was small, he used to sing songs from his village and tell me stories about the rabbit and the moon. He’d always make me speak Spanish with him—but we’d just talk about everyday things, like what time he had to pick me up from art class. He’d never given me details about his childhood or his mother or father. All I knew, really, were the bare bones of his life. Finally, I thought of our conversation the evening the letter had arrived. “He did say that you
know
things.”