What the Moon Saw (25 page)

“I can’t marry that man.”

“Doesn’t matter if you like him or not. You feed him, wash for him, give him children. And he’ll provide for you.” He turned back to go to his food.

My hand reached out to stop him. “I want to cure, not marry.”

“Then cure after he dies. When you’re an old lady. When you can do what you want.”

I thought of the healer who threw herself over a cliff. “But I
have
to cure. Just as I have to sleep and breathe.” My voice grew louder, gathered strength. The other men were watching us, amused and curious. I lowered my voice now, but still, it trembled.
“I must cure. I have no choice.”

“Don’t talk to me again. Not until you’re married.” Then he added, more loudly, so that the other men could hear, “Or else you’ll regret it.” But he could not meet my eyes as he said this.

He walked back to the men and sat down. He scooped up a tortilla full of beans and shoved it into his mouth. Spraying bits of beans, he shouted, “Now bring me more tortillas, girl.”

As I walked toward the kitchen, my eyes met the men’s. They looked away quickly.

In the kitchen, I piled tortillas into a basket. María moved close and whispered, “Be careful, Helena. People fear your powers. They know that the powers could be used for good or bad.”

“I’m not a witch, María. I’m a healer.” But she was right. I could see how some people acted around me. They were cautious. They whispered and avoided my eyes. They feared I’d curse them if they angered me. Oh, yes, they brought their sick to me. They respected my healing powers. But it is true that respect can turn quickly into fear.

María folded the napkin over the steaming tortillas in my basket. Gently, she touched my arm. “Some people are relieved at your engagement. They say you’re like a wild animal, an animal that needs a master.” A playful grin came over her face. “Do you know what your fiancé said about you?”

“What?”

She widened her eyes. “That you’re a
nagual.
That you change into a jaguar at night and roam the forests!”

I laughed with María. But of course, I was thinking:
How close to the truth that is.

The night before my wedding I couldn’t sleep. The past month had felt like a bad dream. At first I’d felt anger, and then, only helplessness. As though I were drowning. As though my hands were tied and I was weighed down with a stone underwater. But now that the wedding was only a day away, the anger was returning. It started as a little pulsing ball under my belly. Out it spread through my body, gathering strength. That night I lay on my
petate
and felt my blood raging, wild, under my skin. I could stand it no longer.

I slipped out of the house and ran into the forest. My arms flailed, and my feet gathered speed. Right to the edge of the cliff I ran. The cliff that the healer had leaped off years earlier. I peered over the edge, dizzy. Dizzy but fearless. Breathing hard, I balanced there. I balanced, my toes off the edge, my heels on solid rock. Far below were dark forms of shrubs and stones.

I did not jump.

Instead, I turned and ran down the slope along the side of the cliff, down into a gully. I found myself in front of a cave. The cave where people left offerings to the spirits of thunder and lightning. I picked up a dead tree branch and slammed it against a tree trunk. Over and over I slammed it until I heard a crack. The branch split. I did the same with another and another.
Slam! Crack! Slam! Crack!
I was a storm myself. Sparks nearly flew off me. On and on I whirled until I was drenched in sweat, with bits of dead tree stuck to my skin.

The following morning Aunt woke me up to prepare for the wedding. I still had twigs in my hair. I still had mud under my fingernails. But what I didn’t have was the crazy courage I’d had during the night. And I didn’t have time to find that courage, because from the time I woke up, no one left me alone. Not for a second. My aunts and cousins, some who came from the next village over, washed my hair in water scented with flower petals. They dressed me in the new red
huipil
that Aunt Teresa had made for me. With don Norberto’s family, we had hot chocolate and
tamales
. By the time we cleaned up, it was time to walk to the church.

Uncle José suspected I might try to run off, so he came to the kitchen himself to fetch me. He grasped me hard by my upper arm and led me to the church. During the Mass, he stood at my left side. Oh, how his fingers dug into my flesh. On my right side stood don Norberto, reeking of
mezcal.
A stench that turned my stomach. Yes, I might have run if I’d had the chance. But throughout the ceremony, Uncle kept his hand on my arm, squeezing the veins against the bone. My arm went numb, up to my fingertips. I thought,
That’s what married life will do to me, turn me numb, like a scorpion sting. First my body will grow numb, and then my spirit.

And I was married.

The feast afterward passed in a blur. I remember other people laughing and dancing as the band played. The light drizzle didn’t stop their fun. They didn’t notice the mud splattering their legs. Oh, but how I shivered. How cold my bones felt. I remember my new husband leaning against a tree with a
mezcal
bottle to his lips. Young girls watched the dancers with glittering eyes. Girls dreaming of their own weddings. I wanted to scream at them,
No! Run now!

After the dance, the whole village led me and my staggering husband to our hut. Inside, we stood alone, staring at each other. I felt my eyes narrowing like a cat’s. I didn’t screech this time, but still, he backed away.

“You’re a witch,” he said. “And a
nagual.
”

He backed out, clutching his bottle of
mezcal.
I heard his brothers arrive out front. Through the bamboo slats I saw them drinking and playing with their machetes. They were chopping firewood into small pieces. They were so drunk, so careless, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they hit a leg instead of a log. Not noticing that blood, not sap came out. The image of don Norberto’s dead wife came to my mind. Her empty eyes and bruised, tired body.

Someone snapped a branch. “That’s what you’ll do with your witch wife, Norberto. Break her.”

I couldn’t find enough saliva in my mouth to swallow. A heat prickled over my skin. I picked up a knife from the basket of tomatoes. It felt solid in my hands. I ran my fingers over the blade and began walking around the room. What could I do? After all the lives I’d saved, could I kill a person? Yes, I was desperate enough to do it. To plunge a knife into my new husband’s chest. And that scared me even more.

Time passed. Finally, outside, slurred voices began to say, “I’m goin’ home. G’night.”

“Go tame your mountain-cat wife, Norberto,” one said. He snorted and spit.

This was my last chance. I put Loro on my shoulder. Then I pushed the stool against the wall, climbed up, and cut the rope that tied the palm roof to the rafters. I lifted the roof and pulled myself over the wall. The bamboo’s sharp ends stung my skin. Outside I tumbled, right into the mud behind the hut. Loro had let go. Gently he floated down next to me. He climbed back up my arm and found his place again on my shoulder. It wasn’t until then that I realized my sandals were still inside. But I couldn’t go back for them. I leaned against the back of the house, breathing hard. I heard my new husband open the door. I felt his confusion as he looked around the room for me. I heard him throwing things against the wall, cursing.

I ran.

All night I ran, in bare feet. Loro flew alongside me. Through coffee fields and forests I ran. Across streams and jagged rocks. Over fields of spiny cacti. And all night, thunder and lightning and rain came in waves. Again and again I slipped and fell in the mud. The wetness on my feet—how much of it was mud and how much was blood? I didn’t know. And I didn’t know if the men tried to come after me.

But I did feel something else behind me. Something kind. Something that smelled faintly of sweet copal incense. The spirit of Ta’nu, hovering behind me. A wispy, smoky form in the rain, urging me on gently.

At dawn I stopped running. I sat down on a mossy log by a stream. Loro perched on a low tree branch, grooming his feathers with his beak. The sky melted from black to deep blue to gray to pink. My heartbeat calmed, but my feet began to sting, to throb. Ayy! They were raw and bloody and riddled with thorns. I gathered herbs, limping around, crying out with every step. Then I carefully pulled out spine after spine. I washed my feet and wrapped them in the fresh herbs.
Carrizo, Santa María, sauco.
Finally I laid my head on the moss and slept. I dreamed of doña Three Teeth’s village, even though I’d never seen it before. I dreamed of the green fields she’d spoken of, the thick forests, the sound of the waterfall.

Late that morning Loro woke me up with
“¡Buenos días buenos días!”
For a moment I lay there, content, feeling the warm sun over me like a lace shawl. Watching the light shine through the leaves, speckling my skin with jaguar spots. Breathing in the freshness of morning, the freshness of dew.

Then the pain came back. Ayy, how my feet throbbed! When I unwrapped the leaves from my feet, I gasped at how they looked in the bright daylight. So torn up, as though a dog had been gnawing on them. It would be days before I could walk on them.

But where would I go, anyway? I could not go back to my village. Uncle would be furious. Don Norberto and his family would be more furious. All that money spent on a wedding feast. Oh, the whole town would be furious. You see, people frowned at a disobedient girl. Especially at a disobedient wife. If I went back, Uncle would force me to live with my husband. And I had no doubt that my husband would punish me for humiliating him.

Never before had I felt this alone. The emptiness in my stomach spread over my body. The emptiness crept out to the forest around me, so
everything
looked empty. If a cliff had been nearby, I might have leaped off it this time. Just like that healer in my village. Yes, and if my feet hadn’t hurt so much, I might have walked and walked until I
found
a cliff, and then jumped off.

Instead I lay on the fallen tree trunk. I lay with my eyes closed, blocking out the sunshine. There I dwelled in empty blackness. Everything seemed empty because I was empty. Because my soul had nearly given up. It had started drifting away from my body. The fire in my feet was crawling up my legs, filling my body with fever. My soul did nothing to stop it. My soul had nearly stopped caring.

Loro found little berries to eat. I ate nothing.
“¡Ánimo!”
he called to me. But I barely moved. Day faded into night and into day again. Rain fell on me sometimes. My body was almost too tired to shiver. Too hopeless to form goose bumps. In the mornings the sun dried my body, but in the afternoons rain poured on it again.

Faces from my past came and went. The faces drifted in and out of my mind. Faces of people I might never see again. María laughing and touching my arm. Aunt Teresa flipping tortillas. Little Lupita pretending to do a
limpia.
Doña Three Teeth singing softly.