Highwire Moon

by Susan Straight

  “We’re not fucked up,” she said. But they were. What did she have now? Not even root beer and Cap’n Crunch, not her father’s smell beside her in the truck. Suddenly she wanted to be at Sandy Narlette’s. She wanted the laundry room, where the full moon always came up in the window, the gleaming washer turning pale blue as the Mason jars on the shelf. Pillowcases in the dryer, with thread-stitched names that she could read with her fingers in the dark.

  She felt nothing under her ribs, and she saw her own face, inside a cage of glittering string. Sandy had said something about a foster kid’s ribs. A Christmas ornament. On Sandy’s tree. Something she’d made in the third grade?

  Michael lit a cigarette. Then he kissed her. “Tina Marie had a baby,” he said softly. “That’s why she’s all messed up. Shawna said she heard Tina Marie had a baby three weeks ago.”

  Elvia remembered the blood on Tina Marie’s leg. From a baby? “Where is it?”

  Michael shrugged. “Who knows?”

  She wouldn’t let herself see it—a baby in the trash. Wrapped in a bag. She tasted the smoke on her tongue, the bitter ashes on her teeth.

  Outside, Hector had started a fire, too. He took tortillas, a block of cheese, and salsa from a paper bag that said MERCADO APARECIDA. He blistered the tortillas over the fire, and when Elvia ate one she tasted corn and smoke and warmth inside the slightly charred holes. Tina Marie ate a quesadilla dripping with soft white cheese and salsa. Caveman said, “Why didn’t you just get three tacos for thirty-nine cents? It’s Taco Tuesday.”

  Hector handed two quesadillas to Elvia. He said, “You’re Mexican, you like tacos? That’s like saying, you’re American, you only eat hamburgers. But I picked tomatoes in Florida, and we ate grits and chicken-fried everything.”

  “You were in Florida?” Tina Marie said dreamily.

  Hector nodded, tucking his black hair behind his ears. “Mexico’s a big fuckin country. My mom is from Veracruz people. She eats fish. My dad’s from Tijuana. He’ll eat anything.”

  Tina Marie ate two more quesadillas. Elvia hadn’t seen her eat at all before. Caveman drank another beer, then said, “Only faggots get off on cooking.”

  Hector spat into the fire. Elvia could tell Caveman wanted to rule everything, even the food. Michael came out of the shelter and asked, “What smells so good?”

  Caveman got out the cookie tin. Tina Marie put her head in Caveman’s lap and fell asleep. Caveman said, “This one wants Indian brew right now. Wants out of her head. Thinks she’s fat.” Caveman touched Tina Marie’s matted hair. “But she just had a baby.”

  Elvia stared at Tina’s pale, plump arm thrown over his leg. “Where is it?” she whispered.

  “We sold it.”

  “Sold it?” Michael said. “To who?”

  “Everybody wants a white baby,” Caveman said. “This one had blue eyes. Bald as a bowling ball. A lady I know gave us three grand for it. She gets like ten grand when she does her deal.”

  Elvia couldn’t stop staring at Tina, her lips pursed against his thigh. “Was it your baby?”

  “Hell, no,” he said. “She was knocked up when she got here. You couldn’t tell, cause her clothes were cool. Baggy, you know.” Like mine, Elvia thought.

  “Who was the father?” Hector said.

  Caveman shrugged. “Whoever paid for it. That’s the father now.”

  Michael said, “How you know they’ll take good care of it? A baby—that’s already a person, like with feelings and all, but you don’t know what the feelings are. They can’t tell you.” Elvia felt him going rigid next to her, and she silently pleaded, Don’t tell him. Don’t say it.

  She was angry. It was his baby, too. But he didn’t want it. Every time he opened his mouth, he sounded afraid. He wasn’t afraid in the desert, in Tijuana, even dangling from palm trees. He was only scared of what he couldn’t even see.

  “They scream and cry,” Caveman said. “This one. All of them.”

  Michael’s forehead creased in lines like fingernail scratches. “No, man, I mean you gotta know what to do, figure out what their feelings are, so you don’t fuck them up.”

  “Hey,” Caveman said. “If you paid ten thousand bucks for something, wouldn’t you take care of it? A car, a motorcycle, a kid. Whoever bought the baby has to be better than Tina. Or some fuckin foster home, some witch mom.”

  “You ever been in a foster home?” Elvia asked angrily, seeing Sandy’s hands on the gold-flecked Formica counter, her nicked fingers, her thumb for a handle to help you jump down.

  “Me? Nope. I don’t need a rent-a-witch, cause my real mom’s the worst one.” He looked at the dark trees. “This one was a mom for a minute.” He nudged Tina Marie. “Not anymore.”

  Tina Marie woke up, her eyes clouded like dirty marbles. Caveman put his arm around her.

  Elvia heard a rippling call from a tree. “Barn owl,” she said, almost to herself.

  “How do you know?” Caveman said, grinning at her.

  “My sister,” she said, without thinking. “She knows the name of every bird, lizard, and bug in Rio Seco.”

  Michael pulled back to look at her. “Your sister? She’s got a place? A house?”

  “My foster sister,” Elvia said.

  “Foster.” Jared shook his head. “If I counted that, I’d have a hundred brothers. Shit.”

  Everyone laughed. Caveman said, “You’re Indian? What tribe has green eyes?”

  “Crazy-ass tribe. Like my dad,” Elvia said. She heard the barn owl call again, remembered the white-faced owls swooping into the field, Rosalie pressing her face to the screen to see.

  “If your fosters are so fuckin great, how come you’re down here with us?” Jared said.

  “Because she’s looking for her real mom,” Michael said, and their eyes shifted.

  Tina Marie’s eyes were like blue-burned holes in her face. Like the hottest embers. “Why?” she asked. “No such thing as a real mom. Only fake ones.”

  “Hell, no,” Elvia said, standing up. “Some people are better than blood.” She went inside the shelter and opened her backpack. The folded, faded print dress from Tía Dolores. Elvia touched the too-soft material. Tía Dolores had said that whoever feeds you, takes you for shots, combs your hair—that’s the real mother.

  Michael came inside to move the jimsonweed leaves and roots. “Tina Marie’s like a zombie.” He looked up, eyes glittering black as rainy streets. “Talk about sellin it—” He turned away. “It’s there now. Nothing we do is gonna be right. Nothing. We gotta go to Dos Arroyos.”

  At the crest of the foothills, Elvia saw the brown veil of smog turning violet in the sunset, and the lemon groves in blurred patches below. Sandy’s house was in the lemon groves—Elvia had seen these mountains from the yard, brown hills topped with white boulders. “The Sugar Springs Mountains,” Sandy said. “Like toast with cinnamon sugar.”

  Pepper trees loomed ahead while Michael drove faster and faster to one of the green valleys where she’d always thought there must be water. Two bullet-pocked metal signs stood at a junction—COUNTY WASTE FACILITY and DOS ARROYOS INDIAN RESERVATION.

  Michael said, “Right here is where I first saw Hector. He was riding this old bike, and these three skinhead dudes were racing a pickup, chasing him with a baseball bat out the window, yelling about killing wetbacks. I was hunting rabbits for my grandpa, so I shot out their tire. Told them Mexicans were part Indian so fuck off. Told em they were illegals on rez land.”

  “They didn’t fight?” Elvia looked at the broken glass along the road.

  “Hell, no. They screeched outta here. And Hector yelled, ‘Punkass rednecks!’ Shit, I thought he only spoke Spanish. He told me about his college class and showed me his maps. We been hanging out ever since.”

  A guard shack squatted at the dump entrance, a lit window with a face peering out. “On the othe
r side of the mountain, they grow avocados. The Mexicans living in the grove come over and go through the dump. They recycle for free, but the county gets pissed.”

  “Like Tijuana,” Elvia said, thinking of people sifting through the smoking mounds.

  “But way better trash,” Michael said grimly, pulling onto the reservation road. “My grandpa works the shack, day shift. Seems like Indians get casinos or dumps. My grandpa picked a dump, forty years ago.”

  The steep cliffs along the road were covered with brittlebush hanging like small, silvery clouds. After a few miles, the valley widened, and Elvia saw four house trailers perched beside a dry creek bed. Silver shutters blinded their windows, and their walls were rusty and pockmarked. “My uncles are all gone,” Michael said. “I haven’t seen them in like, five years. They went to LA or San Francisco. Nothing here.”

  On the other side, an adobe house was nearly invisible on the canyon wall. Michael parked below it, where a small tent trailer sat under a cottonwood tree. Inside, the linoleum floor was clean, the bed was made with an old wool blanket, and a skim of dust covered the little table. “I live here in summer,” he said. “It’s cool, like being half inside, half outside.”

  Elvia sat gingerly on the bed, touching the screen windows. “Half is your favorite way.”

  “When it gets cold, I go see my cousins in Tourmaline. Stay there and go to school. Sometimes. When it warms up, I come back here and work trees.”

  Elvia heard someone shout outside. “Hey, now! I thought maybe you were asshole teenagers I didn’t know. But it’s an asshole teenager I do.”

  The old man’s face was brown and wide-jawed, square as a giant walnut. “You steal this truck, Michael? Or she did?”

  “It’s hers,” Michael said. “Not stolen, Pops.” He walked around behind the cottonwoods.

  His grandfather humphed, looked at Elvia. “Nice braids, Pocahontas. I hope you’re not lost up here, looking for Grandmother Willow. We only got palm trees. A few oak.”

  Elvia felt her braids loosened from the long day, felt her chest tingle with anger. How the hell did she look? Hands scarred by grapes like a Mexican woman. Eyes pale green like an American. And inside? Distant memories of Indian words from a place she’d never seen.

  “I can’t be lost if Michael brought me up here.” She glared at him.

  The grandfather’s face was so wide on his thin, slump-­shouldered body that he didn’t look like Michael at all. He shrugged and grinned. “Sorry. But kids come up here, think they’re gonna see buffalo and Indians. We don’t eat buffalo. Acorns. Chia seeds. You ever see a Chia Pet? Little smaller than a buffalo.”

  Michael came back to the trailer and said, “I need my equipment, Pops. Me and Hector are gonna work trees.” He fixed his eyes on Elvia, and she knew he wasn’t going to tell his grandfather about the baby.

  A palm-roofed ramada surrounded the adobe house. Blue and green bottles lined the windowsill, glowing from the kerosene lantern inside the single room. “You’re half what?” the grandfather said, serious now.

  “Mexican Indian,” Elvia said. “From what I know.”

  “Huh. His mother was pretty,” the grandfather said. “She liked Mexican guys with low-rider cars.” Michael’s cheeks were hollowed and dark as he listened near her. Elvia touched his blank forehead. Where was his soft spot, the bones that closed after his mother was already gone?

  The grandfather pointed to clay shards, arrowheads, bowls, and baskets on wooden shelves around the adobe walls. “I know Mexican women make a basket like that pale one. Pine needle. Their people are cut off from California by a line. But they talk the same.”

  Michael said, “When the dozer guys find something old in the dirt, they bring it to him.”

  “All this junk is mine,” the grandfather said. “From my dirt.”

  Michael moved impatiently. “I just need the chainsaw and the gaffs and my rope.” He watched intently as his grandfather went outside. Then he quickly took a red clay bowl from the shelf near him, slipping it into his jacket. When his grandfather came back with a coil of yellow rope, Michael said “Cool” and went down to the truck.

  Elvia hovered near the table, where a bowl of hot cereal steamed. “It’s not Cream of Wheat,” the grandfather said, grinning again. “Michael hates it. Nobody like you likes weewish.”

  “Like me?” Elvia said angrily. “Not Indian?”

  But he said, “Young like you. Young people like Wonder Bread. They like to eat air.” He held out a spoon in challenge.

  The nutty bitter grain made her throat rise, but she swallowed and her stomach was quiet. “Acorn porridge,” he said. “Look, you’re not old enough for that truck. Somebody took it. Michael doesn’t need more trouble.”

  She ate another spoonful. “I’m not trouble,” she said.

  He surveyed the shelves, touching the empty space where the red clay bowl had been. “Don’t let him lose the bowl. If he sells it or uses it wrong, somebody up there will punish him. Not me.” He stared down at the truck, then said, “He doesn’t have a mother. I tried my best.”

  Elvia was startled, remembering her father say the same thing to Warren one night. “I been trying so damn hard, and I don’t know what the fuck is the right thing,” he’d said.

  Michael honked the horn. She got into the truck, rubbing her eyes. “The bowl is for the medicine?” she asked, and he nodded, but instead of heading down the valley, he drove another two miles or so until the road was only a dirt track among the boulders. They came to a small white-plaster church and baby-tooth stones under the pepper trees.

  “This is where I drink the kikisulem,” he said, leading her under the feathery branches. He showed her with his eyes. Past a few wooden crosses with no names, she saw the white rock, not a headstone but a long, narrow boulder with a chipped depression and a wooden plaque that read VICTORIA TORRES in burned letters. “I made it in wood shop in junior high. I have to shellac it every year. For the rain.”

  Elvia sat next to him on the pepper leaves. “When somebody dies, Cahuilla used to burn the whole house. Now they just burn all their stuff. Clothes, everything. So all I ever had was this rock. You’re supposed to use your memory for people, but she died like the minute I came out, so what the hell was I gonna remember?”

  Elvia felt his heart pounding way too fast against her spine when he folded his arms around her. “But she didn’t leave you on purpose.” Near the trunk of the pepper tree was a pallet of leaves, a thick cushion long enough for a body, and she knew he slept here sometimes.

  He handed her the bowl—the dusty red clay with blurred black designs. It fit between her palms. She touched the narrow rim and wondered how many mouths had drunk there. “When I drink it,” he said, “I hear her voice. So will you. You’ll see her—your mom. We’ll do it tonight. After we see Ruby. You said your whole body is sore, right? She can help you.”

  From the truck window Elvia heard dull chopping. A huge agave cactus toppled over near the dirt track.

  “Aunt Ruby?” Michael called. A small, dark-faced woman, with graying braids so long the ends were tucked into the neckline of her blouse, was holding an ax.

  “Michael? Come help me get this one out.” Ruby didn’t sound at all surprised to see him.

  Michael took the ax and cut around the base of the cactus, and when they’d hauled the chunk of agave heart toward her palm-roofed ramada, he put it in the embers of a low fire.

  “Easier to work at night, when it’s cool,” Ruby said. Her thin braids swung like silver reins from her purple blouse. “What do you want?”

  “My—Elvia’s all sore from working grapes in Mecca,” Michael said. “I was thinking tea.”

  “Ahtukul?” Ruby said, studying Elvia. She touched Elvia’s arm. “Creosote. Good for your blood, for women.”

  “And the bed,” he added, glancing at Elvia. “Warm for her muscl
es.”

  Bed? Michael led her to a sandy spot near the creek bed and said, “Lie down.” Ruby drew an outline around her with a long stick, the sand near her ears making a shimmery sound when the wood parted it.

  Ruby sat her on a wooden stool under the ramada, while Michael dug inside her shape. “Is he still drinking the kikisulem?” Ruby asked, leaning close, sunbursts of wrinkles near her eyes.

  “The jimsonweed?” Elvia saw Ruby nod. “He’s making some now in the river bottom.”

  “He shouldn’t drink it so often,” Ruby said. “I knew how to use it. My father taught me. Once, when I was young, I dreamed to the thirteenth level. You have to go to sleep, in your dream, and dream again. My uncle had to come find me, carry me home. It took two days for me to come back. In my mind.”

  Elvia looked down at the sand near her feet. If I drink it, and I do it right, I can dream my way back to that night, and I’ll know if she told me something about where she was going. What she wanted.

  Michael carried wood into the sandpit and lit a fire, and Ruby said, “Your body hurts, eh? You’re not used to hard work?”

  “Not like that,” Elvia said. “And . . .” She watched Michael poking a stick into the hot glow coming from the hole. Was she supposed to tell Ruby about the baby? Was the tea to make the baby strong? Woman stuff?

  Ruby shredded dried leaves into a boiling pot. Elvia could smell the oil. She stared at the fire in her shape, a grave of red that turned to blue, billowing like water for a moment. “We do this for the first blood, and for mothers,” Ruby said, and Elvia turned in surprise. “When I was young, we lived in Desert Springs. We had hot springs. Then they made us walk here, a long time ago. His grandfather Antonio, me, the rest of us. They said someone bought the land. But we knew how to use hot sand, too.”

  Michael raked the coals out of the pit and said, “Come on.” His face was still and remote. Elvia stepped down into the darkness, the sand pulsing with heat, and laid her head on the shelf he’d made. Ruby pushed in the edges of the sand bed, and warmth rushed into Elvia’s skin, her muscles and bones.