Highwire Moon

by Susan Straight

  “I forgot. Gotta go by the rules.” Elvia wanted to laugh. Her father wasn’t big on rules. Neither was Michael. She closed the bedroom door. Laying out the last brown and green glass-gems and her moonstone on the bed, she tried to pray one more time, like in the motel, in the desert. Sandy didn’t know what her life was like. She didn’t want Sandy to return the truck and see the shabby motel. She didn’t want to be feral. Years ago, Ray had called a shelter kid “a feral child. The kind I don’t know if you can help.” Elvia had asked Rosalie what feral meant, and Rosalie said, “Like wild dogs that live in the arroyo or groves. You can’t make them live normal again.”

  I have to do this by myself, Elvia thought. Figure out what’s normal, for me.

  She heard screaming in the middle of the night. Stumbling to the door, she saw a man handing a kicking child to Sandy. The boy yelled and flailed his wrists, and Sandy’s hands ran down his wind-milling elbows until she’d trapped them in her arms. The man said, “Baby sister’s gone. Dish drainer marks on the back of her head, Sandy. Father gave her a bath. Drunk. This one’s two. On the kitchen floor staring at the sink when I got there. You’re gonna have a long night.” When he turned to put down a bag, he saw Elvia. “Who’s that?”

  Sandy’s voice was high. “Just a friend’s kid spending the night, Les. I have plenty of room.” The man looked hard at Elvia, and then he reached for the doorknob.

  She thought Sandy would call her to help when the car left, but the boy’s wail was regular as a car alarm now, and then Sandy took him into her bedroom and closed the door.

  Elvia stayed awake until dawn, hearing the cries muffled and slowed, Sandy’s voice soft and indistinct and constant, like clothes in a dryer. Her bandage voice. She doesn’t need me. She does this all the time. For anybody who’s messed up. All the same. We’re all here for a week, a month. Then somebody’s supposed to want us. But I’m not a kid now. I already have my box. We all get a box. Then we have to go.

  She got her clean socks from the laundry room, the white washer and dryer where she used to fold clothes at night, looking at the highwire moon through the wispy curtains.

  Quietly pushing open Sandy’s door, she heard their heavy, sleeping breaths. He had dark blond hair, a butch cut like dust on his skull, his body curled tight away from Sandy’s. She lay on her back, her arm beside him, the pillows stacked around them. So he wouldn’t fall, Elvia knew.

  She went outside to put her backpack in the truck. Sandy’s roses were bright as pinwheels in the streetlight. The white dead-end rail was like a crooked picket fence against the vacant lot. She walked through the dry foxtails to the arroyo, in the space worn down by her sisters’ sliding feet. She wondered where they were—Jade, Chrissy, Bridget. The light snaked down the arroyo, illuminating the dry sand. A shopping cart lay on its side like a sleeping animal.

  When she passed Enchantee’s house in the truck, she saw the blue Honda pull out and blink headlights at her. Enchantee waved and Elvia waved back. But then when she got on the highway heading toward the desert, she saw Enchantee still behind her.

  She pulled onto the shoulder and walked back to the Honda. “What are you doing?” she shouted.

  “Giving you a ride back to Sandy’s. She called me and said you’d be leaving.” Enchantee had on sunglasses, a white scarf, and red lipstick. She looked like a movie star.

  “Who said I’m going back?”

  Enchantee shrugged.

  “She’s trying to run my life. Rules and doctor and school. Pretend to read my mind.”

  Then Enchantee grinned. “That’s what mothers do. If you want one, I’d go back if I were you.”

  “That’s you.” Elvia waited for a convoy of semis to pass, wind thundering against her. Enchantee’s scarf waved like a flag.

  “Sandy’s worried.” Enchantee pressed two twenties into her hand. “If you won’t let me drive you, do what you gotta do, have a good lunch, take the bus back here.”

  Elvia looked at the money. “You don’t even know me.”

  “I’m your aunt now, whether you like it or not.” Enchantee grinned, her white teeth, maple skin, and red lipstick bright in the morning sun.

  “Yeah, you and Sandy really look like sisters.” Elvia rolled her eyes.

  “Hey,” Enchantee said, her voice suddenly harsh. “My mother left me with my aunt when I was born. I had three cousins who weren’t anything like sisters I’d want. I’ll take Sandy anytime. And I taught myself to be a good mother. I hope you figure it out.” She pulled back onto the highway, leaving Elvia standing near brittle-bush and discarded tires.

  Hector’s aunt told me the same thing. She said who takes care of you is the mother.

  Driving through the Sandlands, down the curving highway, she knew she’d leave the truck, whether her father was there or not. She wouldn’t cry. She was trying not to remember that night when her father had brought her this way and she’d imagined the night-lit trucks were Christmas trees hurtling sideways through the valley.

  santa ana

  With each step over rocks and dry stems, Serafina had imagined herself on a pilgrimage, like women moving on their knees up the cobblestoned streets until their legs ran with blood. Or a donkey, carrying baskets along the mountain trails, plodding, head down.

  Now she was lost. The labyrinth of streets, the government buildings, the idea of asking strange Americans about her daughter—she was as lost and afraid as before, when she’d panicked and sat down on Larry’s green couch. And Florencio wouldn’t even leave camp, for fear his luck was used up. Rigoberto said she was wasting her time. How could she think clearly when she picked oranges every day until the citrus oil covered her arms and her full bag felt like a person on her shoulder? And the wind blew every afternoon, whirling through her head with the wild rustling of palm fronds and eucalyptus, brushes sweeping away her thoughts. The government had a building for children, she was sure. For lost children. Americans lost their children all the time. She could buy false documents from Alfaro—Araceli said an identification card was fifty dollars—and then present herself at a government counter to ask about Elvia.

  Rigoberto said, “Waste fifty dollars for that? For someone to tell you, yes, your daughter is living with someone else. In a house. With a bed.”

  Last Sunday, she had slept through Alfaro’s honking taxi call, and Rigoberto hadn’t awakened her. She’d opened her eyes in the shack, covered with fine sand from the fierce gusts, not sure where she was. Then she remembered the wind from before, when she and Elvia had watched through the window as palm fronds and newspapers and tumbleweeds cartwheeled past them.

  In the hot plywood near her face, thousands of woodchips glowed in the afternoon sun. What did Elvia remember? Serafina remembered her own mother taking her to the river, showing her the round stones she said used to be jagged, before water took away what it wanted and made sand. She remembered her mother’s hands over hers on the metate, on the mano.

  She had to make money for the documents, and make offerings to those who could help her.

  Before dawn, she stood outside at Araceli’s place to shape breakfast tortillas. Behind her, the sunflowers and tobacco still reached green and tall, but the October wind bent wild oats and foxtails to the ground and loosed their sharp seeds through the camp. Between gusts, it was quiet in the arroyo, but not like San Cristobal. For long moments, all Serafina would hear was an eerie hawk cry or the clink of Araceli’s pot lids. But behind those sounds, a helicopter hovered somewhere, car engines raced down a distant street, trailing sirens.

  When she wasn’t in the orange trees, she was here—tortillas in the morning, sauces for dinner. Araceli paid her cash each night. She had made mole coloradito for Florencio and Rigoberto after that first Sunday, when she had carefully picked all she needed from the Mercado Aparecida bins. The new mano was rough in her fingers, and the ancho chiles ground into a paste looked so much l
ike darkened blood that she had to close her eyes.

  But she ground harder and harder, adding the tomatoes, then the raisins, peanuts, and almonds, the thyme, marjoram and cumin, peppercorns, and last, a bit of chocolate and sugar. When she mixed in the broth, smoother and thicker, the fiery smell rose into her nose and mouth and she breathed it in to erase everything. Everything.

  Everyone else could smell it, too. She added the chicken pieces, and when Florencio and Rigoberto had dipped tortillas into the sauce, several other men stood near her lean-to clutching dollar bills and asking for just a small plate, their eyes hollow with memory.

  Because Araceli cooked large amounts of food, but nothing that tasted enough like home, Florencio said, their bellies were full when they headed to the groves, but their hearts still ached. He took Serafina aside and said, “None of us is going home. Maybe for a long time. Maybe forever. We have to do what we can here. Do you have enough mole for them?”

  Then Serafina thought, Araceli will pay me. I know it. I can do this every day.

  For three weeks now, she’d awakened long before dawn, just like at home, and made more than a hundred tortillas, turning them on the hot metal griddle Araceli had placed over the fire. The new plywood shelter was held up by a pole and a pepper tree. To the thick bark, Araceli had affixed a picture of La Virgen de Soledad, the patron saint of Oaxaca, her pale face above the gold-embroidered black robe severe and serene at the same time. Underneath, Araceli put fresh flowers in a soda bottle: wild mustard, sunflowers, and yerba buena she grew in a coffee can.

  “I brought the seeds from home,” Araceli said to Serafina. “Yerba santa, epazote, and aguacate. The last time I went back, I knew I needed them. But I can’t mix them like you do.”

  Serafina finished the last of the tortillas as the men crowded around the grill, and Jesus said, “Chilaquiles today, no?”

  She nodded. She’d made everyone’s favorite breakfast with the leftover coloradito. Torn tortillas, the red sauce, and white cheese in layers. Everyone ate so quickly that the only sounds were Don Rana’s motorbike and the truck rumbling up the grove road.

  When Serafina was in the trees, the wind began and she closed her eyes against the grit rising from the furrows. She did not need to see the oranges anyway; she could feel for them by bumping her fingers until she plucked hard and mechanically dropped the fruit into the sack. Today was Friday. They worked Saturday, too, and then Don Rana would pay them. On Sunday, she would wash all the clothes in the canal, hang them on the ropes Florencio had strung between the trees, and hope the wind didn’t take them. Rigoberto said the wind had a name. Santa Ana. She thought of all the places here—Descanso, San Jacinto, Los Angeles, Rio Seco. Everywhere seemed like Mexico, with the same names and plants and faces, if you stayed out of sight. There were camps all over California where you could disappear. Now everyone was talking about Santa Maria and Guadalupe, where Rigoberto said they would have work in the strawberries soon.

  But she didn’t want to leave. She was making a plan now, slowly. She could find work here, maybe she could cook somewhere. She could buy the falso documents, pay someone to translate at the government buildings. She had even thought about looking in bars this Sunday for Larry. He wasn’t a child. He might be easier to find. Larry Foley. She could remember only parts of him: the eyes green as new corn, their corners laced with red when he smoked in the truck with his friend; the hands veined with engine oil; and how he’d laughed and swung Elvia.

  She wasn’t paying attention when the whirling dust devil came from a barren field left fallow between groves, whipping her hair around her face like a strangling mask for a moment. She held on to a nearby tree, choking on the dust, sure that los aires, the spirits everyone talked about in San Cristobal, were trying to tell her something. All this wind was a bad sign. Back home, the air was calm and quiet and damp. Rigoberto said, “It’s just Ana. Does that make you feel better? They named a wind after a santo?”

  She heard a high whine, and the dust dervish spun away from her and zig-zagged crazily across the road, picking up speed, and then disappeared into the grove.

  Don Rana stopped his motorbike in front of her. “The trees—they kill it,” he said slowly, nodding at the dust devil. Then he motioned for her to get on the back of the motorbike.

  Serafina didn’t move. Her head burned black, and she looked at the gun on his hip. No. This couldn’t happen to her again. The arroyos, the hard hands clubbing her on the head . . . There was no sense in running. The motorbike idled along beside her. If he wanted sex, why didn’t he go to the Tejana women who came every Saturday to the end of the ravine and lay down on blankets for ten dollars? No. She wouldn’t even look at him.

  But Don Rana said, “You have to cook, no? Mixtecos work better when they eat.” He spoke slowly and she understood. “Plenty more work after dark. Goddamn wind slows us down.”

  She was still afraid, the whole time they rode through the grove roads, leaving roiled clouds of dirt behind. But when she got off the motorbike near camp, Rana said nothing, just hunched over and whirled away.

  When she got to Araceli’s, the older woman shook her head. “Nobody has any money yet, and I didn’t see Alfaro today. We have to make do with this.” Serafina glanced inside one pot at the rice flavored with bits of onion and a sheen of yellow cumin. Araceli pointed her knife at a pile of nopales, and Serafina sheared off the tiny red spines with her own knife.

  The ruby-red fruit of the nopales by that back fence, the jelly she’d made for the old woman . . . Could she possibly be there? That first Sunday, Serafina thought she’d smelled the oatmeal scent of years before; back then, the old woman never answered the door. But she crept out at dawn to water. Could she leave a note on the door? An offering of jelly for the old woman? She looked up the hill at the green trailer sitting half hidden near a Cottonwood. An offering of nopales to Don Rana? She knew he could speak English. Maybe he could write, as well.

  Don Rana sat outside his trailer with two other men, all wearing pointed cowboy boots and western shirts with pearl buttons. They stared at Serafina when she approached. Their eyes were light as toasted bread, their norteño faces suspicious.

  “Fucking indios,” one of them murmured.

  “I brought you some food,” she whispered, knowing she couldn’t ask him anything now.

  “Nopales? Shit, I ate enough cactus in Sinaloa.” They all joined his laughter. “I wouldn’t touch that fucking green pile now. Crazy Mixtecos. I only eat meat.” He put the plate on the ground, and a small dog came out from under the trailer and sniffed the rice.

  “Remember the fireworks?” Rigoberto said, when she told him what had happened. “Do you?”

  Serafina nodded. When they were small, the government had taken away half of the land around San Cristobal, sold it to someone. The people got on a bus to Oaxaca City and camped out on the church steps in the square. The second day, soldiers came and set off fireworks all around the church, calling it a celebration but accidentally hitting two men with rockets.

  “We weren’t invisible at home,” Rigoberto said. “We were irritants. Tin cans in the road. Shoot at them. Run them over. But here, we are invisible.”

  Jesus said, “Except when someone stumbles on us by accident.” He scraped the bottom of the rice pot. “Then someone kicks the can to the roadside. He cannot send soldiers. Not here.”

  Rigoberto shrugged. “Why should he? We don’t own the land. We only move across it. Back and forth.”

  Serafina remembered the smell of the fireworks, the deafening sound, the older women screaming, the soldiers laughing. But when they were scattering off the steps, her mother had pulled her inside the church. “Here,” she said, shoving Serafina in front of the Virgen. Furtively, her mother rubbed something over Serafina’s face, then knelt and prayed silently, her lips moving. When the shouting outside grew louder, she pulled Serafina up, and Serafina smelled
the pollen of lilies, saw the yellow stain on her mother’s fingers.

  Yellow, she thought all night. My rice wasn’t yellow enough, not like the marigolds and gladiolas under the feet of la Virgen de Soledad. Florencio watched her while she sat on the bed, combing her hair. Rigoberto left, probably for the Tejana women. She had heard him tell Jesus, “I don’t want children. I can’t afford it. So I have to pay. The Tejanas cost money, but a mother is much more expensive.”

  Don Rana and his friends had spat the word. Mixtecos. The visiting priest who had come to San Cristobal only once a month had hated Mixtecos, too. He would stand in the church, glaring at the villagers. The church walls were an affront to God, he said.

  The old priests had ordered the church constructed over the tombs of dead Mixtec rulers, on the very wall of mosaic stones over the burial grounds. Serafina had often stared at the east wall. In the moss-black niches where statues of Spanish santos looked out, her uncle had pointed to garlands of flowers and grapes for fertility carved into the stone. On either side, El Sol y La Luna gazed at each other. The sun, god of man, and the moon, goddess of woman. The priests had been oblivious, her uncle said, to the Mixtecos laboring on the facade.

  She felt Florencio’s hands on her shoulders, resting cautiously. Larry’s lips had frightened her, rough mustache bristles and pressing teeth. But she’d kissed Elvia a hundred times, loving the feel of her lips on her child’s skin.

  Then she had tried to kiss the hands of Santa Catarina. The night she lost her baby.

  The rice had to be gold for an offering. She would do everything right on Sunday. When Florencio turned her toward him, she made the sign of the cross, quickly, her thumb to her forehead and breast, shoulder to shoulder, and then she kissed her own thumb, her lips soft against the thumbnail.

  Florencio embraced her now, and she wasn’t afraid. She let her lips go soft against his. She felt his mouth warm on the scar at her temple; then he kissed her jaw, lightly, not hurting the pebble of memory inside.