Eating the Moon

by Mark David Campbell

  Late the next evening, Nando and I are sitting outside the cottage on the platform watching as the sinking sun stains the horizon the color of a ripe mango. Great numbers of white cattle egrets squawk and fuss in the treetops beyond the silhouette of the pyramid mound.

  “Where is this place? How did people get here?” I say as I spread my arms and sweep them back and forth in the air.

  Nando’s face seems to glow, and he looks far off, as if he can see something in the sky beyond the trees. “It was long ago,” he says, speaking slowly and delicately, drawing his words from somewhere deep inside—like he’s telling a story that has been told to him many times before. “So long ago that no one knows when we first came here from the great cities far away. At that time the Daughter of the Moon, Ix Chel, had left her home in the wetlands to join with Feathered Serpent, the ruler of the drylands in the north. She traveled by seafaring canoes with fifty-four of her divine sisters. The canoes were paddled by fifty-four of the strongest, most beautiful men who, although common men, had forsaken the touch of women and given themselves only to the service of the Moon.”

  Nando pauses. I study his face as he continues to stare upward, as if in a trance. I shift a little, and he goes on with his story.

  “Two weeks out at sea the grand party became lost. Then they came across a large band of smaller war canoes. These were the Island people who had made many raids along the coastal towns of the wetlands. The Island people immediately recognized Ix Chel and offered her and her party safe passage. Since they were low on fresh water and had lost their bearings, Ix Chel accepted the hospitality of the Island people.”

  “Probably not the wisest thing to do,” I say.

  Nando shakes his head slowly, then continues. “The Island people led the sea canoes to their island, where they fell upon Ix Chel and her party, slitting many of the men’s throats and taking the women prisoner. That night, as the Island people feasted, the full moon suddenly disappeared and everything became dark.”

  Nando smiles and sniffs. “The Island people fell to their knees, fearing they had stolen the moon from the sky. That’s when, in the cover of darkness, Ix Chel and her surviving sisters fled from the village and escaped in one of her canoes. When the moon appeared once again, the chief saw that he had been deceived. He swore to recapture Ix Chel and set out after her.”

  Nando breathes in deeply and continues. “Ix Chel’s great canoe was faster than the smaller Island canoes in open sea, but it was very overloaded. Closer and closer, the Island canoes came. At that moment, just as they feared the Island people would catch up with them and they would all perish, a strange curtain of fog appeared.”

  I lie back on the patio floor with my head resting on my hand and gaze up at the darkening dome. The sun has dipped below the horizon, draining the sky of its yellows and oranges. Purple shadows from the great pyramid mound and forest are creeping across the plaza toward us. A chorus of frogs serenades the incoming tide of darkness.

  Nando lies back beside me and continues to stare upward, as if he is reading a text written in the heavens. “Ix Chel and her canoe slipped into the thick fog where they were hidden from the Island people. They had escaped but were lost with many wounded, and they still did not have any fresh water or food. Then a small patch of clear sky with three bright stars appeared ahead of them to guide them through the darkness.”

  “Wait a minute!” I jerk my head up. “That sounds like what happened to us just before our ship sank.”

  Nando rolls his head toward me and smiles. “Of course it is.” He looks back toward the sky and continues on with his tale. “By dawn the canoe emerged from the fog, and there, shimmering in the morning light, the people saw the most beautiful islands they had ever seen. They knew that these three islands were actually the three stars that had seen the Daughter of the Moon in peril and laid themselves down on the sea. ‘This is where we shall live, on the Islands of the Stars,’ said Ix Chel.”

  Nando pauses and sniffs again then rolls his head toward me, looks directly into my eyes, and says, “And that is how we came to this place.”

  The shadow of the pyramid mound has now engulfed the plaza, scaled the steps, and crept across the terrace, leaving the two of us blanketed in darkness. I gaze back at Nando, my heart pounding in my chest. I say nothing, not wanting to break his spell. Here I am, marooned on the Islands of the Stars—held prisoner within this boy’s brown eyes.

  GUY CONTINUED to stare at the far wall then breathed in deeply and yawned and stretched. “We are strange creatures indeed.” Guy looked directly at Richard. “We spend our lives trying to get close to each other, but for most of us, sex is as close as we ever get.”

  Richard held Guy’s stare. “And who are you close to?”

  Guy’s mouth hardened, and he blinked rapidly, his eyes watery. “No one.” He stretched his throat and swallowed. “Doc, since the future doesn’t exist yet, a promise like ‘I will always love you’ has no meaning at all.”

  “It expresses how you feel at the time and the desire for that feeling to last forever, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, but forever comes with an expiry date.”

  Richard rested his chin on his knuckles. “As does everything in life.”

  Guy forced a melancholic smile. “As does life.” He got up from the sofa and walked toward the door. Then he stopped and turned back to Richard. “Doc, do you think truth also comes with an expiry date?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re thirty-two years old. You don’t get a second chance to be young.” His expression was compassionate, and his tone was fatherly. “Isn’t it about time you stopped trying to live up to everyone else’s expectations and started living your own truth?” Without waiting for a response, Guy turned and left.

  Chapter 9: The Birds and the Bees

  GUY BURST into the office. “Yep, it’s right there in the anthropology textbooks. The nuclear family is the basic human social unit—just Dad, Mom, and the kids. Ridiculous!”

  Richard, who was looking out the window, swiveled around in his desk chair and gave Guy a forced smile that seemed to say both hello and Here we go again.

  Guy lowered the volume of his voice and continued as he claimed his usual place on the sofa. “Even within our society, families are highly fluid: single parents, gay parents, collectives, divorce, adoption, and remarriages. We pretty much fuck who we can, and everything else is just variations in the game, full stop.”

  “So why does some out-of-date textbook have you so agitated this morning?”

  “Because they expect me to teach that heterocentric, hegemonic crap.”

  “Mr. Palmer.” Richard spoke with a slight tone of condescension as he got up and moved over to the swivel chair. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it your job as an anthropologist to present people with new tools and concepts so that they can think differently?”

  “I’m just sick and tired of their narrow-mindedness.” Guy spit out the words.

  “I’m sure you are more than capable of giving a lecture that discusses recent changes to the concept of the family. Or do you prefer to teach only to the converted?”

  Guy clamped his jaw. Then he curled his lip and sneered at Richard. “You know, Doc, I hate it when you’re right.”

  Richard had a rather smug look on his face.

  Then with a complete shift in tone, Guy said, “Okay. Enough of this crap. I want to talk about something else instead.” And he went on with his story.

  THE FOLLOWING afternoon is hot, with hardly a breeze. All I can think of is a drink of cool water and a nap as I stagger up the terrace steps to our cottage loaded with a large basket of potatoes, a feather headdress, and a couple of yards of beads. “Hey, guys, look what this sweet old lady gave me,” I call through the doorway.

  Pico watches me as I enter with my bounty.

  “Oh no!” Nando slaps his forehead. “What old woman? What did you say to her?”

  “Nothing. You
know, the old woman with the diamond-shaped tattoo on her forehead.”

  “Rurlu?” Nando looks at Pico. Pico nods.

  “I met her by accident along the path, and she insisted that I take this stuff from her.”

  “That was no accident. Did you promise her anything in return?”

  “No, nothing. She just kept repeating the word gosha, over and over again.”

  Pico begins to laugh.

  “It’s worse than I thought.” Nando buries his face in his hands.

  “What? Did I do something wrong?”

  “Just pile it over there in the corner.” Nando sighs.

  “What did I do?”

  “You just made an agreement for your juice.” Nando shakes his head back and forth. “Gosha means juice.”

  “What kind of juice?” I furrow my brow. “Coconut juice? Orange juice?”

  “Not that kind of juice.”

  Pico has a silly expression on his face. He clasps his crotch and jostles it and laughs loudly.

  “No!” I hang my mouth open. “You don’t mean—?”

  “Yes.” Nando inhales deeply. “I will take it all back tomorrow. I will explain that you have gone dry and cannot give juice. But from now on”—Nando holds his finger in the air—“when you see Rurlu, just run and hide in the forest or swim out to sea.”

  “But there are sharks out at sea!”

  “Trust me.” Nando rolls his eyes. “You are much safer with the sharks.”

  “Okay, okay. But I still don’t understand what I did wrong.”

  “Don’t worry.” Nando reaches out and wraps me in his arms. Pico jumps over and joins in. “Tonight there is a telling for the planting moon, and after you will understand better.”

  “Will your sister be there?” Nando has told me his sister is a very knowledgeable woman. Maybe she can tell me more about where the island is in relation to Cuba or some other populated place?

  “The whole village will be there,” Nando says enthusiastically. “The planting moon is a very important ceremony for both men and women.”

  That night the moon is full. Nando leads me partway up the pyramid mound steps to the first platform and through a passageway to the women’s side. The women’s side is almost a mirror image of the men’s, with a large plaza flanked by long terraced mounds with cottages on top. Like the men’s village, the cottages are stucco white and painted with green and red bands along the walls. Instead of fish symbols like the ones painted on the walls on the men’s side, oblique circular designs are painted on the walls on the woman’s side.

  “What do the circles mean?” I slowly trace my finger around one of the designs.

  “Oh, those are potatoes. It is the symbol for vagina,” Nando says.

  I pull my tracing finger back sharply.

  The plaza is lit with torches, shadows jumping off the walls around us. We join the other men and flop down on the back terrace facing the pyramid mound. The women are already sitting in a coiled circle formation in the center of the plaza.

  “Man, some of those women look strong,” I whisper to Nando and point with my chin in their direction.

  “Be careful. Don’t point or stare. It is a sign of disrespect,” he whispers back. “The women are seated in order from the strongest on the outside to the elders in the center,” he continues in a low voice. “Of course, women with a child in their belly sit within the protective circle.” Nando nods covertly toward a robust elderly woman with short brown hair, wearing a grass skirt and layers of wooden beads around her neck. “She is my sister, Kyle, the Big Woman of the village.” For a microsecond, her eyes catch sight of him and she smiles and winks.

  “So, she is like the chief of the village?” I ask.

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “Was she elected, or did she inherit the title?”

  “No, nothing like that.” Nando shakes his head. “She works very hard to prove that she is always fair and just and wise. She is very well respected, and everybody agrees that she is the best person to guide us in times of trouble. So she is the Big Woman of the village.” Nando smiles.

  “Kyle?” I say. “It sounds like an American name.”

  “It means Thunder Storm.”

  “Why do they call her that?”

  “Because she sounds like a thunderstorm when she has an orgasm.”

  I start to giggle. Nando furrows his brow at me. I blush and try to regain my composure.

  “And the small dark-haired woman holding her from behind?”

  The small woman suddenly notices us looking and shoots us a venomous glare.

  Nando quickly drops his head, and I follow. “That’s her mate, Dzil,” he says out of the corner of his mouth like an amateur ventriloquist. “She does not like you because you come from the outside. Be careful of her. She is very fierce.”

  I shiver. Now I know how Dorothy must have felt when she met the Wicked Witch of the West.

  “Why are they sitting in the center? Are they expecting a baby?”

  “No, my sister is too old to have children, but she is an elder of the house of the Moon. Dzil is still without child, but she assumes a position of status because she is my sister’s lover.”

  “I understand.” I nod. “Hey, so that means you are also part of the local elite,” I say half-impressed, half-teasing.

  “All men belong to the houses of their mothers, not their fathers, and so a man’s sister is very important.”

  Ahh, I think, classic matrilineal descent.

  “I belong to the houses of the Moon and the Morning Star. They are good houses.”

  I’m just about to ask Nando why he claims he belongs to two matrilineal kin groups, when suddenly the women begin making an ear-piercing trill with their tongues oscillating back and forth against their cheeks. All conversation stops. Those men who are still milling around take a seat wherever they are standing. The torches are extinguished, and we sit in darkness. Then, one by one, young people dressed in white, carrying torches, appear from behind the various terraces of the pyramid mound—women from the right, men from the left—lighting it like a stage.

  Kyle unwraps herself from Dzil’s clutches and makes her way through the crowd to the steps of the great mound, then slowly climbs halfway up and sits down with her feet hanging over the edge of the terrace platform.

  Nando leans in closer with his lips inches from my ear. “Now the great story begins.”

  I smell the spicy odor of his body and feel his warm breath tickle my ear. My head spins, and I begin to sweat. “I’m not sure I’ll understand it very well,” I say in a hush.

  “Do not worry. I will make a translation for you.”

  The wailing women fall silent, and Kyle begins to speak. “Our island home provides us with everything we could need or want: fresh water to drink, plants to eat and make medicine, strong trees to build houses and fishing canoes, hemp to make ropes and cloth, and an abundance of fish from the sea.”

  Just then I feel Lalli’s familiar touch on the back of my neck as he slides in close to me and sits down. I look up and smile. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Nando watching us with a strange expression. Aha! Maybe he’s jealous of Lalli? I finally have a reaction from him.

  Kyle stands and raises her arms, her voice echoing above the sound of people mumbling and shifting in their seats and babies fussing. “Nine moons after their arrival, Ix Chel and the women who had been violated by the Island people gave birth. Tara, the warrior, held out her newborn child by the foot and cried, ‘Let us take our revenge upon the Island people and spill the blood of their children on our soil.’”

  A low growling sound fills the plaza. Everyone around me is baring their teeth and waving their fists in the air. Kyle continues. “But Ix Chel spoke and said, ‘This is how we shall take revenge for our sorrow. Our tears shall become our joy.’ She took the child and placed it against her breast, where it fed. And the other women obeyed.”

  A baby starts to cry on the far side
. Some people laugh lightly, and his mother stands up and bounces him in her arms. Kyle looks across the plaza and smiles. Suddenly Dzil lets out an enormous wail. She throws herself onto the ground as if she has been mortally wounded, and everyone’s eyes turn from Kyle toward her. Women cluster around her and lift her back to her feet and hold her while she sobs loudly and flails her arms.

  I lean over toward Nando. “What’s wrong with her?”

  He puts his lips to my ear and says, “Dzil is very skilled at expressing her ideas.”

  Kyle waits until Dzil has calmed down, then goes on. “Tara would not listen to Ix Chel. ‘We shall take our revenge on all men,’ she cried.”

  “No! No!” Little Lisha yells, and everyone around her joins in, yelling and pounding their feet on the ground.

  With her hands spread wide, Kyle pushes against the air to signal for calm. People make hushing sounds, and the crowd quiets. In a strong, reassuring voice, Kyle says, “But Ix Chel spoke to the people, saying, ‘No man shall violate woman. And women shall join with women and men with men to celebrate the gift of fertility and life.’”

  The crowd breaks into wild cheers. Babies crying, woman yodeling, and men whooping and stomping their feet.

  Kyle takes a burning torch, holds it in the air, and proclaims loudly above the noise, “And this is the law, as spoken by the Daughter of the Moon.” She pauses. “And this is the law by which we live.” Kyle turns and disappears behind the pyramid mound, and the torchbearers follow.

  Everybody continues to whistle and yodel and whoop and stomp. Men embrace men and women embrace women. I stand up with Lalli and Nando. Lalli grabs me and hugs me. I pull Nando in tightly, and he buries his wet face against my neck and shoulder. My skin tingles with goose bumps.