Once, in a Town Called Moth

by Trilby Kent

  Then, a startling thought. If no one knows who I am here, do I even exist?

  Ana returned home with forty-two cents in change, which she left on the kitchen counter for her father with the receipt.

  Unwrapping the broccoli from its plastic, Ana started at the sensation of something small and black scurrying from between the stalks onto her hand and around her wrist before dropping into the sink. It lay there, curled in a puddle of dishwater, for several seconds before unfurling one leg—two, six…eight legs—and bracing itself against the foreign surface. It was brown, actually, not black, with a fat, hairy body and two sharp pincers at its front that might have been horns, or a claw.

  Disgusting, thought Ana—and then she shivered at the recollection of its legs glancing her skin.

  “Product of Brazil” said the sticker on the plastic wrap, which also had a barcode and the supermarket’s logo on it. Brazil was a huge country that bordered Bolivia to the east; many of the trains from Santa Cruz were either coming from or going there.

  Harnessing her revulsion, Ana peered more closely at the spider. She wondered if it was poisonous. She was tempted to run the water and wash it down the drain, but suddenly she felt sorry for it. Perhaps because it seemed so solid—more like an animal than an insect—and because it almost certainly hadn’t known, when it clambered onto that particular head of broccoli one morning only days ago, that it would find itself shrink-wrapped and loaded onto a truck, then a plane, then another truck, before being piled onto a fridge shelf and left there until some girl came along and dropped it into her shopping basket.

  She took a glass from the cupboard and looked around the kitchen for a piece of paper large enough to slide in under the glass. She would trap it gently and release it outside. She spotted the Phuket Paradise takeout menu on the counter and grabbed it. It had fallen through the letterbox three days ago, and neither Ana nor her father had known what to make of it. Now, at last, it had a purpose. Armed with the tools of capture, she turned back to the sink—

  Nothing.

  She stepped back from the counter, scanning the linoleum tiles, but it was impossible to make out a brown body against the swirl of mustard-colored flowers. She considered the countertops and even dared to push aside the mug tree in case it had sought refuge behind it, to no avail. The sink was deep and damp-splattered. Surely it couldn’t have climbed out so quickly? Had it gone down the drain of its own accord, seeking safety in the dark? Ana took the flashlight from the cleaning cupboard and shone it down the plughole, but still couldn’t see anything.

  Even if she shut the kitchen door, the spider was small enough to crawl under it. Ana imagined herself lying in bed that night, waiting to hear the whisper of movement across her pillow, a tiny, hairy leg tickling her ear—

  Ana, stop being stupid. It’s gone down the drain. It’s committed spider-suicide. Why would it want to go anywhere near your ear?

  She rinsed the broccoli and placed it in a colander, which she put in the fridge. Then she re-opened the fridge, tore off one bushy broccoli stem and left it on a piece of paper towel on the counter by the sink. She did not know if it was a lure or a friendly gesture to a fellow-in-exile, and mainly she hoped that it would remain untouched.

  “Good luck, amigo,” she said. “Just stay out of my room.”

  The first time Suvi appeared at the front door, she was carrying a skateboard: black with yellow wheels and some kind of graffiti on the bottom. She spun it on one end as she tilted her head to the side and, squinting up at Papa, said, “Would your daughter like to come out?”

  She was chewing bubble gum and rested one hand on her hip. Her wrist was stacked with fluorescent woven bracelets. The yellow wheels rattled.

  Ana had watched through the banister railings on the landing. Papa had glanced up in time to see her flinch and disappear into the bedroom.

  “She’s not in,” he said. “Perhaps another day? I’ll tell her you came.”

  Two days later Suvi returned, this time without her skateboard. Her sneakers were squashed and dirty and covered in peace signs scribbled in black pen. She was eating a Fruit Roll-Up.

  “We’re going down to the ravine,” she said to Papa. “This is Jonty and Ben; they live three doors down from you.”

  Behind her, a tall boy hovered in the middle of the street, chucking a tennis ball at some tree branches. A younger boy sat on the sidewalk, watching him.

  Papa must have heard the whisper of the kitchen door shutting, must have sensed Ana leaning against it, holding her breath.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “She’s a little under the weather today.”

  That evening, he said to her, “She may not come again. If she does, you should go for a bit. She lives across the street. I’ve seen her parents. An only child, like you. Maybe you’ll be friends.”

  The third time, Ana had no choice: she was sitting on the front step when Suvi came rattling up the sidewalk.

  “Hey,” she said. “Are you feeling better?”

  She didn’t wait for Ana to reply, but flipped her skateboard and ambled up the walkway.

  “I’m Suvi,” she said. “Jonty’s got his bike down at my place.” She held up a five dollar bill. “We can get Cokes from the store…if you want?”

  Ana nodded.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ana.”

  “Have you got a board? Or a bike?”

  “No.”

  “That’s OK—I’ll go slow.”

  Jonty and Ben only stayed for a little while, lounging over the handlebars of their bikes with closed faces.

  “We’re not really friends,” said Suvi after they’d gone. “I just hang out with them in the summer. To be honest, I doubt they’d have come to your door if it hadn’t been for me bugging them. They think girls are lame.”

  Ana was secretly relieved that they’d left. The taller one had stared at her as if she was something disappointing in a zoo, and she’d heard the younger one snort behind his hand, “Cool braids, Princess Leia.” She didn’t know what this meant, but she knew it couldn’t be good.

  “So, where’d you come from?” Suvi cocked her chin at Ana’s sweatshirt. “I don’t know that camp.”

  Ana glanced at her front, at the upside-down letters of Camp Kawinpasset. “Bolivia,” she said. “South America.”

  It felt strange to be speaking in English, and she was suddenly grateful for the informal lessons she’d had from Aunt Justina, who had worked hard over the years to remember the language of her Albertan childhood.

  “Whoa, cool. So you’re Bolivian? But you’re so pale!”

  “My family’s from Russia…” She motioned with one hand, searching for the word. “Before. A long time ago. They lived in Canada for a while, and then they went to Bolivia.” Ana listened to herself, approving of the perfect circle her narrative seemed to be forming. “But now we’re back in Canada.” As if it all made sense.

  “I get it. So, you’re going to go to Walpole in the fall?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “For high school. It’s either there or, uh, Upper Beaches?”

  “I don’t know.” Ana paused. In Bolivia, she would have finished her schooling by now. “I don’t think my father’s decided yet.”

  “Well, you should totally try to come to Walpole. It’s closer and it has a rock climbing wall. I’ve been going to the middle school there, so I kind of know my way around. We’d probably be going into grade nine together. Are you fourteen?” Ana nodded. “Me too. It was my birthday last month. That would be cool.”

  “No school,” her father said.

  He hadn’t even looked up from the plank of wood that he was marking with a pencil.

  “But I have to go. Suvi says it’s the law.” Ana watched her father straighten, using the pencil to scratch behind his ear. That word, law, had caught his attention.

  “Suvi is the girl who came here?”

  “Yes. She’s nice.”

  “And she knows about the
law? This thirteen-year-old girl?”

  “Fourteen. She said the police had to escort some boy to school last year. He was living with another family. A foster family, I think she said…”

  At last, her father looked at her.

  “Leave it with me,” he said. “I’ll find out.”

  “Walpole,” said Ana. “If I have to go, please can we make it Walpole?”

  “I’ll do as I said,” came the reply. Then he nodded at the kitchen, her responsibility. “When I’ve finished here, we’ll have dinner.”

  They called it her mother’s pearl necklace, although the pearls weren’t real. Ana didn’t know where it had come from. Nobody she knew wore jewelry; in their community it would be considered a vanity. Her father tolerated its presence in the house only as long as it stayed in the box in the cupboard of the dry sink. Over the years the cord had worn thin, and the necklace had to be restrung. Ana’s mother had taken it to a Bolivian man in the village who sold watch batteries and tightened earring clasps. She only went to him a few times, but on each visit he must have secretly taken a few pearls off and replaced them with plastic ones. You could tell a plastic pearl because it dented when you bit it. Now, all but three of the pearls on the necklace were marked with punctures where Ana had tested them.

  “I don’t know why you keep it,” said her father. “It’s worthless.”

  “It was hers.”

  “It wasn’t. The real pearls were hers. Your mother was always too trusting.”

  Colony Felicidad

  Gerhard Buhler had never liked Papa. In all our years in Colony Felicidad he never said as much, and neither did Papa, but somehow I always knew it. Perhaps the ripples from my mother’s disappearance reached further than people were willing to admit. The light from a star continues to travel for many thousands of years after the star has died.

  Or perhaps it had nothing to do with my mother. I just assume that it did because I only ever knew about one thing that linked them: when I was four she saved Gerhard Buhler’s youngest boy, Isaac, from drowning.

  You’d think this would be a good thing, the sort of thing that would make Gerhard Buhler forever grateful to her. We were on a day trip to the lake off Route Four—my mother and me, Maria and Susanna and Isaac, and a couple of other women with their children, plus Papa who drove us and Frank Reimer—because it was so hot.

  The lake was the closest thing we had to the seaside because the Pacific Ocean is miles away, beyond Bolivia’s borders and even past Chile and Peru. Instead we drove a couple of buggies down the drive and onto the main road and then onto another road that ran parallel to Route Four for about half an hour, and then down a track that led onto a secret slice of waterfront that hardly anyone ever sees. It’s a freshwater lake, but the beach is a little sandy, so we could almost pretend it was the seaside. The beach is a thin sliver between the shining water and the trees, and the sand is gray, mostly damp.

  The boys went swimming in their breeches. The women laid out blankets and stayed on shore, while my father and Frank Reimer took off their shoes and socks to walk in the shallows. Maria, who was almost fourteen then, tucked her skirts into her belt so that she could wade in up to her knees. Susanna and I and the other little girls went in in our slips. The water was cold and black and wicked against our skin.

  After a while I must have left the water, as I remember sitting next to my mother, feeling the sun on my bare legs and the reassuring tug of her hands as she combed and re-braided my hair. That was a treat—usually we washed and braided only once a week—and I remember savoring the delicious indulgence of it.

  I don’t remember what happened in between that moment and the moment we were all standing at the other end of the beach, far from where we had set up our camp, right where there were some rocks bouldering the trees. My mother was in the water, and my father was running into the water after her to take Isaac Buhler in his arms, to pass Isaac to Frank, and then to help my mother out of the water, her skirts trapping between her legs, her face pale and gasping.

  I don’t know how she knew that Isaac Buhler was in trouble, because the rest of us would have thought you’d have to hear screams first: “Help me! I’m drowning!” Perhaps it was something she’d learned on her childhood farm in Alberta; perhaps there had been stories of little boys who drowned in watering holes there. Until then I’m not sure that anyone was aware my mother even knew how to swim, but I suppose she must have been pretty good to reach Isaac, who had drifted beyond the rocks and become caught in some old fishing nets. Either that, or she was just really brave.

  I don’t remember the rest of that day, although I do remember for a long time afterward the littlest kids saying, “Isaac Buhler is drowning” as though it was still happening, even though Isaac Buhler was alive and well and usually to be found burying ants in their anthills or stealing cream cookies from the kitchen. “Isaac Buhler is drowning” became something of a song after that, the kind of thing you sang rather than said. It didn’t mean anything.

  So why Gerhard Buhler had it in for Papa, I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting things confused. Sometimes that happens when you’re trying really hard to remember. The harder you try, the more confusing it all becomes.

  Toronto

  “SO, WHEN’S THE REST of your stuff arriving?”

  They were standing in the middle of Ana’s room, and Ana was wishing that she’d had time to put away the clothes her father had bought her. As it was, they were spread across the bed like outlines at a crime scene.

  “This is it.” Ana swallowed. “We left most of our things in Bolivia.”

  “Do you have a TV?”

  Ana shook her head.

  “That doesn’t matter. You can watch most things online now, anyway.” Suvi waited for Ana to respond. “Do you have a computer?”

  Ana breathed deeply. “I think my father wants to get a new one. Ours is…broken.” Anticipating more questions, she said, “We’re getting a new car too.”

  “Cars are a hassle in the city, anyway,” said Suvi. She pointed at the bed. “Interesting clothes,” she said.

  Not as interesting as my old ones, thought Ana.

  “You having a garage sale or something?”

  “I’m…sorting them. For charity.”

  “That’s cool. Hey, so what did you say your parents do?”

  “My dad’s a carpenter. My mother…” Ana spotted the pearl necklace coiled in a dish on the windowsill. In Colony Felicidad, no one had ever commented on her mother’s absence. “She died a long time ago.”

  “Oh, jeez. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine.” Ana forced cheeriness. “So, uh, can I see your house?”

  Colony Felicidad

  I tend to notice people’s feet first, perhaps because I spend a lot of time looking down. Faces, especially new ones, can be kind of intimidating. Even with Aunt Justina, I preferred it when we talked sitting side by side. Using English felt like a kind of rebellion in a place where people only spoke German or perhaps a bit of Spanish, and it was something neither of us wanted to acknowledge. It was easier to practice conversation while looking at the long grass winding between our toes.

  After my mother disappeared, I noticed how my father’s feet changed. His shoes got dusty and the laces rarely got replaced. He went from stepping sure-footedly, almost restlessly, around the house to just kind of shuffling. I was too scared to look at his face for the longest time because of what I might see. And when he talked to me, I started to notice he felt the same way, because more often than not he’d talk to my feet instead, or else to a point just past my shoulder.

  There were lots of interesting feet to watch at the airport in Santa Cruz. Callused heels in flip-flops; painted nails on tanned toes in wedge heels; enormous cushioned sneakers; black alligator skin sharpening to a business-like point; jelly sandals; and shoes with a little light in the heel that flashed when they moved.

  I wondered where Papa had found the money to buy our tickets. I’d seen
him put one of the boxes from the dry sink in his bag as we left. It held a gold watch that I’d assumed was once my grandfather’s, and a few rolled-up notes of some foreign currency that were of no use to us in Bolivia. The box had once held my mother’s pearl necklace too, only I’d taken that for my own years before.

  Now that I think about it, I can’t remember much about my mother’s feet at all.

  Toronto

  “THIS IS JULIE, and that’s Steve.” Suvi reached across the kitchen island to dip a carrot stick in a bowl of something green and white. “Help yourself.”

  Suvi’s mother looked like a grown-up version of Suvi, with the same square bob and blunt bangs and wobbly grin. Her skin was tanned, and she wore silvery purple eyeliner. She was dressed in a tank top, cut-offs and bare feet—her toes were painted bright coral pink, and there was a silver toe ring on her baby toe—and when Suvi introduced them she squeezed a hand around Steve’s soft waist and smiled liked a schoolgirl.

  “Hey, Ana. Nice to meet you. You’re welcome to stay for dinner, if you like. We’re doing tacos.”

  “Thanks. I may have to ask my father first.”

  “No problemo.”

  Steve was pouring a couple of beers into tall glasses. “Suvi says you moved here from Bolivia,” he said. “Yikes.”

  “It’s a long way away.”

  “You were born there?” Ana nodded. “I was born in Australia. Don’t remember much about it now; we moved here when I was five. But I can still do a mean Aussie accent.”