When the Moon was Ours

by Anna-Marie McLemore

  Aracely threw out the remover-soaked cotton balls, and went with him.

  Miel shuddered when Aracely touched her, the way she had when he tried the same thing. But Aracely spoke to her in a voice so soft Sam couldn’t make out the words. She talked her down in a way Sam didn’t know how to, like her words were a rhythm she was helping Miel follow. Her voice was a frequency she was getting Miel to tune in to, until Miel was nodding, and letting Aracely take her hands. Aracely helped her stand, guided her through the constellations of broken glass.

  There was something about it so different from what he would have done, different even from the way his mother talked to Miel.

  There was something not quite sisterly, and not quite maternal. Not just the familiarity that had grown between a woman and the girl who’d lived with her for ten years.

  Tonight Sam would paint another moon for Miel, one warmer than the bluish one he’d carried into the woods. He’d make one big enough to fill his arms, the light both full and crescent. He’d paint its face the blush of a flower moon, its edge darkened almost to red, like a strawberry moon. He’d paint its mare serenitatis and mare tranquillitatis, the wide seas of serenity and tranquility crossing the crisp white of a snow moon.

  All the colors would look like the rose moons he and Miel had found in the sky that summer. He’d hang it in the beech tree outside her window, and under its light she’d sleep. He wanted to give her every light that had ever hung in the night sky. He wanted to give her back what she thought she’d lost years ago.

  Sam could stay with her. He could tell her what his grandmother had told him about the crocus fields, how they sometimes smelled like hay, and sometimes like leaves, and sometimes like the spice they held. He could tell her his favorite story his grandmother had told him. A prince and a fairy who fell in love, and could sometimes be seen over the water of Saif-ul-Malook on nights lit by the full moon.

  But it took Aracely to get Miel home, to get her in bed, to get her to sleep. Aracely stood in the doorway of Miel’s room, watching her breathe, lips parted.

  There was something proprietary in that look. Something possessive, both defensive and proud.

  Sam had disregarded that moment of thinking he’d seen a resemblance between Aracely and Miel. He’d let it fall like a stone he picked up, turned over, and then decided not to keep. But now he looked for it again, like brushing his fingers through a carpet of leaves, finding it a second time.

  He couldn’t ask Aracely, not now, with Miel settling into the space between those glass pumpkins and her own dreams. But he wouldn’t forget. This time he wasn’t letting it go.

  lake of forgetfulness

  Ms. Owens’ voice came up through the floorboards, her nervous laugh and her chatter to Aracely.

  Miel opened her bedroom door. She heard Aracely answering back in her slow, calming voice, her aren’t-men-awful voice. Ms. Owens’ voice was unsteady, and Miel wondered what actuary, what mattress-franchise millionaire, had broken her heart this time.

  And why Aracely hadn’t called Miel down to help her.

  Aracely stood at the stove, boiling water for lavender and ginger tea. After the second time, Aracely always gave it to Ms. Owens, to relax her, to make sure the inside of her wasn’t becoming too stiff and brittle from so many lovesickness cures.

  Miel leaned against the counter, her elbows on the tile. “Where is she?” Miel whispered.

  “Just fixing her face,” Aracely said, giving Miel a pained look. “It’s a bad one this time. Mascara everywhere.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Miel asked.

  Aracely leaned in. “I think that’s the same thing she wants to ask the guy.”

  Miel elbowed her, and Aracely pressed her lips together. Only Aracely could make those kinds of jokes without sounding cruel.

  “I meant why didn’t you tell me to come down,” Miel said, her voice still low. “I always help you.”

  Aracely’s eyelids pinched. “You had a long night last night. I thought you might be tired.”

  Miel felt the unease of slipping from a place she’d claimed as hers. She always handed Aracely the eggs and the oranges. Aracely always signaled to Miel to open the window at just the right time to let the lovesickness out. They both carefully shooed the lovesickness out the window, watching so it wouldn’t fly back, or end up stuck in a bowl of fruit or a vase of flowers, the ceramic trembling like a wasp’s wings. Or worse, rush back into the body it came out of. To visitors, curing lovesickness seemed all instinct and flourish. But Aracely treated it as a craft that took as much patience and method as cutting raw opal.

  And Miel had been part of that for almost as long as she’d lived with Aracely.

  “I’m fine.” Miel stood up straight. “I can do this.”

  The kettle sang, and Aracely took it off the burner. “Are you sure?”

  “It was just bad dreams,” Miel said. “That’s all.”

  “That’s not what I hear.”

  The gossip had already bubbled through the town about the newest glass pumpkins in the Bonners’ fields, deep and bright as topaz and bloodstone.

  “Are they saying I did it?” Miel asked.

  “No.” Aracely poured the hot water. “Why would they?”

  Miel felt the tension in her fingers pulling back toward her heart. No one but the Bonner sisters knew they had brought the stained glass coffin back from its distant place in their family’s stories. No one but the Bonner sisters knew they had locked Miel inside it.

  No one but Miel saw those jewel-glass pumpkins as the threat they were.

  Miel handed Aracely the hard cone of piloncillo she always grated into Ms. Owens’ tea.

  “I can do this,” she said.

  Aracely took the piloncillo. “Are you sure?”

  “I always help you,” Miel said.

  “I’ve cured her more times than I can count. I know her heart better than mine. If there’s one you had to miss, this isn’t a bad one.”

  “But it’s important,” Miel said. “You’re always saying keep the repeat customers happy.”

  Aracely eyed the door Ms. Owens was behind. The sound of the sink running came through.

  “Fine,” Aracely said. “But take it slow. You don’t have to get me what I ask for so fast you throw it at me. I can wait. So can Emma. If it takes an hour, so what? I don’t want you handing me a pink egg when I want a green one.”

  “Deal,” Miel said.

  So they spread a sheet over the table in the indigo room, and Ms. Owens came in, clutching a pocket square that must have belonged to whatever man she had last fallen in love with. It looked like it cost more than any dress Miel owned. The candles turned the silk the color of Aracely’s Spanish rice.

  Aracely tried to take the pocket square.

  Ms. Owens held on.

  Aracely ran her fine-boned fingers through a lock of Ms. Owens’ hair. “Let go,” she whispered, her voice warm with the assurance that everything was good and right, that it was the golden hour of afternoon and not night, that there was no fear in the world.

  Ms. Owens shut her eyes, and opened her hands, and Aracely took the pocket square.

  Miel folded her elbows, hands gripping her upper arms. All the heat in her body pulled to her wrist. She could almost feel the weight of Ms. Owens’ heart, how she wore her disappointment like wet clothes.

  “Lie down,” Aracely said.

  Ms. Owens did. The almost-white blond of her curls fanned out from her head. Flakes of mascara clung to her cheeks like ash, and tears trembled at her lash line.

  Aracely tore a scrap from the pocket square. Ms. Owens winced as though she felt it. Aracely burned the cloth in a glass jar and said the prayer of Santa Rita de Cascia. The edges of the satin blackened and curled in on themselves.

  Miel handed Aracely a purple onion, the green stalk still on. Aracely always knew which color egg, which orange, which herb. She swept the onion over Ms. Owens as she said the prayer again, her whisper softeni
ng the air in the room.

  Ms. Owens kept her eyes shut tight enough to wring tears into her hairline.

  Miel stood, waiting for Aracely to tell her what to do. She waited long enough that she thought she saw ribbons of faint light shining along the floor. They snaked and twirled, skimming the baseboards. They wrapped around the legs of the wooden table.

  At first they looked like tiny streams, bands of water no thicker than her wrist. Then they looked solid, their glint a hard edge.

  Like glass. Like vines of glass, not just deep green but dark blue and red and violet. They spun up the indigo walls. They reached out toward Miel, trying to wrap her forearms. She felt them without them touching her, a cord of pain from each elbow to each wrist.

  They pricked her like thorns and leaves growing under her skin, and she felt the ache of a glass vine caging her forearm. They would crack, and the jagged pieces would cut into her wrists. Her blood would tint the glass. It would splinter and cut deeper into her.

  A bump against the window, like a bird hitting the pane, cut through the room. A sharp scream followed it. It streamed into the air, skittering along the walls.

  “Dammit, Miel,” Aracely said, her hands on Ms. Owens’ shoulders. “Did you hear me? Open the window!”

  Ms. Owens sat up, clutching for the pocket square she no longer had. She looked down, startled to find her hands empty.

  Miel hadn’t even heard Aracely ask the first time. But she could see the startled look in Ms. Owens’ face, the way her eyes looked almost white.

  Aracely had taken out her lovesickness.

  And because Miel hadn’t opened the window fast enough, it had struck the glass, and then rushed back into Ms. Owens.

  Miel leapt toward the window, pushing up the sash as wide as it went.

  “It’s okay,” Aracely said to the trembling woman on the table. “It’s okay.”

  But Ms. Owens’ breathing fluttered, and she broke into screaming again.

  But Aracely kept her hands on Ms. Owens.

  “Lie back down,” she said.

  However assuring Aracely’s voice sounded, Miel caught the straight line of her back, like a current had gone through her.

  Ms. Owens lay down again. But she shivered. She clutched at the air.

  Aracely hovered her hands over Ms. Owens, ready to set her palms against her collarbone.

  But Miel could see the lovesickness, even more restless now that it had left and rushed back, kicking around inside Ms. Owens.

  Ms. Owens sat up, and her hair spilled down her back. “No,” she said. The tightening of her face pinched two more mascara-darkened tears from the corners of her eyes. “I can’t.”

  She ran out of the indigo room, the waves of her hair sweeping her shoulders.

  These were not words Aracely drew from those who got up from her table. Each time Aracely gave a cure, the visitors always said they were tired. It’s so strange, I’m so tired. I’ve never been this tired. Aracely’s lovesickness cure often made people sleep for days. They felt fine at first, awake and alive, and then they sank into relief and exhaustion. Once the lovesickness cure had made a man fall asleep to the rust-colored leaves of late November and wake to the first snow silvering his window.

  But Ms. Owens was running out of the violet house, startled and awake.

  The door slammed. Ms. Owens’ steps scattered the gravel outside.

  The torn pocket square had fallen to the floor.

  Miel bent to pick it up.

  Aracely’s steps clicked on the wooden floor, and Miel looked up. Aracely was rushing toward the front door.

  Miel followed her outside, the air cool and green with the smell of grass and light rain.

  But Ms. Owens had already started her car. In the distance, the taillights were growing smaller.

  “Just let her go,” Miel said. “She’ll come back.”

  Aracely turned to her, so close Miel could smell the amber of her perfume. “You told me you were ready. You told me you could do this.”

  “I thought I was,” Miel said. “I just wasn’t paying attention for one second. I’m sorry.”

  “Do you realize what you’ve done?” Aracely looked stricken, possessed, like she’d witnessed sons and daughters scratching out the names on their family’s headstones.

  “I’m sorry,” Miel said.

  “Great,” Aracely said. “You’re sorry. Well, that solves everything, doesn’t it?”

  Miel felt the aftertaste of her own apology turning, growing sharp on her tongue. “Look, if you’re so mad at me, why don’t you call Sam?” she asked. “He’s better at helping you anyway, right?”

  “Sam.” Aracely’s laugh was a sharp inhale, almost a gasp. “You wanna talk about Sam? How do you think he and his mother have kept that secret this whole time?”

  “What are you talking about?” Miel asked.

  Aracely grabbed a handful of Miel’s sweater and tugged her close, more like she didn’t want anyone to hear than to shake Miel.

  “Emma Owens is the only one who’s seen his real paperwork,” Aracely said, her teeth half-clenched. “She’s the reason he’s registered as Samir and not Samira.”

  The grass under Miel felt soft, like it would turn to water and pull them both under.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Did you think we got lucky this whole time?” Aracely asked. “That the school just took his mother’s word about his name and his date of birth? Sam’s mother got away with saying she didn’t have the papers for grade school or middle school, but they wouldn’t let it go for high school. They wouldn’t register him without official documents. So I called in a favor, to the one woman who’s on that table more than anyone else. She owed me. She’s the only one who knows his birth name. And she’s kept quiet because of everything I’ve done for her, but now…” Aracely’s words trailed off, and she looked down the road Ms. Owens had left by.

  Now Aracely had failed. So many flawless cures, as much mercy as medicine, and now she had failed. It hadn’t just been Aracely’s good name resting on her giving a remedio so skilled it felt like a soft, shimmering dream.

  It had been the secret name Sam didn’t want anyone knowing. And it was Miel’s fault.

  Dread billowed through her.

  Aracely went back inside.

  “Can you fix this?” Miel asked, going after her.

  Aracely slid into her coat and lifted her hair out from under the green velvet of the collar. “I don’t know.” She grabbed her car keys. “But you better hope so.”

  marsh of sleep

  Pain sparked through Miel’s wrist, startling her awake. She shuddered at the feeling that there were words she’d just heard, but that she’d been too asleep to hear them, and their echo had become too weak for her to catch now.

  She scrambled from where she was curled on the sofa, waiting for Aracely to come home, and she sat up.

  “Aracely?” she called toward the door.

  She was still breaking through the feeling of being half-asleep. But through the blur she saw the deep red of Ivy’s hair.

  Ivy was standing over Miel, staring at her wrist. Her eyes looked gray as the pumpkin Peyton had held that night by the water tower. Her expression hovered between satisfied and relieved, like she’d just checked a door or a stove and found that yes, it was locked, yes, the blue gas flame had been turned off.

  Without meaning to, Miel followed Ivy’s stare. She looked down at her own wrist. Two new leaves lay bright green against her skin. They were young and soft, not yet showing the hard stem of the coming rose.

  To Ivy and the rest of the Bonner sisters, those two leaves were evidence that a new rose was growing, that Miel hadn’t destroyed another one of the blooms they’d decided was theirs.

  Miel looked up, but the copper sweep of Ivy’s hair and the gray of her eyes was gone.

  She shook off the feeling of sleep, and ran to the back door.

  It was a little open, a few inches left between the door and t
he frame.

  The smell of the grass outside, clean and a little sour, filled the hall and the kitchen. But cutting through it was a scent that did not belong in this house. Not the tart fruit smell of the soap she and Aracely used. Not the heavy amber of the glass bottle that sat on Aracely’s dresser.

  It was a smell like almonds and Easter lilies, the kind of perfume Mrs. Bonner might have bought her daughters, and that the four of them would have passed between them. It held the undertone of Ivy’s camellia-scented soap.

  Miel left the door open, letting in more of the night air so the perfume would fade. She stood there, waiting for it to become so faint she could tell herself that Aracely, rushing out to Emma Owens’ house, had just forgotten to close the door.

  serpent sea

  It took more nerve than Sam had expected. He’d been so sure, looking between Aracely and Miel. But in the morning, that certainty had vanished, the sun and its white-gray light washing it out. Then, at night, it came back, deepening with the sky. By the time he got home from the Bonners’ farm, it was spinning inside him, its weight wearing him down.

  Later that night, after his mother had gone to sleep, he stepped out into the cold air, filled with the dull spice of falling leaves. He followed the trail of moons toward the wisteria-colored house.

  Most nights, he stood outside where Miel could see him, the moon in his hands calling her out into the dark. But tonight he stood in the house’s shadow, hands in his pockets, waiting for Miel’s light to go off.

  Her window went dark, and he knew she was asleep. His fingers brushed the metal in his pocket. His mother and Aracely both kept spare copies of each other’s house keys in their kitchen drawers. He’d taken theirs with him in case Aracely was locking her doors earlier now that it was getting dark faster. But she hadn’t.

  He paused in the doorway. For the first time since he left his house, he felt the force of how strange, how invasive this was. It didn’t matter how well he knew Miel. He was walking, without being asked, into a world ruled by women. Even at the threshold he could smell perfume and the sugary fruit scent of their soap.