Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything

by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

  He’d just parked the car on the side of a gas station—we were about to pick up a bag of caramel chocolate popcorn to hide in my purse for the movies. And he looked at me with his steel gray eyes with their thick, pale lashes and told me how pretty I looked. We kissed. And then, out of nowhere, he put my hand on his dick.

  It made me gasp, but he mistook it for a good reaction. “Big, right?” he said, grinning. Then he grabbed my neck and pulled my face into his lap.

  I yelled and opened the car door, but he grabbed my arm so hard, pain shot into my neck. I screamed and screamed into the open sliver of car, and some cowboy filling up his tractor came running over. Justin let me go.

  My dad wanted to press charges. I begged him not to. The last thing I wanted was Sheriff McGhee to know. He’d assume it was my fault and then his darling son would let the whole school know what an out-of-control skank whore I was. Dad tried to guilt trip me, saying some other girl could get hurt. He dropped it when I pointed out Justin would never face any punishment, not in one hundred thousand years. Nothing would happen to him, just like nothing happened to Sheriff McGhee, just like nothing happened to Jeremy.

  For two weeks, I had to cover a hand-shaped bruise on my arm while at school. I felt Dad’s eyes on it constantly when I took my cardigan off at home. When it turned to faded lime, he decided I needed to learn self-defense. And ever since, he’s been teaching me and Rose how to kick ass.

  32

  SOMETIMES, WHEN I’M IN THE desert, I pray for any girl who happens to get near Justin. That her hair will stand up, that some part of her wild animal body will know he’s a predator. And that she will run fast and far away, away from all the boys who think they deserve to be sucked off just because they have dicks.

  33

  “COME ON, ARTEMISIA. I KNOW you’re stronger than that.”

  I groan and kick a rock. “I can’t do it, Dad.”

  “So, you’re just going to quit, that it? If you ever get attacked from behind, you’re just going to—”

  I scream and lunge at him. First, I aim for his shoulder, but he blocks it. I aim for the other side, but as he’s on the defense. I turn and kick his leg in from the back. He stumbles forward and I jump and kick off his hips like he’s a trampoline. He flies back as I hit the dirt.

  He stands and dusts himself off. “Your reflexes are improving, m’ija.”

  “I know.” I lick the salt of sweat off my lip. Rose jogs up to me and grabs my hand.

  “That was amazing, Sia. You looked just like Rogue and Storm and—”

  “Supergirl?” Dad supplies. Rose and I both wrinkle our noses.

  “Catwoman, maybe,” I say.

  “Well, Catwoman, then, needs to master the back attack. Rose’s been able to do it for two months now.”

  “Well, I’m a lot taller,” Rose supplies.

  I sigh. “Please, Dad. I obviously can’t do it.”

  He narrows his eyes as he tosses us water bottles. “Work on leg tosses for the next two weeks. And do some running. Two Saturdays from now, you’re gonna throw me.”

  I let out a gasp after gulping down too much water. “Whatever,” I choke out.

  He ignores me and shakes our hands like he always does at the end of each session. “Thank you, Mr. Martinez,” Rose says as Dad heads inside for a shower.

  We collapse on the patio chairs and Rose checks her phone. “Crap,” she says. “We’ve been at it for almost three hours.”

  “Ugh,” I say. “No wonder I’m starved.”

  “Smoothies?” she asks.

  “I’m kinda feeling cheeseburgers, actually.”

  “Oh, heck yes.” And then Rose pauses. “I can’t be too long, though. I have to shower and go bowling with Samara this afternoon.”

  “Really?” I say. “I didn’t know you were into bowling.” Which is a lie, because I know Rose used to bowl with her brother before he moved to Haiti. I guess what I’m really saying, on the inside, is I didn’t know you were into doing things without me. That’s a little too pathetic, though, but it’s almost like Rose hears it anyway.

  “You could come. We’d love to have you.”

  “Who’s all going?”

  “Me. And Sam.”

  I think of them next to each other at the party, smiling so big, fireworks may as well have been going off all around them. “Wait, is it, like, a date?”

  Rose laughs. “Of course not. Remember?” She points to herself. “President of the Dateless Losers Club?”

  I shake my head and smile. I must be really stressed out or something. Everything is getting to me lately, even Rose. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrogate you. I thought I sensed something between you guys. But no, I think I’m going to stay in and read.”

  “What about later tonight?” Rose asks. “We can take some of my mom’s cooking to the desert. Have a picnic with the candles.”

  “Can’t. Noah and I are going out. To work on our project,” I add quickly, before Rose can explain the suspicious look on her face.

  “Oh, well. It’s spring break. We’ve got all next week, right?” We both sit in a weird silence for a couple of seconds before Rose stands up really fast and touches my arm. “Come on, Sia. I’m starving! And those cheeseburgers aren’t going to eat themselves!”

  34

  I WASN’T THERE WHEN THEY took her. I wasn’t there, so I can imagine the worst. See, there, her brown hands, clenched and spinning; her screams, high and shattered. There are skid marks on the sidewalk where she dug in her boots and said, No, no, no, what about my family, what about my daughter? ¿Qué va pasar con mi esposo, y mi bebé, qué va ser de mi vida?

  All I knew is she didn’t come to pick me up from school. I was thirteen, standing outside of school by myself like some kind of loser, and I was pissed that she didn’t answer any of my calls. I’m so mad at myself for being angry, but I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know.

  An hour after it happened, as I sat at the school pickup line, counting weeds, Dad pulled up in the Jeep that would be mine in two and a half years. His eyes were red.

  “Sia,” he said. “Something happened.”

  I thought that was the worst day of my life.

  I was so fucking wrong.

  35

  DAD HAD INSISTED ON MEETING Noah before “hooliganing it up” (Dad’s words, ugh), so Noah arrives at about a quarter till eight. I’m loading the dishwasher, and before I can even start to peel my rubber gloves off, Dad reaches the front door.

  “Mr. Martinez? I’m Noah DuPont.”

  I’m sure Dad’s shaking his hand forcefully as he says, “I know who you are, son. So you plan on taking my daughter out to the desert. Alone. Just the two of you.”

  I slam the dishwasher shut and yell, “Dad! Stop it!”

  “Are you sure this is for school?” Dad asks me as I approach. Noah’s ears are bright red, and it almost makes me giggle. Instead, I glare at my father.

  “Dad,” I say slowly. “Lo estás asustando.”

  “Good,” Dad says victoriously.

  “Did you just tell him you’re gonna kill me out there?” Noah asks, his eyes wide.

  “Of course not. Come on.” I grab his hand and pull him around my looming father. “I’m going to make tea to bring.” I’ve got the kettle going already. “Do you want any?”

  “Uh, sure.” Noah’s taken a seat on a dining chair, but he’s eyeing my dad, who cracks his knuckles in the foyer.

  “What kind?”

  He gives me a noncommittal shrug as he looks around warily. I decide on a calming blend. Lemon balm and tulsi, dried from my winter herb garden.

  “Sugar? Honey?”

  “Honey, sugar.” He winks, then gives me a wide smile. I grimace at him, turn, and see my dad watching us like a creeper.

  “Dad, don’t you have anything to do?”

  “I’m seeing you off, m’ija.”

  “Ugh.” I drizzle some honey and pop the lids on the thermoses. “Let’s get out of here.”
<
br />   To Noah’s horror, my father walks us to the door. “Be home by nine,” Dad says.

  “What? It’s eight fifteen now!”

  “Nine thirty.”

  “Ten.”

  “Quarter till.”

  We shake on it and I usher Noah out the door.

  36

  I’M SKETCHING THE MOON INTO my notebook as Noah determines its size. We work quietly. I can only hear pencils scratching paper and the occasional drumming of his fingers against the passenger door.

  “Okay, I think I’ve got it,” he says.

  “Let me see.” I take his notebook and survey his work.

  “No, look,” I say. “The depth of it is incorrect. You see? You’ve inversed the shadow and the light parts.” I cross out a few of his calculations and write some of my own. “There. Now it’s right.”

  “Let me see that.” He narrows his eyes playfully, then looks down at the notebook. “Okay, yeah. Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Do you need me to explain it?” I ask.

  “No, no,” he says, still looking at the page. “I see it.”

  We’re done with our work. I’m about to turn the car on when I stop and turn to him. “Hey,” I say. “This might sound kind of random, but do you know the sheriff in town? Timothy McGhee?”

  Noah furrows his brow. “No, can’t say I do.” He gives a half smile. “Why, are you in trouble with the law or something?”

  I smile a little. “No, I’m just being weird. And random.” The relief is all thick in my voice. The relief that I’m not currently spending time with one of the jerk sheriff’s cohorts.

  I turn to the ignition again when he asks, “So. Why do you light candles out here?”

  I freeze, my keys in the air. “It’s personal. It’s a family thing.”

  “Cool. Like a ceremony or something? That’s cool.”

  I don’t say anything for a few seconds, but he doesn’t add anything else. I finally put my keys in the ignition and pause. “Okay. This has been bugging me for a while. How do you know about the cacti that look like people here, in this spot? Who told you about it?” I ask.

  Now he’s the one who looks unsettled. “Well, it’s kind of a long story.”

  “We have twenty minutes until we have to head back.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Well, I used to live here, in Caraway, when I was little. And my mom took me here all the time.” He points. “She said that cactus was Adam, and that one was Eve. And it stuck with me, you know? When we moved back, I made her show me where they were.” He looks out the window. “I guess I come here to feel close to her.”

  “Is your mom Mexican or something?”

  “No. She’s French and Italian and Greek and, uh, something else, I think. Why?”

  “No, it’s just that’s sort of why I come out here, too. My grandma told me that those two cacti created the world.”

  “Ah, so that’s what you meant by that. And wow, yeah. That’s a weird coincidence.”

  I furrow my brow. “I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  “So, like, what do you believe in? Fate? Or whatever?”

  I don’t answer him. Instead, I touch the rim of St. Anthony’s candle in my cup holder. “Why’d you move here with your dad?”

  He swallows, looks down. “My mom got another DUI a couple months ago, and well, they don’t see her fit to raise me anymore. She’s fighting it in court and all that. But I’m stuck with my dad in the meantime.”

  I want to ask him why he hates his dad so much, but I figure I’ve pried enough. My hands reach for my keys again, but I stop. “My mom’s dead.” He doesn’t look surprised. I guess he’s probably heard by now. “She was deported. Got lost in the desert trying to get back. I light candles to guide her home.”

  To his credit, he says nothing. Then he reaches over and wraps his hand around mine. It’s warm and calloused.

  “So where’d the universe come from, Sia?”

  I look at the night sky, indigo on one side with a cornflower glow on the other. A few bright stars dot it with their yellow glimmer. Right there, between the moon and that wispy cloud the shape of a Pegasus, that’s where Rose and I saw those freaky blue lights a couple days ago. It feels like a dream now. Like Rose and I just imagined it.

  And then I remember Noah’s question.

  “It came from a woman who wanted to be touched.” I say it without thinking, but as soon as the words come out, it’s like electricity has been charged in our bodies. His hand sears mine. He stares at me and his eyes look like the night ocean or black diamonds or something equally embarrassing.

  I pull my hand away, and like a machine being unplugged, the hum of whatever is between us dulls and stops. “We’ve got to get going.” I turn on the car, hard, and drive us back.

  When I get in the house, I text Rose. I asked. Noah’s never heard of the sheriff.

  She writes back right away. Lucky him.

  37

  I’M SUPPOSED TO BE READING Rose’s Buffy/Faith story, but when I stare at my computer screen, the words are just meaningless. They are animals darting on each landscape line and I can’t catch them. Not a single one.

  I hate days like these. The kind where all I can think about is Mami.

  If only she had just stayed in Mexico. Even next to homeless. Even not knowing anybody. Even weeping her guts out every moment we weren’t together. If only she’d stayed. Brokenhearted and hungry and so lonely, her chest aching like a part of her flesh was still pinned to me and Dad and Abuela here in Arizona, aching as though she were dying, dying, but not actually dying, not completely.

  That’s better than dead, right?

  38

  BEFORE SHE DIED, ABUELA TOLD me that before we had trees and clouds and tomatoes, before even this earthly world, there was una familia. The mother had many children, but they were wicked and wanted dominion over all the worlds. They gathered each world and stuffed them in their pockets like they were pieces of carved jadeite.

  You can’t just do that with a world. It’s like snapping off a yam-orange marigold and expecting to be able to lord over all the flowers now. Things don’t work that way.

  The mother’s youngest son knew each world was most perfect, most needed, where it had grown its roots. While his siblings slept, the youngest took the worlds from their pockets and placed them gently back in the dirt. Back where they came from.

  When the siblings discovered what had happened, they whipped out their weapons. A bow, a dagger, an arrow, a sword.

  The mother screamed so loudly, she became the moon. The boy became the sun. And all the wicked older siblings turned into the wild things that live in the forests and deserts and sea.

  This is why wild animals so often sniff the dirt. They’re still searching for worlds to steal.

  I know that the bad guys in the story, the siblings, became animals as a punishment. But ever since Abuela told me this tale, I’ve been jealous of them. Like, there are so many days when I want each part of my body to become something else. Not like the moon or sun, not bigger and more important.

  I want my arm to become a wren with a line of brown on the corner of its eye. My feet, a smooth, gold puma, my hair, a coarse-furred wolf. My hands, two stretching hares, my hips, round river rocks. My nose, a bee, drenched in pollen. My cells, bits of plankton that swim as though they are all one smooth body.

  Just whenever I need a break from being me all the time.

  And if I come across a world like carved jadeite, I’d peek to see if Mom existed within it. And maybe I’d just step inside, the way we tiptoe toward el santuario at church.

  39

  HEY, I TEXT ROSE. WHERE are you?

  I’ve been waiting for her for ten minutes at the library. The little, falling-apart Caraway Public Library. Literally, like, a dust storm once toppled and broke one of the outdoor iron tables and someone just put caution tape around it. Left it like that for years now.

  This is where Rose and I meet for tutoring every couple o
f weeks, before a test or quiz or whatever. We’ve tried doing it at one of our houses, but we kept getting distracted by shiny things like the TV and the Internet and a kitchen full of Little Debbie Zebra Cakes and plantain chips. So after I almost failed two tests in a row, Rose had the idea to do it here instead.

  What do you mean? she writes back. And then, a second later: Crap, Sia! I’m so so so so sorry. I completely forgot. Completely. But Sam and I are in Starbucks rn. Can we meet up at your place after?

  I let out a wheezing breath that makes the old man next to me give a sharp look. I don’t know if I’ve annoyed him or if he thinks I’m dying. It doesn’t matter, though. All I can focus on is the feeling like Rose has reached inside my stomach and pulled out all the vital organs. Because she forgot. She just forgot.

  Or maybe she just likes Samara more than me now.

  I swallow and respond. Not tonight. Dad wants to talk about… I think for a second. What sounds important? … colleges and stuff. I’ll let you know when’s a good time to reschedule. To reschedule me. The best friend since sixth grade.

  It’s a full five minutes before she writes back. Okay. That’s it. That’s all I get.

  I want to cry, but I don’t. I’m an expert at keeping the tears inside now. Instead, I open up the textbook and pretend like I know exactly what I’m looking at until I can’t stand it anymore.

  40

  “HOW’S THE MAÍZ DOING, M’IJA?”

  Dad and I are drinking hot cocoa on the back porch. As though it knows we’re talking about it, the corn patch shivers with wind.

  “Good,” I say. “I keep finding these weird red bugs on it, but I think they’re just munching on the leaves for a quick snack. I’ll make some garlic spray if they get outta control.”

  He leans back and smiles. “Your mamá loved growing maíz, didn’t she?”