What the Moon Saw by Laura Resau

Author:Laura Resau
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780375849275
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2008-11-23T22:00:00+00:00

In silence we sat until the guard’s footsteps sounded in the hall. He opened the door, coughing, and handed a heavy jar of water to us. We drank in gulps, doña Three Teeth and I, passing the pitcher back and forth. Then he set down a clay plate with a few tortillas and a bowl of black beans. The tortillas were stale and the beans cold, but that didn’t matter. We shared the food, nibbling like rabbits, trying to make it last longer. Of course, my cell mate had only three teeth, so she had no choice but to chew slowly.

I left the last tortilla for her, and the last bit of beans. But she refused. “No, love, you take it.”

“No, please, you.”

“No, you!”

So we tore it in half, and in half again, and again, until the tortilla pieces were the size of my little fingernail. And when we tried to part it further, we fell into a fit of laughter. Oh, such a fit that the guard’s face appeared at the door’s window to see about our uproar. Who knows what he thought when he saw us rolling on the floor? Rolling and laughing so hard that tears rolled down our cheeks.

Once he left we caught our breaths and our laughter faded into sighs. Night fell, and we lay on the dirt floor with our braids overlapping. Above us, a fly buzzed through the air. This close to doña Three Teeth, I caught a whiff of her real smell. It pierced through the stench of old sweat and mouse droppings. Her smell made me think of a fresh lime. A lime just sliced open, tart and sweet in a fine spray.

I told her about Ta’nu and Loro and Aunt and María, the beings I loved in this world. When I imitated Loro shrieking “¡Ánimo!” she giggled like a young girl. After a moment, I said, “Tell me more about your village. About when you were a child. When everything was good.”

She talked and talked. As her words poured out, she seemed lighter. Her voice turned warm and soothing as lemongrass tea.

I closed my eyes and let her paint pictures of the green fields around her village. Of the mossy springs where they collected water. Of the secrets in the mountain forests. I listened to the shhhhhhh shhhhhhh sound her voice made when she talked of the spirit waterfall. A waterfall that you could hear but not see. The sound of moving water had sung her to sleep as a child. And it sang me to sleep there in our cell. It made me forget about the floor beneath me, cold and hard. It made me forget about the rats scuttling in the corner and the cockroaches crawling over my ankles.

In peace, I slept.

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