The Lightning Queen

by Laura Resau

  “Bummer,” I say under my breath in English. “Major bummer.”

  “What?” he asks hoarsely.

  “Nada, Grandpa.” Nothing.

  We’re just passing the lady with the baby doll when Grandpa blows his nose, then says, “You know, Mateo, all my life I believed you’d be friends with that girl, Ruby.”

  I stop, turn to face him. Lite rock music trickles faintly from ceiling speakers. A nurse wheels an empty chair past us. The lady with the baby doll coos.

  I find words. “Uh, what are you talking about, Grandpa?”

  Leaning against the wall, he rubs his face. “You know that time I died?”

  I nod, as if that’s a perfectly normal question.

  “Remember what my grandfather’s spirit told me?” he says slowly. “The thing that made me want to live again.”

  I scan through that part of his story, and then, with a jolt, I remember. The thing about the grandkids! “He said Esma’s and your grandkids would be friends. For life.”

  I nearly slap my forehead. How did I not realize this sooner? Like back when I was on the phone with Ruby? Or when we met in the hallway? I was so caught up in reuniting Esma and Grandpa, I forgot about the grandkid thing.

  It hits me hard in the gut, like I’ve just belly-flopped off a high-dive … how much sense it makes. Ruby’s the only other kid in the world who understands our grandparents’ impossible fortune, who wants to bring that magic into our world, here and now. Of course I’m destined to be friends with her. It’s what I’ve wanted all my life.

  Suddenly, everything shines in a new light—the pale flowered wallpaper, the nubby purple carpet, the baby doll’s plastic head. Everything is possibility.

  The coin necklace is practically dancing in my pocket, alive with crazy electricity. I pull it out and let it wind around my fingers. And now I’m buzzing with lightning and the feeling that nothing is impossible.

  “Grandpa,” I begin, figuring things out as I go. “What if Esma does want to be saved? I mean, you could’ve tried harder back there, right? Listen, I can help you. Together—”

  He pats my shoulder. “Oh, Mateo, many things happened over the past fifty years. Things—”

  A sudden flutter of feathers interrupts him. Something brown and tiny flits in the air between us.

  It’s Raindrop. She’s flown out of Grandpa’s pocket. With her injured wing, she hangs crookedly above our heads for a moment, gives us a look of impatience. Then she makes a lopsided flight back down the hallway.

  No nurses notice, but the lady in the wheelchair props up her doll to give it a better view.

  Grandpa and I follow the bird down the blue carpet as she darts into Esma’s room. On the way in, I whisper, “Try harder this time, Grandpa.”

  A fresh look of determination sweeps over his face.

  Inside, the bird rests on the windowsill beside Esma.

  Stunned, Esma looks at the sparrow and then at Grandpa Teo, hovering in the doorway beside me.

  And for the first time on our visit, Esma smiles.

  “Esma, meet Raindrop,” Grandpa says, laughing. “Looks like she doesn’t want to leave you. Want to keep her?”

  I translate for Ruby, adding in Spanish and English, “I doubt this place allows birds.” Great, I sound like Mom.

  Grandpa pulls Flame from his pocket. “Then how about a turtle?”

  Esma smiles bigger. A hoarse whisper, like the echo of a laugh, creaks out. On her notepad, she writes, Let’s get some fresh air.

  Yes, I think. Let’s get out of here. I translate for Ruby, who nods with relief, tucks the notepad beneath her arm, and maneuvers Esma down the hall.

  Outside, I gulp the early evening air. It’s still sunny and humid, and the roses give off a sweet, hopeful scent. We head down the paved path, into the woods behind the building. Ahead, Grandpa insists on pushing Esma in the wheelchair, talking to her softly in Spanish as they go.

  I can’t help sneaking glances at the girl destined to be my lifelong friend. That silky scarf in her hair is really cool. And she kind of bounces on her toes as she walks, like the world is her inflatable castle.

  She catches me staring, and for a second, our eyes meet. I panic, because it’s not every day that a pretty girl looks at me this way, so open and curious. A pretty girl I’m destined to be friends with.

  Unsure what to do, on an impulse, I hand her the necklace from my pocket.

  “Cool,” she says, holding it up, staring at its silhouette against the blue sky, listening to the music of the breeze through it. Maybe it’s the necklace, but something releases a river of words pent up inside her.

  “Okay, Mateo, that’s your name, right? Well, I have so many ideas, and none of my friends get them, but maybe you will, ’cause, well, you know … but listen, wouldn’t it be cool to make a Romani caravan and paint it amazing colors and hook it up to a truck and drive it all the way down to the Hill of Dust? Like you and me and my grandmom and your granddad? And oh, another thing is I’m starting this Gypsy rock band and I can sing and play violin, but I need someone else, and do you play an instrument? Wouldn’t that be awesome? And also, I really want to taste homemade tortillas and maybe learn how to make them, the ones ground on stone and cooked over a fire, because my grandmom always talks about them and we’ve been to, like, a hundred Mexican restaurants looking for them and we even went to Cancun but they’re never as good as the ones on the Hill of Dust, ’cause it’s, like, the Hill of Dust is pure magic, you know?”

  Ruby bites her lip, suddenly embarrassed. “Oh, gosh, Mateo, I never talk this much, it’s just that I’ve been saving up all my ideas for someone who actually cares and now you’re here and I can’t stop blabbing!”

  She slaps her hand over her mouth. Above, her black-rimmed eyes are smiling.

  I clear my throat and say quietly, “I took a woodworking class. Made a stool.” I shrug. “How much harder can a wagon be?”

  A happy squeal pops from behind her hand.

  I keep going. “I’ve played drums since second grade. And I’m learning guitar.”

  Another squeal.

  “And it’s true,” I say, “there’s nothing like the tortillas on the Hill of Dust. They’ll taste extra good after a superlong caravan ride there.”

  Her eyes widen to twice their normal size. If eyes could scream with laughter, that’s what hers are doing now.

  I feel my own eyes grow big with excitement. “My aunt Perla could teach you to make tortillas in her little kitchen hut. The best part’s how your hair smells like wood smoke the whole time.”

  Ruby removes her hand from her mouth, revealing the world’s biggest grin. Her teeth are straight and white, and her lips very pink. “That’s it! That’s what I want! Exactly! Tell me more about the Hill of Dust, every tiny detail.”

  As we walk down the path through the woods, I tell her.

  And she listens.

  And she gets it.

  Afterward, she gives me a sideways glance. “Anyone ever tell you your eyelashes are amazing?”

  Heat spreads from my cheeks to my toes. Then I whisper, “Anyone ever tell you that for fifty years we’ve been destined to be friends for life?”

  Once we’re deep in the forest, with only bits of golden sunshine sprinkled through the leaves, Esma raises her hand to say stop. We’re on a bridge over a small stream. I wipe sweat from my neck and watch the water trickle by, spots of light swimming over the surface.

  Shakily, Esma stands up.

  Grandpa takes one elbow, and Ruby takes another. “Sure you can stand, Grandmom?”

  Esma straightens up, tilts back her head, and opens her mouth. A raspy sound emerges.

  Some kind of seizure? Or a stroke? I’m about to ask Ruby whether we should call 911 when Grandpa Teo throws back his own head, opens his mouth, and screams. It makes my heart jump, this thundering sound, incredibly loud for an old man.

  Still screaming, he wraps his arm around Esma’s shoulder.

  Looking
strangely satisfied, Ruby sits down on a nearby log.

  I sit beside her, my heart beating like crazy. “What’s going on?”

  “Screaming at the stream!” she declares.

  “Oh, right.” The corner of my mouth turns up in a bewildered smile. “My grandpa told me about this.”

  The screaming freaks me out at first, but soon I relax. They seem so happy with their screams—Grandpa’s loud, Esma’s nearly silent. For a while I watch them, and then my eyes move to the reflections off the river, flashing like tiny bolts of lightning.

  It’s a strange thing, how their screams eventually fade into laughter, his loud, hers breathy.

  Ruby turns to me. “Know what my grandmom always said? That Teo helped her discover her true power. That she owes, like, every success in life to him.”

  I think about this. “She helped my grandpa discover his power, too. I mean, he probably wouldn’t have become the famous Doctor Teo without her.”

  Ruby’s voice drops to a whisper. “Know something crazy? My grandmom was married and divorced four times.”

  I don’t want to admit I already know it from Wiki, so I just say, “Wow.”

  “She was looking for Teo in every man. She could never find him. Not till now.”

  In front of us, Esma and Grandpa stand close. She leans into him, and he lets his arm settle on her hip. I can’t help listening to their conversation.

  “So, my friend for life,” Grandpa asks, “how has life as a lion’s head been?”

  Pressing her lips in a girlish smile, she writes something on her paper, hands it to him, chuckling in her wheezy way.

  He reads it and nods. “When you’re old, you don’t need to be the head of anything, do you? You can just grow like a tree, something with feet in the earth and hands in the sky and water flowing through it.” Grandpa Teo pulls her closer, gives her head a light tap with his fingertip.

  I can barely hear him whisper, “Oh, squash head. Let’s be trees together.”

  Ruby elbows me, whispers, “Translate!”

  I obey, and she gets a melty look in her eyes. “They do look like trees, leaning against each other, don’t they?”

  I nod. “It’s like, even though they lived so far from each other, they were holding each other up this whole time. Like their roots were all tangled together.”

  “Yes!” Ruby says, giving me another sideways look that sends shivers through me, the good kind. Her arm brushes mine. It feels like there’s something alive, buzzing and sparking in that tiny, warm space between our skin. “Guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other this summer,” she says. Her eyes flash, silver and playful.

  “Guess so,” I say, feeling something big welling up inside me. “Building a caravan’s a lot of work.”

  Suddenly, Ruby’s hand flies up to my shoulder. “Look!” she whispers, her voice full of wonder.

  I follow her gaze and see Esma raising her arms like branches of a tree, slowly turning in a circle.

  Grandpa reaches up to take her hand and twirls her, ever so slowly, in a strange, slow dance.

  Together, they spin like ancient planets.

  Then Esma’s song emerges, rising over the trees and into our cores. It’s a single, warbling note, without words, raspy and soft.

  Still, it’s a song.

  And as the two spin together, sunshine dances on the water, and I could swear I see two silver ribbons of light, one from her chest, the other from his, weaving together and swirling into the sky.

  INSPIRATION

  I felt fortunate to form meaningful friendships with Mixteco people when I took a teaching position in the remote mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. For two years, I was welcomed into Mixteco communities, first as a teacher and later as an anthropologist studying their culture. During this time, I heard stories about the beloved gitanos, whose caravans had shown movies in this region years earlier. I knew that gitanos (also known as Rom or Gypsies) have been misunderstood throughout the world, so I was intrigued by how fondly local people spoke of them. Like the Rom, the Mixteco have also faced prejudice and racist treatment for centuries. I felt drawn to explore the fascinating relationship between these two cultures.

  As I developed this story, I wove in realistic and mystical elements of oral histories I heard in Mixteco villages. The initial spark for this book came from the experiences of a ninety-six-year-old healer named María López Martinez (lovingly nicknamed María Chiquita—María the Little One). When she was a young girl, a gitana fortune-teller told her she would live a very long life. Shortly after her fortune, she grew ill and appeared to die. Inside their hut, her family held a candlelit vigil over her apparently dead body. At one point during the mourning, a drop of candle wax fell onto María Chiquita’s body. Somehow, it woke her from death!

  She told me that her time in the other realm gave her powers to become a healer. She lived to age ninety-seven, and near the end of her life, she proudly pointed out that the gitana’s prediction had come true. I returned to María Chiquita’s village for her cabo de año—the candlelit one-year anniversary of her death. I’m grateful to continue a friendship with her daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter.

  THE MIXTECO PEOPLE

  In my novels, it’s important to me to include not only the mystical parts of a culture, but also the tough realities that have shaped its experiences. Before living in Oaxaca, I had focused on indigenous—or native—rights issues for my anthropology studies. Once I moved there, I got a firsthand look at the injustices these cultures have faced for centuries.

  As of the 2010 census, indigenous people made up 13 percent of Mexico’s population. They speak a total of sixty-two different native languages. Oaxaca, the state where I lived and where this story is set, has the second-highest indigenous population (at 58 percent). (Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas, México, cdi.gob.mx.)

  There are over a dozen indigenous groups within Oaxaca, the Mixteco culture being most common where I lived. In rural communities, some people still speak Mixteco, close to the language spoken in pre-Hispanic times. Many of my friends have kept alive not only their ancestors’ language, but also their traditions, adapting them to modern life. I studied these practices in my fieldwork on Mixtecos’ ideas about illness and healing, some of which appear in this book.

  In the 1500s, after the Spaniards arrived in what is now Mexico, over 90 percent of the indigenous population died from violence, forced labor, and disease. The colonial government imposed a caste—or rigid class—system. They placed the indigenous people at the bottom and those with Spanish ancestry at the top. Over the years, these groups mixed, and the ethnic category mestizo—or mixed race—was born. Mestizos, too, had more privilege and prestige than indigenous people.

  During the early to mid-twentieth century, with the Mexican Revolution, the general population began to view indigenous people as the true foundation of Mexican society. Artists like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera honored native cultures. In the later part of the century, indigenous rights movements led the government to take more measures to respect indigenous languages and cultures. One such governmental effort was the creation of bilingual education (Spanish and the local indigenous language) in the 1970s.

  Unfortunately, despite some progress, indigenous people are still marginalized—unjustly pushed to the edges of society. In most communities, indigenous Mexicans live with higher poverty rates, much lower literacy rates, and much higher infant death rates than the general population. They have less access to quality education and health care, and often experience discrimination and racism.

  During the mid-1900s—the setting of Teo’s story—indigenous students could be physically punished for speaking their native language at school. Some of my middle-aged friends in Oaxaca described to me how the teacher smacked their hands with rulers when they were children. This made them feel ashamed of their native tongue, discouraging them from later speaking Mixteco as adults. Even in the late 1990s, when I lived
in Mexico, I noticed that the word indio—Indian—was used as an insult, often together with words like dirty, poor, or ignorant. I’ve noticed hypocrisy in how indigenous people are treated. Pre-Hispanic cultures are highly valued, yet their modern-day descendants are marginalized.

  My Mixteco friends are intelligent, hardworking, warm, fun, welcoming people who often speak several languages and hold a wealth of fascinating knowledge. Some of the stories they’ve told me feel enchanting—like María Chiquita’s. Others upset me—like stories of being punished for speaking their native language. In writing this book, I’ve tried to balance the magical parts with the gritty reality. Ultimately, I want to honor the way that many indigenous people—including children—have resisted oppression and created positive change for themselves and future generations.

  THE ROMANI PEOPLE

  For centuries, the origin of the Rom was a mystery. Now, based on linguistic and genetic evidence, we know that about a thousand years ago, the Rom first left India and spread across Europe.

  There is no accurate data for the number of Romani people in the world, in part because the Rom often choose not to register their ethnicity in official censuses. In Europe alone, Romani population estimates range from between four million and fourteen million. Several million more Rom live in the Americas.

  Traditionally, the Rom traveled by caravan in groups that specialized in certain skills, from musical entertainment to metalworking. Today, some are still nomadic, and some have settled. It’s remarkable that although Rom on different continents have adopted certain practices of their host countries, they have kept a core cultural identity and language for so long.

  Unfortunately, over the past millennia, most Rom across the world have also suffered from misunderstanding and discrimination. Europeans thought they came from Egypt and began calling them Gypsies, spreading rumors that they were thieves and child stealers. During the Middle Ages, they were enslaved, and over the past several centuries, persecuted. Many people don’t know that the Rom were among the millions of people massacred in Nazi concentration camps.