His face turns red and he chews on his lower lip hard enough to make it swell.
Mona pretends she doesn’t notice. “Thirteen-year-old girls want boys to like them, but they’re not sure what that involves.”
I wonder how she knows this because—except for Joseph—Mona never wanted boys to like her.
“Thirteen-year-old girls make promises they don’t want to keep,” Mona says. “And men always believe them because they’re men—bless their little testosterone-soaked hearts.”
Joseph looks even more embarrassed when she says this, but he also looks like he knows it’s absolutely true.
“Mary needs a mother.” It’s pretty clear that Mona wants the job, as if being the Oracle of Wilburton isn’t enough. “Someone who knows exactly how to put her on the right track.” Mona looks at Joseph when she says this, because he is the wrong track Mary is currently on. “Someone who can show her how to mend a broken heart.”
I remind her, “Mary doesn’t have a broken heart.”
“She will, when the Dreaming Moon is full.”
Now that calendars are gone all the moons have names, like the Green Apple Moon, and the Hunters Moon, and the Dreaming Moon that waxes half way through the old time month of October. The moon of first frosts, and nightmares, and coyotes singing songs to spirits.
“It’ll be easy,” Mona says. “Mary’s so impressionable.”
“Impressionable.” Joseph is all dreamy-eyed, like the word has something to do with touching thirteen-year-old cream-colored skin in places no man has ever touched before. He reaches out with one hand and caresses my neck. He kisses me and wipes his lips with his fingers.
Comparing me with Mary, I realize, even if he doesn’t. Figuring out who is softer, who is sweeter, which one thinks he is the most important man in the whole world.
“Joseph.” I whisper his name to bring him back from dreamland. I put my lips over his and explore his mouth with the tip of my tongue. I look into his eyes and make my breath tremble, faking an orgasm perfectly.
This won’t go anywhere, because Mona is in the room, but Joseph knows without a doubt, “Karma loves him best of all.”
Mary isn’t the only one with an impressionable mind.
• • •
Mary doesn’t know she’s the center of attention. She takes turns looking at Joseph and Mona and me as we sit on our rocks inside the Oracle Cave and wait for something special to happen. Everything is special to a girl like Mary, even ceremonies Mona made up to trick her.
The cave is lit by candles arranged in a circle around the four of us so we’re a target for the spirits. According to Mona this is the night the Dreaming Moon turns full. We can’t see it from inside the cave, but there are holes in the rocks that let in moonlight and starlight.
The rock walls press against each other like gravity is stronger when the sun goes down. Everything looks solid and dark outside the reach of the candlelight, pushing us toward the center of the magic circle.
Mary doesn’t remember a time when there was no Oracle of Wilburton. She doesn’t remember Facebook or McDonald’s, or the latest and greatest Apple smartphone with a thousand useful applications. No Wikipedia or Google. No MTV or Netflix, or rap songs about hos. The history of the world is thirteen years of gossip to Mary, just words written in books she never read.
The truth is whatever Mona tells her—isn’t it? And miracles happen all the time—don’t they?
Joseph sits close to me but he can’t keep from checking Mary out with not-so-discrete glances every few seconds. She looks so pretty in the candlelight, so ready to make an impulsive decision that will change everyone’s life forever.
“Listen.” Mona looks taller than the rest of us from her seat on the Oracle Rock, like she is the only adult in the room. It’s easy for Mary to do what Mona says, easy for Joseph too, because he’s been doing what she says since he learned to talk.
Not so easy for me, because Mona isn’t my mother, and the rock I’m sitting on is digging into my bottom and sending a burning sensation all the way to my ankle. But I hear coyotes singing their song in the surrounding hills, calling to each other, and to the spirits who walk the earth under the influence of the Dreaming Moon.
“It’s starting,” Mona tells us, and we are all a little bit afraid. Even me, and I know there’s nothing magic about Mona.
She seems to know exactly where trickery stops and mysticism starts. Mona rises from her seat, and extinguishes the candles one at a time, plunging us into darkness incrementally, making the stars and moonlight shining through cracks in the rock seem brighter and more important.
“It’s time.” She blows the last candle out as every coyote in the hills sings the same note.
The Dreaming Moon drifts on the coyote song over a space between rocks and captures Joseph and me in a silver rectangle of light. Mona and Mary are invisible. The rock walls are invisible. There’s only Joseph and me, and the Dreaming Moon accompanied by coyote songs.
The rectangle moves off of us, across the floor of the cave and up the wall illuminating hearts and initials and plus signs until it stretches around my name and Joseph’s and part of the inscription directly below it.
Joseph loves Karma
Now and forever
Then the moonlight rectangle vanishes, leaving only the darkness and the coyote songs until Mona lights a candle.
Joseph and I are locked in an embrace, and Mary is covering Mona’s shoulder with tears. Joseph belongs to me, the Dreaming Moon has chosen.
Mona whispers mother-words in Mary’s ear. She kisses the tear streaks on her face, and promises better times to come.
I feel an almost imperceptible movement inside me. Then another. I guide Joseph’s hand so he can feel it too. He smiles at me the way men have smiled at their wives since this happened for the very first time.
“It’ll all work out,” I say, loud enough for Mary to hear. “A mother knows these things.”
About The Author
Everything John T. Biggs writes is so full of Oklahoma that once you read it, you'll never get the red dirt stains washed out of your mind. The tribes play a significant role. No authentic discussion of the state is possible without them. Traditional Native American legends are reworked and set in the modern era, the way oral historians always intended.
One of John’s stories, "Boy Witch" took grand prize in the 80th annual Writer's Digest Competition in 2011. Another won third prize in the 2011 Lorian Hemingway short story contest. Sixty of his short stories have been published in one form or another, along with his first two novels, Owl Dreams and Popsicle Styx.
Facebook: John T. Biggs
Twitter: @biggspirit
www.johnbiggsoklahomawriter.com
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