Entangled Moon

by E. C. Frey

  “All right, Daddy. I understand.”

  “Fiona, I love you, we love you. Your mother and I recognize how bad this could’ve been. We think it’s better you stay close to home.”

  “Okay.”

  “All right. The doctor says you can come home tomorrow. The bandages may take longer. Get some rest.”

  “Yes, Daddy.” I hated the way I surrendered. I didn’t even put up a fight. Did Mariah fight?

  I turned on my side and punched the hospital pillow. The torture around my head nearly made me faint. I lay still until the shards of pain mellowed around the edges. Good. At least I knew I was alive—and I certainly deserved more punishment. Of the pain kind, not the grounding kind.

  “Fiona.”

  I didn’t know how long I’d been lying there.

  “Fiona.”

  The whisper was a creature of the fog, the same haze that had been floating around me since I had woken from the night in the woods.

  “It’s me. Espy. Are you awake?”

  I turned towards the voice. “Espy!” I held out my arms.

  “Oh, Fiona. I was so worried.” She hugged me.

  “Espy. I looked for you. I couldn’t find you.”

  “Me too. But hey, chica, we’re all right. Everything turned out fine.”

  “I know. Have you heard about Heather?”

  “Yes, I went to see her.”

  “She’s here? You saw her?”

  “Yes, she looks horrible. There are a lot of tubes. She’s black and blue all over.” Espy’s’ voice cracked. “Her face is more puffy than yours is right now.”

  “Oh my God, Espy. They’re lying. You know she didn’t fall down the stairs.”

  “I know, but my parents don’t want to know about it. Her parents aren’t leaving her side. They watched me the whole time I was there.”

  “Jeez. Mine didn’t believe it either.”

  Esperanza was quiet for a moment. “Fiona, we have to hope she comes out of this and then we have to get her away. There are no adults who are going to save her. They don’t care.”

  “I know.”

  “We have to talk to Eve and Mariah. We have to get her out of here.”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t cry. We need to get through this. Then we have to protect her.”

  “I know.”

  “I have to go back to my room now. Mimi is coming soon to get me.”

  “You’re leaving?” I grabbed for her, but I only caught air.

  “Yeah. They’re letting me go today. I’m leaving for Mexico tomorrow. I’ll be back soon, though. Everything will be fine when we’re past this and everyone gets better.”

  “If she gets better.” I sobbed. “It’s all my fault. I’ve killed her like I killed my baby brother.”

  “Stop it. You know this has happened before. Maybe not this bad. But her mom could’ve woken up on the wrong side of the bed and done the same thing, with or without you. We have to believe she’ll come out of this.”

  Bitter tears let loose. “You’re right. Shit! I feel so helpless.”

  “We’ll figure this out. We’re a butt-kicking, horse-stomping, kick-ass, bitchin’ posse. Remember?”

  I smiled. “I remember.”

  “Manana.”

  “Maka Manana.”

  Esperanza kissed me. She left as quietly as she had entered.

  The buzz of the hospital light grated on my nerves. I could not think through it. I lay back down and drew lines around the edges of the images that shifted through the haze. It would be a long month. But long months are great for making plans. We would need it to save Heather.

  Of course, the wanting and the doing are never the same. Heather came out of her unconscious sleep. Eve and I tended to her every day. Heather’s mother tolerated our presence, either out of remorse or a desire to be seen as the solicitous and loving mother. It didn’t matter which. Heather was safe while we were there.

  We were like dying roses without Mariah and Espy. Our month of separation became defined by watching Heather heal. Her head injury was not as severe as the doctors had thought. The relief registered more with me and Eve than with Heather’s parents, who appeared unfazed and unrepentant. But the front they showed the outer world was different. Who were we? Kids. And our opinion didn’t matter. Heather couldn’t remember anything of that day; her injuries were a confusing mystery for her. We stayed away from the subject.

  The bruises turned their alternating rainbow of colors, but no one took notice. Heather melted into the walls, the bruises were the only color to an otherwise invisible life force. But even her bruises faded.

  My injuries followed suit, but I couldn’t blend so easily. Everyone noticed me. I grew tired of the questions. Was I so different than Heather? Heather, unlike me, was allowed to blend. My vibrancy served as a counterpoint to Heather’s lack of it. Eve took little notice. In fact, she took little notice of anything. She didn’t fade though. She simmered. The quiet of anger and forgetting maddened.

  I wanted adventure. A month was too long. I wanted to forget it all. I wanted to go back to the way things were.

  I take another long gulp of vodka. God, I was so stupid. I am so stupid. Things can never go back. Change is a river. The past is subsumed by the present. Is that not a special forgetting?

  But Eve, my precious Eve, stood in my way. “Stop whining, Fiona. I don’t feel like going to Sycamore.”

  “We haven’t done anything fun in a while.”

  “No? I would think recovering from the last fun would be enough for you. Besides, Heather isn’t up to it.”

  Heather looked at her feet.

  “We don’t have to do anything crazy. I just want to do something, anything.”

  “No, you want to find Damon and you want us to go with you. You think that will make you forget. How’s that fun for us?”

  “I don’t care about Damon,” I said, lying like a common criminal.

  “You know you do. He’s like a force field, and now you don’t have any scars or bruises.”

  “That’s not fair. And no, I don’t. I’m just bored.” I looked toward our Rose Garden. Its luster had faded. What was Mariah’s favorite rose? It didn’t matter. All the roses in the world couldn’t save us from the world we were now living in. “Oh, let’s just go back to my house.”

  Eve smiled—rare lately. Espy and Mariah would be home soon.

  Things had shifted. My friends bored me. Espy and Mariah would turn things around. We would be the same again. I just had to wait. A couple more days and we would be on the way back to “normal.” Heather and Eve would have to follow.

  But Espy returned with a broken heart. She was in love and she had lost her virginity. I still had mine, and I sensed myself slipping in the one thing at which I was best: sex appeal. I needed to catch up.

  Mariah, meanwhile, came back all fiery and radicalized. There was no taming her. It was as if she had breathed in the spirit of the horses she rode under the heat of the South Dakota summer.

  “Mariah,” I asked her on her first day back, “what are we going to do about Heather?”

  “What can we do? Do you think the police will care? They’re part of the establishment.”

  Eve weighed in. “I tried to tell my parents. I don’t think they were paying any attention.”

  Mariah considered. “I’m sorry. They’re still upset about your brother. They can’t really do anything anyway.”

  “I know, but they might’ve been able to give me some ideas.”

  Mariah scoffed. “What ideas? No one gives a shit. She’s just another kid. We don’t have any power. It was an accident. Who will people believe? Us?”

  I could never stand helplessness. “Someone has to do something to get her out of there.”

  “What can we do?” Eve said.

  “Hide her?” Espy suggested. “We have to figure something out. She’s going to die next time.”

  “I know.” The truth of it ran like ice water through my v
eins. We would have to find a way, even if it meant losing everything.

  I take another long sip of vodka. It seemed so easy. How could we have known it would be the hardest thing we had ever done? How could we have known things would take such a disastrous turn?

  No one on that hill was ever the same. Karma is like a river. Once you step into it, the consequences, good or bad, are unstoppable. You cannot go back. The current is swift and dangerous. All you can do is swim with the tide like your life depends upon it.

  17 Mariah

  Running like hell, as fast and as far as my heart and lungs will take me, can’t erase the experience. In all the years I’ve witnessed death, it’s always like the first time. I know I should be numb to it, or at least less affected, but I’m not cut from Hollywood cloth. The smell clings to my clothes. I retch into the naked red earth outside the makeshift hospital. There are times when I think I’m diminishing. Fading by the touch of others’ deaths. Yet, I hunger for the meaning, even the intimacy, harbored within the folds of dying. Worse than disease, it’s the drama of war that magnifies its touch. Yet, plagues and ferocious pathogens feed on war. In the struggle to survive, heroes are bigger, evil is more malignant, foes are the darkest of enemies, and endurance is the sweetest of gifts. In a world in which we fight for control and authority over our lives, helplessness is our greatest fear. The power manifested in remaining alive, even in thriving, often comes at the expense of the other. That is the catch—the conundrum. I have borne witness to others’ helplessness, and in so doing become an accessory to the stripping of power to that other. Worse, I’ve witnessed things I wouldn’t wish to be done to me. That’s a powerful karma. The trickster mocks me, Wak’djunk’aga. The same was done to my own. To my family, to my tribe. But now I’ve watched it happen. No, I’ve crawled into the belly of the beast. I’m crawling even now.

  It was only yesterday I crossed the bridge over the Rio Grande from Del Sierra in Texas to Ciudad Frontera, but that moment is already light years away. The immediacy of the crossing is gone, and a powerful terror matches my steps.

  This morning, my dread traveled with me through the silent mud-sloshed streets of the makeshift neighborhoods surrounding the AAC complex. A few stray dogs with mud-hardened flanks whined and scavenged for food. Knocking on doors, I hoped to catch an occupant willing to answer my questions. I had anticipated their reluctance. They need their jobs. But they weren’t avoiding me. The place was a ghost town. A tumbleweed diaspora, untended and colonizing against empty houses, rattled and whistled in the hot wind. Dust devils swirled in the vacant streets and open sewers, drying and caking in the high sun, cracked and formed rifts along the edges of the desolate town. Only newly abandoned, the remains of the town were yielding quickly to the elements.

  After fifteen minutes, a member of AAC security stopped me.

  “This area is in quarantine. You have to leave.”

  “Quarantine? Why?”

  “That’s privileged information. This area is owned by Astride Amalgamated Corporation. Any unauthorized persons are to be escorted to its boundary. I need to see your identification papers.”

  I produced my District of Columbia driver’s license. No way he was getting my passport. Without it, the border became impermeable.

  “American?”

  I looked into his hard blue eyes. What did he see? “As American as it gets.”

  He drove me away from the complex and deposited me in the center of town.

  “The bridge back to the United States is that way. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave this place. It’s not safe here.”

  The car sped back toward the factory complex.

  I stopped someone in the center of the city, far from the makeshift barrio on the fringes, and asked about the hospital. Yes. That way. Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders, had arrived. There was fear in their eyes. But I knew wherever MSF was would be a relatively safe area, and it was even possible I would know someone. Maybe they could tell me where all the people from the barrio had gone.

  As luck had it, I did find someone I knew.

  And now standing in the middle of a hospital gripped by an epidemic brought my co-worker’s words flooding back to me.

  I grabbed his arm as he walked by. “Enrique, thank God. Do you have a minute?”

  Enrique’s brow furrowed. “Mariah? What’re you doing here? You shouldn’t be here. There’s a cholera epidemic.”

  “I thought so. Why are all the neighborhoods vacant? It doesn’t look like there are enough people here to account for just one of the neighborhoods I was in.”

  Enrique pulled off his protective gloves. “I’m just a doctor, Mariah. That question is for someone else.” He looked around and motioned his head down the hallway. “There’s a patient down there, last cot on the left. His name is Jorge Nunez. He has some crazy story about his wife and children disappearing. It could be his delirium. We’re administering fluids, but the company doctors don’t seem to be too excited about saving him. We’re watching him and they’re watching us. Something’s not right. Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  Enrique gently grabbed my arm. “Mariah. I know you’re fearless. We all know you. We’ll do our best to make sure you’re okay, for old time’s sake, but be careful. Something’s not right here. We’re hearing a lot of stories that I doubt the company wants the world to hear. This isn’t our first gig. If they find out a journalist is here, we could all be in trouble.”

  “Thanks Enrique. I’ll be quick.” His tone unnerved me. Since when did MSF worry about some corporation on the wrong side of the law?

  “He only speaks Spanish.” Enrique slipped his mask back over his face and pulled new gloves over his hands.

  I pulled up a seat next to Jorge Nunez’s cot. “Con permiso. Lo siento. I’m a journalist. Can you tell me what happened to you and your family?”

  He looked at me—grief and bitterness fused in his eyes. My announcement sank in, but it was clear he hadn’t come to terms with his situation. As if the happening was no more than a bee sting. He squeezed his eyes shut and tears traced streaks along his dark brown cheeks. I gently coaxed him—assured him I would tell the world of his plight. I was the hope of justice. If only he’d tell me.

  He confirmed my suspicions. His job was to pour the worst of chemicals down a drain. He didn’t seem to know many details about where the water drained to, but between what he told me and what I’d already dug up for myself, I could connect the dots. There were no usable containment ponds and no chemical or hazardous waste capabilities. The wastewater treatment facility fed raw sewage and chemically tainted water into the river—a river that eventually sloshed into the Rio Grande Valley to be used as irrigation for grapefruit, cotton, and vegetables. The river and its estuaries also passed through several wildlife refuges.

  He rubbed his tears with his swollen and scabbed fingers.

  Lo siento. Just a little more and the world will know the truth.

  He shook. He knew something was wrong, but he needed his job. It was his fault. He was the reason his wife and children, his family, were dead.

  No. What could he have done? It was AAC’s fault.

  He was silent.

  Anger made me reckless and I stayed longer than I should. Toward the end of our conversation, Jorge told me the bodies of his wife and children were gathered up with others in the neighborhood and taken somewhere. He’d overheard someone visiting the cot next to him telling of a mass grave.

  “Why would they do that?”

  Jorge looked at me with sadness in his eyes and shook his head.

  The woman in the cot next to him grabbed my sleeve. “They don’t want anyone to know. We are just poor Indians. We are untraceable, ilocalizable.” She pulled me closer. “Some of the people they put into the grave were still breathing.”

  The woman, a grandmother, watched and waited, her grip on my sleeve strong for her small frame. Her eyes shone with a vibrancy that mocked
her chiseled features.

  Sweat dripped into and stung my eyes. What had I walked into? “I’m sorry. I’ll make sure you’re not forgotten. Does anyone else know about the . . . others, the ones who were still living?”

  “Sí. But they’ve all left. They’ve fled to the desert. Better to be lost in the desert than to be left in the desert. Tell your story, little one, but don’t go into the desert. Some stories are best left buried.” The old woman smiled and, pointing at Jorge, never took her eyes from me. I shook my head and she relaxed her grip on my sleeve and settled back against the bed.

  I turned to Jorge. “All right. Jorge. One more question, por favor. Where are you from?”

  “San Juan Pinas in Juxtlahuaca, Oaxaca.”

  “Mixteca?”

  “Sí. I should’ve never left. I need to go home to my people.” He closed his eyes again and the tears flowed. “I need to take my wife and children home.” His voice broke and he rested his forearm over his eyes.

  “Lo siento. Lo siento.” But there weren’t enough apologies. This was always where words withered against the power of sorrow.

  Before I left, the grandmother pulled on my sleeve once more. “Do not go into the desert.”

  “I won’t, Grandmother.”

  Enrique stopped me on my way out. “Follow me. We have to get you out of here. AAC’s goons have been asking questions about you.” He walked me down the hall and through a side door.

  I followed him. “But there’s still more to find out. You know I’ve been in worse situations than this before.” I was lying. There was something evil here. I needed to uncover it—expose it.

  “Not like this, Mariah. You need to get out of here. We need to get this epidemic under control and covering your ass isn’t going to help us. You understand?”

  “I won’t get in your way. Promise.”

  “That’s not the point, Mariah. We’d still know. We have to focus. We don’t need any more problems.”

  “All right. I get it.”

  Outside, the air was hot and dry. The wind whipped off the land and dirt swirled into a mist of finely ground dust that blanketed everything. There was something about Jorge’s eyes that stayed with me. Familiarity stalked me. I’ve always known there will be a day I’ll have to go home. Soon.