Once, in a Town Called Moth

by Trilby Kent

  Couples came and went. Groups of junior girls swarmed giddily into the building, and the odd lone boy loped up the steps two at a time. As the evening went on, fewer people came out, flooding the quiet stillness with the brief blast of music that followed them from the gym. A group of kids from the year above Ana stood out of the sentry’s view by some bushes near the fire exit, the glow of lighters flickering between them. A sweet smell wafted past her, and Ana breathed deeply. She closed her eyes.

  “Is it as much fun in there as I’m guessing it’s not?” said a voice beside her.

  “Those guys over there offer you a puff of their joint?” asked Mr. Peterson.

  Ana shook her head.

  “Relax. They know that I know that they know. Miss Sykes in there doesn’t. Those kids are just lucky it wasn’t Doc Rutter who signed up for this chaperone shift.”

  He sat down next to her and pulled out a cigarette. “So. What’s going on in there?”

  “I don’t really know. I’ve been out here mostly.”

  Mr. Peterson nodded, cigarette tight between pursed lips, frowning as he held up a light. “You don’t mind?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He exhaled slowly, extending an arm along the top of the bench. “Not a dancer, then?”

  “I’m trying to avoid Karen Spelberg. She thinks I’m after her boyfriend.”

  Mr. Peterson snorted. “Are you?”

  “Of course not. But popular people always assume other people want something they have.”

  “That’s true. Kind of makes you question what it is that makes them popular in the first place.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Ana. “Suvi says the ‘cool girls’ will all be fat and divorced with buckets of kids and dead-end jobs by the time they’re twenty-five.”

  “Did she?” Mr. Peterson seemed to weigh this up. “Maybe. Mind you, I knew a few so-called bad girls in high school who ended up at Harvard Law. And some totally forgettable types who are now CEOs. There were also some pretty smug geeks who seemed to assume they’d be the next Bill Gates who are still living in their parents’ basements. It works both ways, you know.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do say so.” He grinned, took another draw. “Started Papillon yet?”

  “Yeah. It’s good. He’s on the ship right now.”

  “Stuff’s about to get worse before it gets better.”

  “Don’t tell me—it will ruin it.”

  Hands up, smiling surrender.

  “You should get inside,” he said at last. “Your lips are turning blue.”

  “I guess.”

  “Come on.” He dropped the cigarette, squashed it with his heel. Scaled boots, pointed toes. “Or else I’ll have to do something, like, totally humiliating and insist on lending you my jacket.”

  Leather, sheepskin. A musky smell. Cigarettes and something bitter, something sweet.

  “OK—I’m going.” She stood up. “Does this mean you’ve finished your shift?”

  “I’ve got to sign off with Syko inside. She’ll put the next sap on duty when I’ve gone. Those kids with the weed had better get moving if they don’t want to get caught.” He stood up. “After you.”

  His hand on her back, just above her waist. Julie’s top was cropped at an angle; his fingers touched her skin. Warmth against the numbness.

  “You have a good night, Ana.” He released her to catch the door as it swung open.

  Don’t go.

  “Did you say something?”

  She shook her head.

  “Maybe give the last dance a try, just for the heck of it,” he said. “For me.”

  “Why is it always only the gross boys who hit on me?” Suvi pulled a face. She had been late meeting Ana and Mischa to walk home after school and was still flustered. “It’s always the ones who smell weird—like, not B.O., but something else. Kind of clammy and vegetable-y.”

  “Who hit on you?”

  “Philip Bird said my hair smelled liked watermelon and did I want to go for burgers at Fran’s sometime.”

  “That’s kind of nice.”

  “Ana, get real.”

  “Philip Bird’s not gross,” said Mischa.

  “How would you know?” said Suvi.

  “Gross is…I don’t know, like, Sam Greenblatt. That butt-fluff mustache and white stuff in his braces.”

  “Sam Greenblatt doesn’t hit on girls. He’s probably gay.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Mischa.

  They had stopped outside his house. An old man sat on the porch nodding to himself and squinting. Mischa waved to him. “Mr. Shuter,” he said to Ana and Suvi, by way of explanation. “He talks to his family in his head a lot. He calls me Bobby.”

  “That’s cool,” said Suvi.

  “Wanna come in?”

  “I’ve got homework. See you tomorrow?”

  “Sure. Bye, Ana.”

  “Bye.”

  After they had been walking for another few minutes, Ana said, “Mischa’s right. Philip Bird isn’t gross.”

  “Ana.” Suvi rolled her eyes. “Of course he said that. Mischa likes Philip. As in, likes likes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve known him since kindergarten. He knows it. He knows that I know. I don’t care if he’s gay, but some people do. Why do you think Sean and his gang are always picking on him?”

  “I didn’t think…”

  “That’s because you’re too busy getting picked on by Karen Spelberg.”

  Suvi stopped and pointed to a stray sock left at the side of the road. She used a stick to pick it up and shove it between the wires on the park fence.

  “Mr. Peterson told me kind of the same thing,” said Ana. “Well, not really. He said the kids at school will stop picking on each other in a couple of years. I’m not sure, though.”

  “Of course not. Adults can be totally shitty to one another, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Peterson’s a dreamboat and all, but he has some wacky ideas,” said Suvi. “Sometimes I think he’s kind of a drifter. Like, he’s still searching for his place in the world. Which is why he’s a teacher.”

  “Teachers can’t be drifters,” said Ana.

  “Sure they can. People become teachers for three reasons.” Suvi held up a finger. “One: to feel big. Those are the jerks and the bullies, like Mrs. Hines and Mr. Curtis.” She held up a second finger. “Two: because they’re genuinely in love with their subject and they want to be, like, missionaries for it. How Miss Sharif is with math.” A third finger. “And three: because they don’t know what else to do.”

  She pointed to the pizza place on the corner. “Wanna get a slice?”

  “I don’t have time. I’m meeting someone in half an hour.” Ana saw the question forming in Suvi’s face and cut her off before she could ask. “Tutoring.”

  “Well, have fun.”

  “Yeah, I won’t. See you tomorrow.”

  Divide and conquer. Three of the girls staked their place in the line snaking past the sandwich counter—ignoring the older women’s sighs and the suited men casting surreptitious glances at the flare of their skater skirts—while the rest commandeered stray chairs to establish a sprawling camp of joined-up tables in the middle of the cafe. A tidal wave of chatter, conditioned hair, glossed lips and chipped nails. Bags in a heap on the floor; jackets piled onto a chair, sliding off, piled up again. The ones who sat shared pictures on their phones, while the ones at the counter ordered milkshakes with grown-up names: ridiculous coffees with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. They flashed shiny debit cards and chewed their lips while punching in newly memorized PIN codes.

  Ana watched from a corner, turning her pencil between her fingers so that if anyone caught her eye she could pretend to have been distracted from her work. There was whispering now: hunched shoulders, tense silence, peals of laughter. You’d think they were plotting the greatest comedy coup in the history of time. But no—a representative had bee
n selected to go up to the counter and ask for another cup. The barista was young, muscular, curly-haired. He batted doe-like eyelashes, flashed a Colgate smile. Was he enjoying the attention, or just oblivious to it? These girls probably came in here every day. The girl returned, red-faced, to the table. Slid the cup to her friend, collapsed in a chair while the others squealed their delight.

  Is that it? wondered Ana. She got a cup, not a date.

  Soon after, the subtle social dance of extricating themselves from the group. Having plans, a reason to go and someone to leave with mattered. Ana stared at her notebook and listened.

  “OK, I’ve gotta go meet Alison. Charlie, are you coming?”

  “Is anyone going back?”

  “My dad’s picking me up outside Beck’s.”

  “I’ll go back with you, Karen.”

  “Are you guys staying here?”

  “Nah, I’m going with Lindz. Bye, Soph.”

  Poor Soph, whoever she was. They all got up together, so clearly she must have decided it was safer to depart with the pack and figure out her exit strategy when they got outside. The tables were left scattered with coffee detritus, plastic packaging and crumpled paper napkins. Ana underlined the title at the top of the page. Athenians and Visigoths. Surrounded it with stars. Shadowed the letters.

  She looked up to see Lena walking toward her. Reaching the table, Lena craned her neck to consider Ana’s notebook.

  “Hey,” she said. “Looks like that essay is coming along great.”

  They got hot chocolates to go, and then they walked to Lena’s place. It was smaller than Ana had expected—the ground-floor apartment of a modern three-story building squashed between two bungalows—but pristine. Potted plants on the front steps, shining tiles in the kitchen. Everything—the walls, the counters, the furniture—was white or pale cream. There were no pictures on the walls, but several ferns and a row of squat cacti on the kitchen windowsill. Something about the blankness of it reminded Ana of Mr. Peterson’s apartment. As if neither he nor her mother had known how to start over again.

  “The bathroom’s at the back. There’s my room just before it, and the living room here with the kitchen…and that’s pretty much it.”

  “Who lives upstairs?”

  “Retired couple. Friendly, quiet. And above them, some impossibly hip guy who sits on his balcony playing guitar all summer long. He must be a banker or something the rest of the year.”

  “It’s really nice.” Ana thought of Mrs. Fratelli’s house with the wire fence and mustard-colored kitchen. “It’s smaller than ours, but it’s nicer.”

  “Well, thank you. The tiles reminded me of Bolivia.”

  “You’re right. Speaking of which…”

  “Here it comes,” said Lena.

  Ana sat down on the sofa.

  “I think you know why we came to Toronto,” she said. “I want you to tell me.”

  “I wish I could, Ani. But I’m not a mind reader. I can only assume your father—”

  “No,” said Ana. She stood up. “ ‘So long could I stand by, a looker on,’ ” she said. “You must have known something.”

  A significant look. “Why don’t you tell me what you know, instead.”

  “I know it had to do with Gerhard,” Ana said. “I know he threatened Papa.” She took a deep breath. “I know there’s a gun at the bottom of the lake.”

  That got her attention. Lena glanced over her shoulder to check that the door had closed behind them, opened her mouth, glanced down the hallway as if someone might be waiting there, listening. Still she hesitated; Ana could tell she was deciding whether or not to tell her the whole story.

  “I know something happened in Moth ten years ago,” Ana said. “Just before you left.”

  Lena paused again. And then opened her mouth to speak.

  Once, in a town called Moth, a young man pulled a gun on a police officer and threatened to shoot.

  Once, in a town called Moth, a young man pulled a gun on a police officer and fired a warning shot.

  Once, in a town called Moth, a young man shot a police officer dead.

  “It was a long time ago,” Lena said. “I can’t be sure that I remember all the details correctly.” She waited for Ana to give her permission to stop. Ana said nothing. She sat back down on the sofa.

  “It was meant to happen just once,” Lena continued. “The first time, I’m not even sure that your father understood what it was he was doing. He was collecting a shipment—produce, we assumed—and taking it to the wholesaler. The colony was halfway between collection points. They would save fuel, I suppose, by paying for him to use a buggy.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Locals. Spanish names I can’t remember. Milobo was their nickname for your father, because he drove alone. That was the deal. He told me very little. There was one man with a gold watch—I know, because he gave it to your father. The others were poor.”

  “So, he took this…shipment?”

  “Yes. The first time was easy, and he was paid well. Then, a few months later, they asked if he would help again. So he did. The third time they asked, they gave him a gun to keep on him when he went. The road was getting dangerous, they said. Bandits and thieves and gangs. The police were no better; they’d steal and call it bribery, which wasn’t even considered a bad word. The most important thing was that he was safe. The next most important thing was that the shipment didn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

  “Only it did?”

  “No, it didn’t. Your father was as good as his word.” Lena breathed deeply. “The handovers happened in Moth. One day, a police car turned up. The officer was alone, totally outnumbered. He pointed his gun at the men who were collecting—the poor ones, the locals—and your father told him to back off. He had the gun ready. The foolish officer didn’t retreat, so your father…he fired.”

  “Was Gerhard there? How did he find out?”

  “He knew about the extra driving your father had been doing. He’s not stupid, Gerhard. The shipments stopped after that, but word spread quickly about the dead officer. He was some important official’s son; his murder drew attention. For a while, at least.”

  “But by then the gun was at the bottom of the lake.” Ana swallowed. “The shipments…they were coca, weren’t they?”

  Ana let the tap run. She’d splashed her face and soaked her arms up to her elbows, and then she dried herself with toilet paper so Lena wouldn’t find a drenched towel on the hanger. She hadn’t needed to go to the bathroom; she’d just wanted to be still and quiet and alone.

  Her father had blood on his hands. Did Bolivia have a death penalty? That was something they could look up quickly enough on Lena’s phone—not that Ana was going to suggest it.

  She didn’t want to rush to conclusions. She didn’t want to think about God or repentance or forgiveness because these were all things that her father must have considered already—and what good had that done, now that they’d fled the country and were living under aliases in a foreign city?

  Her mother had known all this time and done nothing. Did this make her a criminal too?

  Ana cupped her hands and took two gulps of water before turning off the tap.

  Please, please, please, she thought. And then she said it—“Please, please, please…”—as the ache in her jaw spread up to her eyes and her temples, and her eyes burned and blurred with tears hotter than those she had shed even as a child in another country, another life.

  Passing by Lena’s bedroom on her way from the toilet, Ana hesitated by the open door. The room, like the rest of the apartment, was mostly white—a blank slate. But the bed was covered with a quilt the colors of the lake off Route Four: blue and green with silty grays and a sandy golden border.

  The gun been lying in the lake all this time. The same lake into which Lena had dived, fearlessly, after Isaac Buhler. Maybe it was tangled in the same fishing nets that had wound around Isaac’s skinny legs. Isaac Buhler is drowning…

&nb
sp; “Who did you make it with?” she asked, when Lena appeared behind her.

  “With my sister and my mother when we first arrived in Colony Felicidad,” said Lena. “It took us forever to agree on the pattern. It was the first thing we did together to make our house a home.”

  It was almost six o’clock.

  “Your father will be wondering where you are,” said Lena.

  “I told him I was going to a prayer group after school.” Ana took a sip of camomile tea, placed the mug on the table. “Suvi said I couldn’t keep telling him I was at her house because one day he’d come knocking on the door and I wouldn’t be there. It was the best thing I could think of.”

  “What kind of prayer group?”

  “He didn’t ask. In a way, I don’t think he wants to know.”

  “What does he want, do you think?” Lena leaned forward, studying Ana. “Is he afraid?”

  “Maybe. He wants to find you,” said Ana. Then, “I don’t think he would have come all this way unless it was very serious. He doesn’t really want me to be here. Whatever else he could be looking for, I’m not even sure he wants to find it.”

  “In that case, why now?” Lena wondered aloud. “Why would Gerhard wait ten years? Something must have happened to make him threaten Miloh now, after all this time.”

  Ana was quiet for a moment. Then—

  “Maria,” she said.

  Colony Felicidad

  It never occurred to me to ask whose it was. It was Maria’s baby, obviously: Maria’s secret. Then, one afternoon, being careful not to look at me, teasing apart a blade of grass in the shade of the tipu tree, Susanna asked if I could guess the father.