Once, in a Town Called Moth
Page 19
Ana looked at her father. He was listening intently, watching her mother with a mixture of curiosity and awe.
“We aren’t afraid of a little challenge,” he said. “Are we, Ani?”
“No. It smells great.”
“Well, if all else fails there’s cheese and toast.” Lena pulled the dishcloth from her belt and tossed it onto the counter. “Come on, let’s sit in the living room while this finishes.”
“School will be winding down soon.”
“In a few weeks.”
“Will you miss it?”
Lena’s question hung in the air as Ana piled the plates.
“It will be nice to have a break over the summer,” Ana said. Then, avoiding her father’s eye, “And to be in grade ten next year. You know, not at the bottom of the heap anymore.”
Silence. Lena emptied her glass and reached for the stack of plates.
“Well,” she said. “I can understand that.”
“It’s been good for her,” said Ana’s father. Mother and daughter looked at him in surprise. “Listen to her English,” he said. “And the sums she can do are impressive. Some of it makes me nervous. I find myself wondering what the application will be, how far it will take her away from the important things—but it hasn’t changed her. It only shows how smart she is. That’s God’s gift, isn’t it?”
This was more than Ana had heard her father speak in many months.
“So…” she began. “Does that mean we’re staying?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Her heart sank. Of course the evening could never have gone that well; of course it would all come tumbling down now…
“But what a shame to leave now,” said Lena in a small voice. “When it’s going so well.”
“There have been problems too. Insolence, disobedience.” He shook his head. “You haven’t been there. You haven’t seen it.”
Ana took the plates into the kitchen and rinsed them in the sink. Her father had asked for a second helping of Lena’s curry, which, although like nothing Ana had ever tasted, made her feel strangely warm and full and contented.
The neighbor’s cat was sitting outside the kitchen window, sniffing the air, its tail flicking impatiently. Ana picked up a leftover piece of chicken from the pot, wound open the window and nudged it onto the ledge.
She returned to find her father with his hands on his knees, nodding at the floor.
“Your mother says you need stability,” he said. Ana waited. “And she may be right.”
Ana and Lena exchanged glances. Registering them, her father stood up.
“We have stayed long enough,” he said. “It’s late.”
“Papa,” said Ana. “Don’t forget.”
He paused, then disappeared into the hallway where he’d left a plastic bag. Inside was a cereal box. He returned with the box and handed it to Lena.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “A silly thing. But Ana insisted.”
They watched in silence as Lena carefully tipped the wooden blocks onto the table.
“They’re beautiful,” she said. Then, studying them more closely, “Six sides. Six puzzles?” He nodded. “My goodness. I’ll be up all night trying to put it together.”
Ana could have been mistaken, but she was sure her father smiled then.
“We can always help you with it,” she said.
Closing the kitchen cupboard, Ana noticed it. A glancing movement, a skein of substance, vanishing soundlessly behind the sugar bowl.
She waited, heart thudding. She knew that it wasn’t a mouse. A mouse wouldn’t have frightened her. It wasn’t a ghost, either.
Gingerly, she picked her way across the floor and reached for the dustpan in the corner. She extended it toward the counter, using the edge to make contact with the sugar bowl. No sooner had she nudged it to one side, out the creature flashed—eight legs scrambling hairily over the laminate surface, slipping, skidding, intent on escape—and Ana let out a yelp.
The noise seemed to stun it. It froze, crouched, by the edge of the sink, legs drawn up high against its long, brown body.
It waited. Ana waited.
“Is that you, amigo?” she whispered at last.
The spider didn’t move. Ana retreated toward the fridge and opened it. Pulled out a few lettuce leaves and a broccoli floret. Placed them on a paper towel at the other end of the sink, by the open window.
“Your favorite,” she said. “Just remember our deal. Stay out of my room.”
“The Lennon sisters,” said Ana. She pointed at Lena’s phone. “Can you show me?”
It took a few seconds for Lena to get to YouTube.
“ ‘Mister Clarinet Man’…‘Que Sera, Sera’…hang on, let me find the one…”
Four sisters in grainy black and white on a variety show stage. Peter Pan collars, high-waisted skirts, crimped hair in ponytails; the youngest, still a child, in a boxy tunic with short bangs. Sweet smiles, clear voices, perfect harmonies. Ana cut a glance at her mother, who was mouthing the words along with them as she watched.
Although we’re apart
You’re part of my heart
And tonight you belong to me.
The song swung into a free-wheeling third verse, and Lena smiled at Ana.
“I know, it’s old-fashioned,” she said. “But you’ve got to admit, they’re pretty good.”
“Bedtime for me,” said Lena at ten. “I know it’s early for a sleepover, but I’m bushed.”
“That’s OK. I’m going to read for a bit.”
“You can leave the bathroom light on if you want.” She blew a kiss from the doorway. “Night, night.”
She must have been more tired than she’d realized. When next Ana opened her eyes, the book lay on the floor by the sofa and the room was in darkness. She moved her head a quarter turn and registered a light on in the kitchen.
Footsteps. The sound of the fridge opening, closing. Running water. A light switched off. A pause in the hallway, steps retraced.
Ana closed her eyes and turned her face back into the pillow.
She heard her mother take a breath in the doorway, hold it. How long was she going to stand there? The floor creaked as she stepped closer to the sofa. Set her glass gently on the floor. Pulled something off the armchair. The blue quilt. It smelled musty and sweet: laundry detergent mixed with something lingering. The floor creaked again as Ana felt a blanket gently lowered onto her shoulders, straightened so that it covered the length of her.
Lena stood there a moment longer, then carefully picked up the glass and tiptoed back to the hallway. After a second her door closed, and Ana opened her eyes once more in the dark.
The school fair officially opened with the Dance Crew delivering a thumping routine on a temporary stage. Or rather, the Dance Crew miming backup to Karen, who, in Ana’s mind, would be turning cartwheels in perpetuity in that measly leotard.
Mr. Peterson was watching from the sponge-throw on the other side of the pitch, a smile teasing his lips. All of the teachers were wearing normal summer clothes, and he’d turned up in long shorts that showed his legs, tanned and covered in a thicket of hair, and a barbed wire tattoo around one ankle.
“Save me a popsicle,” Ana told Suvi. “I’ll see you at the lunch tree in a minute.”
Mr. Peterson smiled as she approached, and he held out a wet sponge. “Take your pick. Miss Hines or Mr. Hamza.”
“I don’t have a ticket.”
He winked at her. “This one’s on the house.”
“It’s OK.” Ana rooted in her backpack and then returned the dog-eared paperback and yellowing comic to him in a plastic bag.
“Oh…” The other teachers were a good distance away, bored behind the wooden cutout. There were no other kids in line. Mr. Peterson considered the bag. “I hope you enjoyed them.”
“Thanks.”
Nearby, a little girl was having her face painted by one of the student volunteers. Orange and black and white stripes, a pink nose. Th
e child held very still, staring into the eyes of the older girl who would turn her into a tiger, concentrating hard on becoming what she couldn’t yet see.
“You’ll be in Miss Simon’s class next year,” said Mr. Peterson. “I’ve recommended you.”
Ana nodded.
“I’m sorry things have ended like this,” he continued. “I feel…let down…”
“I didn’t let you down,” she said. “I grew up.”
He blinked, and then he smiled, and opened his mouth to reply.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. “My friends are waiting for me.”
Colony Felicidad
Poor old Tomas de Molli. You’d think it would be pretty thrilling having a town named after you, but not if they got your name wrong. That would be worse than nothing, like being given a present only to have it snatched away a minute later.
I used to wonder what happened to Tomas. Then I’d get to thinking about what might have happened to Popi. (Sue, I suppose, being a dog, would have met a typically doggy end long before the others.)
The porcelain works obviously never came to much, but I like to think that Tomas stayed in his village in the saltpeter field until the very end. Moth was where his dream had been born and flickered and foundered and faded. Long after the last families trundled off to try new lives in Potosí or Oruro or maybe even La Paz, old Tomas would stay in his little white house with his adopted Guaraní son.
By the time Tomas died, Popi would have been a young man dressed in European clothing. Too big to swing on the bell-pull in the church or throw marbles up against the well in the town square. It would have been the end of one century and the beginning of a new one by the time he had to decide whether to stay in Moth like Tomas—journeying for days to the nearest town for butchered meat and cheese and anything that he couldn’t grow in his vegetable patch, which was most things—or start all over somewhere else.
Maybe he was even tempted to go back to his village in the hills, assuming it was still there. At some point he might have learned to chew coca and speak the old language. I thought it was doubtful, though. It’s hard to go back when so much has changed around you, and even more so when you yourself have changed so much.
Toronto
“YOU’RE STAYING?”
“For now, at least. There’s still a lot they have to work out…but, yeah. I think so.”
“This calls for a celebration,” said Suvi, leaping from the front step. “Pancakes at Chewey’s? I’ve got fifteen bucks. Meesh?”
“Ten. We can do two plates between us, and shakes.”
“Woot!” Suvi flung an arm around each of her friend’s shoulders and swung off of them like a monkey. “We’ll AL-ways be to-GETH-er…shoo-bop-a-shooby-doo…”
“You’re crazy,” said Ana.
“There are drugs that can take care of that.” Suvi jabbed her in the ribs. “On the other hand, you’ll always be Menno.”
“This summer is going to be epic.”
“Just normal would be fine.”
“Yeah, but we should aim for better than fine.” Suvi slurped her milkshake and mopped up the last drops of maple syrup with a giant pancake slice. “These are the important years, right? The years that determine if you’re going to be this faded star for the rest of your life, or if you’re always going to have a chip on your shoulder about never making the basketball team, or if you’ll hold on to your insecurity about how you look because some bitch called you Big Nose in the changing room.”
“Great,” said Mischa.
“It is great! Because there’s still time for us to decide not to be freaks, and not to be jerks, and not to be total recluses, so that we have some cool stories to tell our grandkids…but mainly so that we can just live with ourselves when we’re older, you know?”
“If you say so.”
“She’s right,” said Ana. “It’s kind of cool, if you think about it.”
“Anything’s possible,” said Suvi. “Anything.”
Walking home past the school that afternoon, Ana sensed that something was wrong. The school building stood dark and still, the windows stripped of displays and notices and wall charts, the parking lot eerily empty. But that wasn’t it.
Then, running a hand along the iron railing, she realized that the last of the purple ribbons had gone. Untied in the end-of-year cleanup, perhaps, or simply weathered away by months of wind and snow and rain.
Ana stood there for several moments, unable to move. Then she remembered the scarf that Lena had bought her all those months ago in Kensington Market. Ana hadn’t worn it once; she kept it tied to her bag instead.
She went home and told her father that she would be back again in ten minutes. She ran upstairs, pulled her bag from the bed. Untied the scarf. Back downstairs, down the street, running now, running…
Ana looped the scarf around the center railing: once, twice, three times. Knotted it. Wrapped it one more time and double-knotted it again.
“For Faith,” she said. “Wherever you are.”
They had dinner again the following week at Lena’s. This time, she and Ana cooked one of Justina’s recipes: lamb chops, yellow rice, corn and peas. It tasted, they all agreed, exactly as it always had at Justina’s table. Perhaps even better.
Papa told a story about one of Mrs. Fratelli’s grown sons locking himself in the garage by accident and having to call the fire department to cut the door out. They had laughed and shaken their heads at his idiocy. Lena said that her work was moving into a new office and everyone was on edge because most of the files had been packed up and some of the important ones weren’t accounted for. Ana told her parents about Suvi’s plans to take her to the CNE, which was all about rides and music and cotton candy. Ana still had no idea what cotton candy tasted like.
“Pink and fluff,” said Lena. “Unless it’s blue. Then it’s blue and fluff.”
Ana smirked. “So, it tastes of fluff?”
“Sweet fluff. It turns to air in your mouth.”
When the dishes were done, her father said, “Ana, your mother and I need to talk.”
So Ana took her backpack to her mother’s bedroom at the far end of the apartment, closed the door and, with a sigh of contentment, lay down on the bed.
When she woke, the room was dark. Voices elsewhere in the apartment rose and fell, separated by silences and footsteps.
Ana opened the bedroom door to find the hallway in darkness. Her parents were in the living room. The door was closed.
“Too much…let’s just…time…” Lena’s voice was low, tired.
“There’s been enough time.”
Ana crept farther down the hallway.
“Do you realize what you did to us?” her father was saying. Ana couldn’t hear Lena’s reply. “She was never the same child. This is all new. This is all down to you.”
At first Ana thought there was accusation in his voice—it was urgent, energized—but then she realized it was something else.
“You underestimate yourself,” said Lena.
“You know it as well as I do. I was never enough for her. How could I be?”
“What more could you be?”
A long silence. Ana crept closer to the door.
Her father did not reply.
Ana returned to the kitchen, switched on the light. One by one, she took the dishes that had dried on the rack and returned them to the cupboards. Eventually, the noise would bring them back to her.
“Papa?”
Two packed bags sat at the bottom of the stairs.
“Papa? I’m back.”
She’d said good-bye to Suvi for the week—she and her parents were going to New York to see relatives. Suvi had asked Ana to come, but Ana told her they still had catching up to do, time to spend together as a family.
“What’s with the bags?” Ana fumbled with one of the zips, caught a peek of her father’s blue shirt. She checked the other bag. Her toothbrush, the Camp Kawinpasset sweatshirt. “What’s happening?”
“Go where? What are you talking about?” Ana frowned. “Are we moving in with Mama?”
Her father glanced up. Two smears of red colored his cheeks. “I can’t, Ana. It’s too much. Everything has happened so quickly. It’s not for her to decide what we do—”
“But everything is going so well…”
“For you, perhaps, it might seem that way. I even found myself thinking that she is what you need right now. But she lives here; she wants a different life. You are too young to make that decision.” He raised his hand, stopping her. “I am too old for this. Things falling through my fingers, others telling me what to do. We made a mistake coming here…”
“Where then? Where are you going?”
“Perhaps to Johan’s. Would you like that?”
“To visit, maybe. But why are we taking everything?” She went into the kitchen. The cupboards had been stripped. “What’s going on?”
“New tenants are moving in. I think it’s a sign. If God had wanted us to stay, he would have made it easier.”