Children of the Moon

by Anthony De Sa

  * * *

  Amalia sleeps with me in my bed. I do not want to wake her. I listen to her shallow breaths. Often, when I cannot find sleep, I look at her beside me and let the sounds coming from her slumber, the hisses and soft gurgles, lull me, until I can almost cry. The elephant carving remains caged in her delicate fingers.

  Simu taught me it was best to always speak the truth. Amalia knows her real mother was an albino, no more than fifteen when she got pregnant. She was unwed and already shunned in her village. She found her way to the Grande Hotel and stayed with me. I told Amalia that we were born in the same way—to mothers who loved us but could not take care of us.

  “Has the sun gone away, Alma?” Amalia asks, batting her eyelashes and stretching her arms above her head. Her fingertips touch the wrought iron headboard. She has grown to look like her mother. Her cheeks are fatter now—the same grin, the same eyes.

  “Almost, filha,” I whisper, stroking the soft skin under her chin.

  “Has the scribbler left?” she asks.

  “His name is Serafim, and he will return again tonight.”

  Amalia does not like that I share my stories with others. Four or five scribblers, all men, have come and gone over the years. Serafim is the first one to insist I tell my story from the beginning. It is the only way to capture its meaning, he says. I’ve already revealed more to him than I ever have before. I pull Amalia close to me. She reaches behind and places her hand on my neck. She touches my sores carefully. I do not flinch. I do not want to frighten her.

  Later that evening, from my perch on the balcony, I see Serafim outside the hotel grounds, caught in a crowd of people, among bundles of cloth, chickens and goats, bottles of water, smouldering fires and rusted cars that barely roll down the unpaved roads. Children surround him offering their services as porters or begging for money. He breaks through and walks along the edge of the garbage-filled pool. How clear the pool must have been once, when the hotel had just opened and it seemed like all its promise was held in that large rectangle of unnatural blue. Now in the glow of the Coca-Cola machine, the murky water that has collected in the deep end is the colour of blood.

  I turn from the ocean. Amalia is tinkering with the record player. It is encased in black leather. The brass handle clips onto the lid, where she enjoys tracing the gold-embossed letters, DECCA, with her fingers. Convinced she will get the disc to spin, her slender fingers pinch the arm, while her other hand grips the crank and turns. She is a determined child, and part of me is certain she will succeed one day. Nothing would give me more joy than to hear music lifting into the air. I can see Ezequiel cranking the machine, right there, in that very spot, I think, as he lowers the arm over the record that circles and crackles until the sound shoots out. A woman’s voice took him away to a place that was safe and familiar. I could only watch and love him because it was all I had; he was never mine.

  * * *

  —

  “I am leaving in a few days.”

  It is that time.

  He slips his tape recorder from his pocket and presses Record.

  Sitting on the edge of my bed, I thumb the frayed edge of my shuka. I reach over to light the lantern atop the stacked crates by my bedside. This is my room and everything in it is all I have: a bed, a makeshift nightstand, the chair Serafim sits in, two cardboard boxes that hold my things, and a broken record player on the floor in the corner.

  “Where is Amalia?” Serafim asks.

  Ophelia was not around this morning to watch the children. Amalia went to visit all the hotel blocks, hoping to find someone who had seen her.

  “She’ll be back soon,” I say, but there is a burning sensation rising in my throat and gut. I want Amalia near me, close by. I wind the loose threads from my shuka around my finger and tug. The hem comes undone, the edge raw.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Serafim says.

  “When I had healed, the boy, Kwazi, helped me bring the record player down from the mountain,” I say, wiping my lenses with my sleeve. “I knew how important music was to Ezequiel, and I hoped he’d come back to claim it.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Ezequiel and I went back up the mountain together, but I came down alone.”

  Serafim walks over to stand beside me on the balcony. He places his hand on my shoulder. Only now, before he leaves, does he touch me. It feels good to have the weight of his hand on me.

  Ezequiel

  Pó SAT BY FATIMA’S SIDE watching the rise and fall of the woman’s chest.

  It was a vigil. Machinga entered the hut to relieve Pó. She remained with Vasco, when everyone else in the village had moved down the mountain or closer to the Rhodesian border. Machinga and Vasco were too old to leave. Kwazi remained to look after his grandparents. He ran off the mountain to visit his parents and returned with necessary provisions.

  I didn’t recall much about our return home from Beira, two weeks before. Pó said we were stopped at three different checkpoints by the Portuguese army. They were looking for FRELIMO insurgents. Pó held me tight, kept me quiet. A scan of the flashlight beam, a quick check of the vehicle’s interior and underneath it, and we moved on. I remained in a state of terror the whole time, looking over my shoulder, searching for Abel.

  Fatima died in the evening. A couple of days before, I had found a soft patch of soil on one of the top slopes. With Kwazi’s help, I dug a hole deep enough to bury her. The busy work took the worry away from my troubled mind. I knew things could not remain the same. The war would catch up to me, to Pó. The visit to Beira made that clear. We needed a way out.

  * * *

  —

  Vasco sits at his grinder, pressing the blade and sweeping it from side to side with balance and precision.

  “Do you have a proverb for me today, old man?” I ask. It’s a game we play. Vasco translates a Bantu proverb into Portuguese and I have up to ten questions to help me decipher the proverb’s meaning. I sit on a bench directly across from Vasco and think of Papa Gilberto.

  “A stick one bends while it is still green,” he says. I was hoping for one of the funny ones, like my favourite: Stroke your dog and he will steal eggs.

  “I’m afraid I need something to lift my spirits.”

  “You asked. You must live your life, Zeca. But to do so you must defeat your demons.”

  He pats the bench next to him. I shift closer, my arm brushing his side. He rests his hand on my thigh.

  “Now. A stick one bends while it is green.”

  “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Pó. Stay close to her,” he says quickly, wiping his sleeve across his mouth to sop up the dribble. “I have Machinga. Fatima had her God. You have Pó. She is all you need.”

  Sparks jump from the steel blade only to disappear at Vasco’s bare feet. His hands remain steady with the effort of his work.

  * * *

  —

  Pó is sitting across from the fire. Her whole body is covered in white, shrouded in pure mourning.

  “We must bury Fatima. I have her grave ready.”

  “No,” Pó says. “I will do what my aunt Simu did for my mother. Simu slaughtered a goat and covered my mother in its fat and blood. Five moons later, my mother was gone. This is our way.”

  Kwazi returns carrying a duiker around his neck. It is one of the antelopes that live at the top of Mount Gorongosa, and because this is a sacred killing, the boy did not have to travel down the mountain to kill it. He drops the animal on the ground.

  Pó and Machinga begin to carve.

  “Fatima will go to church one final time,” Pó says.

  It is late. With bloodied hands, Machinga slips into the hut and helps Pó drag Fatima’s naked body outside. Disease had eaten away at her and she had turned thin. Her body has stiffened, but they manage to prop Fatima up in her wheelchair. Machinga threads a sari under Fatima’s arms and across her chest before securing the woman’s torso to the back of the chair. Pó places Fatim
a’s lace veil over her head, and with her body slightly askew, Fatima is ready.

  Pó pushes the chair and makes her way along the narrow path to the clearing and the smouldering fire that is tended by Vasco and Kwazi. As we approach, Vasco stands away from the fire, leaving Kwazi to poke his stick at the wood, lifting red embers into the black sky.

  Pó circles the fire with Fatima in her chair, the same way she has done every Sunday since they arrived, but this time Pó sings a song. I know it. It is the lullaby Simu had sung to Pó as a child, the same song Pó sang to the elephant calf.

  * * *

  I’m singing a song that is on the radio as I set the table. My voice cracks. John, the renter upstairs who helped me home the other day, has been leaving meals outside my basement door. I like to think it is the same food he is eating with his family upstairs. I wash the plates and leave them outside my door, where they are picked up by one of his children. I see them running past my basement window.

  Today it is spaghetti and meatballs. I don’t like noodles. I’m staring at the food and say a little prayer. Mother Anke always said we needed to be grateful for everything God gave us.

  A car backfires.

  I need to pack my things. They will be coming for me soon. They will take me away from my home…

  * * *

  Today Mother Anke adds a few more things to her travelling trunk. She uses her whole body to push it down the hallway, closer to the front door, before walking down our front steps to sit in her wicker chair by the well. I’m not certain what she is waiting for, but I know she wants to leave and she will remain in that place until she is taken away. She does not speak. I ask her questions, but she does not respond. She wears a straw hat, its wide brim protecting her face and shoulders from the scorching sun. The tsetse flies land on her skin and bite her and she does not flick them away.

  I climb up to sit on my branch in the old acacia in the clearing. From here I can watch Mother Anke through the mesh of leaves, and I can also scan the bush and the dirt road that rises over the hill. Papa does not leave on his horse anymore. Instead, he locks himself in his office and closes the shutters.

  It is late afternoon in October, just before the long rains begin to fall, and the ground is scorched. The riverbed is dry, not even a trickle.

  I look up across the mission. The sounds and movements around me have stopped. The jungle has become suddenly quiet. Mother Anke sits up in her chair and straightens her back, as if she has picked up the scent of something approaching. I hear a rustle in the trees. Twigs snap. Then I hear a rifle’s unmistakable cachink. Dark shapes of a man—and then another, and another—slowly emerge from the shadow into the clearing. Behind them, a machete slashes the brush and another man steps from the trees. I look around and count seven men in military uniforms. They do not see me up in my perch.

  “We came for a visit,” the first man says to Mother Anke. His machine gun is slung behind his back. “We came to find God in your mission.”

  I allow myself a tiny breath of hope, but I am thirteen now and I can tell when men are playing. One of the men, a small man, throws his head back and laughs loudly. This annoys the first man, the toothless leader who simply holds his hand up and the small one stops. I follow the other men, who have shifted and now circle us in the clearing. Some of them are squatting and have lit cigarettes. Their machetes lie on the ground, but their guns rest across their thighs.

  Mother Anke stands and pushes her straw hat off her head. It falls to her back, its string cutting across her neck. The first soldier offers his canteen to her.

  “I have water,” she says in Portuguese, pointing to the well. I have not heard her speak in over three weeks and I no longer recognize the tone in her voice.

  “If you’re going to insult me by not drinking my water, then I should offer it to the boy in the tree,” he says, turning to look straight at me.

  His face is round, with large ears that stick out. His eyes are big and set far apart. Mother Anke looks up at me in the tree. I slide down. One of the soldiers has removed his boot and is massaging his sockless foot. He looks younger than the rest, a boy like me.

  “My friends call me Macaco,” the leader says, jiggling the canteen in front of me. I’m not certain what to do. My knees feel weak. I reach for the canteen and take a drink.

  Papa Gilberto appears at the front door. The men look at him. He is not fully dressed; his suspenders lie slack by his sides, and his linen shirt is not fully buttoned to the collar. For a moment I believe Papa has been expecting these men, that he called on them to help deliver Mother Anke’s trunk to the city.

  “You have come to our mission and so we welcome you. Is there anything we can do for you?”

  I know Papa’s voice and there is no conviction in the offer.

  “I think we have everything we’re looking for,” Macaco replies.

  Papa comes down the steps to stand behind Mother Anke. He places a hand on her shoulder and attempts to direct her back into her chair. She refuses to sit. The other soldiers have begun walking from building to building with their guns raised.

  “Stop!” Macaco shouts. I am ten feet away from being beside my parents. “You, boy, bring her chair here, under the branch.”

  I brush my father’s arm and Papa whispers, “Do as you’re told.” I grab the back of Mother Anke’s chair and drag it in the dust, making clear lines with the back legs.

  “Pick it up!” the man says, and I do. I carry the wicker chair by its armrests and place it under the branch, in the spot where Lázaro used to sit.

  “Now come here.”

  I look to Papa, who is trying very hard to keep his feet rooted to the ground.

  “Animals!” Mother Anke yells.

  Macaco shrugs. “What do you have hidden there?” he asks me.

  I reach back and feel my slingshot tucked in my back pocket.

  “Give it here,” Macaco says, wiggling his finger, his palm up.

  My hand shakes as my mind runs with the idea that I am quick enough to whip the slingshot from my pants, nestle a stone in its sling, and aim between Macaco’s eyes. He will fall like the giant in the Bible. But Papa’s face urges me to do as I have been instructed.

  Macaco holds the gift Lázaro had carved for me, the only thing left of my old friend. He flings it away. “Armando, come here!” The boy uncoils rope before he approaches. “Give me your gun,” Macaco tells Armando. Armando lifts the strap of the machine gun over his head and gives it to Macaco. “If you are going to be a soldier, you must use a man’s weapon. Not a child’s toy.” Macaco presses the gun against my chest. “Take it!” he says. I clutch the wooden handle and allow my fingers to trace over the black metal of the gun’s forearm and barrel. It feels strangely warm and heavy.

  My back explodes with heat. The prayer house is ablaze. The other men light torches they have made and begin to touch the straw roofs of each structure on our mission. The goats run to the fields and the chickens cluck nervously, small bursts of flight to hide away from the flames. I see Papa’s books being thrown out the window. His office chair is next. I look to Papa for an answer and suddenly hear the music from one of his records cutting through the roar and whistle of fire. His face shows no emotion and I am angry with him. He needs to do something before it is all gone.

  “You are worse than animals!” Mother Anke holds on to the sides of her skirt.

  She steps forward. Macaco does not move. Mother Anke raises her hand to smack him. He catches her swing in mid-air, holds on. “Such a fine hand,” he says, lowers it to his lips and kisses it. I take a short breath. Macaco swings his machine gun and strikes the side of her head with the thick butt. Mother Anke staggers back and Papa can do nothing to soften her fall. Pee warms my inner thigh.

  The boy stares at me, or perhaps at his gun. I’m not sure.

  Mother Anke’s eyes begin to flutter and I wish they would remain closed so she does not have to see our world burning down. But it is Papa who frightens me mos
t. I have never seen Papa without an answer.

  I want to raise the gun and fire. But I don’t know how it works.

  “You,” Macaco says, waving his gun, directing Papa to move. “Go sit in the chair there.”

  Papa walks slowly to the wicker chair, his hands turned up to heaven as if he is reciting a prayer. “Go sit with your mother,” he says as he brushes past me.

  “Gilberto,” Mother Anke says. She wobbles a bit as she stands.

  Unable to let go of the gun, I walk toward Mother Anke. A trickle of blood from her temple runs down to the corner of her mouth. She is about to take a step forward to meet me but two of the men grab her and hold her arms back. Her whole body tilts forward, a final thrust to rush for Papa, who sits down in the wicker chair. The men bend Mother Anke over the well’s dark opening. They pin down her arms and she holds on to the stone sides, her knuckles white with the strain. I turn back to Papa. Armando is securing him to the back of the chair with rope. In my shame, I can only look at the tips of his toes. When I do look up, his face is turned up to the sky. He is looking up at something only he can see. The smoke billows above.

  The world is erased—sound, colour, movement. I am stuck in place, immovable. I do not turn from my father. I want Papa to say something, to give me a sign. I cannot stop my lips from trembling. All the air in Mother Anke has been released, poured out into the well, her body landing with a thud. Her scream echoes across the grounds.

  I open my mouth.