When the Moon was Ours(25)

Aracely tried to take the pocket square.

Ms. Owens held on.

Aracely ran her fine-boned fingers through a lock of Ms. Owens’ hair. “Let go,” she whispered, her voice warm with the assurance that everything was good and right, that it was the golden hour of afternoon and not night, that there was no fear in the world.

Ms. Owens shut her eyes, and opened her hands, and Aracely took the pocket square.

Miel folded her elbows, hands gripping her upper arms. All the heat in her body pulled to her wrist. She could almost feel the weight of Ms. Owens’ heart, how she wore her disappointment like wet clothes.

“Lie down,” Aracely said.

Ms. Owens did. The almost-white blond of her curls fanned out from her head. Flakes of mascara clung to her cheeks like ash, and tears trembled at her lash line.

Aracely tore a scrap from the pocket square. Ms. Owens winced as though she felt it. Aracely burned the cloth in a glass jar and said the prayer of Santa Rita de Cascia. The edges of the satin blackened and curled in on themselves.

Miel handed Aracely a purple onion, the green stalk still on. Aracely always knew which color egg, which orange, which herb. She swept the onion over Ms. Owens as she said the prayer again, her whisper softening the air in the room.

Ms. Owens kept her eyes shut tight enough to wring tears into her hairline.

Miel stood, waiting for Aracely to tell her what to do. She waited long enough that she thought she saw ribbons of faint light shining along the floor. They snaked and twirled, skimming the baseboards. They wrapped around the legs of the wooden table.

At first they looked like tiny streams, bands of water no thicker than her wrist. Then they looked solid, their glint a hard edge.

Like glass. Like vines of glass, not just deep green but dark blue and red and violet. They spun up the indigo walls. They reached out toward Miel, trying to wrap her forearms. She felt them without them touching her, a cord of pain from each elbow to each wrist.

They pricked her like thorns and leaves growing under her skin, and she felt the ache of a glass vine caging her forearm. They would crack, and the jagged pieces would cut into her wrists. Her blood would tint the glass. It would splinter and cut deeper into her.

A bump against the window, like a bird hitting the pane, cut through the room. A sharp scream followed it. It streamed into the air, skittering along the walls.

“Dammit, Miel,” Aracely said, her hands on Ms. Owens’ shoulders. “Did you hear me? Open the window!”

Ms. Owens sat up, clutching for the pocket square she no longer had. She looked down, startled to find her hands empty.

Miel hadn’t even heard Aracely ask the first time. But she could see the startled look in Ms. Owens’ face, the way her eyes looked almost white.

Aracely had taken out her lovesickness.

And because Miel hadn’t opened the window fast enough, it had struck the glass, and then rushed back into Ms. Owens.

Miel leapt toward the window, pushing up the sash as wide as it went.

“It’s okay,” Aracely said to the trembling woman on the table. “It’s okay.”

But Ms. Owens’ breathing fluttered, and she broke into screaming again.

But Aracely kept her hands on Ms. Owens.

“Lie back down,” she said.

However assuring Aracely’s voice sounded, Miel caught the straight line of her back, like a current had gone through her.

Ms. Owens lay down again. But she shivered. She clutched at the air.

Aracely hovered her hands over Ms. Owens, ready to set her palms against her collarbone.

But Miel could see the lovesickness, even more restless now that it had left and rushed back, kicking around inside Ms. Owens.

Ms. Owens sat up, and her hair spilled down her back. “No,” she said. The tightening of her face pinched two more mascara-darkened tears from the corners of her eyes. “I can’t.”

She ran out of the indigo room, the waves of her hair sweeping her shoulders.

These were not words Aracely drew from those who got up from her table. Each time Aracely gave a cure, the visitors always said they were tired. It’s so strange, I’m so tired. I’ve never been this tired. Aracely’s lovesickness cure often made people sleep for days. They felt fine at first, awake and alive, and then they sank into relief and exhaustion. Once the lovesickness cure had made a man fall asleep to the rust-colored leaves of late November and wake to the first snow silvering his window.

But Ms. Owens was running out of the violet house, startled and awake.

The door slammed. Ms. Owens’ steps scattered the gravel outside.

The torn pocket square had fallen to the floor.

Miel bent to pick it up.

Aracely’s steps clicked on the wooden floor, and Miel looked up. Aracely was rushing toward the front door.

Miel followed her outside, the air cool and green with the smell of grass and light rain.

But Ms. Owens had already started her car. In the distance, the taillights were growing smaller.

“Just let her go,” Miel said. “She’ll come back.”

Aracely turned to her, so close Miel could smell the amber of her perfume. “You told me you were ready. You told me you could do this.”

“I thought I was,” Miel said. “I just wasn’t paying attention for one second. I’m sorry.”

“Do you realize what you’ve done?” Aracely looked stricken, possessed, like she’d witnessed sons and daughters scratching out the names on their family’s headstones.