When the Moon was Ours(36)

This time, when the Bonner girls found her in the dark space between trees, she did not fight. And because she did not fight, they did not dig their fingers into her, or drag her to the stained glass coffin. They just set their hands on her, like they were all in church and they were blessing her. Ivy parted the blades of those brass scissors, and Miel gave herself over to the blazing reds and oranges of the Bonner girls, bright as tongues of flame.





bay of honor

She kept the door to her room closed. She almost never kept the door to her room closed. But lately she and Aracely barely spoke. Miel didn’t know if Aracely was still mad at her, and she didn’t know if she should ask.

Miel lay curled on her side, cheek against her comforter.

Aracely was civil, and that made it worse. She poured Miel coffee in the morning, offered without speaking, but didn’t hold her lips tight or look away like she was angry. She just handed over the cup and then went back to frying nasturtium blossoms. It reminded Miel of how badly she’d ruined the lovesickness cure, and how she’d thinned out Ms. Owens’ loyalty so badly that she was open to the whispers and charms of four fire-haired girls.

Now it was all on Miel to save Sam, to make sure no one tried to force him into matching the name on that paper. She had cut into pieces the net Aracely had woven for all of them. The ache in her wrist, like Ivy was pressing the point of those brass scissors into her, would not let her forget.

The tap of knuckles struck Miel’s door, the soft rhythm she recognized.

“Come in,” Miel said without moving.

The thread of Aracely’s perfume snuck into the room ahead of her.

“Are you hungry?” Aracely said. “I was thinking of making something.”

Miel shook her head, cheek still against the bed.

Aracely sat on the edge of her bed, the slow lowering of her weight buoying Miel a little. It had always been a comforting feeling to her, the sense of another person sitting near her, especially Aracely. Now it sharpened the truth of how little they’d talked.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you about Emma,” Aracely said.

“I deserved it,” Miel said, her voice coming out hoarse without her meaning it to. Not a crying sound. More like her voice, within the country of this house, had fallen out of use.

“No, you didn’t,” Aracely said. “And I went over there and made it right. She’s cured. At least until the next time around.”

“Great,” Miel said, and the word came out so soft even Aracely missed the sarcasm.

“You can’t do that again,” Aracely said. “If you’re not really here, you can’t help me. I’d rather you tell me that.”

Miel nodded, her cheek rubbing against the quilt.

“I know I’ve expected a lot of you,” Aracely said, and the lowering of her voice made Miel know what she meant, how Miel had been handing her eggs and lemons and glass jars since she was six, her small hands holding them up. “But you’re not gonna disappoint me by telling me you can’t do it. Everybody has bad days.”

Miel shut her eyes, guilt braiding thick in her wrist and snaking deeper into her.

Aracely ran a hand down Miel’s hair. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

She almost asked what she meant, the night Aracely had to bring her home, or the lovesickness cure Miel had wrecked when she did not open the window fast enough.

But it didn’t matter. The answer was the same either way.

“No,” Miel said.

A knock echoed up from downstairs. Sam’s mother. She was the only one who never used the doorbell. She thought it was too formal when the four of them were so much like family.

Aracely went downstairs. Miel pulled herself off the comforter, tripping over clothes she’d left on the floor yesterday and the day before, and followed her.

Sam’s mother stood in the front hall.

“Have either of you seen Samir?” she asked.

Aracely’s eyes crawled over to Miel. “You were supposed to meet him somewhere, weren’t you?”

She could see Aracely holding her back teeth together. Her eyes flinched a little wider. Miel could almost hear what she was thinking. Yes, Miel. Say yes.

“Yes,” Miel said, letting her gasp sound like a sudden realization, as though she’d forgotten and now remembered. “Yes.” She glanced toward the watch Sam’s mother wore on her left wrist. “I’m late, but I’ll make sure he’s home early.”

Sam’s mother looked between the two of them, her gaze careful and considering.

She did not believe them.

Miel knew how tall Sam’s mother was, taller than Sam or Aracely. Her long skirts, skimming the floor, made her look even taller. But she never seemed this tall when she laughed, or when she taught Miel the difference between sweet basil and tulasi. She had a tulasi tree on the side of her house that she never cut or picked from, and its green and purple leaves seemed to give off a stronger scent for being left alone.

She seemed this tall only when Sam and Miel brought home grass snakes. Or when the parents of one of the girls she looked after did not notice that their daughter was so nervous so often she bit her fingernails to bleeding.

Or when she wore this kind of worried look. It was those moments, and this look, that made Miel hesitate to call Sam’s mother Yasmin. It didn’t matter that she’d told Miel to. This woman was so much a mother, so much an adult, and any reminder of that made addressing her by her first name feel strange and irreverent.