Highwire Moon Read online

  Highwire Moon

  A Novel

  Susan Straight

  Contents

  prologue

  tourmaline

  san cristobal

  the sands

  lasso

  colonia pedregal

  mecca

  god of the hearth

  rest

  tijuana

  ticuaá-butterfly

  babu teeth like opals

  corn milk

  smoke people

  naranjas

  drylands

  formica

  santa ana

  mukat

  día de los muertos

  the heart’s fontanel

  pinkeye

  cabazon

  cloud people

  starla

  glossary

  about the author

  FOR ROSETTE

  my Velcro child of hip and heart, who waited so patiently

  acknowledgments

  Many thanks and muchas gracias to all those who helped me in Oaxaca and in the United States:

  Diana and Renee Carr, Nick Dolphin, Institute Welte, and Dr. Eduardo Cervantes in Oaxaca, and especially Isabel Martinez Maldonado, Gaby, and Angeles in Santa Maria de Atzompa.

  Richard Parks, Elaine Pfefferblit, and Pat Mulcahy in New York. In the country of mothers, Holly Robinson, Elizabeth Eastmond, Beverly Johnson, Charlotte Carrington, and Gail Watson. In the wild life, Jeff Watson. In the computer universe, Juli and Jason Gladney. Thanks also to Arabella Meyer, Michael Kearney, and Gordon Johnson.

  Grateful acknowledgment goes to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Lannan Foundation for their generous assistance, which enabled me not only to write, but to spend time with three invaluable sources:

  Gaila, Delphine, and Rosette, who got me a life.

  ______

  A glossary of Mixtec and Spanish words is on page 351.

  fontanel:

  The soft spot on a newborn’s skull.

  Just as the child is born with a literal hole in its head, where the bones slowly close underneath the fragile shield of skin, so the child is born with a figurative hole in its heart . . . What slips in before it anneals shapes the man or woman into which that child will grow.

  —Jane Yolen, Touch Magic

  introduction

  I began writing Highwire Moon in 1980, when I was nineteen years old. That summer, in my hometown of Riverside, California, my father came home with news one evening from the linen plant where he worked. A group of women whose job it was to wash, dry, iron, and stack hospital linen had been taken by immigration officials that day. They were undocumented workers from Mexico and would be deported.

  I sat on the front steps that night, the three cement steps that faced our street, and couldn’t stop thinking about the likelihood that the deported women had left children behind. What if one of them had been forced to leave her children with a neighbor she didn’t like or trust, just for that morning, because she had no one else? What if a ten-year-old had been left to watch younger siblings, and then the house grew dark, and still no one came home? What would happen to those children now?

  That night, I looked behind me at the cheap plastic doorbell, which glowed red-orange in the dark. For my entire childhood, my mother took in a series of foster children, and I suddenly remembered my foster sister Sandy, who lived with us for six years. (I had two brothers, and usually there were two more foster siblings, a girl and a boy.) Sandy and I shared a bedroom, our clothes, our lives, but one night when I was 12 and she was 11, someone rang that doorbell. It was her older brother Lee, who’d just gotten out of jail and come to see her, which was against the rules. But my mother let them visit on the porch, and when Sandy came back inside, her eyes were changed. I didn’t know the word then, but I do now—bereft. Though our family was large and stable, she missed her brother, and her mother, who was in a mental institution.

  I began to write in my car that night, sitting at a local church parking lot near a statue of the Virgin Mary. I wrote fifty pages in a notebook, imagining the life of a young Mexican woman who was taken in an immigration raid, leaving her half-American, California-born daughter to be raised by a foster mother. I wrote about the night the mother is taken away, and the three-year-old girl waking up in the station wagon with her mother gone. She imagines that she isn’t good enough for her mother to keep her, and her mother nearly dies trying to get back across the border to retrieve her child.

  But I didn’t really understand—nor could I finish the novel—until I had daughters of my own, and nearly lost one of them. Only then did I begin to understand the full complexity of the story, and why mothers, and fathers, would take such huge risks for the possibility of helping their families. After those first fifty pages, I put the novel away, and came back to it over and over until I had three daughters, and until I went to southern Mexico.

  I had been countless times to the border towns near my home, Tijuana and Ensenada, and spent time in shantytowns with church groups delivering food and medicine and clothing to desperate mothers. But in 1997, I journeyed to Oaxaca, so that I could see the landscape and the small villages, and talk to people about making the decision to risk it all and travel illegally to a new country. My daughters, seven and five, were surrounded by Mexican women who cooed over their hair and eyes, and offered them sweets and tortillas. But the younger one soon became very ill with a bacterial infection she had apparently picked up before leaving California. A kind Oaxacan woman helped us find a doctor, and my husband carried our delirious, nearly-unconscious child for blocks and blocks to the doctor’s home. We then had to trust that the injection he gave her was the antibiotic she needed, and that he knew how to make her better.

  I was horrified. This was my fault. I had wanted to write about a mother who would do anything to find the child she left behind in America, and I had ended up putting my own daughter at risk in the country my character had fled. When the fever finally broke, I walked to the nearest church and joined a dozen women with shawls over their heads praying in front of La Virgen de la Soledad, patron saint of Oaxaca. I told them in Spanish what had happened, and they showed me how to offer my own life for that of my child, assuring me that God would hear my prayer. That’s what they were doing, on their knees, in the dark, with photos of their children and offerings of candles and coins and flowers. I joined them. And when I returned, her father said that he had done the same, but alone in the hotel room with no candles, only her breathing.

  This is what I learned in Mexico: Parents will make any sacrifice for their children. Why do so many come across the border illegally? If you told me that one of my daughters would die early after stepping on a nail in a village without a doctor, or that my girls would have to leave school because they were needed to work and support the family, or that they would be in danger every day from drug cartels, I can promise you I would risk everything to give them a better life, especially if that life was available just across the border. I would walk a thousand miles if I had to, and so would most of the mothers I know.

  Back in California, I spent another year finishing Highwire Moon. Serafina, the mother from Mexico, takes care of her own mother until she dies, and then she heads north to try and find the daughter who would now be fourteen. Elvia, her daughter, bounces from foster home to foster home, finally landing at a wonderful, caring home with a foster mother name Sandy, who makes each of her girls feel special. Then Elvia is taken by her father, and finally, she heads south, on her own journey to try to find out why her mother abandoned her.

  When it came to the title, my own three daughters were the inspiration, back when they were small. We have lived in the same old house in Riverside
for their entire lives, and they know in which window the full moon will rise each month. It is the window in the laundry room, and while they sat on the dryer and I folded their socks, we would see that moon sit for a minute on the telephone wire in the sky, looking as if it could change its course and roll another way.

  Hundreds of women have told me that this novel was the first story they’d heard that reflected their own mothers’ journey, or their own, across the border, trying to keep their families alive. And hundreds more have told me that they will never eat a strawberry now without thinking about who is stooping to pick it in a field. Foster mothers and children have told me that they love seeing a good foster mother in fiction. Immigration law is changing every day in America, but people still cross the border, as my character Serafina did, to make money to help her own mother survive. For thirty years in California, I’ve seen immigrant parents harvest crops, often with their children at the edges of the fields, and I’ve stood beside immigrant parents at my daughters’ public schools. The mothers at the playground fences curve their fingers around their jaws, watching, in exactly the same pose as Dorothea Lange’s iconic Migrant Mother from the Dust Bowl exodus. All mothers seem to make this gesture when they watch the children they love.

  prologue

  Serafina held the Virgen de Guadalupe curled in her palm. The blue-robed woman standing on a bed of roses was still warm. Larry had torn the oval picture from the glass candleholder, the veladora Serafina kept burning all day to assure the Virgen’s gaze upon her and her daughter.

  “This ain’t Mexico,” he had said, eyes red as pomegranate seeds, and then he roared off in his blue truck.

  Without the image, the candle flame shook small and lonely as a glowing grain of rice. Elvia stared at the wick through the bare glass. Serafina watched the tiny fire reflected in her pupils. The little duplex room had filled with the purple light of summer evening.

  Serafina smoothed the stained-glass edging around the Virgen. This was not enough. She had tried to make an altar inside the kitchen, but she needed to pray inside a church, with santos looking down upon her, to ask what she should do.

  “Náā?” Elvia called to her mother in their Mixtec language. “Nducha yúján nunī yihi?” She wanted Serafina to make atole, to heat the milk with ground-corn masa and sugar and cinnamon.

  Serafina waited, her eyebrows raised. “Please,” Elvia said perfectly. She had just turned three. She could say many words. Serafina picked her up and carried her to the kitchen so she could feel the small hands fluttering like moths on her shoulders.

  Serafina knew Please. Thank you. Money. Pay. Fuckin cops. Fuckin truck. American. Speak English. Okay. Sorry. She could say “sorry,” but she couldn’t form her lips properly around any of the other words. She had said “sorry” a few hours ago to Larry, when he had whirled around the house and torn the Virgen from her veladora and shouted, “Ellie’s American! My kid’s American, okay? Quit this shit!” But her “sorry” didn’t sound right. She tried to whisper it now, but her throat wouldn’t cooperate. She was crying. She wanted to kneel inside the church at home, to touch San Cristobal, the patron saint of her village, to rub Elvia with flowers and then lay them on the altar as an offering, to pray about what kind of life Elvia would have.

  “Náā?” Elvia crooned now. “Cap’n Crunch?”

  It was almost gone. It was very expensive. But Serafina poured the yellow pillows of cereal into a plastic bowl. She knew she would have to drive the car. Elvia could carry the cereal. Elvia reached up with a golden square between her fingers, offering it to her mother, and Serafina crushed the sweet powder with her teeth.

  Maiz. Nunī. It was corn, she knew. She stirred a swirling brown veil of cinnamon into the atole. The steam rose from the thickened milk and clouded her eyes for a moment, and she saw home. The mist descending from the mountains, softening the harsh light of here. California.

  “Náā?” Elvia said from near the TV. “Sesame Street.”

  Serafina kneeled next to her daughter, blowing on the mug of atole, trying to imagine herself driving past the fence. The television said, “A. Apple. A.”

  “Apple,” Elvia said. “Náā—apple.”

  Serafina nodded, closing her eyes so the steam couldn’t collect there and make tears that would frighten her daughter.

  “B. Balloon. B.” A boy was carried away by the blue circle.

  “C. Cat. C.” The yellow cat’s whiskers shivered when he grinned.

  Outside in the twilight, she held Elvia on her hip and touched the hot door handle of the black car named Nova, almost like a bride. Novia. The car was Larry’s bride, with heavy-lidded jeweled eyes. Serafina studied the dusty hood. The car always stayed in the driveway, facing the street to hide the blank square where the license plate should be. When Larry came home, he worked on the insides, tangled like pig intestines.

  He had tossed the keys at her and laughed. “Drive back to Mexico,” he’d said. “Get a life.”

  Now Elvia slid onto the front seat, laughing, holding her bowl of cereal. She loved Larry’s truck; sometimes he let her turn the steering wheel. Last week, when Serafina began to ease the Nova up and down the dirt driveway, Elvia had explored each dashboard knob. Her short brown legs stuck out stiffly over the edge of the seat.

  Serafina placed the mug of hot atole in the black plastic tray on the seat between them. When she turned the key in its silver circle, the car closed a dark hull around Serafina, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe. The floor trembled. She closed her eyes, then opened them, afraid. She had come to California in the trunk of a car. The rumbling under her cheek had stayed inside her brain for days. The oily air had stayed inside her throat.

  Black gas step. Black stop step. She pushed on them, her own short legs reaching with difficulty. Elvia screamed with delight at the jerking movements of the car down the driveway. The cloud-haired old woman from next door came outside, waving, pointing to something on the ground. Serafina looked away. I don’t have her money, she thought. Rent. No rent.

  The car jostled off the curb and into the street. Serafina made herself breathe. A white tower. She thought she had seen a white tower when they had first moved here. She hadn’t been past the corner store since. She pushed down on the black gas step and the car moved slowly into the darkness, the engine growling like a large dog in her ears.

  At home, the church sat on the highest knoll, where people could see the cross and blue door from miles away. The church was always lit by candles, the door always open, in case someone needed to pray or give an offering.

  What did I bring? Serafina stopped the car with a decisive jerk at the corner. I have nothing to offer. She saw two cars approaching, and her heart ticked like crickets trapped in a jar. The cars went past, the street was empty, and she turned onto the avenue. Moving the wheel was hard. It was slick and bumpy, not like wood, not rough and cool like stone.

  Serafina pushed each step in its turn, and Elvia reached forward to play with the dashboard knobs. The Nova bucked and moved down the street until Serafina saw the white tower and cross, lit bright. She turned the wheel again, and it fought her. The Nova went into the parking lot, where bumps in the asphalt made the car rise up and then fall.

  Elvia said suddenly, “Ñuhun.”

  Fire? Serafina glanced at the dashboard, where Elvia pointed. The knobs and lights and vents were like a strange altar. One knob suddenly pushed itself back out, and Elvia pulled out a fiery-red metal eye. Serafina snatched it quickly, and the car swerved. Darkness rose before them, and Serafina tried to push the stop step, but the car’s mouth hit something hard, like a fist against teeth. The windshield was black with leaves, buried in a thick hedge.

  Elvia screamed, and at the same moment Serafina felt the burning pang on her arm. She stared at the knob in her hand, but the heat had subsided to an ashen black circle.

  The atole had flown from the mug when t
he car hit the hedge. The thick white splatter on her own arm stung like the bite of a thousand red ants. She saw one large drop on Elvia’s wrist, and immediately put her mouth to the burn. The hot sweet milk disappeared under her tongue, and she licked and then blew on Elvia’s skin, licking and blowing, cooling and kissing and breathing on the burn, saying she was sorry, she was so sorry she had made Elvia cry.

  Elvia had cried only two times in the past year. Once, a boy with hair red as chiles had thrown a rock from the street, hitting her in the back. And once, Larry had driven away in his truck, and Elvia cried because she wanted to drive again.

  Serafina whispered to the wound, watching the angry red welt glisten with her own saliva, and then Elvia shuddered one last time and tucked her head into Serafina’s chest. Serafina heard scraping, settling in the hedge, and she twisted the dangling keys. The engine-muttering stopped. Elvia pointed to the black knob and said, “Táā—Daddy’s ñuhun.”

  Serafina dropped the lighter into her pocket. Then she put her hands together on the black wheel and laid her cheek there until Elvia said, “Náā?”

  Serafina ran her finger around the mug sides, collecting the now-cooled atole on a finger for Elvia. She whispered to Elvia that atole stayed hot forever, so it was the best drink for cold mornings and nights at home, in Mexico. You could carry a mug of atole to the field and sip it every now and then, and the warmth would seep into your chest.

  Bells sounded in the church tower, but Serafina lost count. Elvia yawned and laid her head on Serafina’s lap. Serafina felt the hard lighter knob against her thigh. Now it couldn’t hurt her daughter. Elvia would sleep, and Serafina would go inside to pray.

  “Cusū,” she told Elvia, whose eyes were blinking slowly. “Cusū, sēhe síhí.” Sleep, my daughter. She waited until each small breath was like a cloud exhaled.

  Serafina hid the keys under the seat. She got out of the car. Elvia slept, curled on the black vinyl, her hand cupped like a tiny ladle. The leaves of the hedge were dark and sharp. A light went on in a building nearby; a head was silhouetted behind a curtain. Serafina saw a triangle of glass, a set of fingers when the curtain was pulled back. Then the window went black again.