The Day of the Moon (15 page)

“You're the one who is wrong! Let's not take a chance. We can return if we think—or if he lets us know—that he has given up planning to punish us. Isadora, think of the child. Think of
yourself
.”

Exasperated, Jerónimo's voice had escalated, matching Isadora's testiness. But then they fell into silence, both of them wrestling with what they imagined would happen. It was Jerónimo
who yielded. He looked at Isadora; he was calculating, figuring. Then he nodded, at first slowly, then with more energy.

“Maybe you're right,
niña.
Maybe he won't hurt us. Maybe we can go on living here. We'll go up to the
barranca
, with my family.”

Next day before sunrise, Isadora waited in the stable; Samuel, sleepy and grumpy, was with her. When Jerónimo arrived, they left Hacienda Miraflores and began the climb up to the caves of the Rarámuri. A few days later, Ursula Santiago packed her belongings and she, too, left the hacienda and made her way back to her people.

Isadora pressed her forehead against the damp windowpane. She straightened her head and stared at the wire mesh embedded in the glass. How much force would be needed to break through that net? She closed her eyes and felt her eyeballs burning. Then she opened them and focused on the park surrounding the asylum.

It was the end of the day; darkness had wrapped itself around the high arches and recesses of the building. Isadora concentrated on the fog creeping in from the marshes of Zapopan, snaking its way beneath bushes, and clinging to the drooping stalks of tall grass. The trees loomed against the sky; their branches hung low against the soggy ground, and she heard them weeping.

Isadora traced a line on the clouded glass with her finger, then she wrote her name. Next to it she etched a
J,
then an
A.
She jerked away from the window and paced the cell, moving from one wall to the other, back and forth, until she stopped at the cot where she slept. She sat on its edge, feeling the crossbar press against her buttocks.

She got back on her feet and returned to the window. The fog had risen, almost reaching the lower branches of the trees. She craned her neck and saw the moon rising in the eastern sky. The thought flashed through Isadora's mind that the phosphorescent white sphere glowed like a skull circled by a transparent halo.
After staring at the moon for a few moments, she remembered that the Rarámuri believe the dead return to meet with the spirits of those who are alive—to those who lie dreaming during the moonlit night.

“They call it the Day of the Moon.”

Isadora and Jerónimo lay on a grassy embankment, away from the cave they inhabited. His gaze was fixed on the sky as it turned shades of red and orange toward the west and lavender in the east. As she reclined on her side, her head on his outstretched arm, she outlined his profile with her finger.

Jerónimo and Isadora had grown more and more worried at what was happening around them, and today they had been trying to distract themselves. They could no longer deny the antagonism of the tribe. It was a resentment that Jerónimo had not anticipated when he brought Isadora and Samuel to live among his people. He had known that there would be surprise and even gossip, but he had not expected the undercurrents of bitterness that welled up each day.

Another source of uneasiness was Don Flavio's silence and inertia. He was behaving as if nothing had happened, as if Isadora's abandoning Hacienda Miraflores and her flight with Jerónimo had not been an affront to his honor. When Jerónimo left the hacienda with Isadora he was able to find work on a nearby ranch. Each day, when he went down to the
llano,
he listened to the rumors that eventually reached him: The
Patrón
of Miraflores was sick. He could not even leave his room. But then, as time passed, Don Flavio was seen riding his horse, crossing one side of his land to the other, yet no change in his behavior was detected by anyone, no matter how closely he was watched. This filled everybody with anxiety. It was unnatural that the father of a white woman did nothing when she ran off with one of their own. Instead, there was a strange
calm in Don Flavio, and the tribe suspected that something dreadful was about to happen to them.

That evening, hoping to distract her, Jerónimo began speaking of Rarámuri beliefs. Isadora listened carefully, although much of what he told her was not new to her. As he talked about the cross, she remembered how it was thought of as a saint by the Rarámuri—an actual being, deserving of homage and reverence. She knew also that peyote was considered a god and often called Tata, father, by the old ones, the
huehues,
of the tribe. As a child she had experienced the processions, the dances, the chants; and all along Isadora had felt that even though different from what she had learned from the nuns, the beliefs of Jerónimo's people did not contradict her own way of thinking. But now Jerónimo's words caught Isadora's attention.
They call it the Day of the Moon.
She drew her hand away from his face and lifted her head, balancing herself on her elbow.

“That's beautiful, but what does it mean?”

“The ancient ones believe that while we sleep, our souls join the spirits of the dead, and that together they work hard—harder yet than during the day, when we walk about in sunlight. They also believe that during the night, when we're sleeping, we do wonderful, mysterious things with those who have gone to the other side of the sierras. They say that it is at this time that we make new songs and poems, and that we discover who we love. This is what is meant by the Day of the Moon. It happens, they say, every night when we're dreaming.”

“I had never heard that before,” Isadora said as she looked into Jerónimo's eyes. “But you say
they
as if you don't believe in the Day of the Moon. I think I could believe in it.”

He smiled and shrugged. “Well, maybe. What I mean is that I don't know. Maybe when I'm old I'll see things as the ancient ones do.” He looked up at her, his eyes shining. “Do you believe everything that you're told?”

“Not everything. But don't you think that our spirit does something when we're sleeping? I do. I ask myself, Where does my soul go? Does it look for something, for someone?”

“Maybe. I'm not sure.”

“It's beautiful to think that we'll meet again after we die, Jerónimo. And what better time than during a dream, when the moon gives us another day to work, to sing, to love.”

Isadora now sat up, captivated by the notion. Jerónimo, still stretched out on the ground, crossed his arms behind his head and looked at her silhouette as the last glimmer of light cast tones of silver and green on her. His eyes traced the curve of her forehead and nose. Then his gaze slid down to her lips, chin, throat, breasts. He paused at her bulging abdomen; it was swollen with his child. This thought forced his mind back to that which had been making them grow more apprehensive each day. He shook his head as if to shake off an insect; and he sat up, put the palm of his hand on her stomach, and kissed her. It was growing dark now, so they got up and made their way toward their cave.

As they walked, they put aside the night's talk, and returned to what had been troubling them for weeks. Don Flavio's stillness baffled them, the antagonism of the tribe hurt them—and there was also Samuel, who had become despondent as the weeks melted into months. Unlike Isadora, who had dwelled in the caves whenever she could as a child, he could not get used to living there; sleeping on a mat on the ground, eating maize and beans and squash almost every day. He wanted to see his grandfather and keep him company in the stables as he used to before he was taken to the cave. He missed his comfortable room and having servants. Most of all, he resented that his mother slept with El Rarámuri.

Isadora had attempted to soothe Samuel by talking to him, taking him on walks, singing to him. At first, she had told him that his grandfather had gone away, but when she saw that the boy did not believe her, she decided to tell him the truth: Jerónimo was now her husband, and his father. When Samuel heard this, he became even more disconcerted, and he refused to speak, even to her. Not
even Ursula could comfort the boy, no matter how many times she tried. Through this all, Jerónimo had tried to make friends with him, but he was rejected by the boy.

Jerónimo and Isadora spoke about Samuel as they walked, pausing, moving cautiously in the waning westerly light. After a while their conversation returned to the reaction of the tribe to Isadora's presence. Resentment had become apparent when the two had first walked through the plaza of the communal village. People stopped to stare at them. Those on the way to the marketplace paused to get a better look. The talkers cut off what they were saying to gawk at the unlikely sight crossing the cobblestone plaza. The black-robed priest who had just emerged from the darkened portico of the church blinked and took a second look, convinced that his eyes were indeed failing him. A small cluster of old hags stared first at the young Rarámuri, then at the white woman, then at the boy child, then at one another, their wrinkled lips pursed in disbelief, their tiny eyes bright with curiosity.

What at first was an oddity soon became the only topic of conversation and gossip. After a few days, interest became apprehension, and finally the presence of the white woman and her child became a source of fear for most of these people. The men who trekked down the sierra to work each day, especially those paid by Don Flavio Betancourt, asked each other what would happen once the
Patrón
found out where his daughter was living. Those who were not peons for Hacienda Miraflores either sympathized or heckled Don Flavio's workers about how they would soon have to find new work.

For the women of the tribe, what Jerónimo Santiago had done was a calamitous offense. Although it was the
huehues
who dictated the laws of the people, the women made the decisions that counted. They were the custodians of the family and the traditions that bound it. They were the ones who jealously safeguarded who married whom, which households would come together, and what would become of the children from those unions. As they ground the maize, wove wool, dyed cloth, gathered wood, helped the sick
and the pregnant, and especially as they gathered water at the well, it was the women who decided what was approved and what was forbidden within the tribe. When Jerónimo Santiago arrived with a white woman by his side, and she with another's child, tribal women flocked together; they gathered in small groups, finally they crammed into caves in large assemblies. The son of Celestino and Narcisa Santiago had somehow snatched away their right to decide. Such behavior could not be tolerated.

Those who secretly observed the lovers were convinced that Isadora and Jerónimo mocked the tribe with their constant smiling, chatting, and laughing. When her bulging abdomen became obvious, the men and women of the tribe found it intolerable. It was wrong for one of their own to mix with the offspring of the white
patrón.
Only evil would come of it. So it was that they pressed the
huehues
to convene and put an end to the danger that loomed for the tribe.

Celestino and Narcisa also talked of what to do. When Jerónimo appeared with Isadora and her son, they were not surprised, thinking that it was another of the visits she had been making since she was a child. But when Jerónimo announced that he was leaving the family dwelling to set up one of his own, it became evident that their son intended to make her his woman, to sleep with her. Narcisa and Celestino, and even their other sons, became alarmed, frightened. Don Flavio was capable of destroying their lives.

Celestino knew that his years of service to Don Flavio would evaporate. They meant nothing. He would become merely the
indio
in the eyes of the
Patrón.
His family would become the enemy, his cave dwelling the site of Isadora's violation, and they would all be ruined. As weeks had passed and Don Flavio did nothing, the lull only frightened him more.

On the other hand, Celestino and Narcisa could not forget that Jerónimo was a good son, and that Isadora was also a good woman; that they had known and cared for her since she was a child. Mother and father wrestled with their apprehensions, as well
as with the gossip that had engulfed them. They knew they would soon have to decide between what the tribe determined and what their son had chosen to do.

When Isadora and Jerónimo made their way into their cave that night, they found Narcisa and Celestino waiting for them. As Jerónimo stoked the fire, the others squatted on the earthen floor. Flames leapt up from the hearth, casting shadows on their faces. Only the crackling of the burning twigs broke the silence. Isadora looked around, observing the faces of Jerónimo's mother and father.

Celestino's face was a mask carved in mahogany. His forehead was seamed by a deep crevice that started at his hairline and crept down to meet his long, beaked nose. Isadora looked closer and saw that his eyes were half-closed; slanted slits resting above high cheekbones.

Narcisa sat cross-legged, hands resting in her lap. Her still raven-colored hair was parted in the middle and slicked back into tight, thick braids; their blackness was dappled with specks of silver cast by the dancing flames. Isadora was struck by the thought that she had never looked closely at Narcisa's face. What she now saw was a beautiful picture: almond-shaped eyes cast beneath a high forehead, a short nose, and round, full lips. She wondered if this was what her own grandmother had looked like.

“The
huehues
have agreed to come together to consider what you have done.”

Celestino's voice broke the silence, muting the snapping sounds of the fire. He did not utter his son's name but he looked only at him.

“What do you think,
tata?
” Jerónimo, too, looked only at his father. The younger man sat cross-legged, his back straight and stiff, betraying the tension that gripped his body.