Stories from The Moon / Cuentos de la Luna

When I was nine years old, a girl named Ro stole my voice with the help of our second-grade teacher. We must go back in time to understand why they were interested in my voice. The problem with my lungs started early on. I spent most of my toddler years in bed with a cold or an ear infection. I would look forward to opening nicely wrapped boxes containing sets of matching pajamas, with their corresponding robe, slippers, and thick socks for Christmas. Unfortunately, my drawers stored more pajamas, sweaters, and thermal wear than regular, “healthy people clothes” like dresses, short-sleeved shirts, and sports clothes. I spent entire weeks at home in bed. I remember a bookshelf full of books and being read stories constantly. I remember taking long warm baths with drops of black bath oil that were supposed to help me breathe better and came in dark glass bottles. The oil looked and smelled like Maggi sauce. It would turn the water in the bathtub into a giant cup of black tea with me floating it in, like a piece of soggy cookie.

I remember watching Blue’s Clues in the mornings when kids my age would be on their way to school. One of my favorite films was a somber cartoon version of The Ugly Duckling, which my mother refused to watch with me because I always cried in the end. My favorite cartoon was about a silent bunny and his squirrel friend. The cartoon centered around his life as a single father to a baby bunny. Baby Bunny and Silent Bunny would spend most of their time in the kitchen. A squirrel was a recurring guest in their home. No one spoke in this cartoon, but they understood each other. I wondered if Baby Bunny ever spoke outside his home, if Squirrel had another group of friends with whom he would have loud parties, or whether he sang at birthday parties. I liked Silent Bunny because his silence reminded me of home when my parents went to work and I was home alone with Flor. I have attempted multiple times to find the name of this cartoon, but I have yet to find it. I’ve talked about it to numerous people, and no one has ever heard of it. I am still looking for someone who has watched it too. Have you watched it?

There was always something to do at home. I liked going to the kitchen and eating bowls of Choco Krispies in a gray bowl that was supposedly indestructible. I liked that word because its syllables felt poky on my tongue like a train moving. The long word felt like you would have reached your destination by the time you finished pronouncing it. When no one was looking, I tested the in-de-struct-i-bil-i-ty of the bowl multiple times by banging it against the kitchen floor. It never broke. I liked wearing fluffy socks and sliding across the marble floor around the foyer. I tried to recreate the scene when the ugly duckling was found by a girl my age while skating on a frozen lake in the forest. I was home where I had no lake and no forest, but I decided to practice my sock skating skills in case one day there was an ugly duckling who needed to be rescued. I was also building a collection of rocks I found in the garden. I stored my rocks inside a white plastic bag and constantly hid them because I was suspicious that someone else would not see the value in these rocks, have them confused with ordinary rocks, and put them back in the garden. Looking back, my collection was full of ordinary rocks.

This was when my father bought the infamous Projects for Kids Manual, as seen on TV. One evening my father and I were watching Tom and Jerry when a commercial came on advertising a manual that had hundreds of experiments and projects for children. The commercial showed two kids making their own lip balm. There were vivid colors, glitter explosions, and children laughing in the background as an adult voice listed all the projects these kids had learned to make with their hands. Then the scene quickly changed to the same kids holding “treasure rocks.” When their little hands split the rocks open, shiny purple things were revealed. I clenched my hands into little fists. As an adult, I still do that when something gets me excited. I had never seen rocks like those before. They would fit perfectly in my collection. Before the phone number was displayed on the screen, my father had already reached for the phone. “This is perfect for her. She spends too much time by herself. She won’t get bored with all of these things to do,” my father told my mother when she got home. “Why did you order two? She only needs one,” was all my mother had to say. My father said he ordered two because if he would go through the whole process of ordering one manual, he might as well order two.

I cannot remember how long it took for the package to arrive, but when it did, I was still sick and ready to start working on the “treasure rocks.” Flor opened the package, took the manual out of the box, and read the instructions. I remember a crucial ingredient was instant coffee. What followed was a long and very messy process. I needed to figure out what to stuff inside it, and the rocks in my collection were too big, so we decided to hide a Polly Pocket Doll with some of her accessories. Egyptian pharaoh style, I was told. We let my treasure rock air dry on the kitchen table. The next day I was eager to show my mother our creation. I brought it to her and placed it dramatically on her vanity. She was putting on her earrings. I dug my thumbs into the soft rock and pulled it apart slowly like the kids in the commercial had done. The “treasure rock” felt like bread made out of sand, mushy and flaky at the same time. I smiled, making the treasure visible to my mother. “Look,” I said, clearly excited, but my voice would not allow it. When I spoke my first words, they came out low and raspy. My family did not think much of it when I started speaking sentences with the same tired voice. They assumed that I just happened to have a husky voice. Picture me at age five with straight bangs and dinosaur-print pajamas, speaking in an old lady’s chain-smoker voice. Look. My mother was not surprised. “That’s it?” she said, looking at me through her reflection in the mirror. I did not understand why she was not clenching her fists in excitement. It was clearly a marvel I had done with my own hands under the instructions of Flor.

In the following weeks, Flor and I looked for a project more fitting to my mother’s expectations. We went for the lip balm stored inside empty Kodak photo film containers. They smelled weird, and when I ate Choco Krispies, little pieces of food would get stuck on my lips. My mother did not want to try it. I sent two lip balms to my grandma. The manual lived with us for less than a month. Once my parents realized this manual turned their clean kitchen into a messy laboratory and that my creations, which I was so proud of, were utterly useless, the manual disappeared. “But there were two. We still have a backup.” I was relieved that my father had ordered two manuals. I remember asking Flor to help me find the spare manual, but she said that sometimes things simply disappeared. I believed her and stopped looking for it. The next day I returned to working on my rock collection, which now smelled of stale coffee because of the fragmented pieces of the “treasure rock” at the bottom of the plastic bag. I also resumed my sock skating practice; I wanted to be able to do turns.

While I was sick at home and my friends were in school, they visited a chewing gum factory, a pillow factory and, once a year, went to our local zoo. I visited doctors’ offices as if they were my school field trips. The doctor I saw most often had an office in a tall building. The best part was pressing the chunky round elevator buttons. My mission was simple: I would push all the buttons in one sweep motion before anyone could stop me. Up and down, fast. My mother always apologized to our fellow passengers while I held her hand smiling.

The doctors would ask me to exhale hard, “with all you’ve got,” into this machine that purred like a cat. It showed my air intake in red zigzag lines on a screen. I did not understand why the device did not expand with the air I had blown into it like a balloon. There must have been something wrong with it. Afterward, I felt exhausted. The doctor would then say something to my mother, hand her a new prescription, and I would be back the following week. After every appointment, my mother and I would go to the pharmacy, where I could choose my weekly flavor of Vicks cough drops. I did not like the cherry ones, but I liked the color they left on my lips. I felt like a grownup, like my mother with her red lipstick.

At some point, I had missed so many days in school that a letter was sent saying that if I missed three more days, I would have to retake the school year. My mother would not let that happen. We are getting closer to the scene of the crime. I do not remember much about the second grade, given that I missed almost the entirety of it, but I remember Ilia Mortega. One time during recess, I opened my Hello Kitty Tupperware and found strawberries. I was eating them when Ilia came over and asked if she could have one. “Strawberries are my favorite,” she said, munching one. I told her strawberries were my favorite too. We became instant friends right there and then.

She was taller than me, skinny, pale, and had wavy black hair. More importantly, when I met her, she had a cold too. She also had a package of orange-flavored Vicks cough drops in her GAP backpack. Later that day, we handed our “sick notes” to our P.E. teacher and sat at the gym in silence because of our sore throats while the rest of our classmates played soccer. We sat together in class after that. We did not talk about it or ask each other, but like Silent Bunny, Squirrel, and Baby Bunny, we understood each other.

The weekend before going back to the second grade, a doctor gave me a purple plastic thing. It looked like a miniature, fat frisbee. He showed me how to open it by turning it slightly to the right. He said that whenever I felt out of breath, I should open it, place my mouth on the little holes on the right side and inhale for ten seconds. “Then you hold your breath for five seconds,” he held his breath, “and then you exhale.” I rehearsed this weird breathing technique until I won his approval. At home, I took out a shoe box where I kept all my stickers and chose one with Tiger wearing a green scarf. I put it right in the middle of the fat frisbee. I could not wait to use it.

Monday morning, I woke up and got ready for school like all the other kids in the world. I felt part of something. I felt important. It was December and cold, so Flor wrapped me in layers of clothes while I took bites from the waffle on my plate. I wondered if Ilia would still be sick like me. I was happy to be back at school. I had not seen so many people my height in a long time. In Spanish class, Ilia, who was not sick anymore, explained that we would rehearse for the school’s Christmas show after recess. She said that everyone in our class was playing a part. I was worried that I would not perform well. After recess, our teacher led us to the auditorium, where the entire second-grade class sat in the stands. Each group practiced their performance. I cannot remember exactly what each group performed, but singing was always involved. Then it was our group’s turn. I followed my classmates to the stage and imitated what they did.

We stood in a circle, and I stayed close to Ilia. Our teacher went over our show. We stood in a big circle while Ro, a pretty girl with freckles and straight hair from Mexico City, would come to us, one by one, and ask, “what does Christmas mean to you?” I did not know what my answer would be. My hands felt clammy. I was not ready for this. Finally, our teacher said we would go over the whole thing once and instructed Ro to take her place in the circle’s center. She looked very professional holding a mic, but my fat frisbee looked nicer.

Ro asked Harold first, and he answered that Christmas meant spending time with his grandparents in Dallas. Aura said that Christmas meant drinking punch and eating buñuelos. I didn’t know what to say, and Ro was getting closer to Ilia. By the time Ilia answered, my mind had gone blank. “Christmas means getting new pajamas,” I said into the mike, but no one seemed to understand me. I repeated myself and coughed. Our teacher came to me and asked me to repeat it, so I did. “Good. Very good.” She asked me if I could stay after rehearsal. I said yes because it was not really a question. My classmates went back to class with a substitute teacher. I stayed with our teacher. She asked me to say, “what does Christmas mean to you?” into the mic. I repeated the question about five times until our teacher said I could leave.

On the day of the Christmas show, my parents were in their seats anxiously waiting for our class’ turn. When my class came on stage, I scanned for them in the crowd but could not see them in the darkness. Ro was wearing a pink headband and shiny shoes. I was standing next to Ilia with my fat frisbee in my pocket. When Ro’s mouth opened, I heard my voice coming out. Ro walked around the circle, careful not to step on the cable of the mic. Then, I listened to my voice ask my classmates what Christmas meant to them, one by one, in Ro’s body. When Ilia answered, Ro skipped me and asked Eric, next to me, the same question with my voice. I did not know what to do. Ilia looked at me and shook her head. I looked at her and cried. The audience applauded when Ro completed the circle, and we returned to our seats. I could see the back of Ro’s head two rows in front of me.

On our way back home in the car, my father was angry that they had recorded my voice without their consent. My mother was laughing, “she has a husky voice. It’s unexpected in a kid. The teacher thought it would be cute, and it was. Everybody said so.” I was in the backseat crying. It felt so unfair that someone took my voice like in The Little Mermaid. “They skipped me. I didn’t answer the question,” I said between sobs. My mother turned to see me from the passenger’s seat, “what does Christmas mean to you?” I smiled. During our family’s Christmas, I decided to take my voice back. My grandparents, cousins, uncles, and aunts were sitting in the living room when I ambushed them. “What does Christmas mean to you?” I asked my parents, holding my fat frisbee as a mic. I asked everyone, one by one, in my low, raspy voice.

I wish I could say that I kept my hundred-year-old grandma’s voice, but in the third grade, my health was restored. My mother says that one day I began speaking in a different voice. It was not low and raspy but high-pitched and squeaky. It turns out that everyone thought I had a husky voice because since I began speaking, I had been sick. Once I stopped being sick, my authentic voice came out. Sitting here in a café, more than twenty years later, I still miss my husky voice. I wonder if the reason why Silent Bunny does not speak is that someone stole his voice too.