The Moon Within Read online

  Juju is playing with his Legos

  and talking like he does

  about who messed up

  during the show and why.

  I look out my window for Luna.

  Where is she tonight?

  She is nowhere.

  She is in her dark phase

  our time for potential Mima says

  the time to plant seeds

  that will bloom when the moon is full.

  I think about Iván, Aurora, Magda, and my foolishness.

  What will we harvest when the seeds planted are so mean?

  The following Friday night

  I’m on the tablet watching a movie

  when a text comes through.

  Sup my Celi?

  It’s from Iván.

  I begin to answer,

  Leave me alone, I don’t text with jerks!

  but I pause before I send it

  because he is typing too.

  My curiosity grows bigger than my anger.

  …

  It’s my birthday

  tomorrow

  Going with some of the

  guys to the movies

  You wanna come?

  I hit send.

  What?

  So does this mean no?

  Yes

  Yes you’ll come or yes it

  means no? (crazy face pleading emoji)

  I’m only inviting a few

  guys, c’mon it’ll be hella fun

  Then that familiar flutter in my panza returns

  and I feel an ebb back to him.

  What are you watching?

  Jurassic Attack (three dinosaur emojis)

  Will your mom be there?

  Nah it’s a drop-off

  I’m turning 13 (emoji smile with glasses and bucked teeth)

  My mom probably won’t

  let me.

  LMK

  show starts at five

  Grand Lake Theatre.

  K

  My locket is in a tussle

  tattered battered

  but lifted.

  I hear Magda’s words,

  Sometimes we say things we don’t mean when we are hurt.

  Maybe, I just don’t know what’s hurt Iván

  for him to have said the things he did to Magda.

  My curious locket wants to know and so

  I ask permission.

  Mima says I can go

  but

  only if she and Juju

  can find another movie to watch

  at the same time in an adjacent theater.

  The flesh-eating dinosaurs would frighten Juju.

  Lucky for me, a penguin movie is playing

  and I can go and be one of the guys

  with Iván, Pedro, and Leandro

  but not really.

  I know I will never be able to tell Magda.

  But it is something my locket cannot hide.

  Mima, Juju, Pedro, and Leandro know too.

  My mind is mush.

  Right now

  I can’t think about

  how to keep this secret safe.

  Tomorrow, I’m going to the movies with Iván!

  In the lobby, I buy Iván popcorn

  and hand him a medicine satchel

  I threw together for him

  for skateboarding first aid:

  tea tree oil to disinfect

  tepezcohuite salve to heal a scrape

  bandages, medical tape, gauze.

  He thanks me with a slight shove on one shoulder.

  Iván saves a seat for me next to him

  so we can share the popcorn.

  I can’t think of anyone but Magda at first

  and how she might want to be here too

  but I’m distracted by Mima and Juju

  who’ve come all the way up to our seats

  just to see where I’m at!

  I clench my jaw at her and shoo her away

  then the movie starts.

  I forget Magda and Mima

  get lost in the terror on-screen.

  I’m eating popcorn instead of my nails

  and so is Iván.

  I reach into the bucket of popcorn

  he reaches in after me

  grabs my buttery hand and

  holds it there

  lost in the movie too.

  I look at him

  slip out my hand

  from under his

  my flor more sparkly than ever.

  I pick up my root beer with two hands

  sip in the flavor of this

  excitement and fear.

  Not so much because of the movie

  anymore but because now I know

  what it’s like

  to have held a boy’s hand.

  He leans in and whispers, Are you scared?

  A little, I confide.

  Though he’s asking about the movie.

  For a moment, I wish to be in the theater next door

  watching the penguin film

  with Mima and Juju.

  That thought is cast aside

  by a buttered locket

  a held locket

  beaming to be here

  without Mima and Juju.

  I flow open.

  Swim in all of the special attention

  he’s giving me.

  I am warm and feel like

  I’m floating

  when he simply turns to me to ask,

  Can I have a sip of your root beer?

  When do you turn twelve? One thick eyebrow rises.

  Soon, I’m a summer baby.

  Would your parents let you have a …

  Oh, never mind, he sighs.

  Inside thoughts tumble like weeds.

  Have a first kiss

  on the lips.

  His

  really touching mine.

  My parents would never allow it.

  Papi says, I have to be thirty

  and Mima says I have to be thirteen

  when I’ll also be able to wear makeup

  and crop tops, have a phone,

  and go to the mall without a chaperone.

  Why do I have to wait for all of the

  good things when I don’t feel

  like a baby anymore?

  But maybe Iván only likes

  to have me around

  to be one of the guys

  and was just gonna ask

  about something else.

  Our movie lets out.

  Mima and Juju are still in there

  so we wait by the large cardboard dinosaur display.

  When they come out of their movie

  Iván thanks Mima for letting me come

  and asks how the movie was for them.

  Mima loves it when kids look

  an adult in the eye when talking.

  Juju erupts in mental diarrhea,

  So, Celi, how was your date?

  I fume and instantly throw a Junior Mint at him

  then cover his mouth with my hand.

  Juju pries away my fingers and spills,

  You haven’t even had your moon ceremony

  but Mima let you go in there by yourself anyway.

  Mima gathers Juju to her while fake smiling

  to stop me from attacking him.

  Then Iván asks,

  What’s a moon ceremony?

  I feel like someone is stepping

  on my chest

  my breath stolen away.

  It’s a beautiful coming-of-age ritual

  that our indigenous ancestors

  held for young girls before quinceañeras.

  Mima is now oversharing with IVÁN!

  I don’t know what to do with myself so I try to tug Juju’s ears

  but Mima pulls him behind her and farther away from me.

  Cool, like something the Aztecs did? Iván nods and

  looks at me sort of cross-eyed

  but then winks.

  Iván refuse
s a ride home

  prefers to skate with the boys.

  As we leave, we watch them ride off

  on their boards though it is getting dark.

  Just enough night to see that Luna

  watches over them too.

  I don’t tell Mima about

  his holding my hand inside the movies

  the almost girlfriend question

  or what he thinks about Magda.

  These nuggets are for my locket to keep.

  Sunday morning I awake

  to Juju talking to himself

  about being cold in early June,

  You know that water freezes

  at thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit?

  Since we are made of water

  we can freeze too.

  The almost-summer mornings

  in Oakland wouldn’t be

  so cool if it weren’t

  for the fog that rolls across

  the Bay like a wet blanket

  and seeps into these old walls

  with no insulation

  the crisp wood floors

  of our little house

  that seems to be more

  alive because of the bold

  teals, reds, mustard yellows

  that punctuate the walls

  in each of the different rooms.

  My eyes still closed

  I hear the whispers of the freeway

  relive every moment from the day before

  a silent choreography in my mind.

  I get a text

  from Teresa’s phone number, from Magda.

  Need to talk to you

  In person

  Can you come over?

  Today?

  Ya

  Anytime

  Too stunned to say no.

  She’ll see right through me.

  Maybe she already knows

  and that’s why she needs to talk to me?

  Guilt rides on me

  like a backpack too full of books.

  As I get ready to go see her

  Mima says that the rest of the family

  has been invited too.

  But Papi’s got a gig

  and Juju is his roadie today.

  Anyway, I can’t imagine Magda sharing

  anything too personal with them.

  Magda stands at the door, next to Luis.

  Her always smile eclipsed by an almost frown.

  They ask us to remove our shoes.

  I feel as transparent as a screen.

  We don’t go into her room

  to hang out like we normally do.

  We are invited to sit on cushions in a small circle

  on the living room floor with our mothers and her dad.

  A clay bowl of dried white sage branches

  sits at the center.

  Teresa ignites the sage, lets it

  come aflame, and then blows it out.

  She douses her limbs, her head, her chest

  with the swirling bitter-smelling smoke.

  Luis, Mima, and Magda do the same.

  When I am handed the smoking branch

  my eyes water, it trembles in my hand.

  The smoke will reveal everything.

  Still, I smudge my body

  keep the sage near my chest

  gather the smoke in the

  cup of my hand

  pull it into

  my heart, my heart, my heart.

  When Teresa speaks finally

  the words that come out of her

  are foreign.…

  Our child has arrived at a new truth.

  A real self, an authentic self, the reality always meant to be.

  Marco is his true name.

  Magda is part of his historia, the earlier chapters of girlhood.

  Also born a boy energy into the body of a girl

  it is the wisdom of the sacred masculine placed

  in the body of the divine feminine.

  We could not claim it for him

  until he was ready to understand on his own.

  In our ancestral Mexica tradition, Ometeotl

  is our Creator spirit that is neither

  female nor male but both—divine duality.

  Marco has Ometeotl energy

  a person who inhabits two beings

  the female and the male at once.

  Though we can’t be certain how our

  ancestors felt about people of two energies

  because there is so much we don’t know

  so much we are still learning

  as new Mexica, we regard it an honor

  to be a reflection of the Creator.

  I look over at Magda and fight confusion

  a boy in the body of a girl?

  I have always known that she was different

  a tomboy for sure, more free than anything else

  but simply Magda, Magdalena Teresa Sánchez.

  Not Marco Sánchez!

  Not Marco Magdalena Teresa Sánchez!

  Mima taps me back to attention

  when Luis begins to speak.

  From what we do know

  people who danced between

  or to other energies

  than what they were assigned at birth

  were sometimes called xochihuah.

  Xochitl is the word for flower in Nahuatl

  and a xochihuah is

  the one who bears flowers.

  They were known to worship

  at the temple of Xochipilli, the flower prince god

  who protected people of all gender identities

  and queer folks.

  Marco, my son, carries the blossoms

  of his truth inside him

  as a sacred xochihuah.

  A sho-chee-wah? I stretch to pronounce

  unable to hide

  my unraveling thoughts.

  Yes, a xochihuah,

  my truth

  Magda assures.

  I look up to the light

  of hopeful

  you-understand-me eyes

  and all of a sudden

  I do somehow

  and it’s easy.

  I pause only to find

  my own it’s-all-right look

  to offer.

  I see Magda’s hands shake a little

  when she says,

  Being Marco feels good

  even if I have two energies.

  My parents say that I don’t have to decide yet.

  That’s part of my road to figuring it all out.

  But I feel more boy than girl at the moment.

  And because I can be both

  I’m going with Marco for right now.

  Then Teresa turns to me,

  We need your help to make his transition

  as a xochihuah safe and loving within the community.

  And though we don’t know

  how we will reveal it

  there will be those who will judge.

  We need everyone’s support and no

  one more than yours, Celi.

  I feel the weight of Teresa’s words

  fall feather light on my shoulders

  wound up in the love I have for my best echo.

  I nod my head slowly.

  Magda smiles. No. Marco smiles.

  Reaches to squeeze my hand.

  The wide white doves of his teeth

  are proof of his faith in me.

  He is grateful I have his back.

  Marco and I reason

  in Spanish, the word friend has a gender:

  amigo, male

  amiga, female

  as do many other words.

  Friend in English has none.

  But in Spanglish, our happy mixed-up tongue,

  amifriend has both

  the warm sound of amor in am

  and friend, the sweetest word English can muster.

  Marco is optimistic,

  I hope that others will get me like you, Celi.


  But then again, there will be the Iváns

  who will mock and sneer and hurt

  and never understand him

  ignorant of Ometeotl and xochihuah, blind to the honor.

  No hay mal que por bien no venga.

  Marco’s right, there isn’t anything bad

  that does not bring something good.

  If it hadn’t been for Iván and his friends

  Marco thinks he would have never changed a thing.

  Celi, it was right then and there that I finally got it!

  I knew that I couldn’t pretend anymore.

  But maybe you would have without them?

  Maybe. Well, at least we don’t have to deal with Iván ever again.

  Our clasp, snap, bird-flight-fingers handshake

  seals our understanding.

  Inside, I wince.

  Marco asks Ms. Susana

  and most his teachers, including Papi,

  to simply call him Mar instead of Magda.

  Mar is the word for sea in Spanish.

  He wasn’t ready to go all the way there

  with every one of the kids in bomba class

  or in world drums class or at school.

  Though most of us could sense

  his new kind of happiness.

  His parents said they would do that carefully, perhaps

  with a community gathering, or a letter

  so it is the safest for him.

  When we echo, it does not matter

  where our gender lands

  what our lockets hold

  we are body movement

  drum movement

  song movement

  creativity in movement.

  Ten minutes before class ends

  Iván walks in holding his skateboard.

  My heart crinkles and shakes outside of me.

  He watches the class like a begging puppy

  I think he wants to join

  and I feel sorry for him.

  When class is over, Marco

  helps put away the drums.

  I shove my skirt into my bag

  and then I feel Iván standing behind me,

  Did you get my texts? He sounds anxious.

  I’ve texted you about a hundred times.

  You mad at me or something?

  I signal him to follow me as I walk

  toward the café away from Marco.

  He continues,

  Or did your mom take away your tablet again?

  I want to tell him that it was a mistake

  to have gone to the movies with him

  that I really can’t be friends with a person

  who totally misunderstood and hurt my best friend

  no matter how my heart spins.

  But I don’t.

  It is as if my mouth shrinks with the truth.

  I’m sorry, yeah, mom’s got my tablet.

  Whew! I was hecka worried for a minute.

  You know, Pedro said that he had a nightmare