“¿El encuentro es ahora? Che, Nacho, ¿vos no me podrías cubrir?”
Is the meeting right now? Couldn’t you cover for me, Nacho?
The che and vos sound like Argentinespeak. What if it’s Other Manu?
The exciting possibility brings me a half step closer, and now my nose is inches from rounding the corner. Maybe I can sneak a peek without her noticing.
“Okay,” I hear her say, and her voice sounds like she’s just a few paces away.
I suck in a quick inhale, and before I can overthink it, I pop my head out—
And see the door swinging shut.
I scramble over and tug it open, desperate to spot even a hint of her hair, any clue at all to confirm it was Other Manu—but she’s already gone.
All that remains is a wisp of red smoke that vanishes with the swiftness of a morning cloud.
3
The aroma of sizzling bacon and eggs snaps me from the mysterious Argentine’s spell, and after picking up Mimitos’s bowl, I find Ma and Perla at the kitchen table, huddled over the caramel-colored calabaza gourd.
They stop talking as soon as they see me, and I wish I’d been paying more attention. It’s too late to eavesdrop now.
“Welcome back, baby,” says Ma as she refills the mate with hot water. She hands the drink to Perla.
“What’s up?” I ask, looking from one to the other.
“You, apparently.” Ma gets to her feet and plants a kiss on my forehead. Then she walks barefoot to the stove to check on the food.
She wasn’t always this casual about sedating me for three nights. At first, Ma would do a full workup when I awoke—pulse, blood pressure, temperature.
My period started on the first full moon after my thirteenth birthday. I don’t remember much about that cycle because by nightfall, my body was in such raging agony that I slammed my head into the bedroom wall hard enough to leave a dent, and knocked myself out. The dent is still there, concealed by my poster of Jupiter’s moons.
I was still in pain when I came to, and Ma offered me the blue pills. She knew about the sedatives from her days as a nurse in Argentina, and she had Perla request a rush prescription from her doctor. They’re so potent that just one tablet can knock a person out for twenty hours—which is why I take three.
“What’d I miss? Has there been any news?”
Ma keeps her focus trained on the eggs. I look to Perla, but she just stares back and sucks on the mate’s metal bombilla—a straw with a strainer at one end that filters out the yerba leaves. Her glassy eyes may be a blink away from blindness, but her gaze still feels as invasive as a microscope.
I sidle up next to Ma and set Mimitos’s bowl beside the fat blue glass filled with water that Perla changes out every day. She says it’s to ward off envy.
Ma seems smaller to me today, and I wonder if I grew taller this lunaritis. The thought leads to the same question I’ve been asking myself for months—Does Ma notice the changes in me?
She has to … but then why doesn’t she say anything? Should I ask her? Will she think I’m losing it?
Am I losing it?
I stare at her root line as she flips the bacon, tracing the graying locks layered in among the darker ones. And on an impulse, I tip my face down and kiss her head.
We usually only kiss each other in greeting, so Ma’s eyebrows arc up as she meets my gaze. “What was that for?”
The shock sugaring her voice makes me feel like a neglectful daughter. “Nada,” I mumble, cooling my warm face in the fridge as I pull out an almost-empty carton of orange juice and tip my head back to swallow whatever sweetness remains.
“¿Y esa porquería?” demands Perla in her gravelly voice. She’s as disgusted by my drink as I am by hers. “¿Por qué no probás un sorbito de mate?”
I make a face at the mate she’s offering me, and Ma goes over to refill the hot water again. “And you call yourself my daughter,” she says as she brings the metal bombilla to her own lips.
I seal up the bag of yerba on the counter and make my best effort not to cringe at the bitter herbal smell of the drink that’s as sacred to Argentines as dulce de leche. Then I join Perla at the table and pick at a bit of dried sauce on the checkered tablecloth. I can still smell the spaghetti Bolognese they must have had on my second night of lunaritis. Last night, they made milanesas, my all-time favorite meal; when I opened the fridge, I saw they left me a couple of breaded filets of meat for lunch.
Ma turns off the burners and tips the bacon onto a plate, along with two sunny-side up eggs. She places the meal in front of me, then pours a dollop of coffee into my chipped Virgo mug and fills the rest with milk—my favorite drink.
Ma says in Argentina it’s called a lágrima because it’s just a teardrop of caffeine. Perla says it’s not so much coffee as coffee-flavored milk.
The pans hiss at Ma as she gives them a quick rinse, then she joins us at the table and fills the calabaza gourd with more water. She says she likes to make me the kind of big breakfasts she cooks for Doña Rosa’s kids, but she never tastes any of it herself. According to her, Argentines prefer light breakfasts.
I take a bite of crispy bacon, and its crunch is louder than usual, like someone chewing ice in my ear. I wince, and to distract myself I flip through the pages of the local Spanish-language newspaper that’s open on the table until I get to the sports section.
“Ganó River,” says Ma, her voice flat with annoyance.
“Ugh.” I drop my head in shame at our loss.
Ma and I share the same passion: fútbol. We’re long-suffering fans of an Argentine team called Racing. River is our biggest rival, and we mourn their every victory.
Ma and Perla trade the mate between them, and since they usually fill every atom of air with words, today’s silence is deafening. The tension grows so taut that I shovel down food quickly from nerves and keep riffling through the paper’s pages until a headline jumps out at me:
El presidente argentino será padrino del séptimo hijo varón de una familia de Corrientes
I scan the text, skipping over any words I don’t know. I can’t pinpoint exactly when my default language switched, when I started thinking in English and subtitling Spanish.
“Wait a moment,” I say through my mouthful of eggs. “Ley de padrinazgo presidencial—by law the president of Argentina becomes godparent to the seventh consecutive son or daughter in a family? How the hell did that become a thing?”
“Language,” warns Ma. She hands me a napkin to wipe the yolk trickling down my chin.
The seventh child …
That reminds me of a story Perla used to tell me when I was little to make me feel better about my alien-looking eyes.
She would say I was born in a secret city that’s home to magical creatures, and every time a seventh son or daughter is born in Argentina, they have to make their way to that land to claim their werewolf or witch powers. Whenever I’d point out I’m an only child, she’d say that’s what makes me special: I’m the first of my kind—a non-seventh child born with magical powers.
I can’t remember the city’s name.
“La ley está basada en la leyenda del lobizón,” says Perla in her rattly voice.