What the Moon Saw Read Online Free Page A

dramatically still, watching a grin spread over my face. Even though I tried to keep my mouth closed to hide my squirrel cheeks, I couldn’t help laughing at how hyper my little grandfather was.
    I snuck a closer look at Abuelita’s dazzling smile. Did mine really look like that?

    The first bus ride was a short one, from the airport on the outskirts of Oaxaca City to the bus station downtown. On the way, we passed shacks and fields and trees with big orange flowers that I’d never seen in Maryland, or anywhere else for that matter. The streets of the city were lined with pastel cement buildings, with store signs painted right on the walls. Tiny Volkswagens filled the streets, speeding and beeping and weaving crazily around each other, skidding between buses, through puffs of black exhaust.
    At the bus station we boarded a bus headed outside the city, toward a smaller town. The view out the window made me thirsty—dry brownish hills spotted with tall cacti and shrubs with sharp leaves bursting out in all directions like fireworks. Villages speckled the landscape, each with its own giant cathedral and cluster of small houses. They weren’t the cute houses I’d imagined. Most looked haphazardly thrown together from unpainted concrete blocks and sheets of scrap metal. Heaps of sandbags and construction materials littered the dirt yards, and laundry flapped on barbed wire fences. The nervous ball in my stomach was growing bigger. I told myself not to worry, that my grandparents’ house would match my picture.
    After two hours on the second bus, we switched to a third bus.
Another bus?
I nearly groaned. I felt like stomping my foot and whining,
Why aren’t we there yet?
When Abuelo saw the look on my face, he said, “Don’t worry,
m’hija,
only one more bus after this! And what a beautiful ride! You will see!”
    Even though it was early evening, the heat felt heavy. This third bus wasn’t air-conditioned. I unstuck my thighs from the ripped vinyl seats and crossed my legs the other way. My body felt stiff as old spaghetti from so much sitting. My grandparents were dozing now. In front of us sat a woman with three chickens in her lap, their legs tied together with frayed twine. Every time the bus hit a bump, the chickens bounced up, flapping their wings and squawking. The bus held a strange mix of smells—animals, sweat, ripe fruit, raw meat. I pushed open the window and a fresh breeze blew in, rattling the panes and rippling through the torn curtains.
    Now the hills were growing green and shady, thick with pines and flowering trees. Along the roadside, two boys my age strutted along without shirts. They looked tough, with faded red bandannas wrapped around their heads. They were laughing and casually swinging machetes as long as their arms. I wondered what they used the machetes for—hacking through jungles, maybe? An old barefoot woman passed by, leading a sheep tied to a piece of rope. The boys stopped swinging their machetes and stepped politely out of her way. A little farther on, three girls in too-small dresses and plastic flip-flops giggled and tried to keep their goats out of the path of our bus.
    When we reached a town of low buildings painted sherbet colors, the bus lurched to a stop, clanking and rattling. It sounded like a bowling ball was rolling around in the engine. We were in front of what looked like a big garage full of blue plastic seats. TERMINAL DE AUTOBUS was stenciled on the wall with orange paint. The bus station. We gathered our bags, shuffled off the bus, and waited on the plastic seats, which turned out to be as uncomfortable as they looked.
    At the curb, a three-legged dog was sniffing for scraps near a food stand with a torn cardboard sign. Tacos with head and tongue, I translated silently. My stomach was already beginning to turn. Tongue of what?
    “Are you hungry,
mi amor
?” Abuelita asked.
    “Not really,” I said, imagining the whole head and tongue of some animal wrapped up in a