Moments In Allusion

I hear the whimpers for the millionth time and immediately I know Luna is getting a bottle of Corona thrown at her. I push past the honeysuckle bushes until I reach the chain link fence where I’ve met this dog time after time. In this moment, I am six years old and my father warns me not to go near the fence because the neighbors are drunk again. My innocence allows me to disregard his words as I kneel down and reach my hands through a hole in the fence and comfort the giant caramel mutt. Underneath the moonlight, her eyes become a shade darker than the scars she is coated in. I stare at deep brown of her eyes and I tell her that she is enough. I never have a single moment to walk her or even give her a toy to chew, but I make her my own. I pet the top of her head and she nuzzles towards it; moving with the fragility of a cat and the intention of a broken woman. Luna has given me all the possible comfort there is to give to a six year old from Queens. After school, I bring her pieces of bread from the deli in one hand and a water bottle in another. She waits for me to feed her and never hesitates to slurp the water I pour from the bottle onto my teensy palm; a homemade water bowl.

I am now eight years old and the springtime sun is beaming on my face. For a fleeting moment, my face is a window on a rainy day with tears dripping down it- drip, drip, drip. When I open my eyes, and look at the ground, I see my reflection on a broken shard of glass. I look at Luna behind the fence and back again at my reflection on the glass. My fragile body flails itself towards Luna and breaks down as I get closer to the Bullmastiff. I always had moments like these during my youth, where my bones felt like they were being crushed by a machine. They stopped when I realized my mind was the machine. “Someday the fighting will stop Luna, I promise. Someday, someone will save you and you will have a place to call home.” I sit criss cross applesauce on the ground; my body shaking along with the end of each word I muffled. I wonder if Luna wished the same future for me. Either way, I know she had heard the screaming and banging from our second floor. Luna saw the silver glint of handcuffs around my mother’s pale wrists. She smelled the cigarette fumes from the detective who smoked on our porch. She could understand the pain I felt when I was told to let my mom go. Luna understood more of it than I did.

After an hour or so of the days events, I just lie there on the concrete, still crying, unable to see the sky clearly. I remain next to Luna with a giant fence in between us and the city lights as the only things unchanging.

I am nine years old and Luna looks like she hasn’t slept in years. I kneel and notice how much bigger the hole in the fence has gotten. She must have chewed it while I was in school (whenever I actually went). I examine the skin underneath her dark brown eyes: it looks so heavy. There are new scars all over her face and I brush my fingers over them as softly as possible. “Your scars will heal, I promise. ” again, I wonder if she wishes the same for the scars I hold inside of me. “If you leave me then you better take your fucking mutt with you too!” I hear from Luna’s side of the fence. I panic in silence and hide behind some tool boxes my dad left outside. My neighbor is yelling at her husband; a skinny man with grey hair and burn marks on his arm, or are they cuts? I couldn’t tell you. He stumbles down his stairs, holding onto the Tequila bottle tighter than he holds onto the railing. Luna runs towards him and puts her head down when he reaches the last step and just sits. For a while, the yelling stops. He doesn’t say if he is going to leave or if he is going to take Luna with him. I remain crouched behind the tool boxes and watch my neighbor take more swigs of his bottle while Luna lies next to him. Eventually, the woman comes back and the yelling begins, but I do not stay to listen because my name gets called by my dad.

I am ten years old and everything around me has turned a deep dark blue and for a while this is all I see. I sit on the steps of my back porch and don’t bother to look at the fence on my left. All I am focused on is whether or not my mom is going to come back like my dad said she would. During the days that succeeded my mother’s arrest, my dad’s drinking problem had gotten worse, which meant that no one was watching over me. This meant that I went to the park alone and ate whatever I could find in my kitchen cabinets. This meant that I would spend hours with Luna outside and color or cry in her company. She was my best friend, my diary, and the only one thing that never left me.

Unable to avoid my curious tendencies, I glance over at the hole in the fence. I sit and wait for Luna to come while I also wait for my mother to come back home. Seconds turn into minutes which turn into an hour and I see Rodrigo come outside with a bottle of Corona in his hand. He doesn’t see me and shouts at Luna, who is now at his side. “She fucking left us, she fucking left me! All of that money I invested in this fucking house, para que?! I swear to fucking god if she was here right now, I would choke that son of a bitch. I could kill her-”. My eyes widen at the raw display of alcohol abuse unraveling in front of me.

“Katherine!!!” my mom calls from inside the house. I turn back at my door, look at my mother walking towards me and I take a deep breathe. It turns into choking and then sobbing and I fall into my mother’s arms. She looks at the neighbor and asks me if Rodrigo said anything to me. I tell her no, but that he’s been speaking horribly to Luna. My mother says that there’s nothing she can do about that… “I don’t want to talk to the police ever again.” Rodrigo continues walking, leaves his house, and clutches the golden bottle. Luna makes eye contact with me and then turns to look at the gate that Rodrigo left open. “Run, please run Luna, there is nothing for you here.” I say in my head. “Vamos mija, I wish we could adopt her, but you know that’s impossible.” I catch up to my mom with tears n my eyes; leaving the backyard, Luna, and my mother’s perishing honeysuckles.

I am twelve years old. There are no chains-link fences in this new house, but there are expensive white ones. I lie down on foreign grasses and think of Luna. The crisp summer air of nightfall wraps its arms around me and nostalgia promises to never leave me.

Here I must say to the actual moon what I could not say to Luna: Thank you for lying by the fence as I asked you questions. Thank you for never asking any back. Thank you for licking my palms and the space on my forehead at 9pm. Thank you for waiting and lying outside all those afternoons and nights; for trusting me. Thank you for staying when mami and Lissette had to go. Thank you for helping my six year old self understand love. I am dearly sorry I could never say goodbye to you, Luna, or to the lights that were always above us.