Read Online What the Moon Saw by Laura Resau - Free Book Online Page B

knit dress in my grandparents’ bedroom—a souvenir from a neighbor’s birthday party ten years earlier. Things that made me nervous were having no refrigerator (germs!), the fact that no one in the village seemed to own a car or a phone (emergencies?), and all the bugs and rodents living in my bedroom (just creepy).
    Some things seemed plain strange, like the way pets were fed only leftovers. “Pets in the U.S. get their own special food,” I said. “Bird food, fish food, cat food, dog food…”
    Abuelo grinned. “You’re joking!”
    “Then what do you do with stale tortillas and burned rice?” Abuelita asked.
    “Throw them out.” I didn’t want to get into explaining garbage disposals.
    Abuelo’s eyes got big. “So, there the dogs are very fat and happy!”
    “Well, not too fat because fat dogs get fed
diet
dog food,” I said.
    Abuelo’s mouth dropped open. Abuelita held a cracked eggshell in midair and stared at me. “Diet dog food?” they said at the same time.
    I nodded.
    They started laughing, first in little titters, and then in deep belly laughs. Abuelo clutched his belly, doubled over, nearly falling to the floor. And Abuelita buried her face in her hands. Her whole body shook. Every time it looked like they were calming down, Abuelo gasped, “Diet dog food!” and they shrieked with laughter all over again. For three minutes straight they laughed. They laughed until smoke began rising from the pan.
    “The eggs!” Abuelo cried.
    Abuelita grabbed the pan with a towel and spooned the eggs quickly onto our plates. “Ayy, Clara!” she sighed. She wiped her tears with her wrist.
    I was trying hard to put myself in their shoes and see what was so hilarious. Maybe diet dog food was as funny to them as using a math workbook for toilet paper was to me.
    I took a bite of the eggs, which were only a little brown in places. I ate the way my grandparents did, tearing off a piece of tortilla and using it to scoop up some eggs. They didn’t use forks and knives at all at the table, and only sometimes spoons. Tortillas were their utensils. They used tortillas as napkins, too, to wipe off the sauce around the corners of their mouths.
    “How come the eggs don’t go bad, sitting out?” I asked.
    “Sitting out?” Abuelita asked. She tilted her head, puzzled.
    “At home we always keep them in the fridge.”
    Abuelita squinted at me. “The hen laid them only a few days ago,
mi amor.
”
    “For what do we need a refrigerator?” Abuelo said with a proud shrug. “Even if we could afford one, we would never use it.”
    “Here our food is fresh.” Abuelita smiled. Her gold tooth caught the firelight and made her look like a queen. “Good for you.”
    Abuelo added, “Nearly everything you eat here came from our land and our animals. Only a few things, like honey, we buy at the market. We pay with the money our coffee beans bring us. Which isn’t much.” He glanced at Abuelita and laughed.
    I had to admit, the eggs were delicious. Much better than old eggs from a cardboard carton from the store. Like fresh-squeezed orange juice compared to the frozen stuff in a can. They were the tastiest eggs I’d ever eaten.

    The next morning when I came into the kitchen, Abuelo exploded in another fit of laughter. “I couldn’t sleep last night,
m’hija
! The diet food for dogs! Every time I drifted off, I thought of it!”
    “It’s true,” Abuelita said. “Oh, how he laughed! For hours, Clara! I almost sent him out to sleep with the chickens.”
    As we ate, I noticed quiet sounds—the wood fire crackling, Loro rustling in the rafters, a pot of beans simmering. Sounds you might not be able to hear over the hum of a refrigerator. Maybe when you took the extra noises away, you could notice hidden messages. You could hear what your spirit was telling you.
    After breakfast, Abuelita packed me squash flower quesadillas for lunch. She wrapped them in banana leaves, which she used like plastic bags. I stuck them