A Curious Moon

By Natasha Soto

I began to work for SínTitulo shortly after I moved to Bitterbridge. It was a translation company that put closed captions on documentary films.

The films I worked on were mostly arthouse or documentary or raw archival footage, and the company didn’t use software or artificial intelligence to translate or transcribe because that was in SínTitulo’s mission statement. Ten minutes of film took approximately one hour to transcribe, and I got paid by the film, which resulted in me working at all hours in order to heat the cold, old Victorian house that I was working out of. I could sometimes stay up all night, trying to decode the intent behind the words, to understand their ghosts so I could incarnate them in a new language.

Mostly, I enjoyed the work. It took place at home, for one. It was also good practice for nurturing the all the languages I had learned, but now barely use. I picked up most of these languages from my mother, the somewhat famous linguist. She made sure to cram all five of the Romance languages into me before the critical age of language acquisition ended, at around seven years old. She even wrote a paper about her pedagogical practice for teaching five languages at once in what she calls “language clusters,” and there I am as her subject, under the pseudonym Lola.

My father kept an orderly study where he sectioned off books by language. He even kept a low shelf dedicated to graphic novels, which he would often invite me to use. My father likes to tell this story sometimes: one day he came home from work and found me, three years old, in his study. I was standing on a pile of books I had pulled off his shelves. When he stormed in, I was scowling directly at him, and a stream of urine was running from my legs onto his books. I spat at him, coldly and in French, “I am destroying your books because you spend so much time with them and not enough time with me.”

He tells this story with great pride.

In High School, his books became my companions, too. I would take them on adventures. My favorites were the ones in Russian, slow burns that would take months to read from cover to cover. I would read them on the Subway, underlining unknown words in pink pen, until I made my way from Morningside Heights to Brighton Beach in the height of the Summer. I would be sucked into lands of princesses in ballrooms wearing sumptuous velvets and furs, until the D train pulled into its final stop at the end of the world.

The best part of my work for SínTítulo was actually watching the documentaries, which made up the bulk of films I worked on. From my bedroom in that tiny town, I could peer through windows into how people were getting by around the world. I never even had to leave the comfort of my bed.

I watched my favorite documentary during the polar vortex on a night where the temperature was something absurd in the negatives. It was filmed on a tropical island nation that had suddenly experienced great famine. Each person was given plastic bags full of seeds by the government and instructed to grow their own food.

A sweet, intelligent old man flashed a proud smile in front of his pink colonial-style home in the city. “Esto es mi huerto,” he said, indicating a lush, green patch of beans, carrots, and tomatoes with a wide, soft forefinger. He had learned all about farming from library books and old almanacs. The man had permanent smile lines around his eyes filled with his own garden dirt.

While watching, I pressed my hand against the bare wall in my room. It was covered in crystalline frost, and it hurt to touch, a result of the polar vortex. I lived alone in a second-floor sublet that was so large it felt like I was stealing. In a previous life, I had lived in New York City with two roommates in an apartment with only two real bedrooms, so the third young woman who moved in actually slept in the living room. We were constantly jostling for space and blaming each other for leaving crumbs, for potentially attracting mice. In my current apartment, I could rollerblade through the living room and not bump into anything at all.

A weird thing happened while I lived in the city with my roommates. I started work at an office job, my first job out of college. It was great news in theory, I wore beautiful new outfits and everyone congratulated me — even my parents, who had wanted me to hurry up and apply for graduate school. But my body rebelled against the work. One moment, I was reporting to the office as usual, and the next, I was watching my heel-crammed feet walk as far away from the building as possible. In the aftermath of my decision, I felt completely immobilized. I worried that people were becoming worried about me, so the worry redoubled and wouldn’t stop.

Finally, I told my friends and family that I was moving to Bitterbridge, which is more of a collection of houses near a pond than a town. I just needed a break, I implored, I just need some time and space to figure out what I want to do.

My mother gave me a worried look.

My father shrugged and helped me pack.

My roommates complained about the nightmare of finding a new roommate, but wished me well.

A polar vortex arrived at Bitterbridge soon after I did. It changed very little about my day-to-day life because I rarely left the house. I stayed in and worked all hours of the night and slept during the day, which I came to resent myself for, but couldn’t break the habit. My landlord, a woman named Marisol, who spoke Portuguese, came in to help me defrost the pipes. She slouched against a wall and rubbed her weary eyes as she supervised me blasting hot air from a hair dryer onto the pipe under the bathroom sink. She issued a warning.

“Do you hear what they’re saying in the news? It’s so cold outside that people are getting frostbite within seconds. You are too young and beautiful to risk it — bundle up! What do you need from the grocery store? I’m about to drive over there for some supplies.” I rattled off a list of things — water, a box of mac n’ cheese, chocolate — which she waved off.

“I’m not gonna remember all that. Just text me.”

In a moment of desperation for life, maybe the correct word is recklessness, I wiggled out of my pajamas and my bedroom window onto a small, dark landing below, curious to see what negative 55 degrees would feel like on my skin. The insides of my nostrils froze immediately, and then I felt a strange burning of wind across my bare skin. I spat and watched my saliva explode into shards of evaporated ice. The air felt murderous. I shimmied back in and tried to finish up work on a documentary about a beekeeper in southern France. His bees were dying, and no one could figure out why.

Months of what felt like pure ice found me either asleep or staring at my computer screen. When the polar vortex subsided, it was replaced with unseasonably warm weather. The chickadees sang louder than I remembered they were capable of. Gallons of sunlight poured over me. I took out a pair of binoculars and peered at the lake from my window. I could see birds of all colors moving through the phragmites.

I felt good. Instinctively, my body stretched itself as if emerging from a hibernation. After a hot shower, I stood in front of the mirror and thought: what a shame that no one is around to witness my beauty. This might seem like a vain thought, but that is how it came out, fully formed and almost spoken aloud. The sun was pooling in my brown eyes, my hair was loose, and my skin was elastic with sleep. I was struck by the realization that I was still young, that I still had so much life left to fill.

I decided to reframe my experience. I was a body, no, a beautiful body on this Earth having an experience. Any action taken from here on out would be an expression of my inner light.

I continued to feel this power as I pranced across rivers of melting snow and, next to the pond, ran my hands along the fluffy reeds at its edge. I was wearing a light red, flowy dress and a spring-appropriate trench coat, I had also borrowed a wicker basket from Marisol for the occasion. The outfit fit the weather, at least when I put it on, but it was one of those days that threatened to devolve into grey as soon as the wind decided to blow a cloud in the right position.

I was on a mission to buy uplifting foods only — fragrant bundles of rosemary, goat cheese rolled in blueberry jam, crisp apples, and fizzy waters. I even bought a bouquet of lilacs wrapped in twine and found joy in arranging these objects beautifully in Marisol’s basket. I stopped to take a picture of it.

The lilac seller, a woman with arthritic fingers who had struggled with the twine tying process, looked up and said “I love your red dress”.

“Oh yeah…this,” I said, remembering what I must have looked like to the world. I marveled at my voice emerging from my throat — it had been days since I had heard it. It was almost as if I had forgotten to speak at all, “Thank you.”

I was just about ready to return to my garret, which I have affectionately named the second floor I live on, when I remembered that I’d been sneezing a lot recently. In that documentary with the beekeeper, I learned that many people believe honey is good for allergies, and can even improve sleep schedules. I could use a remedy, for both.

The honey stall was lined with perfect rows of stoic honey bears of different sizes, all facing the same direction like a disciplined army. Their beady eyes were fixed directly on me, and I feel unsettled by all this attention. I tried to look past them, but suddenly my eyes snagged on the eyes of the young man selling the honey. Their leader. He was backlit, giving him the impression of a polished amber stone. Just like the bears, his honey gaze was also fixed directly on me, and he was standing at stiff attention. I hadn’t seen anyone this beautiful in a long time, and it almost pained me to look directly at him. But he smiled, ready for a sale.

“Hey,” I began, emboldened by the momentum created in his gaze, “Is this honey local?” I felt ridiculous as I asked, the name of the neighboring town the honey came from is printed on many of the bear’s labels.

“Yeah, our farm is in the valley, about 30 minutes away. We come here every Tuesday, but this is the first time I’m seeing you around” He said this with a wide smile, and for a second I wondered if this golden person was flirting with me.

“Oh, I just moved here,”  I said, wondering if eight months still counted as just, “the weather has been so cold recently I’ve been shopping for food at Hannafords.” The explanation felt weak, the cold was already a distant memory.

I mentioned the documentary I just watched about bees and honey, and even started to reveal that I had been having trouble sleeping regular hours recently. The words kept spilling out of me, as if I was being charmed by this tan, flannel-wearing vampire with sun-bleached arm hair. The whole time I spoke, the honey salesman dipped white plastic spoons into different honey jars, and handed them to me to lick clean.

“What’s your name by the way?” I asked.

“Miles,” he says. Funny, it is so close to the Spanish and Greek miel, for honey, but it’s actually from the Latin word for soldier. The words have no relation to each other, I don’t think. “What’s yours?”

“Olivia.”

“Nice to meet you, Olivia. I think it’s true by the way, the sleep schedule thing,” Miles said, “I know someone who travels a lot for work and uses our honey to adjust to the eastern time zone when he gets here.” He reached below the table and extracted a tiny honey bear made of glass. “I bottled this one myself this morning, from my personal hive. Here, take it as a sample and let me know if it helps.”

I drifted home that day, vibrating from the magic of my encounter. I felt like I had been given an excuse to return to the farmer’s market and talk to Miles next week. I was in a benevolent mood so I left the lilacs in front of Marisol’s door, as a gift.

The warm, late afternoon sun filled the living room with its amber light. When I pulled out the bear-shaped honey jar, it immediately glowed alongside everything else, but brighter, as if it was emanating its own light. I rolled the bottle around in my hands, and the honey moved through the glass like molten gold. When I popped the lid of the jar open, I was floored by its fragrance, something hypnotically sweet, with a hint of something graver, maybe the spice of clover flowers. I tilted the jar up above my tongue and let the liquid fall into my mouth, coating my throat with its warmth. It was almost as if I could taste the buzzing of the bees who made it. It made me want to sing.

So I sang to myself, softly at first and then louder, delighted by the notes I was producing, honey clear and soft.  As I arranged my meal, my voice continued to delight in itself, and then I heard a soft hum join me. It was a beautiful, strong voice that harmonized and swirled around my own. I wondered if it could be the bear. I picked him up and scanned him closely, trying to detect a difference in his appearance. His glass mouth was contorted suddenly into a little O. I kissed the bear on the forehead, and put him in my cupboard for the night. But when I closed the door and shut him in the darkness, I suddenly feel a pang of dread. No, I thought, the bear would live on my countertop. I went to bed and sleep immediately, for the whole night, and woke up only when the warmth of the Sun crept onto my pillow.

The first thing I spotted when I woke up was the honey bear. He looked kindly at me with eyes that were somehow darker and wetter than before. Instead of being on the countertop, he was sitting on my stove between two burners. I had the sudden urge to make strong black tea with heaps of honey in it.

“How did you sleep?,” the honey bear asked. His voice was just how I remembered Miles’s.

“Better than I have in a long time,” I answered. My hand was on the marble countertop and I noticed that it is impeccably smooth, “did you clean?”

“I did,” says the honey bear, “I knew you were allergic to some of the things in the house. The dust. Marisol’s last tenants also had a dog in here, so I got rid of the dander that was left over.”

“Wow, and who can I thank for all of this?”

“My name is Mel.”

“Like the Portuguese, honey?”

“Exactly.”

“And how was your night?”

“I cleaned, and waited, I was eager to see you.”

“I am here now.”

We lived like husband and wife that month, Mel and I. He cleans the house and I worked at my computer, comforted by the sounds of a house filled with life. Mel has his hobbies and encourages me to take on my own, so I dance and dance around the living room. Each time I felt sad I reveal to him a new secret that I have forgotten about, and he replaces the painful well left behind with sweetness. He cures me of the insomnia and malaise. Each time I take a sip of his honey, I feel my life force double. In the mirror, I have a golden aura.

“Are you real?” I ask him one morning.

“Yes, mi vida, I’ve been here all along.”

But his voice feels weaker than usual, his eyes a little more dim. The honey in Mel’s bottle is almost all dried up.

I suddenly remember that there is an outside world. I suddenly remember Miles.  I have to go back to Miles for a refill. Well, he will ask, what did you think of the honey from my favorite hive? I rehearse in my mind what I will tell him: that not only did it cure me of my ailments, it catapulted me toward happiness; that the glass bear came alive with a voice and name similar to his own; that it contained the antidote for loneliness; that it taught me about music and joy and the simplicity of life, I stop myself. I will tell him that I loved it.

Natasha is a writer, artist, and astrologer from New York City, currently based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Camden. Her poetry and prose have appeared in LETTERS journal, Rejoinder Journal, Siren Magazine, and elsewhere. For more about her writing and practice, visit natasha-soto.com.