Luna: New Moon

‘Carlos had been dead twenty years. There were still hundreds of sperm samples frozen. Carlinhos came from one. Then the gracious Adriana decided she wanted another child. A baby-toy, a last reminder of her dead husband. At the age of fifty-six she wanted another baby. And there was me, with nothing of my own! She didn’t deserve another child, a little late-life boy-toy. And it was so very simple.’

The saints, the orixas, the exus and guias fix Lucasinho Corta with plastic eyes. He feels itchy and self-conscious. The green biolight makes him nauseous. He’s sure it’s the green biolight. Not the immediate, terrible question he has to ask.

‘Flavia. What about me?’

‘Those are Sun cheekbones and Corta eyes, Luca. No mistaking.’ Flavia reads his confusion. ‘I said you couldn’t understand it.’

‘So you had Wagner …’

‘A boy of my own. That was all I needed. You Cortas, your pride makes you blind. It’s the first and greatest sin, pride. You would never have considered that Wagner might be the son of Carlos and Flavia and not Carlos and Adriana. Never. Arrogance and pride!’ Flavia lifts her hands, as if in praise, or denunciation. ‘And you would never have known except for Wagner going to hospital for that lung treatment. He developed a bronchial condition. Adriana was worried that it might be congenital, that Carlos’s sperm and her eggs had curdled and gone sour over the years. The hospital ran genetic tests. My deception was revealed in an instant. I had broken my contract, but it would have been the scandal of the century if the news networks had found out that Adriana Corta’s last child wasn’t hers. I took Corta money to be quiet, and a threat.’

‘Vo threatened you?’

‘Not Adriana. Her agents came bearing gifts. Helen de Braga showed me the money, Heitor Pereira showed me the knife. Wagner stayed at Boa Vista to be brought up a Corta in every way. But Adriana couldn’t love him. She looked at him and she saw something that was Carlos’s, but not hers.’

‘She’s always been distant around him. Cold. But my father really hates him.’

‘He’s wise, your father. Wagner is a threat to the family, I am a threat to the family, me telling you this is a threat to the family.’

Lucasinho’s heart leaps with panic.

‘Would he, if he knew you’d – Hurt you?’

‘He wouldn’t run the risk of losing you forever.’

‘Like that would bother him. I didn’t see him sending security to find me when I ran out of Boa Vista.’

‘Your father knows exactly where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing. He knows where you are right now.’

‘I fucking hate being a Corta.’ A sudden sweep of the arm clears the table of saints and votives. Flavia painstakingly replaces them.

‘Listen to rich boy. You run away and your friends throw you parties, your aunt throws you cash and your lovers throw a sheet over your ass and a roof over your head. You hate being a Corta? You hate never having to sell the breath in your lungs and the piss in your bladder? You hate never having to steal from recycle bots, knifing someone for a bag of manioc fries? Close your mouth. Your brains might fall out. That cake you brought? I would have cut you open for it, boy. Your family always hired Jo Moonbeams for madrinhas because we’ve got Earth bones and muscles. I was six months off the cycler, working in robotics development for Taiyang in Queen of the South when a micro-recession threw me out on to the street. I slept up in the roof, I could feel the radiation hammering through my body like sleet. I stole and I maimed and I sold everything I had and then I said never again. Never again. So I went to the Sisters because I knew what they were doing with genelines and the Mãe-do-santo looked me up and down and checked my medical records five, ten, fifty times. Then sent me to Adriana Corta and she put Carlinhos in me and I was never hungry or thirsty or breathless again. You hate having all those things? Mother and saints, you fucking ingrate.’ Flavia crosses herself and kisses her knuckles.

Lucasinho’s face burns with anger and shame. He’s tired of being told what he needs to do with himself. Wear this dress. Put on that make-up. Don’t be with that girl. Be a thankful son. Madrinha Flavia gets up from the floor and boils water in her kitchen cubby. Pestle in mortar, then a thick green smell fills the small room.

Lucasinho’s hand is on the door.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘No. But you won’t go. You wouldn’t be here if you had anywhere else to go. And I don’t want you to go. Here.’ Flavia hands him a glass of herbal maté. ‘Sit.’

‘Orders. Everyone gives me orders. Everyone is so clever about me and who I am and what I want.’

‘Please.’

Lucasinho sniffs the brew.

‘What is this?’

‘Helps sleep,’ Flavia says. ‘It’s late.’