The Moon Goddess

When she was four years old, her older sister warned her never to point at the moon. It doesn’t matter whether it is a full moon or a crescent; if you point, the devil will come and cut your ears off. She didn’t believe her sister’s other claims—that a fruit tree would sprout out of your head if you swallowed seeds, or that your future husband’s face would be full of pimples if you left rice on the plate. But this ear-slicing business, mysterious and absolute, she took to heart. Now well into adulthood and married long ago, she had never once violated this lunar sanctity. It was not God in whom she believed, but divine punishment of a most unreasonable sort.

It seemed unlikely that her husband would understand her feelings about the moon, even if she tried her best to explain, for he was fearless. His life, and therefore hers, followed its own orderly orbit: shirts were hung according to their shade, from light to dark; underwear was always folded in a left-first, then-right pattern; soup bowls were stored with the insignia facing up; and the floor was always to be dusted first, before mopping. Within the bounds of his rules, she found irrefutability and security, a routine in which she could submerge herself, a trick she could use to sustain herself in a life severed from her previous one.

But each year when fall came around, and the leaves turned red and yellow and covered the ground, she was terrified. Mottled white and brown orb weavers displayed their eight-legged grandeur on intricate webs strung between two tree branches in the garden; a funnel-weaver appeared hanging off a neglected sweater; giant black house spiders roamed across the floor seeking mates with abandon: she wouldn’t necessarily scream when she encountered them, but she froze on the spot with her mouth hanging open. Her husband said this was evidence of a disorder called arachnophobia. He would pick up a loitering male, make her stare at it and tell her to squash it. She would try to get away, but he would hold her close and squash the creature with two fingers. Then he would smile, patting her head, and say, see, there’s nothing to be afraid of. He called this cognitive reframing. She wondered if she might have been reframed for the worse. In time, she started to dream of spiders, in droves.

It isn’t unusual to fear spiders, she told herself. There’s even a word for it. For the most part, she did not think of herself as especially neurotic. But when it came to punctuality, she could be zealous, whether the occasion was a ballet, a talk, or simply meeting a friend. Twenty minutes early was ideal, and right on time was decidedly too late. Naturally, her husband had a different idea about timeliness: what was wrong with planning to have just enough time? He must suppose, she thought, that the world would always conform itself to his needs, that there would be no traffic jam, no car accident, no getting lost. Since the events they attended were largely his anyway, she quietly endured her panic.

That winter, her husband was invited to speak at a number of conferences, and she was to fly with him everywhere. Time and again, he insisted that getting to the airport only forty minutes before takeoff was more than adequate. While he shaved and applied lotion, she would pace around the hotel room, fidgeting with the luggage, and trying to slow her heart rate. Once, as she caught a glimpse of him whistling to himself in the bathroom mirror, she felt a rush of rage. Her left pinkie jerked. She started to suspect that this was an elaborate game her husband had designed just to set her off.



Later, after the conferences had come and gone, they were preparing one evening to go to a former colleague’s New Year’s party when she had the idea to leave alone, before him, while he was still fidgeting with his shirt and hair. She watched him rub wax into his hair and lied, saying that her friend needed help setting up dinner, so she would go on foot. Her husband’s hand paused at the tip of his hair for a split second before he said, “Sure, suit yourself.”

The friend’s house was just on the other side of the lake where they lived, so she decided to take the winding path through the woods. It was dark and she had never walked alone this way before, and before long she was lost. By a stroke of bad luck, there was no cell reception. Dead branches and dried leaves crackled underneath her boots. Soon, she heard a faint melody played on a piano. She clung to the music, followed it, and it led her to a tiny wooden cottage, from whose square window a green light shone. She paused at the door and listened. The piano music stopped. The door opened, and a woman appeared. The woman had a pale, round face and looked like her older sister when she was still alive. Without a word, the woman motioned for her to come in.

The woman sat in front of an old upright piano in the sitting area, pointed her to an orange ottoman, and started playing again. The piece, to her untrained ear, sounded like an internal monologue that was at once resigned and haunting. It felt like an elegy, but it was not soothing; it was not meant to heal. The music seemed to brood and ponder. There was a reflective silence before the final cadence.

The air hung still for a moment. Then the woman turned to her. “The way out is closer than it seems,” she said. “You’ll see it.”

She shifted her weight in the ottoman. What on earth could this woman be talking about?

“The way back to the lake, of course. Tea?”

The woman disappeared behind a swinging door. Next to the kitchen, on top of a round oak table, lay various objects she couldn’t identify: a bundle of metallic wires, a hammer-like contraption with an opening that could fit a thumb, and strips of wood, metal, plastic, and felt. The collection looked like a surgical set.

“These are my livelihood,” the woman said, reappearing with two clay mugs. “I tune pianos.”

She asked if the bundle of metal was piano wire. The piano tuner nodded. “Each string holds a hundred kilograms of weight. Heads fly if you run your neck into them.”

She shuddered and took the mug, using it to warm her hands.

“My husband was a piano tuner. I was a pianist. He couldn’t stand it when our piano was just a little off. I learned by watching him fiddle with it, over and over, all those years.” The husband was long dead, the tuner explained.

She asked the tuner if she was all right by herself in the woods.

“You know the story of Shang-er, I suppose?” The tuner asked, instead of answering. “The version I remember best was that Shang-er stole the elixir of immortality from her husband because he had become an arrogant and cruel emperor. She drank it to save the people. The elixir made her body light, and she flew to the moon where, for eternity, she was forced to endure loneliness. But there is another version, a more ancient one, that says she stole the elixir simply because she wanted to leave her husband and become immortal herself.” The tuner’s eyes swept across the sitting room, across the bookcases, the turntable, and the lamp with the green shade. “There are still pieces of my husband all over this house.”

After a time, she left the cottage and followed the tuner’s directions out of the woods. As the tuner had promised, the way was not far, and she soon found her friend’s house, with her husband’s Audi parked out front. When she looked back, the cottage was lost in the woods.

As she walked in, her husband was chatting about skincare routines with two women in pearls. He waved her over, and whispered, “Oh dear, did you get lost?” She kept quiet. “I told them you are suddenly into nature and exercise, so you were taking an evening walk. Just go with it, and don’t embarrass yourself, okay?” He squeezed her shoulder. For the rest of the evening, she looked out the floor-to-ceiling window, searching for a green glow among the tree shadows.



One afternoon in the late summer, she had a video call with her twelve-year-old niece, who lived on the other side of the globe with her alcoholic father. The niece wanted to see her house, so she walked around with her tablet to show her their spotless two-story suburban home: her navy-blue table runner, her collection of classical music, her newly acquired Steinway piano, the hummingbirds that were taking turns napping at the feeder on her deck.

“I wish I could take piano lessons, too.” Her niece was in a dark, narrow room, filled with stacks of cardboard boxes, piles of plastic bags, a rice cooker, and a rag on a hanger behind her.

She told the niece that she’d had the same desire when she was a child, and her sister, the niece’s mother, never failed to figure things out for her. Her sister was the one who’d drawn the 61-key piano on paper for her to play, who raised her like a mom as they grew up together in the slums. She knew all the secret alleyways and could always get away after stealing food or scraps from their neighbors. She was the fiercest child on the street; even the boys wouldn’t meet her eye after she nearly broke one boy’s wrist.

“Mom told me that you’re both lucky and unfortunate. What does that mean?” The niece had a stoic expression.

She had been lucky, she explained, because her sister protected her during their childhood, and then in school she met her husband, who got her out of the slums. Her niece nodded, as if acknowledging that she understood adults don’t always explain everything. Then the niece said that her alcoholic father had lost his job and gambled away the small savings they had left. They had been evicted from their four hundred square-foot apartment and moved to a place a quarter of the size. She was the one doing all the cooking.

“It’s like Mom was his spine, and now he has none.”

She said she wanted to help if she could. Wouldn’t it be nice if the niece could come visit them? She was making a big dinner that night, and they had tickets to a musical. Her husband might be in a good mood; she would talk to him.

“I hope Uncle has been good to you,” the niece said, and sighed.



The musical was at nine thirty at a venue some thirty minutes away. She made sure to have dinner ready by the time her husband got back from work. He watched her take the roasted chicken out of the oven, then handed her his suit jacket. “Let’s eat on the patio,” he suggested, un-characteristically.

There was a full moon, and the patio felt bright. After she carved the last bit of meat from the carcass, she started telling him about her niece and her brother-in-law’s troubles.

“You lot.” He shook his head. “Hopeless.”

She kept quiet. But what did she expect?

“I know your slum,” he said. “Sometimes these people just need to be left alone, so they can learn to pull themselves together. Learn to be responsible adults.”

She remembered the slum’s odors of garbage, rotten fish, human and animal excrement; the oppressive and labyrinthine alleys that connected thousands of families; the unlicensed dentists, noodle factories, and gambling dens. Her sister picking up swarming cockroaches in buckets. The times her sister led her up a spiral staircase to the rooftop. Television antennae tangled across the roof, like a field of crosses in a graveyard, and laundry hanging from apartment windows dotted the sides of taller buildings. They flew kites on the roof and marveled at the towers of new condominiums at the edge of the slum, where her husband’s family had lived.

At a quarter to nine, he asked her to get another bottle of wine from the cellar. “We’ve got plenty of time.” His body sunk deep into the rattan chair. It looked like he might never get up. She poured him a glass.

“Why don’t you play the Turkish March for me?” he said, squinting at her.

“Hm.” She glanced at her watch. It would take three and a half minutes. A trickle of sweat rolled down her forehead. She opened the French door that faced the patio and sat down in front of the Steinway. Since she started taking piano lessons at the beginning of the year, her husband had been insisting that she learn this piece. She had come to resent its jovial, upbeat mood. She played, thinking about all the classical music she had listened to in the past few months, but she still couldn’t name the piece that the piano tuner had played. She had forgotten to ask.

“You’re missing some notes,” he said. “Isn’t your left hand a bit weak?”

“Indeed,” she said. “And the piano is out of tune.”

She closed the lid. He signaled her to sit down beside him and started shaking his leg. The sounds of crickets seemed to compete with the ticking clock.

“I suppose the spiders are coming back, aren’t they?” he said.

“I haven’t seen them yet,” she said.

“Listen. Kill one yourself this year, okay? You can’t always act like a child.”

She looked at the chicken bones strewn on the table. She stood up and started clearing them into a trash bag. Apparently, she hadn’t cooked the chicken through, and he had left the bloody parts on his plate.

“Here’s a big one,” he pulled her over and pointed to the sky, toward the moon. That night, the moon had taken on an eerie tint of red. In front of it, hanging over the tree branch, there was the shimmering outline of a web, with a spider sitting silently in the middle.

“Go get it,” he gave her a push and grinned.

She remembered her dream from the previous fall, where a mass of spiders rushed toward her and she started eating them, one by one, until she woke up screaming.

She walked toward the tree. “Do you remember the folktale? That Shang-er lives up there?” She pointed at the moon.

“Haven’t we all heard that story?”

“There’s another version.” She picked up the carving knife. She considered their almost perfect life together, then imagined a different one. She stretched her left ear out and made a clean slice. The upper part of her ear dropped onto the emptied plate.

“You’re not supposed to point at the moon.” Blood flowed down her neck. She walked toward him, knife in hand.

For a moment, he froze in the chair. Then he stood up and backed away, hands in the air. The scattered pieces of the piano tuner’s husband, she thought, might not have been just a figure of speech. Her blood dribbled on the ground, forming a long, dark trail as she stepped forward.

Across the lake, the piano tuner listened, and began to play.