Moonface by Angela Balcita

a break from the movie my cousins and I were watching in the next room. I stood over the sink and reached up to the cupboards for a glass.
    â€œShe’s feeling better?” my aunt asked, looking at my mother over the lenses of her reading glasses.
    â€œMmm . . . yes,” my mother said, “but she’s different.” She leaned in close, whispered to her. “She’s just like her brother.”
    I stopped pouring and listened closely from around the corner. “She quickly gets angry now. Short temper. She’s a bruja .”
    â€œMom! Quit it!” I snapped.
    â€œSee?” She raised her eyebrows and looked at my aunt, avoiding my glare.
    My mother had taught me Tagalog when I was growing up, naming the words for things I pointed to in both ways—in both English and in Tagalog. But I didn’t need to be skilled in either of those languages to know from her tone and her facial expression that bruja meant “witch.”
    â€œI’m being honest, not mean,” she said to me. “You get that way now. I think it’s in the kidney.” She was referring to my brother’s quick temper. She always said that he was quick to laugh, but just as quick to anger. This was true; his fuse was short. But I certainly wouldn’t call him a male witch.
    For the longest time, I didn’t believe her. But when I started feeling healthy and stronger, so unlike myself, able to run down the street, run like hell, with the energy and athleticism of my brother, I started to believe that something in me was changing. At a checkup after the surgery, I asked one of the surgeons quietly if my mother was onto something.
    â€œI know I could take on his kidney’s health, but could I take on his personality traits, too?”
    â€œThat kind of thinking can get you in trouble,” the doctor said.
    But, with Charlie, I felt in trouble without that kind of thinking. This exchange seemed too carnal—too scientific, too strictly biological—without the idea that Charlie and I could be connected on some other level. These weren’t body parts that were made in labs or regenerated from orphan cells. These were living cells from living people. I had to believe that love could sweep in here, that there was a mystical factor involved in this exchange. That Charlie and I—not blood related, not even married—were going to be united by a greater force. Part of him would live in me, no matter what. I’d be with him. Forever.
    After losing my brother’s kidney, I thought for many months that it might have been something I had done. Was it my fault? Was I eating the wrongfoods? Drinking too much beer? Was I not taking care of myself enough ?
    â€œNo, it’s none of these,” my brother said on the phone after he heard the news. “Ten years—we had a good run.”
    I joked with him, “Well, if you’ve got another to give, I’ll take it.”
    He hung up the phone abruptly.
    Charlie kept telling me not to think too much about that stuff. “It wasn’t your fault at all. Sometimes things just happen. They make room for other things.”
    His mind was set that this was going to work, and I tried to follow his lead, but there always seemed to be something to worry about.
    â€œWhat will Charlie’s family think? They’ll think we’re not willing to help you, that we’re relying on other people to help you,” my mother told me once on the phone. At first, she didn’t like the idea of Charlie’s donation, her Filipino pride making her hesitant to receive help from outside the family.
    â€œWell, his mother tried to take his place, but he wouldn’t let her,” I told her.
    â€œAy, anak ,” she said. “Look at all these strangers trying to help you.”
    â€œThey’re not strangers, Mom,” I said. “They’re like family.”
    â€œWell,” she said, thinking about it,