Chapter Text
As a young child, Lua Anna Houghton-Lopez – “Lu Lu” or “Lu” for short-thought she had the best life ever.
Named for the Portuguese words for moon (Lua) and her father’s niece (Anna), she was the youngest child (by about 10 minutes) and only daughter of two wonderful, loving parents: Francisco (or Frank) Lopez de Heredia and Dr. Lily Houghton-Lopez.
The story of how her parents met and fell in love was one for the ages. Her father had fallen in love with her mother when she and her brother MacGregor went on an expedition in the Amazon for the Tears of the Moon (a story shared with her and her siblings many times). After breaking Frank’s curse, they all left the Amazon for England. It was her father’s first time visiting England in his 395 years, and he found that England had many charms-the best of which was Lily. He moved in with both Lily and MacGregor in 1916 and began “studying” cartography (as if he wasn’t already an expert) at University College London. It didn’t take long before both moved out and married in 1917.
And they didn’t waste much time after getting married before Lily became pregnant and gave birth to her oldest son, Francisco Charles Houghton-Lopez (who was named for his father and grandfather, respectively) in 1918. A year later (in 1919) her father graduated from university with his license in surveying and joined a company where he helped with surveying land and creating maps for companies and people looking to build houses, estates or businesses.
Then in 1920, Lua and her twin brother, Fernando Miguel Houghton-Lopez, were born. (Fernando’s name meant “adventurous”, a name that perfectly encapsulated his personality as well as the spirit of his parents. Miguel was their other grandfather’s name.)
The story of their birth was very dramatic. After giving birth prematurely to the twins (and losing a lot of blood in the process), Lily and her newborn children were near the point of death. Frank had driven like a madman to the university and took the formula that Lily had created from the petal. After consuming it, Lily and her twins quickly improved.
(At the time of the twins’ birth, the formula was in the testing phase. And years later, in spite of proof of its effectiveness, it had still not been patented.)
Her father, Frank would share that seeing her mother and the two of them near death was the most terrifying experience of his life. (“Even more terrifying than being cursed?” Lua had asked him once. “Yes,” he had answered solemnly before pressing a reverent kiss to his wife’s temple.)
Lua knew all three of them were blessed just to be alive.
Lua also felt blessed to live in a house a little ways outside of Cambridge that sat on an acre of fields and wooded property. Her parents had purchased the property when they married with Lily’s half of the inheritance and maintained it with her tenure as a professor as well as with Frank’s small surveying and cartography business that he had started when his children were very young. She loved taking walks around the large country property, hand in hand with her mother as Lily pointed out every species of plant they saw before making Lua repeat their Latin and English names back to her.
Even more exciting to Lua as a child was the fact that she got to spend many summer holidays in Brazil. Occasionally, they just visited to see her father’s old friends, such as Trader Sam and her tribe or Zacqueu, his father and his younger brother, Joao. Lua was enamored by this country, and even though her father had lived three and a half lifetimes here, he always spoke of it fondly, his eyes lighting up when he navigated the waters of the Amazon (on a boat that was never as good as La Quila , his “buena niña”).
Her family would also, on occasion, travel to Spain, where they would traverse the land and her father would tell them stories of his childhood and younger adult years living in 16 th century Spain. He often would bring his cartographer’s paper and map out various cities and villages and detail how it had changed over the years. Once, they even got to visit Algiers, where their father was born.
And then there was her mother’s brother- her fun uncle, MacGregor. He continued to occasionally speak on the expedition in Lily’s classes, but his real love was writing. He wrote a novel detailing his experiences in the jungle, which was advertised as an “exaggerated” tale of adventure, science and love. (After all, he couldn’t just go around proclaiming curses and undead conquistadors as a true story, could he?) He finally had his happily ever after, though, just a few years after returning from the Amazon. He fell in love with one of Lily’s colleagues (a Dr. Jack Hanson) at the men’s college, and the two eventually moved to New York City in America when Lua and her brothers were very young. At that time, Lily referred to Dr. Hanson in front of her children as their uncle’s “friend” to protect both men from the dangers that oversharing young children tend to present to an adult’s private life. But they all knew the truth.
Oh, and her first pet? A jaguar.
She was living an adventurous, unique life that she absolutely loved.
As she grew, however, she began to realize just how unique her life was compared to those of the other girls at her private school. For example, at the beginning of autumn term, while most girls shared tales of their summer holidays that included trips to the south of Wales or to France, Lua described holidays in a small Brazilian town along the Amazon, where she and her family would take trips down the river and where her father would teach her how to tell if a snake was venomous or not and how to create shelter out of sticks and leaves.
And she just wasn’t like a lot of the girls she went to school with. Instead of tea parties, she preferred climbing trees. Instead of pretty dresses, she would spend time out of school in pants. Instead of worrying about boys, she worried about books.
Because of this, she didn’t have many friends and was teased often for her preference for “boyish things”.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only reason she was teased.
Her olive complexion (lighter than her father’s but darker than her mother’s) and her wild, untamable curls of chestnut brown hair were the source of many bullies’ jokes.
Lua hated her skin and her hair. She hated how odd she looked standing next to her pale classmates with their smooth, straight blonde or brown locks.
The only part about her that matched any of those other girls were her eyes, which were like her mother’s. “As blue as the clearest blue sky,” her father would tell her before dropping a kiss to her forehead, right between her eyes.
(In fact, whenever her father told the tale of how he met her mother, he would always add that it was her mother’s eyes that captivated him first. What usually followed that comment was a kiss from her, to which all of the children would respond with exclamations of “Ew!” and “Gross!”)
Lua was the only one of her parents’ children with eyes like her mother’s. Her two brothers both shared their father Frank’s bright brown eyes. Over the years, Lua was called “exotic” by many around the world because of her blue eyes and skin tone. Her parents thoroughly abhorred the term “exotic” in reference to their only daughter’s appearance, but compared to the school bullies’ comments, such comments were tame.
In fact, the first handful of times she was teased as a young primary student, she ran home from school in tears, and her parents would both hold her, their eyes full of sadness and anger when they heard how she was treated. She and her brothers had even once caught her mother crying after a particularly rough day of teasing for her when they were all younger. Lily was speaking to her husband in hushed whispers about the unfairness of it all, tears running down her cheeks, to which Frank responded by pulling her into a tight hug and telling her, “Mi amor, that’s the way things are going to be for them-and for all of us- unless society changes. We’ve known that from day one.” Lua and her brothers could see the brokenness in his eyes, even though his tone was calm and soothing.
Her brothers had a similar experience in school, sadly- teased for the color of their skin, especially Francisco, whose skin was as almost as dark as their father’s. They were also often teased for their dark brown eyes and curly or wavy hair. Francisco’s hair was ironically the lightest color of the three children: it was a light brown that was close in shade to their mother’s natural blonde hair color. Fernando had it the worst when it came to the teasing about hair - his hair was pitch black and as wavy and wild as their father’s had been when he was young. (None of the children or even Lily had ever seen him with hair, but their father swore he had hair like Fernando’s. He even had a self-portrait sketch from his conquistador days to prove it.)
Not wanting to make her mother cry anymore (and not wanting to see that barely-concealed pain in her father’s eyes again), Lua and her brothers decided then and there not to tell their parents anymore when the teasing happened.
One of the most infamous incidents of bullying (even amongst her brothers) occurred when Lua was in year 8 in her private secondary school for girls.
One day near the end of autumn term in writing class, she and her classmates were asked to write and share a story of a time they tried something new for the first time and what they learned from the experience. Lua had shared a story from primary school-the story of how her dad first helped her catch piranhas by shooting down rats and throwing them in the water. She described how she got to scoop fish from the murky waters, gut them, and roast them over the fire.
“I was so worried I would vomit, but the taste wasn’t as awful as I had anticipated,” she read aloud, “These days I could probably catch and cook piranha in my sleep. I learned that if something looks disgusting to eat, one just has to find the best way to cook it, first.” Most of the students (save for her good friend, a French exchange student by the name of Anais) had laughed or made faces of disgust, and even her teacher had a barely-masked look of surprise and revulsion on his face.
During lunch hour, while she was sitting under a tree with Anais, a few girls approached them.
“Have any piranha for lunch today, Lua? Or just some nasty Spanish food?” one teased. Lua recognized the girl as Eloise, one of the cruelest girls in her form. She hunched over her tortilla españolla that her father had cooked for her in the morning, refusing to meet the girls’ eyes or dignify those questions with a response.
Anais shot them a nasty look, but that didn’t deter the three girls, and another laughed,
“I bet she ate the rats on her trip, too.”
“They’re really not so bad if you cook them properly,” Lua made the mistake of sharing without thinking. Her heart dropped in instant regret, her face quickly becoming inflamed with embarrassment and she saw the girls’ expressions twist into an odd mix of repugnance and amusement before the three of them suddenly burst out laughing.
“My father was right,” Eloise taunted in between fits of laughter, “You and your family are as dirty as your skin is!”
Lua’s blood turned cold. To insult her was one thing- but to insult her family ? That was another thing entirely. She stood up quickly, her hands balled up tightly into two fists. “What did you say?” she asked through clenched teeth as she struggled to maintain her self-control. The girl rolled her eyes before taking another step toward her, crossing one arm over the other when she said, quite loudly though she was only a few feet away,
“Don’t you speak English, you little Spanish brat? I said: my father thinks your family is DIRTY- with your dirty skin, dirty hair, dirty food…and especially your DIRTY father.”
Lua’s next thought was not a thought at all but an instant reaction to Eloise’s words. She punched Eloise in her smirking, condescending face square on her nose, which immediately knocked her down onto the grass. Shaking with anger and adrenaline, she leaned over the girl, who was sobbing and holding her nose in pain.
“Do not EVER speak ill of my papá or my family again!” Lua shouted. Eloise’s tear-filled eyes were terrified and Lua could see that her nose was bleeding heavily. Almost instantly, the adrenaline that had filled Lua’s body so quickly disappeared just as swiftly, and she sank down to the ground, shaking like a leaf. What have I done?! Anais was by her side in an instant, patting her back and assuring her in her thick French accent that the other girl had deserved it. The other two girls as well as other classmates could only look on in shock at the scene.
A few moments later, the deputy headmistress and a few teachers walked over along with the headmistress. One teacher tended to the injured girl while the headmistress and deputy headmistress approached Lua. Even Anais knew better than to get involved, and slowly backed away from her friend. Lua didn’t blame her. The headmistress was a no-nonsense woman who inspired respect (and just a bit of fear) merely with her presence.
“Come with us,” the deputy headmistress spoke gruffly, grabbing Lua by the arm and all but dragging her to the headmistress’s office before leaving and shutting the door firmly. And there Lua waited, alone. She glanced down at her right fist, which was flushed slightly red with a smattering of blood around the knuckles.
What will my punishment be? she wondered worriedly. She had been in trouble before, but never this seriously. She knew she would be caned and would also be made to apologize to Eloise, but what else? Would she also have to write lines? Would she be expelled?
Her heart sank impossibly further at the thought.
What seemed like hours but was likely just a handful of minutes later, the headmistress and the deputy headmistress entered, and the former huffed, “Young lady, what do you have to say for yourself?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt her, ma’am,” Lua murmured, unable to meet the woman’s stern gaze, fresh tears filling her eyes.
“But the fact of the matter is that you did , even if it was provoked,” the deputy headmistress chimed in, “Several students reported that she was saying words about your family. About them being dirty. Is this true?”
The headmistress folded her hands on her desk, and after a moment Lua realized both women were waiting for her answer.
“Yes,” she responded in barely a whisper.
“What specifically did they say?” the headmistress prodded further. Knowing that her parents were probably going to be phoned, Lua was hesitant to share any further details that she knew would hurt her parents’ hearts if they found out.
I’m sorry, Mum, she thought, knowing she was about to break her promise to herself about keeping the bullying she had endured a secret. Taking a shaky breath, she glanced up at the two women and answered, her voice wavering with emotion and nerves, “She…called me a Spanish brat. And called me dirty. Said my hair and skin and food were dirty. She said her father thought my family and I were all dirty- especially my father. I…I got upset,” Lua quickly glanced back down again, new tears springing to her eyes as she recalled Eloise’s words. She felt the anger, renewed, rise in her body again.
“That is hardly an offence worthy of a jab to the face,” the deputy headmistress commented. But Lua was already angry and couldn’t have stopped her outburst if she had tried.
“I don’t expect any of you to understand!” She cried, standing up suddenly.
“Silence!” The headmistress roared, and instantly the room was silent, and Lua slowly sank into her seat once more. “Regardless of what was said or not said, I will not tolerate such violence at my school. Put your hands on the desk to receive your punishment for striking another student and for talking back.”
Silently, obediently, she placed her hands, one already red and bloodied, on the desk, waiting for the deputy headmistress’s cane to strike her hand. The cane came down once, twice, three times…ten times in all. Lua squeezed her eyes shut the whole time, willing herself not to cry. Afterwards, both her hands were a dark shade of red.
“Now,” the headmistress (a Headmistress Adamson by name) continued, “Deputy Headmistress Michaels and I have decided that, since this is your first severe offence, you will not be expelled.”
Lua let out an exhalation of breath she hadn’t realized she was holding at the news.
“However, you will eat your lunches in the solitude of the classroom every day for a month, where you will write 100 lines each day saying ‘I will not hit my classmates’. We have also phoned your parents and Eloise’s parents.”
So much for getting off easy, she thought grudgingly. “Yes ma’am,” she nodded in understanding.
“I hope you realize the severity of your situation, Ms. Lopez. There is a possibility that Eloise’s nose is broken,” the deputy headmistress explained. Her heart sank at the thought. Sure, Eloise was cruel, but she hadn’t meant to injure her.
“Yes ma’am,” she mumbled again, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me, apologize to your parents. And to Eloise and her parents when they arrive.”
Oh, great. Or as Joao would say, “O caralho”. Better not let that one slip.
An hour (and a lot of agonizing waiting) later, the door to the office opened once again, and in walked the headmistress, along with both her parents. Lua stood, legs shaking like a newborn giraffe’s at the sight of Headmistress Adamson and her very angry parents together in the same room.
O caralho, indeed.