The Other Side of Blue

by Valerie O. Patterson

  I savor the taste of Kammi’s disappointment. She doesn’t cry or stamp her foot, but she looks at me sharply. Maybe she thinks it’s my fault, that I did something to make Mother come down with a headache.

  I shrug as if she’s asked me a question out loud. Who knows? Maybe Mother doesn’t really have a headache. Maybe she doesn’t want to paint en plein air with a beginner, one who will look at her as if she’s a goddess. Maybe it makes her uncomfortable, though that’s hard to imagine, given the way Philippa used to hang around our house near the lake. She started out following ten paces behind Mother wherever she went, until she became more skilled herself. After a while, Philippa became an artist in her own right. Then she started to walk beside Mother, as if they were equals.

  “Okay,” Kammi says, lowering her eyes. “If I can’t paint today, going to town will be okay.”

  Other than the day we arrived at the airport, I haven’t been to Willemstad this year. It’s my chance to take the sea glass I’ve collected so far to the bead shop to sell.

  “Another day, you paint with Mrs. Walters. It is no problem.” Martia smiles and straightens the small silver pin, shaped like a palette, on Kammi’s blouse. No doubt she is wearing a gift from her grandmother. Only a grandmother would give that pin to anyone who truly wanted to be an artist.

  Kammi smiles and Martia hugs her. I slip money from Martia’s outstretched hand into my pocket.

  Jinco looks in his rearview mirror when he should be watching the shell road twist and turn in front of the cab. He pretends he’s looking at me, but he’s staring at Kammi, because all the men will gaze at her in the way they’re not supposed to, eyes turned away yet studying her sideways. She’s just a child, they’ll think. They’ll be right, but Kammi already has a sexy look, whether she knows it or not.

  I stare down Jinco when he looks my way. He remembers last year, I know, but he still showed up to meet us at the airport this year, as if this were just another summer and Dad was staying in Maine like he often did. Dad would say he shouldn’t interfere, that Mother had to have her space. And her space didn’t always include him. Maybe it didn’t always include me, either. But she always brought me to the island. I came along like a barnacle attached to the hull of a sleek speedboat.

  In Willemstad, Jinco jerks the cab to a stop near a banyan tree before the Queen Emma pontoon bridge.

  “We’ll meet you here at four o’clock,” I say. In the heat of the afternoon. I’m probably making him come for us just when he’d be taking a nap under a shade tree or having a beer.

  Jinco shrugs and taps the car clock, the one that runs ten minutes slow compared to my plastic wristwatch. “Four,” he says. He’ll be late. He and I both know it.

  “Come on, get out on this side.” I slide out the door and motion to Kammi to follow.

  She says thank you to Jinco. His eyes follow her in the side-view mirror. He can’t help himself.

  When Jinco speeds off, leaving a cloud of burned oil in our faces, we’re standing on the pontoon bridge. The Queen Emma Bridge opens to let the big cruise ships in and out of the main harbor. Every summer, I come down at least once to wave as the ships inch out of port, saying goodbye to tourists pointing their cameras at us from the deck.

  I lean over the side. Anemones cling to the pontoons and the bridge supports near the shore. “If you squint, you can see through the water at an angle.”

  Kammi stares, a few strands of hair blowing across her face.

  “There,” I say, pointing. “Just on the edge, see the parrotfish?”

  Her gaze darts back and forth along the water. I can tell she can’t see it.

  “Look through the water. Follow the light.” I point again. “Quick, before a cloud moves in front of the sun.” The fish hovers just there, motionless.

  Kammi throws out her arm, pointing. “I see it.”

  Looking where her hand is pointing, I see nothing. The startled fish has moved away.

  “Sure,” I say. Whatever. “Come on.” We pass the tourist shops closest to the cruise-ship dock, the ones that pay extra so they can be listed in the brochures. “Safe, friendly sales staff.” “Air conditioning.” “Extra-special prices,” they claim, “just for the ship passengers.” It’s a lie. No one checks to see if I’m with a cruise ship when I claim a discount. Maybe they mumble, “Ship?” and I name whatever ship is in port. Only once last year, a nosy clerk, just a little older than me, asked me for my ship card, for proof, and she thought she had me. Her smirk and unbelieving eyes said so. I shrugged and claimed my mother had my ID card. Then I said loudly, so the manager would hear, “She’s not coming to this shop, so I guess there’s no sale.” The girl gave in and sold me the shell bracelets for ten percent of. Better a sale than no sale, and no skin off her nose if I cheated the owner. She’d have done the same. And the truth? The truth is the ten percent discount is no discount, but we all play the game.

  Kammi darts under the shady overhang of a food stand, where the air smells of cinnamon, one of Curaçao’s exports. An oscillating fan whips the scent into the air, and it wafts into the street, where it mingles with dust and diesel. Tourists slathered in sunscreen mill about, struggling behind tour guides with tasseled flagpoles, calling out for beach tour this and snorkeling tour that.

  Kammi waits in line and buys a Coke with ice. She hands over her money and then takes a second cup and passes it to me, without asking if I want one.

  I can’t be bought for a cold drink.

  But I take it.

  When the mob of cruise tourists pass, I lead us down a quiet side street. Colores. The shell and bead shop is still there. I feel the bulge of sea glass in my skirt pocket. I keep no valuables in the crocheted purse that hangs across my body, over my left shoulder. It dangles there, the button closure open, tempting pickpockets. It holds some small coins, a bandana, a map from the cruise ship that someone dropped and I scavenged.

  A bell over the door tinkles as we enter Colores, barely noticeable above the clatter of the air conditioning. Kammi stands just inside the doorway, taking in the wooden bowls of beads covering every empty space. I felt the same way the first time I came here. It is too much—the colors, the textures, the promise.

  At the first table, Kammi runs her fingers through blue glass beads.

  “Like your sea glass,” she says. She picks out an assortment of blue beads and bundles them into a small white envelope. Then she heads for the silver beads at a table across the room. She can see possibilities.

  I turn away and hang out near the front counter, waiting for the owner to appear. Kammi’s seen the sea glass in my room. Does she know I gather it every morning, early? The sea is my field. It decides whether to give up its treasures, whether to cast onto the beach shards of glass, worn smooth, for me to glean. I only keep the best blues.

  “Do you have crimps, pliers?” Kammi asks. She’s moved on to the shelves of tools and wire.

  “Yes,” I say from across the room. I pretend to look at beading magazines by the checkout. I don’t want her to see my sale. Mother doesn’t know about the sea glass. I didn’t even pack pliers. But I left an old, cheap set of tools that Martia knows about in the storage area under the deck. Some silver wire, too, in a velvet pouch. It’s probably all tarnished now, since it’s been a year.

  “Beading thread?”

  I nod. A spool should be there. I look over leaflets for beading classes being held here on the days the cruise ships dock in port. For tourists again. The door opens, and three cruise-ship tourists—I can tell from their shoulder totes labeled with the ship’s name—waddle in, out of the heat.

  Kammi wanders down another aisle of wooden dishes teasing her with beads—glass, coral, wood, even plastic, like the beads they throw to tourists in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

  The owner, Antje, appears from the back room, her thighs swishing together under a wide-banded skirt. She’s come out because of the tourists, who laugh and joke with each other about who makes the best necklaces
back home in New Jersey. When Antje sees me, she motions with her hand, pats the barest space of counter, as though I haven’t been gone a year.

  From the pocket in my skirt, I take out a plastic bag of small bits of sea glass, spilling them onto the wooden counter. Antje squints and runs her hands over each piece, as if she can tell by touch whether they’re fake, whether they’re from this island. Or if they’re tumbled by machine rather than by the ocean. The artist who buys them from her wants only local glass—she says it evokes the mystery of the island. It costs more, too, the shop owner knows. In exchange for the glass, Antje counts out small bills and square coins for me. She slips them into a white paper envelope as if they’re beads I’m purchasing. In case the taxman comes snooping, she says.

  I look over my shoulder. Kammi is distracted by the boxes of Venetian glass beads, these and the tourists exclaiming all around her about the spiraling blown glass. She doesn’t even notice my transaction.

  My secret is safe.

  Chapter Eleven

  KAMMI AND I leave Antje cajoling the tourists, trying to sell them Chinese beads at European prices. Outside, I breathe in the heat and blink at the brightness.

  “Let’s go this way,” I say, pointing away from the shopping district.

  “Okay,” Kammi agrees, following me. Not questioning.

  I’ve been thinking about the commissioner’s letter, how the report is final and sealed away forever. To me, though, it’s like a scab, healed over only on the outside. Underneath the wound is still raw, with too many questions left unanswered.

  Maybe the commissioner knows Mayur’s cousin. Maybe I can find him here. I can confront him myself to see what he knows. Then I won’t have to give Mayur the satisfaction of holding something over me until I beg him to tell me.

  I lead us to the shell-white building with the flag out front.

  “Let’s go in,” I say.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s where the commissioner’s office is.”

  “What are we going to do here?” Kammi gives me a frown.

  “I just have a question.”

  Kammi doesn’t move forward when I begin to climb the steps.

  “I don’t think I’ll go in,” she says.

  “Okay. Just wait here. I don’t want to have to tell Mother I lost you.” I don’t wait to see what she does.

  At the top I push through the door. A guard stands at the entrance. He leans against the counter with the hip that doesn’t have a sidearm buckled to it. A fan in the corner turns, washing cool air over me as it moves back and forth. The movement of air riffles papers on the counter.

  “Office is now closed.”

  I should have thought of that. Some things close here in the heat of the day. Only shops that cater to tourists are busy now. Everyone else goes in search of shade and a quiet place until later in the afternoon.

  “It’s important. I need to see Mr. Botha. The commissioner?” I stand up tall, trying to look important, imperious, the way Mother would if she wanted something here. This guard won’t ask me questions if I act like my mother.

  He frowns. “Mr. Botha is not here. The commissioner is Mr. Pieter Drak now. Mr. Botha, he is gone. Retired. Sorry.” The guard’s lips turn down, as if he really is sad that he can’t make the commissioner—the old commissioner—appear. “Perhaps Mr. Drak, he can help you. Later?”

  I shake my head. A new commissioner wouldn’t know.

  How could Mr. Botha retire? He has an unsolved case. In the United States, the police don’t give up. They keep cold cases going for years. I hear about them all the time, the unsolved cases closed with the discovery of only a small bit of evidence. Maybe something as small as a chip of blue paint.

  The guard hands me a card. “Here, here is the number. If you change your mind.” I pocket Mr. Drak’s card.

  “How about Dr. Bindas? Do you know him?” If the guard knows Dr. Bindas, then he might know the cousin who works in the government.

  Again, he shakes his head. “No.”

  Disappointed, I find Kammi outside on the stairs in the shade thrown by the building across the street. She’s sitting with her back to me.

  I plop down beside her.

  “Did you find out something?” she asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “What were you going to ask? Is it about the letter your mother got?”

  “Yes,” I say. “It’s about my father.”

  Kammi opens her mouth and then closes it again, as if she’s thought better of asking a question she might not want to know the answer to. Dad wasn’t part of the reason she came here. After all, Dad is gone. Her father is moving into the picture.

  I squint at the clock tower across the street. “Come on. Jinco will be here soon.”

  Near the cruise-ship dock, we buy cold drinks and sit on a bench underneath a tree. I watch a pair of lizards chase each other along the wall. Sunburned tourists, laden with shopping bags, head back to the ship like lemmings.

  When Jinco shows up, he makes a big show, driving a huge circle around us and doubling back, crossing in front of three small cars, all missing something: a bumper, a radio antenna, a side mirror. Men drinking at the café bar wave noisily, yipping their appreciation. At his driving, or at Kammi. Or maybe both. She and I spill into the back seat. As he takes the curve again to more hoots of pleasure, we slosh into each other like waves.

  Kammi leans over to me. “Is he drunk?”

  I look at Jinco’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “No. He’s just showing off.” At that, Jinco settles back into being Jinco the taxi driver for expats and tourists, the safe driver, one a mother would be comfortable leaving her daughter and daughter-to-be with for an afternoon.

  “Why don’t you drive us to Santa Catarina? To the ostrich farm? We have time.”

  Jinco takes his foot of the gas. A minibus rattles past, nearly running a Jeep of the road coming the other way. Jinco ignores the traffic. “Go there now? Martia, she pay me for roundtrip to Willemstad. That’s all she pay.”

  I take bills from my pocket. “I’ll pay extra.” I’m in no rush to go home, to see if Mother has recovered from her headache. Though I don’t want to make Martia wait, we have time enough to drive by and feed the ostriches. In the early years that Dad came, he liked to take me to feed them. He watched the birds, their blinking eyes and long eyelashes. “Intelligent birds,” he said. “You can see it in their eyes.” Mother never came, claimed she was allergic to feathers. One year, Dad bought me a hollowed ostrich egg, the blue color just for me, he said. Some of the eggs were sold with painted designs on them, but I liked the plain ones. Holding them up to the light, I could see the pale inner wall, how the blue color bleeds through to the creamy underside.

  Jinco nods curtly. He’s made up his mind. He brakes, then yanks the wheel and heads back to the cutoff. He makes a hard right turn and we’re off, speeding past a bus and a truck sagging with water bottles.

  By the time we get there, Kammi has her face pressed to the window, watching the fields for ostriches. Jinco stops the car at the entrance.

  “I wait here,” he says, motioning to a tree where a minibus is pulling away. The shady spots are so few in this area, he needs to stake out one for himself. Tour buses have lined up farther along the gate and driveway. He points at his car clock. “Thirty minutes. Then we go. My day, it is finish.”

  Jinco is lying. He’s waiting to go back into town and drive drunk late-afternoon tourists back to the cruise ship before it sets sail at dusk. He can charge extra. Martia says he makes good money on ship days. She had to pay him extra out of Mother’s stash just to ensure he’d take us out today, at the last minute. I heard her negotiating with him.

  “Come on.” Jinco knows I heard him. This is my game.

  I make a show of paying for Kammi at the gate. It’s the money Martia pressed into my hands as she sent us off this morning. But Kammi doesn’t know that. Maybe she thinks I’m being nice.

&nb
sp; The staff lets us feed a baby ostrich. Kammi stretches out her hand, and the bird’s long neck curves over as it takes some pellets in its beak, carefully, as if it’s been trained.

  “Does your mother ever come here?” Kammi asks.

  “My mother?”

  “Yes, does she?”

  “No. She doesn’t. She doesn’t like animals. Why do you care?”

  Kammi pulls her hand back and pours more pellets into it from the plastic container. The ostrich stares at her hand, then pecks more food. Kammi holds her arm steady. She doesn’t even blink when the ostrich’s beak taps her palm. “I want her to like me.” She says it fiercely.

  “Why? She’s going to be your stepmother. Don’t you believe all those tales about stepmothers?”

  “No. Dad said—”

  “Do you do everything he wants you to do?”

  “No.”

  “I bet you do. Dad wants you to paint with watercolors. Dad wants you to get along with my mother. Did he tell you to be nice to me, too?”

  Kammi blushes. “He said I couldn’t win you over. He said I shouldn’t try.”

  I laugh. “But you are trying.”

  Kammi doesn’t look at me, but the ostrich turns to me and blinks. I don’t know if my dad was right about ostriches. This bird looks pretty stupid to me. It listens to my voice, cocks its head, as if trying to figure out what laughter is about. Then it pecks at Kammi’s empty palm, searching for more. She snatches her hand away. If ostriches are so smart, like Dad said, it should go straight for the plastic bin where the pellets are stored and not look for handouts from strangers.

  Chapter Twelve

  MARTIA OPENS the door for us before Jinco has even driven away. She’s been waiting, keeping dinner warm. Kammi goes straight to her room. I wait in the hallway as Martia tiptoes up the metal stairs to Mother’s studio and knocks. The door opens, closes. I listen but I can’t hear anything.