by Laura Resau
Finally, I crawl between the white sheets, make sure the mosquito net is tucked firmly into the mattress, and let my head fall onto the pillow. I’m just drifting off when a thundering sound makes my eyes fly open. My heart races. Am I imagining it? I listen, holding perfectly still. All I hear is my father’s song and the waves and crickets and frogs outside my window. The regular rhythms of nighttime. I do some deep breathing and, after what seems like ages, manage to sink into sleep.
But when I do, my dreams are strange. A giant turtle is crawling out of the dark surf. He transforms into a kind of merman who reaches out flippers that morph into arms. For a long time he holds me, and I let my eyes close. I feel like a little girl, sinking into his embrace, and then, when my eyes open, I find myself in a bright, dazzling world of sunshine. All night, I try to recapture that feeling, but every dream ends with me swimming in the blackest sea, searching for the turtle merman, who somehow has slipped away once again.
Early the next morning, Layla makes her rounds past the cabanas, ringing a bell to wake the guests for sunrise yoga, belting out bits of mystical poetry. “Rise with the sun. Turn away from the cave of your sleeping. That way a thorn expands to a rose.…” She chooses a different verse each morning, always Rumi.
In the past, I was the one she woke up unreasonably early, but now she has our guests to keep her company in her predawn spiritual questing. I disentangle myself from my mosquito net, splash cold water on my face, and change into a sundress. I don’t bother brushing my hair. Bristles won’t penetrate its stiff coating of sea salt—nature’s hair spray, Layla insists. Her blond hair is rapidly heading toward ropey dreadlocks. Just her style. I pull my dark hair back in a blue silk scarf and head down the path spotted with mosaics of tile fragments and sea glass.
I wind through flowering bushes and herbs to the kitchen palapa, an open-sided shelter with tables made of cross-sectioned tree trunks tucked beneath a thatched palm roof. The kitchen itself is basically a counter with a mini fridge, some shelves, and a two-burner stove. One by one, in response to Layla’s bell, groggy backpackers emerge from their cabana doorways. Meanwhile, I heat water for tea and cinnamon coffee. Some of the guests need a little caffeine to make it safely down the jungle path to the beach.
Once I’m fully awake, I can appreciate this time of morning, when the air is misty and cool, the dew lingering, the sun still hidden, when the world is all green shadows and flitting birds. I perch on a stool behind the counter and take out my notebook. It’s jade, my favorite shade of the ocean here, the underwater world with sun filtering through. Every year, I write in a different-colored notebook, filling it with thoughts, observations, dreams, interviews, questions, unsent letters, musings. My notebooks are what’s kept me sane in my nomadic life.
I open to a fresh page, marked with a small brown bookmark made of amate bark, painted with a sun and moon. Another one of the mysterious gifts my father slipped me in France. I set it on the table, then write my plans for the day.
1) check on sea turtle nests
That will be the first thing Wendell wants to do, so why fight it?
2) make plan for nature paths in jungle
This will be tons of work, but I’m excited about it. It’s mainly for the guests—a wild garden to enchant them, prompting them to write glowing online reviews. We need something special to set our cabanas apart from all the other rustic little resorts spotting the coast. But there’s something deeper, too, I realize. Years from now, I’ll walk the paths, knowing that my own sweat went into creating them. In previous countries, I’ve never bothered to plant anything more than potted flowers. I knew we’d be leaving before I got to see the fruits of my labor. Which reminds me …
3) have Layla extend contract to stay
I might feel more secure about her promise if it’s in writing. She’ll probably resist. She finds rules and contracts and obligations of any sort unsavory. And speaking of unsavory tasks …
4) finish chem homework
I rub my fingers over the fibers of my bookmark, thinking of my turtle dream last night, the elusive merman. Why try to find a man who’s hiding? Maybe I shouldn’t look for my father; maybe I should be content in this paradise. I can’t shake the image of him lost in the water, the idea that somehow, he needs me, even if he doesn’t know it. I twirl my pen, thinking.
Hesitantly, I add a fifth item to the list. My hand shakes as I write:
5) start asking around about J.C., aka José Guy, aka Tortue, aka Dad
Whatever his reasons for not contacting me, my paradise will not be complete without my father. If he can’t—or won’t—find me, I’ll find him. Even if it means going against his clear instructions not to.
I look up to see Layla returning from her rounds, gliding down the path barefoot in her white knee-length huipil—a rectangular piece of raw cotton with arm and neck holes, decorated with embroidered flowers. She’s taken to wearing huipils because they’re so comfortable in the heat. She looks completely at ease floating along the trail, as though she’s lived here for years and not just weeks.
“Oh, thanks, love!” she says, eyeing the water I’ve started heating. From the rickety shelves, she plucks mismatched, chipped teacups, wetting her fingertip on her tongue and rubbing the smudges she missed last night—a hazard of dish-washing by candlelight. Luckily, there are no health department inspections here.
I stand up to help her with the coffee. “Qué onda, güey,” I say, which roughly translates to, “What’s up, dude?” Literally, “What wave, ox?” Go figure.
She glows. “Today I’m tackling the Hummingbird cabana.”
The Hummingbird cabana is the most dilapidated one, the one we saved for last for repairs. It’s still uninhabitable. I thought we should tear it down and start over, but Layla has been adamant that it can be saved, just as she’s felt about every other cabana. Our first day here, Layla gazed at the fourteen neglected huts lovingly and announced, “Now I know exactly how Michelangelo felt!”
“Michelangelo?” I asked doubtfully, watching a gecko scurry over the rotting wood.
“He could look at a stone and see the work of art waiting inside!” She’s always fancied herself an artist, specializing in turning junk into art. “This place will be my ultimate project,” she said. “Besides you, of course, love,” she said, kissing my hair. “And what a perfect name … Cabañas Magia del Mar … Magic of the Sea Cabanas.” A dreamy look washed over her face. “This will be the ultimate eco-resort—a refuge for anyone seeking an oasis of renewal.”
She set Wendell right to work designing the website for Cabañas Magia del Mar. I offered to write the copy, but Layla said she’d do it. A good decision, actually. Instead of her description of “a haven of rustic sustainability, sensuality, and spirituality,” I might have been tempted to be more direct: “Barely a step above camping, where your run-down quarters feature bugs, lizards, unmatched furniture, patched mosquito nets, no electricity, sporadic cold water, ample mildew.”
After she tells me her plan for the Hummingbird cabana, I think of number three on my notebook list. “Hey, Layla, let’s contact the owners of this land and extend our contract. Maybe to five years, for starters?”
“Well,” she says with a sheepish smile, “I actually haven’t even signed the twelve-month contract yet.”
“You haven’t?” I try to keep the irritation out of my voice. I should’ve guessed. So Layla. “We’ve already done all this work, and you haven’t even signed the rental agreement?”
“I just arranged it all by email through the real estate agent. That’s documentation.” She obviously feels proud using the word documentation. Something she’s famously terrible at, something I always have to force her to deal with so we won’t be deported from our country-of-the-year.
“We need a contract, Layla,” I say firmly. “Today. For five years. At least.”
“Fine. I’ll write the agent an email.”
“Good,” I say, making a mental note to keep
on her about this. The only documents she’s ever been able to keep track of for any length of time are our U.S. passports and American citizenship papers. And when I was old enough—around seven—she dumped the job on me.
The one piece of paper Layla treasures is her List. She began her List shortly before I was born and over the past seventeen years has been jotting down every new place recommended to her by fellow travelers.
I glance over at the List, which Layla has nailed to the wooden beam over the kitchen sink. At times this List has been the bane of my existence, reminding me of all the places Layla would uproot us to and from. But now, I appreciate the poetry of what I see. The first place on Layla’s List might be—no, will be—the final place we live. Mazunte.
That was the final clue that led us here—the realization that my father must’ve been the traveler who suggested visiting this town. Layla started the list eighteen years ago, then promptly forgot who gave her the first recommendation. If only she’d recorded the names of travelers who’d recommended each place—we might’ve traced my father to this town years ago. It wasn’t until I’d narrowed his likely hometown to Mazunte last fall that I noticed the connection.
Layla did scrawl some notes after Mazunte: sea turtles, jade water, jungle, mole.… As a kid reading this list, I wondered why moles would be an attraction. At some point, I discovered it must be mole—MO-lay—which travelers have told me is the world’s most delicious sauce. Not surprisingly, chocolate is the main ingredient.
“Layla, have you had any mole here yet?”
She shakes her head. “But I want to get my hands on some. Right here in southern Mexico was the birthplace of mole. Cacao beans were sacred to the Maya and Aztecs. Food of the gods …”
She rambles on, picking up a tray with the pitchers of cream and bowls of sugar, as I flip through the pages of the List, mentally ticking off places we’ve lived—Senegal, Thailand, India—and noting the places we haven’t. I notice, on the last page, some fresh writing, new countries that weren’t there last week. Madagascar, Portugal, Mongolia. What? She’s still adding potential new homes?
Before I can ask about it, Joe the clown straggles into the kitchen. I groan at the sight of him in a pink wig.
“Sweat of the stars,” he murmurs with a slight Spanish accent, betraying his Mexican roots, despite his insistence on speaking English with us.
Layla smiles as if she knows what he’s talking about. Maybe she does. “Morning, Joe.” His real name is something like Joani, but he likes to be called Joe.
I raise an eyebrow. “Sweat of the stars?”
“Another name for chocolate,” he says, rubbing sleep from his eyes and adjusting his wig. How he can wear a wig in this climate is beyond me. To complete the look, he’s donned a pair of baggy rainbow patchwork pants held up by orange suspenders.
His first day here, before he understood how sweltering the heat on the coast is—unlike the climate of his native Mexico City—he wore sweat-streaked clown makeup, and I briefly entertained the idea that he might be my father. After all, in France, my father’s face was hidden beneath white paint, his hands inside white gloves, his hair tucked into a black skullcap. But while my father seemed gentle, timid, respectful of people’s space, Joe the clown bumbles around, always in your face, droning on loudly, practically tripping over everyone’s feet, an air of desperation clinging to him.
Layla hands him the tray to take out to the tables. He knows the routine. Joe arrived just a couple of days after us and immediately became enamored of Layla. Her blood must contain some secret clown-attraction potion; Joe is definitely not her first suitor of this profession. He convinced her to give him free room and board in exchange for work as the cabanas’ maintenance man. Just until he could wrangle up some clown gigs, he assured us—something I honestly don’t see happening, given his utter lack of talent. Apparently, he got hooked on clowning somewhere in the American Midwest, where he studied building design and learned English. Inept clowning aside, I have to admit, despite his ridiculous attire and annoying personality, he does have skills we need—plastering, framing, roofing, repairing furniture.
“Another day and the world’s still here,” he says, humming under his breath as he arranges the sugar bowls and cream pitchers on the tables. A few months ago, Joe woke up feeling sure the end of the world was near. So he sold the construction business he inherited from his father in Mexico City and set off on a journey—as he tells it—to spread joy to everyone he meets during these last days of existence. His clowning is apparently tied in with the spreading of joy. Unfortunately, his obsessive rants about the Mayan prophecy—the impending destruction of the world as we know it—put a damper on his clown act.
Layla, an eternal optimist, reassures him that the completion of the cycle will be a new beginning rather than a bad ending. He counters that the world is a horrific mess, that the end is inevitable. She shrugs and says that people have always been certain their world was a horrific mess. But they find a way to tolerate the messiness and survive. “Just focus on the good stuff,” she keeps telling him.
“I had another apocalyptic dream last night,” Joe announces, picking up three oranges from the counter and juggling them. “Involving torrential storms of geckos.”
I make a face. Once Joe gets started with his end-of-the-world prophecies, he can go on for hours. Not to mention, his juggling skills are lacking, and there are plenty of breakables in this kitchen.
When he drops the oranges, I scoop them up and wash them off, then put them back in the bowl. Unfazed, he keeps talking about the storms of geckos. Before he can grab any more oranges, I shoot Layla a look. She hands him another tray, puts on her Rumi-quoting face, and calmly whispers, “A white flower grows in the quietness. Let your tongue become that flower.”
Joe presses his lips together in a smile. “So wise,” he murmurs. Thankfully, his tongue is quiet as a flower while he fills the tray with coffee mugs and spoons.
Meanwhile, the guests have begun trickling in. Layla greets every one with a huge smile and a qué onda, güey. Inappropriately street-talky, but the guests either don’t understand or seem amused by the slang.
Our guests are the same breed of backpackers we’ve hung out with all over the world—the kind who stay in out-of-the-way places and embrace the lack of electricity and hot water. Two twentysomething Norwegian women stroll into the palapa and plunk themselves sleepily on the tree-trunk seats in front of the counter. They’re followed by a blind, middle-aged Chilean named Horacio who arrived last night. Even with a guitar strapped on his back, he seems to be navigating the irregular stone path fairly well using his white cane—better than some of the hungover guests who can see, in fact. On his heels are three Australian guys in their twenties with half-open eyes; a bright-eyed American couple, who must have gone to bed early; two Canadian women who’ve brought their own organic herbal tea bags; and a groggy Spanish man who reeks of stale tequila. Finally, along comes a Brazilian couple, who look elegant from the time they open their eyes.
As the guests work their way through their tea and coffee, they become more chatty. By the time I’ve served the last person coffee and sat down again in front of my notebook, everyone is relatively perky and lost in conversation.
Joe sits beside me. “What’s in that mysterious green notebook of yours?”
“Jade notebook,” I correct him, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. There’s something grating about him … or maybe, as Layla would contend, I just have unresolved feelings about clowns.
“Jade,” he repeats. “What’s in your jade notebook?”
I sigh. I might as well interview him, get it over with. I’ve already filled a good chunk of my notebook with interviews with our other guests. I grab a pen from my pocket and open to a fresh page. “Okay, Joe, what’s your idea of perfection?”
I’m pretty sure he’s going to say Layla, because his gaze moves right to her in response. But he thinks for a moment, then says, “Perfec
tion is this sick, sad world ending, and a shiny new one beginning.”
“Right,” I say, regretting that I’ve given him an opening for another the end-of-the-world rant. I let him ramble on about storms and fires while I zone out and think about my own perfect world. Joe would not be in it. My perfect world would actually be pretty close to what I have now. The people I love—Wendell and Layla—in a beautiful place doing rewarding work, meeting (mostly) fascinating people. It’s like a puzzle that has come together for me, with just one piece missing—my father. Number five on my list.
“But of course,” Joe is saying, “you can’t have perfection without complete destruction first. Annihilating the ego. Burning up in fire until the sparkling soul is revealed.”
I bite my tongue and close my notebook. “Thanks, Joe. Very interesting.” I search for some reason to end the conversation. “Hey, look—everyone’s heading to the beach now. You don’t want to miss sunrise yoga.”
Joe jumps up, his wig nearly falling off. Tripping over his baggy clown pants, he rushes in front of the others to join Layla, who’s leading the motley crew through the jungle toward the beach. As they go, I catch snippets of Layla’s melodic voice quoting Rumi to the eager guests. “… graceful movements come from a pearl somewhere on the ocean floor. Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge of driftwood along the beach, wanting!”
After Wendell finally wakes up—somehow he can sleep through Layla’s yoga bell—we eat breakfast, then head to Playa Mermejita. Sure enough, the first words out of his mouth are “Let’s check on the turtle nests!” As we walk through the surf, he pauses to take photos of water birds and shells. He plans to photograph the flipper tracks leading to and from the sand-covered, egg-filled holes. And maybe, if we’re lucky, a few turtles might still be straggling back to sea. The sun’s already blazing, but the water’s cool, lapping around our ankles and calves.