by Laura Resau
In the past, she’s spent her hours between classes hanging out with the most eccentric expats or locals she can find, whiling away hours at cafés in conversations about Art and Existence, darting off on hikes to sacred mountains and lakes and caves. Then, a half hour before her next class starts, she whips into a whirlwind of activity, digging into her giant box of ESL stuff, cutting up flash cards and magazine pictures, jotting down ideas for wild grammar games and vocabulary skits. It’s been strange to see her so calm and orderly.
I crane my head forward, between the front seats. “You’re a superhero, Jeff. Layla’s never been so organized in her life.”
“She’s making progress, isn’t she?” he says. I notice he even has a little cleft in his chin, like Superman’s.
Layla glances back at me. “Hey, Z, you know when I do visualization trips to other worlds? You know my animal spirit guides?”
I can’t believe she’s bringing them up in front of Jeff. “The stag and the puma?” I groan.
“Well, I was telling Jeff he’s like my own personal guide to the regular world. It’s like I lost the map a long time ago, and now Jeff’s showing me around, making me feel at home here.”
Jeff’s eyes in the rearview mirror look earnest and surprisingly unfazed by the stag and puma comparison. “And Layla’s my guide to the world of travel and adventure. Just at the time I needed it most.”
This extreme sappiness is hard to swallow, but it’s my dream come true, so I plant a big smile on my face and say, “Serendipity.”
It takes us a while to locate the museum, which is hidden down a maze of unlabeled streets off the highway. Inside, it’s musty and tiny and empty of people, only three dark rooms with a sixth-grade social studies-project feel. Homemade posters and little dioramas about local traditions are lined up behind locked glass cases. I can’t imagine anyone trying to steal them.
Jeff stands gaping in front of a hand-drawn map of Ecuador. “It just hits me every once in a while. I’m on a whole different continent. The adventure of a lifetime! I wish my daughters were here.”
It’s touching that he considers a trip to a school-project-caliber museum the adventure of a lifetime. And it’s sweet that he misses his daughters so much. I wonder if my father has other daughters and if he misses them the way Jeff misses his. I wonder if my father ever has some inexplicable primordial longing to see me, even though he has no reason to think I exist.
“Your daughters are lucky,” I say.
“I’m the lucky one. And on my next trip, I’ll take one of them along. You and Layla inspire me. All this parent-daughter globe-trotting. What a great bonding experience!”
I’ve always considered it more a burdening experience than a bonding one. I don’t correct him. Instead, I say, “Tell me about your daughters.”
He talks and talks, and Layla pipes in here and there—it’s clear he’s told her plenty about his daughters already. After an hour, I know about everything, from Chloe’s first steps to Camille’s volleyball team’s championship. This is a man who adores the slightest flutter of his daughters’ eyelashes. It’s almost dizzying.
Finally, he turns his attention to the clay dioramas on display. “So, ladies, tell me, what have we here?” By now I’m hungry and ready to leave this place, but Layla translates each and every one of the informational signs into English for Jeff. He listens, captivated. She lingers on Inti Raymi, the festival of the sun, celebrated at the end of June, around the summer solstice. “We were supposed to be here for the procession to the waterfall, but I came down with the flu in Thailand.” She sighs. “We didn’t make it here till a few weeks later.”
I remember this well. It was a big, traumatic thing for her, missing the summer solstice celebration. That’s her all-time favorite part of the year, anywhere in the world.
“Good thing,” Jeff murmurs. “Then we might not have met.” He puts his arm around her shoulders, a careful, protective gesture. I expect to see Layla’s shoulders stiffen in response, but no, they soften under his arm.
Layla translates more signs, about harvesting crops and exchanging food. Jeff’s utterly fascinated, making ohs and ahs here and there.
I find myself yawning. It’s uncontrollable, this yawning. I desperately want a nap. I never feel tired in Agua Santa, even in the middle of heavy labor. Maybe because in Agua Santa, I’m actually doing the harvesting of crops, not reading about it. I’m actually exchanging food with people, not just looking at a diorama of little dolls trading sacks of potatoes and corn.
I watch Layla carefully. She finishes reading a section on the Yamor Festival, and then Jeff starts talking about Otavaleño wedding rituals. I find myself waiting for a slight parting of her mouth, the tiniest watering of her eyes, a hint of a suppressed yawn. But no, she seems inexplicably content.
Over the weekend, Jeff and Layla dine together each night at the Restaurante Americano, so I spend the evenings with Wendell. On Saturday, we cook together in the apartment—quinoa soup with heaps of cilantro. He’s very good at dicing vegetables—he chops fast, creating tiny pieces. He cleans the dishes as we go along, too. I want to light candles for our dinners like Layla and I always do—it really does make the food taste better—but I worry he might get the wrong idea. So we eat on the balcony, under the light of an electric bulb.
Giovanni the surfer clown joins us, offering bits of Taoist wisdom in return for food. He talks about The Way, the flow of the universe, action without action, effortless doing. It sounds like yet another excuse not to wash the dishes, if you ask me. When I try to pin him down on the details, he twists three balloons into a rose, presents it to me, and says, “The Way that can be described is not the true Way.”
Wendell and I smile at each other. After Giovanni leaves, Wendell says, “He’s cool. I’ve never met anyone like him.” A tiny part of me wishes he could have known the prewaterfall Layla.
On Sunday, Wendell and I make shrimp seviche from a recipe Gaby gave us. Giovanni’s out, and Wendell and I are alone on the balcony. Even though no candles are lit, there’s a certain feeling of intimacy in the pool of light beneath the bare lightbulb, the shadowy flowers and trees in the courtyard below us. From my back pocket, I pull out the next letter I’ve translated. “This one’s my favorite so far,” I say, and proceed to read it out loud.
“To the evil people who call themselfs my birth parents:
I’m so mad at you!!!!!! Here’s why: 1) it’s all your fault no one will ever say to me, you look just like your dad, the way people say to Aiden. 2) you gave me away like you thought I was too ugly or dumb or something. Well, I think your dumb and ugly. BUTT UGLY! Your so ugly PUKE looks nice next to you! 3) I bet you have kids locked in cages in a dunjon in your basement. Lucky thing my real mom and dad saved me from your cluches!
I HATE YOU,
Wendell B. Connelly,
age nine”
“There’s no exact translation for butt ugly,” I say.
He smiles and sucks on a piece of lime-soaked shrimp. “I thought about throwing that letter away.”
“Whoever your birth parents are, they’ll get a kick out of it.”
We eat some more shrimp and popcorn and then he says, in a deliberately casual voice, “Hey, Z, you know how Taita Silvio looks like me?”
“It’s uncanny,” I admit.
“You think he’s my birth dad? You think he had an affair with that mystery woman?”
I pick through my popcorn for an unburnt kernel, stalling. “It’s possible. But he seems so devoted to his wife. Do you really want to go there? It could ruin his marriage. Is it worth it?”
Wendell’s eyes harden. “I have a right to know.” He finishes his last swig of papaya juice. “And if he won’t tell us, we’ll have to find the truth ourselves. Let’s look around for clues.”
“Snoop?”
“Snoop.”
“That doesn’t seem … devious?”
“What’s devious is him hiding things from us.” Wendell seems t
o be a generally mellow guy, the type who doesn’t get angry easily. But spending all this time with him, I can see it. The coldness that’s crept into his voice, the rigid set of his jaw.
“Okay, Wendell. Let’s snoop.”
Chapter 13
I blink, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, damp and cool as a cave’s shadows. There’s no electric light. The clay walls are blackened with smoke stains and hold the scent of candles and incense and earth. Candelabra encircle the room on a wooden ledge. Behind me, Wendell holds open the heavy wooden door to let in a sliver of light while I search for matches.
Here we are, in the curing room. Snooping. I feel terribly guilty about it. This morning we were helping Luz and Silvio in the fields, when, as planned, Wendell said he didn’t feel well. He actually did look sick, probably his own angst over what we were about to do. I offered to come back with him while he rested. Unexpectedly, the house was locked, and we almost turned back, relieved. Then, on impulse, Wendell suggested we try this room. I’m doubtful we’ll find anything. It doesn’t exactly seem like the place you’d store birth certificates or even illicit love letters.
Once I find matches and light a few candles, Wendell lets the door fall closed. My heart’s pounding as I take in the room. In the corner, on the far end of the dirt floor, is a table that appears to be the altar. The entire wall behind it is a burst of color. Hung from the adobe are colorful plastic tablecloths with prints of yellow roses and sunflowers and bowls of honey and a blue teapot and cups—kind of an English garden pattern. Dozens of pictures of saints and Virgins and crosses and ribbons hang on the adjacent wall, along with fresh bundles of leaves and strings of Christmas lights and the Ecuadorian flag. Pushed against the side wall is a long bench that looks like it was painted blue years ago. Now, only a hint of blue remains.
An odd medley of objects covers the altar: plastic water bottles filled with colored liquids; roses; stones of all shapes and sizes, some as small as plums, others as heavy and big as melons; a shiny golden laughing Buddha with babies crawling on him, all of them bald with large round bellies. Next to the Buddha family sit scissors, a candle, a bundle of leaves, a glass goblet of water, and two worn pink towels.
“Look, Z.” Wendell points to a neat row of crystals, four of them, by the Buddha babies. He holds his crystal next to them. They look similar, but I’m no geologist.
Then I see it, something that makes me break out in a shivery sweat.
Propped against a plastic bottle is an old photo, curled at the edges. It’s in color, but faded and a little out of focus. A hugely pregnant woman stands in front of an adobe house, with muted green hills beyond. She has an early nineties hairstyle—bangs curled and hair sprayed high, hair glossed back in a ponytail. She’s wearing the clothes of an Otavaleña woman, but with a red fleece jacket instead of a wool shawl. She looks about twenty years old, and stares into the camera with a reluctant, sad hint of a smile. A familiar half-smile.
At closer look, I notice a man’s hand on her shoulder. The rest of him has been cut out of the photo in one uneven snip.
Wendell sees it too. He picks up the photo, and with absolute certainty says, “It’s her.”
Back in the cornfield, the corn leaves look like sponges, soaking up light. After spending all this time with Wendell, I notice the quality of light more. It’s the key to a good photo graph, he always says. The photo he holds carefully in his hands now is so blurred you can’t even tell where the light’s coming from. He keeps slowing down between the corn rows, pausing to study it.
In the distance, the girls are playing chase, screeching and laughing. Mamita Luz is working a few rows over from Taita Silvio, bent over with her machete. As we walk toward him. Mamita Luz stands up and stretches her back. “Feeling better, hijo?”
“Sí,” Wendell says, stopping in front of Taita Silvio.
Quietly, I say, “Tell us the truth. The straight truth.”
He pauses, then nods, leaning on his machete.
Wendell holds up the picture. “¿Mi mamá?”
Silvio makes the faintest movement, a hint of a nod.
“Is she the woman who disappeared sixteen years ago?” I ask.
“Sí.” He sets down his machete.
“What’s her name?”
“Lilia.”
“What happened to her?”
He hesitates, then finally says, “She died. A car accident. I’m so sorry, Wendell.”
Wendell’s expression is unreadable. The photo trembles in his hand.
“And his birth father?” I ask.
He turns up his hands. “Who knows.”
I study his face. He’s lying. My voice drops. “You look a lot like Wendell. We know your wife can’t have children, but—”
“Listen, son. I wish I were your father. But I’m not. We went to doctors in Quito. The problem is not only with my wife, but with me also. Perfect for each other, aren’t we?” Avoiding our eyes, he picks up his machete and whacks at a weed.
Mamita Luz walks over, beads of moisture coating her round face. She puts one arm around each of us. Even her sweat smells like steaming bread. “Everything all right, mis hijos?”
Wendell shakes his head, his gaze fixed on Silvio. Using the basic vocabulary of Spanish 1, he forms a question. Amazingly, it’s grammatically correct, although the pronunciation leaves much to be desired. It’s a desperate, last-ditch effort of a question. “Taita Silvio, ¿tiene hermanos?” Do you have brothers?
Taita Silvio freezes midswing. Lowering his machete, he whispers, “No.”
“She’s pretty, don’t you think?” Wendell’s sitting on a stool outside the curing room, staring at the picture of his birth mother. “I mean, if you overlook the hairstyle.”
“Beautiful,” I say, which is a bit of an exaggeration, especially since I can barely make out her blurry features. But there is something soft and kind about her expression, the way she holds herself, something I see in Wendell, too.
Mamita Luz is sitting next to me, taking kernels off corncobs, and the girls are gathering blackberries at the far end of the yard. Taita Silvio hasn’t said anything for an hour. In the cornfield, he simply walked away, his machete at his side. Now he stands beside Wendell, looking at the photo and touching Wendell’s shoulder, as though it might break. “Keep the picture, hijo. I should have given it to you sooner.”
“Why do you have the picture?” I ask. “What happened sixteen years ago?”
Silvio shakes his head.
Mamita Luz frowns. “Tell him. He can handle it.”
Taita Silvio sighs a few words in Quichua, then takes a long breath. “She—Lilia—came to town one day with—a man”—and here he glances at his wife and unspoken words pass between them—“a man who didn’t treat her well. She was poor and vulnerable. She kept to herself mostly. He didn’t want her to have friends.” Taita Silvio stops.
Mamita Luz continues. “And then her belly started swelling. She gave birth on November sixth.”
“My birthday,” Wendell murmurs.
Any lingering doubts about his birth mother’s identity disappear.
“We helped her plan the baby’s adoption while she was pregnant,” Mamita Luz says, her eyes glistening. “Lilia left the man and came to live with us. We were with her at the hospital when she gave birth. We helped her say goodbye to the baby boy, and a few weeks later, we brought her to a safe place. Not long after that we got news that she was riding in the truck with—that man. He was drunk. He crashed. Lilia died.”
Wendell listens closely as I translate. I can practically hear his thoughts. The only thing worse than a dead birth mother is a drunk jerk for a birth father. “And the man?”
Taita Silvio says something to his wife in Quichua. They’re arguing about something. Finally, he shakes his head. “The man no longer exists.”
Correction. The only thing worse than a dead birth mother is a dead drunk jerk for a birth father. I can feel Wendell’s heart slowly falling.
Again, Taita Silvio and Mamita Luz exchange looks and heated words in Quichua.
“What was his name?” Wendell pushes.
Taita Silvio stares at the ground. “I don’t know.”
“I need you to do a divination to find out,” Wendell says.
Taita Silvio looks surprised. “I’m not—it doesn’t always work.”
“We have to try. I’ll pay you.”
Mamita Luz’s apple cheeks are as stern as I’ve seen them. “The boy is strong enough to know the truth.”
Taita Silvio squints at the sky, blue except for a few wispy clouds. “Bueno. My wife and I have to go to Quito for two days. I’ll do the divination when we return.”
Now the girls are running toward us in a flurry of excited shouts. “Look at all these blackberries!” Odelia shouts, her sisters trailing behind.
Taita Silvio and Wendell glance up with identical expressions. The bright sunlight illuminates their cheekbones, accentuating the shadows underneath. Their mouths are set and turned up a little at the left edge. Their ears, small and protruding, are echoes of each other.
Odelia holds her handful of berries over her head. “Look at all my berries!” she shouts to the sky. And to Taita Silvo, “Can my star see me? Even though I can’t see my star?”
“Yes, hija, your star is always there,” he says. “Your star watches you. Your star thinks about you every day and every night, even though you don’t know it.”
…
That evening at home, beyond all comprehension, Layla is sitting on the sofa, watching TV.
I’m speechless. TV? Layla’s vehemently against TVs, calls them soul suckers. Once I find my voice, I squeak, “Where’d that come from?”