by Laura Resau
For a while I wander around the market, distracting myself with its bright rugs and flute music and musty wool smells. The vendors are packing up for the night, and Gaby has already left.
Layla is really, truly changing. I realize I’ve been waiting for her to throw her arms up and say, That’s it, I’m going back to who I really am. In the hospital in India, when I was a feverish, vomiting, shaking, shivering, convulsing, aching mess, Layla sat by the bed whispering prayers, holding my hand, crying, saying, I’ll do anything, anything, anything to make you better, love. Fast-forward six months, past the danger zone, to the kitchen table in Maryland, where, through peppermint steam, Layla announced we were going to Brazil.
What confuses me now is this: we’re well past the danger zone of the latest near-death episode. Layla lived through the waterfall, just like we lived through everything else. So why isn’t she going back to her old self? What’s different about this time?
Maybe it’s like the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia before we lived in Phuket. Not just any underwater earthquake turns into a giant tidal wave. It depends on the time, the place, the circumstances, the landscape of the ocean floor, the shape of the coastline, the force of the earthquake.
What are the circumstances with Layla? Her thirty-fifth birthday? The three alleged white hairs? The arrival of Jeff? Or maybe she just hit some random critical number of near-death experiences that put her over the edge. Whatever the reasons, this time seems different.
“Zeeta!” It’s Gaby, calling out from a hole-in-the-wall café painted cheery orange. Alfonso and some other vendors are crowded into the booth beside her, eating and chatting. When I duck inside, they make room for me, hand me a llapingacho—potato pancake—and beg me to give them an impromptu English lesson.
“We’ll pay you!” they insist. I’m not feeling too social, but I accept. I need the pocket money.
The vendors are a rowdy bunch, always ready to make a joke, giggling hysterically when I hold up a mirror to show them how to put their tongues between their teeth for the th sound. I try to laugh with them, but my throat feels so tight I can barely breathe.
An hour later they leave, full and content, while Gaby and I linger behind. From her giant bag, she takes out her latest sewing project, a blouse with embroidered orange butterflies. “So, Zeeta, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say. She warned me. I should have wished for general happiness. Or focused on what mattered. Breathing. She knew all along.
She raises an eyebrow, as though she can see right through me. “Where’ve you been hiding?”
“Hanging out with Wendell.” Mentioning him lightens my mood a little.
She nods. “He’s very handsome.”
“I’m just helping him find his birth parents, that’s all.”
“That’s all?” She flashes a devilish grin.
“He’s in love with his ex-girlfriend,” I say, my voice bitter.
“Is she here?”
“No!”
“Then what’s the problem?” She pokes her needle emphatically into the fabric.
“Gaby, there’s nothing more pathetic than chasing after a guy who’s in love with someone else. Even if she is on another continent.”
Gaby smiles a mysterious smile. “Well, you just enjoy yourself, then, Zeeta.”
I sip my bottle of bubbly water. “I don’t like him that way, Gaby,” I insist. “Anyway, I have my own problems. After Layla’s near-death experience, she met this guy. And now she’s turning into a different person.”
“What kind of person?”
How to describe the new Layla? “Normal,” I say finally.
She gives me a wry look. “Your greatest wish, if I remember correctly.”
“Fine, fine. You told me so.” I glance at the café owner, who is expertly flipping llapingachos, a stoic smile on her face, damp with sweat. “But it turns out I like the old Layla better.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“She’s always with him or watching TV.”
“I’m sure you can find time. Why haven’t you talked with her?”
I consider this. “She’s doing it for me. I’ve been pleading with her all my life to be normal. I can’t just say, ‘Oops, I changed my mind. Let’s just rewind to how things were before.’” I run my fingers over the smooth ridges of my bottle.
Gaby makes a few more orange stitches. “What do you think will happen now?”
“I don’t know. But the way things are headed, I’m worried she’ll want to move back to the U.S. to be near him. Turns out he lives near my grandparents.”
Gaby thinks. Then she says, “If you’re headed down the wrong road, no matter how far you’ve gone, you can always turn back.”
“How?”
“To begin with, tell her how you really feel.”
“It’s not that easy, Gaby. What if I’m not headed down the wrong road? What if we’re finally headed down the right road but I’m so used to the wrong road I don’t realize this is the right one?”
Gaby knots the orange thread and tears it with her teeth, then pulls a spool of pink out of her bag. “There’s a young man with crazy hair who comes by my booth sometimes. He tells me, Gaby, I love how you sit here in the flow. You sit here and the universe is a better place because of it. Now, I think he’s as crazy as his hair, but maybe he’s right about the flow. Maybe you should think about the flow and whether you’re in it, and if not, how you can get back in.”
I smile. “What’s this guy’s name?”
She looks into space, trying to remember. “Who knows. But he speaks Spanish well, only with a different accent.” She grins. “He gave me this.” From her bag, she pulls out a bouquet of balloon daisies. “Sometimes he’s dressed as a clown.”
Chapter 17
On the way to the hotel, I spot Wendell walking out of the Internet café. He stands outside, dazed, right in the middle of the sidewalk traffic, getting bumped here and there as people pass. His face glows orange in the neon light from the window sign.
“Wendell!” I shout, zipping across the street to meet him. “I thought you’d be back at the hotel by now.”
“She wrote me an e-mail.”
“Oh.” She with a capital S.
“It was a long one, and kind of, I don’t know, sentimental, I guess.”
“Hmmm.”
“I tried writing back, but I didn’t know what to say exactly, so I kept writing stuff, then deleting it, and I don’t know—”
“How about dinner at the market—fried plantains and potato cakes and supersalty grilled pork bits?”
He looks surprised at the change of subject. “Sure.”
On the walk to the food market, he’s distracted, probably going over Her e-mail line by line. But once we sit down, he slips into the moment, into the smells of greasy fritada—fried pork—and simmering menestra—lentil stew—and bubbling chicken soup. It’s cozy under the bare lightbulbs of the booths, gazing out over the plastic colored tarps reflecting lights, the people milling around, workers joking with one another as they clean the Plaza de Ponchos.
Back at the hotel, we watercolor by lamplight and talk and lay the drying pictures over the floor, leaving a narrow path to the bathroom. My pictures have geometric designs with pen under the watercolors—a turtle’s shell, a flock of birds, ocean waves. I always gravitate toward finding patterns in life’s chaos.
Wendell’s art has come a long way since his illustrations on the latest letter I translated. As a nine-year-old, he’d done a self-portrait of himself standing on top of a planet, flexing his muscles. Apparently he’d just won an art competition at summer camp. He’d taped on a card from his parents, a recycled-paper one, probably made by his mother, which read, BEST ARTIST IN THE UNIVERSE AWARD. He wrote, I bet your sorry you gave away the Best Artist in the Univurse!
His paintings, spread around us, are gorgeous and atmospheric, with a hint of danger. A brilliant blue sky and green hill with a bloodred devil lurking in
its center. Golden bread by an ochre oven holding fiery orange coals inside. A silvery waterfall tumbling into a pool full of bones.
“You just might be the best artist in the universe,” I tease.
He blushes and says, “I’m an art geek,” almost apologetically. “I’ve taken painting classes, but photography’s my main thing. I want to make a book of pictures from this trip. For my portfolio.”
“For what?”
“Just this art abroad thing I want to do next summer.” He’s trying to sound casual, but I can tell it means a lot to him. “It’s kind of hard to get chosen, so the portfolio has to be good. I’ve saved up part of the cost, and the rest I’ll make working after school.”
“Abroad where?” I ask, trying to sound casual myself. Secretly, I’m thinking that if Layla and I keep traveling, who knows, we might end up down the street from his art school. Coincidentally.
“Not sure yet. The program offers a few different countries. I want to choose somewhere with the best possible light.” His face is illuminated just talking about it, the way Layla’s face gets when she talks about a new place. I can imagine Wendell traveling the world, always dreaming of a place with light conditions even more spectacular than wherever he happens to be.
When we run out of paper, we crawl into our beds and set the alarm for four a.m.
Wendell turns off the light. “Your turn.”
“My turn?”
“A story.”
“Oh.” I decide to tell him the first one that comes to mind. It’s a memory that’s kept popping into my head lately. “Here goes. In Morocco, in Marrakech, Layla and I used to go to the main plaza at night, where people played drums and danced and clapped. It was so crowded you could barely move. It hypnotized you, the rhythm, the lights, the clapping and dancing. Smoke drifted around. Sizzling lamb kebabs and steam from mint tea. At one of those moments, I was looking at Layla’s face, all pink and glowing and beaded with sweat. I felt like everything was exactly right, like there was nothing else I’d rather be doing. No other way I’d rather live my life.
“And then, something was moving in my pocket and it was a hand, a little girl’s hand. I saw her face for a split second before she lowered her veil and darted off. I checked my pockets. Empty of money, my thirty dirham gone. It was just a few dollars, but it was a lot to me, so I ran after her, racing through the crowds as fast as I could, right on her tail.
“I was indignant. Maybe she thought I was a regular dull-witted tourist, not someone who’d grown up playing in markets. Maybe she thought she’d easily lose me in the crowd. She led me into a maze of narrow streets. They grew more and more deserted, but I kept running. I remember thinking, It’s all Layla’s fault! If she gave me a normal life, none of this would be happening.
“And then, at the end of an alley so narrow you could touch both walls with your arms spread out, we reached a dead end. The girl turned to face me. A group of other street girls came out from the shadows. Five or six of them. Thin black veils hid their faces. In the distance there was the beating of drums and clapping. No one would have heard me if I’d screamed. My heart was pounding louder than the drums, and I was bending over, my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. I was terrified.
“So I stood up straight, and in Arabic, I said to the girl, ‘Essalam alikoum. I’m Zeeta and I’d like to be your friend.’
“She turned to the other girls. One of them was holding a henna tattoo kit and a plastic binder of tattoo designs. I’d seen girls like these wandering the streets, offering tattoos. I’d heard from police that the girls were famous for slipping their little hands into pockets while you were distracted.
“‘Why do you want to be my friend?’ the girl asked, suspicious.
“‘Because you’re fast and smart and interesting.’ I smiled the most open, honest smile I could muster. ‘And because you owe me a henna tattoo. Let’s see what designs you have.’ I walked over to the girl with the binder, who looked about eleven, a couple of years older than me. I flipped through the pages and pointed to a hummingbird. ‘How about this one? On my ankle, please.’
“The girl who stole my money slowly lifted her veil. And then, one by one, the other girls lifted theirs. The one who stole from me crouched down and began drawing a humming bird on my ankle. Meanwhile, another did a flower on my hand for free. Their fingers were quick and nimble. We chatted in Arabic—about where I lived and why I spoke their language and how they got into this line of work, and on and on. A half hour later, when they showed me the finished designs, I gasped, because they were so intricate, so beautiful, and worth so much more than thirty dirham and a run through dark alleys. And there, with my new friends, I thought, I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
At the end of my story, Wendell says, “So what’s the moral?”
“What do you think?”
For a minute, he says nothing, and I think he might have fallen asleep. But then he says, “That sometimes what you thought was bad is good after all. In a way you never expected.” He laughs softly. “And that you might even get some cool tattoos out of it if you’re lucky.” He laughs again. “And that you, Zeeta, are a badass to be reckoned with.”
Suddenly, I feel sure that in the darkness, his hand is reaching toward mine, spanning the gap between the beds. I extend my hand into that space and move it around, searching. But his hand isn’t there. So I tuck my hand under my chin and fall asleep, dreaming of wandering through a maze alone in the dark.
The next morning, just before dawn, Wendell and I are walking along the trail, through the forest pulsing with insect songs and moist earth smells and rushing river music.
“Almost there,” I say.
We round a bend, and the trees open into a giant clearing, with the towering waterfall as its centerpiece, fuzzy through the mist.
“Wow,” he says.
“Wow,” I say, even though I’ve already seen it before.
He sets up his expandable tripod and takes a bunch of pictures, some of me alone, and some timer shots with us together.
“Here’s where Layla climbed down the first time.” I point to the pool at the waterfall’s base. “But let’s go farther downstream, where the current’s not so strong.”
We walk along the river’s edge, through the underbrush, holding aside branches for each other, until we reach the spot. “Okay, Wendell, take off your clothes, dunk your head under, and think about your wish, exactly what you want.”
From my pocket, I pull out the fistful of rose petals I’ve collected along the way.
“Let me guess.” One corner of his mouth turns up. “I rub them all over my nude body?”
“Yep.” I smile. “I won’t look. But if you’re drowning, just scream and I’ll rescue you.”
“Okay, here goes.” He pulls off his T-shirt.
“There’s a towel in my pack for you.”
“Thanks, Z,” he says, taking off his sandals.
I turn away and peer into the trees, the dark forms in the shadows. After a minute, I sneak a furtive peek toward the river, just to make sure he hasn’t slipped. The water’s up to his hips. His hands are tucked under his armpits, and he’s shaking with cold. His hair falls loose, dripping around his face and spotted with rose petals.
I look back to the forest. It’s lighter now. In only a few seconds, the spaces between trees look lighter blue and the leaves more distinct, taking shape.
After a while, he calls out, “Okay, ready,” and now here he is, dressed, wringing out his hair and looking elated. Together we sit on the rock and watch the blue turn into clear daylight, and soon we can see all the petals of all the flowers on the riverbank and the mossy rocks, and their shades of amber and gold and yellow reflecting sunshine.
“So,” I say, “you think you’ll get Her back?”
“What?”
“Will your wish come true?”
He pauses. “I didn’t wish for her.”
Lowercase her? I can’t tell. “Oh.�
� I falter.
“I was planning on wishing that Faustino was my birth father. And that he was a good man. Then at the last minute I changed my mind and wished for something else.” He drapes the damp towel around his neck. “How about you? Got any wishes before we leave?”
“I’m wished out for the moment.”
The corner of his mouth turns up. “Thanks, Z.”
“For what?”
“For—I don’t know, for the towel. For translating. For everything.”
“That’s what I’m here for, Wendell. Translating and providing towels. And other duties as needed.”
He rubs his arms and shivers. In a low voice, a voice that comes from a hidden, tender place, he says, “Then warm me up, Z.” He slips his arm around my waist and draws me in, close. We stay like that for a while, long enough for two doves to call back and forth, back and forth.
On the way back through the forest, we walk close, arms around each other, listening to our breath, to the crickets in the trees, to the leaves trembling in the wispy breeze. Sunshine on dew gives the forest a magical, tingling light that makes everything bright and alive.
As we leave the woods, I think I know what he’s wished for. And it’s very, very pleno.
Back in town, we buy pastries at the bakery and sit on a curb to eat them, crumbs and sugar falling in our laps. Then we take a bus to Agua Santa. By the time we get there, a heavy fog has rolled into the valley, hiding the mountaintops. The girls meet us at the crossroads near their house and, singing “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” at the top of their lungs, lead us to the base of the hill. Above, Faustino’s house is perched on the hilltop, barely visible through the mist.
The girls refuse to go any farther. Odelia hugs my waist tightly, as though she’s saying goodbye forever. “I told my star friend to watch out for you,” she whispers.
“Thanks, amiga.”
“What about the dogs?” Isabel asks, wary.
“I have my special weapon.” I pat the plastic bag of stale bread I bought for a quarter at the bakery. “After a few pieces, those beasts will be my new best friends.”