The Jade Notebook (18 page)

But her face holds only sympathy. “You love him. Of course you’re a little worried.”

I breathe out in relief. She understands. “But how can I deal with it?”

She takes a clothespin from her mouth, gestures to the birds. “While I’m out here, I leave their doors open. They always come back. This is their home, where their food is, where they’re loved.”

“Really? They always come back?”

“Pues,”
she says, with a devilish grin, “except for when a cat gets them.”

A look of horror must come over my face, because she quickly adds, “But that hardly ever happens!”

I feel myself loosen up and laugh. The ice between us has been broken. She launches into stories about the changes she’s seen in this town—from a sleepy little village of fishers and turtle hunters to a haven for hippie travelers. It’s not hard to work Meche into the conversation—it turns out they went to high school together. Tentatively, I ask Cristina if she has advice on how we can make Meche get rid of the jaguar.

She takes a clothespin from her mouth and studies it, frowning. “I haven’t talked to Meche for years. She keeps to herself. But frankly, I can’t see her giving up that jaguar. It’s like a child to her. From what I can see, her life revolves around that creature.”

She gives a little shiver. Apparently, she doesn’t like talking about Meche any more than other people do. “Now
dígame
, Zeeta, tell me, you must speak a lot of languages, you lived so many places.”

I decide to drop the jaguar lady subject and let myself bond with this woman who might be my relative. When I mention I can hold simple conversations in a few dozen languages, her mouth drops open, and she asks me to teach her some. I give her a mini lesson of seafood menu items in French, instructing her to pout out her lips to pronounce
poisson
.

This throws her into a fit of giggles. Once she catches her breath, she says, “Speaking of France, you mentioned that
señor
you met—he was in France?” Her voice has turned deliberately casual.

I swallow and nod, suddenly alert.

“Was he—was he all right?”

I want so badly to tell her who I am. But more than that, I want my father to be the one to tell her. I don’t want it to feel like a dark, strange secret revealed. I want it to be a joyful occasion.

Still, there are things she needs to know in order to understand, to be patient. “This
señor
,” I begin, “he has bipolar disorder.” I say it in English, unsure of the Spanish translation.

“Bipolar?”

“He has ups and downs, manic and depressed periods.”

A damp sheet falls from her hands to the laundry basket. She stares at it, absorbing the full meaning of my words. Then, her voice quavering, she asks, “Is he in trouble?”

“He wanted to reconnect with his home, his family.
Wanted to resolve something.” I measure my words, not wanting to reveal more than my father would want. Only what’s necessary. It’s a fine line. “He felt he had to do this before …” I search for the right words. “Before he could move on.”

Cristina picks up the sheet, pins it to the rope. She does the same with the other sheets and pillowcases. She’s biting the inside of her cheek, I can tell.

I grab a sheet and hang it on the line that crisscrosses hers.

Eventually, she speaks. “He’ll return to his home. Sooner or later. Like the birds. The important thing is that his family keep the doors open, welcoming.”

When the baskets are empty, she brushes her hands together. “Now come back tomorrow for more laundry, Zeeta!” She winks. “You can teach me Portuguese!” Then she bids me farewell in the French I taught her.
“Au revoir.”

I take her hand in a lingering handshake. Our eyes lock, and I wonder if she has the sensation I do, of looking into a mirror.
“Au revoir,”
I say, and leave the cool courtyard, heading toward the sunny stretch of beach.

As I wave goodbye to El Sapo, he calls out, “Sunset volleyball tonight, Zeeta! Be there!”

How much longer can I keep this secret? It’s all I can do not to call back,
Sure thing, cuz!

In the kitchen hut, battering fish for dinner, I can’t stop glancing up at the path, waiting for Wendell. When I finally do catch sight of him, my heart leaps, as if we’ve been apart
years instead of hours. He’s jogging up the path, his camera bouncing on his chest. I’m just trying to find a towel when Wendell throws his arms around me, despite the bits of egg-and-bread-crumb goop stuck to my hands.

“Good first day?” I ask, laughing.

“Incredible!”

I can’t stop kissing his neck as he shows me the photos on his digital camera. Even though they’re tiny, I can see what he’s excited about: close-up after close-up of sea turtles that appear to be posing just for him. Santy was right—Wendell’s a natural. I look from the images to him, and it’s one of those flashes, when you see someone so familiar in a different light. Wendell has things to share with the world that have nothing to do with me. It’s a mostly happy feeling, tinged with something like sadness.

I kiss him again. “
You’re
incredible, Wendell.”

After dinner, we head to the beach for sunset volleyball. Approaching the court, I notice a commotion of flying sand and people yelling. It’s a fight, centered on a guy I haven’t seen before—a large, bare-chested guy about my age with a buzz cut and cutoff camouflage pants. He’s waving his fists around, his face red and furious. El Sapo’s gesturing for him to calm down. Other people are holding back another guy who’s struggling, calling out curses and threats.

“What’s going on?” Wendell asks Mayra. She’s huddled at a safe distance with Xochitl.

“That
vato
,” she says, scowling. “He keeps picking fights.”

“Who is he?” I ask. “I haven’t seen him before.”

“He came to town a few months ago,” Mayra says. “From
Mexico City. Sometimes he crashes our games. He thinks he’s so tough.”

Xochitl nods. “See how he’s missing a finger?”

I catch sight of his right hand as he runs it over his stubbly head. The ring finger is just a small stump.

Wendell raises an eyebrow. “How’d he lose it?”

“He says it’s from a gang fight with machetes. Says he ended up killing the guy.”

I shiver, trying to imagine this. Then trying not to. Joe has talked about the gang violence in Mexico City. Not to mention the kidnappings and drug cartels. I’m not surprised to hear this guy’s involved in violent crime. “You think his story’s true?” I ask hesitantly.

Xochitl gives a devilish grin. “
Pues
, we say he stuck his finger in a blender while it was running. While he was doing kitchen prep in some restaurant. He just blamed it on a gangster.”

Mayra laughs. “He’s not the smartest guy.”

I glance over at him on the court. Things appear to have calmed down. El Sapo walks toward us, breathing hard, frowning. After greeting us, he mutters, “Man, I wish El Dedo would stay away.”

“Dedo?” I ask. Finger?

“He’s never even introduced himself, so we call him El Dedo.” El Sapo glares at him. “That
vato
doesn’t talk much, communicates with his fists.”

“He doesn’t get that this is a peaceful place,” Mayra says. “
Muy tranquilo
. We don’t fight around here.”

“What’s he doing in town?” Wendell asks.

El Sapo shrugs. “Maybe he got into trouble in Mexico City and he’s lying low here.”

We jog onto the court, making sure El Dedo is on the opposing team. Whenever he’s upset, he gets in someone’s face or kicks sand or hurls the ball, hard. He doesn’t direct his violence at the girls, but I do overhear him making crude comments.

During the break, Cristina comes over with
agua de tamarindo
—tamarind water, caramel brown and tangy and cool. She distributes drinks to everyone but El Dedo, instead, scolding, “You’re lucky your mother doesn’t live around here,
muchacho
. If she did, I’d tell her exactly how rude you are.”

He narrows his eyes at Cristina but says nothing.

She walks away, muttering,
“Qué cochino.”
What a pig.

I turn to El Sapo. “El Dedo’s completely outnumbered. Why don’t we stand up to him, tell him he can’t play?”

El Sapo frowns. “We’re just hoping he’ll get tired of our games, decide not to come back. A little while ago, there were a couple other
vatos
, friends of his, who just got bored and stopped coming.” He digs his feet in the sand, shaking his head. “But if we kicked El Dedo out … guys like that—they get revenge. And for them, revenge means death.” He lowers his voice. “Death by machete.”

Sounds even more unpleasant than death by jaguar.

A week later, El Dedo still hasn’t made another appearance. Wendell and I haven’t missed a single sunset volleyball game. We’ve settled into a new routine. In the afternoons, he works while I help Layla at the cabanas, trying to ignore Joe’s clown antics. He’s begun performing in the kitchen hut every day at four. This coincides with happy hour, when he has a captive audience sipping Coronas and crunching tortilla chips. His schtick involves chasing a paper airplane around the hut, tripping over chairs and tables. Most guests ignore him, tossing a concerned glance when he falls particularly hard, unsure whether it’s a slapstick part of the act. He takes this attention as encouragement.

On Friday, I’ve reached my limit of his clowning and apocalypse warnings. Normally, I’d head to Tesoro Escondido, but Cristina and El Sapo have gone to the nearby city
of Puerto Escondido to run errands. When I consider working alone on my jungle paths, the thought of facing Gatito again makes me shudder. As a last resort, I set up my laptop in the kitchen hut and try working on my English paper. After staring blankly at the screen for ten straight minutes, I shut the computer down and stand up.

On my last visit with Cristina, as I was lamenting Wendell’s absence, she asked me what I loved best before I even met him. Doing notebook interviews, I said with no hesitation. “Then do some notebook interviews,” she suggested. “Meet your other neighbors.”

Maybe she’s right. Maybe I should reconnect with notebook-writing Zeeta. It is, after all, what I
do
. Wendell or no Wendell.

Plus, our neighbors might have inside information and ideas on how to get rid of Meche’s jaguar. Tossing my notebook and pen into my bag, I head down the dirt driveway. After a brief pause, I turn left, toward the other entrance to the Playa Mermejita, the road the poachers took that night. I’ve never gone this way, have always taken the jungle route.

The road rises into a hill, with trees and flowering bushes arched over the road, making a green canopy of dappled light. Since there are no cars, I walk down the center of the road. It’s peaceful. Ahead of me, a blue butterfly dances, and I’m about to point it out to Wendell until I remember he’s not here. It’s a hard habit to break.

I shift my bag to my other shoulder as a cheery graveyard comes into view, overflowing with flowers, blue and green
painted crosses, Virgin Mary shrines. The butterfly weaves among the graves and disappears into the jumble of colors. I set down my bag, sweeping my gaze over the cemetery.

Someone’s moving among the graves. Dark hair, slim body, long legs. A white huipil. A slight limp. Meche. She’s farther up the hill, on the other side of the cemetery, holding an armful of flowers.

When she glances up, I raise my hand in greeting, noting that there’s no jaguar in sight. I also note that this is neutral territory, a good place to discuss her finding a better place for her pet. I bend over to pick up my bag, but when I stand up, she’s gone.

I jog around the graves to where she was standing only moments earlier. There’s a blue painted cross with a sign on it:
MARÍA VIOLETA RAMIREZ GARCÍA
. Breathless, I peer at the dates. The girl died when she was two years old. A heap of fresh white flowers—calla lilies—are scattered on the grave. Meche must have dropped them before she ran off. I pick them up and arrange them in the vase, which is half filled with water. I prop a few rocks against the vase to keep it stable if the wind picks up. This girl would have been twenty now if she’d lived, three years older than me.