The morning light has turned from red to pink, so we don’t have much longer out here, unless we want to get busted.
“Are you trying to keep me in suspense?” I sit up to face her.
“I think I need help,” she says.
“I’m in.”
She looks at me, hard. “I haven’t even told you, and it’s crazy—crazier than the beach bust-out.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “I’m in.”
It’s true. Vivi could tell me that she wants to hold hands and launch off the side of this boardwalk into a pile of hungry alligators, and I’d probably say yes to her.
“I’ll take a semester off of school—maybe a year, if that’s what it takes—and go to Guatemala. I think I can get Mom to come too.”
I let out a nervous laugh. “Uh, okay. That’s a little unexpected.”
She glances out at the swamp. The gators are starting to wake up below us, sending out their low-throated croaks.
“Is it crazy?” she asks. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?”
I watch an alligator climb across the backs of three others, slow, hesitant, deliberate—everything that I don’t want to be right now.
“You think they have decent internet over there?” I ask.
She darts a puzzled look in my direction. “Yeah, probably.” She nods.
“Then I’m in,” I say.
“Really? You would do that?”
“Why not?” I ask.
Because the crazy thing is that I can—I can leave this place.
I came home last night to a mandatory family meeting. I was so tired, and all I wanted to do was sleep, but once I figured out what the screaming was about, I felt nothing but gratitude.
“It finally happened. My dad and my uncle, they gave up working together. They’re not even talking to each other. My uncle’s getting a cousin to come down from New Jersey to run the kitchen—my dad quit.”
“Seriously?” she asks.
“Mmhmm. Looks like Dad finally figured out how to say no to Uncle Jay. He and my mom and my great-aunt are gonna open a little coffee shop out here on the island.”
I guess it’s bad to want a nasty family quarrel, but the time had come for them to get this over with.
“And you’ll have to work at the shop? Or will you stay at the restaurant?”
“Neither. That’s the amazing thing. Uncle Jay said he can’t let me work for the restaurant anymore—I need to show loyalty to my parents and all that crap—and Mom and Dad don’t need my help. Their place is small and easy to run. Looks like I am out of a job.”
“Sorry,” she says.
“Jesus, don’t be sorry!” I lean back on my elbows and look up toward the trees. “For the first time in my life, I’m free as a bird. My family doesn’t need me at the restaurant, I’ve finished school—except for a couple of online classes—I don’t have any bills hanging over my head.”
A huge blue-gray bird swoops down over our heads. We both watch it pump its wings and then land in a tree above us.
“I want to be with him until…”
She doesn’t finish her thought. I think she needs to say it. I’m pretty sure it would help.
“Until?” I ask, reaching out to touch her arm.
“Until … I want to help him die,” Vivi says. She looks at my hand on her arm and then turns to watch the heron stretch his long neck.
“I know,” I tell her. “So do I.”
“Do you think he’s going to survive that place?” She looks at me, eyes shining. “I mean, what if he doesn’t get the treatment he needs. What if he dies there—alone?”
I squeeze my eyes shut and let out a long sigh. I have to tell her the truth, but I can’t seem to make it louder than a whisper. “I don’t know.”
We sit together in silence, listening to the loud squawks and cries of the birds above us. I’ll admit it, these birds are beautiful—but they sound like a traffic jam—like car horns and squealing tires.
“We’ll go anyway—we have to hope, right? But I can’t do it without you,” she says. “You know that—I mean, I don’t know how to take care of him.”
“That’s not true,” I tell her. “You know better than anyone what Ángel needs. Sure, I know the technical parts, but anybody can do that, with training.”
She lets out a burst of air through her nose. “Not anyone,” she says. “Have you forgotten about my weak constitution?”
“Well, yeah, there’s that.” I lean forward and nudge her knee. “Hey, can I ask you something—you promise not to get mad?”
She shrugs. “Why not?”
“What in the hell made you think you wanted to be a doctor?”
“Dying dad and all that.” She shrugs again. “I guess it made me feel better about leaving him, imagining that I was heading off to college to learn how to save lives.”
“Makes sense—”
“Maybe for some people,” she says, shaking her head, “but not for the girl who’s always fainted at the sight of blood.”
“Yeah, I handle the bodily fluids better,” I tell her, “but you’re still the person Ángel needs most. Plus, I’d never get by in Central America without you and your mom. You two were made for this stuff. It’s like you’ve spent the past ten years traveling the world, getting ready for this moment.”
“I like that,” she says. “That’s a good way of thinking about it all.” She climbs onto her knees. “Do you really want to come with us?”
I slide my hand into hers and pull her closer. “Do you really want me there?”
She leans in to kiss me, her lips soft against mine. I rest my hands gently on her hips, feeling the thin cotton of her dress under my touch, feeling the enormous relief swelling in my chest.
Our kisses are different from the first time. We move together slowly, deliberately. We lie down together on the boardwalk, and I let my hand slip under her sundress. I run my fingers along her thighs, her waist, and she lifts my shirt gently to rest her open palm on the bare skin of my chest.
She wraps her arms around me and plants tiny kisses on my hair, my neck, my cheek, my ear.
And then, finally, she answers my question.
“I do,” she whispers. “I really do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
VIVI
BIRD JOURNAL
August 13, 8:54 A.M.
Double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus)
Physical Description: gangly, prehistoric-looking waterbird—matte black with yellow-orange face.
Habitat: common on clear, open waters.
Social Behavior: fly in V-shaped flocks. Float low on the surface of the water; also dive deep to catch fish.
Call: usually silent away from nest site, their call is a clearly spoken yaaaa ya ya ya.
Double-crested cormorants are highly unusual birds, since they are as comfortable in the water as they are in the sky. They both swim and fly with grace and endurance.
WHEN I COME into the kitchen the next morning, my mom is making art.
No surprise there.
“Hey, Mom.” I squeeze between her, two deep fryers filled with melted wax, and a huge vat of orange dye, making my way carefully toward the coffeepot. “Did you know there’s a lake in Guatemala where the water rose seventeen feet in two years and no one knows why?”
“And?” she asks. Her back is turned to me, but I can feel her attention shifting toward me. She knows where this is going.
“It’s a mystery. The lake is surrounded by three dormant volcanoes. It’s the deepest lake in Central America, and scientists can’t explain what is making the water rise. It’s called Lake Atitlan,” I tell her, closing the fridge.
“And?” She turns to look up at me. There’s a smirk on her lips and a sparkle in her eyes.
“They call it the belly button of the world, but it’s supposed to be a place of extraordinary beauty, quaint Mayan villages, ancient ruins dating back two thousand years.”
“And?”
I pour cream into my coffee, scoop in some sugar, and lift the cup to my mouth. I try to breathe in the scent of it, but it smells like the inside of a European cathedral in here—probably all that melted wax.
“And there’s a town there called Panajachel. A ton of expatriates live there—the kind of people who would really be into buying batik art.”
“Interesting,” she says, her face lighting up. “And?”
“And there’s a clinic in the village that has a rotating staff of doctors and nurses from around the world.”
She nods. “And?”
“It’s incredibly cheap to live there. You can get a four-bedroom waterfront home for five hundred a month—with a papaya tree in the yard and bougainvillea blooming across the front entrance.”
“Papaya for breakfast every morning.” She nods again. “That sounds good.”
I look outside the kitchen window, toward the brightly colored squares of cloth she has drying on a line.
“I want for us to go live there, with Ángel, and TJ—he wants to come too. He knows how to take care of Ángel. And we’ll stay until…”
“Until…” She’s standing beside me at the window, watching me.
“Until Ángel doesn’t need us anymore, and then we’ll come back and I will be ready for school.” I turn to look at her. “I can take time to work out the financial aid situation at Yale, or maybe I’ll apply for the honors program at University of Florida. Either way, it won’t cost us everything.”
“Are you sure?” she asks, studying my face. “You’ve worked so hard for all of this—I hate that my mistakes are keeping you from your dreams.”
“What mistakes, Mom?”
“Vivi,” she says, taking my hand in hers. “You need to understand this: I wouldn’t trade a single moment of our lives together for some life insurance policy or that big empty house. I’d rather keep the memories. Does that make sense to you?”
I nod because, honestly, it does. My parents lived the life they wanted, and they did it with incredible gusto. That takes courage.
“But we should have set aside money for college—we shouldn’t have assumed that your father would always be around to provide for that. I’m sorry, Vivi. I’m so sorry we did this to you. I’m so sorry our decisions in the past are keeping you from the future you dream of.”
“I’m not even sure what my dreams are, Mom.” I bite my lip and pull my hand away. “Do you think Dad would be disappointed? I mean, if I don’t go back to Yale?”
She lets out a sigh. “How could your father be disappointed in you, Vivi? You are the bravest and most resilient woman I know. And your dad—he was wonderful. He was the love of my life. I’m adrift without him—but we both know he wasn’t perfect.”
“Yeah,” I say. “He wasn’t.”
“And while I hid out in this house, making art, overwhelmed by our situation and trying to find a path out of my grief, you”—she steps over to inspect one of her anemones; she gently lifts the cloth—“you, Vivi, found a way to build us a new life—a life filled with meaning and purpose. How could your father not be proud of that?”
I stand in silence for a while, watching my mom work. It’s strange, how she has spent the entire summer underwater, making art from sea creatures, while I’ve been obsessively focused on the sky. I think about the cormorant I saw early this morning, when I was walking on the beach, strategizing how I would present this plan to Mom. Cormorants dive deep into the ocean for food, and they are as comfortable underwater as they are in the sky.
“Pour me a cup?” Mom asks, gesturing toward my mug of coffee. She’s wearing yellow rubber gloves, or at least they used to be yellow. Now they’re stained with layer upon layer of color.
I get a chipped mug from the pantry and pour her coffee. When I turn to give it to her, she’s wrist-deep in red dye.
I think maybe it’s time for me to embrace my inner cormorant.
“Want me to…”
“Help?” Her voice sounds a little too enthusiastic. “Oh yes, Vivi, that would be so great! I’m trying to finish this sea anemone series for the show at Wendy’s gallery, and I’m down to the wire.”
“How does it work, exactly?” I ask, realizing that I have spent an entire summer seeing my mom make batik art, and I never took a moment to really watch. It’s time for me to dive in and find my mom again.
“You start from a blank white canvas,” she tells me. “An old sheet, any old rag, as long as it’s white.”
“Oh, that explains it!”
“Explains what?” she asks, all innocent.
“Why we are down to exactly two sheet sets this summer. Both of them pink.”
She laughs. “You know what they say! You have to make sacrifices for your art.”
“So, what does the wax do?” I ask, pointing toward the deep fryer turned wax-melting system.
“You cover whatever part of the canvas will stay white with wax, to protect it from the dye. You dip the canvas into the lightest color, and you let it dry. Then you cover any part of the canvas that will stay that color with wax, and you dip the whole thing into the next-lightest color.”
She points to a canvas that’s only partially finished. I can see the beginnings of a sea anemone, the jagged edges of its dark spine starting to emerge from the washed-out colors on the sheet.
“And you keep adding layers, darker and darker, until you have your finished product.”
“Okay,” I say. “I think I get it. Put me to work.”
“Those are ready for the ocean.” She hands me a thick brush. “Wax over every piece that you think should remain red—basically the entire anemone. That will protect the cloth from taking in more dye—and then we will dip it into the indigo.”
I spread the sheet out onto the linoleum counter and start painting wax onto it. We work in silence, and after a while, I’ve fallen into a rhythm.
When the wax is dry, Mom puts her gloves back on and carries the sheet over to a vat of deep blue dye.
“What if you mess up?” I ask. “I mean, if you cover something with wax that you actually meant to dye? Or you dye something that you should have protected?”
“Happens all the time,” she tells me. “See this one?” She traces her finger along the edge of an elaborately wound tentacle. “It was a spill! It’s actually fun, figuring out how to work around the mistakes, how to incorporate them into the design. It’s not like painting or sketching—there’s no eraser, no ammonia. You just have to get creative and keep moving forward.”
I guess it’s moving forward, but it also seems to me like it’s a process of working in reverse—you have to imagine something out of nothing. You have to keep that image in your mind and then slowly—piece by piece, dip by dip—build your way toward it. And if you make a mistake or two, you just keep going.
But the amazing thing? That mistake—no matter how big or how terrible—melts right into the pattern of the canvas; it becomes an integral part of the art.
CHAPTER THIRTY
ÁNGEL
I REFUSE TO DIE HERE.
This place sucks. Atsalu taq’wixil.
Does that expression work in your language? It seems like it would be a fairly universal way to get my point across.
Anyway, this place sucks, and I refuse to die here.
When I first showed up, I was in no shape to leave the infirmary. The ambulance ride from the hospital almost did me in. It felt like forever. By the time we got here, my head was a mess. I couldn’t even hear myself think. All I remember is seeing a high fence with about four layers of razor wire on it, and looking through it at a big windowless prison spread out across a field surrounded by guard towers.
For a week I barely even ate. I was pretty psyched once I could sit up again and finally felt hungry.
The nurse with the Snoopy scrubs was working that day. For real, the lady is working in a freaking prison, and she chooses to wear powder-pink scrubs with a dog doing a little jig across them.
Anyway, she�
��s okay, the Snoopy nurse. One night I told her I was hungry for actual food, and she got all excited. The next morning, she woke me up at four thirty in the morning, saying it was time for breakfast, her voice all chipper.
I rolled over and mumbled that breakfast happens when the sun comes up.
Snoopy Lady said, “Not here it doesn’t wait for the sun to come up. Breakfast happens at five or it doesn’t happen at all.” She has a funny accent. I asked her about it, and she said that’s how people in Georgia talk. I guess I’m in Georgia now. I dunno.
“You hungry, or what?” she said. “Cuz now’s your only chance till noon.”
I was hungry. She loaded me into a wheelchair and took me through about ten metal doors. I sat there and waited while she took out her keys and unlocked each one of those doors. By the time we got to the last one, my head was starting to hurt from hearing them all thud behind us.
When we rolled into “the mess”—that’s what they call it—all I saw were the enormous, life-sized photographs that lined the freaking walls. Get this, people: tropical island paradise. That’s what they show. Sandy beaches, blue waters, a lonely palm tree waving in the breeze.
WHAT. THE. LIVING. HELL.
Downright cruel, I’m telling you. Evil.
We turned a corner, and then I saw the rest. Guys in red jumpsuits sitting around plastic picnic tables, picking at the Styrofoam plates filled with something that I guess the people who run this place call food. On every plate, a blob of yellow, a blob of white. No Deshawn here to come and take our breakfast orders. Oh no. Snoopy Lady pushed me into line, behind a bunch of guys in prison jumpsuits shuffling along, grabbing their food from the counter. I’m telling you, people, it was so weird, because I got to that counter and all I saw was a big metal wall, with a thin slit at the bottom, and through that slit, hands pushed food at us. But we couldn’t see who was feeding us. All those servers showed us were their hands, shoving full plates out for hungry people to grab. And the guys in line? They took their plates, looked down, and frowned. Some of them even sighed. Because the food in this prison is barely food.
I didn’t know yet that the people on the other side, the guys working in the kitchen, in the commissary, in the barbershop, the janitors, the sweepers, the dishwashers—they were all detained immigrants like me—locked up in here, working as “volunteers.” Yeah, that’s what the guards call them—the immigrants who are held in this place. The ones who work to keep the place going, they’re called “volunteers,” and they might as well be volunteers, because they only get paid a dollar or two a day, and the only place they can spend that money is the commissary, where a packet of ramen noodles costs, like, five bucks.
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