by Laura Resau
Wendell leans across the table and kisses me. “Hey, let’s not give up.”
I offer him a halfhearted smile through the red-tinted candlelight. Then I ask the question I’ve been too scared to ask, to even write about in my notebook. It comes out in the softest whisper. “Wendell, what if my father—what if he’s lost? Forever?”
“We have no reason to think that, Z.”
Wendell stands up, walks over to me, holds me close. “We’re doing the best we can. We need to trust that he’s out there somewhere. That somehow, we’ll find him.”
I press my cheek to the fabric of Wendell’s T-shirt. “You’re right.” And suddenly, I feel overwhelmed with gratitude. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Wendell.”
He kisses me again, a kiss that tastes of caramel. “I feel the same about you, Z.”
“I’m just so glad we won’t have to say goodbye again, ever.” I imagine us as two trees growing side by side, woven together, solid and inextricable. As long as we’re together, I can handle anything, maybe even the worst-case scenario with my father.
Later, under the star-studded sky, I’m sitting at the edge of the bonfire, mesmerized by the leaping flames, my toes dug into the sand. Layla’s voice is a background, like the rush of waves, quoting Rumi to the guests, who listen with rapt attention. “Flowers open every night across the sky, a breathing peace and sudden flame catching.”
Meanwhile, Wendell is talking—probably about sea turtles—to the Norwegian women, who are nodding emphatically.
I look at each of the rosy, glistening faces of the backpackers around the fire, watching Layla spout Rumi. “We are the night ocean filled with glints of light. We are the space between the fish and the moon, while we sit here together.”
People murmur and nod and stare at the sky, then the ocean, then back at Layla. She’s found her calling, the perfect, ever-changing community for herself. The kinds of people who choose to stay at a place like Cabañas Magia del Mar all have bits of Layla inside them. They’re obviously enchanted to be here with her, with each other. A gathering of strangers who, in a short break from their realities, play and laugh and sing and swim and do yoga and explore the mysteries of existence, with Layla as the Rumi-quoting guide. Symbiosis, that’s clear from the sparkles in everyone’s eyes.
Earlier, after the restaurant outing, while I was helping Layla carry wood from the shed to the bonfire pit, she asked why I was all melancholy. I explained Cristina’s strange reaction, and how she looked just like me, and how, at the heart of it, I feared my father might not even be alive. “Walk with grief like a good friend,” she recited softly in response. “Listen to what he says.”
So here I am, waving away woodsmoke, trying to take Rumi’s advice and listen to what grief has to tell me.
Beside me, the blind Chilean man, Horacio, is playing guitar, what sounds like a folk song. His husky voice matches his rough beard, black, peppered with white and gray. I focus my attention on the guitar notes, the way his fingers move over the strings.
The image of a man playing guitar on a beach at night … this is how Layla described my father. And last year in France, when he slipped me the CD, I finally got to hear his haunting melodies, soul-touching and breathtaking. There are no words in the songs, but there’s so much feeling conveyed in his playing. My father’s French band was called Illusion, which is fitting, because he himself was a kind of illusion. I didn’t see through his illusion until it was too late and he’d already left. All I have is his music.
But I want more. I want words, his words, tender words for his daughter. He did offer me some of these back in France, words that comforted me. What kills me is that I didn’t pay enough attention. I thought he was nothing more than a kind stranger. There’s so much I’d want to ask him if he were here with me. Since I learned to write, I’ve spent my life filling notebooks with words from strangers. And now, more than anything, I want to fill them with words from my father.
Horacio finishes his song, rests his guitar on his lap, stares contentedly into nothingness. I wave away smoke and open my jade notebook, angling it so that the firelight illuminates a page. Twirling my pen, I say softly, “Hey, Horacio.”
“Hey, Zeeta.”
Strange that he recognized my voice. We’ve hardly ever spoken. “You’re good with voices,” I say.
“Everyone’s is distinct. I recognize voices the way you recognize faces.”
I think about this, how it would come in handy for me. I’ve heard my father’s voice before, briefly, but I couldn’t pick it out of a voice lineup, that’s for sure. “Oiga, Horacio, mind if I interview you?”
“Sure,” he says, tilting his head toward my voice.
I decide to start with the basics, then dig my way deeper. “Do you have any kids?”
“A daughter,” he says, still facing the fire.
Something about the way he says “daughter,” with so much meaning, makes me catch my breath. What if—? Then I get my thoughts back in check. He’s blind. Your father is not. Stop the wishful thinking. I jot down daughter.
“And a granddaughter,” he adds with a proud, grandfatherly smile.
I close my eyes. Of course he’s not my father. But I know exactly what I’d want from my father if he were here. “Horacio, what’s your favorite bit of fatherly wisdom?”
With an amused look, he says, “Here’s what I told my daughter.” He chuckles, and adds under his breath, “Even though she never actually asked for it, like you.” Enunciating each word, he announces softly, “Your life will be a mess.”
I blink, taken aback. “Sounds more like a curse than advice.”
His fingers graze over his stubbled, fire-flushed cheek. “Twenty-five years ago, when my wife was eight months pregnant, we were in a terrible car crash. She died. Miraculously, our baby daughter survived. Little Elsa was in the hospital with me as I had surgery after surgery. They saved my life. But my head trauma was too severe. I never recovered my sight.”
I swallow hard. He’s paused and I feel I should say something, but I just stare at the fire, waiting for the rest.
“In the hospital, the nurses would wheel me into the newborn unit and I’d sit holding Elsa and feel how damaged we both were. She felt so fragile in my arms, so helpless, her tiny heartbeat …” His voice crackles with emotion. “I held her and cried for my daughter who had no mother and a blind father. Like all parents, I wanted a perfect life for my child. But of course, this was never a possibility for Elsa. From the time she entered this world, her life was a mess.
“One day, as I held her little bird body, I felt this warmth radiating from her, this strength. That’s when the idea came to me. Life is a mess. My daughter would just realize it sooner than most people. So I stopped wishing for a perfect life.
“Instead, I focused on her feather-soft skin, this miracle. And I realized I wanted to travel the world with her.” He laughs gruffly. “A blind man traveling the world with his motherless baby. How messy is that? But I was determined. I’d gotten a settlement from the accident, so I had the money. My mother came along for the first few years, but when Elsa was old enough, it was just the two of us. She still travels with me sometimes.”
Horacio tilts his head back, as though gazing at the stars. “I’ll always remember holding my little girl that day and whispering, ‘Our lives will be a mess together. A beautiful mess.’ ” His voice softens, almost inaudible now. “You know, your life will be a mess too, Zeeta.”
It’s as if he can look right inside to my deepest fear. “Maybe not,” I say weakly, staring at the dark ocean.
“Oh, it will, sooner or later. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it.”
I close my notebook, trying to keep my voice steady. “My life has been a mess for the past seventeen years. There’s nowhere to go but neater.”
He grins into the darkness. “Life can always get messier.”
The next morning, I wake up to faint predawn light filtering through the
screen. Layla hasn’t yet rung her yoga bell, which means it’s still early. Way too early to get up. I squeeze my eyes shut and press the pillow over my head, trying to slip back into sleep. But the rushing waves and buzzing insects are too loud, persistent. I turn on my right side, turn on my left, lie on my back, then on my stomach. Then I sit up in frustration.
For some reason I’m awake. Awake and feeling uneasy.
Maybe if I make some tea and write in my notebook I’ll feel better. I crawl out through the gap in the mosquito net. I splash cold water on my face, exchange my nightgown for a sundress, slip on my flip-flops. I open the door, expecting the misty morning air, the fresh dew-covered leaves, the stone path leading to the kitchen hut, lined with red-blossomed hibiscus bushes.
I step outside and scream.
There in front of me is a limp, bloody chicken with its head severed, flies buzzing around it in a thick cloud. I stagger back and shut my eyes, choking on the stench. I’ve seen dead chickens before, butchered them myself, as a matter of fact, but this is different. It’s unnatural to stumble across one on your doorstep.
Wendell calls out from the window of his cabana. “Z, you okay?”
Before I can answer, he’s at his door in his boxers.
“Watch out!” I yell just in time, before he steps on his own decapitated chicken.
Warily, I glance over toward Layla’s cabana, on the other side of mine. Sure enough, there’s another headless chicken with an entourage of flies. A yelp flies from my mouth.
Layla pokes her head to the window. “What’s happening?”
“Watch out for the dead chicken!” I shout. And then, realizing that my voice might carry to other guests, I wish I could snatch the words back. Nothing worse for business than a bunch of dead chickens lying around.
“What is all this?” Wendell murmurs, wrapping an arm around me, pushing aside my tangled hair.
“A serial chicken killer on the loose?”
Wendell studies the dead animal. “Just like in my vision,” he says in a low voice. His eyes flicker to mine. “What’s going on?”
I’ve lived in enough places where witchcraft is practiced to know what this is. “Look, Wendell.” I point to the blood-spotted bones, sharp stones, twigs that form a pattern around each carcass.
“What does it mean?” he asks.
“This,” I say, like a doctor pronouncing a dreaded diagnosis, “is a curse.”
Within minutes, Layla emerges from her cabana. Hands on her hips, she surveys the dead chicken and bones and rocks and twigs on her front stoop.
“Well?” I venture, my voice cautious.
“Well,” she announces, “whoever did this has come up against the wrong people!”
Wendell raises his eyebrows.
She brushes her hands together as if washing something off. “Oh, yes indeed. If anyone’s equipped to deal with negative energy, it’s us, right, Zeeta?”
From the supply shed, she grabs rubber gloves, then disposes of each mess in a garbage bag. This goes fast; luckily, only mine, Layla’s, and Wendell’s cabanas have been victims. This might be because they’re the ones clearly marked with MANAGEMENT signs, the idea being that late-arriving guests can knock on one of our doors to get their cabana keys. I never guessed the signage would make us vulnerable in this way.
Next Layla gathers all the sacred amulets and rocks she’s accumulated over the years. She picks up her stash of copal incense, a bunch of clay incense pots, salt, little figurines of goddesses and statue of the Buddha, bells and crystals, gemstones and fresh flowers—her entire arsenal. Then she gets to work, chanting and singing and burning incense.
Hearing the racket, the guests trickle out of their cabanas, asking, “What’s going on?” in their respective languages.
Layla calmly informs them, “Sunrise yoga has been canceled due to an attempted curse.”
Joe, of course, sees this as more evidence that the earth is on the verge of complete destruction. He pins on his purple wig, muttering, “When the most loving woman in the world is victim of a curse, that’s when you know the world’s about to end.…”
Layla thrusts a bag of salt into his hand and instructs him to scatter it along the stone paths of the cabana area. She directs the befuddled guests to pick fresh herbs from her pots—ruda and basil and rosemary—and teaches them chants to say while waving around bundles of leaves. Oddly enough, the guests seem more than happy to participate. I imagine them sending a flurry of emails and texts to their friends back home about how padre it is to dispel an actual curse.
And I imagine an addition to our website: Another featured attraction of Cabañas Magia del Mar … Participate in an authentic spiritual cleaning! We’d just have to leave out the gory bloody-poultry details, of course.
Thankfully, none of the guests have actually laid eyes on a dead chicken; that image would be hard to shake. They’ll just remember the bells and incense—a kind of early-morning party.
After an hour, Layla claps her hands and, as if ending a yoga session, calls out, “Fabulous job, everyone! Now let’s celebrate with breakfast!” Only Layla could turn a dead chicken incident into a festive occasion.
To put a further festive spin on the morning, Joe dons his giant shoes and does a clown routine with a rubber chicken and a fishing pole and a watermelon. The other guests carry on with their conversations, periodically tossing confused glances Joe’s way. He keeps going, and when he stops and bows, people offer some polite claps, which he takes as a sign to launch into another routine using a wind-up cockroach, a hairbrush, and a can of beans.
Blocking him out, I whip up two dozen eggs for breakfast, thinking of what El Sapo said about the rumors of tragedies, deaths, and accidents on this land. I think of all the “be carefuls” directed at us. I think of what the old lady with the hammocks said about how this place was cursed. And whether or not I believe in rumors and curses, I have a feeling this isn’t going to be finished so easily.
Wendell heaves the watermelon from Joe’s routine onto the counter and slices into it. He offers me a piece and asks in a low voice, “So, who do you think left the curse?”
I take a bite, sweet and cool. The culprit is clear to me. She may have been terrorizing previous managers with this dead-chicken-curse routine for years. “The jaguar lady,” I say matter-of-factly, wiping watermelon juice from my chin.
When Wendell says nothing, I add, “You know, the woman whose signs explicitly state that trespassers will be devoured or cursed?”
“That would be the obvious choice,” he says, deftly flicking seeds with the tip of the knife. “But we didn’t actually trespass when the jaguar pounced. We were on our side of the fence.”
“I doubt she’s one to haggle over details.” I take another bite. “So what’s your theory?”
He finishes his piece, tosses the rind into the compost bin. “I was thinking the poachers would have a motive too. Maybe they realized we called the cops on them. If this place is unoccupied, they can poach more easily. And if that’s why they’re doing it, we have an extra motive to stop them.” He takes a giant bowl from the shelf, and starts scooping the chopped watermelon into it.
I consider his ideas, toss a chunk of butter into the frying pan, then watch it slide and bubble. “But wouldn’t the volunteers stop them anyway?”
He frowns. “Whoever was scheduled the night we were there obviously didn’t show. Or wasn’t doing their job. Or else was cooperating with the poachers. Or maybe they themselves were the poachers.”
“You’ve really been thinking about this, huh?” It seems like overkill to me, this conspiracy theory stuff. For all we know, the volunteer was sick that night. I just ask, “What time should we go to the Turtle Center?”
He shrugs. “Later this morning?”
I pour in the egg mixture, watch as it slowly firms. I mentally shuffle through my plans for the day. I don’t mind an excuse for putting off my world history homework. “Okay. After breakfast.”
; Wendell looks pleased as he sticks a spoon in the bowl of watermelon.
I whisk the eggs, adding a few pinches of salt. I don’t mention that I’d still cast my vote for the jaguar lady as the guilty party. But a visit to the Turtle Center is more palatable than the other option—going into the Forbidden Territory. Of course, it’s all a matter of procrastination. If we’re going to run these cabanas for years, we’ll have to meet the neighbor sooner or later.
After washing breakfast dishes, Wendell and I walk down the dirt hill and turn right onto the paved main street. The Turtle Center is just a few blocks farther along the road. On the way, we pass Don Ernesto the butcher and Doña Elisa the tortilla lady and El Loco the dreadlocked fisherman. At first I’m worried they might hold it against us that we live on supposedly cursed land, but they each smile and nod in greeting.
El Loco even waves us over. Holding a giant conch shell out to me, he says in his rough voice, “I found this. Thought you might like it.”
I take it, hold it in my hands, study the smooth pink spiral interior. “Thanks,” I say, surprised.
He shrugs a shoulder, looks at us through black dreads laced with a few white hairs. “You’re my new best customers. Have to keep you coming back, right?”
Wendell asks, “Hey, you happen to know where the police station is?”
“Why?” El Loco’s eyebrows shoot up. “Everything all right?”
I realize that the locals have probably just been waiting for something to go wrong at our cabanas. I imagine this is how rumors spread. I give Wendell a warning glance.
He says vaguely, “Just some trouble with poaching is all.” Thankfully, he doesn’t mention the curse.
But El Loco lets his gaze linger, obviously concerned. “The station’s just down the block,” he says, pointing to a side street. Then he warns, “Tengan cuidado.”
“Of course,” I assure him as I hold the shell nervously. Now, after the curse, these warnings have more weight behind them. They’re harder to shake off.
