The Indigo Notebook

by Laura Resau

  She glances at me, then back at the flickering screen. “Jeff bought it for us. There’s a satellite dish on this building, did you know? We get a zillion channels.”

  I perch on the arm of the sofa. It’s a rerun of Friends, which of course I’ve heard of, because some things you can’t escape even in the tiny nooks and crannies of the planet.

  She lays her hand on my knee. “Remember how you used to beg me for a TV when you were little?”

  I nod. I gave up that dream long ago.

  “It’s more for Jeff than for me. He doesn’t want to get behind on his sports viewing when he hangs out here. He keeps golf stats.”

  I wonder if this will be the kiss of death for him. For Layla, golf is the epitome of all things evil the world. She always observes that no matter what country we’re in, whether jungly or desertic, the ritzy resorts have cleared a gigantic area and planted turf and dumped tons of water for irrigation, all because a certain portion of the world’s population can’t survive without this sport. I’m amazed she can even mention the golf-stat thing without a trace of sarcasm.

  “So he’s really into golf, huh?”

  “It’s actually an interesting sport if you give it a chance. There’s this whole golf subculture, you know? I’ve been so judgmental about it in the past, but there’s something to it.”

  I can’t think of anything to say.

  “Anyway, he’s entitled to his hobbies. He doesn’t get my spiritual searching. In a grown-up relationship, differences can be healthy.”

  I fiddle with my rings. She sounds like an advice columnist in a women’s magazine, the mainstream voice of reason. Since when did Layla call her spiritual-searching obsession a hobby? “Is he back in Quito now?”

  She nods.

  So I’ll have her to myself tonight. That makes me secretly happy.

  We watch Friends and Frasier and Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. At first, it’s fun. I see us from the outside, a bird’s-eye view of a mother and a daughter side by side on a sofa, watching TV, laughing at the jokes, sharing a bowl of popcorn, worthy of a magazine ad. After two hours, I find myself waiting for Layla to say, Let’s paint the walls purple! Or Let’s blast Moroccan music and belly dance on the porch! Or Let’s have champagne and make crème brûlée! But the only thing she says is, “Finally I’m getting it.”

  “What?”

  “The appeal of TV.” She hugs a pillow. “See, it’s a necessary escape.”

  “Escape from what?”

  “From life.” She seems pleased with her analysis. “From a boring life, that is. A life you’d need to escape from.” And she settles back into the couch and changes the channel.

  Later, in my room, I unfold another letter. Wendell’s warned me this one would be extra-embarrassing.

  Dear birth mom and dad,

  I’m sorry that my last letter was mean. Let me tell you why I hate my FAKE mom. I was sick on Thursday with stomach problems. STOMACH PROBLEMS. And mom wrote a note, Wendell has diarea so he was not in school yesterday. And I gave it to Mrs. Woods and she read it and put it on her desk and then Colin saw it and said, Wendell has diarea!

  I am so humeliated. I said, mom why the hell didn’t you write stomach problems? I even said that, hell. And she got mad at me. At ME! After she humeliated me! You wouldn’t ever write that I had diarea, would you?

  Sincerely,

  Wendell B. Connelly,

  age 10

  p.s. an hour later. it’s not like you have to come get me or anything. Mom came up here with brownies and said next time she’ll write stomach problems. She promises.

  I shuffle through all the times I’ve told Layla I hated her. Pretty much every time she’s made us move to a new country, at least in the past few years. In each of my notebooks, there are solid pages with line after line of I hate Layla. I hate Layla. I hate Layla.

  At the end of my tirades, after some sulking in my room, I could never resist coming out, lured by the sweet scent of rose petal tea and the peppermint and rosemary essential oils she heated to make me feel better. She’d say some Rumi quote like, “Oh, love, remember that sometimes, what hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.” Then we’d drink rose tea with lots of honey and she’d pull me into whatever she was into at the time—playing the didgeridoo or dancing to African music.

  Soon the hate faded. But in my notebook, I never crossed out the lines of I hate Layla. And I never filled a single page with lines of I love Layla.

  Even though, of course, I did.

  “Head, shoulders, knees, and toes, knees and toes!” Odelia belts out the song in the sweet, damp air, still fresh from dew. Wendell and I are touching our heads, shoulders, knees, and toes for the tenth time today. It’s as though Agua Santa has a magnetic pull, won’t let us stay away. Taita Silvio and Mamita Luz are in Quito, visiting some of their “children” who’ve grown, and the girls insisted we come on a hike.

  They’re taking us to a high lookout point, where you can see everything. “Practically the whole world!” Isabel has promised. A day without thinking about Wendell’s birth parents will be good. And mountaintop views always give me perspective on things—in this case, what to think about Layla’s new TV-viewing habit.

  On the way up the hill, we pass some two-story cement houses, unpainted, like islands among corn plants. Dogs live on the roofs, barking and peering over the edges, silhouetted against the expanse of blue above. The higher we go, the bigger the sky grows, spotted with a few clouds like pearls, broken open and melting. You can see far into the distance, across the layers of hills that stretch into the mountains. The earth slopes and curves, rises and falls, joining here, separating there, with the mottled green fabric of leaves draped over it all.

  The wind is wild, whipping at our shirts, pushing us this way and that. On the way, Odelia proudly points out eucalyptus trees, and has us smell the cough-drop scent of the leaves torn up in her hand. Isabel plucks tiny edible berries from flowered ground cover, and Eva gathers pale green water cress from streams for us to taste, smiling for the camera as Wendell snaps photos.

  Eva motions to a tree whose huge white flowers dangle like ornaments. “And that’s floripondio. In the old days, mothers used to put their babies under the branches if they were cranky. It made them sleep.” She lowers her voice dramatically. “Thieves use it too. They crush the petals and sprinkle them in your food. And then, you’re like a zombie, and they rob you.”

  On and on the girls chatter, telling us tales and showing us plants and landmarks as they lead us up a hill toward the lookout point. We reach the top of the hill and look around, stunned at the view. On all four sides, rolling hills and valleys surround us, a landscape dripping with sun-drenched green. It’s as though a treasure chest has overturned, spilling out gemstones of every possible shade of green—jade and emerald and turquoise, all aglow.

  Odelia points toward the next hill over. “Look! Inside that hill are tunnels that lead to a diamond palace,” she says. “Secret tunnels.”

  Isabel widens her eyes. “And the devils try to make a deal with you to make you rich. In return, they take your soul and—”

  “So we’re not allowed to go there,” Odelia breaks in, “because—”

  “A bad man lives on that hill,” Isabel interrupts. “And he turns into a snake at night and goes into the tunnels with the devils and—”

  “Don Faustino.” Eva jumps in eagerly. “We’re not allowed to go to his house. He made a deal with the devil. That’s why he’s rich.”

  “Once,” Isabel says, “our cousin’s friend’s brother went there on a dare and his dogs bit him and Don Faustino just watched and know what he said? He said, ‘That’ll teach you not to mess around on my property.’ The dogs bit him all over, and just when they were going for his neck for the kill, Don Faustino pulled them off.”

  “And you know the strange thing?” Eva says.

  “What?” Of course, I’m taking all this with a
giant grain of salt. I’ve heard these kinds of stories in most small towns we’ve been to, all over the world. The rich man who made a deal with the devil. An envied outcast.

  “He’s the brother of the nicest man in town. Taita Silvio.”

  Chapter 14

  In the scant shade of a small tree, Wendell and I wait for the bus. He asks in a strained playful voice, “You think my birth father is a snake man who hangs out with devils?”

  I smile. “The guy’s probably a harmless hermit.”

  “What about him siccing his dogs on that kid?”

  “Could be a rumor.”

  Wendell stares at the mountain Imbabura, looming high. “Let’s go to his house.”

  I reconsider. “Well, maybe it’s not just a rumor. Obviously Taita Silvio doesn’t want you to meet him. Why else would he lie?”

  He pulls the crystal from his pocket, rolls it around in his hands. “Either way, I have to know.”

  The bus comes chugging along, a blue one with a cloud of gray smoke trailing behind. It stops and the doors open. I climb on first, with Wendell right behind me. The door’s just closing behind us when, without warning, Wendell grabs my hand and says, “Get off.” He pushes open the door and pulls me out after him. We stumble onto the asphalt, and I struggle to regain my balance.

  The driver calls out, “You coming?”

  Wendell shakes his head vehemently, and the bus pulls away.

  Is he crazy? He said there were weird things about him. Apart from his letters, I don’t actually know much about him, come to think of it. This is the kind of thing Layla does from time to time, if she has an ominous dream or sees a particular sign. “Three dead bees in a row this morning!” she said a few months ago in Thailand. “One in my dream, one that slammed into our window, and one on the way to the bakery. That’s it, I’m not leaving the house for the rest of the day.”

  Has Wendell had a sign? Or some kind of feeling? Like whatever made him give me the be careful in the water warning?

  Hands shaking, Wendell takes out his camera and starts fiddling with the knobs, refusing to meet my eyes. “I just—I just saw this thing I wanted to take a picture of.”

  He’s a terrible liar.

  “What thing?” I ask.

  He looks around and his gaze settles on a crushed plastic Inca Kola bottle in the weeds. “That. It’s an artsy shot.” He lowers to his knee and snaps a few photos.

  Obviously, he’s lying. Maybe he saw someone on the bus who he didn’t want to see? Maybe he’s claustrophobic and the bus felt too crowded?

  About twenty minutes later, when the next bus comes, we get on without incident. Wendell tries to act like his regular self. He talks about some landscape photos he wants to take, but he seems distracted, fiddling with the curtain’s tassel, eyes darting to the window.

  Halfway there, our bus slows. At first I figure it’s to pick up or drop off passengers. But then I notice voices rising into a kind of high-pitched frenzy. Something’s burning—engine exhaust, rubber, fuel. I turn across the aisle toward the opposite windows, where all the passengers are peering outside, eyes open, mouths dropped. I follow their gaze. First I see the flashing lights of the ambulance and fire trucks, and then the bus, blue and turned on its side like a carcass, the front end smashed into a huge semitrailer. A crowd of dazed people are streaming off the bus, some hunched over, helped by medics, as stretchers are being loaded into three ambulances.

  I turn to Wendell. The color has seeped out of his face. He stares like he’s seen a ghost.

  “That’s the bus we didn’t take,” I say. “Isn’t it?”

  He nods.

  The police direct our bus to keep moving through. I study Wendell. “You knew.”

  His eyes are glassy. “You think anyone died?”

  “You knew.”

  “Maybe you should translate a couple more letters, Z. The two most recent ones.”

  I race to the corner coffee shop, order chamomile tea and caramel-filled pastries, and shuffle through the unread letters in my bag. I find one from age fifteen, typed, red ink on white paper.

  Dear birth mom and dad,

  I think I’m going crazy. I think maybe you’re the only ones who can understand. Sometimes when I’m zoning out, like listening to music or staring at the wall in class, sometimes I get these feelings, like something’s going to happen. Sometimes, something good. Sometimes, something bad.

  Like yesterday, I looked at my buddy Aiden in math class and I got this terrible feeling. And then, we were riding bikes home from school and it was raining and his wheel caught on the railroad tracks and he wrecked his bike. He’s okay, just pretty bruised and scraped up. But what if I caused it? Or could have stopped it? I don’t even believe in this stuff, but it’s happening to me.

  Will I have to live my whole life like this? What’s wrong with me? I haven’t told anyone about this. I don’t know why, it’s too weird.

  Please help me make it stop.

  Wendell, age 15

  There’s another recent one, from age sixteen, scribbled on notebook paper with torn edges. The handwriting is fast and furious, written at jagged, desperate angles.

  Dear birth mom and dad,

  I’m going to find you. I’m going to find you and give you these letters. I need your help. I know you can help me. I can’t live with this anymore. It’s this big secret that’s crushing me.

  My girlfriend broke up with me and I think it’s because I told her about this stuff. When I begged her not to break up with me (I know, not one of my proudest moments), she said I had abandonment issues and needed to find resolution. (She’s taking a psych class this year and thinks she’s better than Freud now.) Blah blah blah.

  But it’s true. I do need resolution. I need you to explain myself to me. I’ve been writing you these letters and you’ll never get them unless I find you. I’m going this summer.

  Hasta pronto,

  Wendell, age 16

  I read the letters three times, and when my hands stop shaking, I translate them.

  Then, like I always do when I feel like I’ll explode with emotion, I start writing in my notebook. After three lines, I slam it shut, frustrated.

  I don’t want to write.

  I want to talk.

  To Layla.

  I want to tell her about Wendell, and the accident, and the snake man, and everything else.

  When I get home, the door’s unlocked. She must be home. But she isn’t cross-legged on the floor painting, or staring at a plant on the porch and writing a poem about an unfurling leaf, or kneeling at the crate coffee table and soldering stained-glass mosaics. That crazy energy is missing, the whirlwind that usually sweeps me up. Usually she beams a smile at me, packed with chi, and says something along the lines of, “Hello, my gorgeous daughter. What did the universe shower you with today, love?”

  And I always say something like, “Dog shit on my flip-flop.” And then she laughs a tinkling laugh, and somehow we get around to talking about whatever we feel like talking about and drink passion fruit juice on the patio. It was a warm, cozy space we created together, Layla and me, now that I think about it.

  She’s on the sofa, watching TV, her school folders in a neat pile on the crate coffee table. “Hi, love.”

  “Hey, Layla.” I open my mouth to tell her everything, but then I notice her eyes glued to the screen. I press my lips together.

  We watch some Desperate Housewives together in silence. During the commercials, she opens the folder marked Lesson Plans and makes some notes. This past week, I popped into one of her afternoon classes and found the classroom silent, the students with their heads bent over textbooks, copying exercises into their notebooks, while she sat behind the desk watching them, her eyes oddly blank. In Thailand and Brazil, whenever I stopped by her classroom, students were dancing on the desks, or impersonating the Simpsons in ridiculous wigs. They were usually laughing so hard the teachers in nearby classrooms complained. But Layla never got in too much t
rouble. Her students always had the highest test scores of any classes and always gave her the best evaluations.

  During an SUV commercial, she looks up from her papers. “Jeff’s such a good influence on me, you know?”

  “So you really like him?” I say, pushing the Wendell stuff to the side for the moment.

  She smiles, a slow smile that manages to reach the corners of her lips but doesn’t quite make it to her eyes. “I feel like a grown-up with him. It’s weird, but good, you know? And safe. I finally understand your need to be safe.”

  “Really?”

  “Lately, when I’m trying to sleep, my throat feels like it’s closing up. It’s like I can’t breathe, like I’m back in that water, drowning. That’s how you feel when you wake up in the middle of the night, isn’t it?”

  “Try deep belly breathing,” I suggest.

  Layla looks sad. “It’s not too late to give you a piece of a normal childhood, Z.”

  “Layla, you don’t have to do this for me.”

  She tucks her knees under her chin. “If I’d died in that water, what would have happened to you? I mean, I don’t even have a will. Jeff made a whole list of things I need to do. Legal and financial things. Things he did for his daughters.”

  Desperate Housewives comes on again, and Layla looks back at the TV, the ghostly blue light flickering over her face. “You’re happy about Jeff, right, Z?”

  “Of course, Layla.”

  “Because it was pure destiny that dropped him in my path. And he says the same thing about me. He says that his life felt all small and closed up after the divorce, after his girls went to college. And now, he’s exploring this whole adventurous side of himself.”

  “That’s great.” My voice sounds small and far away.

  She turns up the volume and pats my knee. I wonder if that’s something she picked up from Jeff. She never used to pat before. I wonder if soon she’ll be saying things like, “Oh, my!”