The Indigo Notebook (28 page)

Mamita Luz chuckles and pats her husband’s belly, soft and round. “No ribs in sight with my bread nearby.”

Taita Silvio reads a few more letters out loud and we laugh a lot and cry a little and eat bread and sip lemon balm tea. Afterward, the kitchen feels so cozy and warm that even though it has to be nearly dawn, we don’t want to leave. Dan finds the guitar in the corner and strums some tunes, humming lightly. Then Taita Silvio picks up a reed flute and starts playing along with him. Together, they create a spontaneous melody.

Wendell’s watching them while Sarah and I are watching
Wendell. He’s their music. His dad is the reed and Silvio’s family’s genes are the carefully placed holes, and some mysterious force like the Absolute is the breath, and they’ve all come together to create this beautiful boy.

This boy who kissed me in a crystal cave.

This boy who chose me as his She.

After a while, Sarah and Dan start yawning and saying they’re ready to head back to the hotel with Wendell. I’m ready to go home too, but Layla’s discovered that Taita Silvio’s a healer. Now, of course, she’s in the middle of a passionate conversation with him. You’d never guess it was five a.m. by the amount of energy she suddenly has.

We say goodbye to Wendell and his parents, agreeing to meet at the market for dinner that evening. Once they leave, Layla jumps right back into her conversation, detailing her near drowning in the waterfall with dramatic flair. She’s standing up, twirling her arms around, demonstrating how the water sucked her under, as though it’s a modern dance routine.

Silvio nods gravely. “You have fright,
cumarita,”
he says. “At the moment you were drowning, your spirit left your body. You need to get it back.” He sips his tea. “You haven’t been yourself lately, have you?”

I answer for her. “No, she hasn’t!”

Mamita Luz pats Layla’s shoulder sympathetically. “Would you like my husband to give you a
limpieza, cumarita
?”

Magical words for Layla. An invitation to a spiritual
cleaning. Her secret life goal, I’ve deduced, is to have her spirit cleaned in every country in the world.

This time, she really needs it.

“Oh yes! Thank you!” She hugs Mamita Luz. “Thank you for having such a lovely husband and making such delicious bread. Thank you for everything!”

In the candlelit curing room, I sit on the bench at the wall, while Mamita Luz and Taita Silvio prepare for the
limpieza
. As instructed, Layla starts to undress, first unwinding her wraparound skirt.

In a cotton spaghetti-strap tank and hipsters, she stands in perfect yoga posture, with a hint of a belly poking out. She’s always refused to do crunches—they might block her golden belly chakra. She’s entering a trance state now, eyes closed, belly expanding and contracting with her breath.

Meanwhile, Taita Silvio is arranging the altar with Mamita Luz’s help. They put the huge feather headdress on his head and the strands of beads around his neck. The framed saints on the walls stare down at us. The gaze of the Virgin of Agua Santa is especially tender. Sacred water. I know that makes Layla happy. She loves water goddesses in any form.

On the altar, candlelight reflects off the laughing Buddha with all the happy bald babies crawling over him. It makes me think of Mamita Luz and Taita Silvio and all their children. It makes me think of all the different ways to be a mother or a father, or a daughter or a son. Of all the different ways to feel at home in this world.

Mamita Luz spreads a plastic doormat under Layla’s feet
so that the dirt floor won’t get muddy. Then she holds a glass goblet of water before Layla. “Sacred water,
cumarita
. From a melting glacier. Drink.”

Layla sips.

Mamita Luz sits down and Taita Silvio begins chanting in Quichua and whistling, meandering melodies that make me think of the flute music he played earlier. He blesses a green bottle of liquid. Mamita Luz whispers something to Layla, and Layla closes her eyes, and Taita Silvio spits all over her, forceful gusts like ocean mist in a storm. He’s at least five feet away from her but easily soaks her. Again and again he blows away the bad air, calling her spirit back.

He takes two stones from his altar.
“Cumarita
, think about who you really are.” He rubs them over her, patting her flesh rhythmically and chanting, as though her body’s a musical instrument. A smile to rival the Buddha’s lights up her face. This is the kind of thing she lives for.

Taita Silvio grabs a bundle of leaves.

“Chilca,”
Mamita Luz whispers.

With the
chilca
, Taita Silvio taps Layla in a regular rhythm, making circles around her stomach, back, and neck, chanting in Quichua and whistling all the while. Now he’s focusing on her chest, just over her heart.

Layla’s shivering, and if there were more light in the room, I bet we could see her turning blue. Next, Taita Silvio puts a handful of rose petals cut into tiny pieces in his mouth, then takes a sip from the green bottle. He spits on her. “Rub the petals into your skin.” Then he gives her white stones to rub
over herself. “Think of what you want,
cumarita,”
he says. “What you truly want.”

Layla smiles and concentrates.

Then Taita Silvio takes another swig and blows the liquid on her. This time, he lights a lighter as he spits. When the alcohol spray passes through the flame, a fireball forms and shoots across the room. I jump a foot off the bench. Just before it reaches Layla, it goes out.

Not much surprises me in healing ceremonies, but fireballs are a new one. One fireball after another, and each time I jump. All the fireballs make Layla stop shivering and bathe her in an orange glow. She looks like an angel.

My heart racing, I think,
This is my mother
.

And then I think,
She’s back
.

The fireballs stop. Layla opens her eyes and smiles at me. Mamita Luz comes to her with a pink towel and her clothes. Taita Silvio sits down, looking worn out but satisfied. “We’re finished. Your spirit is back, as strong as ever,
cumarita
.”

In the fresh early morning air, we head toward the bus stop, Layla and me, side by side, our strides synchronized. In my left palm, I’m clicking together the amulets I’ve brought: jade, jasper, and crystals. I’m tired, a happy tired, a tired that lets down my usual defenses and gives me the courage to say, in a raw, simple voice, “I missed you, Layla.”

“I missed me, too.” She laughs a sleepy laugh and throws her arm around my shoulders.

We walk down the road, a ribbon through masses of green,
as though a sea of leaves has parted just enough for us to pass through. All this green feels delicious, painted with angled lemony light, dripping with tree shadows. Power lines crisscross the hills like silvery spiderwebs, and tiny, faraway people walk along their own narrow ribbons of road, curving here and there.

I lean into her. “What now, Layla?”

“Now, fly!” she says with another laugh.

“Seriously, Layla.”

She throws her head back and gazes at the sky. “Okay, how about this? Jeff will head back to Virginia, and maybe we’ll e-mail a little, and then after a while, he’ll fade into our memories.” She unbraids her hair, still damp, and runs her fingers through it, letting it tumble over her shoulders. “A couple of years from now, when we’re in another country, and we pass a handsome older fatherly type, or flip through a magazine and see a well-dressed man playing golf, we’ll say,
Hey, remember that Jeff guy? Remember how we almost moved to Maryland?”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

I click the stones around in my hand. “And,” I say, “we’ll feel a little sad, maybe, but then we’ll blast Moroccan music and you’ll shout,
Dance with me, Z!
”

Layla snakes her hands up in a quick belly dancing move. “And you’ll roll your eyes, and groan,
It’s the middle of the night, Layla! What about the neighbors?
But you’ll join me anyway.”

I breathe in the mist rising off the shiny green cornfields in
the valley, the luxurious gown of Pachamama—Mother Earth—embroidered with emerald leaves and crystal lace, trimmed with the silk ribbons of rivers, fringed with petals and leaves. “And secretly, I’ll love it.” I raise a calculated eyebrow at her. “On the condition, of course, that we establish some rules.”

“Hmm.” She lifts her hair, twirls it, and ties it in a loose knot. “No rules. How about agreements?”

“Okay. Agreements.”

By the time the bus arrives, we’ve agreed that we’ll put ten percent of our money away for my college fund, ten percent for her retirement, ten percent in investments, and ten percent for emergencies. I’ve agreed to complain less about her boyfriends. And she’s agreed—very reluctantly—to take turns doing the dishes.

Finally, the most important agreement: I get to choose what country we go to next. I just need to figure out where that will be. Which involves, of course, Wendell.

A few days later, at six a.m., Jeff and Layla and I are standing in a drizzle in our courtyard. He’s stopped by on his way to the airport, left his SUV, engine running, on the street. He’s particularly handsome in the rain, his skin damp, his eyes the same iron gray as the sky, looking wistful. I feel a little stab of regret that we’ll probably never see him again.

He launches into a speech. “Thank you for everything, ladies. You’re looking at a different man from the one you met on the plane.” He even sounds like a Handsome
Magazine Dad, sturdy and sentimental. “I’ve got it all planned out, thanks to you. I’ll take Spanish night classes. I’ll go on a weeklong trip to a different country every year. And I’ll always order the daily special.”

“But will you eat it?” I ask.

“At least a bite.” He grins. “Even if it’s snake or iguana.”

I look away as Layla gives him a long kiss goodbye and whispers in his ear.

Before he climbs into the SUV, I give him a copy of Rumi.

Inside the apartment, Layla and I watch a few minutes of golf with the volume turned down so we can hear the rain on the roof. We list a few things we like about Jeff, sort of a memorial service to their failed relationship. Layla tears up a little as we stick the TV back in its box. Later that morning, we’ll sell it at a pawnshop and put the money in our brand-new money market account.

A week later, I come home from the market to find Wendell and Layla drinking foamy papaya juice on the sofa. They look excited. Before I can ask what’s going on, Layla leaps up and announces, “Wendell has a surprise for you, Z!”

She runs behind me and covers my eyes with her hands. They’re warm and sticky and smell like papaya, like a little kid’s hands.

“Uh, Wendell,” I say, “care to enlighten me?”

“You’ll see,” he says.

Layla leads me to my bedroom, sits me down on my mattress, and removes her hands. “Open your eyes, love!”

I open my eyes. My room feels different. It’s no longer empty. And in a split second, I figure out why. Nine prints hang on the previously bare wall. They’re photos, Wendell’s photos, some color, some black and white, some sepia, and they fill the wall, floor to ceiling.

The center photo is of steaming bread in a shaft of sunlight. Then there’s the crystal cave in warm candlelight. The mountain Imbabura, towering and shrouded in mist. A close-up of watercress by a trickling stream. Wendell on the floor with drying watercolors surrounding his face (I took that one). Me in the café, the first day we met, when he talked about the light hitting my hair (and yes, you can actually see red highlights). Gaby sitting like a queen at her booth, among scarves and clothes of all colors. The waterfall at sunrise, all silver spray. A portrait of Mamita Luz and Taita Silvio and the girls, standing proudly in front of their house, smoke rising from the chimney like a child’s drawing of a happy home.

Wendell sits next to me on the mattress. “Like it?”

I’m speechless for a moment.
“Que pleno,”
I say finally. “I love it, Wendell.”

“Good!” Layla says. “Now I’m off to my class. Late as usual.” She kisses me on the forehead and breezes away.

I stand up and look at the pictures closely, noticing the shapes, the color contrasts, the composition of light and dark. “Wendell, remember in the cave, when I asked if you saw us together in the future?”

He stands behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. “I didn’t get a chance to answer.”

“Well, what is it you see?” Asking this scares me. What if he doesn’t see us? Or sees us far away from each other? Sees us lonely? Or sees us with other people?

He presses his face into my hair. “We’re together. In a place with amazing light conditions. And lots of fountains.”

I
’m sitting in the shade of a
floripondio
tree in Faustino’s garden, jotting down impressions on the last page of my indigo notebook, glancing up once in a while to watch leaf shadows shift on Wendell’s face. It’s the day before he has to leave, and we’re having a farewell picnic. We’ve just eaten avocado-and-cheese sandwiches and watermelon slices and caramel-filled pastries. I’m full and content, tingling with the thrill of filling another notebook, relishing the breeze moving over my skin.

A few feet away, Giovanni is perched on a boulder, blowing up a pink balloon, his curls dancing wildly around his face. He’s teaching the girls and Mamita Luz and Taita Silvio and Gaby how to make balloon pigs. Layla—who’s already mastered balloon-creation from a previous clown
boyfriend—is wandering around the garden, watercoloring petals and bugs and stones.

I close my notebook and slip my hand into Wendell’s. He’s spent the past month living with Mamita Luz and Taita Silvio, learning about healing and divining. Every day, I stop by their place, and Wendell and I walk to Faustino’s house with the girls to feed the donkey and chickens and dogs. Sometimes we hang out in this garden, sometimes in the crystal chamber, which mesmerizes the girls. Their father is making some progress with his treatment, and their mother comes by to visit when she can.

I glance at the impromptu balloon-animal-making class. Gaby is forming the balloon pig’s snout, with Giovanni’s guidance. She twists with so much vigor, the balloon pops. She jumps and, in English, shrieks, “Holy cow!” which sends the girls into giggle fits. Her English is getting better by the day, and I’ve been making enough money from our tutoring sessions with the other vendors to put some into savings.