The Jade Notebook (28 page)

“Why?” I ask, helping her with the chiles, hoping she doesn’t see my hands shaking. I try to sound casual, but an electric charge is surging through me. I’m grateful for the
agua de espanto
’s calming effect; without it, I might jump right out of my skin.

She lets out a long sigh. “It’s a long story.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I say with a hopeful grin.

Another sigh. “My oldest son was my joy. His music made me smile. He sang and played guitar so beautifully. But he was very … fragile. Not like most people. He would swing between extremes. He was excited about his latest plans one moment, but then he fell into this sadness, for no reason I could see. Oh, how this frustrated his father! And other people. They had trouble understanding him. He was the opposite of his younger brother. Now, that one has always been friendly and upbeat. But I always paid special attention to my eldest because he needed me.”

My father
, I think.
She’s talking about my father
.

She stirs the corn kernels into the vat of water, then stokes the fire beneath the enormous pot. “Keep an eye on
those chiles,
mija
,” she instructs. “Turn them once they’re about to burn.”

I nod, moving my gaze to the comal, my heart thumping. I try to absorb what she’s telling me. It sounds like my father’s bipolar wasn’t diagnosed until he left home. Of course it would have been confusing and upsetting for them.

“José was nineteen,” she begins. “One night, very late, we were woken up by the police chief banging on the door. He said that someone had taken my husband’s truck and filled its bed with turtle eggs and freshly butchered turtle meat. Then, when the cop pulled him over, he leapt from the driver’s seat and ran away, abandoning the truck. The police didn’t see the driver’s face, but they recognized the truck as my husband’s. Of course I vouched for my husband. He’d been sleeping next to me. The chief asked to speak with my sons. My younger one was asleep in his bed.” She pauses, rubbing her eyes with her wrist. “Don’t forget to turn the chiles,
mija
.”

I blink and look at the chiles, which are starting to burn. Quickly, I nudge and flip them over, one by one, with a wooden spoon.

Eyes watering, she continues. “But my oldest son wasn’t in bed. An hour later, with the police chief still there, José came into the house. He told us he’d been alone on a walk. But he was covered in sand and blood.”

The ground is shifting beneath me. This is the story Santy told me. My father’s story. Any lingering doubts disappear. Lupita’s son is my father. Which means Lupita really
is my grandmother. Without a doubt. She’s my grandmother! And this land I’m living on, this land I love so much, this land is my grandmother’s land.

She’s looking at me strangely now. All my feelings must be visible on my face. I swallow hard, force myself to act normally, try to recapture the soothing feeling of the
agua de espanto
. “Did you think José was telling the truth?”

“Of course not.” She stirs the corn kernels and pig’s head in the now-bubbling water.

“Oh.” I stare into the pig’s eye sockets, my heart sinking. Part of me has been clinging to the idea that he might be innocent. But if even his mother doesn’t believe him …

“He was with a girl,” she says, frowning, flipping a smoking chile.

“A girl? How do you know?”

“A mother senses these things. I smelled perfume on him.” She shakes her head with conviction. “There was no poaching that night. He was meeting a girl.”

I’m not sure what to make of this. Is it just the hopeful explanation of a devoted mother? “Couldn’t this girl provide an alibi?”

“He wouldn’t admit he was with anyone! I pleaded with him, but he wouldn’t change his story. He was protecting the girl.”

“Why?”

“Who knows? The police said there was enough evidence to book him. And my husband believed our son was guilty. Rogelio was furious. It was too much for poor José—the
gossip and dirty looks—and the worst of it from his own father.” She shakes her head sadly. “José left town before his trial. A foreign researcher from the Turtle Center helped him get a work visa for somewhere in Europe. She believed he’d been falsely accused. I kept thinking he’d come back, but …”

My voice comes out in a whisper. “Has he?”

She pulls a tissue from her apron pocket, blows her nose. “José told us he planned to leave before the trial. Rogelio was so angry, he told our son never to return. He warned that if he did, he’d bring him straight to jail himself. Oh, he’s so stubborn, even after so many years.”

“Are you the only one here who believes he’s innocent?”

“Probably,” she admits, her face scrunching into a frown. “People thought he was delusional, depressed, capable of anything. It’s not true. He loved the turtles more than anything. His nickname was El Tortuga!”

I flip a few more chiles, wondering if there’s any chance she’s right and my father is in fact innocent. “Then who did it?”

“Who knows.”

“But who would’ve had keys to the truck?” I ask softly.

She shrugs. “Anyone could have taken them. Even back then, Rogelio always fell asleep at his store, leaving his keys on a hook. And we never locked our gate. Friends and relatives and customers were always coming and going.”

Hoping she doesn’t find my curiosity suspicious, I ask, “Are you in touch with him?”

She makes a small sound. I can’t tell if it’s a yes or a no or
just a sigh. She’s lost in her thoughts, pushing coals around with a stick. “You know, years ago, I went to every girl in the community, trying to figure out who he’d been with that night. Begging them to tell the truth. But no luck.”

In France, my father did seem tenderhearted, kind, timid. I can’t imagine him being cruel, especially to the turtles he loved so much. But I’ve done plenty of online research on bipolar disorder. Delusions and erratic behavior fit the profile, especially in someone whose condition was untreated. I remind myself that when I met him, he was on meds and therapy. Who knows what he was capable of as a teen, struggling with an illness he had no name for?

Without talking, Lupita and I watch the water boil, the pig’s head half submerged in bubbles. It bobs, its eye sockets gaping, its mouth wide open. My father might be majorly flawed, I realize, even more flawed than I imagined.

But he was obviously loved, too. I open my notebook. “Doña Lupita, tell me about your son. The good things.”

“Oh, there are so many! Let’s see … he was the best tree climber you’ve ever seen—he’d scamper up and pick papayas, oranges, lemons. And he had the best slingshot aim—could hit a target a kilometer away! He loved Punta Cometa. He’d bring his guitar there and play at sunset. And let me tell you, the only thing more beautiful than that place at sunset is that place at sunset with my son playing his music. Heaven on earth. Oh, and he was always diving—he could hold his breath for ages. He’d dive deep and come up with little treasures for me—shells and sand dollars and starfish.” Lupita’s
face darkens. “But like I told you, he was … moody. He had big ideas and a lot of passion, but when it came time to see his ideas through, he’d feel overwhelmed. He wanted to start a rock band, tour around the world, but then he fell into such a terrible mood he just roamed the beach alone.” She holds her head up proudly. “But even in his dark times, José brought me little treasures from his walks.”

She disappears into the kitchen and comes back outside with a cloth-covered basket. Ceremoniously, she reveals the contents. It’s full of beautiful shells, red and purple and orange, some tiny, some huge. One by one, she picks them up, turns them over in her hands, places them in mine. “Look at all these!”

Little by little, as I run my fingers over the smooth shells, I start seeing my father through his mother’s eyes. Everyone should have someone who defends them when no one else will, sees them as forever innocent, the bestower of endless treasures. I try to see him this way, which isn’t too much of a stretch, since he’s given me little treasures—the Jimi T-shirt, the jar of sand, the bookmark.

Over more stories about my father, Lupita and I grind the chiles, add garlic and oil, then toss oregano and other herbs into the boiling corn kernel–pig’s head mixture. Finally, we eat our
pozole
, which is rich and delicious, sprinkled with cilantro and chopped onions, drizzled with spicy chile oil. When my bowl is empty, I ask, “How can you not be bitter about all this?”

“Oh, years ago, I was, but then I looked at the lives
around me. None turned out how people planned. I’d always thought El Tortuga would be an important turtle researcher here, live on the land by Punta Cometa, find a nice girl who understood him, get married.… I had his life planned out in my head. And then, after one terrible night, it was gone. Life takes its own path. And it’s never neat and predictable. The best I can do is trust that I can handle whatever life brings me.” She reaches out and touches my cheek. “And look what it’s brought me … you!”

I want so badly to tell her who I am. I hug her, and when I pull away, I whisper, “What’s your son’s full name?”

She wrinkles her eyebrows at my direct question. “José Carlos Cruz Castillos.”

I whisper those long-awaited words, repeating them under my breath, all the way home. And they stay inside me, a kind of undercurrent, throughout my excited dinner conversation with Layla and Wendell, and our bonfire circle, and even my dreams.

“¡Incendio!”
I’m deeply asleep when the word penetrates my brain. Shouts of
“¡Incendio!”
over and over. I struggle to wake up. Now there’s a banging. Someone pounding on my door? More yelling. “Fire! Fire!”

I push up onto my elbows, orienting myself, as an acrid smell fills my nose. I clamber out of bed, tangled in my mosquito net, and stagger to the door. The Brazilian couple is running down the path, shouting “Fire!” Behind them, smoke and flames are rising.

My heart’s racing. Is it one of the cabanas? Is anyone hurt?

As I move closer, squinting through the smoke, I see Wendell running toward me, his arm shielding his mouth.

Layla is heading my way with Joe on her tail. She’s coughing, gasping, “Zeeta!”

Relieved, I watch them, blinking my watering eyes. “Everyone okay?”

They give dazed nods. “What happened?” Layla asks, bewildered.

Joe puts his arm around her protectively. He looks strange without a wig—his messy, thinning black hair is exposed—and with his face bare of the rubber nose and fake eyebrows. He’s wearing loose sweatpants and an old undershirt, no rainbow suspenders in sight. He points toward the smoke. “It’s the supply shed.” He tilts his head, frowning. “Was there anything combustible in there?”

Layla shakes her head slowly. “Just tools and buckets and natural cleaning products.”

Rubbing his eyes, Wendell offers to call the fire department and heads for the phone.

This propels us into action. Layla jogs toward the kitchen hut, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll get the extinguisher.”

“Okay, and I’ll get the hose,” I shout, turning to run in the other direction.

“Wait, Zeeta!” Joe calls after me. “I smell gasoline. We shouldn’t use water. And we can’t get too close.”

I concentrate. Now I smell it too. Gasoline … that means someone set this fire. And the shed could explode any minute.

“I’ll take care of it,” he says, taking the extinguisher from Layla. “You two go back to the kitchen hut. Make sure the guests are safe.”

Joe heads toward the fire, stands as close as he dares. An
arc of chemicals spews from the extinguisher. It doesn’t put much of a dent in the blaze but at least seems to contain it.

As Layla and I head to the kitchen hut, Wendell rushes over. “The fire truck’s on the way,” he says, breathless. “It’s coming from nearest big town—Puerto Escondido.”

The guests are huddled at the dining tables, in shock, murmuring expressions of disbelief in their various languages. I note that Sven the Norwegian architect has gotten Horacio safely from his hut and is explaining what’s happening. I join the little group, and together, we watch the shed burn.

At some point, I realize tears are streaming down my face—whether from smoke or shock, I’m not sure. I lean on Wendell, pressing my face into his shoulder. The stench of burning wood has saturated our hair, every bit of skin and clothing.

A few minutes later, Joe runs toward us, coughing. His eyebrows are singed, his face blackened with soot. “Ran out of chemicals,” he gasps.

Layla fusses over him with cool washcloths, and I bring him a glass of ice water, regarding him with appreciation for the first time.

Soon sirens are shrieking in the distance, and red and blue lights flash through the trees. With the truck come four firefighters. They put out the fire fairly quickly with heavy-duty fire extinguishers, then inspect the site, digging through the smoking rubble. Eventually, all the firefighters leave except for the chief. Their truck is pulling away just as Gerardo arrives.

In the kitchen hut, over glasses of lemonade, the fire chief—a burly, middle-aged man named Alejandro—gives his assessment. “The blaze was fueled by gasoline,” he announces. “Just as you suspected. It was intentional. Arson.”