The Other Side of Blue (8 page)

I can't be bought for a cold drink.

But I take it.

When the mob of cruise tourists pass, I lead us down a quiet side street. Colores. The shell and bead shop is still there. I feel the bulge of sea glass in my skirt pocket. I keep no valuables in the crocheted purse that hangs across my body, over my left shoulder. It dangles there, the button closure open, tempting pickpockets. It holds some small coins, a bandana, a map from the cruise ship that someone dropped and I scavenged.

A bell over the door tinkles as we enter Colores, barely noticeable above the clatter of the air conditioning. Kammi stands just inside the doorway, taking in the wooden bowls of beads covering every empty space. I felt the same way the first time I came here. It is too much—the colors, the textures, the promise.

At the first table, Kammi runs her fingers through blue glass beads.

“Like your sea glass,” she says. She picks out an assortment of blue beads and bundles them into a small white envelope. Then she heads for the silver beads at a table across the room. She can see possibilities.

I turn away and hang out near the front counter, waiting for the owner to appear. Kammi's seen the sea glass in my room. Does she know I gather it every morning, early? The
sea is my field. It decides whether to give up its treasures, whether to cast onto the beach shards of glass, worn smooth, for me to glean. I only keep the best blues.

“Do you have crimps, pliers?” Kammi asks. She's moved on to the shelves of tools and wire.

“Yes,” I say from across the room. I pretend to look at beading magazines by the checkout. I don't want her to see my sale. Mother doesn't know about the sea glass. I didn't even pack pliers. But I left an old, cheap set of tools that Martia knows about in the storage area under the deck. Some silver wire, too, in a velvet pouch. It's probably all tarnished now, since it's been a year.

“Beading thread?”

I nod. A spool should be there. I look over leaflets for beading classes being held here on the days the cruise ships dock in port. For tourists again. The door opens, and three cruise-ship tourists—I can tell from their shoulder totes labeled with the ship's name—waddle in, out of the heat.

Kammi wanders down another aisle of wooden dishes teasing her with beads—glass, coral, wood, even plastic, like the beads they throw to tourists in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

The owner, Antje, appears from the back room, her thighs swishing together under a wide-banded skirt. She's come out because of the tourists, who laugh and joke with each other about who makes the best necklaces back home in New Jersey. When Antje sees me, she motions with her
hand, pats the barest space of counter, as though I haven't been gone a year.

From the pocket in my skirt, I take out a plastic bag of small bits of sea glass, spilling them onto the wooden counter. Antje squints and runs her hands over each piece, as if she can tell by touch whether they're fake, whether they're from this island. Or if they're tumbled by machine rather than by the ocean. The artist who buys them from her wants only local glass—she says it evokes the mystery of the island. It costs more, too, the shop owner knows. In exchange for the glass, Antje counts out small bills and square coins for me. She slips them into a white paper envelope as if they're beads I'm purchasing. In case the taxman comes snooping, she says.

I look over my shoulder. Kammi is distracted by the boxes of Venetian glass beads, these and the tourists exclaiming all around her about the spiraling blown glass. She doesn't even notice my transaction.

My secret is safe.

K
AMMI AND I
leave Antje cajoling the tourists, trying to sell them Chinese beads at European prices. Outside, I breathe in the heat and blink at the brightness.

“Let's go this way,” I say, pointing away from the shopping district.

“Okay,” Kammi agrees, following me. Not questioning.

I've been thinking about the commissioner's letter, how the report is final and sealed away forever. To me, though, it's like a scab, healed over only on the outside. Underneath the wound is still raw, with too many questions left unanswered.

Maybe the commissioner knows Mayur's cousin. Maybe I can find him here. I can confront him myself to see what he knows. Then I won't have to give Mayur the satisfaction of holding something over me until I beg him to tell me.

I lead us to the shell-white building with the flag out front.

“Let's go in,” I say.

“What's this?”

“It's where the commissioner's office is.”

“What are we going to do here?” Kammi gives me a frown.

“I just have a question.”

Kammi doesn't move forward when I begin to climb the steps.

“I don't think I'll go in,” she says.

“Okay. Just wait here. I don't want to have to tell Mother I lost you.” I don't wait to see what she does.

At the top I push through the door. A guard stands at the entrance. He leans against the counter with the hip that doesn't have a sidearm buckled to it. A fan in the corner turns, washing cool air over me as it moves back and forth. The movement of air riffles papers on the counter.

“Office is now closed.”

I should have thought of that. Some things close here in the heat of the day. Only shops that cater to tourists are busy now. Everyone else goes in search of shade and a quiet place until later in the afternoon.

“It's important. I need to see Mr. Botha. The commissioner?” I stand up tall, trying to look important, imperious, the way Mother would if she wanted something here. This guard won't ask me questions if I act like my mother.

He frowns. “Mr. Botha is not here. The commissioner is Mr. Pieter Drak now. Mr. Botha, he is gone. Retired. Sorry.” The guard's lips turn down, as if he really is sad that he can't make the commissioner—the old commissioner—appear. “Perhaps Mr. Drak, he can help you. Later?”

I shake my head. A new commissioner wouldn't know.

How could Mr. Botha retire? He has an unsolved case. In the United States, the police don't give up. They keep cold cases going for years. I hear about them all the time, the unsolved cases closed with the discovery of only a small bit of evidence. Maybe something as small as a chip of blue paint.

The guard hands me a card. “Here, here is the number. If you change your mind.” I pocket Mr. Drak's card.

“How about Dr. Bindas? Do you know him?” If the guard knows Dr. Bindas, then he might know the cousin who works in the government.

Again, he shakes his head. “No.”

Disappointed, I find Kammi outside on the stairs in the shade thrown by the building across the street. She's sitting with her back to me.

I plop down beside her.

“Did you find out something?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

“What were you going to ask? Is it about the letter your mother got?”

“Yes,” I say. “It's about my father.”

Kammi opens her mouth and then closes it again, as if she's
thought better of asking a question she might not want to know the answer to. Dad wasn't part of the reason she came here. After all, Dad is gone. Her father is moving into the picture.

I squint at the clock tower across the street. “Come on. Jinco will be here soon.”

Near the cruise-ship dock, we buy cold drinks and sit on a bench underneath a tree. I watch a pair of lizards chase each other along the wall. Sunburned tourists, laden with shopping bags, head back to the ship like lemmings.

When Jinco shows up, he makes a big show, driving a huge circle around us and doubling back, crossing in front of three small cars, all missing something: a bumper, a radio antenna, a side mirror. Men drinking at the café bar wave noisily, yipping their appreciation. At his driving, or at Kammi. Or maybe both. She and I spill into the back seat. As he takes the curve again to more hoots of pleasure, we slosh into each other like waves.

Kammi leans over to me. “Is he drunk?”

I look at Jinco's eyes in the rearview mirror.

“No. He's just showing off.” At that, Jinco settles back into being Jinco the taxi driver for expats and tourists, the safe driver, one a mother would be comfortable leaving her daughter and daughter-to-be with for an afternoon.

“Why don't you drive us to Santa Catarina? To the ostrich farm? We have time.”

Jinco takes his foot of the gas. A minibus rattles past, nearly running a Jeep of the road coming the other way. Jinco ignores the traffic. “Go there now? Martia, she pay me for roundtrip to Willemstad. That's all she pay.”

I take bills from my pocket. “I'll pay extra.” I'm in no rush to go home, to see if Mother has recovered from her headache. Though I don't want to make Martia wait, we have time enough to drive by and feed the ostriches. In the early years that Dad came, he liked to take me to feed them. He watched the birds, their blinking eyes and long eyelashes. “Intelligent birds,” he said. “You can see it in their eyes.” Mother never came, claimed she was allergic to feathers. One year, Dad bought me a hollowed ostrich egg, the blue color just for me, he said. Some of the eggs were sold with painted designs on them, but I liked the plain ones. Holding them up to the light, I could see the pale inner wall, how the blue color bleeds through to the creamy underside.

Jinco nods curtly. He's made up his mind. He brakes, then yanks the wheel and heads back to the cutoff. He makes a hard right turn and we're off, speeding past a bus and a truck sagging with water bottles.

By the time we get there, Kammi has her face pressed to the window, watching the fields for ostriches. Jinco stops the car at the entrance.

“I wait here,” he says, motioning to a tree where a minibus is pulling away. The shady spots are so few in this area, he needs to stake out one for himself. Tour buses have lined up farther along the gate and driveway. He points at his car clock. “Thirty minutes. Then we go. My day, it is finish.”

Jinco is lying. He's waiting to go back into town and drive drunk late-afternoon tourists back to the cruise ship before it sets sail at dusk. He can charge extra. Martia says he makes good money on ship days. She had to pay him extra out of Mother's stash just to ensure he'd take us out today, at the last minute. I heard her negotiating with him.

“Come on.” Jinco knows I heard him. This is my game.

I make a show of paying for Kammi at the gate. It's the money Martia pressed into my hands as she sent us off this morning. But Kammi doesn't know that. Maybe she thinks I'm being nice.

The staff lets us feed a baby ostrich. Kammi stretches out her hand, and the bird's long neck curves over as it takes some pellets in its beak, carefully, as if it's been trained.

“Does your mother ever come here?” Kammi asks.

“My mother?”

“Yes, does she?”

“No. She doesn't. She doesn't like animals. Why do you care?”

Kammi pulls her hand back and pours more pellets into it from the plastic container. The ostrich stares at her hand, then pecks more food. Kammi holds her arm steady. She doesn't even blink when the ostrich's beak taps her palm. “I want her to like me.” She says it fiercely.

“Why? She's going to be your stepmother. Don't you believe all those tales about stepmothers?”

“No. Dad said—”

“Do you do everything he wants you to do?”

“No.”

“I bet you do.
Dad
wants you to paint with watercolors.
Dad
wants you to get along with my mother. Did he tell you to be nice to me, too?”

Kammi blushes. “He said I couldn't win you over. He said I shouldn't try.”

I laugh. “But you are trying.”

Kammi doesn't look at me, but the ostrich turns to me and blinks. I don't know if my dad was right about ostriches. This bird looks pretty stupid to me. It listens to my voice, cocks its head, as if trying to figure out what laughter is about. Then it pecks at Kammi's empty palm, searching for more. She snatches her hand away. If ostriches are so smart, like Dad said, it should go straight for the plastic bin where the pellets are stored and not look for handouts from strangers.

M
ARTIA OPENS
the door for us before Jinco has even driven away. She's been waiting, keeping dinner warm. Kammi goes straight to her room. I wait in the hallway as Martia tiptoes up the metal stairs to Mother's studio and knocks. The door opens, closes. I listen but I can't hear anything.

I'm the first to sit at the table. From here I can see the mail Martia has stacked on the sideboard. Facing me is a postcard. I reach over and pick it up. The scene is familiar. Ponte dei Sospiri. Bridge of Sighs, Venice. Only this isn't just a postcard. It's a print of a painting of the famous landmark at dusk. I can make out the shadow of a gondola going under the bridge, away from the artist. A grayish, ghostly couple sits in front of the gondolier, facing forward. The
postcard reminds me of another gondola—the small framed painting in Dad's drawer.

I turn the card over. The loopy handwriting addressing the card to Mother in care of the Dutch owner looks familiar. Philippa. Postmarked from Italy. I can't help reading it. She writes that she painted the scene and made it into postcards for souvenir shops. She's won a commission to paint all the major bridges of Venice. She writes that it's good luck for a couple to sail under the Bridge of Sighs.

Kammi wanders into the room, scoots her chair close to the table at the far end, and stares at her plate. She hasn't said anything to me since the ostrich farm. Maybe I hurt her feelings. I'm not sorry if I did.

Mother comes downstairs slowly, too, as if she still has a headache and the echo of her footsteps on the metal staircase sounds loud to her own ears.

“What's that?” she asks.

“A postcard. You'll never believe who it's from.”