The Other Side of Blue (4 page)

Mother and Kammi both say no at the same time.

Kammi pierces her salad with her fork. “He says he can't prove God exists.” She speaks as if she's not sure he's right, but she's still young enough to believe fathers are infallible and will live forever.

Martia hovers by the dining table. She pats Kammi's thin wrist. “
Kome, kome,
” she says. “Eat, eat.” After she circles us, and sees that our plates are full, she retreats. I hear the soft crackle of the radio turning on in the kitchen.

“The Bindases have invited you over for a swim tomorrow.” Mother addresses Kammi. “They have a son”—she squints at Kammi—“about your age, I think.”

“I told her all about Mayur,” I say. I didn't, of course. Only his name and age. But Mother doesn't know what I said or didn't say.

“I'm sure Kammi will give Mayur a chance.” Mother turns to her. “He's a nice-enough boy. From a privileged immigrant family. So his expectations are high.”

“She means he's slumming,” I say.

Mother glares at me. “He's lonely.”

“With all those cousins who come from Trinidad?”

“But they don't live here.”

“Neither do we.”

“His parents like him to meet new people. It was very nice for him to call this year. Particularly when you were so rude.” Mother leaves out why I was rude. “I'm sure he'll like Kammi.” Because Kammi is nice and I am not, that's what she means.

I don't bother to warn Kammi that Mayur is a smirky rich kid who set the rules for the pool when his parents aren't around. The first time I was invited over, he said that I had to take a shower—with soap—or I couldn't swim in his pool.
His
pool, he called it. The houseboy delivered fresh towels folded in squares, just like at a hotel. They smelled like lemons and bleach.

“The pool's nice,” I concede to Kammi. “The way it seems to be part of the sea, but isn't. It's safer.”

I won't let Mother have the last word.

A
FEW MINUTES
before three the next afternoon, I tap on Kammi's door. It snaps open as if she's been waiting just on the other side since lunch. Dressed for a pool party, she's braided her brown hair and pinned it up at the back. A pareo is tied just so at her right hip, where the barest pink bikini bottom peeks through; the bikini top is held by what looks like ribbons over her shoulders. Somehow she managed to pack in her suitcase a straw tote with a pink gingham lining that matches her suit. Her whole look is so fragile, I have to turn away.

I say, “Hope you brought enough sunscreen.” I sound like my mother. When she addresses me it's not in direct questions like “Did you bring concealer?” or orders like “Don't eat that.” Instead, she says “Ice cream has X grams of fat” when I'm not even close to the refrigerator, or “Black is slimming” when I'm reading a book in the bay window on a winter night in Maine. Funny, she doesn't say that about my black beaded headscarf, the one I started wearing after Dad died and I signed up for Arabic. Mother hates that scarf. But I liked wearing it sometimes last year, covering myself like my Arabic teacher. After a while, the principal said no one could cover their hair at school unless they had a written note from a parent saying their religion required such a covering. Even then, he wasn't happy about it. He was afraid someone would smuggle a weapon into the school under a scarf. As if it wouldn't be easy enough to do that anyway if someone wanted to.

Outside, I feel my bathing suit sticking to my skin underneath the same skirt and T-shirt I've been wearing all day. If I go in the pool, I'll take the skirt off and leave on the tee. It skims the top of my thighs and helps cover my chest better than the swimsuit. As long as I don't get wet, the tee hides the fat.

Will Mayur notice I've gotten fat? Heavier up top like the boys in my class started to notice this year, and I hated the way they made fun. Zoe told me to ignore them, but it was easier for her. She's petite like Kammi.

We're away from the house before Kammi says anything.

“Do you really dislike...” Kammi starts to ask. I think she's going to ask me why I don't like my mother. “Why don't you like Mayur?”

She doesn't ask about Mother. That's a subject she's probably not ready to talk about.

“He's a jerk,” I say. “But his parents are nice. The pool, too, like I said.” It's also away from my mother. And even if I don't like him, I have a reason to see Mayur again.

At the next turn in the road, I lead us along a shell path that winds down a hill toward a secluded bay shaped like a thin lip of moon. When we reach a steep turn, Kammi's leather-bottomed shoes slip.

She skids, catching herself before she lands on her butt.

“Flip-flops or sneakers. Don't you have some?” I look at her and then turn away. I'm more direct than Mother after all.

“Running shoes, I have those,” she says, pushing herself up.

I start walking. “Next time, wear them. Something with grip.”

She doesn't answer, but she starts to place her feet more carefully as we walk. She won't slip again.

The path widens to a shell driveway, and suddenly a lawn spreads out in front of us. It is lined by rocks and irrigated green. The Bindases aren't into native flora, like the Dutch owner of our house. He asks the gardener to plant only indigenous plants, the hearty ones that don't need extra watering from the cistern. Martia says he is “respectful” of Curaçao. Whenever Mother mentions the lovely calla lilies in the Bindases' yard, Martia doesn't say anything about the neighbors. She hides her opinions behind her apron.

In the Bindases' yard, the gardeners are working, digging up piping, moving whole rows of lilies still in bloom. The blossoms have wilted, collapsed into the texture of wet paper. Only the birds of paradise remain stubbornly upright.

Mrs. Bindas waves from the deck along the pool. She's dressed in flowing yellow palazzo pants—an unsuccessful attempt by overweight women to hide their thighs, my mother would say. I say Mrs. Bindas isn't heavy. The billowy pants make her look even thinner, slender and light as a swallowtail butterfly. She calls into the shadows of the house. “Mayur, come, please. Your guests are here.”

By the time Kammi and I reach the deck, Mayur is stalking out of the house.

I introduce Kammi to Mrs. Bindas. Kammi shakes her hand like a grown-up.

“I'm very glad you're staying next door this month. So nice for Cyan and her mother to have some company.” She pauses, maybe thinking how Kammi might help us forget last year. Of course, she doesn't say any more about that. “And for Mayur, too. He craves having other children of his—you know—age. Before his cousins come, he gets—how do you say? Bored?”

When Mayur saunters forward, Kammi even holds out her hand to him, but he just says hi to her over his shoulder and heads to the pool. He doesn't even look at me. Short, with dark eyes that might look cute on anyone else, he snaps on goggles and flings himself into the pool, splashing water our way.

Mrs. Bindas titters like a bananaquit. “Oh, Mayur, he is
showing off. Just a little for his guests.” She looks at Mayur's back as he paddles across the pool, and I see a frown furrow her brow. “I'll send out some refreshments.”

I give Kammi a look. Mayur showing off—as if that's something new.

Kammi shrugs and scoots a lounge chair into the shade. She slips her sunglasses on, steps out of her shoes, and settles them under the chair, toes pointing away from the pool, heels touching. So perfectly placed. Balanced. Just the way Mother would do it. For a second, I wonder if Kammi is really the daughter and I am the stepdaughter-to-be. Is that what Mother wants?

I toss my flip-flops. One lands upside down in the puddle created by Mayur's dive.

Kammi retrieves a horse club mystery from her beach bag.

“Aren't you too old for those?” I ask.

She looks a little embarrassed. “My grandmother sent them to me for the trip. I have to tell her I've read them. I don't want to hurt her feelings.”

I laugh. “Why don't you just memorize the blurb on the back, in case she asks?”

“They're not that bad.”

“If you don't mind the dumb dialogue and the stupid endings, and how everyone always learns something about themselves. I hate books like that.” Because life isn't like that. Sometimes, people disappear and there aren't any lessons to be learned. Only questions left unanswered.

“I just can't lie,” she says. She acts as if I've asked her to lie about something important.

“Suit yourself.” Closing my eyes, I settle back in the lounge chair, ignoring Mayur as he does the butterfly down the length of the pool. Leave it to him to choose the splashiest swim stroke. The one that says “Look at me.”

A few minutes later, water droplets land on my ankles.

“Stop that, Mayur.” I know it's him before I open my eyes.

“It's my pool,” he says, splashing from the middle of the pool.

“They're my legs.”

“My chair.”

“They're still my legs.” I can't believe I'm saying this.

Beside me, Kammi dog-ears the page she's reading. She closes the paperback and tosses it on top of her beach bag.

She actually asks Mayur a question. “Are you on a swim team?”

He stops splashing. He can't help himself. Someone's interested in him. He swims to the edge of the pool and plants his head on his folded arms while the rest of him floats in the water. His mouth reaches just out of the water. His goggles add to the idea that he could be a space alien or something.

“The school doesn't have one. I'm on a club team, though.”

I drape my arm across my forehead.
A club team.
I'm surprised he didn't say it was
his
team.

“I'm joining our club team next year, too,” she tells him.

Kammi can play his game, but she's nice when she does it. I grin to myself.

“How big's your school?” he asks.

“Two hundred students. How about yours?”

Mayur pushes himself back into the water, lets his head go under. Obviously his school has fewer than two hundred students.

I laugh out loud this time. I don't think Mayur hears a thing, with his ears full of water. But Kammi does. She smiles, seeming to know she's bested Mayur at his own game. Whether the smile is supposed to include me, I don't know.

Mayur retreats to the farthest corner of the pool.

Kammi takes her sunglasses off and places them on the wrought-iron table. She unknots the pareo and slides into the water in one smooth motion.

Using a graceful breaststroke, Kammi swims the length of the pool and back. Her moves make barely any splash. I watch Mayur watching her. I can't tell what he's thinking.

Almost without slowing down, Kammi slips out of the water like a seal. As she's drying off, Mrs. Bindas returns to the pool area.

Behind her, the houseboy is carrying a platter with a huge bowl piled high with something frozen, yellow and white with slivers of shaved coconut scattered on top. He nearly trips when he sees Kammi stretched out on the deck chair, damp, like a model spritzed with water on the cover
of a fitness magazine, her hair still braided. She doesn't even notice. She's sitting up, adjusting the pareo, then her shoulder strap, barely breathing hard from the swim.

“Gelato,” Mrs. Bindas says. “Piña colada flavor. No alcohol, of course.” She titters again, in that high-pitched way, as if she is making another joke, and waves us over to the large wrought-iron glass-topped table in the shade.

The houseboy spoons gelato into bowls and passes the first to Kammi, of course. Her pink skin glows just the way the makeup ads promise.

“Mine—” Mayur starts to say as the houseboy finishes filling a second bowl, but his mother interrupts him.

“Guests always go first,” Mrs. Bindas says.

Mayur pouts, but he's smart enough not to say anything that will embarrass him in front of his company. Even if he doesn't treat us special unless his mother is around.

I am given the second bowl, though the houseboy barely glances at me as he slides it across the glass table in my direction. Last year, I was the only guest, served first. The house-boy scoops out a double amount for Mayur, who snatches it away almost before the serving spoon clears the edge of the bowl. He plops himself into the chair farthest from the table and slurps his ice cream. Either Mrs. Bindas doesn't hear him or she doesn't care.

“It's delicious. Thank you.” Kammi is polite, so predictable. I wonder if she ever surprises herself.

“Thank you.” I don't trust myself to say more. Mrs. Bindas hasn't yet referred to last summer.

Mrs. Bindas folds her hands together as if she might clap. She's pleased with her gift. And with the response from the American girls.

“The flowers are so beautiful here. What are those?” Kammi says, pointing to an area on the other side of the pool, undisturbed by the gardeners.

“Birds of paradise, you call them in English. Mrs. Walters, she told me that one year. She sat here in this very garden and drew so many of our plants. That's bougainvillea over the wall.”

Mrs. Bindas is gracious when talking about my mother. If she remembers the last time I was here, a year ago, when Mayur landed in the pool in his dress shoes and suit, she doesn't act like it. Mother made me come with her to thank Dr. Bindas in person for his assistance. The Bindases had just come from a family wedding. “My cousin, he knew about your father,” Mayur said to me. “What happened with the boat.” I heard the sea in my ears, felt waves crashing over me. I couldn't breathe.

Mayur told me his cousin knew something about what happened with the boat. “How calm the sea was that day, how flat,” he said. The police found a bottle of champagne, unopened, set in water in an ice bucket. When the police lifted the bottle from the bucket, the wrinkled label peeled
off. Almost like skin off a bone. Mayur said there was more, a mystery. “Who takes champagne on a boat alone?” he asked. “Maybe there were two dead bodies from the boat. Maybe there's still a dead body out there. I know something, too.” That's when I pushed Mayur, and he flailed backwards into the pool.