The Other Side of Blue (18 page)

“Tell me.” And I push my breast hard into Mayur's soft mouth. He sucks softly, and my body wants more.

He draws back. “I like that.” He runs his hand over my wet breast, brushing it lightly, teasing.

“That is the mystery,” he says. “It's not a note from your father or your mother.”

I hear the others coming back. Mayur reaches over and pulls my bra down over my breast, as if I'm incapable of covering myself.

I can't even speak. I don't know what to think. The note was in the book Dad had been reading. Then why didn't Dr. Bindas turn it over to the police? Nothing makes sense.

“Why didn't your father give it to the commissioner?”

“He didn't know about the note. I found it.”

I imagine Mayur thumbing through Dad's book. Touching the pages with his guilty boy fingers. Finding a note creased inside. Hiding it. Keeping it secret.

“A note. So what? Maybe it wasn't anything. Maybe it was just a receipt from a bookstore.” I feel my voice going higher. I don't want Mayur to think the note is important.

“Part of it was written in Italian,” Mayur says.

“Dad taught Italian. He was an Italian
professor.
” It was a letter from a student or from the university in Rome where he researched.

“It was a love letter. From a woman.”

“What did it say?”

“It's a quote from some artist. Chagall. Something about there's only one color in life, the color of love. Then the rest is ‘I love you' in Italian. Over and over.”

Mayur backs off now that he's delivered his news, as if he's embarrassed to talk about words of love, even in a dark cave where we can't see each other's eyes.

“Hey, what's going on?” Saco shines his light on us.

Roberto chuckles. “Oh, ho, Mayur, I didn't know.”

“Who?” My voice sounds raspy. “What's her name?”

Mayur seems to not hear them. He speaks only to me.

“Pippa,” he says.

Pippa.

Suddenly, I am very cold. Behind my closed eyes, I see stars again. I can't breathe.

“Give it to me.” Mayur's lying. He doesn't have a note.

Mayur turns on his flashlight. The beam jiggles as he pulls a piece of paper from his front pocket. He unfolds it. I can't read it in the semidark, but when the light shines over the signature at the bottom, I can see it's real. I can see the way Pippa's “p's” intertwine and loop back around her name. Mayur couldn't fake that signature, couldn't even know it.

I snatch the note from his hand. The thin paper tears in my fingers.

Kammi touches my arm. “Cyan, are you okay?”

“Let go of me.” I yank away from Kammi, her hand on my arm reminding me of Mayur. I squeeze the note in my hand. “Don't touch me. Leave me alone.”

I spring to my feet and run back toward the entrance, which glows like the moon across open water. I just keep running toward it. I don't even turn my flashlight back on.

“Stop!”

“Watch it!”

Voices shout behind me like bad spirits. Slaves used these caves for voodoo ceremonies, I read that somewhere. Or maybe Martia told me. She said she wouldn't go in caves. She's superstitious.

It's my fault. I came here. I feel the dampness where Mayur's mouth touched my skin, and I feel sick.

The ground goes out from under me. The moon disappears, and I feel myself falling. My shoulder slams against
rock. The flashlight flies from my hand. I don't know up from down. Something rough scrapes my head, and I lose my left flip-flop. The backpack I'm wearing slams against a hard surface. Then the back of my head hits the ground.

I
'M LYING FLAT
and I don't feel anything. Except for my head. It hurts.

I wake up again. Or maybe it's for the first time. My head is hot, but everything else feels cold. I lie there, breathing. I'm no longer falling. The world spins the way it does after a ride at a fair.

When I open my eyes again, I blink to make sure they're open. The darkness is the same as when my eyes are closed.

The silence presses against my chest, reminding me of Mayur, of his body against me. I try to move a little. A toe, an ankle, the other leg. My shoulder twinges. I'm lying on my backpack, and it digs into my muscles. I roll over a little and then gag from the nausea. I slip the backpack off and lie down again.

I don't know how long I've been here. Or how far I fell. Or where the others are. Did they leave me?

I imagine Mayur somewhere nearby, telling his cousins how I let him touch me. How he held my breast in exchange for a secret. Maybe Roberto teases him, saying he didn't get enough for his secret. Maybe they're laughing. Maybe not Saco.

“Hello?” My voice comes out, but it sounds like a whisper even to my own ears.

No answer. I run my hands beside me, trying to find the flashlight.

The note, too, is gone. Knocked from my hand.

I have to find the flashlight. Then I can find the note. Above, I can see only a faint patch that's less black than everywhere else. That must be the way out. I can't tell how high it is, though, or how far away.

Feeling the ground for the flashlight, I take off my right flip-flop. The other one I lost when I fell. The sports sandals are in my backpack. I can use them when I get out. On all fours, I inch my way closer to where I can see the faint spot.

“Hello!” This time, I shout toward the spot.

From far away, I hear a faint hello. They didn't leave, I think. Then I realize it's just an echo. The hello is my own voice coming back at me.

My head still hurts, so I lie back and rest. I feel better knowing I can open my eyes and see the way out, even if I can't yet reach it. I think about what Mayur told me.

Pippa is Philippa's nickname. She and Dad spoke Italian when she came to paint. Mother didn't know then that Philippa liked Dad, did she? When she practically lived with us?

“Philippa was willing to sacrifice almost anything for her art,” Mother said to Kammi at Café Azul. It wasn't true, though. She sacrificed her art for something forbidden. She was my mother's best student. Did Dad love her back?

All this time I thought Mother was wrong, that she'd been having the affair.
Affair.

I feel like I'm going to throw up. I gag, but I move my head. I ease my way along the cave floor, making sure there's not another hole I can fall through, until I feel a wall. I drag my backpack with my other hand. Inside, I still have the water bottle and some snacks. The pastries are probably crushed, but they'll taste just as good if I feel hungry again. I can't tell what time it is. I sit upright, wobbly, my legs shaking.

I feel so stupid. How did Philippa and Dad get together? Did Dad hate himself but Philippa's soft touch made him warm and he couldn't stay away? Who acted first? Did Dad see her painting in the sunlight, and he touched her hair and then he couldn't forget? I think of Mayur's hand in the darkness. I retch.

From very far away, I hear voices. This time, I know they aren't just echoes of my own voice. Above me, flashlight beams dart like searchlights.

“Cyan?” It's Kammi's voice. I hear the fear in it. She thinks I'm dead.

“Cyan?” Saco's voice penetrates the darkness.

“I'm here,” I say. “Here!” I say it louder. The sound echoes in my brain when I talk that loud.

“I hear her. I hear her!” Kammi is shouting. Even from down here, however far I slid and fell, I can hear her relief.

“Are you hurt?” Saco asks.

“Not bad,” I yell.

The light reaches me. I blink.

“You fell in the hole,” Saco says. “We thought you'd run outside.”

I remember now. I wasn't looking. The only thing that mattered was getting out of the cave.

“How long?” I have no idea.

“Thirty minutes, at most. We can't see you. Can you stand up?”

“Yes.” I move. At first, my muscles don't do what I want them to. My leg muscles shake, my arms, too. I wait for the dizziness to pass, then stand.

It's then that I start to shiver.

“I lost the flashlight,” I say. If they go away, I'll be in the dark completely. “Don't leave me here.”

“We won't leave you,” Kammi says. She speaks to someone else, but I hear her. “Where's your rope? Give her a flashlight. We can lower it down.”

“Not my flashlight,” says Mayur.

“Give it to her,” Roberto says. “We'll share mine. We've got to figure out how to get her out of there.”

I hear Saco again. “Cyan, the light, it's coming. Can you see it?”

I sit there looking up, the darkness spinning. I see the aluminum tube jerking down through the hole at an angle. I can see now that the cave wall slopes some; that's why I didn't fall straight down. Why I didn't break my neck.

“Yes.”

“Okay, once you get it, take a look around. See if there's a way out from there.”

With shaking hands, I untie the flashlight and turn it on. Now that there is a glimmer of light, I can breathe. I shine the light in a circle around me. There's a dark opening along one wall, but it looks black as pitch, blacker than the rest of the cave. Probably the hole goes farther down; maybe that's where the water seeps through to the rocks below.

“No, I don't see anything.” I hear my voice rise again.

“Okay, it's okay,” Kammi says.

The voices talk above me.

“We have a plan,” Saco says after a minute. “We're sending the rope down again. This time, tie it around you, under your arms. Knot it twice. We're going to pull you back up.”

I don't say anything.

“Cyan, are you there?” Kammi yells.

“I'm here.” They want me to let them pull me back up through the hole I fell through once already. What if they drop me? What if the rope breaks? I rest my hand against the wall. I try not to think. I have to get out of the cave. There is only this one way.

“It's a real climbing rope. Very strong,” Mayur says. I hear the pride in his voice. His bragging voice again.

The rope slithers toward me. I take off my backpack, loop the rope twice around my chest, and then knot it three times. I slide the pack onto my left shoulder, the one that's less sore, and stare up through the hole.

“Ready?” Saco asks.

“Wait.” I shine the light around me, looking for the note. The evidence. I can't find it. I swing the light in wider circles.

“What are you doing?”

I don't answer. The white paper should glow in the light. Maybe it fluttered into the deeper hole. I can't see it.

“Cyan?” Kammi asks.

“I'm ready,” I say. I hold the flashlight against my chest. The note is gone. Whatever happens, though, I won't let go of the flashlight.

“We see you. Check the knot.”

I jerk it hard. It holds fast. “It's good.”

“Okay, we're going to start. Slowly.”

I feel the rope tighten around my chest. What if I can't breathe? What if it slips over my arms and I fall again? My stomach heaves.

“Are you okay?”

“Don't drop me.”

“We won't. Hold the rope above the knot.” Saco's voice is steady.

I grasp it with both hands, twisting it. “Wait.” The rope stops. I stash the flashlight in the backpack. I'm too afraid of dropping it.

“Okay.”

The rope tightens, and I'm moving. I almost can't breathe. I bump against the sloping wall, and the rope burns against my skin. Finally, my back rests solidly against the cave wall, and I'm being dragged up through the slanted tunnel.

The rope slips, and I let go to dig my fingernails into the sides of the tunnel. “Don't drop me.”

“It's okay,” Saco says. “The rope gave a little. No harm. We've got you. We can almost reach you. Hold out your hand.”

I raise one arm above me into nothingness. The rope tugs me a few more inches.

Hands grip my arm, hard. I don't mind. They pull me the rest of the way out of the hole. They leave me lying there, gasping like a fish out of water. Is this how Dad felt, trapped in the netting under the blue boat? Could he see the sky above the water but not reach it because of the weights holding the net down? He clawed with his fingernails against the wooden boat, but that didn't save him. The police report mentioned blue paint chips under his nails. He must have
tried to save himself. He didn't want to die. He died so close to the surface, so close to the light, yet he couldn't breathe.

I feel myself start to cry.

He came to Curaçao last summer for a reason. Even with the note in the book he was reading, he asked Mother to go out in the boat with him. He brought champagne. You don't offer champagne to ask someone for a divorce. No one would do that. Dad wouldn't do that. He came to make up, to put the past behind them. He didn't leave Mother or me on purpose.

“You're okay,” Kammi says. “Everything's okay.”

Mother refused to go with him. Does that mean she wanted a divorce? Had she known all along? Kammi's parents are divorced, but there are worse things. There are worse secrets.

“Can you get up?” Mayur asks. Now his boy voice sounds worried. Maybe Dr. Bindas has already called the police. Maybe Mayur's worried I'll tell his father about how he touched me. I won't, though. I wanted him to tell me. I wanted him to touch me.

“Yes.” My voice comes from somewhere.

“Let me help you,” Loco says. He and Roberto both help me up, and they untie the rope. My muscles are starting to ache. My head buzzes. But I'm going to be okay.

Outside the cave, I blink in the harsh light, unable at first to focus. I inhale deep, long breaths. Glad to be alive.

Kammi speaks first. “You look awful!” Then she clamps
her hand over her mouth. They don't teach that in Atlanta, to be so frank.

I touch my head. There's a small bump.