SIX
Four weeks after I arrive on Isabela, I get an early birthday present: a strange and unlikely dump of old emails into my inbox. I have no idea why some were coming through, yet not others—but there are several from Finn, and two from my mother's facility, updating me on her health (no significant change, which I figure is good news). There is also a note from Sotheby's, saying that I have been furloughed, along with two hundred other employees, because of a massive downturn in the art sales industry. I stare at this for a while, wondering if Kitomi wasn't the only one to delay her auction, and trying to rationalize that being furloughed is better than being fired. There's also an email from Rodney, telling me that Sotheby's can suck a dick, and that the only people who weren't furloughed were tech support, because they're pivoting to online sales. He never thought he'd have to return to his sister's house in New Orleans, but who can afford rent in the city on unemployment?
The last line of his email is Girl, if I were you, I'd stay in paradise as long as I could.
On my actual birthday a week later, I am invited to Gabriel's farm. It's twenty minutes by car into the highlands, and he comes to pick me and Abuela up in a rusty Jeep with no side doors. "You don't look a day over forty," he deadpans when he sees me, and when I shove at him he starts laughing. "Women are so sensitive about their age," he jokes.
As we drive, we see more galapagueños out and about than I have in weeks. At first, when the island closed down, I could walk the beach or hike into the highlands and not see another soul. But now, by the fifth week of lockdown, with no actual cases of Covid on Isabela and no one new arriving to spread it, people have begun to sneak out of their houses and break curfew.
As we wind into the center of the island, the scrub and desert landscape at the shoreline gives way to lush, thick vegetation. The shipments of food and supplies to the island have been extremely limited, and I know that Gabriel isn't the only person here to rely on family farmland to supplement them during the pandemic. We pass dirty sheep in pens, goats, a lowing cow with an udder as full as the moon. There are banana trees, with green fruit defying gravity to grow upward, and girls squatting in fields pulling weeds. Finally Gabriel turns onto a dusty path that winds toward a small house. Beatriz had led me to believe that it was nothing more than a glorified tent, but only half of it is under construction. Gabriel isn't building a house as much as he is expanding it.
For Beatriz, I bet.
I've been thinking nonstop about her confession to me in the trillizos. I'd said that if Beatriz talked to me about suicide, I'd tell Gabriel—and her recklessness in the tunnel truly worried me. But I couldn't confess to Gabriel what had happened unless I explained why, and that would mean talking about Ana Maria not returning Beatriz's affections. That, I know, is not my secret to share. Gabriel doesn't strike me as the kind of parent who'd be upset if his daughter came out, but then, I do not truly know him. Whatever strides the LGBTQ+ community has made in the United States, they are not universal; moreover, this is a predominantly Catholic country and gay rights aren't exactly the mainstay of that dogma. I think about Abuela's house, where painted crosses decorate every bit of wall space. In the absence of church services, suspended because of Covid, she has created a small altar where she prays and lights candles.
Instead, I've found ways to see Beatriz every day, to take her emotional temperature, and hope I don't have to betray her in order to protect her.
Beatriz comes bounding out of the front of the house as Gabriel pulls the emergency brake on the Jeep. "Felicidades!" she says, smiling at me.
"Thanks."
I realize something is tugging at me and I turn to find a little white goat with brown ears chewing on the hem of my T-shirt. "Ooh," I say, kneeling down to rub its knobby horns. "Who's this?"
"I don't name my food," Gabriel says, and I gasp.
"You are not eating this sweetheart," I tell him, "and he has to have a name."
"Fine." He grins. "Stew."
"No." I fold my arms. "Promise me. Consider it my birthday gift."
Gabriel laughs. "Only because Stew's a terrible name for a lady goat. As long as we can milk her, she's safe. We trade her milk to the neighbor for eggs."
He helps Abuela up the steps into his house. The livable area is two rooms: one with a small kitchen, a tiny table, two mismatched wooden chairs, and a beanbag chair; the other a bedroom. I don't see a bathroom, just a little outhouse in the distance. While Gabriel and Abuela stand at the table, unpacking the food she's brought to cook and talking in Spanish, Beatriz pulls me into the bedroom.
There is a mattress on the floor and a scarred chest of drawers, but there is also a mirror with mosaic glass around it, and a quilt with flowers embroidered on it, and fairy lights strung on a series of nails that have been tacked to the wall. This must have been Gabriel's room, I realize. I wonder if he transformed it into this little oasis for her, hoping for the best before she came here from school. I wonder where he sleeps now.
"Oh," I say, pulling several postcards from my tote. "I brought some more."
"Cool." Beatriz takes them, setting them in front of the mirror.
Since our day at the trillizos, we haven't talked about the girl she left behind on Santa Cruz, or if she still feels like cutting. Only once in the past two weeks has she even alluded to what transpired. We were sitting in Puerto Villamil, watching boobies torpedo into the water to catch fish, our legs dangling off the pier, just letting the afternoon settle around us like cotton batting. "Diana?" Beatriz had said, apropos of nothing. "Thanks. For catching me."
What I wanted to do was wrap my arms around her tight. What I did instead was bump her shoulder with mine. "De nada," I said, when I meant the very opposite. It wasn't nothing. It was everything.
I figure Beatriz will tell me what she wants to tell me and needs to tell me when she's ready. And God knows, right now, I have nothing but time.
There's a knock on the door and Gabriel pokes his head inside. "You ready to earn your supper? I need help picking fruit."
"It's my birthday," I protest.
"No problema." He shrugs. "We'll have the goat for dinner instead."
"Funny," I tell him, and turn to Beatriz. "Come help. I'm way too old for physical labor."
She shakes her head. "I've got other things to do. Secret things."
Gabriel leans toward her and in an exaggerated whisper asks, "Was that good?"
"Perfect," Beatriz says, and she skirts us on her way to the small table, where Abuela is already measuring out flour. "Go on," she shoos. "Leave."
I follow Gabriel outside. "She's making a cake for me, isn't she?"
"You didn't hear it from me," he says.
"That's sweet." I sit down on a stump near the front door as Gabriel untangles something from a pile of tools. He hands it to me—a wire basket on a stick—and then picks up a five-gallon plastic bucket.
"Vamos," he says.
"You mean we're really picking fruit? I thought that was just a ruse to get me out of the house."
"It was. But also, this is a farm." I follow him into the fields that stretch behind the house, where he points to yams and corn, lettuce and carrots. There is a patch of pineapple not ripe enough to harvest, and then we come to a small group of trees. "Papaya," Gabriel says. He takes the pole and squints up at the leaves, jostling the tool for a minute before he lowers it again and with a little flip of the wrist, drops the heavy fruit into my hand.
"I didn't know papaya grew on trees," I marvel.
We work in companionable quiet while he strips the tree of its ripe fruit, and then I kneel beside him to dig up a few yams. By the time we get back to the house, I'm filthy. Gabriel leads me to a water pump, jacking its handle so that I have a stream to wash my hands and my face. When I return the favor, he strips off his shirt and ducks his head and torso under the water, shaking off like a hound and making me shriek.
The noise draws Beatriz, who stands in the doorway. "Perfect timing," she says. Then she claps, and Abuela appears behind her holding a small one-tier chocolate cake on a plate. "Cumpleaños feliz," they sing, "te deseamos a ti …" Beatriz runs ahead and whispers something to Gabriel, who takes out a lighter and flicks the flame to life with his thumb.
"No candle," he explains.
Abuela sets the cake down on a picnic table outside the house, which has been decorated with strewn flowers. "Make a wish," Beatriz orders.
Dutifully, I close my eyes.
I wish …
That I was back in New York with Finn.
That my mother will get better.
That this will be over soon.
These things are what I should be wishing for. But instead, all that runs through my mind is that it is hard to make wishes, when in the moment, it feels like you have everything you need.
I open my eyes again and lean toward the lighter in Gabriel's hand. Gently, I blow.
He winks at me, and snaps the lid so the flame disappears. "That means it will come true," he says.
After we finish the cake, Gabriel builds a fire in a ring of lava stones in the yard. He turns on a small transistor radio and we all sit on folding lawn chairs. To my shock, there are presents for me: Beatriz gives me a small box she has decorated with shells; Abuela gives me a necklace with a medal of the Virgin Mary on it and insists on securing it around my neck. Even Gabriel tells me he has a gift—but it's an experience, not a thing, and he'll take me in a few days. Afterward, Beatriz brings me a blank journal and demands I do a portrait of her, like the ones I did at the feria. When the last of the light leaves the sky it's decided that Beatriz will share her bed with Abuela, and that Gabriel and I will camp out under the stars.
When we are alone, I look at the medal nestled between my breasts. "Did I just get baptized or something?" I ask.
Gabriel grins. "It's called a miraculous medal. It's supposed to bring blessings to people who wear it with faith."
I glance at him. "So basically if I'm not Catholic, lightning could strike at any moment?"
"If it does, it will likely hit me first, so you're safe," he says. He pokes at the embers with a stick, stirring them, and then picks up the journal with the sketch I made of Beatriz. "You're very talented," he tells me, carefully closing the book and setting it on the picnic table.
I shrug. "Party trick," I say.