Jaz & Miguel (28 page)

Jaz booked a room at the Southern Sun about five minutes from the
airport. It wasn't the cheapest hotel but, after all that had happened, she
felt like she deserved a personal break. Besides, she'd never expected her
money to stretch as far as it had in South Africa. The last she'd checked, the
exchange rate was one dollar to ten Rands. Not only did she have enough saved
up for the hotel, but she could even pay for a room and food at something
moderately priced for at least another month. If she got a job waitressing,
maybe she'd be able to pay for longer than that. She thought of that cute
Italian coffee shop in Parktown North, not too far from the campus. She'd been
there once or twice with Miguel and had seen people sipping wine all day while working
on their laptops or browsing the web—a quaint little place.

Maybe she could get a job there.

Jaz crashed on the bed and let the linen caress her tear-marred
cheeks, trying her best to just stop
thinking
, and then realizing she'd
have to call her parents soon—not only to take the heat for what she'd done,
but also to have them pick up her luggage at the airport. It would've been
better to have made this sudden decision not to return home
before
she
had checked in her luggage. But, better late than never—isn't that what people say?

She decided that she wouldn't call Thandie or Elize or Nita right
away for the same reasons she'd chosen to stay at a hotel and not asked one of
them to put her up (which any one of them would've immediately done). She just
needed to feel like she was ready to stand on her own two feet. This and
nothing else—not Miguel, not her parents, not her emotions or how sad she still
was for the things that had happened—was what she needed to prove to herself
most of all.

The hotel room had a fresh wooden smell, almost like the thatched
roofs of the rooms in Rustenburg. In Jaz's mind, this would be an aroma that
she would forever equate with Africa.

She eased off her clothes and slid into a hot shower, letting the
firm spray wash the last five months away from her mind. When she got out, she
put on a white robe that was hanging behind the bathroom door and pulled out a
fruit juice from the mini-bar. For an instant, she pretended she was a woman on
a business trip with no worries on her mind but the imaginary upcoming meetings
of the following days.

The feeling soon passed, and after finishing the drink and realizing
she'd probably have to pay double for it than if she'd simply bought something
at the airport, she threw the bottle in the trash and promised herself to start
counting her pennies (or her Rands).

She made a list of things to do the next day:

- Buy clothes at Mr. Price
- Get a job at that cute Italian place
- Find a cheap place to stay
- Buy groceries (if the place I'll be staying at has a kitchen, otherwise find
a cheap place to eat at every day)
- Call the girls
- Get a number for Miguel and call him

Then she called her mom (who was
pissed!
) After thirty
minutes of arguing and fighting and Jaz standing up for herself, followed by
lots of explanation as to why she had done it and all the things that had
happened and which had been going on in her mind, her mother sighed in a way
that made Jaz wonder if she hadn't done the same thing when she'd been Jaz's
age.

 "Like mother like daughter," said her mom. "How can
I stay angry at you? My little baby is growing up." The sound of tears was
clear in her voice. Jaz promised that she'd email every day (yes,
email
—her
mom insisted and it was the least Jaz could do) and, at the first sign of
trouble, Jaz promised she'd ask her parents for help. Her mom also offered to
send her money, but Jaz refused it.

"Not now, mom. If I go broke, I'll come back home. I just …
need
to do this. Life—well, it's tough and, unless I learn to survive …." She
trailed off into thought, not knowing even what she meant herself, just
feeling
it inside her, like some primal, instinctual urge of needing to break away from
the den and go out and hunt on her own or something. In the back of Jaz's mind,
she even defined "broke and needing help" as something like
having
slept on the street for three nights in a row and not eaten for four days
.
She wasn't going to give up that easily.

But she didn't tell her mom that.

Her mom told her she'd smooth things over with her dad that evening.
"I love you, sweetie, with all my heart. And I believe in you. And, as you
know, the door is
always
open," she said.

The statement brought a tear to Jaz's eye—and she didn't want to
cry—so she choked out an "I love you" back and quickly hung up. She
was amazed at the capacity for love and forgiveness from a parent to a
child—like that night in Hillbrow, and how Miguel's father had simply hugged
him, happy to see him come home alive, all sins forgiven. And now, her mom,
letting her out into the world despite her own fears, the door always open.
It's like parents were tapped into some eternal fountain of love and
forgiveness despite the (evidently innate) ability of their children to come up
with the most elaborate, endlessly imaginative, and just downright
thick-witted
fuck-ups
possible when they are young ("young"
being
defined as any number of years less than the parent's own age).

Jaz felt a sudden gratitude for the existence of that fountain.

But her mom's support, and her understanding, had at least given Jaz
a fighting chance.

And that's all she asked for now: was a
fighting
chance.

Because life had kicked her, and she wanted to kick back at it now.

Having nothing else to do, she sat by the pool just outside the bar
downstairs, hands folded in her lap—thinking—and stared out at the golden-blue
glow of the pool's lights and sniffed the chlorine until she was too tired to
keep her eyes open.

The next morning, she stuffed herself on the breakfast buffet
and caught the shuttle to Eastgate—the nearest mall. She went to Mr.
Price and bought three pairs of jeans, seven T-shirts (she saw one like Thandie
had with the arrow pointing up to her face—but that was a hopeless dream she
knew would never sprout any further than it already had), and two dresses,
amazed at how little they'd all cost. Then off to Clicks for a few toiletries,
and finally she sat at the Milky Lane eating a chip caramel sundae that was
almost as big as her forearm.

As she sat watching people walking by, going into the
Exclusive
Books
store up ahead or cuing up in front of the
Health-Juice place on her right, she was amazed at how easy it all suddenly seemed.
She thought of her times up at Bauhaus Books and Coffee in Seattle: people-watching,
checking out men's butts, reading a good book.

Was this any different? Is home not simply the place you choose, or
the place where all your friends are?

And, truth be told, her friends were not in Seattle, her friends
were here—her
real
friends.

She called them—feeling like she'd achieved something great by now.
Within an hour all three of the girls were with her, tears of joy falling from
their eyes, and before Jaz knew it she was ordering a second ice cream the size
of The Rocky Mountains (she really had to stop doing that lest she start
looking like Candy one of these days) and stuffing it down while the girls
worked out the remaining items on her list for her without Jaz even having to
ask.

Nita had a cousin in Lenasia who had a car he was getting rid of.
She was sure she could twist his arm and get him to sell it for five-hundred or
so (he was trying to get it sold for three-thousand). She called him right away
and made a deal (with Jaz's approval) that he could take Jaz out on a date as well
(after confirming with him that Jaz was indeed "a babe"). Then Nita
told her that Jaz should make him take her to the most expensive restaurant she
could find (Elize came up with a few suggestions) and, if he tried anything
funny, that she had other cousins who would put him in his place.

Jaz giggled, although part of her was also excited about meeting the
guy. Jaz had seen photos of Nita's family and if her cousin looked anything
like her brothers, then all the guy needed was a half-decent personality and she
might even go out with him a second time.

Thandie knew someone who worked at a fancy restaurant in Melrose
(wasn't that a place in Seattle?) and called him up to arrange an interview for
her. She told Jaz that the tips were probably much better than at a small coffee
shop and, with a car, she'd manage to travel the extra distance and still come
out with more money.

Elize had friends who'd just lost a tenant for one of their
cottages. They were old and rented more out of the need for company than for
money. They might be willing to put Jaz up and, if she was willing to help
around the house and garden, maybe even charge her only for water and
electricity.

The more her friends talked and bulldozed through all the possible
barriers to Jaz making a life for herself in South Africa, and as they negotiated
amongst each other as to how to get her completely on her feet, the more she
felt ... like she belonged.

Isn't this how life is supposed to be?

Having completed just about everything on her list, the four of them
decided to hang out at the mall ("Shopping Center") and look at guys
and eat even more ice cream (if that was even possible).

Jaz laughed and smiled. She was happy. She was. That picture she'd
had in her mind of Miguel—even now as she sat there—was not really bothering
her that much anymore. Sure, it was there, but it wasn't too bad. It wasn't
making her want to cry or bury her face in her hands or wonder where he was and
if he was OK—not like it had been doing that morning. And she knew that, if the
picture pressed too hard against her again, that she'd have the girls to lift
her mood.

As the weeks and months went by and Jaz started working and saving
up money and counting her coins at the end of each month to see how much she
could spend and how much she needed to save, and as she hung out with the girls
every Saturday (each of them choosing a mall on a turnabout basis), Miguel
became more and more a fading memory. During the daytime, and as she got busy
with things, he was barely on her mind, a photograph fading with the sun. It
was only at night sometimes, at random points that seemed to have no connection
with anything she'd been doing during the day, when his image would impress
itself upon her so severely that it felt like she was being burned by it.

And in those moments, she cried. She cried into her pillow, her only
comfort being the distant hope that—as it had happened endless times before—the
next morning, the sun would again rise, the birds would again sing, and she could
move on.

She'd considered calling his father and maybe getting a number for
him, but the way Miguel had left—so suddenly and without warning—it had been
clear he was in no mood to stay in touch with
anyone
. And, after all, he
had
broken up with her that night after Mozambique. And it had not been
because she was leaving—from what he'd said to her that night, that much had
been abundantly clear.

She never did find out what his real reasons had been.

Maybe it was better this way. She couldn't face discovering what he'd
despised so much about her to have ended their relationship so abruptly.

In truth, it was actually this last point—and only this last one—which
really stopped her from ever trying to get a hold of him. She was afraid of another
rejection from him.

And she loved him too much to go through that again.

She'd asked herself many times what she'd maybe learned from being
in love with Miguel (she knew she still
loved him; and that
he would forever be her
first
love). Had she learned that love sucked?
Or that love just wasn't enough? But these questions, too, as it was with his
image, also began to fade, each day—and night—becoming less and less.

One thought, however, didn't fade, and she found herself thinking on
this particular night more than any other. It was their first date, in
Melville, at that quaint little restaurant where all had seemed so perfect and
everything felt like it had all come together by Fate or Destiny. And then
Miguel had even asked her
that very question.