The Jade Notebook (12 page)

The next morning, I wake up to faint predawn light filtering through the screen. Layla hasn’t yet rung her yoga bell, which means it’s still early. Way too early to get up. I squeeze my eyes shut and press the pillow over my head, trying to slip back into sleep. But the rushing waves and buzzing insects are too loud, persistent. I turn on my right side, turn on my left, lie on my back, then on my stomach. Then I sit up in frustration.

For some reason I’m awake. Awake and feeling uneasy.

Maybe if I make some tea and write in my notebook I’ll feel better. I crawl out through the gap in the mosquito net. I splash cold water on my face, exchange my nightgown for a sundress, slip on my flip-flops. I open the door, expecting the misty morning air, the fresh dew-covered leaves, the stone path leading to the kitchen hut, lined with red-blossomed hibiscus bushes.

I step outside and scream.

There in front of me is a limp, bloody chicken with its head severed, flies buzzing around it in a thick cloud. I stagger back and shut my eyes, choking on the stench. I’ve seen dead chickens before, butchered them myself, as a matter of fact, but this is different. It’s unnatural to stumble across one on your doorstep.

Wendell calls out from the window of his cabana. “Z, you okay?”

Before I can answer, he’s at his door in his boxers.

“Watch out!” I yell just in time, before he steps on his own decapitated chicken.

Warily, I glance over toward Layla’s cabana, on the other side of mine. Sure enough, there’s another headless chicken with an entourage of flies. A yelp flies from my mouth.

Layla pokes her head to the window. “What’s happening?”

“Watch out for the dead chicken!” I shout. And then, realizing that my voice might carry to other guests, I wish I could snatch the words back. Nothing worse for business than a bunch of dead chickens lying around.

“What is all this?” Wendell murmurs, wrapping an arm around me, pushing aside my tangled hair.

“A serial chicken killer on the loose?”

Wendell studies the dead animal. “Just like in my vision,” he says in a low voice. His eyes flicker to mine. “What’s going on?”

I’ve lived in enough places where witchcraft is practiced to know what this is. “Look, Wendell.” I point to the blood-spotted bones, sharp stones, twigs that form a pattern around each carcass.

“What does it mean?” he asks.

“This,” I say, like a doctor pronouncing a dreaded diagnosis, “is a curse.”

Within minutes, Layla emerges from her cabana. Hands on her hips, she surveys the dead chicken and bones and rocks and twigs on her front stoop.

“Well?” I venture, my voice cautious.

“Well,” she announces, “whoever did this has come up against the wrong people!”

Wendell raises his eyebrows.

She brushes her hands together as if washing something off. “Oh, yes indeed. If anyone’s equipped to deal with negative energy, it’s us, right, Zeeta?”

From the supply shed, she grabs rubber gloves, then disposes of each mess in a garbage bag. This goes fast; luckily, only mine, Layla’s, and Wendell’s cabanas have been victims. This might be because they’re the ones clearly marked with
MANAGEMENT
signs, the idea being that late-arriving guests can knock on one of our doors to get their cabana keys. I never guessed the signage would make us vulnerable in this way.

Next Layla gathers all the sacred amulets and rocks she’s accumulated over the years. She picks up her stash of copal incense, a bunch of clay incense pots, salt, little figurines of goddesses and statue of the Buddha, bells and crystals, gemstones and fresh flowers—her entire arsenal. Then she gets to work, chanting and singing and burning incense.

Hearing the racket, the guests trickle out of their cabanas, asking, “What’s going on?” in their respective languages.

Layla calmly informs them, “Sunrise yoga has been canceled due to an attempted curse.”

Joe, of course, sees this as more evidence that the earth is on the verge of complete destruction. He pins on his purple wig, muttering, “When the most loving woman in the world is victim of a curse, that’s when you know the world’s about to end.…”

Layla thrusts a bag of salt into his hand and instructs
him to scatter it along the stone paths of the cabana area. She directs the befuddled guests to pick fresh herbs from her pots—
ruda
and basil and rosemary—and teaches them chants to say while waving around bundles of leaves. Oddly enough, the guests seem more than happy to participate. I imagine them sending a flurry of emails and texts to their friends back home about how
padre
it is to dispel an actual curse.

And I imagine an addition to our website:
Another featured attraction of Cabañas Magia del Mar … Participate in an authentic spiritual cleaning!
We’d just have to leave out the gory bloody-poultry details, of course.

Thankfully, none of the guests have actually laid eyes on a dead chicken; that image would be hard to shake. They’ll just remember the bells and incense—a kind of early-morning party.

After an hour, Layla claps her hands and, as if ending a yoga session, calls out, “Fabulous job, everyone! Now let’s celebrate with breakfast!” Only Layla could turn a dead chicken incident into a festive occasion.

To put a further festive spin on the morning, Joe dons his giant shoes and does a clown routine with a rubber chicken and a fishing pole and a watermelon. The other guests carry on with their conversations, periodically tossing confused glances Joe’s way. He keeps going, and when he stops and bows, people offer some polite claps, which he takes as a sign to launch into another routine using a wind-up cockroach, a hairbrush, and a can of beans.

Blocking him out, I whip up two dozen eggs for breakfast, thinking of what El Sapo said about the rumors of tragedies, deaths, and accidents on this land. I think of all the “be carefuls” directed at us. I think of what the old lady with the hammocks said about how this place was cursed. And whether or not I believe in rumors and curses, I have a feeling this isn’t going to be finished so easily.

Wendell heaves the watermelon from Joe’s routine onto the counter and slices into it. He offers me a piece and asks in a low voice, “So, who do you think left the curse?”

I take a bite, sweet and cool. The culprit is clear to me. She may have been terrorizing previous managers with this dead-chicken-curse routine for years. “The jaguar lady,” I say matter-of-factly, wiping watermelon juice from my chin.

When Wendell says nothing, I add, “You know, the woman whose signs explicitly state that trespassers will be devoured or
cursed
?”

“That would be the obvious choice,” he says, deftly flicking seeds with the tip of the knife. “But we didn’t actually trespass when the jaguar pounced. We were on our side of the fence.”

“I doubt she’s one to haggle over details.” I take another bite. “So what’s your theory?”

He finishes his piece, tosses the rind into the compost bin. “I was thinking the poachers would have a motive too. Maybe they realized we called the cops on them. If this place is unoccupied, they can poach more easily. And if that’s why they’re doing it, we have an extra motive to stop them.” He
takes a giant bowl from the shelf, and starts scooping the chopped watermelon into it.

I consider his ideas, toss a chunk of butter into the frying pan, then watch it slide and bubble. “But wouldn’t the volunteers stop them anyway?”

He frowns. “Whoever was scheduled the night we were there obviously didn’t show. Or wasn’t doing their job. Or else was cooperating with the poachers. Or maybe they themselves were the poachers.”

“You’ve really been thinking about this, huh?” It seems like overkill to me, this conspiracy theory stuff. For all we know, the volunteer was sick that night. I just ask, “What time should we go to the Turtle Center?”

He shrugs. “Later this morning?”

I pour in the egg mixture, watch as it slowly firms. I mentally shuffle through my plans for the day. I don’t mind an excuse for putting off my world history homework. “Okay. After breakfast.”

Wendell looks pleased as he sticks a spoon in the bowl of watermelon.

I whisk the eggs, adding a few pinches of salt. I don’t mention that I’d still cast my vote for the jaguar lady as the guilty party. But a visit to the Turtle Center is more palatable than the other option—going into the Forbidden Territory. Of course, it’s all a matter of procrastination. If we’re going to run these cabanas for years, we’ll have to meet the neighbor sooner or later.

After washing breakfast dishes, Wendell and I walk down the dirt hill and turn right onto the paved main street. The Turtle Center is just a few blocks farther along the road. On the way, we pass Don Ernesto the butcher and Doña Elisa the tortilla lady and El Loco the dreadlocked fisherman. At first I’m worried they might hold it against us that we live on supposedly cursed land, but they each smile and nod in greeting.

El Loco even waves us over. Holding a giant conch shell out to me, he says in his rough voice, “I found this. Thought you might like it.”

I take it, hold it in my hands, study the smooth pink spiral interior. “Thanks,” I say, surprised.

He shrugs a shoulder, looks at us through black dreads laced with a few white hairs. “You’re my new best customers. Have to keep you coming back, right?”

Wendell asks, “Hey, you happen to know where the police station is?”

“Why?” El Loco’s eyebrows shoot up. “Everything all right?”

I realize that the locals have probably just been waiting for something to go wrong at our cabanas. I imagine this is how rumors spread. I give Wendell a warning glance.

He says vaguely, “Just some trouble with poaching is all.” Thankfully, he doesn’t mention the curse.

But El Loco lets his gaze linger, obviously concerned. “The station’s just down the block,” he says, pointing to a side street. Then he warns,
“Tengan cuidado.”

“Of course,” I assure him as I hold the shell nervously.
Now, after the curse, these warnings have more weight behind them. They’re harder to shake off.

We give him the fist bumps that the hippie beach bums around here favor, then head toward the police station.

It only takes three minutes to reach the station, a low, dirty pink cement building. Inside, there’s a single room with two unfinished-wood desks and two ancient computers and a few dinged-up gray file cabinets. A single door leads back to what must be a holding cell. A fan spins and clicks overhead, making the worn curtains rise and fall.

Two officers sit at the desks, one about fifty years old, with a mustache and stout build, the other thinner, and not much older than me and Wendell. The younger one is fiddling with his cell phone—texting, maybe—and immediately drops his gaze back to his device. We stand there awkwardly until the older one gets up. “I’m Officer Contreras,” he says, gesturing to two wooden chairs. “But you can call me Gerardo. What can I do for you?”

We sit down and introduce ourselves, and then I tell him about the curse and Wendell’s theory that the poachers might be behind it. Wendell adds that he already reported the poaching by phone a few days ago.

Gerardo nods, jotting down notes, then turns to the younger man. “Did you file that report, Chucho?”

“Uh—yes,” he answers, tucking his phone in his pocket.

“Where is it?”

Chucho shuffles through papers on his desk, then opens and shuts some drawers in a file cabinet.

Gerardo presses his lips together and sighs. “When he
finds it, we’ll add this latest development,
muchachos
.” He stands up, shakes our hands. “Be careful up there. Lots of problems over the years up near Punta Cometa.”

“Right,” I say, turning to leave.

The younger one calls after us, “And if you see any more poaching, come straight here, right to me. I’m the one in charge of your case. I’m on top of it.” He scrawls a number on a scrap of paper and hands it to Wendell. “Don’t confront the poachers yourself,” he cautions. “They could be armed and dangerous. In fact, you shouldn’t even be on that beach in the first place. It’s protected. You’ll disturb the turtles. You could be arrested yourselves for lurking around there at night.”