Read The Other Side of Blue for Free Online

interrupts him.
    â€œGuests 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.
    â€œIt’s delicious. Thank you.” Kammi is polite, so predictable. I wonder if she ever surprises herself.
    â€œThank 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.
    â€œThe 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.
    â€œBirds 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.
    Mayur should have whined to his mother that I was to blame, but he didn’t. He told her he tripped into the pool and she sent him to change his clothes. Mrs. Bindas followed close behind him like a sheepdog, reminding him he should be careful. “You could have hit your head. And your suit, Mayur. It is ruined.”
    I retreated to the door, where Mother was speaking to Dr. Bindas. He handed her a book he said had been Dad’s, something he’d left by the pool one day. Mother took the book without looking at it.
    That was the last visit. Mother and I left Curaçao the next day, stuffing clothes and unread books into suitcases and a few of Mother’s most precious paints into her carry-on bag instead of toothpaste and cosmetics. She left the watersplotched book Dr. Bindas had given her on the coffee table when she took her luggage to the door, where Jinco waited with the taxi. Dad’s
The History of Language.
I slipped it into my suitcase without saying anything to Mother about it. We rode to the airport in a silence we have clung to ever since.
    Mrs. Bindas is talking, describing the landscaping, how many gardeners had to be hired to make it work. Mayur is
still eating, and is tapping his bare foot against the chair leg. Mrs. Bindas turns to me.
    â€œThe garden is so perfect this year. I am hoping Mrs. Walters will come here and teach an afternoon