Excerpt
The Grand Paloma Resort
Chapter 1The tourist child’s mud-streaked body had become heavy and sweat made her slippery in Elena’s arms. As she made her way out from the tropical forest behind the Grand Paloma Resort, Elena headed not in the direction of the manicured grounds but into the water-starved, cracked dirt of the staff quarters. Looking down at the little girl’s unconscious form, she whispered, “Please, please, please don’t die on me.”
She wove through row after row of beautiful casitas. Alternating between vibrant turquoise and the brightest yellow, with a flash of hot pink every fourth or fifth little house, each decorated with flower beds full of birds of paradise and lilac hibiscus bushes, it was the kind of sight that would make a visitor sigh in delight. Unless they happened to touch the plants and realize they were plastic. Nothing got watered in this part of the resort.
Once she was safely inside the casita she shared with her older sister, Laura, Elena took a breath and looked around, unsure whether to lay the child on her bed or her sister’s. Relief washed over her. No one had seen her. It was as if the dusty ground of that forest had lifted and shrouded her.
She was paralyzed momentarily by the weight of the child’s body. What was she? Sixty pounds? Two hundred? Elena was dizzy from the heat and humidity. She’d been hired to care for the now injured and unconscious child, looking after the girl by day and sleeping in a tiny cot-sized room in the back of the kitchen of the penthouse suite that the girl and her parents occupied. She hadn’t been in the casita all week. Elena’s side was as messy as she’d left it—unmade bed, strewn clothes, shoes everywhere. It was shocking. Her sister always cleaned up after her.
Elena laid the kid on Laura’s neatly made bed. She called the girl’s name and shook her gently. No response. The blond bouncy curls that had swayed when they’d tried the latest viral TikTok dance that morning, before their outing in the forest, were matted with mud and blood. The kid’s flat chest seemed too still. Had it been a mistake, moving the girl?
Elena caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror. Her dark brown skin shone from the effort of carrying this kid. The bald head she’d shaved to celebrate her freedom from the global academy, from the confines of this place, appeared oversized. The big eyes that everyone always complimented her on were full of tears. The slender frame she worked hard at, swimming two, sometimes three times a day when she wasn’t charged with full-time work as a babysitter, made her seem fragile, prepubescent. She was seventeen but looked like a fourteen-year-old. The pink scrubs that identified her immediately to all guests as a babysitter exaggerated that image, softening her. She’d worked hard to appear revolutionary, but now look at her: a terrified kid.
Elena sat on the bed to take a breath. She was comforted by the smell of her sister’s woody perfume. Laura’s row of white uniforms—which denoted her rank as part of the senior leadership team of the hotel’s management—was rigid in the closet. On her sister’s night table was Elena’s final paper, the one she’d written just two months ago as a requirement for graduation from the international high school: “The Case Against Statelessness.” Her teacher had said it was great writing but had predictable conclusions. The questions you ask are important, she’d said, truly excellent, but what about resolutions? Is there a way through? Still, she’d gotten an A. The walls were decorated with posters from the cities the sisters wished to one day visit together—London, New York, Milan, Paris.
Elena called her sister, who didn’t answer her cellphone.
Elena called again and again and again.
Laura finally answered. “I’m busy, Elena,” she said sharply, then hung up.
Elena knelt next to the bed. She kissed the girl’s forehead, tasting the coppery mountain mud. There was a bit of sweetness in it. She remembered how warm the mud had been when she’d first suggested they should do mud masks. The kid’s skin didn’t feel warm anymore. It felt cold, clammy. Something was changing. The mud had dried and crusted on her skin. The girl’s eyelids fluttered. Elena held her breath as it seemed she was on the cusp of opening her eyes. But then the kid seemed to grow more still, tiny red and blue veins becoming more pronounced beneath the soft, almost transparent skin of her eyelids.
Elena reached inside the pocket of her pants. She found the last yellow ecstasy pill she’d been holding on to, which she had planned to chew later when she took the kid to the beach. She had taken another pill just like it when they were deep in the forest, crunching it between her teeth, swallowing the grimy texture, tasting that bitterness that coated her tongue. When the kid fell, Elena had been outstretched on the dry dirt, glad that the feeling of hopelessness seemed galaxies away. As the CIELO brand seemed to promise, she’d felt like she was floating in the sky, but she’d also been fully present in her body, marveling at the beauty of the trees that canopied them in a warm glow, humming with the glorious vibration of interconnectedness. They were a part of everything. Harmony was within reach.
She was tempted to take this pill now, to escape this terrible situation. But she knew that was a bad idea. She was coming down from her high. She would take this pill later, save it as a reward for when she figured a way out of this circumstance. Holding the pill made her feel bold, brave. Time to act.
Elena called her friend Pablo, praying he’d pick up the phone on the first ring.
“Dimelo, loca,” Pablo said, laughter lacing his tone. “What did you do now?”
Elena felt indignant at the way he stressed the word now.
She realized that calling Pablo for help was a bad idea. She needed Laura. “Do you have any more of the yellow pills?” she asked instead.
“Muchacha, what’s wrong with you? Not on the phone. Swing by if you want, I’m descaling the fish.”
Pablo hadn’t mentioned it, so apparently, the parents of the unconscious girl hadn’t yet rung an alarm, demanding to know what the hell had happened to their eight-year-old child. Elena supposed that, like most people who visited the Grand Paloma Resort to forget their boring, rich lives, to experience something shocking and surprising, maybe even transcendental, the unconscious girl’s parents were sitting by the pool in the stifling August heat to burn their skin—to get that delicious, tingling feeling that eventually raised their body temperatures, that made them hungry for touching, licking; for feeling a rush of air-conditioned currents on their naked limbs so that when they went back home at the end of their vacation they could say to their friends, “Yes, Dominican Republic truly is paradise. I’m so happy I got away.”
Snap out of it! The parents might call for their child any moment.
Elena redialed Laura, let the line ring again-again-again. She tried her office line instead.
“Laura Moreno,” Laura said in a sophisticated tone.
“It’s me,” Elena said.
“What?!” Laura was annoyed.
“You’ve got to come to our room now!”
“Calm down, what happened?”
“There’s been an accident with la muchachita from PH7.”
