Page 82 of The Deepest Lake

“Just do it. She’ll forgive you for the cancer part.”

My head’s getting lighter and lighter as I try to get at least one good ring to form, thinking of my mother the whole time, knowing I’ll tell her the story later, even knowing what she’ll say. That’s great, Jules. But maybe bubbles next time? Or a pretty floating lantern?

“She’s receiving your thoughts right now,” Zahara says in all seriousness.

“How do you know?”

Zahara stubs out her cigarette under her sandal. “My mom received all the thoughts I sent her a year ago, from the hotel room in Vegas.”

“No,” I say under my breath.

“Yes. She knew something was wrong after just the first day. She had a racing heartbeat and an upset stomach. Day two, she started trying to contact Brad. That’s the asshole’s name. Day three, she was on the phone with my producers and two of my friends. My fuckhead ex-boyfriend said I’d gone on a silent retreat in Joshua Tree. My mom tried to believe it but she couldn’t stop feeling sick. Meanwhile, Brad was ordering room service and refusing to let any maid change the sheets.”

“That’s awful.”

“They’re used to that shit in Vegas. If the toilet hadn’t backed up, I think he would have kept me tied up for a month.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, it happened. Anyway, this works, too.” Zahara cups her mouth and starts howling out across the lake. “Mom! Mama!”

“I can’t do that. It’s too embarrassing!”

“Have you noticed how it’s the same sound in so many languages? Spanish? Chinese? Everyone likes to say it. It’s a sound that makes you feel good. A billion babies can’t be wrong.”

“Okay, fine.” I try it, glad for a reprieve from her sad story, wanting to share a few moments of silly joy.

“Louder. Like this. Mama!”

“Mommy!” I double over with laughter.

“Mom. Mama. Mommy!”

It feels so good, so ridiculous and anxiety-purging.

Zahara switches into a wolf howl but I stick with the basics.

“Ma-ma! Ma-ma-ma-ma!”

“Ah-wooooo! Ha-ha-ah-wooooo!”

“Mom! I miss you. I really do. I love you, Mama.”

My cathartic session with Zahara, howling for our mamas across the lake, doesn’t go unheard. Mauricio comes down the bluff to wish me feliz cumpleaños— he remembered!—and check in with us, but I tell him that neither Zahara nor I are performing at the staff party tonight. I wish him the best of luck on the poem he’s planning to read, by the Guate poet, Isabel de los Ángeles Ruano. It’s about complicity—the ways in which we are all guilty. I like to imagine Eva listening to it, eyes narrowing as she wonders if there’s a message in it for her. But that will never happen. First, because she doesn’t understand Spanish. Second, because she’s always so damned sure she hasn’t done anything wrong.

When I look back from Mauricio to Zahara, she’s just popped something small into her mouth and is closing her lips over two fingers, smiling like some naughty cherub.

“Be careful with that. We just had a lot of tequila.” I squint at the bottle, only one-third full.

A few minutes after Mauricio leaves, I smell cigarette smoke coming from the bluff over our heads. I’m certain it’s the person who’s been eavesdropping on me and Eva.

Eyes closed, Zahara mumbles, “Can you go get me one of those?”

“Cigarettes are bad for your skin. Even the skin on your hands. Go back to sleep.”

I feel dizzy from the drinks but I also feel like I’ve done my job. Zahara’s napping. We’ve shared some personal shit but she hasn’t gone overboard with anxiety or melodrama, and by tomorrow, this day will be behind her. Then she can decide if she wants to stay or cut her losses short. Of all the women here, Zahara is the one who needs Eva and her connections the least.

I spend ten more minutes journaling—about the tragic death of Rogelia Cruz, the subject of Isabel de los Ángeles Ruano’s poem “The Closed Silence,” about anything I can think of, and it feels good. I follow my thoughts as they wander, without forcing them. I essai and test out thoughts, leaning into the permission given by essayists like Montaigne or Phillip Lopate, the writer whose best-known anthology introduced me to Montaigne—all that old stuff that Eva dismisses. Nonfiction writing that doesn’t fit into a box; memoirs that aren’t about best-selling trauma topics. I enjoy personal writing for what it is: personal. Not designed for public consumption from the first draft, but a process, instead. A way to notice more. To turn outward, sometimes, not exclusively inward.