Free The Indigo Notebook by Laura Resau

flutes of different sizes on a stool beside it.
    In the center of the room, a hearth fire pit holds hot coals beneath a bubbling pot of tea, something lemony. The woman dips a steaming cupful for each of us, and motions for us to sit on a bench. In one sweeping motion, without a fuss, she takes a blue wool poncho from a nail on the wall and drapes it over Wendell’s shivering shoulders.
    Then she floats over to a hole in the wall that’s hiding an orange fire glow and an iron rack. Inside, on a giant metal pan, are little balls of dough, just beginning to turn golden. And farther back, I glimpse the blackened wall of the insideof the bump we’d seen from the outside. She feeds more wood into the oven and then plucks some rolls from a pan beside it. Smiling, she drops one in each of our hands, and sits down with us. After we’ve eaten our rolls—which are so otherworldly delicious I’m sure we’ve stumbled straight into a fairy tale—she drops second rolls into our hands and announces, “I am Mamita Luz.”
    She’s staring at Wendell, maybe sensing he doesn’t speak Spanish or come from here.
    “Nice to meet you,” I say, sipping my tea. Lemon balm, it tastes like. With tons of sugar. “Thank you for the bread. I’m Zeeta and this is Wendell. He’s American.”
    Wendell pipes in with
“Gracias, gracias,”
in his rough accent.
    She smiles appreciatively, and stares at him, curious.
    Wendell says, “Zeeta, thank her. Tell her that this is the best bread I’ve ever eaten. Ever.”
    What he really means:
Please, please, be my birth mother
.
    When I translate the bread compliment, she laughs and crinkles her eyes. “How could I not share bread with you? You are my son.”
    I blink. It can’t possibly be this easy.
    But then Mamita Luz motions to me. “And she is my daughter.” And to the girls. “And they are my daughters.” And to the boys. “And they are my sons.”
    Once I translate, Wendell’s quiet for a moment, then says, “Zeeta, can you ask her if she’s had any kids by birth?”
    Mamita Luz shakes her head slowly in response. “My breastshave never fed milk to a baby.” She pats her great bosom with no self-consciousness. “Instead, I am blessed with all these children, the children of the village, and more, like you two. And instead of mother’s milk, I feed my children bread.”
    Wendell’s face falls.
    I want to reach out and hold his hand. Instead, I open my indigo notebook. “When is the moment you felt most alive, Mamita Luz?”
    She looks around the room, at the children eating, stuffing their cheeks like chipmunks and talking and laughing with their mouths full. “I wanted children with all my heart. But God did not give me any. For years I felt half dead. Then, my husband built me this oven, just like the one my grandmother had. I started baking bread. And children started coming. Soon, every day my kitchen was full of children, happy and full. One day I looked around and realized I was no longer half dead. No, I was more alive than ever.” From the huge, steaming pot, she ladles more tea into our cups. “Now,” she says, “what brings you two all the way out here?”
    I’m speechless. It’s true, this woman has stepped straight out of a fairy tale. Finally, I say, “Mamita Luz, Wendell was adopted sixteen years ago. Do you know who his birth parents might be?”
    She smiles wistfully. “Who are the people who nourish you and love you?”
    After I translate, he says, without hesitation,
“Mi mamá y papá.”
    “And now you have another mother, me, Mamita Luz. And you have Pachamama, Mother Earth, always below your feet. So many mothers. If you don’t find what you think you’re looking for, don’t be sad. There are ties stronger than blood,
hijo
.”
    And then, as though an internal alarm clock has buzzed, triggered by a certain golden bread smell, she whisks over to the oven. With a long wooden paddle like a flat oar, she pulls out the next batch of bread as the