Notebooks

“Sofia gave herself permission to disappear.”

AUGUST 8, 2023

Sofía tries to write, but her efforts go nowhere. She’s failed once already this morning. Her notebook’s damp pages disintegrate in her fingers, and her pencil point has just snapped for the third time. In moments like this, her only thought is leaving. Her reasons for coming here evaporate into the air.

Sofía groans. She rakes a hand through her sweat-matted hair. She’s so hot she could explode.

No one told her it would be like this. Well, no. Someone did.

She chose not to hear.

Her shirt, at 11 a.m., is already beginning to smell. She excavates a new one from the Ziploc bags she keeps in her enormous backpack. She got this storage strategy from Lucas, a Chilean who interned at the station a few months before her. She met him at an info session in Santiago. Afterward, she had a few lunches and coffees with him, seeking advice. His stories calmed Sofía down. Information always did. She took notes like she could use them to control the world.

Sofía’s been at the station six weeks. Six more to go.

She wants to scream.

✺

Lucas suggested the notebooks.

“Look,” he said. “I don’t know why you’d go. You’d be wasting your time.” Foam from his coffee clung to his mustache. Sofía pretended not to notice. “But if you do go, bring writing material. Notebooks, pencils. Books, too. Trust me, if you go, you’ll be lonely as hell.”

He was trying to warn her, but to Sofía, he was describing paradise. She’d kill to be alone someplace where no one knew her or her story. Someplace where she could think. Live simply. Use her hands for once, not her head. The idea of having power only a few hours a day thrilled her. (And look at her now, capering under her lightbulb when it buzzes on from 6 to 9 p.m.)

She liked the thought of cold morning showers.

Of collapsing into bed at night, lulled to sleep by the jungle’s noise.

✺

She’d never been to Yasuní National Park before. She felt like she’d disappeared. Coming here meant completely leaving the grid. The station was so deep in the Amazon it took Sofía nine hours of travel and four kinds of transit — plane, boat, truck, other boat — to reach this clutch of cabins hidden in the trees. Truly a vacation in the middle of nowhere. Not a vacation. She was, technically, volunteering, according to the flyer she’d seen strategically posted outside the biology department.

First she heard rumors, which she managed to ignore. But then the campus erupted in banners, flyers, nameless warnings that, together, broke Sofía’s heart.

Sofía studied art, but she once took a literature elective near the bio building. Also, that was where Carlos taught. Ecology 101. She stumbled into a talk of his and was dazzled. He added her to his mounting list of mistakes, which he was paying for now.

From the front page of every tabloid.

✺ 

Sofía found out months too late. First she heard rumors, which she managed to ignore. But then the campus erupted in banners, flyers, nameless warnings that, together, broke Sofía’s heart.

Her first instincts ran to melodrama: pill bottles, red bathwater, flying leaps into the void. But the impulse she followed came from a campus poster promising unique volunteer experiences in the Ecuadorian rainforest, no knowledge or background required. Only a desire to help. On the flyer, it all looked so green: trees, more trees, a beaming girl describing her adventures in a speech bubble, like a comic strip.

Winter break was coming, and Sofía arranged to take the first month of the next semester off. She was a good student, and, under the circumstances, it suited everyone if she vanished for a little while, now that she’d refused to testify. She couldn’t.

Instead, she talked to Lucas.

And now here she is.

✺  

Alfonso, the head chef, waves at her. He’s already poured her a cup of coffee, adding the one drop of milk she likes. In Sofía’s first weeks at the station, she was convinced Alfonso hated her. To Alfonso, she was no different from the other foreigners. Just another coddled little girl who flew into his kitchen the first time a wasp stung her, wailing and begging for ice. All the cooks laughed and told her, “Chill out. Stings build character. Trust us, they toughen you up.”

Sofía stood in the kitchen, in so much pain she would have hacked her arm off with a machete. When someone got her a glass of ice, she shoved her entire hand in it. She didn’t move till the cubes melted, in what felt like seconds, to water.

Nobody talked to her at first. Not the kitchen staff, not the research staff (ecologists, like Carlos), not the foreign scientists who came to study monkeys and birds. All of them were too deep in their own worlds. Sofía spent those early days in her head, and her notebooks. Lucas had been right. She was lonely as hell. Also, she couldn’t reach the outside world. Using the station’s internet was expensive, and frowned upon. When Sofía showed up at the computer lab with her damp, humid fistful of bills, the station manager, Gaby, looked at her with pity and scorn. After a few days, Sofía stopped going. The only emails she got, anyway, were from Lucas and her mom asking if she was alive, Ed forwarding dumb videos, and Carlos sending incessant notes without body text, only subject lines asking, “You OK?”

Sofía gave herself permission to disappear.

It wasn’t like the press had ever found her.

✺  

She settled into a role at the station, or created one for herself. At dawn, she rose to help Alfonso bake bread. Afterward, she had breakfast, she did dishes and, once the scientists had all retreated to the library (the only air-conditioned place at the station) or hiked into the jungle, she loaded a bucket with cleaning supplies and began her housekeeping duties. She’d surprised everyone by taking them on, but nobody asked questions. The cleaner quit right before Sofía arrived, and the station hadn’t hired a replacement. The staff flipped coins nightly to decide who was on cabin-cleaning duty next. Then, one day, Sofía called from her empty table, “I can do it.” She heard some uncomfortable laughter, but no one turned her offer down.

The scientists tended to be fairly clean. Muddy boots on the porches, clothes dangling from their pegs. Each room had two beds, either side by side or bunked; a nightstand with two candles; and a bathroom barely big enough for a shower and a toilet. Sofía had to empty the trash, replace burnt-down candles and empty matchboxes, replenish the soap and shampoo bottles, and make the beds, though surely the researchers didn’t sleep under their thin green coverlets. The cabins had neither fans nor air conditioning, and the heat at night was unfathomable. Sofía woke every morning with her hair stuck to her forehead, the sheet beneath her soaked.

At first, she did her chores diligently. She folded the researchers’ clothes and towels. She dusted. She tried, not always successfully, to chase spiders outside without killing them, feeling pleased to have overcome her fear. She felt the same toward mosquitoes. After spending a few nights in a cloud of bug spray, she resolved to skip it. Now, she wears her bites proudly. Far better than falling asleep with chemicals on her tongue.

Before long, though, she became fascinated by the notes. Everyone had notebooks, journals, diaries — and no one could hide them. Nightstands or backpacks: Those were the options. At the station, everyone was on the honor system. Not even the cabin doors had locks. The kitchen offered unlimited cookies and fruit in exchange for nobody taking too much. Restraint dominated and a wobbly equilibrium ruled, though some people did smuggle private snacks — boxes of granola bars, Tupperwares of raisins and almonds — from Quito. Fair enough. Hunger reigned here.

Sofía can’t remember whose notebook she opened first. Stephen’s, maybe. He observed monkeys, sometimes sketching them, which she found endearing. He wasn’t a very good artist. He wrote in a cramped, hurried scrawl, likely hoping to return his notebook safely to its Ziploc before it got wet. Some pages were more legible than others. Written at night, possibly, in the library. Sofía had seen him there once or twice. On days his notebook wasn’t in his cabin, she liked imagining him carrying it around.

She read Hjørdis’ incomprehensible Swedish notes. It was a pleasure to look at her densely packed writing, to turn a page and see the tight lines skirting a water stain. Her favorite notebooks, though, were Diego’s. Maybe Sofía liked them best because he wrote in Spanish, so she understood everything. Or maybe it was because he was so consistent. He wrote every night, which meant every morning, she had new material to read.

She rarely spoke to Diego in person. She waved in passing, but that was it. He skipped breakfasts, always carrying his coffee and peanut-butter-covered toast to his desk. Everyone said the jungle was changing him: ruining his social skills, sapping his enthusiasm for the weekend trips to Quito that kept the others going. Sofía didn’t pry. She liked playing the part of the cool girl. The relaxed volunteer who did the station’s dirty work, then read the notes no one could hide.

✺   

After completing the day’s chores, Sofía dived into the jungle. All the trails had names — animal ones, usually — carved on wooden markers at their starting points. She could hike Puma, or Parrot, or Howler Monkey. Sometimes she walked behind a group of researchers, or asked a guide to teach her a new route. Fresh arrivals came weekly, often university students who hiked in packs, filling the jungle with noise. Occasionally journalists showed up, or documentarians there to shoot b-roll. The newcomers were always completely wrapped up in themselves. None spoke to Sofía unless they had no choice.

She slept alone in her cabin. A drawing of a puma hung on the door. She was always hungry.

She was convinced the Amazon air was purifying her, erasing her bad times. It was giving her a second chance. After the float trips, her body smelled different.

In the afternoons, a group of students and researchers always took float trips, which meant drifting for miles in the Tiputini River’s current, one of the station’s boats following behind for safety. Sofía always joined the trip, though join was a figure of speech. She was tagging along. She found the river unnerving. So much water, and so muddy she could barely see her own hands. She imagined anacondas and piranhas swimming right between her legs. If a branch grazed her skin, she had to stifle a scream. She’d been laughed at enough here already.

Still, she liked submerging herself in the river. Breathing deeply. Smelling the rainforest, which was like nothing else. She was convinced the Amazon air was purifying her, erasing her bad times. It was giving her a second chance. After the float trips, her body smelled different. She felt different. It made her new.

She’s gotten used to working in silence. She left her iPod in a dry box the first day, then never retrieved it. Without headphones, she’d learned to identify monkeys by their hoots, birds by their songs. She came to love the sounds of grass crunching beneath her boots and branches rustling around her as she hiked. In the afternoons, in the exhausted lull before dinner and dishwashing, Sofía went back to her cabin to sketch and write. Her notes weren’t a diary. Not exactly. Her goal was less to record the truth than to somehow siphon the day from herself. She’d draw trees, or new bugs she’d seen, or her own changing body. Sometimes she lit a candle in the bathroom, took off her sweat-drenched T-shirt and grimy bra, peeled her pants down her legs and looked at her reflection. Her body glowed. It was, she thought, beautiful. Her dirty hair didn’t matter; she didn’t care that she’d gained weight. Then and only then, Sofía smiled at herself in the mirror.

In his bedroom Carlos had two giant, tacky mirrors, which he claimed were leftovers from a profoundly vain ex. He’d liked looking at Sofía, watching her face twist with pleasure (or pain; during their encounters, the two were often the same). She, however, avoided the mirrors. She felt imperfect already. Inadequate. Saggy breasts, stretch marks crossing her ass cheeks, belly wobbling when she got on top. Better to shut her eyes and let the world turn to water, her body dissolve. It was like dying. In those moments, she wanted to die.

Now it had been almost three months since anyone touched her, and her whole body felt alert. Occasionally, Alfonso brushed against her accidentally while searching for plates in the cabinets or pulling bread from the oven, and a shiver ran from the arches of Sofía’s feet to the small of her back. Later, in her cabin, tired and filthy and dying of heat, she couldn’t muster much interest in touching herself. If she tried, it didn’t work. She’d fall asleep with her hand in her underwear, or on her breast. Her body was too worn out, and not patient enough.

They learned to be afraid, to see men as predators-in-training who only wanted to use them. Nobody taught them to deal with desire. Not others’, and not their own.

She still has a tricky relationship with herself. With her body. Her sexual education was incoherent and clumsy. Her mom — who hated mother-daughter conversations and, as a rule, didn’t answer questions — was unusually chatty when sex and its hazards came up. She lectured Sofía nonstop on teen pregnancy, tried to terrify her with descriptions of STIs. Sofía grew afraid of her body. She approached desire with dread. Then with caution. Then she flung herself into its deepest, darkest heart.

She’s had her share of hookups. Of men groaning like animals while she memorized the cracks in the ceiling or, if she was on top, on the walls. She’s been abandoned a second from orgasm; she’s been kissed with unbearable patience; she’s woken up with her arms and chest covered in bruises. She’s been bored to tears. And she’s taken every possible precaution, then waited, petrified, for her period to show up.

She’s not alone. Her friends got exactly the same education. They learned to be afraid, to see men as predators-in-training who only wanted to use them. Nobody taught them to deal with desire. Not others’, and not their own.

At the station, it was hard to feel sexy. Nobody looked at her. She thought not, anyway. Everyone seemed caught up in their own work, their own routines. Sofía’s body turned into an object that walked, moved, ate (though never enough). It was simple. Serviceable. She had hands to wash plates, legs to carry her around. Chapped lips. Arms swollen with bites. Her body felt like a foreign country she’d barely seen. She never knew before that it — she — could tolerate these temperatures, could deal with cold showers, no alcohol, no processed foods. She’d never known that if her body got hungry enough, it would dream other bodies, then wake her up gasping for air.

✺ 

Today, Sofía is cleaning Hannah’s cabin for the first time. Hannah got here only last night. She’s young and seems quiet, though all the scientists — all the new arrivals — are quiet till they realize there’s not much entertainment here besides settling in and opening up. Sofía is curious about Hannah, and since Hannah took a boat out to explore the station, Sofía has all the time in the world.

Still, she knocks, to be safe. No answer; no Hannah.

Hannah didn’t bring much luggage, only a backpack. On the nightstand, she has a notebook, a pencil case and a single book. Anil’s Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje, who Sofía’s never heard of. Hannah has marked the book up thoroughly: underlines, marginalia, little sticky notes that will disintegrate beyond recognition in a day or two.

Sofía finishes her work quickly: trash out, mirror cleaned (and reflection avoided), clothes hung on their pegs. She makes the bed, though it’s barely wrinkled, then drops herself to the floor. She’s so hot. This cabin’s location means it’s always the hottest one.

Hannah writes her notes in English, which is fine. Sofía speaks the language. She can read the notebook, which is a mix of scientific log and diary. Hannah’s plan is to set up cameras in the jungle so she can take photos and videos of animals without bothering them. She wants to sell the images to National Geographic, which, she points out, has already supported her work. Hannah records every detail. Every cent invested in her project, including her trip to the Amazon; every calorie she eats; every day’s temperature. Sofía opens Hannah’s backpack, careful not to move its contents: underwear, socks, pants, T-shirts, a toiletry bag, a camera, some pill bottles Sofía can’t identify, a pregnancy test. Anxious now, Sofía zips the backpack closed.

Sofía hated how curious her mother was, hated that she dug through drawers and backpacks, seeking evidence. (Of what? Evidence that her dad had contacted her? That she smoked? That she’d had sex?) 

Hannah has three extra notebooks, still wrapped in plastic. Sofía smiles at the prospect of having so many new notes to read. Hannah’s hoping to be here a month, and apparently, she writes in her notebook more than once a day. Someone carved the word CALM by her headboard. Not Hannah —  when Sofía started cleaning, it was already there.

She still has no friends here. The women mostly leave her out. Gaby, the station manager, smiles at her sometimes, and once she offered to let Sofía use the internet whenever she wanted, for free. But Sofía hasn’t had a single real conversation here. She’s always alone in her head, or her notebooks. She’s already read all the books she brought — not that she packed very many; she’s not a reader like her older brother — and moved on to the bestseller-list mysteries and romances left behind in the station library.

Before Sofía leaves Hannah’s cabin, she starts Anil’s Ghost. She reads only the first few pages, scared of getting sucked in and losing track of time. It would be bad if Hannah caught her snooping. Sofía is skilled at avoiding attention, at making herself invisible. Also at digging through other people’s lives without getting caught. In her own cabin, she keeps her diary wrapped in a shirt in her laundry bag, where nobody would ever look. During her childhood and adolescence, Sofía kept her diaries in shoeboxes at the back of her closet, or covered them in brown paper like she did with her schoolbooks, then jumbled them in with her toys. She had to keep her mom out of them. Sofía hated how curious her mother was, hated that she dug through drawers and backpacks, seeking evidence. (Of what? Evidence that her dad had contacted her? That she smoked? That she’d had sex?) 

Once, she caught her mom reading her brother’s diary. Tomás had hidden it, like an idiot, in a box under his bed. When their mother saw Sofía in the doorway, she went pale. “I wouldn’t,” she said, “but your brother’s been acting so strange. This can be our secret, right?”

It was a secret, though not the kind her mom thought. As of that afternoon, Sofía read Tomás’ diary, too.

His writing was peak melodrama. He always wanted to vanish. Life was always too hard. Their mom was always dragging him to psychiatrists, psychologists, even acupuncturists. She was convinced he was slipping from her grasp, that he was heading for the abyss. He drew demons next to his words, deformed creatures with twisted faces.

Eventually, Sofía told him that their mom read his diary, and it disappeared from the box under the bed. She’d hoped to win Tomás’ love, or his approval, by telling him, but no luck. He looked terrified, then stammered a thank-you. No more. After that, their mom couldn’t find the diary. She was too scared to look again, but Sofía did. Her brother moved his diary to a bag in one of their father’s coat pockets.

She knows a notebook can hide a whole world. Lies, or proper adults’ perverse fantasies, or her brother’s daily yearning to die. He never told anyone.

Not a bad hiding place, their dad’s closet. Their mom had avoided it for years. She used to say she’d empty it out; her sister Marcela promised to help. But then her relationship with Marcela got rocky, and she never had time to deal with the closet alone. For a while, it seemed like a museum, with its neat rows of suits, racks of ties and perfectly shined shoes. But the feeling dissipated eventually, and the closet turned into a warehouse. In theory, it was a walk-in, but it was hard to fit inside. Opening the door could trigger an avalanche. Inside were boxes of their grandfather’s books, childhood toys everyone was too nostalgic to donate (“Your kids can play with them!” their mom would say), folders of childhood drawings, awards for proper behavior, good report cards. Memories no one knew where else to keep. The suits and shoes were still there, but family history had taken over.

Sofía wrote her diaries in notebooks so small she could fit them in her dad’s shoes. Usually, she shoved them into his barely worn fishing boots. Here at the station, the tiny notebooks made no sense, but she’d still brought two, plus a normal-size journal. Each in its own plastic bag.

If Sofía could have any job in the world, she’d like to be the person who fills the prop notebooks in movies. She’d write case notes for cop shows, scrawl murder plots in blank books, write the shadows of crisis in suicide victims’ journals. Padlocked diaries for kids’ movies. Love letters for romantic tragedies.

She knows a notebook can hide a whole world. Lies, or proper adults’ perverse fantasies, or her brother’s daily yearning to die. He never told anyone. Maybe not even his shrink.

Just the notebooks.

Once, she told Carlos her brother had suicidal thoughts. He said not to worry. Everyone wants to die sometimes. She was in his bed — she was always in his bed; dinners and movies were impossible, since other professors or students could see them — struggling not to imagine her brother throwing himself on the metro tracks or smashing his skull on the pavement. Carlos wasn’t off base. She’d imagined it for herself, too.

“Unless,” he added, more seriously, “he’s making plans. If there’s a detailed plan, that means it’s more than a wish.”

For weeks, Sofía didn’t see one. She figured Tomás was a standard-issue depressive. Then he began describing how agonizing suicide by paracetamol would be. Apparently, the most innocuous drug promised the most painful death. Sofía couldn’t sleep after that. She began sitting outside her brother’s closed bedroom door in the night, as if she could keep death from sneaking inside.

That period lasted only a few months, but Sofía would never manage to free her body and mind from its weight. Tomás started writing about girls he liked, places he wanted to travel, but she still saw the shadow in his words. She worried that if she stopped reading, the demons would return, twisting their faces, bringing drug names and lethal doses. Before long, though, Tomás announced he was moving out.

Her little brother Ed was happy. She had that. He was the only cheerful member of their family, but sometimes, one was enough. It was enough to know that no matter what, one of her brothers would be safe.

✺ 

Sofía wraps up her work in the cabin. She checks that Hannah’s belongings are all in place. She heads back to the kitchen and stows her cleaning supplies in a closet.

Alfonso is making spaghetti for lunch, and another cook is setting the table. Sofía snaps her rubber gloves on. She still has breakfast dishes to do.

✺

If somebody asked Alfonso about Sofía, he wouldn’t be able to say much. No one here would. On a cop show, the detectives would leave the station without a single clue. Sofía laughs at herself for thinking in clichés. She’s embarrassed even to imagine police officers grilling her family, shedding light on her darkness, revealing what she’s kept unseen. Besides, what would her family know? Her mom never met Carlos. Neither did her brothers. She never mentioned him at home. It wasn’t allowed. Sitting in his parked car on the edge of campus, well after nightfall, he’d said, “We’ve got a good thing going. Why ruin it?”

Her family never asked questions. If she said she’d been at the library with her study group till late, or said she was going to a friend’s beach house for the weekend, nobody questioned her story. She could stagnate for days in Carlos’ apartment. It was so easy there to let desire mix with pain. To remove herself from the world. She was addicted. Addicted, too, to his gaze. She had never thought anyone would look at her; had kept her eyes on the floor, her hair in her face. Now Carlos saw her. Asked her questions. Took her picture. Filmed her masturbating till she released a sound that cracked her open. She always smiled after, glad to have found a new way to give herself to him. To shut herself off.

But suddenly, she was too young for him. She no longer had to lie to her family. He was the one overflowing with excuses now, finding ways to put distance between them. She went back to her old invisibility, but now, her body was heavy with unavoidable pain. Her notebooks didn’t help. Neither did the cuts she made on her thighs and calves. Carlos had left her out in the cold, where her ghosts had been patiently waiting.

Nobody knows why we love who we love. Or how we decide who gets to hurt us.

Sofía wipes her face with her dishwater-wet hand, as if erasing the memories that flood her body. She can feel the marks he made on her skin, hear his lies buzzing in her ears. His tongue in her mouth, his teeth biting her lips till she bled. Her old longing to hang herself, or let him kill her. Let him hurt her. Hurt her more. Hurt her in new ways to banish the old ones, make her shriek so her constant questions can’t be heard. She wants her body to be so tired it can’t hurt more. Or can’t hurt in the way she knows.

She never would have testified against him.

He never made promises.

She was never his student.

Sometimes pain can save us from ourselves.

Her body has already forgiven her.

✺ 

Scientists trickle into the dining room. Sofía dries her hands on her apron, then helps the cooks serve lunch.

No music plays in the kitchen. Nobody talks, but every so often, Alfonso whistles a bit of a song.

✺ Published in “Issue 7: Fiction” of The Dial