Sammie stares at me. “I think we’re all mad. Every single one of us. Here, there, everywhere.” And she laughs too, looking down at herself and whispering, “I was prom queen, did I ever tell you?”
“Yeah.” I grin. “I think you might have done.”
She winks, puts two fingers to her lips, and lets out a long, piercing whistle. Ally clambers onto a table and claps her hands, yelling loud enough to deafen us all.
“Oi! Any of you dirty pricks want to watch Harold being squeezed out of Laura?”
Doña Lucia sets out candles, the generator turns off. Sammie switches on her head torch and Ally tells me to brace myself. Then, everyone holding their breath, she rips off the tape. I grit my teeth on a yelp. She’s taken the tobacco and half my leg hair with it. People ooh and aah. I stare into the fathomless black hole, wondering if he’s still breathing. Sammie calls for silence. I can hear the trucks rumbling past on the road, the cicadas rattling. The crush of two different worlds. I think the rain has finally stopped. I can just see the edges of the stars. Ally leans in, a lit cigarette between her lips, and puts both her thumbs on either side of the hole. Then she squeezes. I do squeal now, but she keeps going. I see pus, bubbling blood, and then suddenly, with a cry of release, something sails out of my knee in a miraculous spray of white liquid, right into the sea of waiting faces.
“Where is he?” Sammie yells, looking around. “Nobody move!”
There’s chaos until Stu weakly holds out his beer. His face and glasses have been splattered with what is probably pus, and there, floating in his drink, is Harold. Stu thrusts his glass at me. He sprints through the back of the bar, out into Doña Lucia’s garden, presumably to vomit, as I reach my finger in to pull my worm to dry land. We all stare at his forlorn, lifeless body. He’s about the length of half my pinkie finger. He looks like a translucent tadpole with spines along his tail.
“He’s so tiny,” Ally murmurs, staring at him.
I nod. A little bit sad, a little bit proud. And then I burst into tears.
I wake up the next morning to a long, ungentle shaking.
“Laura!” Dolf hisses. “Come on!”
I start up, rubbing my face. It’s pitch dark outside. Dolf’s eyes are gleaming in the eerie blood-red light of his head torch.
“What’s happening? What time is it?”
“Five! Come on!”
I stare at him for a moment, and then I remember. Volunteer numbers are so dire, ten at last count, that I’ve been assigned three extra work areas. I’m back with Sama, which I love. Then the puma sisters, Inti, Wara and Yassi, and Leoncio, alternating afternoons. Spending all day with Wayra is a luxury long passed. In order to fit my new cats in, Mila says Wayra will either have to drop down to every other day or . . . a reprieve . . . we can try and walk her before breakfast. Most cats would be too energetic so early, and too playful. But maybe Wayra will be different. We don’t know because we’ve never tried. We’re going to try today.
The air is grainy by the time we get to her cage. The jungle is weightless. Silent. I hesitate just before we reach the top of the bank where her cage is, pressing my hand against the fallen strangler and unconsciously stroking the furry threads that I’ve been watching expand over the last eight months.
“Ready?” Dolf whispers.
I nod.
“¡Hola, mi amor!” I exclaim, as if I haven’t seen her in weeks. “Wayra, princesa. Gorgeous girl, I’ve missed you!”
There’s silence and then, I hear something. It sounds like the air being let out of a balloon.
I grab Dolf’s arm.
“Meow!” I copy tentatively.
She meows back. Then I’m running and when I burst into the clearing, she’s racing up and down. Her eyes are gleaming in the dawn light, her tail jerking. I collapse next to her.
“That’s the first time she’s ever meowed at me!” I exclaim. Not counting that one time in the cage. I push my arms through and she grinds her face against me, starting to purr, resting her chin in my palms. I lean my face close, telling her how much I love her. I can’t stop saying it now. She listens. I rub the backs of her ears, taking off fresh blood from nightly mosquito bites. I rub her eyes, getting the sleep out of the sides, I massage her cheeks, feeling the hard bones underneath and the smooth give of her skin. She yields, savouring the feeling of being touched, and when she looks up, she has a dazed, hopeful expression.
What are you doing here so early? She yawns. I wasn’t asleep, you know.
She looks different in this light. In this time of magic, between day and night. More real. This is the time for wild creatures. Her time.
We’re on the trail in seconds.
“Come on, gorgeous girl,” I whisper.
We walk at a quick trot, the soft, cool granular air brushing us, the only sounds the shriek of the crickets, the hum of the forest waking, the muted beat of our footsteps. Shadows float through the limbs of the surrounding trees, making the whole world look like it’s made of liquid. She’s liquid too. She gazes around, standing very still in the centre of a little clearing, patuju on all sides with the red blush of flowers, spindly bamboo stalks and vines tethered above our heads. Her pupils are night swollen. She can slide in between shadows. The sun isn’t beating yet, the mosquitoes and the bugs are still asleep. Even the leaves under our feet are soft, wet with dew and soundless. The smells are new, freshly grown, and she’s filling herself up with them. She swings her head left, right, up, down, around, down again, her ears gyrating, the tip of her tail trembling, her whiskers going wild. Her mouth is open, her eyes googly. She’s a kitten who’s just discovered feathers.
There’s a whirling burst of birdsong, high and sonorous, and she freezes, one paw raised off the ground, her tail caught mid-jerk, her face angled towards the bamboo. The world is lightening by the second, a soft grey filtering through the leaves. Dolf and I look at each other, and I am too happy to smile. I’m too happy to even breathe. I feel a swell of incredible love right at the centre of my chest. Wayra’s anxiety can feel like waves in the air, pulsing and filling an entire world. But now there’s nothing. Only peace.
We walk until Wayra wants to stop, and when she does, settling happily on her fallen sunlit tree, Dolf pulls a thermos of coffee and two swollen mangoes—each the size of two fists—out of his backpack, their bruised skins already slick with juice. I stare at him, not quite believing he’s had the foresight to bring breakfast. Quietly, he just hands me a mug, steaming with black coffee, and one of the mangoes.
“Salud.” He raises his mango in the air, and I touch it wonderingly with mine.
Mango juice runs down my arms. I can’t believe any of this. Last year, I thought she was happy. But this . . . meowing when we come to see her, purring into my hands? How did this happen? The ephemeral feeling of the dawn has almost gone but there’s still a shadow of it around the hazy edges of her whiskers, the mottled tresses of leaves.
I don’t look at Dolf and I don’t look at Wayra. I can’t. I look down at my boots, my familiar, wonderful no-longer-white gumboots that I’ve worn every day for more than half a year, with the orange football socks pulled up to my knees. I wrinkle up my nose, trying not to cry again.
“Are you OK?” Dolf whispers.
I look at him. His shape, his tall familiarity, his tenderness. His pale balding hair pokes out under his wide-brimmed sun hat. There’s a streak of mud across his cheek. I shake my head, and then he’s next to me, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. I feel tears cascading down my cheeks and Wayra going very still.
I’m so tired. I’m not even twenty-six years old, and I’ve got scabies and a parasite that’s been making me shit yellow water for months. And I’m sad. Just . . . sad. When I see the aviary, I see Dontdothat squealing for help and none of us hearing. When I look at the road, I don’t see the road that I adored anymore. I see a cattle field, a slashed and burnt farm, a multinational carving up a land that is beautiful and sacred, that has been taken from its peo
ples, and that is home. When I watch a young man pass by on a motorbike, a gun slung over his back, I don’t see his family. I don’t see the possibilities of what might happen if we were able to stop him, speak to him, learn from him. I see only the ghosts of the creatures he’s killed. The jaguars, the pumas, the pigs. I am angry, so angry. When I look at the forest, I feel my fingers curling around the hot metal handle of a machete. And when I look up at the sky, I don’t see the bright shining blue. I just see the smoke lines of planes.
I remember when Jane told me she was ready to leave. I didn’t understand it then. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready at all.
I gulp painfully. Now, I think, I am.
“I’m ready to go,” I say.
Dolf stares at me, his eyes very wide. And then he hiccups, and he is crying too. Convulsing heaves hit my chest and his wet sobs dribble hot down the back of my neck.
“Was Harold too much?” he finally chokes, trying to laugh.
I laugh too, but it’s lost. I don’t know what to say. The truth is, I can’t even believe I’ve said this out loud. He’s shaking his head but I’m nodding, I can’t believe I’m nodding, and thinking about those planes I’ve been watching, casting their harsh white streaks across the sky. The tragedy of the birds, the fires, those planes that I will get on, my body, crumbling bit by bit, my empty bank account that I’ll have to beg my parents to supplement until I start earning money again. And they will, because I’m lucky. Privileged.
When Wayra’s ready, when the bugs start to annoy her and the sun gets too bright, she leaps soundlessly off her tree and leads us back to the runner.
I gaze tenderly at her as she cleans her butt, nestled safe in her garden of patuju that fills the centre of her runner. I love her so much. It’s like a parasite, I think with a panicky laugh, rubbing my wet hands over my damp scalp, maybe that’s why I have to visit the long drop ten times a day. I’m just trying to empty out all this emotion. But I can’t. Deep down, I don’t want to get rid of it. Part of me wants to feel like this every day of my life.
Wayra and I . . . we’ve gone through so many different versions of ourselves. We’ve learnt to trust each other, and broken that trust, again and again. Each time we do it, I think it will break me. But I think it has made us stronger. Each time we do it, it makes me love her a little bit more. How can I walk away from this? I don’t think I dared hope that something like this could exist.
Dolf picks up a palm leaf and trails it along the edge of the clearing. Wayra stares at it, her pupils swelling, and then she’s up and they’re running back and forth, the leaf gyrating and Wayra pouncing, hiding, delirious with a joy that is just another layer I never knew was there before Dolf tried to play with her, and that—like everything that we’ve tried to do this year—has pushed the grief back, just a little bit. The clearing, its tangled trees, its familiar bamboo, its lemon tree that drips yellow to the ground, its sentinel . . . they’ve all been watching, I think. And if they are watching now . . . what they see is a puma and two strange, filthy, happy, entangled humans. The puma leaps for the curling spines of a leaf and her eyes shine with an impossible green. Her fur gleams silver and in this moment, it’s hard to see any tragedy at all.
I don’t leave. Not for a while. But it’s there, in the back of my mind. When Faustino stares up at me, making kissing actions with his lips from my pillow. It’s there when Paddy and I spend an entire Saturday, finally, if ineptly, fixing the lock on the aviary door. And it’s there when I go into town and open my email to find another message from Tom, making me laugh with stories about sheep, and cows’ bottoms, and tiny cats that fall in love with his beard. I miss him, more than I expected. And I think, perhaps, I might see him when I go back.
“Laurita,” Mila calls one day across the patio. She is smiling, her hair shining, her cowboy hat crooked on her head. “¿Puedes ayudar con los pìos?”
It’s not yet six, the dawn just breaking. I brush the mosquitoes away from my face. There’s a thick haze of smoke emerging from the animal kitchen. We have to burn egg cartons now to chase away the bugs. I thought I knew what mosquitoes meant. I didn’t. Nowhere close. Yesterday, the record for one palm slap on someone’s forehead was eighty-six. In the jungle they flock in black clouds. I can brush my hands through them. The whine is incessant. It is a drone that sends us loopy, cats and people and monkeys all. The only place anyone is safe is under a mosquito net, and even then not really. I spend hours every night shining my torch into the crevasses, searching desperately for stragglers. I have my head net in my pocket now, but there’s already too many around for me to put it on safely, without trapping at least a dozen inside. I chew hard on my coca, the only thing that’s keeping me upright, and pull my collar up to my neck despite the reams of sweat. There are aubergine-coloured clouds. It’ll rain again soon, I think with a shudder.
Faustino is on the roof. I look up at him, expecting to see him on his own. But Morocha is curled up closer to him than is usual, balanced on the metal roof, her long tail wrapped loosely around herself. Darwin is in her lap, almost too big to ride on her back now. In between breaths, I catch Faustino looking dubiously at the two monkeys sidelong, as he puffs up his shoulders, straightens his neck, leans forwards on his hands to let out another howl. His howls are so loud they bounce off the trees and back again, hitting the roof. Darwin crouches, trying to muster his own emulating cough that one day, I think, will be a howl. When Faustino finally settles himself back with a grunt, he sneaks another sly look at the others. They’re gazing at him, their eyes full and admiring. Faustino looks away quickly but not without a small self-satisfied huff that makes me smile for him as I wallow through ankle-deep sludge towards the animal kitchen.
Inside, Ally stands at the high table chopping papaya as smoke billows around her boots. It looks like she’s on fire. Her eyes are watering, a hacking cough in her lungs as she chops, her fingers red, swollen, bloody sausages, black from the swarming mosquitoes. She waves me off when I try to help, sending me out again towards the pìos’ enclosure. I go happily, patting her gently on the shoulder, to which she just grimaces, her face a mask of horror. I think back to the first time we met, the tough-talking Kiwi who toppled Dolf so easily, gold hot pants in hand, and I think about Amira, that jaguar that she is so in love with. Since I’ve been here, she’s returned to New Zealand and come back again, sporting a full-sleeve tattoo of Amira’s face. But even her enthusiasm cannot withstand these conditions. I laugh a little to myself as I head back out towards the pìos. The water is calf deep now. I’ve got a nasty fungal rash spreading between my toes, my skin peeling off like old apples, leaving raw scarlet flesh behind, and I wince as the flood fills my boots.
“Lau, we going?” Dolf calls from the path, Wayra’s meat bucket swinging at his side. I grin. Wayra has been meowing every day. She is sprinting round her trails. She is swimming every day. Playing most days. Even though she only gets a few hours, at most, outside of her cage, they are a good few hours. Even Mila is impressed. Walking her in the early morning, before the world wakes up, has agreed with her.
“I’m just going to help with the pìos,” I call to him, waving. “Be with you in a sec!”
I increase my speed. I see quickly that the overflowing food bucket has been abandoned just outside their enclosure and Matt Damon is blocking the doorway, his long neck curved, his scraggly, flightless wings poised, his butt out. A few months ago, the other Matt, or Damon, died from a parasite. Nobody knows how old he was. They live for about a decade, and Agustino claims that both Matt and Damon have been here since he arrived—more than five years ago. But there’s only one Matt Damon now. I cannot tell if he misses his friend, but he hisses dramatically as I pick up the food and push my way past, wincing as I sink up to my knees in dirty brown water.
“It’s OK, bud,” I say, touching him gently on the side. “Here’s your breakfast, OK?” Quickly I put it down and call out, “¡Comida!” At this, the rest of his friends race out from the tree
s, swaying from side to side. A posse of drunken, feathered giraffes, making a ragged bee-line for their breakfast. Wading behind them, a shell-shocked expression on her face, is one of the new volunteers who arrived yesterday. Her forehead is a ravaged mess of swollen bites, her clothing—not meant for the jungle, new lightweight travelling gear—is caked in mud from where she’s obviously fallen over. She hasn’t managed to find any decent gumboots, so she’s got an ill-matched pair, one red and one black. Petunia is following hard on her heels, peering malevolently over her shoulder. I can see the girl is already missing a few buttons.
I smile. “You’re Laura Dos? I’m Laura too. Laura Uno.” I reach out my hand for her to shake. She acquiesces gingerly, trying to smile. “Are you OK?” I ask.
“I’m fine!” she exclaims, casting an anxious glance back at Petunia.
“Come on,” I say with a grin. “I’ll show you how to clean the cage. Did anyone give you a spade?”
She nods, holding up a rusty spade with no handle. I stare at her, at the terrified expression on her face, her ruffled hair, her red swollen forehead, and I try not to laugh, wondering vaguely who Mila is planning to assign her to, whether she’s assigned her to a cat already. I’m about to ask her how long she’s staying, when Petunia stretches out her wings and lets out an explosion of sloppy purple poo over my boots. Big Red, up on his perch in the aviary, lets out a delighted shriek of laughter. And I think I hear Lolo, high above Big Red’s cage, cackle in reply.
A few days later I sit on the earth outside of Sama’s enclosure. It’s the afternoon, and the two o’clock rains have just finished. The sky is still brown, but I think it will clear soon and turn blue. I can still hear the patter of the last raindrops as they fall through the leaves, like fingertips on a piano. I’m cross-legged, watching as a tiny mushroom pushes its way out of the mud. It’s the size of my little fingernail. Snow white. Sama’s been looking at it too, lying flat on the other side of the fence, his belly slick with mud. But he’s bored now and saunters away to clean himself off, back in a patch of patuju. I stay though, the low flat clouds drifting, and watch.
The Puma Years: A Memoir Page 24