Sastun

by Rosita Arvigo

  Yellow-head parrots bounded out of the cornfields as we approached, parading over our heads and flaunting their flaxen crowns. Panti looked up at the commotion and cursed them as shameless scavengers who can devour a day’s supply of corn needed for a hungry family of five.

  We passed a field of ripening watermelons glistening with insecticides. “Look at that,” he said scornfully. “They are fooling themselves. They’ve poisoned their own mother and sent her out to sell herself in the markets of the world. She will make them pay for this cruel treatment. Payment always comes.”

  I was startled by his outcry but grateful for his sentiments, which echoed my beliefs.

  Without breaking step, he continued, “Why can’t farmers of today understand? The soil is like a bank account. You can only take out what you put in. Who has a bank account anywhere where you can only withdraw without making deposits? No. No, one must feed the soil with pure, good nutrients if you expect to get that back. Feeding the earth with poisons only means you harvest poisoned food. Not for me, I would never touch one of those melons. They are no more than artificial flowers.”

  This was a passionate topic for Greg and me, and I told Panti about our endless toiling over our stubborn soil. I stressed our refusal to hasten its production with chemical additives. I explained that a major factor behind our exodus from the States was to pursue organic farming and to live in a chemical-free environment.

  “I’m willing to wait three years if I have to for a few good heads of lettuce,” I added, chuckling because I’d probably have to, given the impoverished soil on our farm.

  He nodded in approval, then led me off the main road toward a thin line of small trees and thorny shrubs that hid his cornfield from the road. As I crawled past the green barrier, my eyes lifted to grasp the masterpiece of cultivation spreading out before me. The sheer size of his handsome milpa was amazing, with stalks appearing to climb one on top of another until they reached a zenith at the top of a steep hill, spilling over into a sea of pale gold tassels and silk.

  He sensed my wonder and spoke about his milpa with paternal pride. Corn was very important to the Maya. It was both food and medicine as well as a symbol of rebirth in Maya religious beliefs. The farmer buried the seed into the earth. It then died and went into the underworld. Then after the rain God Chac came and prepared the earth, the maize was reborn.

  We climbed to the top of the hill, and he handed me a palm woven basket and pointed. I knew what to do and asked for no further instructions. Walking down the rows of tall, drying corn I began to pull off the mature ears and toss them into the basket, which I slung over my forehead, Maya style.

  He looked over at me with bright eyes and a surprised smile on his face. I knew he was impressed, and I felt like I’d conquered a cultural wall that had separated us.

  We worked in silence for hours in the cool morning air, but I couldn’t help noticing that Panti took a new interest in me. I would catch him studying me as I rounded a row of corn or dumped a full basket onto a pile under a rough shelter he had built to keep his harvest dry.

  When the sun coated our arms and slowed our rhythmic picking, I invited him to sit down under a Gumbolimbo tree and share an orange. As we sucked on the juicy sections, stopping to wipe our overheated brows, we exchanged tidbits about the crops we liked to grow best.

  Suddenly he turned to look at me, peering curiously into my eyes. “Are you married?” he asked. This was the most personal question he had addressed to me over the last year.

  “Yes, Don Elijio, I am married with two children,” I said, slightly taken aback. It seemed that my ability to pick corn had suddenly aroused his interest in me.

  “Ooooooohh,” he said after a few seconds. A look of rejection crossed his face, and before I could tell him how much I’d grown to care for him he climbed to his feet. He towered over me and grew into a colossal figure against the blinding midday sun. Light seemed to emanate from him and dance on the golden cornstalks. I had never seen Panti look so powerful. Or so tall. My heart began to pound.

  He said in a clipped, reproachful voice, “Just what is it that you want to know, my daughter?”

  Without hedging, I said, “Don Elijio, if you will accept me as an apprentice, I promise to work hard and learn well.”

  Startling me, he pointed his finger and nearly shouted, “Do you have patience? Do you promise to take care of my people after I am gone?”

  In rapid succession, he asked me about my plans for the rest of my life. Throngs of questions washed across my mind as if a mental dam had suddenly cracked open. Could I tend to the legions of sick people that crawled, limped, and stumbled to his door? Would his patients accept me as his apprentice? Could I now, right here, without even asking my husband for his opinion, agree to take Don Elijio’s place?

  The maelstrom of doubts and worries swirling about my brain were silenced by my convictions and commitment to healing. I heard my voice answer firmly, “Yes!” to all his questions.

  “Yes, papasito, I promise.”

  Unconvinced, he continued hammering away at me, warning of the hazards of a medicine man’s life. He outlined a picture of daylong hunts in search of a vital but elusive plant. Then picking, hauling, chopping, drying, and grinding the precious healing flora. “This is a lonely road, my child. Do not agree too hastily. Curanderos are often not even trusted by the very people they heal. They fear us, envy us, and some hate us. The gossip never ends. When we heal people that couldn’t find help elsewhere, they call us witches. Then at night when you drop your weary body in the hammock, you hear, ‘knock, knock,’ and there is the person who called you a witch holding an infant on the doorstep of death. There is no rest by day or by night.”

  I told him I understood what his life was like. I’d witnessed his obligations and burdens for months on end. I wasn’t afraid of hard work. “I want to learn, Don Elijio. I ache to know the names of the plants and how to use them to heal. Everywhere I go there are plants calling to me, but I know nothing about them. Please, I want to learn. I too am a healer, and I need your help.”

  He waved his arm and, without a trace of lingering doubt, surrendered to me. “Then, it is agreed. I will teach you.” He reminded me, however, that without a sastun, he could only teach me so much. To be able to communicate with the Maya Spirits who lived beyond the veil, I would need a sastun.

  Without a ceremonial handshake or toast to our good fortune—mine for uncovering an authentic teacher and his for securing a serious apprentice—we simply grabbed our tools and continued harvesting. The day was heating up and we still had to collect “Xiv” on the way home, he said.

  Reveling in the glory of the permission of a student to ask questions, I boldly inquired: “What is Xiv?”

  “Xiv is the Mayan word for medicinal leaf. There won’t be time to go into the mountains today, but we will be able to fill our sacks with leaves along the way home. You’ll see. Little by little, step by step, day by day.” Poco a poco, paso a paso, día por día.

  As I returned to my side of the cornfield, I thought about our pact. I still felt overwhelmed by the promises I had made, but I knew there was no turning back. My heart had made a dear and spiritually rich commitment that the rest of me and mine would, I hoped, one day embrace.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Spanish Elder, Buttonwood Cordoncillo

  Piper amalago

  A common medicinal plant of many varieties, highly respected for its versatility as a traditional remedy in Maya healing. The leaves and flowering tops are boiled as a tea and used to wash all manner of skin ailments, to aid insomnia, nervousness, headaches, swelling, pain, and coughs, and for the treatment of all children’s disorders. The root is applied to the gums to relieve toothache. The raw exudate of the root heals cuts and prevents infection. The plant is one of the Nine Xiv used by Don Elijio for herbal baths.

  With so much to learn about the medicinal plants of the Maya, I decided to stay with Don Elijio three days each week.

&n
bsp; I slept in the cement house with him. My hammock was stretched across the length of the waiting room, separated from his small room by an embroidered, orange curtain, the last piece of handiwork Chinda accomplished before she died. In Spanish, its fitting inscription read: “I will love you forever.” The words swirled around two bluebirds on a flowering branch.

  The first morning I was there he tugged at my hammock strings. “Wake up, child! No time to lose,” he said in a raspy whisper.

  It was a chilly winter dawn and I groaned. I hadn’t slept well the night before, unaccustomed as I was to sleeping in a hammock. On reflex, I yelped, “Sí, maestro,” before taking a deep breath and swinging my legs onto the cold cement floor. He turned his back while I dressed in yesterday’s clothes and tied up the hammock where it was stored during the day. He washed his toothless mouth with water from a bucket stored in the corner and gave me a cup of water to wash with.

  Breakfast for Don Elijio was white sweet bread dipped in a cup of instant coffee, mixed with three spoons each of powdered milk and sugar. I poured myself some hot chocolate from my thermos and munched on cinnamon crackers.

  “Eat quickly, child. C’ox c’ax,” he said in Mayan, which meant, “Let’s go to the forest.” I gulped down the last of my warm drink and started strapping on plastic flour sacks, machetes, picks, and water containers.

  Once outside, looking into the rising sun, my sleepiness fell away. I have always loved the early morning hour. Here it was vibrant with bees, crickets, and other insects. The old logging road to the rainforest skirted the foothills beneath the Mountain Pine Ridge and wound through peanut fields and small plantations of banana and cassava. The hills beyond us were blanketed in a vista of fan palms and crests of flowering trees in radiant orange and yellow. The last houses, nestled in lush green land and painted in vivid colors, mimicked the bold shades of flowers and the bright, breasted birds.

  Don Elijio stopped before a bush. “Xiv,” he said as he pulled off its leaves and tenderly stuffed it into his sack. With each yank of a stem, he muttered under his breath.

  I remembered I now had an invitation to ask questions, so I confidently asked, “What is this plant used for?”

  Like a symphony playing in my ears, he answered. “This is Anal. You will remember it by its bunch of flowers at the top, which are first green then turn white and make red berries just before the next rain comes.”

  Xiv (pronounced shiv), he said, is the daily collection of at least nine medicinal leaves to be used that day for baths and teas. “I know ninety pairs of Xiv,” he continued. “Pair by pair. Ninety males and ninety females. Each with a name. It’s all up here in my head,” adding his customary tap on his right temple.

  I asked what he whispered while he snipped off the leaves.

  “The ensalmo. You must learn many,” he said, as if I knew what he was talking about. I was surprised that despite my fluent Spanish, I had never heard the word before. I thought it might be a prayer, but I thought better of asking.

  Instead, I asked Panti why he did the ensalmos. He stopped walking and looked at me sideways, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s simple, my child, if you don’t thank the Spirit of the plant before you take it from the earth, it will not heal the people. Many people say they gather what they see me gather, but it doesn’t work for them. That’s because they haven’t remembered to say the ensalmo.”

  It seemed so natural and almost too basic not to have been a part of my thinking before. The plants are living things, and they give up their lives to help us heal. A prayer seemed like a small price to pay for such a gift, I mused.

  He repeated the ensalmo for me ever so slowly: “I am the one who walks in the mountains seeking the medicine to heal the people. I give thanks to the Spirit of this plant, and I have faith with all my heart that this plant will heal the sicknesses of the people. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  “This one with the white string flower is Cordoncillo,” he said. “There are many kinds.” He crushed a leaf and held it to my nose. Then he had me taste the flower, and I was reminded of licorice. “Cordoncillo should always be added to the Xiv mixture and is strong medicine on its own.” Later I learned the plant was known in English as Spanish Elder.

  “And, Rosita, when you’re gathering medicine, never say to yourself, ‘I hope this works,’ or ‘Maybe this will work.’ No, no, you must say with complete confidence in the plants and faith in God that these plants will heal. And they will, I promise you.”

  I told him not to worry, I was a person blessed with a great deal of faith.

  “It is good to have faith. That is the most important lesson you will learn from me,” he continued. “With faith, everything is possible. Believe this, for it is true.”

  As we traveled deeper and higher into the forest, the soil changed from thin and rocky to soft and rich. It was damp and dark and the aroma of decaying humus filled the air.

  Panti’s long cutlass bounced against his leg as he walked. He took the cutlass out of its leather case whenever he needed to cut away a vine or branch impeding our progress.

  “Humph. This vine thinks I don’t have a machete,” he said, ever so gently slicing back only what was necessary to make our way through.

  Every now and then on the trail, he touched the end of a toxic plant with the tip of his machete as a warning. He told me about Wild Chaya, which bears stinging white hairs that can easily penetrate through layers of clothing. When it touches the skin it forms blisters that burn for days.

  He showed me the delicate vine with lovely white flowers called Lindahermosa (“pretty beautiful” in Spanish), which has thorns that cling with barbs, tearing out pieces of flesh as you pass by. Then he warned about the Cockspur or Zubin tree that signals its danger with its bark blanketed with fat, razor-sharp thorns that harbor biting ants.

  We’d been steadily trudging uphill, and I was panting and stopping frequently to catch my breath. Don Elijio, with nearly fifty years on me, was hardly breathing above normal, as if this journey were a leisurely stroll through a city park. He rarely if ever stopped to rest. Like the zampope, the leaf-cutter ant, I thought, smiling, watching the back of his spindly legs in his little black boots.

  I caught up with him in front of a tangled canopy of green vines and small waxy leaves. He put down his burdens and sliced through the thick lianas to get to the center where the root system was hidden. He motioned to me to come closer, and I caught a glimpse of an exposed bit of a gnarly, black root trunk, which he was scratching with his thumb. He smiled and hailed, “Aha! It is good luck to collect medicine with a woman companion. The Goddess of medicine, Ix Chel, has her subjects show themselves to the healer more readily. Smell this root, my daughter, and remember.”

  “Ix Chel, who is she?” I asked while scratching and sniffing the ebony root. I wasn’t at all prepared for the foul stench.

  “Ix Chel is Lady Rainbow, and she is queen of all the Goddesses. It is she who watches over healers and helps them. She also makes medicine plants grow and leads us to them. She is the guardian of all the forest plants and queen of the forest spirits who guard the plants and animals. She is also a friend to the healer.”

  Don Elijio continued working toward the root with his pick. “What is this root called?” I asked, turning up my nose and making a face that made him giggle.

  “This is Zorillo!” he announced excitedly. “And it is the largest one I have ever found in forty years of collecting on this mountain. This cabrón must be as old as me—a great-grandfather of the forest.”

  Zorillo means “skunk” in Spanish, and this root certainly deserved its epitaph, Skunk Root.

  While his steel tool pecked at the earth, he exulted, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I take the life of this plant to cure the sick, and I give thanks to its Spirit.”

  He let out a squeal of surprise when the thickness of the root was fully exposed. “We use this root for many sicknesses. I u
se more of this than any other plant in the forest. I’ll work here to dislodge this grandfather from his bed while you cut away the vines overhead and strip off the leaves.”

  It would take many days, he said, to finish collecting the “grandfather Zorillo.” We would have to strip the bark off the vine and mix it with pieces of the chopped root to be used as medicine. The leaves are excellent for soothing baths and are one of the many Xiv, he said.

  I set the larger, woody vines aside and scraped off the outer bark onto a sack he spread on the ground for me. He ordered me not to let even a sliver get away. Every blow of his pick removed a large chunk of soft, black soil, and he easily lifted up several feet of ropelike roots. The coarse odor of skunk hung in the air while he piled up the exhumed roots, which I scooped up and emptied into a bag.

  We worked steadily for three hours, disturbing the ants, spiders, and snails who lived in the dark earth beneath the roots. I held back the flood of questions building up inside me. I didn’t want to disturb the rhythm of his work and the quiet of the forest.

  “Learn this plant well, my daughter, as we will fill many trojas, corn bins, with this medicine. Its special blessing is that it cures many diseases. Mostly we will use it for maldad.”

  “Maldad?” I asked, while helping him remove a stubborn piece of root lodged under a boulder.

  “Later, later, you will see,” he quipped.

  We gathered up our sacks now stuffed to overflowing with roots, bark, and leaves, and hoisted them onto our backs. We had to adjust our loads several times to make room for tools and machetes before starting down the hillside. Still, he pointed to another vine he said was imperative to collect this morning. He stopped, put down his hefty sacks, and began cutting.

  “Here is Chicoloro. Very important medicine. Remember it well.”