Since she had never done anything unselfish for him, he planned to test her devotion by asking her to scrub his laundry in the river while they stayed at our farm.
I was thrilled at the notion of having him become part of my household for three days, which was as long as he dared disappear from his patients.
On the way back to Ix Chel Farm that afternoon, I thought about how Don Elijio, a man with the power to work with spiritual forces, was also completely vulnerable. He was a frightened old man feeling unloved, misunderstood, and abandoned. In love he had the same problems as everyone else. Somehow this made me trust him all the more.
As soon as I got home, I announced my news of the forthcoming Primicia. Everyone was as excited as I was. My son James, now twenty, was staying with us during a break from college. He and Crystal were thrilled by the idea of an ancient ceremony in their mother’s honor.
The thought of having a Primicia as a thanksgiving was quite fitting, as we were celebrating an anniversary of Ix Chel Farm that week. We knew we had a lot to be thankful for: we were still alive and together, none of us had been bitten by a snake, we had a bit of fresh, organic food on our table, and Don Elijio was sharing his knowledge.
Greg and I decided to build the altar for the Primicia on the ancient Maya mound we had uncovered during construction. There we had found stone tools, spinning whorls, shards, and obsidian blades, evidence of an earlier river community—just twenty feet away from our kitchen hut.
Life was undeniably easier now. We expected more hardships, but we feared them less, having mastered some knowledge of jungle lore and survival tactics. We were eager to thank the Maya Spirits for whatever role they had played in our good fortune. We could hardly wait for Holy Week, Semana Santa.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tzibche Crotolaria cajanifolia
Somewhat of a rare herb, Tzibche is used in the treatment of many spiritual diseases and as a protective brushing before the sacred Maya Primicias. It may also be collected as one of the Nine Xiv formula for herbal bathing.
Good Friday broke with seasonal dreary rain and fog, which had been soaking our farm most of that Holy Week. Although the farm was now blanketed with young blades of grass, there were still many patches of slick mud. We had been living in knee-high rain boots for days and bathing in rainwater under the outdoor shower. We’d also kept the wood-burning stove lit all day to keep ourselves warm and to dry the laundry hanging everywhere in our kitchen.
We had homemade muffins, mangoes, and Lemon Grass tea for breakfast that morning around a table Greg had fashioned from secondhand mahogany boards. But this was no customary, workaday Friday: This was the day my family and I were to meet the Maya Spirits.
We began scurrying around in preparation not only for the Primicia but for our special guests: Panti and Claudia. James left to canoe across the river and walk the mile to the road to guide our guests to the farm.
Soon I heard James yelling from the riverbank, “Mo-o-o-om. We’re crossing over.” Within minutes we saw Panti slowly and deliberately climb the hillside steps, which Greg had just finished building a few weeks before.
Behind Panti was a red-faced, puffing Claudia, bearing his sack of dirty laundry on her head. James held up the rear, oar in hand with a smile as wide as the Macal River on his handsome face.
We exchanged warm greetings, and Panti marveled at my large kitchen, with its thatch roof soaring twenty feet above our wood stove. He was used to small rooms with few windows and imposing darkness.
I led them to the guest room—a rough and rustic, unpainted frame house with a thatch roof, but they let out squeals of approval as if it were a four-star hotel. Panti put down his plastic flour sack, stretched his slight frame out on the cushiony bed, and inched his body around like the hand of a clock.
“It’s so big and soft. This is the best bed I have ever seen in my life. Rosita, you treat us like king and queen.” Claudia grinned, nodding in agreement, quickly spotting the rocking chair with a pillow seat. She squatted her plump frame onto it and began rocking and sighing from fatigue.
Panti declined breakfast, saying it was his custom to fast on Good Friday until dusk. I noticed Claudia was more tender with Panti than I had ever observed before, and I began to think perhaps he was right—she just needed a good man to love her and draw out the dormant angel within.
Once in our kitchen amid the bloomers, overalls, and towels hanging from the rafters, Panti appropriately took up court in our most stately chair. He was kind and patient with our endless questions about the Primicia and its significance, enjoying his role as both priest and teacher. As we talked of Maya Spirits, we were startled by a loud, frantic call from across the river.
We shouted back and heard a man yell, “Is Don Elijio there with you?”
“Yes,” I hollered reluctantly, fearing that Panti would be whisked away by a supplicant who had tracked him down. I knew if an infirm or needy person came looking for him, he would tend to that patient and forsake his respite and our much-anticipated ceremony.
“We need to see him. It’s urgent! Please let us cross!” came the voice again.
Panti only laughed and rocked faster in his regal chair. “You see what I told you, child. They follow us everywhere.”
“You haven’t even been here an hour and already they’re calling for you,” I said, handing an oar to James, who went down to the river to ferry the visitors across. A few minutes later James reappeared, with two men following. They looked desperate.
“We went to San Antonio just after you left, but your granddaughter told us you were here,” one pleaded. “I need to speak to you in private, tato, please. It’s urgent!”
Rising from his chair ever so slowly and stiffly, Don Elijio grabbed my outstretched hand and held on while we gingerly walked across the slippery grass to his little honeymoon cottage.
After they departed, I went to the guest hut, where he told me that one of the men had been involved in a serious crime in San Ignacio, where a court hearing would be held the following week. He had asked Panti to enchant the judge and the jury in his favor. I was shocked to know that he could or would do such a thing, but he explained that the charm only works if the defendant tells the absolute truth. If he has lied, the charm is broken. The special prayer for court cases ensures that the defendant is set free after telling the truth because the judge or the lawyers can’t find a document crucial to the conviction. Thus the case is dismissed.
Then Panti did something else that surprised me. He brought out the flour sack he’d carried with him from San Antonio and whispered, “This bag has my money in it. Hide it for me until we leave.”
I carried the bag into the main house wondering where to hide it. Peeking inside the bag, I saw stacks of neatly piled and rubber-banded bills in every denomination. I shook my head in amazement and stashed the little bag on a shelf over our bed.
Distractions aside, I went back to the kitchen hut and helped Claudia stoke up the wood stove to boil the blue corn. The setting sun signaled that the start of the Primicia was fast approaching.
Panti tested and retested the boiled corn until he was sure it was the right tenderness. Claudia had never participated in a Primicia before this day. Her Guatemalan village had completely converted to Protestant fundamentalism when she was just a baby in the 1930s.
She and I put the boiled blue corn through a hand mill and reboiled it with water and brown sugar. On the altar, we arranged nine white flowers—one for each of the Nine Maya Spirits—and vases of flowers and bowls of fruit. Two wooden angels I had brought from Mexico graced either end of the altar with their delicate wings outstretched and their hands folded in prayer. Four candles were burning under umbrellas, and beneath the altar were clumps of the sticky, resinous Copal incense smoking on a bed of coals. Its rich, spicy smoke swirled up and billowed in the damp winds, as a light drizzle fell.
Panti and I went to search for Tzibche leaves for protecting the participants. We found them just yar
ds into the jungle on our property. He marveled at how much medicine we had growing wild behind our huts.
Returning to the altar, we placed photos of loved ones and people with health or spiritual problems whom we wanted to be blessed by the Maya Spirits. All of our crystals came out of their little velvet bags and were placed on the altar. We worked quietly with a sense of reverence, as an air of hushed spirituality permeated the farm even before the Primicia began.
When every detail was complete, Panti summoned us to stand around the altar. I brought the atole from the kitchen and Claudia handed him his bag of jícaras, gourd bowls. Tenderly, he placed the nine bowls on the altar. He used the tenth bowl, called a julub, only as the serving tool, filling the others a third of the way with the corn atole. He was portioning it out as a mother would the last remaining nourishment to her hungry brood.
He turned to see that all were present. Greg, Crystal, James, Lucy, Claudia, and I stood around him, holding our breath for the Maya mass to begin. I could hardly contain my excitement. I felt privileged to be standing next to my maestro at this candlelit altar at the edge of the Maya rainforest.
With the Tzibche branches in his hand, he brushed each of us, forming nine crosses on our bodies. He explained that this was to protect us from the powerful presence of the spiritual Winds. They do not intend to do harm, he assured, but sometimes if people are weak, sick, or in a negative emotional state the presence of the Spirits can make them quite ill. But the brushing with Tzibche was sufficient protection. He murmured a Mayan prayer, with only “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost” heard in Spanish.
After the brushing, he motioned for me to stand at his side in front of the altar. I took my place, feeling like a child taking the stage, nervous about remembering my lines. He made the sign of the cross over his chest, held his hands out in front of his body, palms facing outward, and began the lilting prayer of the sacred Primicia. The rest of us were completely drawn into his presence and power. His words were unintelligible to all, but the emotion, love, and faith of this man needed no translation.
I was electrified standing by his side, feeling each word take flight into the air around the hillside mound. Greg placed more Copal on the coals, and we savored the pungent sizzle summoning the Spirits to come inhale and listen to Panti’s holy chants. Tilting his head back, he sang out what sounded like a shrill bird call, “Ki-ki-ri-ki-kiiiiii.” He continued chanting until he bowed his head and made another sign of the cross. While waiting for the Spirits, it began to rain.
Sheets of water washed across us, forcing Panti and Claudia to seek shelter in the kitchen, still watching the altar over the half-wall. The rest of us braved the rain under slickers and umbrellas, not wanting to break the spell of this singular, charged moment.
Within the hour, the storm gave way to an eerie stillness, and Panti resumed his melodic cántico.
I was honored to hear that he mentioned my name with the respectful prefix of Doña several times, then he gestured with his outstretched hand in my direction. I still found it hard to believe that I, Rosita, an Assyrian-Italian woman from Chicago, was standing in the middle of the jungle with a Maya priest, being initiated into the realm of the ancient Maya Spirits.
Panti uttered the last phrases and was about to turn away from the altar, when he froze on his feet. He peered slowly over his right shoulder, and we all followed his gaze. The air was heavy and still; the palm fronds hung motionless, as if they were posing for a still life painting. Yet the flame of one candle bent three times toward the west, while the flame at the other end of the altar bowed down three times in the opposite direction.
I glanced at Don Elijio. He only smiled and said, “They’re here right now. They’ve come. They have heard our Primicia chant and have drunk the spirit of the atole. Look there,” he added, pointing with his crooked, brown finger. A few yards away from the altar, a lone palm frond rhythmically waved back and forth, as if to signal the Spirits’ celestial presence.
We all looked at each other in stunned silence, as if to say, “Did you see what I saw?”
As we quietly collected the offerings and trinkets we had placed on the altar, I shyly asked Panti what he had told the Spirits about me. He stopped and whispered, “I told them that you have a pure heart and that I have accepted you as my beloved disciple. I asked them to give you every consideration they have given me.”
“Thank you, my friend,” was all I could manage to utter.
We loved the Copal incense so much, we added more resin and carried it around the farm as a blessing. Panti said it would bless each and every corner and shadow.
He instructed Claudia on how to gently wash and dry his beloved jícaras, which he had used for hundreds of Primicias over the past half-century. When she handed them back to him, he turned toward me with outstretched hands replete with his magnificent gourds.
“I leave these jícaras with you today, my daughter,” he said, looking at me with fatherly pride.
Tears of joy and gratitude fell from my eyes onto his wrinkled hands. He smiled and grasped my hands in his rough, calloused palms. We had forged a bond of honor to the Gods of healing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Copal Tree Pom Protium copal
The tree and its resin are sacred to the Maya, who burn the aromatic resin as incense during ceremonies of purification, thanksgiving, and supplication to the Gods. The burning of Copal incense is a specific treatment for spiritual diseases such as envy, fright, the evil eye, grief, and sadness. It is believed to ward off evil spirits and black magic. The powdered bark is applied to wounds and infected sores. The boiled bark relieves stomach cramps and destroys intestinal parasites. The resin forms the basis of a varnish used on many fine woods.
Shortly after the Primicia, a refugee from El Salvador named Orlando showed up at our gate asking for work. We had a herculean task before us of felling several dead sixty-foot trees, sawing up the branches, and burning them so the snakes wouldn’t take up residence in the underbrush. We knew we couldn’t do it alone, so after counting our scarce cash, we agreed to hire him for the next three days.
By the end of the second day, we had felled dozens of trees and were preparing to burn the piles of branches. I hated clearing the forest, thinking it sad to see such noble trees lying on the ground, having surrendered their lives to our needs. That day our farm looked like a graveyard to me, with our machetes dripping with the trees’ life-giving sap.
We knew it was imperative to set the brush on fire at the appropriate time of day, due to the wind’s ability to carry away the flames, especially during the dry season. One had to have the experience and knowledge of the bush to do it right, and after talking with Orlando, he assured us with supreme confidence that he did. He puffed up his chest and said, “Si, señor, yo sé bién.” Yes, sir, I know well.
At eight the next morning he ceremoniously set fire to a dozen piles of brush and tree trunks only ten yards from our two huts. Within minutes Greg and I knew he and we had made a serious mistake. The early morning wind began swirling around the farm carrying menacing tongues of flame. We quickly were engulfed as ten-foot-high flames whipped around in every direction.
Crystal was sleeping on her bed under a window, and a ball of fire blew in just above her head, scorching her pillow and nearly setting her hair aflame. We quickly evacuated her, rushing her over to the Flemings’ house. To make matters more dire, Mick was away that day and his water pump broken.
The fire was out of control. We grew increasingly horrified, running to each new flame and futilely trying to exert control over its fiery appetite. The wild coconut palm fronds were transformed into twenty-foot flaming projectiles. We were encircled, and for a moment Greg and I stood paralyzed with fear and indecision. How could we quench the hungry inferno with only fifty gallons of water on reserve in a drum and a useless river pump too weak to lure the water up a hundred-foot hillside?
Orlando showed no interest in helping us put out the fire.
As if nothing was going on, he nonchalantly asked for a lift to town. Although Greg spoke no Spanish at the time, Orlando had to have understood Greg’s angry shouting. “You crazy son of a bitch! You started this fire and now you want a ride to town while everything we own is going up in flames?” Greg screamed over the sounds of crackling brush, his fists waving wildly in the air. “Get out of my sight before I kill you with my bare hands!”
Orlando strolled off with his two days’ pay already stuffed in his pockets. By this time I was totally panicked. Sparks were settling on the delicate, flammable thatches, and if either roof caught fire, the battle was over. I had seen a thatch house burn up in Mexico. Once the roof was in flames, the family lost the house and everything inside within ten minutes, including a sleeping baby.
I began losing hope and started yelling frantically at Greg. He was also panicking but pulled himself together, calling on ten years’ experience as a paramedic with the Chicago Fire Department.
He shoved a rake into my hands and told me to start raking out a fire line just beyond the circle of flames. It seemed futile, since the circle was eating up more inches of brush as the seconds ticked by. He started the water pump and quickly began sucking the fifty gallons of water into a hose, which he aimed at the thatch roofs.
“The flames are too big,” I screamed. “They’re passing right over the fire line.”
“Don’t you think I learned something about fighting fires after ten years of rescuing people? Just do as I say, Rose, or we’re going to lose everything,” he ordered with enough force to convince me to trust his instincts.
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