Sastun

by Rosita Arvigo

  While my arms and legs worked furiously, taking long, gripping strokes with the rake, my mind and heart concentrated on intense praying, as I pleaded for mercy for our home.

  We fought the horrendous, unpredictable fire for nine more hours, never stopping to rest or eat. We saved the houses, but the rest of the farm was left a blackened surface of smoking stumps. Snakes ran out from every direction, slithering only inches from our feet. They had been comfortably nesting under the damp, cool piles of brush until the blaze surprised them.

  At dusk, a particularly beautiful sunset in dazzling shades of orange and purple filled the sky. We sat on the one unscathed hillside, wiping each other’s faces, drying our tears, and reminding ourselves to be grateful that we were still alive.

  We went to join Crystal at the Flemings’. No words could describe what we had gone through that day. Lucy put on some hot water for us to bathe, made us dinner, and listened to our story, which got more palatable with a couple of stiff drinks.

  For the next eight weeks, we saw small brush fires ignite in old tree stumps just beyond our clearing. It became part of the daily routine to search out beds of smoldering embers that might burst into flame at any moment with the right wind direction and velocity.

  Greg grew more glum with each day, finally giving in to a dire case of what we’ve learned to call “the Belize blues.” It’s a syndrome that plagues most newcomers to the untamed jungle. When Greg wasn’t depressed, I was.

  After the fire I couldn’t leave the farm to visit Don Elijio, and I suspended my stays in San Antonio indefinitely. I sent several messages to Panti through his grandson Angel.

  Although the fire had obliterated years of work, we returned to some semblance of normal operations within two months, and I felt comfortable about resuming my visits to San Antonio.

  Early one Friday morning, I waded across the river on foot, as the water was no more than thigh high at its deepest point during this particular dry season. Soon I was reveling in the forest glen above the river-bank and welcoming the bulging-eyed lizards and prancing scorpions. The jungle can be hostile and unforgiving, but I had a deep, undeniable love affair with it. The aroma of moist, rotting humus was ambrosia to me, and it felt refreshing to be back again on my solitary treks through the beckoning, high bush.

  I found Panti at home, sitting in the darkness of his cement house. His shoulders sagged and his expression was lifeless. Something was terribly wrong.

  I cleared my throat to let him know I was in the room, then planted a warm kiss on his weathered forehead. He looked up, and slowly a sign of recognition flooded his soft eyes. “Ah, mamasita,” he said feebly. “Where have you been? I thought you’d forgotten me.”

  My heart ached to see him so forlorn and hunched over. I asked about the notes I’d sent with his grandson, but it was obvious the secondhand messages hadn’t allayed his fears that I’d deserted him.

  “I was sure you were never coming back,” he said, despite my assurances that would never happen. I relayed the whole, sad story of our fire and what dumb gringos we were for placing our lives in the hands of a stranger. He was sympathetic, reminding me that such a bank of knowledge about jungle survival must be learned through fateful mistakes if one didn’t learn it growing up here.

  “A dry season fire should never be started in the morning. What a lying idiot you hired,” he cursed. “A morning fire is caught by the winds and blows all about. It should be done about four in the afternoon, so it can burn for a few hours and the dampness of night puts it out naturally.”

  Then he looked down at the floor. Something was still bothering him. I asked about La Cobanera and knew I had struck a raw nerve. “She has robbed me,” he said, keeping his head down. “She stole my life savings. It happened a month ago yesterday. What an old fool I am, Rosita, trusting that old cow.”

  She had finally agreed to come stay with him on a permanent basis but first had to go home to pack up her things. They agreed he would send a taxi when she was ready to move.

  He waited for two weeks, lying awake at night, thinking and planning their new life together. He went around the village looking for a small house to purchase, thinking she would be happier living in a home not so close to his family and patients. He told Angel that they were getting married, and Angel agreed to welcome her into the family.

  She arrived with no possessions, accompanied by one of her five sons, who she insisted would be living with them.

  “I agreed. That’s how stupid I am. I was so happy to see her, and we kissed and hugged like two lovebirds,” he said, almost happily remembering his hopefulness.

  The next day she was already packing to leave, saying she had forgotten something important at home. “‘Don’t go!’ I begged her. But she must have had a good laugh at me, while my heart was breaking.”

  Claudia had been gone for four days without a word before Panti walked into his bedroom and noticed that the lock on the chest housing his money and valuables had been picked. It had been rearranged to give the impression it was intact, when actually it was broken.

  “My heart began to pound because I knew what had happened. I opened the chest and start hollering, ‘Gone, gone, my money’s gone!’” He said Angel came running, and together they stared into the empty chest. Every dollar and every piece of gold and silver had been stolen.

  At first Panti thought it must have been a thief, a stranger, until Angel told him he had caught Claudia and her son in the room when Don Elijio had left for the bush to collect medicines. They were acting suspiciously, but Angel hadn’t interfered, knowing she was to be his grandfather’s wife. Claudia and her son had stayed in the sweltering room for nearly an hour with the doors and windows closed for privacy, Angel said.

  Don Elijio and Angel then went to the police, who followed them to Claudia’s house. She greeted him with a sneer, saying, “So you would never come to visit me when I invited you, but now you arrive with the police!”

  He shouted back, “Traitor! Thief! Your flag is a sack!” meaning “You have no home, no country, and no pride.”

  He told me he later consulted the sastun about who had stolen the money, asking if Claudia had been the culprit. It answered yes.

  When the police questioned her, she gave herself away, said Panti. “That rotten old box with its cheap lock. Anyone could open it with a hairpin,” she snarled.

  “You see, she admits to knowing how to open it,” Panti shouted to the police.

  Panti wanted her arrested, and the police obliged by taking her to jail, where she spent four days before being released and freed of all charges. There was no evidence and no case, only accusations, he said, repeating what the police had told him.

  “My heart is ripped out and still bleeding, Rosita. She might as well have stuck a knife through it,” he said angrily, trembling from the gripping memory of such betrayal.

  “Feel sorry for her, Don Elijio, because she will have to pay a high price for this sin,” I said.

  He nodded with such sadness in his eyes, as if her fate were the real tragedy. “Oh yes. She will die a painful, miserable death. Like one who is set out on a hilltop and tied to a tree, only to be eaten by the birds, piece by piece, until her hands rot off.”

  As if this tirade and confession had restored his fighting spirit, he said, almost defiantly, “I’ve been thinking, though. She really did nothing to me. I’m still here, neither more nor less. I have my dripping faucet of money going. It may never be a flowing creek, but it’s a constant drip.” With that, he folded his arms. “She hurt herself much more than she did me. God will punish her. I put revenge in his hands and commend her destiny to God.”

  As much as he longed to put this tragedy behind him, I could see he was still terribly upset. He kept muttering about feeling stupid and naive, as if he were a schoolboy who had learned nothing from ninety-two years of living. Could such a man be fooled by this evil woman? he asked, without needing a response.

  “Don’t blame yoursel
f for being a loving man. She was the one who made a big mistake, not you,” I kept trying to soothe him. “We are naive and trusting, but that’s what makes us good doctors. It allows us to care deeply about other people’s troubles. God made us that way, papá, and most of the time we do all right.”

  He was disturbed by the policeman’s advice to put a lock on his door to keep out thieves. How could he do this—a lonely, old healer who opened his heart and home daily to strangers who wanted much more from him than his collected belongings?

  But he did as the officer instructed, tacking up a metal bolt lock on a flimsy door that was made out of old scrap plank lumber. When we left the next morning to gather medicine, Panti bolted the lock and handed the key to Angel, who promised to guard it until we returned.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Cancer Herb Hierba del Cancer

  Acalypha arvensis

  An abundant, small herb used to treat stubborn skin conditions, infections, fungus, and wounds and drunk as a tea for stomach upsets.

  It may also be collected as one of the Nine Xiv formula for herbal bathing, especially if used for skin ailments.

  It was nearly eight o’clock one evening the following October, and Don Elijio and I had been sitting on the cement doorstep, watching the sun go down behind the custard apple tree. San Antonio is on a rise, and the sunsets there stretch for miles—long purple and magenta streaks against darkening blue. It was one of those exquisite nights when the diurnal meets the nocturnal: the orange sun set on one side of the sky as the silver moon rose on the other.

  Don Elijio rose stiffly and announced it was time to go to sleep. It had been a long and busy day with many patients. He began closing the doors and windows as he usually did.

  Down the path came an energetic group of women and children led by Doña Juana, wife of Don Elijio’s dear friend Don Antonio Cuc. She was one of the village women who came to check on Don Elijio regularly, bring him treats and news.

  Doña Juana was in her eighties, still trim with sharply etched Maya features and silvery white hair. Like many Kekchi Maya women, she wore a triple strand of colorful plastic beads tied in a knot at her throat, and a cotton towel lay around her shoulders like a shawl.

  She had fifteen children, upwards of eighty grandchildren, and scores of great-grandchildren. She was herself an accomplished granny healer and cared for her clan with simple home remedies gathered from her garden, nearby fields, and roadside paths. Like other granny healers, trained at their mothers’ and grandmothers’ knees, she sought Don Elijio’s assistance when a family member didn’t respond to her usual remedies.

  We opened the door wide to let the flood of humanity through the gates of healing. They breezed in, smelling of soap and smoke and taking over the small room.

  Don Elijio sat down at the consulting seat at his wooden table. Doña Juana took the patient’s seat. Several young women accompanied her, each with several young children, and a teenage girl held a newborn baby wrapped in a light cotton blanket. One of the women was about seven months pregnant.

  “I have brought two of my granddaughters and their children to see you,” she announced.

  Don Elijio looked annoyed. “Why do you not come in the daytime?” he asked. “The daytime is for healing, the nighttime is for sleeping. My useless eyes are worse at night. You’re just lucky Rosita is here or you would all have to come back for your medicine tomorrow,” he scolded in a not-too-stern voice.

  “My granddaughters live at Mile 7 up the road and only got a late ride here,” she explained. “We had to feed the children first, and tomorrow they must leave by dawn.”

  Doña Juana and Don Elijio conversed in Mayan for a while and then shifted to Spanish. As they spoke, the rest of us yawned, stretched, and chatted lightly about the weather, the moon cycle and planting season, and the crop of pineapples that year. It was clear her granddaughters couldn’t follow the Mayan any more than I could. It looked to me like the great-grandchildren couldn’t speak much Spanish either. They teased each other in Creole English.

  “Now this daughter suffers from terrible headaches,” began Doña Juana as she pulled the pregnant woman by the hand and sat her in a stool in front of Don Elijio. “I’ve given her teas, but it hasn’t helped much yet. I thought you would have something stronger for her, little brother.”

  “Tell me, do these headaches come in the day or in the night?” inquired Don Elijio.

  “Oh, my headaches always come just around two o’clock in the afternoon, when the day is the hottest,” said the woman, whose name was Marina. “They can last for hours, even days.”

  “Uh huh,” he said. “Daytime headaches need different treatment than nighttime headaches. Those that come in the day must be treated with a certain prayer and with cooled baths to the head and eyes. Nighttime headaches need hot baths and a different prayer.”

  “Ooooooooooh,” responded Doña Juana, nodding her head approvingly toward Marina. “I told you he would know what to do.”

  “Rosita,” said Don Elijio, not missing a beat. “Go to the other house and fill this bag with the Nine Xiv for Marina.”

  I used my flashlight to find the Xiv and filled the bag. The delicious aroma of the oils in the fresh leaves delighted and refreshed me. I wished I could sleep on a bed of freshly collected Xiv.

  “Here you are, maestro,” I said when I returned to the crowded room and handed Don Elijio the leaves.

  “You are to boil a handful of these leaves for ten minutes, allow it to cool thoroughly, and then sit down in a chair with your head bent backward like this,” he instructed. He mimicked the position he wanted her to take so that she would know how to do it. “Then, wash your head with the cool Xiv water and allow some to fall into your eyes. Cover your head with a thick towel and do not remove it for the rest of the day. Do this for three consecutive days.”

  Don Elijio reached out for her arm to feel her right pulse at the wrist, and as he often did, he motioned for me to feel the left.

  “What do you feel?” he asked, peering at me intently.

  “It seems rather slow and weak,” I said. “Somewhat faint.”

  “Right,” he said. “You have felt it correctly. The circulation is very poor. When I finish the prayer you will massage her neck and shoulders as you do mine. I know that will help her too.”

  When he finished the nine prayers, she shifted into a stool closer to the door where I massaged her neck muscles and corrected the alignment of her cervical vertebrae.

  As I worked, the children sat wide-eyed and silent. They watched us like hawks, obviously drinking the scene in. Thus is traditional healing kept alive, I thought, by moments just like this, when matriarchs show their progeny how to get help from village healers.

  No sooner had Don Elijio finished with Marina than Doña Juana pushed one of the smaller girls into the patient seat.

  “Now, this little girl lives with the sniffles all the time,” continued the matriarch. “Her father wants to get some pills for her, but I told him no, not to do that, as I have never seen that those pills work on people but instead make them tired and dizzy. We must try God’s medicines first, I tell my children. If that doesn’t work, then let’s go see the doctor.”

  “Yes, sister, you are right,” said Don Elijio. “Sometimes what the doctor can’t cure, bush medicine can.

  “Rosita, bring a small amount of Contribo vine for this child,” he said. I released Marina’s neck and shoulders. She looked disappointed. She had been enjoying the massage.

  Back I went again into the dark hut, searching through the dozens of unmarked sacks for Contribo. I located it easily due to its strong, almost unpleasant, aroma.

  Once again, I handed Don Elijio a ten-cent plastic bag stuffed with plants.

  “This Contribo vine is to be soaked in a glass jar all day and then given to the child by the spoonful,” he told the girl’s mother. “Give her six tablespoons every day. Soon you will see that the phlegm worsens and seems to increase for
a while, but that is good—it must all come out before she can be cured. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, grandfather, I do,” she answered using the Mayan word nol for grandfather. Nol was another familiar term of affection, like tatito and viejito.

  I thought the family might be ready to leave, but Doña Juana shoved the other woman before Don Elijio.

  “This daughter has a very serious problem with a fungus on her foot that is too stubborn for my treatments,” she said forcefully. “Show him,” she commanded the woman, who obeyed immediately.

  This granddaughter, Josefina, was the mother of the newborn baby. She dutifully took off her plastic sandal and turned her left foot around so we could see the sole of her foot.

  “Good grief!” I thought.

  Don Elijio and I glanced at each other in disbelief. There were deep tunnels in her heel. Several fissures, the width of a pencil and an inch deep, cut into her flesh. The flesh itself was white, peeling, and cracked.

  “What have you been using on it so far?” he asked Doña Juana.

  “Like always, I bathed it with a hot, hot tea of Jackass Bitters,” she said. “It’s better than it was—if you can believe that—but it doesn’t heal. What should I have done, hermanito?”

  Don Elijio nodded and said, “The Jackass Bitters is good, but you should have bathed her first, then applied a dried powder mixture of Jackass Bitters and Cancer Herb. Those two are very powerful together. Do you know the Cancer Herb?”

  “No hermanito, little brother, I don’t,” she said.

  “Well, it’s little, only a foot or so off the ground, with a little rounded leaf and a fluffy stick of a flower that looks like a tail,” he told her.

  She shook her head silently and said, “No, I haven’t seen that one.”

  “No matter, you can come back tomorrow and Rosita will go with you to the old logging road and show it to you.”