Sastun

by Rosita Arvigo

  Carla turned in her chair, pulling at her arm, with tears streaming down her round copper face. Panti began whispering his healing prayers under his breath while blowing tenderly on her arm.

  “Fill her bag with Zorillo, Skunk Root, Rosita,” he ordered, then turned his attention back to Carla. “Start drinking the Zorillo tea tonight while saying an Our Father. Rosita and I will bring the Tzibche plant to your house tomorrow. We’ll add it to the Xiv we’re mixing up now. You’ll use it for nine herbal steam baths.”

  Reaching under his cluttered table, he pulled out a hand-sewn cloth bag, which I recognized as Chinda’s handiwork. From the bag, he removed a handful of dried, powdered Copal resin. He placed it on a piece of paper that once belonged to a child’s exercise book and was covered with the repetitive strokes of alphabet letters. He rummaged around in another cloth bag and removed a slice of stark white, sticky Copal resin from a ball the size of a man’s fist. He added the resin to the powder, then shook in dried Rosemary leaves.

  I smiled. Panti was always sifting through gunnysacks. Sometimes he looked like a tropical version of Santa Claus, with his bag of roots, vines, barks, and leaves. They were his treasured presents from the Maya Spirits and he was jolly old St. Nick, right down to his boisterous chuckling.

  He wrapped up the mixture and tied it up with a single strand of plastic he had ripped off an old flour sack. “Burn this incense on coals in your house every Thursday for nine weeks and outside your house on nine Fridays. Say this prayer: All evil and envy should leave this place now because it is causing much harm. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

  With this part of his work completed, Panti proceeded with the comic entertainment. Several times he made her giggle, despite the traces of tears on her cheeks.

  Eventually she clutched her bag of herbs and started toward the door, muttering to herself, “Praise God. Praise God. God bless you, old man, with a long life to help us who have nowhere else to go. There’s no one like God and Don Elijio.”

  He shrugged modestly and smiled at her. “Have no worry, child. Soon you will be well again. God will help us all.”

  After Carla left, Panti turned to look at me with his eyebrows bent across his brow in warning. “You see, mamasita, that is why the people in these parts always sleep with their doors and windows closed tightly. The Winds favor no one.”

  The comment was intended to convince me once and for all not to complain about him closing up the windows and doors at night so not a whiff of fresh air seeped in. With the tropical heat lingering into the night, though, the cement house was often unbearable for sleeping. But he especially feared the Night Wind. “It is pure Spirit and can harm the people it touches.”

  Although he’d told me before about the Winds, Carla was the first case of physical symptoms that I’d heard blamed on them. The Winds are intelligent entities to many Latin American cultures, known as Ik in Mayan and Mal Vientos in Spanish. “They are especially feared because they could make people physically ill with mysterious ailments for long periods of time,” he said.

  “Some people don’t believe in them anymore. Even when they’re sick with them, they still don’t believe,” Panti continued. “I respect the Winds because I know how powerful they can be. I’ve seen their mischief.”

  He said one of the worst is the rain-drenched Wind of the Milpa, which attacks farmers on the way home from the cornfields. “They’re hot, sweaty, and tired, and the cold, wet wind blows on them. The next day they can’t get out of bed, won’t eat, and have a high fever.”

  Some Winds do not intend to do harm, but people must show respectful caution anyway, he warned. “Avoid them whenever possible. Farmers should carry dry clothes and get under a shelter when it rains in the milpa.”

  We continued to talk over lunch. I asked him why the Tzibche plant was so vital to Carla’s mixture. He had used it during my initiation Primicia to protect us from being harmed by the powerful, spiritual forces that were roused.

  “It is the only Xiv that cures the Hot Wind of the Maya. It grows just behind a tree near the peanut field on the way to the forest. Tomorrow I will show you.”

  I then asked if there were any other spiritual diseases I should learn about. He looked at me as if I’d asked him how many shades of green there were in the forest.

  “The human spirit can be plagued by as many troubles as the body,” he said. Infants were particularly susceptible. A child was not just cranky when it refused to eat, was up all night, and cried often. He outlined three illnesses the child might have: mal de ojo, susto, and viento de descuido. Their symptoms are similar and they are distinguished only by the intensity and rapidity of the pulse.

  I knew of mal de ojo, or the evil eye. It had been brought to the New World by the Spaniards, who probably picked it up from the Arabs. In my childhood household, my Italian grandmother, Isola, had insisted I wear a clove of garlic in my Catholic scapula to protect me from mal occhio, the evil eye in Italian.

  Susto was Spanish for fright. It can be caused by anything that might scare a baby: an angry dog, the piercing sound of a jet engine overhead, or a drunken father’s abuse of its mother.

  Viento de descuido means Wind of Carelessness. After questioning mothers, Panti traced infants’ problems to being left near a drafty window in the early morning hours or taken outdoors at dusk with their heads or bodies uncovered.

  As usual, the afternoon transport arrived just as we finished lunch and another discussion of Carla’s mal viento.

  An attractive young woman in a miniskirt walked in, followed by a square-framed, middle-aged man.

  The young woman had traveled all the way from Guatemala City to see Panti. Her brother had been abducted by the Guatemalan military a year ago. Her family had never heard from him again. He had become one of Guatemala’s many Desaparecidos.

  She wanted to know if her brother was still alive.

  “This is the work of the sastun,” Panti said as he guided her into the cement house.

  He sat at the table and she sat on the stool close to the door. He pulled the little clay jar containing the sastun out of the Ovaltine can and asked the boy’s name.

  “Ricardo,” she said.

  He turned the jar upside down into his left palm, and the sastun fell out. He blew three times on the sastun and three times into the clay jar, then placed the sastun back into the jar.

  He twirled the jar with the sastun inside in circles. It made the clacking sound I now knew well. As he twirled the jar, he sang a Mayan chant.

  He dumped the sastun out of the jar into her right hand and instructed her to hold it like a die and shake it.

  After a few minutes, he directed her to the doorway where the light was better. He opened her palm, poked at the sastun, and peered into it, searching for the answer.

  He motioned for me to come over and showed me with his finger a number of tiny bubbles inside the translucent ball.

  “There it is, there it is. Do you see it?” he said. I saw the bubbles, but it was like a foreign language to me. Panti could see a meaning within those bubbles that I couldn’t.

  “The boy’s luck is good,” he said. “He is alive but far from home.”

  “Can you bring him home?” asked his sister.

  “Did you bring a photograph?” he asked.

  Then she pulled out a tiny black-and-white dog-eared photograph. I peeked at the picture and saw a very young man with sweet eyes staring up at me.

  Panti placed the photo face down on the stained plastic tablecloth.

  He twirled the sastun in circles around the photograph, repeating a Mayan chant.

  “Sastun, sastun, with your great power,” he sang and went on to ask for the boy’s safe return.

  Panti gave her back the photograph and instructed her to place it upside down in a pocket over her heart every Thursday and Friday and repeat, “You are mine, come here, sit down, and stay.”

  The young woman went to sit outside and
wait for a ride as I motioned for the square-built man to come into the hut.

  He had greasy black hair and a sallow complexion. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved or bathed in a few days. His clothes were rumpled, and a fungus-ridden toenail escaped from a hole in his sneaker.

  “What is your problem?” asked Don Elijio.

  He hesitated, glancing at me.

  Before he had a chance to say a word, Don Elijio said forcefully, “She is with me. What I say, she says. What she says, I say.”

  The man shrugged and pulled out a small photograph of a pretty young girl from his wallet. She looked young enough to be his daughter.

  “I want this girl for my own,” he muttered. “I had her father’s permission to see her but then she changed her mind, just before our wedding. I want her back. Can you help me?”

  Don Elijio picked up the picture and turned it over. “Some people are lucky with women,” he said. “I’ve been alone for many years and will probably die that way.”

  He enchanted the photo with his sastun, handed it back to the man, and instructed him to place the photo upside down in his pocket every Friday for nine weeks, repeating, “You are mine, come here, sit down, and stay.”

  The man paid him five dollars and left hastily.

  I watched him disappear down the road. As soon as he was out of earshot, I turned to Don Elijio and asked, “What was that all about? Do you enchant women often for men?”

  “Yes, mamasita, I do it all the time,” he said matter-of-factly. “The encanto lasts for six months only. During that time he must prove himself worthy of her. She comes out of the spell with an angry fury and will only stay if he has been good to her. It only gives the man a chance.”

  “By then she could be pregnant and stuck with someone she doesn’t love and never intended to marry,” I said. “I don’t like it. Do you enchant men for women?”

  “If they ask,” he said. “But few ever do. Women are more sensible than men, you know.”

  I let the subject drop. I knew that H’mens had performed romantic enchantments since ancient times. I was sure that I never would; it was against everything I believed as a woman. Had this happened earlier I might have been scared away, but I knew by now that Don Elijio had a pure heart, and a lot to teach me. I was here to learn. I returned to my task of making cough syrup out of fresh mango, avocado, guanabana, and cotton leaves.

  After a light dinner of beans and tortillas, Don Elijio announced it was 7:30 and time for bed. Without another word, he pulled the windows tightly shut and sealed himself behind his battered wooden door.

  As the purples of dusk suffused through the coral sky, I thought about the question of faith. A burn is soothed by an Aloe plant, regardless if the recipient believes in its medicinal value. But with spiritual illnesses, faith in the healer and the cure being offered had a lot to do with the patient’s recovery.

  Still, some of Panti’s patients complained of feelings and symptoms that were foreign to me. I didn’t know what I would say or do if a patient blamed the wind or told me that an enemy was taking revenge through black magic. It was a big leap of faith for me to accept that evil wishes could cause physical or spiritual harm. Or this pleasant evening breeze.

  I lifted my face toward the sky and smiled, feeling the cool wind against my grateful body.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Skunk Root Zorillo Payche Chiococca alba

  A tropical vine whose dark, brittle, and meandering root is one of the most important remedies in Maya medicine. The root is used for stomach ulcers, pain, and ailments with multiple, confusing systems. The bark of the vine and the root are taken as a tea to ward off black magic, envy, the evil eye, and evil spirits. The leaves are part of the Nine Xiv formula for herbal bathing.

  Only a few weeks later, Don Elijio and I were making a wound powder of dried Cancer Herb and Tres Puntas leaves when a stocky Indian man bolted through the doorway.

  “Don Elijio.” The man’s voice trembled. “I come with much faith. I bring you a woman who is truly ill.”

  The man stepped to one side, revealing a disheveled woman in her late forties wearing torn and badly soiled clothes. Her hair was stiff and matted, her complexion gray, and her expression tortured. It was her eyes, though, that were the most frightening. Her fixed gaze sent an icy feeling through my veins.

  She was being propped up by a brawny man on either side of her. Her strong escorts, we learned, were her sons Roberto and José.

  I instinctively grabbed her hand and helped her to sit down on one of the stools. She slipped forward, drooling uncontrollably. The drool streamed down her chin and fell onto her lap. The son named Roberto quickly jumped up to wipe off his mother’s face.

  The woman began shifting her body from side to side and doing what I can only describe as a panting growl. I looked over at Panti to see he was as calm and in control as ever.

  “Our mother took sick about two weeks ago,” explained José.

  Late one Tuesday night, their mother, Angelina, was in her room combing her hair while the rest of the family sat in the living room. Suddenly they heard her door slam shut and the lock click. A coarse, unfamiliar voice bellowed from her room, then moaning and a bloodcurdling cry, followed by the sounds of shattering glass and chairs being thrashed.

  They were horrified. They screamed for her to open the door, but she didn’t respond. When her husband finally broke the door down with an ax, the family rushed in to see that nearly all her belongings had been broken and strewn about on the floor. Angelina was bleeding, tearing up the sheets, and biting herself on the arms. It took six adult men to hold her down on the bed and restrain her.

  While her son relayed the gruesome details, she continued to drool and rock back and forth on the stool. From time to time she opened her mouth to try to speak, but the sounds that came out resembled the cries of a wounded animal.

  At one point, I thought I heard her mumble, “Help me, please,” as she reached out for me, clutching my sleeve and twisting it with all that was left of her ebbing strength.

  I wanted to run, but I took a deep breath and let her hold me. A disturbing cold chill traveled down my spine. The hair on my arms stood straight up as if electrified.

  I looked at Panti again. He was listening intently, tapping his lips with the four fingers of his right hand as was his habit when listening to patients.

  “A curandera came to see her the next morning. She said prayers for her and gave her medicine to drink that calmed her down a bit. But within the hour she was terrible again. The curandera stayed with her all night long praying and giving her teas, but after five days she said she couldn’t help anymore. She said my mother was possessed by an evil spirit that was too powerful for her prayers and medicine.”

  The curandera told them to take her to Don Elijio, who could not only subdue the bad spirit but chase it out of her body.

  “Don Elijio, my mother has not closed her eyes to sleep for fifteen days now, nor has any food passed her lips. We fear she will die in this awful state. We have faith in you. Please help her, señor,” said José, wiping tears from his eyes and resting both his hands on his mother’s shoulders.

  Panti stood up, and all eyes but Angelina’s followed his every move. He motioned for me to go outside with him.

  “Put some water on to boil immediately. Put Zorillo in there and get it boiling good for ten minutes and bring me some hot coals in this can as soon as possible,” he said swiftly, turning on his heels to get back to Angelina’s side.

  I scooped out a handful of Zorillo into a gourd bowl and carried it to the kitchen. As I plopped the foul-smelling root into a pot and started a fire under it, my hands were trembling.

  I rushed back to the cement house with the coals, catching Panti dousing the woman with holy water from head to foot, nearly shouting the Mayan prayers over her.

  I went to fetch the pieces of Copal incense Panti had requested. He tossed them onto the coals in the tin he’d situated under her stool
, and the rich incense enveloped her. He also sprinkled dried Rosemary on the coals as he repeated the prayers and held her pulse.

  He joined me in the kitchen to check on the boiling Zorillo. I put another piece of wood on the fire. I looked over at him for reassurance. I felt frightened by the woman.

  “I am sure it is black magic, Rosita, but I will ask the sastun to make sure.” Shaking his head, he added, “It is awful what people do to their neighbors.”

  To acknowledge that this poor soul suffering right in front of me was a victim of black magic was too much for me to accept. So I concentrated on her physical symptoms. Whatever troubled her, she was obviously in need of Don Elijio’s herbs and prayers.

  I cooled the Zorillo concoction by pouring the dark, pungent liquid back and forth from one gourd bowl to another. I could hear Panti twirling his sastun, repeating her name along with words like espiritu maligno (evil spirit), maldad (evil), and hechismo (black magic).

  I carried the cooled tea into the house, and Panti started mixing in Rue, holy water, and the sacred Esquipulas stone. He handed her the mixture in a gourd, and I half expected her to bat it to the ground. Instead, she steadied it to her lips and drank it down, sip by sip. It was the only cognizant act I had yet seen her perform.

  She soon made a motion that she had to vomit, and Panti and I lifted her by the arms and led her outside, where she held onto the trunk of the Sour Orange tree. She wretched and moaned and uttered incoherent words, as if she were mumbling in a foreign language. As she threw up phlegm and the foulest fluids I’d ever smelled, I could feel my face get hot, while my heart beat loudly in my ears.

  Panti spoke quietly to her as she gagged and spit at the muddy ground. “That is very good, mamasita. You will be well soon, I promise you.” He marched back to the house, yelling over his shoulder, “Stay with her, Rosita.”

  The repulsive odor was overpowering my senses and I wanted to bolt again. Yet something held me at my post. It didn’t matter if I believed in black magic or not. She was a sick woman who needed my help.

  I held Angelina’s shoulders and patted her head as Panti asked her sons about her enemies. Any jealous neighbors or angry relatives? he asked. They mentioned their sister’s former boyfriend. Angelina had recently rejected him as a suitable husband for her daughter. The boyfriend’s mother had paid Angelina a visit on the Tuesday before she took sick. The woman had angrily accused Angelina of assuming her daughter was too good for her son. As she stepped off their doorstep to leave, she had cursed them, shouting, “Soon you will see suffering come to this house because of your pride.”