by Laura Resau
Aunt reached her arm out and pulled in our blankets. She wrapped herself up, and handed a blanket to me. Then she crawled out.
“Helena!” she cried.
“Who is it?” I asked, already knowing. I felt about to faint in the heat.
“That man in the uniform. With the limp.”
She spoke to me in Mixteco, of course, and the man couldn’t understand her. I stayed in the temazcal, trying to decided what to do, remembering the spirit grandmother who died inside. Remembering the walls of the prison. Thinking What to do, what to do—when the blanket was raised. That man’s face loomed in front of me. There I knelt in the temazcal, my body limp and drained. Cornered.
“Come out, señorita Helena,” he ordered.
I crawled out with the blanket wrapped around me and stood up straight.
He held a lantern to my face. “You?” he said, surprised. “You are the famous healer?”
“I am Helena, and yes, I cure,” I said. “Señor, please let my aunt go home. I am the one who gave her the steambath. I take the blame.”
He nodded and flicked his wrist for Aunt to leave.
“Aunt, go back home now,” I said. “And cover up well. Wrap the shawl around your head so a cold air won’t strike you.”
“But what did he say? What did you say? What—”
“Aunt, please, before he changes his mind.”
Slowly, Aunt gathered her clothes and walked toward our house. Every few steps she looked back.
The man and I faced each other. I wrapped the blanket tightly around me. I breathed in the smoky scent of the wool, trying to steady myself.
“It is forbidden to do the baños de temazcal, as you know,” he said.
“Yes. But my aunt was in danger of death.”
“You’re under arrest, señorita Helena. Dress yourself and come with me.” He turned his back to let me dress.
Where was the jaguar now? If only he would leap from the shadows and pounce on this man. Or if only Ta’nu would appear. Oh, he would tell me what to do. I slowly picked up my huipil and pulled it over my head. Maybe I could run. The man might not be able to catch me, with his limp. But then what if he found Aunt and punished her instead?
I tucked my huipil into my skirt and took a deep breath. “I am ready,” I said.
We walked toward the tree where his horse was tied up. We had to climb a slight hill, muddy and slippery from the rain. The man’s limp threw off his balance, and he stumbled. His feet slid out from under him. He fell into the mud.
“Ayyy! My leg!” He clutched his leg, writhing in pain. His face tightened and the veins of his forehead stood out. His eyes were clenched and watering.
I picked up the fallen lantern and set it beside him. Then, without thinking, I began massaging his leg. This kind of injury happened to men in the fields sometimes, and they called on me for treatment. “Breathe,” I told him. “Breathe.” I whispered sounds we use to calm babies and animals. To calm any suffering creature.
“What’s your name, señor?”
“Valerio Cruz Velasquez.”
“Breathe, don Valerio, breathe.” With my hands I drew out his pain and flicked it away into the night.
After a while, his face relaxed. “I thank you,” he said. Mud covered his clothes, even his face.
I took his wrist and felt his pulse calming. “How did you hurt your leg the first time?” I asked.
He moved his gaze away, embarrassed. “I was getting on my horse a few weeks ago when I felt a pain. A terrible pain that shot down my leg like a bullet. For weeks, every step has been a knife stabbing into me.” He blinked back tears. “And just now, when I slipped, the pain came back, stronger.”
“You will rest here tonight,” I said firmly, in what María called my mother’s voice. The voice that no one could argue with. “Stay here, in the shelter of the temazcal. I have enough blankets.”
I helped him up and led him toward the shelter. He leaned heavily into my shoulder. Under the palm roof, I set his lantern down and spread out a petate. He lay down, wincing, and I covered him with blankets.
“I’m going to fetch some hay and water for your horse,” I said. Again, in my mother’s voice.
Don Valerio nodded. Oh, he could barely move; he had to trust me. “Again, señorita, I thank you.”
I walked to the house and fetched a bucket of water and an armful of hay from our burro’s pen. When I was on the way back to the temazcal, it started drizzling. The sudden coldness, the sudden wetness, made me stop in my tracks. What am I doing? Healing a man so that he can arrest me tomorrow? Healing a man who will throw me in prison?
But I had no choice, you see. I am a healer. This was a decision I’d made years earlier, when I drank from the sweet cup of light. When I promised to use my powers for good. So you see, I had to help the man.
Back by the temazcal, I watered and fed the horse. Then I knelt in the circle of lantern light, beside don Valerio.
“You know, señorita,” he said. “My great-grandfather was a huesero, a bone doctor, in his village. I was remembering that once he cured me as a boy. I had forgotten it. He cured a shoulder strain I had. Your hands remind me of his.”
“Did he teach you to cure?”
“Oh, no. I was a city boy, through and through. My grandfather moved to the city years ago, and my father was born there. We didn’t want people to think we were backward country people. So no one learned my great-grandfather’s skills. His knowledge died with him.”
“It is sad, isn’t it,” I said, “that people move to the city and forget their customs? They deny the gifts of their ancestors.”
“My grandfather meant well. He only wanted a better life for his children. He worked hard and grew wealthy so that he could attract a fair-skinned wife. He made all his children take fair-skinned husbands and wives. In this way, our family gained wealth and respect. But you are right, señorita, we sacrificed a part of ourselves.”
We sat in silence and watched the flame of the lantern. I promised myself then that I would always keep my head high when I told people where I came from. And when I had nieces and nephews one day, I would teach them to be proud of our customs, our wisdom. And maybe one day, I would teach this to my own children, my grandchildren.
But as soon as the thought came to me, I pushed it out of my mind. I would never have children, because I would never marry.
Don Valerio groaned, and his face tightened. “The pain is coming again,” he said.
“Señor,” I said. “I can cure your leg.”
“Could you?” he said, flustered. “How?”
I looked into his pale eyes, wet with tears. “The temazcal.”
He laughed for the first time. A nervous but warm laugh. “The temazcal?”
I nodded, and smiled.
“Oh, life is strange.” He chewed on his fingernail, looked at the temazcal, then at me, then back at the temazcal. “I would lose my job if anyone found out.”
“You have my word. No one will know.”
“Yes,” he said finally. “I accept.”
“Take off your clothes, señor, wrap yourself in the blanket, and crawl inside.” I crawled inside with my clothes still on. As he came through the doorway on all fours, I caught a glimpse of his white body, skinny like a plucked chicken, and spotted with red. His bony shoulders curved into a sunken chest. Poor man, he looked like a sickly dog.
“You know,” I told him in the darkness, “this steam bath will also help with your other problems. Your stomach cramps, your headaches, your troubles sleeping…”
“How do you know this about me?”
“I know many things,” I replied. “As did your great-grandfather the bone doctor.” And I couldn’t resist adding, “Even though neither he nor I could read the books on those doctors’ shelves in the city.”
“My apologies, señorita,” don Valerio said.
“Thank you, señor. Now lie on your stomach.”
I threw a gourdful of water onto th
e rocks and smiled at the sharp sssssssssssss, the sudden cloud of steam. I brushed him with the herbs, focusing on his left hip and leg. During the first rest, he lay under the blanket breathing like a baby.
“Señor,” I asked. “How did you know I was giving baños?”
“Oh, you’re famous,” he said. His voice sounded looser now. “Today, at the bar in town, men were talking about you, about how you saved your aunt’s life with the baños. Your uncle boasted that the famed healer Helena was his niece, like a daughter to him.”
“Really?” Uncle José had said I was like a daughter?
“Yes, and he said that he told you who you could cure and who you couldn’t.” Don Valerio smiled. “But I’m beginning to think that no one tells you what to do, señorita Helena.”
I laughed, and along with my irritation at Uncle, I felt a bit of tenderness for him.
In and out we went two more times. Once we finished, don Valerio lay there under a blanket, all his muscles relaxed, his eyes closed. The wrinkles on his forehead had melted. He began breathing deeply.
When people are sleeping, they become as innocent as babies. Just look at the little pulse beating under their neck skin. You can’t help feeling kindness toward them.
I pulled a blanket around my shoulders. I arranged another blanket up around don Valerio’s neck, then walked out of the shelter, across the yard to my hut. Whispery spiderweb threads connected the leaves and raindrops and burros and chickens. Their spirits breathed together, interwoven like a petate, interwoven in peaceful, green, wet sleep.
The next morning as María and I were patting out tortillas, we watched don Valerio walk along the path from the temazcal. No trace of a limp. He came out from the patch of trees, stretched, and looked up at the sky. Smiling, he untied his horse and, without the slightest strain, threw one leg over its back and pulled himself up. He spotted us, took off his hat, and waved to us. We waved back. Whistling, he rode off. The morning light made his stray brown hairs glow in a crown. Then he disappeared around the bend in the road.
Clara
Copal smoke filled the kitchen. Sunshine came in through the slats of bamboo, making the smoke look solid. Stripes of light moved over Abuelita while she added more copal to the embers. Every once in a while her gold tooth would reflect the light at just the right angle and flash like a mirror. She was chanting in Mixteco, in a low, rhythmic voice. She was thanking the spirits, the saints, God—asking that they receive our gifts and continue to help us heal.
Next to her, I carefully arranged a green feather, an egg, and a pile of cocoa beans on a banana leaf. I tried to concentrate on being thankful, but what I kept thinking about was how normal it seemed to be doing this with her. And how strange it would be to go back to Walnut Hill with these new things inside me. How would I explain them to my friends? How could I make Samantha understand that the smell of copal smoke in a bamboo kitchen felt more real to me than the smell of new clothes on sale racks at the mall? Here in Yucuyoo my outside self finally fit together with my inside self, the way Abuelita’s sandals had molded to my feet—or maybe it was my feet that had molded to her sandals.
I wrapped the banana leaf around the gifts and tied a string around it to form a neat package. Later that day, we carried the packages just past the edge of the cornfield, to the base of the mountain. We stopped at a shadowy nook, a kind of shelf formed by four stones. Three of the stones sat upright, leaning against each other, supporting the fourth stone, which came up to our waists. The top of the fourth stone was flat, an altar covered with white pools of hardened wax from old candles. Abuelita told me that the stones around it were darkened from years and years of candle smoke, from so many gifts left here, so many prayers and thanks.
With a match, she melted the bottom of the candle we’d brought along. Then she pressed it into the wax pool and lit the wick. I put the packages on the altar and whispered thanks to the white heron. Then I listed all the things and people I was thankful for. It took a really long time, longer than I’d expected. I was thankful for all kinds of things—that Dad had a job and could live with me and Mom. That in a few months Dad and I could go on fall hikes through yellow leaves under a blue sky. That I was beginning to like my squirrel cheeks. That my hands knew how to heal and how to make tortillas. That I’d discovered squash flower quesadillas, my new favorite food. That Pedro and I had held hands and it had felt good. Each thing I gave thanks for reminded me of another.
On the way back, Abuelita talked nearly the whole time. Maybe since I would be leaving next week, she felt the need to tell me everything all at once.
“Already, Clara, with my help, you healed the baby. The time will come when you must heal alone. When you are healing, stay focused. Stay calm. Never panic. Never let your mind confuse you. Listen to God, listen to your spirit. Let your spirit animal help you.” And on and on she went, and I tried to make her words part of me, so that I’d be able to hear them even when I was far from here, back in Walnut Hill.
I didn’t know that I would have to use her words so soon. But that night, lying in bed, I did have a feeling that something was going to happen. Something big, but I didn’t know what. When I tried to think about it, it slipped away…but as I drifted off to sleep, the feeling came back, strong.
The next morning the feeling was still with me while I washed dishes and swept the kitchen floor and fed the chickens. Maybe that was why I ended up packing my backpack so carefully, to prepare for whatever was going to happen. My sketchbook, a pencil, a flashlight, an extra sweater, and the rain poncho were already in the backpack. In the kitchen I grabbed whatever looked good—some tortillas, cheese wrapped in a banana leaf, a big mango, a water bottle filled with lemonade, a chunk of chocolate, an avocado, and as always, the bundle of garlic heads to keep away poisonous creatures.
As I zipped up my full backpack, Loro screeched, “¡Adiós! ¡Adiós! ¡Adiós!” from the rafters above. Goodbye! Goodbye! Goodbye!
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Usually he’d just say, “¡Hasta luego!” See you later! His adiós sounded too final.
I walked out into the bright sunshine. “See you, Abuelita! See you, Abuelo!”
“Be careful,” Abuelita called after me, watching me go.
Strange. She’d never said that to me before. Did she have a feeling too? Maybe I should stay home today, I thought…but Pedro was already waiting for me on the mountain, and we had less than a week together before I left.
By the time I reached our meeting spot by the stream, I’d forgotten about the warning feeling. Pedro sat there, cross-legged in his faded red pants, picking out notes on his guitar, looking comfortable. We spent the whole morning wading in the stream, making music, scrambling over rocks with the goats, weaving palm, looking for the waterfall.
Less than one week left before I had to go back—this thought buzzed in and out of my mind like a mosquito. I said nothing to Pedro about it, but knowing it made every moment with him precious.
A heavy heat had been building up all day—the kind of heat that usually ends in a crazy storm, Pedro told me. From the east the sky was gray-black; darkness was moving in.
We were just about to go back to our homes when one of the goats let out a squeal. We almost didn’t hear its cry because the rushing sound of the waterfall was so loud here, like a washing machine. The goat’s white fur flashed behind a tree, right between the vine-covered rock face and a pile of rocks. We ran over to it.
Its rear legs had fallen into a hole. It was whimpering and struggling to grip the ground with its front hooves.
Pedro grabbed the goat under its front legs and tugged. He looked like he was just about to tumble in after the goat, so with my right arm I grabbed Pedro around his waist and with my left hand held on to a tree branch to keep us from all falling down the hole. Pedro’s face was red and straining, more than the time he’d held the watermelon rock over his head, and he pulled until he fell back against me with the goat in his lap. We sat sprawled in a pile, catch
ing our breaths and letting our heartbeats settle down. Pedro moved his hands gently over the goat’s stomach and legs, just like a vet, to check for injuries.
“The goat’s fine,” he said as it stood up and walked away, wobbly and dazed.
Then it dawned on us at the same time. I practically saw the lightbulb go on in his head and I said, “This is it, Pedro!” My excitement was growing by the second, the way it does on an airplane ride right before takeoff. This had to be it. The rushing sound was louder than ever, and sure enough, it grew louder as we crouched down and lowered our ears to the hole. We could see nothing but darkness inside.
“I wish we had candles,” Pedro said.
“I have my flashlight!” I unzipped my backpack, rooted through my stuff, and pulled out the red plastic flashlight. Like I said, it pays to be prepared, even if it means dragging around a heavy backpack.
I shone the flashlight down into the hole, onto a big, triangular stone. The floor of the cave was a few feet down, just beneath the stone.
“Look, we don’t even need a rope to get down there!” Pedro said.
He took the flashlight from me and started to drop into the hole. He lowered his body carefully. The hole seemed to swallow him up. Suddenly that warning feeling came back.
Before his head disappeared, I said, “Wait, Pedro!” I was stalling, trying to think of a respectable reason not to go down there. “What about the goats?”
“They’ll be all right. Just a few minutes, Clara, then tomorrow we can come back for longer.”
I looked at the sky. The sun had disappeared, and dark clouds were blowing in fast overhead. There was a strange light, kind of orange-yellow, thick as squash soup. Everything glowed like a painting done in a palette of eerie colors. I picked up Pedro’s abandoned guitar and put it in one of the deep cracks in the rock face, a little way down the hill. I didn’t want his guitar getting ruined when the rain came, especially since I’d be leaving soon and he’d need it to keep the sadness—or maybe anger—from filling his heart, as Abuelita had said.