by Laura Resau
Someone snapped a branch. “That’s what you’ll do with your witch wife, Norberto. Break her.”
I couldn’t find enough saliva in my mouth to swallow. A heat prickled over my skin. I picked up a knife from the basket of tomatoes. It felt solid in my hands. I ran my fingers over the blade and began walking around the room. What could I do? After all the lives I’d saved, could I kill a person? Yes, I was desperate enough to do it. To plunge a knife into my new husband’s chest. And that scared me even more.
Time passed. Finally, outside, slurred voices began to say, “I’m goin’ home. G’night.”
“Go tame your mountain-cat wife, Norberto,” one said. He snorted and spit.
This was my last chance. I put Loro on my shoulder. Then I pushed the stool against the wall, climbed up, and cut the rope that tied the palm roof to the rafters. I lifted the roof and pulled myself over the wall. The bamboo’s sharp ends stung my skin. Outside I tumbled, right into the mud behind the hut. Loro had let go. Gently he floated down next to me. He climbed back up my arm and found his place again on my shoulder. It wasn’t until then that I realized my sandals were still inside. But I couldn’t go back for them. I leaned against the back of the house, breathing hard. I heard my new husband open the door. I felt his confusion as he looked around the room for me. I heard him throwing things against the wall, cursing.
I ran.
All night I ran, in bare feet. Loro flew alongside me. Through coffee fields and forests I ran. Across streams and jagged rocks. Over fields of spiny cacti. And all night, thunder and lightning and rain came in waves. Again and again I slipped and fell in the mud. The wetness on my feet—how much of it was mud and how much was blood? I didn’t know. And I didn’t know if the men tried to come after me.
But I did feel something else behind me. Something kind. Something that smelled faintly of sweet copal incense. The spirit of Ta’nu, hovering behind me. A wispy, smoky form in the rain, urging me on gently.
At dawn I stopped running. I sat down on a mossy log by a stream. Loro perched on a low tree branch, grooming his feathers with his beak. The sky melted from black to deep blue to gray to pink. My heartbeat calmed, but my feet began to sting, to throb. Ayy! They were raw and bloody and riddled with thorns. I gathered herbs, limping around, crying out with every step. Then I carefully pulled out spine after spine. I washed my feet and wrapped them in the fresh herbs. Carrizo, Santa María, sauco. Finally I laid my head on the moss and slept. I dreamed of doña Three Teeth’s village, even though I’d never seen it before. I dreamed of the green fields she’d spoken of, the thick forests, the sound of the waterfall.
Late that morning Loro woke me up with “¡Buenos días buenos días!” For a moment I lay there, content, feeling the warm sun over me like a lace shawl. Watching the light shine through the leaves, speckling my skin with jaguar spots. Breathing in the freshness of morning, the freshness of dew.
Then the pain came back. Ayy, how my feet throbbed! When I unwrapped the leaves from my feet, I gasped at how they looked in the bright daylight. So torn up, as though a dog had been gnawing on them. It would be days before I could walk on them.
But where would I go, anyway? I could not go back to my village. Uncle would be furious. Don Norberto and his family would be more furious. All that money spent on a wedding feast. Oh, the whole town would be furious. You see, people frowned at a disobedient girl. Especially at a disobedient wife. If I went back, Uncle would force me to live with my husband. And I had no doubt that my husband would punish me for humiliating him.
Never before had I felt this alone. The emptiness in my stomach spread over my body. The emptiness crept out to the forest around me, so everything looked empty. If a cliff had been nearby, I might have leaped off it this time. Just like that healer in my village. Yes, and if my feet hadn’t hurt so much, I might have walked and walked until I found a cliff, and then jumped off.
Instead I lay on the fallen tree trunk. I lay with my eyes closed, blocking out the sunshine. There I dwelled in empty blackness. Everything seemed empty because I was empty. Because my soul had nearly given up. It had started drifting away from my body. The fire in my feet was crawling up my legs, filling my body with fever. My soul did nothing to stop it. My soul had nearly stopped caring.
Loro found little berries to eat. I ate nothing. “¡Ánimo!” he called to me. But I barely moved. Day faded into night and into day again. Rain fell on me sometimes. My body was almost too tired to shiver. Too hopeless to form goose bumps. In the mornings the sun dried my body, but in the afternoons rain poured on it again.
Faces from my past came and went. The faces drifted in and out of my mind. Faces of people I might never see again. María laughing and touching my arm. Aunt Teresa flipping tortillas. Little Lupita pretending to do a limpia. Doña Three Teeth singing softly.
But wait. Doña Three Teeth’s voice grew clearer and stronger, until it became too close to be only a dream. Her fingers held my wrist, felt my pulse. Her hands rested on my forehead, cool and dry. They gently lifted my head and dribbled water into my mouth.
I coughed and sputtered. When I opened my eyes, I saw her three rotten teeth, her worried eyes.
Soon there was woodsmoke. She’d built a fire. She disappeared and came back with armfuls of herbs. I watched her brew them in bubbling water, watched her blow on the tea to cool it. Sip by sip, I felt the pungent tea go down my throat. Little by little it began to fill the emptiness inside.
Was this a ghost? No, it couldn’t be, because at night I felt her bony body. She pressed against me under a thick blanket, sharing her warmth. She sang to me. Thin wandering melodies she sang. Melodies that a mother might sing to her child. Little by little her voice pulled me out of my dark hole. She pulled me back out into the sunshine.
Then one morning—after she fed me milk with cinnamon and honey—the rusty words finally creaked out of my mouth. “Nku ta’a vini.” Thank you.
Her face lit up at my voice. “You’ll live!” she chirped. She leaped up and danced. Around in the air she flailed her bird legs and twig arms.
Loro screeched and whistled along with her. “Helena Helena!” The first smile in ages came to my face. A few days later I was well enough to hear her story.
“Oh, Helena!” she said. “When the day came for me to leave prison, I was terrified. Terrified! I walked outside and oh, I thought my knees would buckle under. And the sunshine! It was so bright I thought I’d go blind. All the colors, the noise, the people! And you know what I did? I ran straight back inside to the door of my cell. Ha! But the guard wouldn’t let me back in! Imagine, locked outside my cell.” She laughed, little squirrel noises. “I had nowhere to go. Of course, I couldn’t face going back to my village. So I decided to drown myself in a river.
“Ah, but then I remembered the thirty pesos. The money you gave me, Helena! Well, what a waste to drown myself in the river without spending it first. Don’t you think? After all, you were kind enough to give it to me. So I walked on my wobbly legs to the market. And here’s what I did.” She leaned closer. “I bought myself a chicken. And a pot to cook it in. And chiles and chocolate and nuts and tomatoes and sesame seeds and raisins and spices. And a little grindstone. You can guess my plan—to make chocolate-chile sauce for my chicken! Then I bought cherry pastries—a bag of them! One after one I ate them, leaving the city, leaving a trail of crumbs behind me. I walked until I found a forest with a stream where I could cook and eat in peace. My final meal.
“And you know, Helena, as I was cooking, I remembered things. I remembered how much I loved the feel of the grindstone under my hands. And the smell of roasting garlic. And oh, Helena, when I ate that chocolate-chile chicken, tears came to my eyes. Partly from the spiciness, yes, but partly from memories of village fiestas. Everyone would come to those fiestas and fill their bellies and dance and dance. Such fun! So you know what I did? Instead of throwing myself in the river, I danced. I danced and sang, and made a new decision. I told myself, All righ
t, Three Teeth, you can live as long as you can find food. And I walked. Just walked. For two years I’ve been walking. I find fruit and nuts from trees. Sometimes people give me tortillas when they pass me on the road. Because, yes, there are still good people in this world, people who know we all eat from the same tortilla.
“And the odd thing is, Helena, that last week I found myself dreaming of you. Hearing your voice in the wind and the rain and the water. Oh, I told myself, Three Teeth, you’ve finally gone crazy. But I let your voice lead me here. A few days ago I was fetching water a little way up the stream. And all of a sudden that beautiful green bird of yours walked right up to me. ‘Helena Helena!’ he yelled. I knew it was Loro. I followed him downstream, and he brought me to you, love. You, lying here, a few breaths away from death.”
Little by little my strength came back. I was a withered plant, slowly growing greener, growing stronger. Soaking up sunshine. Drinking up water. Feeling the rich soil beneath me and the blue sky above.
Once I gained back enough strength, I told doña Three Teeth my own story. I spoke of my curing, Aunt Teresa’s baños de temazcal, my adorable baby cousin. But when I came to the part about the wedding, my voice turned bitter. “So, I am married now,” I told her.
“Ha!” she laughed. She dipped a cloth into a pot of cool water steeped with herbs. “Of course you’re not!” She squeezed the cloth and placed it gently on my foot. It felt refreshing and tingly.
“But I am,” I insisted. “We had a ceremony in the church. We had the fiesta afterward. Everything.”
“You didn’t sign the government papers yet, did you?” she asked. Her voice was confident. She pressed the wet cloth against the sole of my other foot.
“Well, no,” I said. You see, an official from the city came once a year to our village. He brought papers for that year’s weddings, and all the new couples signed at the same time.
“No, the man with the papers hadn’t come yet.”
“So you’re not married,” she said with a wink. She dabbed the cloth over my ankles, over the scabs and swollen scratches.
“But the ceremony—” I began.
“That means nothing!” she cried. “Nothing!” She threw the cloth into the pot. Water splashed over the sides. “Your uncle forced you! I tell you, you are not married, Helena!”
“You think?” I asked, a smile spreading across my face. I felt lighter, as though I’d just shrugged a heavy bundle of firewood off my shoulders.
“Ha! I am certain! I married for love, Helena. And you will too someday.”
“You sound like Ta’nu.” I laughed.
Doña Three Teeth asked me to call her Nana. In Mixteco this means “mother.” I called her Nana gladly. Sometimes, when we were cleaning dishes or fetching water, I would feel that in some way Nana was my mother.
One night we sat on a stone by the river. She combed my hair with her fingers. Softly, she sang the song about the rabbit in the moon. “Nana,” I told her after the song had ended, “you are my mother because you gave me life.”
She unwound the orange ribbon from her braids and carefully wove it into mine. She fastened the ends together.
When I woke up the next morning, there was Nana, standing over me. Watching me. Waiting for my eyes to open. Oh, she was full of joy. Joy, spilling out all around her.
“Helena, you’re well enough to travel now. Let’s go!”
“Go where?” I mumbled. I was sleepy, yes, but already her joy had started seeping into me.
“To the village where I grew up!” she said. Her eyes blazed. “Together we’ll find my children. Together we’ll live by the sound of the waterfall. I dreamed this last night!”
“How will we live?” I asked. I sat up and stretched. “How will we eat?”
“Curing! We’ll be the village’s healers!”
I thought about this. She had learned to heal from her grandmother. And oh, how I longed to start curing again. Yes, we could do this together. We didn’t need husbands. But what about Aunt, and María, and Lupita? Thinking about them made my chest tighten up. No, it was too late to go back to that path. My path now was leading me elsewhere, pulling me along like a river’s current. Pulling me over the edge, like a waterfall. Over the edge to a new place, a different life. Oh, I would not live with my aunt and cousins again, but sparks from their souls flickered inside mine. And perhaps someday I would go back to see them.
“How far is your village?” I asked. I felt a flutter in my stomach, like the wings of a hummingbird.
“Oh, about three days’ walk over those mountains.” Nana pointed west. “It’s called Yucuyoo.”
Yucuyoo. The Hill of the Moon.
For three days we walked along paths, steep and rocky. We slipped and slid on the mud from afternoon rains. But the walking was good for me. Nana said that I was still too thin, but my cheeks were pink like rose petals. That my face glowed like a full moon. That my hair looked thick and shiny as a jaguar’s fur.
And you know, Nana looked beautiful now too. How can a person be beautiful with three rotten teeth, you wonder. But she was! The fine structure of her face, strong like the old stone sculptures of gods that we came across in the cornfields. And I felt a warmth, a big light, that came from her little bird body. Oh, she was beautiful.
At the top of a tall mountain, late in the morning on the fourth day, we peered into the valley below. Smoke rose from houses. The women were making tortillas. How my stomach rumbled! We hadn’t eaten tortillas for ages.
“We’re home!” Nana yelled. She did a little dance, singing, “We’re home, we’re home….”
Together we skipped, stumbled, tripped down the path. Of course, at the bottom we slowed down, because we couldn’t have people in the village thinking we were crazy. No, they would need to trust us before they came to us for cures. In front of us, a young man led his burro, carrying bundles of firewood. We fell into step next to him.
“Good morning,” he said in Mixteco.
“Good morning,” we said. We were still breathless and smiling.
He was eating a quesadilla as he walked. He must have seen us staring at the food and breathing in the smell of melted cheese, because he offered us some. I chewed the quesadilla and savored every bite. As I ate, I looked sideways at the man. He walked with a limp, wincing at every step.
“How did you hurt your leg, señor?” I asked.
“Pulled a muscle last week hoeing the cornfields,” he said.
Oh, I couldn’t resist. “I can cure it with a baño de temazcal. To thank you for the food.”
“Are you a healer?” he asked, surprised. “You’re so young. You’re not even my age.”
“Helena’s been curing since she was a little girl,” Nana said proudly. “She’s famous. People have come from far-off places to be cured by her….”
Blushing, I squeezed Nana’s arm to make her stop.
“Yes,” he said, smiling. He tilted his hat up to see me more clearly. “I would be honored to be cured by you, señorita Helena.”
And that’s when I noticed the kindness in his eyes. One green and one brown.
Clara
When the storm ended, rays of orange evening light peeked out from behind the mountains. Even though broken branches and fallen trees dotted the mountainside, everything seemed fresh and sparkling—the shiny rocks, the leaves with water droplets clinging like diamonds. I ran my hands lightly over my bruises and scrapes. My skin had become a mosaic of purple and blue.
The goats began to stir. I looked down at Pedro. He lay perfectly still, his head in my lap, only the breeze moving his hair slightly. For a terrifying second I thought he might be dead.
“Pedro.” I brushed my fingers over his forehead.
He smiled faintly.
“C’mon,” I whispered, and picked up my backpack.
I helped him stand up and held my arm around him as we walked a few steps downhill.
“Wait,” he mumbled. “My guitar.”
“It�
�s over here.” I led him toward the crack in the rock where I’d stowed it. When I pulled it out, he gave me a relieved smile. I slung it over my back and let it rest against my backpack. Leaning on each other for support, we squished down the mountain. What I remember most about our walk were the butterflies dancing in the air above the uprooted trees, as though it were a day just like any other.
After dusk, we sat by the kitchen fire—my grandparents and Pedro and his mother and me, all drinking cinnamon coffee with lots of sugar. A couple of hours earlier, Abuelita and Abuelo had met Pedro and me at the base of the mountain and helped us walk home. Once we were back in the kitchen, Abuelita had placed cool cloths on my raw hands and made Pedro an herb tea for his scorpion stings. When his mother showed up, she hugged him over and over and settled her thin arm protectively around him.
“Ayyy, Pedro Victor!” she murmured, smoothing his hair.
“Aren’t you lucky Clara was with you!”
“Pedro Victor?” I asked. Where had I heard that name before?
“Victor’s my middle name.” Pedro took a sip of tea. “I was named after my great-grandfather.”
“Pedro Victor, the romantic musician,” Abuelo told me with a wink.
Slowly, the pieces were coming together. “Doña Three Teeth’s husband?” I asked.
Abuelita nodded. “Nana lived long enough to see her great-grandson born,” she said, motioning to Pedro.
Pedro’s mother smiled. “She said he looked just like his great-grandfather.”
The fire flickered in a way that lit up a perfectly formed spider’s web in the corner. Thin, silvery threads stretched from a rafter to a basket of dried chiles to the wall. The threads joined with more threads and spiraled inward, meeting in the center. Only when the light was just right, only if you were paying attention, could you begin to see the connections. It occurred to me that hidden strands linked us all, through decades, over thousands of miles, across borders.