Seconds passed. The water churned in my lap as they tried to beat their way to the top, tiny sharp claws scraping and grabbing at the flesh of my thighs through the thin fabric.
For those few moments, I loved watching them die. I was God, kneeling there in my shit dress, knees sinking in the mud, belly full of my beloved pig.
But then something flipped inside me. Only rage had fueled me, and rages pass. I squeezed my eyes shut and saw Omar’s face turning hard, slack with disappointment, knowing I was lying when I told him the birds drowned by accident, because he saw through all my lies.
I stood. A gallon of water flushed from my lap, along with the birds, weak but still moving. Filled with a bottomless remorse, a gutting shame, I bent down to catch them, for the first time feeling the tender swell of my own belly.
TWENTY-THREE
– AUGUST –
The morning Omar and Franz and the others left to hunt, just three weeks later, the heat came early, at sunrise, weighing down over the village like a sodden blanket. Rain leadened the air, but never arrived. The jungle drooped over the village like a thousand giants leaning over, their tangled green hair hanging down, heavy with secrets and sorrows. Overnight, the jungle felt closer. Ferns covered a path cleared just days before, plants sprouted around the huts. Only the daily clearing of new growth kept the area we called the village a village—a crescent of beaten earth that allowed the longhouse and the huts, the manioc fields, the lone barn, with our lone cow, to exist. At night I lay listening to the jungle advance: a squeaking sound, as green burst from more green.
As a surprise, Omar built me a little bookshelf made of chonta wood, a hard, durable palm with a beautiful gold-and-molasses-colored grain. It was there I kept my tiny collection of novels, dictionaries, and National Geographics. His small gift, and those from the Frannies, gave me more comfort than I thought possible; they were the tiny glimmerings of a home of my own creation. As mosquitos buzzed around my head, I drank down the warm, sweet glass of papaya juice he had made especially for me, thinking, How is it possible for a place to be both heaven and hell?
As he sorted supplies for his hunt into a string bag, I sat cross-legged on our thin mattress, flipping through his latest English assignment. “Come on. I want to hear you read this.”
He fished out his glasses from a straw basket, got comfortable across from me, and read in English.
“ ‘The Grove. I am twelve years old. For God’s Sake leaves the Tatinga and lives now in Ayachero with us. He is sixteen. Very sad, very angry. Nobody wants him here. As you say, the Tatinga push out the ones with deformity, just like Ayachero people. But I like him and want to learn from him. He says, if you take care of me, you bring me food, let me live with you, I show you a secret. Such a big secret, that if you know it, people respect you, they think you are some sort of God. We are young, and that is how we believe. That information is always good to have.
“ ‘Then, Beya goes on all the hunts with the Tatinga. She can find game very fast, she can call the game sometimes. She says to us, she wants to teach us a lesson. Like I say, we are only young boys. She is showing us a magic place, but it is created from greed and pain.
“ ‘For three days and nights we travel. Four other young Tatinga men, Beya, For God’s Sake, sometimes on a donkey because of his leg, and me. She wants to show us how men become monsters. She wants to warn us. On the morning of day number four we come to a row of rubber trees. We see them before, but never in a row. They are planted. All of their bark is cut in the V shape. That means rubber tappers are there, many years ago, that tribes are made slaves to tap the rubber. Murder and torture and enslave to gather rubber for the barons. A hundred years ago. But the rubber trees still have scars. They remember the torture. The trees bleed out all of their white tears and they are empty. The rubber tappers say no one is allowed to speak your tribe’s language, your tribe’s language is against the law. This is when people begin to shine to each other, to speak in the old language, the language Beya uses with you.
“ ‘Behind the wall of rubber trees grows the grove of mahogany. Three kilometers by three kilometers, thousands of trees so close it is like night in there all the time. Beya says the men that plant the rubber, the barons, have despair because that trade dies, so they cut down the forest and plant mahogany. The grove grows for many, many years. Generations of men kill each other for the secret, until only the Tatinga know where it is. Lots of people say the grove is a myth, but I know the truth.’ ”
Omar took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “How’m I doing?”
“You get an A.”
“Your turn. A secret about you.”
I nodded, pushing myself to my feet. “It’s not a secret, more of a request. I want to go on a hunt with you.” I couldn’t get Doña Antonia’s words out of my head: you never prepare the game. She was right. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, yet by now I ate meat every chance I got—animals that others risked their lives to hunt or spent their time dressing. Perhaps it was also boredom with the other “women’s work.” The biggest draw: a hunt would mean more time with Omar, in a world that he knew like no other.
“You’re pregnant—”
“The other women go with you, and some of them have been pregnant, too—”
“It’s too hard, Lily. They clean the game, they build the shelters. Lots of bugs, you wouldn’t like it.” He got up and brushed himself off, as in: case closed.
“You don’t know that.”
“So now you want to kill the animals, too?”
“Maybe I’ll feel better about eating them. I don’t know. I want to be with you, to learn what you know.”
“You need to be able to run, Lily.”
“I can run.”
“If you can’t, I’m going to have to leave you behind. We can’t lose the game, waiting for you.”
“I can run,” I said, scampering out after him into the blaze of sun as if to demonstrate, all the way down the hill to the waiting boats and men, their women packing the second sloop with supplies.
He threw his gear in the boat, joked with the men for a time, then turned back to me, pulled me aside. “You know, Liliana, if we decide to stay here that long, you’re going to have our baby in the rainy season. It’s a very hard time, very dangerous.” I rubbed my belly, picturing the flooded forest, snakes floating up to the windowsills, manatees drifting under the huts like dark clouds. “Everyone has to work together, the men, the women, children. Everybody. So talk to the women more. A lot of them still don’t know you.”
“I will, I will.”
“I’ll tell For God’s Sake to show you how to use a pistol. Are you ready to do that?”
“Anytime.”
“It’s really that important to you, Lily, to go on a hunt?”
“It is, just once.”
“If you can shoot, I’ll bring you next time. That’ll cure you of ever wanting to go again.” He sighed and glanced at the heavy sky that still held the rain in check. “So tell me, what’s my next assignment?”
“Tell me why you love me. This one is due as soon as possible.”
He gave me a wry smile but kissed me full on the mouth in front of all the men and women before he turned to the boats. We both watched each other as long as we could—me from shore, him from his boat—before the jungle swallowed him up.
* * *
Before a rapt audience of wide-eyed children who sat in a semicircle around me in the main room of the longhouse, I fed two scraps of a burlap sack under the oscillating needle of the sewing machine, foot working the treadle hard. Sweat dripped into my eyes as the incessant mosquitos buzzed at my ears. Slap and sew, slap and sew, slap and sew. Dark purple iodine stains blotched my legs, arms, neck, and face like birthmarks.
I finished joining the two pieces and offered the now towel-long remnant to the children; they snatched it out of my hands and—one holding each end—twirled in a circle as if to test the strength of the stitching. They�
�d collected a pile of things for me to sew together: torn dresses and shirts, ripped dolls, even palm fronds. I welcomed all requests, thrilled to be useful.
Bent over with the strain, a line of half a dozen women dragged a trail of fine wire mesh behind them up the hill: the fish gate. So as not to tear it any further, they carried it all the way up the stairs and unfurled it in front of me, Paco bringing up the tattered ends. There were enormous rips in every ten-foot section. The women had been sewing it by hand when they could, but keeping up with the repairs had become impossible. We’d been going out there with no protection at all. For God’s Sake had slipped me some nylon thread, but I had no idea if the hundred-year-old machine would hold up.
In the middle of a long seam, the machine screeched to a halt, its gears grinding together, desperate to be oiled. Marietta, a sweet but somber prepubescent twelve-year-old who was fascinated by the machine and who sat on a stool next to me, trying to learn every step, nearly burst into tears when it stopped. The line of villagers with torn clothing looked at me expectantly as the women holding the fish net sighed and looked away, well acquainted with the lack of supplies in Ayachero, as well as the way humidity destroyed the innards of machinery.
“I think some oil or grease would get this thing going again,” I said to Marietta, who disappeared into the storeroom, sprinting back with a short length of bamboo tube filled with cooking oil and sealed with rubber on both ends.
Marietta worked the treadle and I worked to spread out the netting, while Paco helped to feed the material under the needle and gather it up once a panel was finished. I was relieved and surprised every time the thick, old iron needle neither broke nor tore the netting as it pulled the nylon thread smoothly through the mesh. Soon I left Marietta to take over the machine—never saw her so excited—to help Paco fold and stack the finished sections. I couldn’t remember having a more joyous day in Ayachero.
* * *
Just before siesta, Anna climbed the stairs of the longhouse. Claudia in her arms, she handed me a few of her and Franz’s clothes that needed repair, insisting there was no rush. Her face still held her terrible grief, but I’d caught her smiling a few times in the last several days. Having Omar gone was frightening and exhausting for me, but she seemed almost relieved when the men were out hunting for weeks at a time, happier and more relaxed. The jaguar platform had been all but abandoned; it seemed its best purpose now was to shade the Anaconda Bar.
She eyed my ever-present backpack. “Lily, I was hoping we could do an exchange. I like your bag very much. May I look at it?”
I took it off slowly, as if shedding a second skin. In doing so, I pulled down the strap of my dress. I hurried to yank it back up, but Anna stayed my hand.
“Wait. Your skin.”
I felt her lift my hair from my shoulders, followed by the dry whisper of her fingers across my shoulder blade. I winced—I knew my bites were infected; that sort of pain was familiar to me. But ever since I was a little kid, all my infected cuts and scrapes had eventually healed, hadn’t they? I couldn’t waste my time worrying about it.
“Wow, lots of bites here.” She shook her head. “A bunch together. They look pretty bad. Do they hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
I flushed out my bottle of iodine. “Can you put some of this on?” I handed her a piece of cloth from the pile next to the sewing machine.
“Did you know, they are calling you Chica Púrpura,” she said softly. “Purple Girl.” My third nickname. Maybe I’m growing on them, I thought as her small fingers dabbed at me. It hurt more than it should have, but I felt sure the iodine could take care of everything. Besides, FrannyB, a real doctor, had given it to me.
Beaming, Anna slipped on my backpack and adjusted the straps. “I feel like a real American now. May we put two holes in the bottom? That way, I can carry Claudia in the chacra. It’ll be so much safer for her that way, and my hands will be free to work.”
I thought of her, eight months pregnant, child on her back, digging yucca out of the hard earth. “Okay.”
She laughed. “Your face! You look so sad! It’s just a bag. Don’t worry. For God’s Sake told me he’s going to bring us yards and yards of pretty fabric. We’ll make party dresses for everyone.”
I had to laugh. I took my precious bag back from her and with my switchblade cut two holes for the baby’s legs to go through. She put on the backpack and I slipped Claudia in, facing away from her mother, her sweet face smiling up at me. It was as if the bag were made for the task.
Anna said, “So, are you still throwing up?”
“Not as much anymore.”
She handed me a bowl of gray-green mush; a wooden spoon stood straight up in the middle. “It’s grubs mashed with special leaves. Eat it every morning. I’ll bring you a fresh bowl every day.”
“Thank you,” I said, taking the bowl.
“Give it a try,” she said with an encouraging smile.
Not taking my eyes off her face, I dipped in the spoon, scooped out a tiny amount, and ate it. Sweet, meaty, grassy. Horrific. I took another small mouthful and set the bowl down.
“Delicious, right?”
I nodded.
“I knew you would love it. This is your first baby?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, careful. No sitting on hot rocks. If you do, the baby will come too early. And stay inside when there’s a full moon. That’s really bad for the baby. Paco was born on a full moon.”
I set the bowl down. “Paco’s not such a bad kid, you know. Why won’t anyone take him in?” Of course, I knew why, I just wanted her to tell me to my face.
“Well, his face, he’s marked . . .”
“You think he’s evil, or something? Has he ever done anything bad?”
“Not yet.” She looked uncomfortable.
“He was just born like that,” I said. “Like you were born with a beautiful face. Like I was born with red hair.”
She shrugged and smiled as if what I’d said was true on the surface, but I was still missing the point: the kid was damaged goods. “You can take him in, then, since you like him so much.”
“Or maybe you and Franz could do it.”
“Franz would never . . . we have enough mouths to feed!”
I shrugged. “Everyone shares the food. I mean, he’s the only little kid in the longhouse. It’s pretty sad. Doesn’t seem fair.”
“He seems used to it.” She huffed Claudia up higher on her shoulders. “Besides, maybe you better worry about other things. Having your first baby is a big deal.”
She quickly thanked me for the bag—discussion over—and set off down the stairs to her hut. It made me sad, but maybe Anna was right. In a few short months, I’d have a child of my own to take care of, be expected to love. That alone felt impossible.
* * *
New requests poured in: the tongue of the giant anaconda over the Anaconda Bar had fallen out of its mouth. Reattach it. For that, I stood on a stool and used the big hand-sewing needle Anna lent me. It was like sewing two leather handbags together.
For protection in the jungle, the hunters wanted long sleeves added to short- or no-sleeved shirts, or long pants made from short ones for the same reason. The material was always weird: cotton/poly blends—heavy on the poly—often with weird stripes or patterns: floral, polka dots, plaids, or sometimes prints with the Little Mermaid, Aladdin, or Beauty and the Beast. I thought the men would hate these fabrics, but the favorite turned out to be the Little Mermaid flannel, which For God’s Sake was instructed to bring back as much of as he could find.
One afternoon, exhausted but happy after a day of sewing, I took my time on the steep stairs to our hut, bringing in Anna’s daily present of mashed grubs and leaves that she’d left on the first step. Just inside the door, I turned around and saw them.
My clothes.
My only T-shirt and pair of shorts, still ripped and wrecked, but washed and carefully ironed, were folded in a neat pile on the mattress. I pick
ed them up, smelled them: they still held the odor of hot stones. I ran outside and a short way up the hill, a shout stuck in my throat. I turned in a slow circle: there was no one around. Smoked meat hung motionless from a metal rod over a fire, the knotted spine of a capybara glistened like a row of crude pearls in the haze of the afternoon. One of the dogs, her back leg ripped open by a wild boar during the last hunt and pieced together courtesy of FrannyB, lay resting in the shade, ignoring the flies that sucked at the corners of her eyes. Only the still, fetid heat greeted me.
I climbed the stairs back to the hut. Tenting the mosquito netting around me, I crawled onto the mattress, dragging the small pile of clothes under the net next to me. I held the little bundle close to my chest, like I was hugging a piece of my old self, my child self, someone I was starting to forget, or let go of. Still, I wondered: Who had done this? Was it Anna? Doña Antonia? One of the other women? And why? And just as mysterious, if not more so: Why did I have no desire to put these clothes on? I liked the weird dress I’d sewn out of burlap lentil sacks and odd polka-dot linen. I thought about what Anna said, about all my gringa treasures, and it hit me that she was right; I could leave, I had a country to go back to—an immense, beautiful country with seasons and laws and ribbons of highway, libraries and museums, restaurants and ice cream and colleges—but I didn’t want to go.
Because I had Ayachero treasures, too—Omar, of course. And now, the women expected me to join them in the morning to do what needed to be done, and they were grateful for my sewing. Beya’s belief that I was a shaman was laughable to me, but the delusion felt magical, like anything was possible, and always, the jungle enthralled as much as it repelled.
Into the Jungle Page 18