“He’s bragging about how he found us,” Omar said under his breath. “Telling people I fought and lost. He’s never been right in the head.”
MiddleEye, hearing Omar consult with me, whipped his head around and glared at us. Roaring, he charged full speed at Omar, stopping with his face an inch from his, white froth rimming his mouth. The anger was real, but also certainly for show; still, my heart beat out of my chest. Omar stayed immobile, expressionless, my hand nearly crushed in his.
Breaking the face-off, a chubby middle-aged woman snatched a pair of aviator sunglasses from a pile of gifts, jammed them on her face and ran up to me, long breasts swinging, hair flying back in twisted ropes dyed dark purple and deep red. In the reflective lenses my filthy, pale face twisted in fear as the woman—chattering away—palpated my breasts as if she were assessing fruit at the market. Everyone seemed amused. Omar did nothing.
Long seconds passed until I couldn’t take it anymore. My arm lifted up to smack her away, but Omar caught it and forced it down. “Let her,” he hissed.
“What is she asking me?”
“If you have milk.”
Laughing uproariously, she pressed her palms down hard all over my enormous belly, breaking her merriment only to bust out into a staccato burst of words. Finally she walked away, smiling and clapping her hands.
“What did she say?” I whispered.
“She said it’s a boy.”
Only later did I learn that if she had thought my child was a girl, chances were they would have gotten it out of me and kept it, since the tribe had too many boys and men, and not enough girls to keep their numbers steady.
A wide-eyed young woman, black lines staining her face in an intricate mazelike design, hands dyed deep blue and just showing her own pregnancy, handed me a calabash of water with a shy smile. Freshly cut cicatrizations, tiny ritual scars, oozed red on either side of her navel. I took a long drink, the light glowing amber through the skin of the womb-shaped gourd. Behind my closed eyes, my baby boy floated, waiting. I called to him for strength, told him I wasn’t going to fuck this up, that we were going to live. He nodded with his closed, swollen eyes, his Mona Lisa smile, amniotic. It was the first time I can remember feeling something like love for him, a budding devotion.
The young girl took my hand and pulled. We followed her. MiddleEye stalked darkly behind us along with several of the other hunters. Omar asked the young girl something; she nodded solemnly. We entered the welcome shade of the roundhouse. Hammocks, drying vines, and tobacco leaves hung from the rafters. Woven baskets brimmed with grinning monkey heads, turtle eggs, water gourds, green bananas, baked white bones, and explosions of brilliant bird feathers.
From behind a bamboo screen, a high-pitched screeching, metal on metal. Seated in a wheelchair rusted to a crusty flaking orange, a man wheeled himself out from his sanctuary. He wore a headdress of black-and-white harpy eagle feathers, the bodies of multicolored macaws sewn by their beaks between the larger feathers. An old Timex watch with no hands hung loosely on his wrist, the metal band stretched out. His shoulders and midsection were wiry and strong, rippling with muscle, but his legs were atrophied, thin as a girl’s. His wide, flat feet—one of them split halfway up the middle—were planted firmly on the footrests. Along with half a dozen quills, scraggly silver hair sprouted from his face. Large hands—nails dark and chipped—came to rest on his lap where a bone needle, ball of palm-fiber thread, perforated nuts, and hawk feathers lay, a project we had interrupted with our visit. He studied us with deep-set, weary eyes.
Swollen with his news, MiddleEye rushed toward his father and barked out the story again, brandishing his knife, pointing at Omar, at me, at the forest beyond the walls of the roundhouse.
Omar approached the man in the wheelchair, dropping his eyes as MiddleEye rattled on in Tatinga. Color drained from his face, from pain or fear or shame or some combination, I couldn’t be sure, I only knew his knack for hiding emotion seemed to be failing him. Finally, MiddleEye wrapped up, struck a wide stance, and folded his arms.
“Keep your eyes on the ground, Lily,” Omar said.
In low tones, Omar spoke in Spanish to the man in the wheelchair, who responded in kind. “Splitfoot, I am here with my wife, Lily.”
His rheumy eyes rested first on Omar, then me. Fresh sweat beaded out all over my body.
The old man’s Spanish came out slow and stilted, as if he hadn’t spoken it in a while. “My sister is dead?”
“Beya lives.”
“Your father? My old friend?”
Omar said, “He died in Cochabamba.”
“He was a good hunter. But a greedy man. Selfish. Your brothers?”
“Panchito is well. Franz and Anna still mourn Benicio.”
He nodded. “We know this jaguar. We hear her at night, but she’s smart, she knows where the traps are, no matter how many times we move them. We think she’s the spirit of our ancestors, angry at us for how far we have fallen from the people we used to be.”
“What happened to you?” Omar gestured at the wheelchair.
Splitfoot turned away to gaze out at the children playing in the sunshine. “A few years ago, I fell from a tree while gathering honey. Perhaps it was Beya who pushed me, or perhaps the spirits of the bees took their vengeance.” He tossed up his hands. “Either way, now I am half a man.”
“I remember you as a great hunter.”
He shifted in his chair, opened his mouth in a grin, but his eyes stayed hard. Ebony teeth, shaved to points, gleamed in the dim light. “You visit to tell me your childhood memories?”
“We need your help.” Omar touched the small of my back. “Turn around,” he said to me. “Pull your dress down in the back. Show him your shoulder. Show him your skin.”
I shuffled in a slow arc to face a scattering of low-slung hammocks filled with men resting or women breast-feeding their babies, all eyes on us. I focused on the gray earth, my feet in their muddy tapir sandals. Hands shaking, I reached back and loosened the tie at my neck. Fabric sticking here and there to the festering skin, the strap finally dropped from my arm and shoulder, revealing my back to the men in a whoosh of searing air. Clutching the front of my dress tight to my chest, I took short bites of air through my mouth in an effort to not smell myself; to not think about the fact that I was rotting from the inside.
THIRTY-EIGHT
“My wife is dying,” Omar said. “The plant that can cure her is on your land. We need your help.”
Splitfoot jettisoned a stream of brown tobacco juice through his sharpened teeth onto the ground inches from Omar’s bloody foot. “There is no plant for her.”
Pain snapped across my belly. Another “false contraction,” at least that’s what FrannyB had called them a few days ago. I fell forward onto my knees, shuddering to think what the real ones felt like. Brown limbs moved in my peripheral vision; I inhaled the grassy, acrid smell of crowding bodies as the Tatinga stood nearby, curious, close. Will the red-haired gringa give birth here, now, in front of us? Mouth dry as sand, I pushed myself to my feet, whispering to Omar, “I need to walk, or I’m going to faint.”
“Okay,” he said, eyeing Splitfoot. “Walk around the oven here. I’ll explain to him what you’re doing.”
Clutching my belly, I stumbled forward, walking in slow circles around the low grate, on which spat and sizzled a set of monkey arms. Omar’s and Splitfoot’s voices rose and fell, a blend of Tatinga and Spanish. I stroked my belly, spoke in soft tones to the child who slept under the harsh fabric of my dress, my stretched skin; whispered to him the story of Wilbur the pig and Charlotte, the brave spider who stood up for him; he was going to be courageous like that one day, too.
Screaming in Tatinga, MiddleEye jumped in front of me, jaw thrust out, porcupine quills twitching. I halted midstride and sucked in a lungful of air, tried to put my heart back in my body. Rivulets of sweat ran down his face, black eyes swam in yellow pools.
“Lily, stop!” Omar hissed.
Slowly, I turned toward him.
“He thinks you’re putting a hex on the village.”
MiddleEye shouted at me again; my head whipped back to face him. Spittle foamed in the corners of his mouth, dragon teeth clicked. With exaggerated goose steps he marched the opposite way that I had walked around the fire, calling out what sounded like numbers . . . had he been counting how many laps I’d taken around the oven? Nine times he circled it; each time he came to face me, glowering, rattling his chonta knife, the long muscle of his torso tightening like a chord. Every third word was “Beya.” I felt a hand take mine; the young woman who had given me the calabash of water chattered in Tatinga as she led me to an empty hammock. I melted into it.
Night had fallen, the blackest I’d ever seen. Around me, vague shapes weighted down hammocks, while several men leaned against the poles, smoking and gazing out at the night.
Omar rushed to my side. “Listen, Lily. Splitfoot said MiddleEye is going to ask the spirits of the plants if you’re worthy of being cured. That’s the way he put it.”
“But MiddleEye’s not a shaman.”
“Splitfoot refuses to do it. He says his son can ask just as well as he can.”
“He’s out of his mind. He won’t—”
“Come on, they’re making a meal for us. We need to be there.”
“I don’t want any—”
“Let’s go, Lily.”
I tried to move. Shock waves of agony rippled deep in the marrow of my shoulder, the backs of my legs. I could barely unwrap my body from the clutches of the hammock, heavy against the knotted palm twine.
He reached under the hammock and lifted me until I could stand; half carried me outside and sat me down at a long, rough table, just a pitted slab of wood laid across two stumps, where men and women sat eating bowls of some kind of soup. A woman with a baby at her breast handed me a deep clay bowl filled to the brim with steaming liquid. A monkey arm was sticking out of it, resting against the edge. Its little hand hung limply down from the wrist, fully articulated, creased palms, fingernails, everything. It looked like a child’s hand.
“Omar, I can’t eat this,” I said softly.
The villagers watched, solemn, cheeks bulging, chewing their food with great energy. On wide clay plates, fish pounded into a gray paste and spread on mashed, fried manioc was folded into a kind of pancake. Youngsters leaned over and tore off pieces of it, cramming it into their mouths, while older women sat with their own share, flaccid breasts pointing straight down, jaws pumping. Bowls of the soup were being passed around as well; only Splitfoot also had a monkey paw. He picked it up and chewed it with his mouth open, obviously relishing its crunch. He never took his eyes off me.
Omar leaned into me and whispered, “They gave you what they consider the best part. Eat it.”
The flames of the cooking fire danced on the circle of warm flesh. Masato was passed around in rough bowls; at the time I only knew the smell—pickles, cloves—turned my stomach. Later I learned the drink was made by women chewing yucca and spitting it out into a trough, where it fermented. Everyone drank it, even the children; my portion sat festering and popping next to my monkey soup. Omar drank his, wiping the stringy remains from his mouth; his bowl was quickly refilled, which for some reason gave me hope—was this all for us?—until I realized this meal was in celebration of the fact that their hunters had returned alive, and with game, just as we celebrated when the same thing happened in Ayachero. We were a diversion, but nothing to celebrate, nothing compared to food.
MiddleEye finished his meal and went to sit opposite another hunter by the fire. Cross-legged, he picked up a three-foot section of bamboo and stuffed it with something from a pouch before settling the tube in his mouth. Just as the other man lifted the pipe’s opposite end and rested it against his nostril, MiddleEye took a breath and blew hard. The man snorted and fell back with a groan, which seemed theatrical but perhaps wasn’t; recovered, he packed the pipe with powder, and did MiddleEye the same favor. Mouth open and panting noisily, MiddleEye got to his feet and began to dance and spin, shooting looks at me with eyes like dark, empty tunnels.
Half a dozen men got to their feet. They snaked around the fire in a halting dance, taking two steps forward, one jump back; three steps forward, two jumps back. Some wore breechcloths, some belts made from the skins of small spotted cats—ocelot or margay. Countless seed necklaces clattered together at their necks and chests, intertwined with hand mirrors and nail files and other small gifts from the Frannies. Some wore fantastic harpy eagle headdresses over four feet high. Young boys pounded drums covered with the skins of giant leopard frogs. I felt caught in prehistory, before speech or time.
I turned to Splitfoot and asked in Spanish, “Why don’t you ask spirits of the plants?”
His eyes burned into me, at the monkey’s hand I couldn’t bring myself to touch. “Because they will not answer me.”
He put down his bowl of masato and continued. “There was a time when the plants and animals of the forest were at my command and did my bidding. My potions cured my people. My enemies grew sick and died from my word alone. At night, I made love to the spirit of the river, who waited for me with open arms like a woman starved. But when the Frannies gave me this wheelchair in exchange for my promise to throw my healing stone into the river, my powers left me completely. They said the stone was blasphemy. The spirits of the plants and animals stopped speaking to me. I have never been so lonely. My family is silent, my family shuns me. I hate myself for this bargain I made.”
For some reason, his story made me remember how, when I was a kid, I’d made friends with kids I didn’t even like, knowing they always had food on their dinner tables, which is when I would conveniently appear. It didn’t matter what they dished up. I ate it. I felt Splitfoot’s sad, intense gaze on me and on the bowl of soup, as if perhaps he would have enjoyed the opportunity for seconds.
I took a sip of masato before picking up the monkey arm by its tiny wrist. Turning the fingers away from me, I raised it to my mouth.
THIRTY-NINE
MiddleEye spun like a top, around and around us as we ate, eyes rolling in the back of his head, sweat flying and staining the dusty earth. He pounded his chest, gurgling out bizarre groans and whimpers. Dropping to the ground, he rolled in the dirt, quivering as if electrified, before jumping up to resume his furious dance.
He grabbed me by the wrists and yanked me from the table. I stood, swaying, as he ran in circles around me, shaking his head, eyes jangling. I sought out Omar; his face said, Stay calm. MiddleEye fell to his knees and pounded the ground near my ankles, where he crawled, raving, possessed. Once again on his feet, he jumped from side to side as if on hot coals as he made his way to Splitfoot. Pointing at me, he whispered in the chief’s ear, then sprinted from him, drunk with his own madness.
Splitfoot turned to Omar. “The spirit of the plant has spoken. The woman is not worth saving.”
Omar got to his feet and towered over the old shaman, a picture of youth and strength next to the shriveled man in the chair. “MiddleEye is no medicine man. The plants have never spoken to him. You know this,” he hissed.
The shaman shrugged, drank his masato, and rubbed his small, tight belly before continuing his meal.
My skin crawled with sickness and fever. Omar stood closer to the old man, put a hand on the desiccated leather armrest of his chair. They locked eyes.
“What do you want from me?” Splitfoot gestured at Omar with the remains of his monkey paw before tossing the twisted thing into the flames, where it popped and sizzled to nothingness. “The plants have spoken.”
MiddleEye whooped his encouragement, spinning around Omar and clacking his teeth like a Halloween skull. The shaman watched from his rusted throne with a sort of rapture like, He may be crazy, but he’s my only son.
“You owe this to me,” Omar sputtered. “This small thing.”
The chieftain smiled; a hundred lines gathered at his mouth and eyes. “
Why?” His hunters, sensing tension, took their places around him.
“We were like family once.”
“She is one white woman. She means nothing to me.”
Omar reached out to strike him. Lightning fast, the hunters grabbed his arms and smacked him to the ground. He fell down on all fours, breathing hard.
Splitfoot screeched his wheelchair toward him and dropped his head close to Omar’s. “Beya does not answer when I shine to her. This is an unforgiveable insult.” He glanced around, as if to see who was listening, some element of his pride on the line. “She was our most powerful shaman, and she chooses to stay in Ayachero. This has weakened us. We have not recovered.”
“She wants to come back.”
Splitfoot lifted his chin. “My sister can speak for herself. I hear only the wind when I call to her.”
“She will come—”
“Your father settled Ayachero,” he hissed. “Too many people came. We were forced deeper into the jungle, farther and farther from game. Now poachers—white poachers—come looking for mahogany, now come roads, planes. The spirits leave when the land is cleared. The trees are crying, just as we cry. Can you hear them anymore? You used to.”
Omar pushed himself to his feet, the warriors eyeing his every move. “When I was a boy, we walked together. I helped you gather the sacred plants. Do you remember, Splitfoot?”
The chief waved him away with a smirk. “That was before you became a white man, as far as I can tell. Listen to me: we can feel the change coming. If we don’t move soon, from this camp, we’ll all die here. And there will never be any rest. We need to keep moving, until we have fallen off the edge of the earth.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry—”
Into the Jungle Page 25