“Pulling out teeth hurts more than childbirth,” Mincaye announced. He was chewing on a monkey leg. We were gathered in Tementa’s oko and I was sitting on a stump, head tilted back, mouth open. Tementa was standing over me.
“What do you know about childbirth, old man?” Mincaye’s wife shouted back at him.
“Can you feel this?” Tementa asked me, tapping on my gums.
I nodded, wincing, feigning pain.
Tementa frowned. “That anesthesia is old. It’s not working.”
“If the girl’s teeth hurt that bad, it’s better just to get it over with!” said a visiting elder.
Tementa looked into my eyes, thoughtfully.
“Is the pain really so bad that you want us to pull out your teeth?”
I nodded again. I had no problem lying. I was convinced that if I took out all my teeth, then the white people would give me new, better ones – shiny white teeth that would never rot.
“I’m going to need help holding her down,” Tementa said to the elders who had gathered around to watch. I saw Víctor out of the corner of my eye, peering through the crowd, worried.
I closed my eyes. Tementa, as well as being a pastor and useful with a chainsaw, was the village dentist. Steve had organized some training for him. He could pull teeth out but he couldn’t put them in. Only an oil company dentist could do that. So, my plan was to begin by asking Tementa to pull my teeth out. All of them, starting with the molars. That way the oil company would give me a complete set.
Tementa put the chisel in my mouth and it felt cold and blunt on my gums. I glanced at the hammer. It had a black handle.
Tick, tick, tap.
My brain strobed wildly with flashes of black and red and white light.
“Get the peccary out of here!” Tementa’s wife shouted. She was holding the chisel firmly. Mincaye kicked Tementa’s pet peccary. It squealed but continued to root stubbornly in the blood that was now pooling at my feet.
Tick, tick, tap.
The pain was flashes of blue and yellow. My neck burned, as if I were being bitten by fire ants. I began to float in the smoke. From above, I saw hands and metal pliers in a young girl’s mouth, yanking hard. The girl was writhing and wailing on the ground, many arms restraining her. Monkeys bounced and shrieked all around. Then elders were talking while the girl became completely still on the ground, as though sleeping.
“Warm water with salt!” a woman’s voice shouted.
I could feel my tongue. It was rubbing against something sharp in the back of my mouth.
I opened my eyes. My body blistered with pain.
“The tooth cracked,” a man’s voice said. He was very close to me. He was peering into my mouth. “There’s a piece still in there . . .”
I woke up in my hammock at home in the middle of the night. I didn’t know how I had got there. Was there something eating my jaw? Were there frogs throbbing in my brain?
“What have you done?”
Mom knelt over me. Her eyes were red with tears. Her voice was desperate and furious and tender. I rubbed my tongue against the nerves, roots, and inflamed flesh of my mouth. I shivered with cold and touched my face. It was burning, swollen, mangled.
In the distance I heard Stephanie playing the keyboard. Each note hurt in a different part of my body. I slept but I didn’t sleep.
“Tiri,” Mom was whispering. “Something is wrong with our daughter. She is losing her way.”
My dad didn’t respond. I heard him splintering kindling by the fire.
Mom spoke again: “Her spirit must be healed. My father will know what to do. He always knows when something is wrong.”
For many moons, I lived with splintered teeth and rot and pus. Mom wedged bitter leaves in the back of my mouth. I stopped speaking, not even whispering. My curiosity deserted me. When Steve came to visit, I accepted a gift of hair barrettes from Stephanie without excitement. He taught Tementa to pilot a small plane everyone called the Flying Bee, and I did not share the wonder of the rest of the village as Tementa glided like a condor over our houses.
One day, Dad flew with Tementa. When he returned, he said to me: “I have seen your grandfather, Donasco.” Mom stood up suddenly, her whole body turned towards him.
“Is he coming?”
Dad said: “He is coming.”
I felt nothing. My face throbbed and burned. One day, while washing clothes, I couldn’t resist looking at my reflection in the water. My swollen face, my dark eyes, my black hair. The infection had spread across my cheek, into my ear, into my eye.
And then, before my grandfather could arrive, it was over. The roots rotted and the jagged tooth shards fell onto the ground, like broken pebbles. The taste of warm blood disappeared. Four molars gone. Many more teeth to go, so much pain ahead.
The first thing my grandfather asked for on his arrival was chicha made by me. But I still could not chew manioc well enough so he accepted my mother’s chicha. He still had that strange, slithering snake walk. His black eyes were as penetrating as ever, seeing into my very thoughts.
“Grandfather,” I said, digging a hole in the earth with my machete, “can you give me follow-me, follow-me powers?”
We were in our garden downriver, planting bananas. Ana was walking and Mom was already pregnant again. She was hunched over the earth, on her knees, like an armadillo, little bits of soil spraying behind her. Dad was on the other side of the garden, harvesting plantains.
“My little granddaughter!” Donasco laughed. His voice had a mystical cadence, as if every word had the power to summon some invisible spirit. “Now what would a beautiful girl do with follow-me, follow-me powers?”
I didn’t know how to answer him. His eyes were all-seeing. I felt nervous. I took a young banana plant from the pile and placed it in the hole. I knew that follow-me, follow-me was a secret, something that very few people knew about. That the powers came from some sort of potion you had to make. Maybe I could use it to get my teeth to fall out, or to get Wengongi to answer me. Maybe I could even use it to get Stephanie to take me to the Land of Rachel.
Suddenly, I felt ashamed. “I don’t know.”
“Follow-me, follow-me is not for little girls,” he said. “It is dangerous.”
I had heard my older brothers talking about follow-me, follow-me. It was something that the shamans knew how to make, perhaps from animal fat and feathers, flowers and leaves and I didn’t know what else. They buried it in the ground and left it there until it was ready. It could be used to get whatever you wanted from anyone. That was all that I knew about it.
Grandfather looked at me hard, then closed his eyes: “Wooshooshooshoo, wooshooshooo.”
A tobacco-scented wind bathed me in the middle of the garden. He opened his eyes.
“Ushuchi,” he said. That was his name for me in Kichwa. “Your mother has talked to me about you. She says you are unwell in your heart. Let me see your teeth.”
I opened my mouth wide.
“My dear girl, what have you done?”
I looked down at the ground, ashamed and defiant.
“Now why would you want to take your teeth out?”
I stayed silent.
“Answer me,” he said sternly.
“I want the white people’s teeth.” I turned from him, pushing dirt over the round, waxy bulb of the banana plant.
Grandpa sighed.
“When the boa flickers its tongue, like this,” he said, showing me a spooky, trembling movement with his index finger, “all the animals of the forest lose their good sense. The agouti runs back and forth mindlessly. The deer approaches in a daze. Even a jaguar can get trapped.”
I watched his twitching finger.
“For us here in the forest, the white man’s world is the boa’s tongue. It makes us lose our senses, little one.”
I looked down, packing dirt over the banana plant with my two hands.
“Ushuchi, are you hearing me?” he asked softly.
“Uuuu.” My voice was meek. I knew that Grandpa could see deep into me. But I didn’t want to be seen.
“Come here,” he said forcefully, scooping a handful of moist dark-brown dirt from beneath the dried leaves. I knelt before him, with my machete in my lap and my head lowered. He whistled a song. I closed my eyes and saw birds flying through shadows. Grandpa was powerful. He took my head in both hands, painting my forehead with the dirt on his thumbs. Suddenly, I felt like falling asleep. Colorful birds flitted wildly in my mind.
“My little Ushuchi,” he said, “your spirit is powerful, but you are being led astray.”
He whistled loudly, then blew on my head several times. It was like the breath of a snake.
“You have not yet bled, have you?” he asked.
I opened my eyes and shook my head, still meek.
“Ever since you were a little girl, I knew that your spirit was fierce and wild, my little Ushuchi. Will you listen to me? Will you listen to your grandpa?”
I nodded, closing my eyes again.
“If you don’t listen to me now, there will be much suffering ahead for you.”
Inside my head, I saw the shadow of an anaconda undulating in the darkest, steeliest waters.
“You must forget all about the white people. This garden here, this is your life.”
I opened my eyes and glanced around the garden. It looked dreary and colorless.
“You must learn how to grow corn and bananas and manioc so that one day you will make a garden with your husband, your chicha will please him, and you will have many children.”
I winced. I didn’t want many children. Mom was always having children and I loved them all but sometimes I just wanted her to stop. And I was sure I didn’t want a husband. I remembered Babë’s grandson staring at me. Ever since the visit to the oil well, people had been saying that he had been on the radio, talking about me.
“You must listen to your mother,” Grandpa said.
My mother tried to give a baby away, I thought angrily. Why should I listen to her?
“Help her raise your younger brothers and sisters. Make the fire each morning. Help her cook the food.”
Grandpa lit a cigarette – tobacco wrapped in dried banana leaves – and blew smoke on my head. Then he rattled a bundle of guava leaves over my shoulders and neck and whistled a song. The melody sounded like wind in the forest, like a dreaming bird, like the darkness of night.
He called to Mom suddenly, breaking my trance. “This one was asking for follow-me, follow-me powers. She’s going to get into trouble soon, if she’s not careful. Birds are everywhere, dark birds. Keep an eye on her.”
Mom didn’t even look over at us, she just kept digging into the earth with her machete, her jaw clenched.
Not even a moon passed and I began bleeding. It happened in the garden. I took off my underwear and squatted over brittle leaves beneath the pounding sun, watching the blood drip out of me. I felt dizzy and nauseous. Was I impure? I collected the young leaves of a guava tree, soft and yellow, and folded them inside my underwear. I didn’t want anyone to see me, so I worked the furthest patch of garden, hacking away at manioc plants and pulling tubers out of the earth.
I wasn’t allowed to eat meat for several days.
“You are a woman now,” Mom said. It was raining outside and the wind was cold. I didn’t even know how old I was. Maybe fourteen?
“The boys can smell you,” she said. “You must stay away from men, otherwise you will get pregnant.”
Her face was stony and angry and worried. I wanted to ask her so many questions. Why do women bleed? Why did Grandpa say that I would suffer? Why can’t we laugh together like you laugh with the village women?
She swayed Ana in the hammock with her foot. I tried to count how many brothers and sisters I had with my fingers. Seven or eight or nine, I thought. But I wasn’t sure.
“How old are you?” I asked Mom.
“I don’t know.” She was crouching by the fire now, flipping over deer meat with her bare hands.
“How old were you when you had Ñamé?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Around your age, just after bleeding.”
Around fourteen years old, just like me. So now I was sure of one thing.
“I don’t want to have children,” I said softly, scared of her reaction. But there was no reaction. She simply continued to fan the fire with a curassow’s shiny feathers.
“I want to be like the Virgin Mary,” I said.
Now she turned to me, on her face a blend of humor and fear. But whatever she intended to say went unsaid.
One morning not long afterwards, when the sun was already overhead, I sat alone on the muddy floor of our dugout canoe, gutting fish with my machete: motas and barbudos. The river was low, but not low enough to cross on foot.
A boy appeared on the banks above, quietly watching me. I ignored him. He climbed into the branches of the miwago and, when I looked up, he smiled down at me.
“What are you doing?” he asked. He was a little older than me, but not by much. His dark hair was cut short and parted down the middle. He was wearing a backpack.
“Gutting fish,” I replied coldly. I had barely glanced up.
“Did you catch them?”
“Yes.”
“I like fishing,” the boy said. “But not with hook and line. I like spear-fishing better.”
I didn’t respond.
“Don’t prick your finger,” he said. “The barbs of the barbudo are poisonous.”
Suddenly he jumped from the tree, scrambled down the bank like an ocelot, and balanced on the front of the canoe.
“Have you ever been to the village of Damoïntaro?” he asked.
“No.”
“There are three rivers there that have tons of fish, mainly sabalos and bocachicos.”
Those were my favorite fish.
“The water is so clear that you can dive without a mask,” he added.
I knew which clan the boy was from because he had a round face, sharp cheekbones, and thick legs. “I’m walking to Damoïntaro right now,” he said. “It’s not that far away if you know how to walk in the jungle.”
“Do you live there?” I asked.
“No. Well, yes. I’m going to live there with the missionaries.”
At that moment, I pricked my finger on the serrated barb of the barbudo fish. Instantly I felt a shooting pain in my armpit. I tried to hide it from the boy.
“Those barbudos are nasty,” he said, amused.
I sucked the blood droplets from my thumb, wincing, embarrassed.
He sat down on the edge of the canoe, nearly tipping us over.
“Do you believe in Wengongi? Or the jaguar?”
No one had ever asked exactly that before. Did I have to choose one or the other? I remained silent.
“The missionaries say that the jaguar is just another animal in the forest,” he said, looking up into the miwago tree. “But they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“So why are you going there then?”
“My parents want me to learn how to talk like the cowori, and the missionaries have a school there with lots of kids.”
“Are they from the Land of Rachel?”
“No. They are another type of cowori. They call themselves Ecuatorianos and Colombianos.”
I threw the last fish in the basket and stood up in the canoe.
He wetted his lips. “Are you going to cook those up now?”
“Uuuu.”
“I’m hungry,” he said.
I walked past him, balancing on the rim of the canoe, the basket dangling off my forehead. I said: “Waorani warriors can walk days on end without food.”
His eyes lit up with pride and defiance.
“During times of war, my grandfather went moons without eating. He could even eat his own spear!”
I sprang up the muddy bank with the basket of fish, my toes clutching tree roots for balance.
“You should come to Damoïntaro,” the boy shouted as I walked towards our cookhouse. “Just follow the trail upriver, over the ridges, over the ridges, over the ridges, and then down, down, down, where the creeks are full of stones and the water is clear!”
I pretended that I wasn’t interested in Damoïntaro. But I was. For many moons, I thought about going. While scraping the black char off our metal pots with sand, I imagined the songs that the missionaries sang at night by the fire. While fetching water from the creek, I imagined the missionary women saying things like: “My! What a quick learner you are, Nemonte! Wengongi is very proud of you!”
But I didn’t go because I was waiting for Stephanie to come back. And she did.
I was fast asleep and the night was pitch dark.
“Here you go, Nemonte,” she said, handing me a pair of high-heeled shoes. “These don’t fit me anymore.”
I took the shoes and examined them. They were pretty and strange. I wanted to admire them, but I was also confused.
“They are not for the jungle!” Stephanie said, laughing. “You will get stuck in the mud if you wear them!” I laughed with her. Imagine scrambling up a riverbank wearing those!
She said: “They are for you to wear in the Land of Rachel.”
I began to cry.
“So you are coming for me?” I asked.
She nodded. Her eyes sparkled blue. And then I woke up. My heart fluttered with excitement.
“She is going to come soon!” I whispered to myself.
A day or so later, I heard the sound of a plane approaching our village. I was too old now to shout “Ebo, ebo, ebo!” but still I ran to the landing strip, carrying my sister Ana in my arms.
Old woman Watora was walking barefoot down the trail with a red-handled machete.
“Who is coming?” I shouted.
“I don’t know, I didn’t dream!”
The plane circled over the village, obscured by the dense canopy on the trail. I caught a glimpse of the red and white of Steve Saint’s plane. And then I knew it. I was sure.
I bounced Ana up and down. “Stephanie is coming! She is here!” I told her.
“Oh,” Watora said. “It is Tementa and Mincaye; they are coming home now from the Land of Rachel!”
Tementa and Mincaye had been away for a long time with Steve. They had been invited to stay with his family and travel the Land of Rachel, talking to whole villages about Wengongi and their lives as pastors.
The plane dropped lower and lower, bounced, and then skidded to a stop on the overgrown grass of the runway. Now it was clear to me that there were just three figures on board. A pilot, who did not look at all like Steve, Mincaye, and Tementa. But no Stephanie.
“I hope they brought those shiny beads I asked for,” Watora was saying. By now, most of the village was here. Mom joined me, Nengere in her arms.
We watched Mincaye get out. He did not smile at us. There was a strange look on his face. Next came Tementa, his shoulders slumped forward. The pilot remained in his seat for a few moments, then he climbed out too, and it was clear this was not Steve. The man’s head was bowed.
Suddenly, I had a terrible feeling inside. Nothing was right about these men. I edged closer.
Mincaye looked at all of us.
He said: “Stephanie is dead.” His voice was flat.
Mom began to wail. Soon, other women began wailing too. Their wailing was the only sound I heard. As for me, well, I didn’t believe it. That’s not true, I said to myself angrily. Mincaye is an idiot and he’s just joking.
Tementa said: “Steve’s daughter has gone to be with Wengongi in the sky. She is with Rachel now.”
I ran away. Ana was left on the runway with my wailing mother. Behind me, I heard them all sobbing and praying to Wengongi. I knew that Víctor was following me.
I veered off the trail, ducking into the woods. I sat on the dark, wet earth at the edge of the creek, where Stephanie and I used to play. My arms wrapped around my knees, I rocked back and forth.
“Stephanie,” I breathed. “You promised!”
And then, for the first time in my life, I wept. With my whole heart.
“Come back home, sister,” Víctor whispered.
I did not move.
“It’s not good to cry too much. The jaguar will hear you.”
For a while, the village was unnaturally quiet. It seemed to me that woodsmoke stopped rising and children stopped playing and that there was nothing but silence.
This didn’t last long. People wanted to talk about Stephanie and how she had died.
She had been in a faraway land doing missionary work. Tementa, Mincaye, Steve, and Ginny had not seen her for many moons. On the day she was expected back, Mincaye wore Waorani feathers on his head. He went with her family to meet her at the airport. Then, when they returned to the house, there was a party to welcome her. Mincaye was demonstrating Waorani welcome dancing and chanting to all the visitors when his elbow flapped against Stephanie’s head.
“Did she cry out in pain?” demanded Watora.
“No . . .” Tementa mimed a sort of shrinking movement, hand on head. “No one really noticed. She seemed all right. But soon afterwards, she said she had a headache. Soon after that, the headache became so bad that they took her to the hospital. And soon after that, she died.”
“Was it caused by Mincaye’s elbow?” my mother demanded.
Tementa paused. “Maybe,” he said at last. He spoke evenly, as always.
“What did the doctor say?”
“Her brain was bleeding and it was perhaps caused by injury.”
We would never know. The elder women looked at each other and shook their heads. No one dared to ask Mincaye, but in any case most people thought that witchcraft was the root of the problem, not Mincaye’s elbow.
Tementa’s wife said: “Mincaye killed Steve’s father. Then Steve made Mincaye his friend. Later, much later, Mincaye killed Steve’s daughter.”
People were silent then.
Tementa said: “Steve does not believe Mincaye hurt her with his elbow. Steve believes this is Wengongi’s way.”
Rachel had told us, Steve had told us, that Wengongi rewarded us when we went to church and led good lives. Stephanie was good. She always went to church. We did not think that killing Stephanie could be Wengongi’s way.
People discussed the subject for a very long time. Personally, I did not care how Stephanie had died, just that she was dead, that she would not be coming back for me. I did not know how to contain my sadness and disappointment.