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The front passenger tire popped and hissed, jerking the steering wheel in Margaux’s hands. She fought it, holding tight so she could ease the van into a clearing off of a two-lane jungle road north of Belize.
Margaux shut the engine off after the van rolled to a stop and put her face in her hands, letting her tears fall in silence so she wouldn’t wake little Jacob and Amanda who had miraculously slept through the blow out.
Outside, birds chattered and crickets sang in the surrounding jungle, announcing the approaching night. The warm humidity of the day would soon grow cool. No way could she change a tire in the dark by herself.
Margaux had driven all the way to Belize from San Diego only to be turned away at the border because she didn’t have visas for Jacob and Amanda. The State Department had reassured her that visas for a two and three year old wouldn’t be necessary.
Public servants, she thought, clenching her fists. Damn them!
“No entrar,” the black-haired federale with a thin mustache and mirrored glasses repeated at the check point. Margaux pleaded with him for forty-five minutes until he called two soldiers to enforce his point. She drove off before they reached her, but the damage had been done. She had no doubt that Jake would find out what happened and come looking.
Margaux gazed at the last red glimmer of sunlight over the tops of the trees. She had hoped to find a safe place for the night other than hotels. Like it or not she had one now. She sighed. Jake’s eyes and ears would be everywhere. If he found her he would take Amanda and Jacob.
Exhausted from driving jungle roads, Margaux closed her eyes and said a mental prayer. Her faith in truth and integrity had been shattered by a justice system manipulated by Jake’s lies and money, but she still believed in the power of spirit over matter.
When she first met Jake he seemed like a carefree little boy who loved flying his airplanes, driving his sports cars, skiing, sailing, and scuba diving. Everything in life equated to fun until she had Amanda. When Jake lost his place as the center of Margaux’s attention, an angry, spoiled Momma’s boy burst to the surface like some undead creature from a horror movie. She should have known when he surprised her with a prenuptial agreement the day before their wedding.
“Mimi”, her best friend Robin called him. “Everything is me me me. Don’t do it, Margaux,” she urged. “He’s a snake.”
On their honeymoon, when Jake shared his insecurities about growing up with no friends, she confided her drunk driving arrest after a sorority party and how she had smoked pot in the dorm.
Before they divorced, Jake deeded all of his properties over to his family and friends to make it look like he had no assets, then he used everything Margaux told him against her to make her look like an unfit mother. He took everything she had and kept coming for Jacob and Amanda.
A tap on the window made her jump. A lithe, brown- skinned Indian girl with silken black hair in a blue and white patterned poncho stood by the door with an armload of jewelry. Margaux looked past her, then in front and behind. No buildings or other signs of life. Where had she come from?
“Hola,” Margaux said, rolling down the window.
The girl put something smooth and heavy in Margaux’s hand, covering it with her own slender fingers. The deliberateness of the act stunned Margaux. She looked into the girl’s open face and felt compassion coming from her dark almond shaped eyes. The girl smiled demurely and nodded toward Margaux’s hand.
Looking down, Margaux saw a carved obsidian jaguar with finely detailed jaws, fangs, and feline eyes. Smooth muscles defined its thick forelegs. Olmec? Toltec? She couldn’t tell.
“Treinta pesos, señora,” the Indian girl said. Though Margaux had less than a thousand pesos, the girl’s eyes compelled her. As if reading Margaux’s thoughts, she nodded toward the back of the van. “El Tigre es la guardiána para sus niños.”
Even though I really can’t afford it, she’ll probably feed her family for a week on this, Margaux thought, counting out the money.
“Muchas gracias, señora.” The joy that filled the girl’s face sealed it.
“Mommy,” Amanda said from the back of the van.
Margaux looked behind her into the fading light to see Amanda sitting up.
“Just a minute, Pumpkin.”
She turned back to find the Indian girl gone. She checked the windows and rear view mirrors. Vanished.
“Mommy,” Amanda said again. “Why are we stopped? Are we sleeping here tonight?”
Margaux stuffed the jaguar into her pocket, grabbed a flashlight and went to the back of the van where Amanda sat, her fluffy mane of disheveled blonde hair, mirroring her mother’s. Margaux checked the rear window. The night jungle scared her, but the possibility of someone taking her babies from her in some Central American town frightened her more. Maybe this was a safer spot.
“Yes, we are,” she said, sitting down beside her daughter. Amanda put her head in her mother’s lap and fell asleep while Margaux stroked her hair. Darkness enveloped them and the songs of night birds and the chorus of crickets grew louder.
Easing Amanda from her lap, Margaux kissed her on the forehead and checked Jacob, whose breathing came slow and even. She kissed him on the cheek and stretched out at their feet. Feeling a bump in her hip, she pulled the jaguar from her pocket. The smooth black stone felt warm. What on earth had possessed her to buy it? She flicked on the flashlight and looked at it once again. Its fanged jaw and feline eyes seemed to smile.
Margaux clicked off the flashlight and closed her eyes, holding the figure, feeling strangely comforted by its warmth. She relaxed, listening to Amanda and Jacob’s breathing, and drifted, lulled by their rhythm and the sounds of the jungle until she felt herself contracting, then rising as her awareness blossomed, filling the van, then the jungle around her, touching everything in it.
The throaty yowl of a huge cat captured her attention, its presence touching her as if no distance existed between them. The message made it unquestionably clear. The cat ruled all here.
Margaux twitched as if shocked. A clear picture of a beautiful, sleek, dignified black jaguar crouched behind a clump of bushes near the mouth of a cave filled her mind. Her body hummed and the vision felt visceral and direct, connecting Margaux with every cell of the jaguar’s body until she became the cat rather than observing it.
The mewling cries of her cubs made her ears stand straight. She sniffed the air at the cave entrance, sensing her babies and their fear intermingled with a cold presence that tensed her into hyper-awareness. Icy ripples shot down her spine, putting her hair on end. Her back arched.
Heart thumping, she moved into the cool darkness low to the ground; eyes, ears, and nose all focused on the danger she knew awaited her. A few more steps and she spotted her trembling babies cornered by a huge Anaconda, jaws wide, its thick body coiled to strike.
She leaped, catching the snake’s neck with her teeth when it turned to strike at her. Its slithering body found hers, sending both of them tumbling to the ground. The snake squeezed, constricting and shutting down her breath while she bit, clawed, and slashed with full fury. Her awareness shrank to darkness until she gnawed through the snake’s neck. The suffocating pressure faltered and fell slack, rewarding her with the sweetness of the Anaconda’s fluid essence.
She extricated herself from the serpentine prison and caught her breath before biting and clawing more, shredding the snake, giving two portions to her hungry babies before finishing the rest herself.
When the last of the meat had been eaten, Margaux’s perceptions grew fuzzy, coming back into focus still with the jaguar, realizing that she had shared a memory and an understanding that bonded them.
As long as she lived, nothing would take her babies from her.
She saw the van through the trees ahead. Picking up her pace, she covered the distance in several leaps, ending with one big one that sent her bounding through the passenger window. On entering, she felt a dizzying shift that brought her back to her sleeping self at the same time the jaguar came through the window.
The cat paced back and forth, approaching Margaux cautiously. Though separate, the powerful energetic connection remained between them. If Margaux moved or had aggressive thoughts or feelings, she sensed a shift in their connection that could cause the cat to bolt at any second. Feeling equal parts fear and respect, Margaux knew she would be safe in the jaguar’s presence as long as she maintained her state of mind, which was simply to learn without thinking.
The jag stopped a couple of inches away, looked directly at Margaux and tensed every muscle in its body. She stared, unblinking, and it seemed to Margaux that the jaguar’s eyes touched her very soul. Margaux shuddered, imagining the cat shredding her the way it had the snake. The jaguar thrust its neck forward, bared its teeth and hissed.
When it stopped, Margaux flooded with love and appreciation. No longer fearful, she found herself in awe of the jag. It lay down, groomed itself and gazed past Margaux as if it didn’t matter whether she was there or not. A rumbling sound came from somewhere deep inside of it. It took Margaux a moment to realize that the jaguar purred like a house cat, except with greater volume; a deep rumbling tone that resonated in the trunk of Margaux’s body in an almost sexual way.
In that moment, Margaux received a new perspective on boundaries and territories as well as a reverence for hunting and a deep, sacred respect and love for the spirit of prey. The jaguar had a profound understanding of nature and related to it as an awesome force within which every intelligence took part, be they hunter, hunted, or other form of life.
Margaux closed her eyes and they continued communicating in what she could only think of as rapid telepathic thought-emotion exchanges. Her forceful responses were answered by the jaguar, firmly asserting its place as the unquestioned teacher until every thought and response played itself out to its logical end.
In spite of the truth and profundity of the lessons, Margaux doubted what she experienced, so she closed her eyes and asked with her mind, “If this is really happening and we are connected, can you show me a sign? I’m not trying to assert my will or tell you what to do, I’m only looking for a sign.”
Something soft touched Margaux’s ankle. The jaguar put its head down and ran the side of her face up and down Margaux’s leg as if marking Margaux as hers. She sidled alongside Margaux until her nose touched Margaux’s cheek, then she backed off.
Amazement overcame Margaux’s doubt and she sat up. Keeping the connection in her head, she looked to the jaguar. Their eyes connected and merged. Margaux held her hand out in what she thought of as a submissive gesture and the jaguar pawed and nipped at it with sheathed claws and gentle bites, as if testing and proving she was still in charge. Margaux remained fearless and neutral, determined to be unshaken in her openness, surrendering while being neither passive nor aggressive.
The cat took Margaux’s hand in its paws and licked her fingertips with tiny languishing flicks of her tongue that Margaux thought of as kitty licks. Margaux understood this to be the jaguar’s own gesture of submission.
As quickly as she had come, the jaguar hopped to her feet and turned away as if her old stand-offish self had come back to make sure Margaux didn’t forget who was boss.
The van shook and the jaguar hopped out through the passenger window. Margaux sat up blinking, marveling at how real it had seemed. She felt her hand and fingers. Wet.
Confusion enveloped her when she saw lights, then the driver’s door opened and Jake climbed in, a hateful expression contorting his face. Margaux felt the weight of the stone figure in her hand. Outside, the throaty yowl of a jaguar captured her awareness, its presence touching her, reminding her that no distance existed between them.
