TWENTY-EIGHT
– OCTOBER –
Their fluffiness leaving them, my two little macaws hopped in their basket. With their technicolor feathers sprouting, gorgeous tails longer day by day, each day I wondered, Were they ready to fly? If I put the basket on the window, would something swoop from the sky or slither up the sill and make a meal of them before they had the chance to try their wings?
With trembling hands I lifted the nest to the long wooden plank. The birds strutted around, jabbing at the seeds at their feet, gnawing on the rim of the basket.
I looked up. Shouting came from beyond the longhouse, calls for help spiked over the early morning birdsong. Heart pounding, I left the birds on the sill and raced down the stairs as quickly as my big belly would allow.
The main room of the longhouse was deserted. Hammocks hung empty, a few still swaying as if vacated in a hurry, cooking fires still smoking. Hurrying down the hall past the storage rooms to the far east end of the building, I saw a crowd had gathered near the opening of the Fire Ant Path.
More shouts, cries. I made my way down the long set of stairs to the hard earth and took off toward the cropland. Tuti ran to meet me, grabbed my hand and pulled me along through the crowd of families and children.
HarryB staggered along, one arm around HarryA’s waist as she half carried, half dragged her down the narrow path along the manioc gardens. Exhausted, she lurched a more few steps forward, then dropped to her knees; HarryA’s limp form tumbling into the sharp grasses of the field. By the time I reached them, one of the men had picked her up and was running with her to the clinic, followed by the buzzing crowd.
HarryB spoke to anyone who would listen. “She got so sick, so fast! I didn’t think we’d make it. I had nothing to give her . . .” She covered her mouth, didn’t recognize me, Did I look that different? “Lily,” she finally said, “have you seen For God’s Sake?”
“No.”
Wild-eyed, she turned to Dona Antonia, who hurried ahead toward the clinic carrying a bucket of water. “Forget about him,” she said, face set.
“Forget about him? What’s going on?”
“We sent Panchito to find him. We haven’t heard anything. What difference does it make? Is he here now to help us?”
I stood in the shadows of the clinic, filled with dread at the scene unfolding before me. Two small fans clipped at the dull hot air, motors whining. After the batteries inside died, there would be no more.
HarryA lay on her back on a thin straw mat on the floor, her arms secured to her body with lengths of liana, her bare feet tied snugly to two stubby poles the men had pounded into the soft wood of the floor. After their task, they stood around looking awkward, arms looped loosely behind their backs.
“Get out of here,” HarryB barked, sending a few young boys out for more water. “And bring clean cloth, as much as you can find. Go!”
HarryA moaned, her head rolling back and forth on the meager pillow, spittle dribbling from the corners of her mouth. She struggled weakly at her ropes as she tried to lift her arms, turn from side to side, or bend her knees. Sweat greased her face and drenched her thin gray hair, soaking the drab cotton sheet she lay on. Dona Antonia busied herself loosening the cords while still keeping her immobile, all the while making small sounds of comfort, sounds I hadn’t known she was capable of.
Eyes swimming in reddened sockets, HarryA turned to me, looking me up and down, my gaunt face, my big belly, my sack dress, and purple-stained skin. “You are going to have a bastard child. You are not married in the eyes of God. I’m dying, Lily, but I’m going to a beautiful place—”
“Shut up, A,” HarryB said. “You’re not dying. We’re going to get this all cleared up.” Kneeling, she held her friend’s fine-boned hand with her ham-fisted one, gazing at her with so much love I had to look away. Dona Antonia handed me some folded-up sections of cloth, motioning to place them under the ties, which were already cutting into the thin skin of the sick missionary’s scrawny ankles.
“Oh, B,” HarryA said. “You know and I know. You can’t do this thing . . .”
A few young boys entered the hut, eyes downcast, hushed by the thin veil that hung between life and death. They carried tin pails of water and armfuls of cotton cloth and burlap scraps, all ironed to board-like stiffness. Anna knelt at HarryA’s head, cooling her forehead with a damp cloth.
HarryB spread out one of the lengths of cotton next to HarryA’s tortured body. When she knew HarryA couldn’t see her face, she let her own terror show; the skin ashen, taut over her sharp chin and cheekbones. Out of a lumpy canvas bag, she removed and arranged on the cloth: a slender, silver surgical-looking knife, a small pair of scissors, tweezers, sewing needle, a bundle of waxy-looking black string, and a label-less bottle of pills. Water boiled in a pot on a brick stove nearby. She lay the sharp ends of the tools in the hot water, then held three white pills and a brimming tin cup of cool water to HarryA’s lips.
“Why are you bothering with me?” HarryA said, turning her head away.
“Take the fucking pills.”
HarryA shut her eyes, a wave of pain rolling across her features, her face whitening. “If it will make you happy, my dear.” She opened her eyes, focusing first on the clipping fans, then on all the faces staring down. “But you know we’ve failed, don’t you? You know we haven’t made one bit of difference—”
HarryB pushed a pill in her mouth, spilling water down A’s pointed chin; she gulped it all back, coughing, blinking, then opened her mouth like a little bird and accepted the rest, bony throat bulging. HarryB exhaled heavily before pushing herself to her knees to free a hip flask from the pocket of her camo pants. She unscrewed the top, bent down, held the flask to HarryA’s mouth, and tipped it.
“If you waste a drop of this, I’ll kill you myself.”
But the missionary, chastened, eyes never leaving HarryB’s, was now accepting any and all liquids.
HarryB turned to me. “Go find Beya. Now.”
Holding my belly, I marched off to the manioc fields, to the cow barn, to the huts where the lepers lived. Machetes strapped to abbreviated limbs, the group of four adults worked the fields in the oppressive sun.
“Have you seen Beya?” Faces obscured by straw hats, a few of them looked back at me. They shook their heads and turned back to their work.
Panting and sweating, I made my way to the far perimeter of the fields, to the mouth of the Python Path. In the trees above, six king vultures peered out from under orange wattles with white-ringed, bottomless black eyes. All patience, all waiting. As long as death existed, so would they.
Under the vultures’ dull, hungry glare, I planted my tapir-clad feet wide. Cradling my belly with both hands, I shut my eyes, all energy focused on silencing my noisy mind—full of the usual deafening chatter: fear, worry, doubt, longings—until, for a few precious moments: silence, as after a heavy snowfall. In my mind, I called in Spanish:
“BEYA, WE NEED YOUR HELP. HARRY-A IS SICK. SHE’S DYING. WE ARE IN THE CLINIC. PLEASE COME.”
As I spoke the words in my head, a buzzing sensation traveled through my teeth and jaw, down my neck to my shoulders, arms, fingers. I knew I had done it—even if she hadn’t heard me, even if she wasn’t listening or chose to ignore me—I knew I had spoken to her.
The sun beat at my face, the vicious jungle air seared my throat.
“ANSWER ME . . .”
I made my mind an empty thing, a blank canvas on which she could paint her words back to me, send a picture, an emotion, anything.
Silence. Emptiness.
One of the vultures spread its enormous black-and-white wings as if to dry them in the sultry air; the others did the same, like a wave, one after the other, till the first one flapped his closed and the others followed suit, all one vulture mind.
I squeezed my eyes shut and silenced my clamorous mind for a second time. Waited for the delicious hush, the lull, the pulsing calm. In my mind’s eye I saw my open mouth, heard myself calling to her in English, then Spanish, then English again. I called up the image of HarryA lying prone, suffering; I showed her the woman’s blank face staring at the ceiling of the hut, the way her ankles were tied and bleeding. I showed her HarryB’s face in devastation; held all this in my mind’s eye until I couldn’t anymore and shards of the picture broke away into the smudgy blue and black shapes behind my eyes. Exhaustion and dizziness flooded me.
I opened my eyes.
Just the dusty path before me, the unforgiving sky above. Tapping one last dram of energy, I sent one more message: “WELL, FUCK YOU, THEN.” In defeat, I turned back to the clinic. I’d taken only a few steps before I heard the whoosh of a machete clearing a path. Bit by bit, as the vines and branches fell, Beya emerged from the matted tangle of forest.