Tree Girl (10 page)

Hesitantly I approached, and he treated me respectfully, offering me some tortillas and a piece of chicken. Another vendor handed me a bottle of Coca-Cola. I stuffed the food into my mouth and drank faster than a girl should. One man gave me two oranges, and I hid them inside my huipil for Alicia. As I chewed, I explained in Quiché to the man with the goats, “I lost my mother, and my baby sister needs milk.” That was the nearest I dared come to the truth.

The man gave me a puzzled look, and when he
spoke I realized that he was Ixil and didn’t speak Quiché. Hesitantly, I spoke a little Spanish, but he didn’t understand that either, so I pointed to a small gourd he had filled with milk. He hesitated, but then handed me the milk with a kind smile. I nodded my thanks and carried the gourd carefully back across the plaza.

Still I trusted no one. Suddenly a soft touch on my shoulder made me jump. I turned to find an old nun looking at me. Deep wrinkles creased the woman’s face. Her skin was shriveled like a dried orange, and her shoulders sagged as if under some invisible load. She smiled at me, her squinting eyes glowing with curiosity and kindness. “Hello, I’m Mother Lopez,” she said in Spanish.

I had seen soldiers dress as priests, but never as nuns. No soldier could have faked such a look of kindness. Cautiously I spoke in Spanish. “My name is Gabriela,” I said.

“You speak Spanish well for an India,” the nun said.

“You must help me,” I said. “This morning my little sister and I found a mother giving birth alone in the
countryside. I helped her, but then because there were soldiers nearby, I had to hide the mother and we brought the baby here. My little sister is outside the pueblo, hiding with the baby.”

The nun nodded. “Show me where they are.”

As the nun began to follow me, gunshots echoed loudly in the air. Then we heard screaming and looked around. From the narrow side streets, soldiers suddenly appeared, firing their rifles into the air and herding people toward the center of the plaza. As we watched, an Ixil husband and wife ignored the soldier’s commands and ran past them, trying to escape. Two soldiers aimed their rifles and fired. The couple stumbled and then fell lifeless to the ground, their bodies suddenly still.

“Come with me,” the nun shouted, grabbing my hand and spilling the gourd of milk on the ground. “Let’s go to the church.”

“I must go to my sister,” I shouted back, twisting my hand free and running back down an empty alley.

Suddenly more soldiers appeared ahead of me, firing their rifles recklessly as they came. I wanted only to
escape, so I returned to the plaza and ran in a different direction, but the soldiers were everywhere, completely surrounding us.

Without thinking, I ran across the plaza to a single large machichi tree thick with branches and leaves. I ignored all that happened around me as I reached up and began climbing.

Below me, people ran in every direction like scared cattle. Soldiers surrounded everyone. I climbed faster. In a forest it was easy to hide in a tree surrounded by other trees, but the machichi tree in the plaza stood alone, a single tree surrounded by buildings, streets, frightened people, and dangerous soldiers. When I reached the upper branches, I peeked down through the thick leaves and saw soldiers. They shouted and cursed and fired their rifles as they herded the terrified people. I feared that some of the bullets they fired recklessly into the air might hit me.

Soon the ugly and dangerous men surrounded not only the people of the pueblo but also the tree I had climbed. I, too, was a prisoner.

CHAPTER NINE

F
ear froze my muscles. With soldiers less than ten meters below me, it was as if a big fist pinched my throat and squeezed the air from my chest. The soldiers could have seen me through the leaves of the machichi tree if they had looked straight up, but they were too busy shouting and waving their rifles at the scared people who churned frantically about the plaza.

I peeked out from between the leaves at the vendors across the plaza who tried to hide, crouching behind their stands. The soldiers spotted them and opened fire. From my tree I watched men and women falling dead across their stands, spilling fruit, coffee,
and vegetables onto the dirt. Goats and sheep bawled and twisted frantically at the ends of their tethers.

Many people ran toward the church near the tree where I hid. Inside, a priest called loudly for everyone to be quiet and not to be afraid. “This is a place of God,” he shouted. “God will care for us. If the soldiers hurt us here, we’ll all go to Heaven together.”

I don’t think God heard our prayers that day. A small band of soldiers burst into the church. Muffled shots quieted the priest’s voice, then people from the church spilled out through the large double doors, only to be met by other soldiers who herded them like cattle across the plaza, where all the other villagers waited. I spotted Mother Lopez among them.

The soldiers shoved everybody into the center of the plaza and separated them. They shouted loudly, “All men—into the church! Leave your knives and machetes outside by the tree. All women go to the municipal building. Children, go to the schoolhouse.”

“We’re taking a census,” shouted one soldier. “This is only for administrative purposes.”

I wanted to scream down from the tree, “Don’t
believe them! They lie!” But I dared not move or make a sound.

Most obeyed the soldiers quickly, fear glistening in their eyes, but a few of the men refused to leave their families. The soldiers approached those men, clubbed them down with the butts of their rifles, and dragged them unconscious or struggling into the church. After three men were clubbed down, the rest left their wives and children without argument.

Some children clung to their mothers and were forcefully pulled away and dragged screaming into the schoolhouse with the rest. One mother held desperately to her baby, but the swing of a rifle broke her arm and a soldier carried her crying baby away, upside down by a single leg.

When the plaza had been cleared of all campesinos and Indios, guards positioned themselves outside each building. Other soldiers brought wood from people’s homes and built a big fire in the plaza. I didn’t understand at first why they had started such a big fire on a warm day. They separated themselves into three groups. Some soldiers went to the schoolhouse, some
to the church, and some to the municipal building. These men joined guards who were already stationed outside each structure.

The goats and sheep kept bawling and twisting against their ropes, trying to escape. Dogs cowered in corners and against walls. The soldiers laughed and shot the animals one at a time, as if for practice. When that shooting ended and every creature lay dead, all was quiet for a few minutes. The only sounds I heard came from the church, where men pleaded to be released and returned to their families. But soon their begging turned to cries of fear, and before long, terrible screams of pain echoed from inside the church. I covered my ears, but nothing could mute the sounds of torture.

I imagined these same sounds echoing through my own cantón when my family was killed. I thought also of Alicia and the baby. Could they hear this shooting? I had promised Papí that I would care for our family, but I had failed everyone, even Alicia. It hurt to imagine her totally alone under the bush, frightened, holding a sick baby and depending on my return.

A new kind of scream made me look toward the municipal building, where all the women had been taken. The soldiers had dragged a young woman outside. They shoved her into the plaza, ripping off her corte, her huipil, and then her undergarments. She fought and struggled, but the soldiers held her naked. She bit one of them, and he slapped her so hard that even from up in the tree I saw blood flow from her mouth. I will never forget how the soldiers laughed as they lined up and waited their turn to rape that woman.

It was terrifying to watch what that woman endured. She was so brave. Never once did she scream or cry out from the pain as each new soldier pummeled her on the ground. Some soldiers struck her as they raped her. Her only escape was to close her eyes and turn her head away from the animals who grunted and laughed as they violated her body and her dignity.

Louder than the soldiers’ sadistic laughs were the screams of torture echoing from inside the church. The screams would grow louder and louder, then suddenly fall quiet. Then the door of the church opened again
and soldiers dragged another body out across the plaza and dumped it onto the flames. The corpses were bloody, with ears and noses and fingers missing.

I felt relief when the last soldier finished raping the woman. Maybe now she would be released or allowed to return to the other women. Instead, a soldier walked up to her as casually as if he were lighting his cigarette. He pulled out his pistol. I looked quickly away as a loud shot echoed up from the plaza. When I peeked again, two soldiers had dragged her body to the fire.

My body trembled as if the tree were shaking. Tears blurred my vision, and I swallowed back desperate screams. I needed to throw up but didn’t dare. For many long minutes I clung to the branches, gasping with anger and fear. At least the woman’s suffering had ended. This was the same relief I had felt the day Manuel died from his beating.

Immediately another woman was led struggling from the building and the raping continued, as soldiers argued with each other to go first. For hours I watched from the machichi tree as bodies were thrown into the flames. Soldiers used their knives to pry gold-filled
teeth from the corpses before they were dumped into the hungry fire.

I wanted desperately to close my eyes, but I feared being spotted or falling. I tried instead to cover my ears, but I couldn’t block out the desperate screams and cries of pain. Many different Mayan languages filled the air with screams and cries that day, but the laughter and joking of the soldiers knew only one language. Spanish.

Before dark, a small number of soldiers gathered under the machichi tree to eat and take short siestas in the shade. I froze like a shadow. If even one soldier glanced up he would spot me. I stared at the bark of the tree and at my skin and at the sky, trying desperately to stay still until the soldiers under the tree woke and returned to their evil.

For the first time I realized how hungry I had become. I had no choice but to ignore my grumbling stomach, but the atrocities that continued in the plaza could not be so easily ignored. Again and again my breath caught in my throat and a bitter taste built in my mouth. I kept swallowing to keep from throwing
up. Finally I closed my eyes.

When I opened my eyes again, the sun had set. I hoped that with the coming of night the soldiers would finally grow tired and stop their insanity. Instead, they began drinking and their actions only grew more violent. The darkness kept me from seeing across the plaza, but desperate bloody screams pierced the night and told me that the evil continued.

During the night, soldiers took turns sleeping under the tree, so close to me that I heard their vulgar talk and listened to their snoring. I had thought the soldiers were animals, but not even animals could have slept through such screams. I pinched my eyes closed again, pretending that the screaming was only monkeys and that the echo of gunfire was only thunder. I tried to imagine flowers and sunsets, but beauty was too far away at that moment to be imagined.

I grew nauseated from weariness, and when the killing continued, I feared growing so tired that I might fall from the tree. I had walked all of the previous night and had not slept all day. I also needed to urinate, but I didn’t dare.

The screaming kept me awake late into the night. Sometimes I stared up at the sky for long periods, watching the clouds make ghostly images as they passed over the moon. The stars looked like bullet holes shot into Heaven. Soon my need to urinate became a desperate thing. Finally, with soldiers sleeping barely twenty feet below me, I silently relieved myself, letting my undergarments and corte absorb the fluid.

By now my legs had gone completely numb and I feared falling. Carefully I squirmed and twisted my body, trying to bring back circulation to my limbs. I dared not swing my arms or kick my legs. All through the night I suffered my own silent torture until the sky finally grew light with the coming of dawn. At sunrise, not one rooster crowed.

The coming of morning brought new horrors. Children were brought out from the schoolhouse to watch their parents being tortured and raped. And throughout the atrocities, the sadistic evil laughter of the soldiers echoed among the buildings and up through the branches of the tree.

A helicopter flew over and circled the pueblo, and soldiers looked up and waved, then returned to their killing. I pulled branches over my head, hoping the helicopter wouldn’t spot me.

Later that morning, several soldiers took a group of children and marched them around the plaza with sticks on their shoulders like soldiers carrying guns. All of the children cried with fright. The soldiers shouted at them, “Turn right! Turn left! Stop!” When a child stopped too soon or turned wrong, that child was pulled from the formation and punished. I had to turn my eyes away. By the time they finished, every child had been pulled from the formation. None survived.