Tree Girl (11 page)

I actually wondered if maybe the cruel things I was seeing were only a part of a bad dream, part of my own imagination and insanity. Surely humans could not be so cruel. But this nightmare was not a dream from which I could awaken.

When at last the only females left were old and wrinkled grandmothers, the soldiers grew angry and led the remaining few out into the plaza and stripped them naked. Mother Lopez was among these women, but the
soldiers treated her with no deference. At gunpoint the grandmothers were ordered to perform like circus animals.

Most of the old women, including Mother Lopez, had so much dignity that they refused to do what was commanded and instead kneeled quietly on the ground to accept their fate. Angry cursing and threats sounded from the soldiers. When the old women still remained kneeling, loud gunshots left their fragile and aged bodies crumpled on the ground.

My body pained me from sitting motionless on the branch, and at one point I nearly crawled from the tree and surrendered to the soldiers. I wanted to join those sparks from the fire that floated upward. After all I had seen, what reason was there to continue living? But my anger burned as hot as the flames in the plaza. My revenge would be to stay alive and someday speak of what I witnessed.

My body and mind had become so weary by this time that even with the madness below me, my head nodded and I jerked awake again and again to catch myself from falling. I ached so badly that I nearly cried
out. Once more I urinated into my clothes. My grip on the branches was so weak now, I couldn’t have lifted a broom. I could barely even swallow.

The pile of burning bodies made a small hill in the plaza, and a wretched scorched smell filled the air. Those devils would have kept killing if there had been a thousand people, but by late afternoon every living human and creature had been murdered except me. The soldiers gathered in the center of the plaza, dirt and blood smearing their wrinkled and torn uniforms. Their unshaven faces made them look like beggars and bandits.

The men went to the
pilas
, the big washing sinks near the church where women washed their clothes. They shaved their faces and took turns washing the blood from their uniforms and skin so that they could return home clean to their own wives and children. I knew that their souls could not be so easily cleaned. After what had happened, I hoped they were all damned to hell.

Before leaving the pueblo, the soldiers spread out in different directions, carrying torches and setting fire
to every structure. Within an hour, all of the pueblo blazed with rumbling flames. Even in the tree, heat forced me to pull my huipil over my face. I feared that the branches and leaves might catch fire.

With flames surrounding me, the pueblo became a literal hell of raging fires as the soldiers returned to the plaza carrying their rifles. Their packs bulged with stolen money and jewelry. At last, late in the afternoon, the soldiers walked single file away from the burning pueblo as calmly as if they had just finished another ordinary day of work.

By this time, I had lost all hope. I feared climbing from the tree, but I had no choice. My body was so weak and my mind so numb. My muscles ached and felt frozen as I began working my way down. Inch by inch I crawled from a tree that had taken only seconds to climb the day before. I used my arms to hold on to the branches because my hands were too weak. My legs threatened to collapse with each movement.

Ten feet above the ground, my body simply gave out and I slipped, crashing from the tree and landing hard on my side, knocking the air from my lungs. I lay
there dazed, gasping for breath, and trying to decide if anything was broken. I stared back up into the tree where I’d spent the last two days and was overcome with guilt for having survived. I deserved to die along with everyone else.

Climbing that tree had not been an act of bravery. It was the act of a desperate coward. Everyone else had faced the soldiers except me. I had hidden while others died. By being a Tree Girl, I had been a coward.

There was a time when trees brought me closer to Heaven, but climbing the tree in the plaza had brought me closer to Hell. I made a promise to myself that day. As I lay exhausted and nearly unconscious beneath the machichi tree in the middle of that burning pueblo, with smoke clouding the air and the wretched smell of burned bodies as thick as the haze around me, I made a solemn vow to the earth and to the sky and to everything left sacred in the world: Never again would I climb a tree.

CHAPTER TEN

A
s I lay under the machichi tree, my conscience screamed at me,
Gabriela, get up and leave now! Go to where you left Alicia and the baby!

I tried to stand but couldn’t. I was dizzy and weak. My dry and swollen tongue filled my mouth and threatened to suffocate me, and every part of my body hurt. I lay moaning on the ground, exhausted, needing water, but first my body demanded a few moments of rest.

Finally I struggled to my feet, stumbling like a drunken man across the plaza and into the marketplace. Little remained from the massacre except spilled fruit, charred ashes from the vendors’ stands, dark
bloodstains in the dirt, and everywhere the stinking carcasses of rotting animals. Much of the bread that remained had hardened. Meat brought fresh to market had rotted, the odor mingling with the stench of death.

I picked my way among the destruction until I found an old clay jug full of stale water. I gulped mouthful after mouthful of the warm foul liquid until my thirst was satisfied. Then I picked my way through the destroyed stands, eating a piece of fruit, an old chunk of salted meat, a dried cookie, and anything else I could find. I wrapped my waist strap tightly around my corte and filled the front of my huipil with whatever I didn’t eat.

I made my way toward the edge of the pueblo to search for Alicia and the baby. I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting more soldiers to appear at any moment. I tried to run but couldn’t. I was still weak, and my legs threatened to collapse under me.

At the place where I had left my little sister, I called out and crawled behind the bush. Alicia and the baby were gone. Frantically I looked in every direction, searching for tracks in the hardened earth and imagining
the worst. What if the soldiers had found Alicia and taken her and the baby to the schoolhouse in the pueblo? I dared not allow such a thought.

The unnatural stillness of the air hung heavy with danger. I continued searching farther and farther out into the countryside, thinking maybe Alicia had run with the baby. Behind me in the distance, thick smoke still rose into the sky from the fires in the pueblo. The afternoon air cooled, but I refused to give up.

When darkness finally blanketed the countryside, I finally sank to the ground in tears. Every living human I had ever known was gone. There on the hard ground in the dark, severed from all that I had ever known and loved, I sobbed uncontrollably. Memories of my family and friends and my past haunted me.

For a long time I lay motionless on the ground and waited for my soul to join the sparks that had drifted to the heavens back in the pueblo. That was where I should have died. Now I wanted everything to end—my loss, the pain, my memories, my life. But a dog barked and barked in the distance. The moon still hung above me in the sky, and around me the sounds
of crickets chorused. I still breathed, and life refused to end so easily.

Finally, I forced myself to stand. I looked back toward the pueblo at the dull glow of flames still tinting the sky, then I turned and wandered toward the North Star. What else could I do? My heart still beat, and tonight life wouldn’t surrender and allow me to quit. For two full nights I’d been without sleep, but still I stumbled blindly into the next night, moving forward in a drunken stupor until at last my body would go no farther.

I didn’t search for soft or protected ground to sleep. I simply quit walking and collapsed, unconscious before my body met the earth. The sleep of the dead captured me, not allowing me to wake either for the heavy rain that came during the night or for the coming of dawn. Only when the sun climbed high in the sky and made the air hot around me—only then did I roll onto my stomach and open my eyes.

I found my clothes and hair soaked from the downpour, and I coughed and stared around me at the wet ground. I still lived, whatever that meant. Struggling to
my feet, I continued northward.

The first days after the massacre, I must have been in shock. I remember little of that time except walking, sleeping, and weeping. Always I wept as I walked, each day surrounded by lonely winds, hot days, long cold nights, crickets chirping, and the crying of doves. I remember hearing doves.

I ate sparingly from the food I carried, and when my path crossed a stream or a spring, I soaked some of my dry bread to make it easier to swallow. I didn’t choose to be alive. I ate because as long as I still lived, I felt hunger.

I tried to avoid people by keeping to trails high on the hills, but many of those who escaped the killings in other cantóns and pueblos also walked the same trails northward. Whenever someone came near, I hid in the trees or ran.

One afternoon I was walking sullenly, staring at my feet, when a voice surprised me from behind. I turned to find myself only a few feet away from a family of Indios who had walked up behind me. A mother, father, grandmother, and one little child stared at me. I started to run,
but I saw in their faces the same haunted desperation I also felt. These people were no threat to me. I stared back at them briefly, neither of us greeting the other, and then I continued on alone.

With the passing of each day, more Indios found their way to the trails—mothers, fathers, grandparents, and children. Like me, most had only the clothes they wore and the heavy loss they carried in their hearts. Many limped and nursed wounds. Others threw up and sweated from illness. Each day heat came like an oven, and each night brought bitter cold. Many parents and grandparents trudged along carrying sick children on their backs. I isolated myself from everybody, carrying on my back the burden of shame for having survived when so many others had had the courage to die.

Where could so many people have come from? There were hundreds, many of whom wore the clothes and spoke the language of other regions. Everybody, however, shared the same vacant expression of despair.

One day, as I ate from the food I carried, two old men approached me with their hands held out begging. I shook my head and ran from them. Another day, an
old woman approached me searching for a lost family member. Again I shook my head. My responsibility had been a family that now lay buried. My only responsibility now was feeding myself and searching for a young girl named Alicia and a baby I had never wanted.

Some days, platoons of soldiers passed on distant hillsides and gunshots echoed in the distance. Rumors of ambushes spread among the refugees. For this reason, most refugees walked during the night, which was hard because of the cold and the twisting rocky trails. Some nights, heavy clouds hid the moon and made traveling even more dangerous, but never as dangerous as a soldier’s gun.

There were some who risked walking during the day, but I didn’t. I hid among the trees or in caves or behind large boulders until nightfall, avoiding everyone, especially those who started fires or had children who made noise. When I finished the food carried with me from the pueblo, I spent my days as the others did, sleeping or picking berries,
jocote
fruit, or digging for raw
pacaya
, a bitter-tasting root that Mamí and Papí had taught me to eat. My nights and days
were consumed with overwhelming anger and guilt.

Sometimes when I walked close to a group, I overheard their stories. Men showed their wounds and told of being caught and tortured. Most of the women remained silent, not willing to share the memories they guarded. All of the refugees spoke of losing family or friends to the war.

I walked alone, but remained close to one large group. I never knew where I was as we journeyed northward. I knew only that I walked each day closer to a frightening and unknown fate. Some days, in the far northern hills of Guatemala, we passed small cantóns filled with mostly Indios. I didn’t dare enter those places for fear soldiers might be waiting in ambush. I knew also that the villagers in those cantóns were very poor and probably didn’t have enough food to feed their own families.

Sometimes strangers approached the refugees, offering directions or telling them where soldiers had been. Always I feared these people were setting military traps. I worried that if we believed them, we might die, but if we didn’t believe them, we might still die.
Everyone lived in constant fear of dying, never trusting anybody.

Rumors of more killings to the south continued, but after many nights of travel without hearing gunshots and many days without seeing patrols, I decided I must be north of where the soldiers destroyed cantóns and killed the Indios. Still fearful and cautious, I began walking in daylight. This was easier, but I noticed that everybody who owned a machete carried it always at their side. I carried a big stick. Every voice, every breaking branch in the forest, even the sound of a hawk’s cry made me look around, certain that the soldiers had caught up with me.