Tree Girl (12 page)

Food grew scarce to the north. I spent whole days searching for enough food for one small meal. More and more people begged from me, but I turned and walked away from them. I feared people and wanted nothing from them, nor did I wish to give anything of myself. I existed in an isolated world of memories, anger, and hurt.

Sometimes I glanced at the children on the trail and felt twinges of pity when I saw their small faces so
haunted by fear and hunger. Their faces brought back painful memories of another place that had children with names like Antonio, Rubén, Victoria, Lidia, Lisa, Pablo, Federico, Lester, and Alicia. But I reminded myself that the children on the trail weren’t my responsibility either. I searched for the only responsibilities I had, Alicia and the baby. But each day I lost a little more hope.

As my journey took me farther north, refugees stretched down the trails for many kilometers, streams of humankind fleeing death. We were a mass of thousands, but still we walked in smaller distinguishable groups. I remained with one particular group of Indios for no reason except that they had become familiar. I no longer distrusted their faces or mistook them for soldiers sent to spy on us. Still I spoke to nobody, helped nobody, and asked for nothing. Sometimes I walked ahead of our group to search for Alicia and the baby, never really expecting to find them. Each passing week, my hope faded.

One afternoon our group walked past a large cereza
tree filled with soft black cherries. The others who walked with me were old and couldn’t climb trees. I knew that I could easily climb and gather cherries for everyone, but I also knew I had promised myself I’d never again climb a tree. The memories from the pueblo were raw in my mind.

“Will you climb the tree and gather cherries for us?” the old people asked me.

My heart beat faster and I shook my head, angered by their accusing stares of disappointment. When they asked again, I ran from the group and walked alone the rest of the day. Climbing trees had brought me enough pain.

The passing of each day found the refugees farther from the danger of soldiers, but new enemies arrived, bringing death with them. Starvation, diarrhea, cholera, measles, fever, vomiting, amoebas, and malnutrition—they killed each day as surely as any bullet. It became harder to ignore the children I saw, their arms and legs growing thinner and their bellies bulging more each day from starvation. When I was growing up, my parents taught me the healing power of the herbs and
plants of the forest. My brothers, my sisters, and I had known that we could always find food and medicine if the crops failed. This knowledge was a gift from my parents. But now I ignored that gift and told myself again and again that these children weren’t my responsibility.

As for me, I had lost much weight. I passed a pile of garbage one day and spotted a small piece of broken mirror. When I stared at my own reflection, my cheeks hollow, my eyes sunken, I looked like someone from the grave. My hair, which I normally kept brushed, had grown matted and tangled. Even though I still carried the brush in my huipil, brushing my hair wasn’t important anymore. Surviving was all I knew.

Because of the starvation and the diseases, every few kilometers refugees could be seen burying their friends or family members beside the trails. Sometimes the ground was too hard or rocky and stones were piled over a body. Sometimes a body lay abandoned and ignored, flies thick around the face. By the time I neared the Mexican border, I feared that many more people were close to dying, but I ignored the deaths.
Anybody who depended on me would end up no better off than my brothers and sisters had.

One afternoon, some of the refugees near me spoke intensely. “Ahead thirty kilometers is the border,” one said. “We don’t know if the border officials will let us cross, but if they do, soon we’ll come to a refugee camp where we’ll be safe. We’ve been told that the Mexican officials at the camp won’t force us to return to Guatemala.”

I didn’t know if I could trust what the man said. Walking thirty kilometers seemed so far, but I had to keep going or starve. I pitied the old people. Many would never make it another thirty kilometers. They were simply living out the last hours of their lives with empty hope.

Five more days passed before I reached the Mexican border. The group I traveled with had slowed so much that I left them behind and traveled alone the last two days. I knew many in that small group needed help desperately, but I couldn’t help their suffering.

As I neared the border, I met refugees returning
who said they had been turned back by border guards. Now I wasn’t sure what to do. The moon at that time was barely a sliver, making it treacherous walking in the blackness of the night, but near the border, trees were scarce. There was no choice but to try to cross at night with only darkness to hide my crossing.

I ate all I could find during the day, and then walked through a long night, skirting the border crossing by a full kilometer. I came to a large river and had no choice but to wade across. In the middle, the water reached my chest and the current pulled at my body. This terrified me because I couldn’t swim very well, but finally I reached the far side.

I waited until dawn to double back to the road, moving cautiously, testing each step. As the sun rose the next morning, I reached the road I thought might lead me to the refugee camp. I no longer saw other refugees and hoped it was because I had made it across the border into Mexico.

It frightened me to walk near the road where there was no protection, but all day I walked on, seeing only a few buses pass. Late that afternoon, I spotted the
camp in the distance. I was weary and glad to have reached the end of a long journey. As I neared the camp, the dusty air carried the sounds of babies crying. Ahead, hundreds of refugees crowded the small encampment. Slabs of wood or plastic were their only shelter. They sat around in small groups, watching me, their stares indifferent.

Two Mexican officials met me as I approached. Their uniforms and rifles made me want to run. The officers shook their heads as they stopped me. They spoke in Spanish. “This camp is full. Keep going to the camp near San Miguel.”

“How far is that?” I asked, hesitantly replying in Spanish.

The official pointed. “Another thirty kilometers ahead.”

I nearly cried. “Please,” I said. “Someone said I could stay here.”

The official’s scowl left no room for argument. “We’re full,” he growled.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I
t took me only three days to reach the San Miguel refugee camp, because on the last afternoon a family in a pickup truck stopped and offered me a ride for the final ten kilometers. At first I shook my head at the driver, but he traveled with his wife and children. I was weary and hungry, and I reasoned that soldiers wouldn’t travel with their families. Still I worried. Maybe the driver would take me back to the border crossing and turn me in. I no longer trusted anyone. I sat in the open back of the truck, tense, ready to jump. Even from a moving pickup.

The man who drove did as he had offered and let
me off beside the highway near San Miguel. He pointed to the refugee camp one kilometer away down a rutted dirt road. I walked the last kilometer, my apprehension building with each step. What if they turned me away from this place?

Nothing could have prepared me for the San Miguel refugee camp. Instead of a camp with tents or some other kind of shelter for maybe six or seven hundred people, I found thousands of refugees whose shelters and belongings looked like fields of garbage—rusted sheets of tin, ragged pieces of blankets, cardboard, old boards, plastic held up by sticks or anything else that might help to ward off the hot sun, the cold nights, or winds and rain. The camp stretched as far as I could see among the rocks and brush.

Hesitantly I ventured among the scattered people who wandered about, their clothes hanging from their thin bodies like rags on skeletons. Nobody spoke to me. A few people watched me idly, but to most I seemed not to exist. I was one of them, my body gaunt, my hair and my clothes matted and dirty, smelling of waste.

Ahead, a group of refugees massed. When I approached, I found a parked tanker truck with long lines of refugees waiting their turn to fill plastic containers with water. Most of the containers were bright red and blue, and they must have only recently been given to the refugees, because nothing else in their world was new.

Beyond the water truck, another crowd gathered. Two white,
gringo
aid workers shouted and pushed, handing out food from another truck, struggling to divide their load among the shoving crowds. One held up a small bag of rice and yelled in Spanish, “This must last your family for two weeks!”

I couldn’t believe how the refugees acted. They were like animals chasing scraps. With each new bag the aid worker lifted above his head, the group surged forward, yelling, pushing, and shoving. “Back up!” he screamed, but I doubted many of the refugees understood his Spanish. I watched several bags being torn open and spilled on the ground by those fighting over them.

I refused to be a part of such madness, so I kept
wandering the camp. As I walked, I searched for Alicia. The journey to the camp had been long and hard, and it seemed unlikely that Alicia would have completed it before me. I knew that it was unlikely that she would complete such a journey in one week, one year, or even one lifetime. Still, I refused to accept that she had been killed. I refused to allow the thought that maybe Alicia and the baby had been found and taken to the schoolhouse in the pueblo. To avoid that thought alone, I would keep looking for the rest of my life. Always I would search for a little girl with long black hair and a stubborn chin, a special little girl who would turn and answer when I called, “Alicia!”

As I walked deeper into the camp, I could find no place for people to wash or clean themselves. To go to the bathroom, I had to stand exposed beside everybody else along a public ditch. The more I explored, the more it seemed that the refugees had grouped themselves roughly by language. I found one section of camp where most spoke Quiché, but nobody offered me help. Finding shelter or food was up to me. Realizing this, I turned and headed back toward the trucks.

All afternoon and evening I crowded with others around the trucks, but only those who pushed or fought the hardest could get any of the supplies. By nightfall, I still had no food or shelter. At last I curled up on open ground under a tattered old piece of cardboard that did little to keep me warm. This camp, like our cantón back home, sat high in the mountains. Some nights the cold air formed thin ice on the mud puddles. That first night I shivered and clenched my teeth, hugging my knees and breathing inside my huipil. I slept little.

When dawn came, my stomach knotted with hunger and I needed water. The morning air hung heavy like a cloud, thick with dust and smoke and the smell of human waste. Hungry babies cried, and everywhere children coughed continuously. Yawning hard, I stood and went directly to the water truck. Already a long line had formed, but I noticed that the faucet splashed as people filled their jugs. Some of the water dripped down the side of the truck onto the ground.

I ignored loud swearing from those in line as I crawled under the truck. Carefully I positioned my
head so that the water dripped into my mouth. When those in line realized I was not trying to take a place in line ahead of them, they ignored me. For a long time I lay there, letting water drip into my mouth. Finally I stood and went in search of food and something to use for shelter.

I found one big truck that handed out donated clothes. The aid workers rolled items into balls and threw them randomly. I needed to find something to protect myself from the cold, so I elbowed in among the others. After pushing and being pushed for most of the afternoon, I finally caught a sweater.

I retreated back from the shoving mass of people and tried it on. I think it could have fit a horse. The waist hung to the ground like a dress, and the sleeves had to be rolled up to free my hands. I couldn’t imagine any person big enough to need such a sweater, but I didn’t care. It was all I had to keep me warm that night.

Others also tried on the clothes they caught. One woman pulled on pants that were so thin and tight they made her skin look black. She looked around in
embarrassment, greatly disappointed that this was her reward for a hot afternoon of shoving and pushing in the sun.

Some were lucky and found themselves with heavy blankets and jackets. Others caught only fancy shirts or blouses. These would have looked good at a dance, but there were no dances at the refugee camp. One old grandmother pulled on a big leather vest that looked like armor on her thin, bony frame. She examined it with a look of wonderment, and then flashed a big toothless grin at the rest of us and walked proudly in circles. We all laughed. I realized it was my first laughter in more than two months.

I rolled up the sweater and held it tightly in my arms as I went in search of food. I had grown weak from not eating. All of that afternoon and into the night I looked. Anywhere a truck stopped, crowds gathered instantly. Even late at night, refugees wandered around the camp hoping to find scraps of food.