Tree Girl (2 page)

Don Guillermo frowned. “It isn’t safe to leave you alone, Gabriela,” he called.

I laughed and yelled, “I’m not alone. The boys are with me. They’re the ones who might fall.”

The old man chuckled and swung his bundle onto his back again, continuing toward the cantón less than one kilometer away.

Now the boys tried desperately to crawl down from the tree and escape, but even stupid boys know not to let go of a tree that swings and bends and threatens to break with each movement.

“Quit swinging the tree,” pleaded the boy who had grabbed at me. “Let us down, and I won’t tell anybody that you bit me.”

I laughed loudly. “When my parents come, I’ll be the first to tell them I bit you and why I bit you. I’ll quit swinging only if you don’t move. If you even pick your nose, I’ll swing this tree so hard you’ll both fall like piñatas to the ground.”

The boys looked up at me in silence with scared eyes and waited obediently until my parents arrived along with half of the cantón. Word had spread faster than fire, and some villagers even left their fields so that they could see the two boys I had trapped in the tree. Everyone on the ground picked up sticks and waited.

“Climb down,” I ordered the boys.

They looked at the waiting crowd below and hesitated. I held up a hard avocado as if to throw it, and they began descending.

On the ground, my brother Jorge stood boldly in front of everyone else, waiting with the biggest stick. Jorge always felt he needed to protect me. No boy had
ever dared to tease me when Jorge was near.

When the two boys reached the ground, Jorge and the others beat them hard before allowing them to escape. I doubted they would ever return to our cantón. Humiliation was not a poison that cowards needed to taste twice.

“Come down, Laj Ali Re Jayub,” one of the men called to me. “You’re safe now.”

I had been safe even before everyone else arrived, so I smiled to myself as I crawled slowly from the tree. I liked the name Tree Girl. When I reached the ground, I glanced back up into the branches and felt the twinge of sadness one feels when leaving a close friend.

As we returned to the cantón, Mamí stopped to pick a red Christmas flower. She tucked it gently into my hair. “Have you done your schoolwork, Gabi?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered truthfully. “I’ve memorized my lessons.”

I was the only child my parents could afford to send to school, and they worked harder than other
parents in our cantón so I could have the opportunity to learn. Though they had never gone to school themselves, my parents possessed a dignity and wisdom that I respected.

“I don’t want you to just memorize your lessons,” Papí said to me as we walked toward the cantón. “I want you to understand them as well. Then you can explain what you’ve learned to the rest of us. If all you are going to do is learn to repeat your lessons, I might as well send a parrot to school.”

“I try to understand what I learn,” I assured him.

Papí smiled patiently before answering. “You’re Maya, Gabi, and your world is changing even as we speak. You must learn to survive change or you’ll be destroyed by it. Your education will teach you how to survive. Sending you to school has given our family hope. Someday you must come back and teach the rest of us. Promise your Mamí and me that you will.”

“I will,” I promised. Hesitantly, I asked, “Why did you choose me instead of Jorge, when he’s the oldest?” As much as he loved me, I knew that Jorge had felt betrayed and hurt that he was not the one.

Mamí smiled gently. “It’s because you think differently than the other children, Gabi. You look up at the sky when the other children stare at the ground. Why do you think you love to climb trees? You see beauty the other children are blind to. You ask questions the other children in the cantón never think to ask. You sing and dream and love poetry. We never taught you those things. You have a gift, and that gift must be shared. In your heart you’re a teacher. Even as a young child, each time you learned how to do something new I would catch you trying to teach someone else how to do it.” Mamí paused and then added, “You’re also brave, Gabi.”

I nodded. Few things frightened me, but I didn’t know if that meant I truly had courage. I did know the gift Mamí spoke of; it was like a quiet and patient voice inside of me, telling me things I didn’t think the other children heard. The voice made me question who I was and what I was becoming. It made me impatient.

We walked in silence the rest of the distance to the cantón. That day was not the first time my parents had spoken of changes that were coming, though they
always refused to say what those changes might be. I could sense their fear growing like a great storm building on the distant horizon, and I wondered what sort of danger was coming.

All my life our cantón had known only the seasons and the changing of night and day to mark the passing of time. We understood that time came to us as a gift. There was no reason to rush and make changes. We had today what our ancestors had, and that was enough. Tomorrow would arrive when it was ready. Why should that change?

Mother turned to me as we reached our small home in the cantón. “You weren’t afraid of the boys, were you, Gabi?”

I shook my head. “They were cowards.”

“Remember, Gabi,” Mamí said, her voice fearful and filled with warning. “Cowards can be very dangerous when they have guns.”

“The boys didn’t have guns,” I said.

“No, but soldiers and guerrillas do. Gabriela, war is coming to our great country.”

CHAPTER TWO

I
think my youth allowed me to ignore the possibility of war, although I, too, had seen more military trucks passing by me on the highway as I walked to school each day down in the valley. Patrols of soldiers had begun crossing the hillsides, sometimes stopping in our cantón to ask questions. Guerrillas without uniforms also questioned us.

Both sides used the same words. “You must not help the enemy,” they warned us. “If you do, then you are also the enemy.”

“When did you see the enemy, and how many were there?” they asked us.

“You are not sharing any food with the enemy, are you?”

“What direction was the enemy going, and what weapons did they carry?”

We could have easily answered these questions, because each day we worked near the fields, not always looking at the ground. We saw guerrilla and troop movements, and often we knew which way they traveled and where they stayed at night. But we learned to say nothing. If we helped either side, that made us somebody else’s enemy.

And yes, we heard that some cantóns took payments in trade for information. Some even hid guerrillas in their homes. This carried great risks. We heard of people disappearing from their homes in the middle of the night.

I saw all the same things my parents saw, but I doubted that the changes they feared would lead to war. I wanted to believe that the troop movements were normal and that the guerrillas were simply a new political party. Always in our country there were political problems. Political parties in Guatemala were
never above using threats, abductions, and assassinations. But that didn’t mean war.

Maybe I refused to be concerned because my quinceañera celebration was near and I wanted nothing to wreck my special day. Each day teased me with hope and anticipation, until I was ready to burst with excitement. So I chose to ignore the worry in my parents’ voices. It was simply the fretting of adults, I told myself.

Finally April arrived, and one week before my birthday, Papí walked with me to each home in our cantón and announced, “Next Tuesday my daughter, Gabriela, she will be fifteen years old. Will you please join us on that special day to celebrate her quinceañera?”

All week we readied ourselves for the celebration. Uncle Raphael provided a pig to be roasted, and Papí arranged to have a priest come to the cantón. The twins, Antonio and Julia, were eleven years old and handled the arrival of my quinceañera differently.

Julia came to me and announced, “I’ll keep the floor and the yard swept, I’ll tie the dogs up, and I’ll
watch Alicia and Lidia. That will help you to prepare.”

True to his nature, my brother Antonio helped with anything if asked. He was honest and hardworking like his twin sister, but he was a timid person and feared taking risks. He would laugh and clap when another boy did something mischievous like holding on to a cow’s tail, but he never allowed himself to grab hold.

Though he was shy, I knew Antonio was proud of me. “You are the first sister of mine to have a quinceañera,” he kept saying.

My brother Lester was thirteen and the laziest of our family. He also was the most impulsive and short-tempered. He announced again and again, “I’ll make sure nobody forgets anything.”

I knew Lester’s voice held not one grain of sincerity. Lester always disappeared at the first hint of work. Two days before the celebration, Jorge needed help butchering the pig that Uncle Raphael gave us. He found Lester throwing corn husks at the dogs. “Would you help me to dip the pig in boiling water and scrape the skin?” he asked.

Suddenly Lester held his stomach with his hands.
“I wish I could help you, but something I ate is making me sick. I better go lie down.”

Papí heard Lester’s excuse and laughed. “You aren’t my child,” he joked. “You were sired by a sloth.”

We all laughed, which only made Lester angry.

“I’ll help you,” I offered.

“I need someone big and strong to help me boil the pig,” Jorge said, knowing that I resented such words.

I could do anything Jorge could, and more. I could weave, pick herbs, and climb trees higher than he could. Jorge’s teasing came mostly from his disappointment and frustration that Mamí and Papí had chosen their oldest daughter and not him, their oldest child, as the one who would attend school. Papí needed Jorge’s help in the fields during planting and harvest, and Jorge was sixteen and as strong as a small ox.

I waited until Jorge could find no one else to help him, then grudgingly he allowed me to go with him to where the big barrel of water heated over the fire.

“I’ll kill the pig,” he announced, as if that made
him more important.

I didn’t mind. I helped to hold the struggling pig, but I looked away when Jorge cut its throat with his machete. Once the pig lay dead, we dipped it into the boiling water to make the hair shave easily. As I helped to gut and dress the animal, an awkward silence hung between Jorge and me. I broke it by saying, “Maybe next year you, too, can attend school.”

“Mamí and Papí don’t send me to school,” Jorge answered, “because they know I’m already smart.”

I knew how much Jorge wished to attend school, so I resisted making any clever reply. Jorge had a good heart, and he had come to my rescue many times. So I ignored his words and offered only a quiet smile. This, however, probably bothered him worse than any sharp words I might have spoken.

All afternoon I helped with the pig until it was scraped and ready to cook. By some miracle, Lester’s stomachache disappeared when he saw we were done.

The day before my quinceañera, I found myself getting short with my youngest sisters, Lidia and Alicia. They
kept wandering away, and then everybody had to stop working to look for them.

“Julia, you promised to watch them,” Mamí scolded.

Julia nodded obediently. “Yes, Mamí, from now on they’ll stay close.”

When Julia returned with the girls, I heard her say to them, “This morning I saw a big dog walking beside the fields. He had a little girl’s dress hanging from his teeth, and he looked hungry.”

Lidia and Alicia ran to my side and remained close for protection the rest of the afternoon.

The night before the celebration, Antonio and Julia made decorations with flowers and corn husks. I washed and tried on the colorful huipil I had woven specially for the day. Julia began following me around and braided my hair whenever I stopped moving for even a few seconds. Little Alicia insisted on helping. I knew that the next morning it would be Mamí who braided my hair before the ceremony.

I spent much of that last evening helping Mamí cook up fresh tortillas. I also helped her kill six chickens and make chicken soup.

As we cooked, Alicia stayed near, offering suggestions. “I think you should do it this way,” she insisted, pushing her fat little hands into whatever we did.

“Thank you for the help, my
bebe,”
Mamí kept saying.

Lidia sat politely by the table and asked questions. “What would happen if you didn’t put water in the tortillas? What would happen if the soup boiled too long?”

Mamí patiently answered each question.

“Can you teach a boy to cook?” I asked.

Mamí smiled kindly and said, “Love doesn’t wear only a corte. It’s easy to mix a recipe and to light a fire, but cooking with love is what makes food good.”

Love was what Mamí gave me, not only when she patiently struggled to teach me to cook but also when we cleaned a chicken or worked grinding corn for tortillas. She taught me love when she taught me to weave the brightly colored huipil I would soon wear as a young woman. Love is the lesson she taught me as each day began and before each day ended.