Tree Girl (6 page)

I stayed with my family as Manuel recommended, and after three days, we visited Mamí’s grave with flowers and candles to help send her spirit on to the next world. Papí gathered all of us that third night and said, “Don’t go outside. The spirits are out tonight.”

We huddled together around the fire all evening, Alicia and Lidia under my arms, all of us peering into
the fire. “Let’s tell stories of Mamí,” I said. “Not sad ones, but happy and funny ones. Mamí would want that.”

It was Julia who found strength to giggle first. “Mamí hated mice,” she said. “Once Lidia and I found a nest of dead baby mice and put them in a bowl of hot water. At mealtime I told Mamí we had made her some special soup. We covered her eyes, and when we let her see the baby mouse soup, she pretended to be grateful and took out extra spoons. She said, ‘I must share something so delicious with you.’”

“What did you do?” Antonio asked.

“We ran screaming from the table.”

Lester laughed so hard that spit came from his nose, and then the rest of us laughed even harder.

Before the night ended, each of us had told stories of Mamí, laying her to rest in our minds as carefully as we had buried her ashes, sharing memories of happiness and not of grief. This was something Mamí had done with our family when her mother had died.

Halfway through that long evening, Papí went outside
by himself. When I heard a strange noise, I peeked outside. Papí was tying a neighbor’s donkey behind our home to make noises so he could tell Lidia and Alicia that they were hearing spirits.

When Alicia heard the donkey move outside, she whispered in my ear, “Mamí, do you hear the spirits outside?”

When Alicia called me Mamí, great watery tears blurred my eyes. I cuddled her closer and said, “Yes, Alicia dear, I hear the spirits.” I was so proud of our family that night. Jorge was gone, and now so was Mamí, but still our family sat around the fire, unbroken.

After everyone had gone to their sleeping mats that night, Papí came to me. “Gabriela,” he said. “With Jorge and your Mamí gone, you are now the oldest. I will need your help more at home, but I want you to still go to school.”

I nodded.

Papí continued. “Promise me one thing. If anything ever happens to me, you must protect your younger brothers and sisters as if they were your own
children. Will you promise me this?”

Promises borrow from the future, but of course, I said, “Yes,” never realizing how soon I would need to honor my promise.

CHAPTER FIVE

T
he first rumors of war had come to our cantón less than one year before Mamí’s death. And from the beginning, I had assumed it was not our war. Why would we have enemies? We were only
campesinos
, country people, and we didn’t care about politics or power. We cared only about our families and raising food for our survival.

For this reason I didn’t understand why the soldiers kept coming to our cantón. “The guerrillas are communists,” they shouted. “If you help the guerrillas, then you, too, are communists.”

In school, Manuel had explained communism to
me, but most in our cantón had never heard of the words
communism, democracy, socialism
, and
capitalism.
We wished only to live our lives and to work the same land that our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had farmed. Mamí and Papí had taught us to help all people, not just this kind or that kind. If wanting to live peacefully as human beings made us capitalists, socialists, or communists, none of us cared. We wished only to be left alone to live the ways of our ancestors. Why should that make us someone’s enemy?

With the fighting and sounds of gunfire, many parents stopped allowing their children to leave the cantón to attend school. Papí refused to do this. He said to me, “Gabriela, I know you want to learn.”

Papí was right. Like Manuel, I believed that knowledge would somehow help me to survive. I was hungry to learn, and since I had become Manuel’s helper, the younger children considered me their teacher. I felt an obligation to help at home, but teaching the children made me feel needed, and I knew that working with them would help me to think less about Jorge and Mamí. Still, I stayed home for one week following Mamí’s death.

The day I returned to school, I left home early so that I could prepare lessons for the younger children. Manuel insisted I spend half of each day with my own studies. The other half he allowed me to teach math, reading, and science to the children, Enrique, Victoria, Lisa, Sami, and Carmen.

When I arrived, Manuel was already at his desk, rubbing his neck as if it were sore.

“How is my teacher, Manuel?” I asked cheerfully.

“Your teacher would be better if there weren’t a war,” he answered, looking out the window as he spoke.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

Manuel threw up his hands. “The world is wrong.” He turned in his chair to look at me, then relaxed with a tired smile. “I’m sorry, Gabriela. You didn’t come to school to hear your teacher complain.” Again, Manuel glanced out the window.

“It’s okay,” I said, missing Manuel’s normal joking and teasing. “Are you watching for the students or for soldiers?” I asked.

Manuel shrugged. “Maybe I’m looking for ghosts. How is your family?” he asked.

“We’re looking for ghosts, too,” I said.

Manuel and I spoke until it was time for school to begin. Only six students arrived for classes that day: Me; three older students, Rubén, Federico, and Pablo; and two of the younger students, Victoria and Lisa. I was happy to see Victoria and Lisa, because they were so close to learning the alphabet. If they finished memorizing the last few letters today, I had two pieces of candy saved for them as a reward.

Manuel acknowledged the few students who had arrived, then leaned heavily back in his chair and scratched at his head as if weighing some great decision. “Instead of sitting in a hot schoolhouse, let’s go to the river for a picnic,” he announced. “I’ll teach all of you how to fish with a net.”

I knew something worried Manuel that day. Maybe he feared soldiers arriving, or maybe other thoughts weighed on him. Whatever the reason, I didn’t mind taking the children away from the schoolhouse to the river. Lisa and Victoria could finish learning the alphabet outside as well as inside.

As if relieved by his decision, Manuel grabbed
Rubén and tickled him. “What have you been eating at home? You’re fatter than my pig!”

Rubén screamed with delight and tickled Manuel back. “And you’re bigger than our cow.”

“He’s bigger than an elephant,” Victoria said.

“Let’s go to the stream,” Manuel said, picking up a small pack. He also gave a small throw net to Federico to carry. I liked Federico. He was a tall, thin boy who thrived, as I did, on learning. He wrote beautiful poetry that sounded like gentle songs when he read them aloud in class.

I watched Manuel as he led us down the path from the school toward the river. Many teachers shouted and punished students. Manuel spoke quietly, even when he was disappointed in a student. He treated each of us with great respect, as if our thoughts were worth more than his own. We would have followed him anywhere.

As we walked, Manuel kept glancing over his shoulder toward the trees. I, too, worried about soldiers, but I had never seen Manuel this way. He seemed to calm down when we reached the river. Here we
couldn’t be seen from either the school or the highway. Manuel spread out the net and began showing us how to throw it into the water.

When Manuel wasn’t watching, I snuck up behind him and threw the end of the net over him. “We caught a whale! We caught a whale!” I shouted.

Instantly everybody tackled Manuel, and soon he rolled back and forth on the shore like a beached whale, grunting and tickling the youngest children who climbed on top of him. Finally he sat up, breathing hard, and untangled himself from the net. “Does anybody want to know what’s in my pack?” he asked.

Instantly Victoria and Lisa grabbed his big hands and led him back upstream to the shade of a single cotton-wood tree beside the river. Slowly, as if feeling lazy, Manuel opened the pack and handed a bottle of orange drink to each of us. One at a time, he opened our bottles for us. The drinks had grown warm from the hot day, but we didn’t care. Last, he pulled out a small bag of tortillas. “Let’s have lunch,” he said.

We all grouped ourselves close to him as he lowered himself down to sit on a low rock. Manuel’s fear
and concern seemed to have disappeared. His face relaxed, and his eyes danced with mischief as he pretended to take Pablo’s drink.

We were still laughing when we noticed soldiers, ten of them with their rifles slung over their shoulders, marching directly toward us. Our laughing and joking stopped, and we waited quietly, hoping they were only passing by.

The soldiers walked to where we sat. “Why are you here with these children?” the comandante shouted at Manuel.

At first, Manuel pretended not to understand Spanish, but the comandante walked up to Rubén, who sat with the rest of us on the ground. He kicked Rubén hard. “Do you know Spanish?” he shouted.

Manuel stood. “I speak Spanish,” he answered quietly. “Please don’t hurt the children. I’m their teacher.”

“And what do you teach them?”

“Many things,” Manuel said. “How to read and write, and how to think.”

The comandante who asked the questions was a very ugly man. His rough skin made his face look like
a pineapple, and his eyes were small and black, like those of a snake. “To think how?” he shouted. “Like communists?”

“No. I teach the children to—”

Without warning, the comandante spun and struck Manuel in the stomach with the butt of his rifle before he could finish speaking. The soldier’s large mouth spread into a wicked smile, then quickly tightened to a thin line. “Lies!” he shouted. “All lies!”

I scrambled to my feet, and instantly several soldiers pointed their rifles at me. Manuel bent over, but he didn’t cry out or fight back.

“No!” I shouted in Spanish, ignoring the risk. “He never taught us to be communists.”

The comandante walked up to me with a curious, ugly stare. “You’re India,” he spit, saying the word as if it were dirty and vulgar. “Where did you learn Spanish so well?”

Before I could answer, he slapped my face so sharply it felt as if my head had exploded. I fell over, and the taste of sweet blood filled my mouth.

“Please don’t hurt the children,” Manuel begged
once more, and again the comandante jabbed the butt of his rifle into Manuel’s stomach, knocking him to the ground. All of us scrambled to our feet. Victoria and Lisa screamed and started running away from the soldiers.

A soldier lifted his rifle to his shoulder.

For a moment I stood in disbelief as the man aimed his rifle.

“No! Don’t shoot!” I screamed, chasing after the girls.

“Bring them back or we’ll kill them!” shouted the comandante.

I caught up to both girls and held each of them firmly by the arm. They trembled like small bushes in a strong wind. I coaxed them back toward the group, whispering, “Don’t scream or run. Come back quietly.”

The soldiers had forced Manuel back to his feet and tied his hands behind his back. One by one they started taking turns hitting him in the stomach and face. One soldier kicked Manuel between the legs. Manuel’s face paled as the cowards in green uniforms hit him again and again. When he looked over at us, the tears in his eyes told me that he cared and worried
more for us than himself. But we were only children. We couldn’t help him.

All of us stood whimpering and shaking, terrified. I tried to look away, but a soldier grabbed me and twisted my face forward to watch. All of us were forced to watch what happened that day. Lisa cried loudly, and Manuel had the strength to look at her and mouth the words
Don’t be afraid.
Then another fist smashed his face.

Taking turns, the soldiers struck Manuel again and again until their fists grew sore and their arms tired. I wanted to throw up from all the anger and fear inside of me. Manuel’s face swelled and became puffy. Blood leaked from his nose and from the sides of his mouth. His eyes bulged, and his skin changed from white to red and back again.

He grunted each time he was hit, but not once did he cry out or fight back. Manuel was the bravest man I had ever known. When he grew so weak that he could no longer stand, two soldiers held him up by his arms while others continued to strike him.

I noticed during the beating that two of the soldiers
were Indios. They didn’t seem to delight in their actions the way the other soldiers did. They probably knew they would be beaten themselves if they refused to help torture Manuel.

I don’t know when Manuel died. The soldiers didn’t know either, but they suddenly grew angrier when they realized they were beating a dead man. I felt overwhelming relief when at last I realized that the freedom of death had lifted Manuel from his body and carried him up to a place where no soldier could ever reach him. Up to the place where we had danced the night of my quinceañera.

I peeked at the other students, Victoria, Lisa, Rubén, Federico, and Pablo. We had all stood bravely through the beating, but when Manuel’s body dropped to the ground, we all cried. The ugly comandante tucked his shirt back into his pants, then turned and walked up to us as if killing Manuel had made him more important. “If any of you speak of what happened here,” he said, “we’ll find you and kill you. Do you understand?”