Tree Girl

CHAPTER ONE

F
or as long as I can remember, trees have coaxed me to their branches in the same way light tempts a moth near on a dark night. My Mamí told me that even before I learned to walk, I pushed away from the safety of her arms and crawled alone to a great
encino
tree near our thatched-roof home. I sat beneath the tree and gazed up at the branches as if their leaves had called to me. As I grew, I pulled myself up among those same branches and stared even higher, hearing new voices.

“Gabriela, when you climb a tree, it takes you closer to heaven.” Mamí encouraged me as each month I
climbed still higher. And I believed her. By the time I turned ten, I could climb to the top of any tree—even those that offered me only a few branches. Always I kicked off my sandals and socks at the bottom so that my toes could feel the coarse bark and find the hidden footholds. When I crawled very high, higher than even the boys dared, I closed my eyes and reached one hand over my head. If I held my breath and spread my fingers wide apart, I could feel the clouds.

The
cantón
where I lived was nothing more than a simple cluster of wood-planked huts that formed a small village, each home joined to the next by roaming children and pecking chickens who ignored boundaries.

“Climbing a tree is dangerous, Gabriela,” the old women who lived in our cantón scolded me. But they worried only because they loved me and because they wished me no harm. Trees could be dangerous. If you didn’t respect them and hold tightly to their branches, you could fall and be hurt. But Mamí knew I respected trees. Her only warning was “Hold on to your dreams as tightly as you hold to the branches, Gabi.”

I was too young then to know how dangerous it would be to lose hold of my dreams. But I do remember well one day when I was fourteen, the day everyone in our Guatemalan cantón began calling me Tree Girl, or
Laj Ali Re Jayub
in my native language, Quiché. Even the boys who had called me Goat Face because I was not very beautiful, even they began calling me Tree Girl.

It began innocently enough.

I was sitting beneath a small twisted cedar tree, weaving a special
huipil
, the blouse that I planned to wear for my
quinceañera
, the day when I turned fifteen. On that special day, I would become a woman and be expected to behave as one, no longer wearing socks like a child. On my quinceañera I would dress up like a bride for the priest to bless me. Mamí would cook a big meal, and Papí would give me a wrapped gift. We would celebrate my entrance into womanhood with the whole cantón.

The old huipil I usually wore had only red and black flowers, but this new huipil I wove especially for my quincea
ñ
era, with blue, red, yellow, and green, and
the ancient symbols of my people, the Maya. Mamí had taught me the meaning of the special symbols: animals and faces, squares, triangles, all telling of our beliefs, of the ancients, and of my ancestors. The symbols held the history of my people and told who I was. The huipil might someday be given to my children.

To weave the special huipil, I anchored the hand loom to a small cedar tree and leaned back against a waist strap to keep the colorful threads tight and straight while I worked. That’s how I was seated when two boys discovered me alone in the forest a short distance from our cantón.

I didn’t recognize the older boys. They were big, with clumsy steps and glassy eyes. When they kneeled beside me, I smelled on their breath the alcohol we called
boj
, a strong fruit liquor made in the cantóns. Both boys joked and teased me, their stares making me uncomfortable.

I felt the way any girl would, alone with boys who can’t be trusted, and I was ready when they began touching me and pulling at my huipil and my
corte
, the wrap-around skirt that I wore. “You’re very beautiful,”
one said. “Quit weaving and give us a little kiss.”

I didn’t want to kiss the boys. Why would they want to kiss someone the other boys called Goat Face? I shook my head and kept weaving, but the boys were drunk. “Come with us,” one insisted. “You’re so beautiful. We’ll treat you like a princess.”

The boys were blind to beauty. Their eyes held the look of stray dogs who see food they think can be stolen. I kept weaving and said nothing, but then suddenly one of them grabbed at my huipil and squeezed one of my breasts. As quickly as a cat, I bit his arm and rolled free from the strap that held me to my loom.

The boy howled with pain as I jumped to my feet and ran. I didn’t run because I feared the boys. I could bite and kick like a donkey if cornered. I had a better plan and I ran toward a large avocado tree that I had climbed many times. Even at night I could climb that tree faster than the moon shadow of a passing cloud.

The boys jumped to their feet and chased me, their anger demanding more than kisses. Purposely I slowed to make them think they could catch me. They were only steps behind when I reached the tree, but that was
all I needed to climb above their heads to safety. The tree reached out its branches to me as I climbed, taking my hands and helping me to escape the ground. Each branch lifted me safely to the next, passing me higher and higher.

The boys swore loudly as they scrambled after me. “We didn’t hurt you,” one shouted.

“You bit me, you ugly toad!” the other growled.

I kept climbing.

The boys kept shouting angry threats as they climbed farther up into the tree after me. When we had crawled high enough for the wind to sway the branches, they paused to look back at the ground and their voices weakened. The cowards didn’t like being so high, and suddenly their angry threats turned to empty chattering like two scared monkeys.

“Come down, you ugly toad, or we’ll hurt you,” one shouted.

Now it was my turn to laugh. “What’s wrong?” I called down. I spoke sweetly, the way a mother talks to a baby. “You said I was beautiful. Do I look so different up in a tree? What’s wrong? Are you afraid to climb as
high as an ugly toad?”

The boys’ angry faces reddened like peppers as they stared up at me. To coax them even higher, I swung my feet in front of their faces, letting them almost catch me. I hoped their anger would make them even more foolish.

When the boys stopped climbing again, I reached out and picked several hard, unripe avocados and threw them like rocks, hitting their heads. They screamed with pain and swore and reached up to try and grab me, but I crawled even higher. Now I was up higher than I had ever climbed before. The branches in my hand were no larger than broomsticks. With the extra weight, the tree bent dangerously.

One of the boys reached for an avocado to throw back at me, so I held tightly to the tree and swung my body from side to side. The tree swayed as if the earth were moving. The boy dropped the avocado, and he and his friend clung desperately to the tree, their faces pale.

I hoped the thin branches were strong enough to hold a short fourteen-year-old girl and two drunk and angry boys. One started to crawl back toward the
ground so I swung the tree harder. Once more they both clung to the branches as if held by glue. The fear that froze their bodies made them my prisoners. “Move and I’ll swing even harder,” I warned them.

Already the sun hovered low over the trees. I knew that if I didn’t return to the cantón by sunset, Mamí would come into the forest calling my name softly. “Gabriela,” she would call. “Come home now. Your mothers, the earth and me, we’re waiting for you. Come home now, Gabi.”

Always, when I heard Mamí’s voice, I would climb from my tree as quickly as any monkey. Those days when I had climbed very high among the branches and needed more time to crawl down, Mamí’s sweet voice would float through the trees a second time like a song: “Come now, Gabi. Come home, my daughter. Even dreamers need sleep.”

The day the boys chased me, I didn’t need to wait for Mamí. A sound from below caught my attention. There, on the trail nearby, walked Don Guillermo, an old man who lived near our cantón. He moved deliberately, his body bent forward against a head strap that
bore the weight of a large bag of corn on his back.

Don Guillermo had heard the boys shouting and cursing. He dropped the heavy load from his shoulders to come and investigate. I think he knew when he found us what had happened, but to make sure, I called out to him. “Don Guillermo, the boys don’t think I’m as beautiful now as when they caught me alone weaving. Now they don’t think I’m as beautiful as when they grabbed me and chased me. When you get back to the cantón, please tell my father and mother to come here. I want them to meet these brave boys.”