Tree Girl (9 page)

We met no one until the fourth day of our journey. Early, before the sun rose, I heard a woman’s voice ahead of us crying out weakly in Quiché, “Help! Please, someone help me!”

Thinking that this might be a military trap, I grabbed Alicia and was about to run when I paused
to listen more closely.

“Help me. Please!” the female voice called again.

I gripped Alicia’s hand tightly and moved forward. There on the ground near the trail, I found a young pregnant woman lying stretched out on top of a corte. Her stomach bulged like a huge melon, and she wore no clothes below her fat waist. Her bare legs and bent knees were spread wide. From where I stood, I heard her heavy breathing and saw her face twisted in pain and dripping sweat.

“Please help,” the woman gasped, noticing me. Even as she spoke, she grimaced with pain and held to her round stomach.

“What can I do?” I asked, approaching her and kneeling. “I’ve never helped anyone give birth before.”

“Catch the baby,” she cried.

Obediently I kneeled between her legs, but I still wasn’t sure what to do. In our cantón, young girls learned many things—to weave, to carry water, to grind corn, to sweep dirt floors, and to make tortillas. We helped our mothers with many chores, but not with birth. That was the job of the midwives, and not
even the men were allowed to help.

In our cantón we would hide with other children in nearby bushes while the midwives helped our mothers give birth. We giggled and stared with wide eyes, imagining the terrible things that made our mothers scream and grunt. Sometimes we whispered to each other, guessing what was happening. The boys were mean and said they were killing a pig.

The woman lying in front of me relaxed for a few minutes as if her pain had disappeared, then again she stiffened and grunted and cried out in pain. Desperately I asked, “What hurts?” But the woman couldn’t answer.

When the pain left her the next time, the woman said, “Soon. Soon.”

I stared. How could a baby be born through such a small opening? Still I waited. Each time the woman stiffened, she screamed louder until I believed she was dying. But finally she screamed, “It’s coming! It’s coming!”

I looked and saw the baby trying to push out from between her legs. It frightened me. It was like her
stomach or intestines coming out. I looked back and saw Alicia watching, her eyes and mouth opened wide. There wasn’t time to explain to her what was happening, but I think maybe she thought she was watching another death.

Again the woman grunted and held to her thighs. She strained harder and gasped deeply, as if trying to catch her breath. Sweat dripped from her face in huge drops. The bulge grew larger, like something arriving from a different world. The baby looked like a ball pushing out. Now the woman panted fast. “Catch it,” she shouted.

Trembling, I reached out my hands. Suddenly the head of the baby popped out, then one shoulder, and then the next. With each grunt the baby slid farther into my hands. After the chest and stomach squeezed out, I helped pull. Slowly the legs slid from the mother, and suddenly I found myself holding the whole baby, a baby girl. Bloody birth fluids and white paste covered the wrinkled little body, and a long twisted cord ran from between the mother’s legs and attached to the baby’s stomach.

“What do I do?” I pleaded. “She isn’t breathing.”

The woman forced her head up and looked. “Clean her mouth with your finger,” she grunted.

Afraid the baby was already dead, I ran my finger through its mouth. My finger pulled out thick slime, but still the baby didn’t breathe. I wasn’t surprised. The baby appeared dead from the beginning, like the dead lambs our sheep aborted in the fields.

“Hold her upside down and hit her backside,” the mother grunted.

I lifted the slippery baby up by its ankles, afraid I might drop it. Awkwardly I swatted its back and bottom. Still it hung motionless, but suddenly it gasped and a loud urgent cry pierced the air.

I jumped, nearly dropping the baby. Nervous fear and relief made me laugh. “What now?” I asked.

Again the woman strained to raise her head. “Cut the cord,” she whispered, her voice weaker. “And tie a knot, or the baby will bleed to death.”

I looked around me. “How do I cut the cord?” I asked.

The mother was too tired to answer me. I looked
around. Alicia sat quietly, watching me with big eyes. I laid the crying baby on the corte between the mother’s legs, and then stood. What could I use to cut the cord if I had no machete?

All I could find was some
magüey
, a broad-leaf cactus. I broke off a stiff leaf, careful not to cut myself with the sharp ragged edge, and quickly returned to the mother, who had closed her eyes but still breathed fast like a tired cow.

The baby cried with such a loud voice that I feared soldiers would hear us. Using the jagged magüey leaf, I sliced through the cord. Blood leaked from both cut ends, so I pinched the mother’s end while I tried to knot the baby’s cord. It was hard, because the cord kept slipping from my shaking fingers, but finally I made a knot and reached down with my mouth to bite onto the bloody end to pull it even tighter.

After I had knotted the mother’s cord the same way, I picked up the baby and laid it against the mother’s chest. The tired woman opened her eyes and stared weakly but couldn’t lift her arms to hold her baby. Her face was pale and she looked ill. The baby still
screamed, so I opened the mother’s huipil and placed the baby’s mouth against the nipple of her swollen breast. The baby wanted to keep crying, but when it felt the nipple against its lips, it caught its breath and began to suck.

I sat beside the exhausted mother and held the uncleaned baby as it nursed. The child was all wrinkled and smeared with blood, birth fluids, and white sticky paste, but still she was beautiful. The magic of what I had witnessed robbed me of my breath. It both frightened and thrilled me. At a time of so much death, new life had been born.

The baby nursed briefly but then cried loudly once again. I forced her mouth back against the mother’s swollen breast, but she turned stubbornly away from the nipple and screamed even louder, her piercing wails like a squealing rabbit alerting a hawk. The hawks that I feared wore uniforms and carried guns.

I wanted to ask the mother what I should do with her baby, but she had fallen unconscious. Her breathing was shallow. I glanced fearfully over my shoulder. There across the valley, crossing a sloping field a kilometer
away, walked forty or fifty soldiers in uniform, single file. They couldn’t hear the baby crying yet, but their trail would soon lead them past the mother, who lay still in the grass as if dead.

I dared not think what soldiers might do to a half-naked woman and a baby. “Soldiers are coming,” I whispered loudly, glancing desperately over my shoulder and then back down at the motionless mother. I wanted to panic and hide, but I called Alicia to my side and placed the screaming baby in her arms. “Hold her,” I ordered. “I need to hide the mother.”

Obediently Alicia held the baby and watched as I grabbed the mother’s wrists and dragged her deeper into the trees to where the brush would hide her body from the trail. Alicia followed us, holding the crying baby.

I shook the woman. “What should I do with your baby?” I begged.

The woman’s head fell to the side. I shook her again but she refused to wake up. Frantically I looked around. I couldn’t just leave the crying baby beside her. The soldiers would soon arrive.

I pulled off the woman’s huipil and wrapped it around the baby as a blanket. I spread her dark corte over her to help hide her and to protect her from the mosquitoes and flies that swarmed around us in the morning air. I feared she was dying, but I could do nothing more to help her. There was no water or food to leave with her, and the soldiers walked closer with each second that passed. I needed to escape.

I took the crying infant from Alicia, glanced one last time at the unconscious mother, then rushed into the forest away from the approaching soldiers. I ran as fast as I could, carrying the baby and holding Alicia’s hand. In some places I crossed trails but dared not follow them. At times the trees thinned and we were forced to walk out into the open. Those times terrified me. Finally I stopped to catch my breath with the baby still screaming urgently in my arms.

I held the crying baby up to look into its eyes. “Be quiet, little baby!” I said loudly. “I’m trying to save your life. If you want to live, then help me. I’m not your mother, and life isn’t always kind.”

I knew the baby didn’t understand my words, but it
hiccuped and stopped crying to look at me. It seemed impossible to me, as I stared at the baby, to think that soldiers had begun their lives so small, vulnerable, and innocent. What was it that corrupted humans so?

I brought the baby gently to my chest and rocked it and quietly sang a song Mamí once sang to me.

Hush baby,
Don’t cry now.
Birds sing,
Church bells ring.

Hush baby,
Don’t be sad.
Never fear.
Mamí’s near.

As I sang, the baby’s urgent screams faded into fitful whimpers and she fell asleep on my shoulder. I held my breath; the soldiers could have been anywhere. Slowly I walked, cradling the baby in my arms and humming quietly. Alicia held to my corte and followed me.

The morning sun had climbed high above us, heating the air and bringing thick swarms of mosquitoes. I shooed them from the baby’s face. When she woke again, the baby didn’t look well. She weighed heavy in my arms, listless and too weak to cry. I walked in circles, tracing my finger gently over the infant’s tiny cheeks and wondering what I should do. The baby needed to nurse from its mother, but I doubted the mother still lived, and soldiers most likely surrounded her.

We walked on until we came to a small stream, where I wet the edge of my huipil. Carefully I dripped water into the baby’s mouth. She spit the water out and turned her head stubbornly to the side. Again I tried. Finally I lifted the baby and looked into her face again, saying, “Listen to me, little baby. If you love us, you’ll live. If you don’t, you’ll die. Do what you want, but decide quickly, because my sister, Alicia, she needs help, too.”

Well, the baby must have loved us. She started sucking on my knuckle and let me squeeze water down my finger into her mouth. Again and again I dipped
the edge of my huipil into the stream and squeezed more water until the baby slept once again.

I knew the baby needed more than water to survive, but it was all I had to offer her. I continued walking until the forest opened onto a bare hillside overlooking a big open valley. Spread out below me was a large pueblo I had never seen before. This pueblo was much like the one I had walked to for market. The central plaza looked like the middle of a big nest from the hillside. Surrounding the plaza were a big municipal building, a school, a Catholic church, an outdoor marketplace, and the many
tiendas
, which were small stores containing little more than tables protected by plastic tarps or makeshift wooden roofs. Rows of brown adobe homes spread in every direction, red tile or rusted steel roofing protecting each of them from the weather.

It was market day. People crowded the streets, and the market stalls were piled high with fruit and other goods. Bells rang out from the Catholic Church, announcing the beginning of mass to the many people in the plaza. The sight of the pueblo surprised me.
These people went about life as if there were no danger. Was this pueblo somehow different from our cantón? Alicia cowered and pulled away from me at the sight of the buildings.

I had thought of entering the pueblo with Alicia and the baby, but perhaps that wasn’t wise. I was a stranger. If there were soldiers, what would they think of a strange girl entering the pueblo with a scared little girl and a newborn, nearly dead baby? Maybe some soldier would recognize me.

I stood on the hill above the pueblo, my stomach churning with indecision. The baby needed help and so did her mother. Maybe in the market I could find some goat’s milk for the baby. She slept too soundly in my arms. I thought of something that Manuel had told me once. He said, “Gabriela, decisions aren’t right or wrong when you make them. It’s what you do with your decisions that make them right or wrong.”

At the edge of the pueblo I decided to leave Alicia alone with the baby for a short time so that I could enter the market. Quickly I would find milk for the baby and help for the mother, then immediately return
before the baby woke up.

We walked until only a stand of trees separated us from the nearest homes. I found a thick clump of shrubs for Alicia to hide beneath. “If the baby cries, rock her gently,” I told Alicia. “Don’t leave this hiding place for any reason.”

Alicia refused to answer or nod, but she held the sleeping baby tightly in her arms.

“I’ll be right back,” I promised. Then I turned and ran into the pueblo.

As I neared the plaza, the sound of music and marimbas filled the air. Papí had always played marimbas, and those familiar sounds flooded my mind with memories. All around me were families, animals, the sounds of children playing, and the smell of cooking. For a moment I wanted to forget everything that had happened. I wanted to begin life over as if no one had died. But even as I daydreamed, I knew Alicia held the sick baby and waited for me.

I rushed across the plaza to the market where I found row after row of vendors bartering their goods. Never had I seen so much food. Carts of colorful fruits
and vegetables were piled high near bins bursting with coffee beans, rice, or corn. Fresh meats hung from hooks, and one stand even sold bottled drinks and chocolates. Some vendors sold live animals: chickens, rabbits, goats, and squawking parrots. I headed toward the goats. Back in our cantón I had seen grandmothers feed goat’s milk to babies when their mothers fell ill.

As I approached, the vendors stared with surprise at the dirty ghost that walked toward them with tangled hair, a soiled and bloody huipil, and a dirty corte. I knew it was curiosity and not unkindness that made them stare. One vendor motioned for me to come closer.