Slash and Burn Read online

  Thinking back on that episode, what saddened her wasn’t the licking she’d gotten or all the things her mother had yelled, but the fact that she hadn’t come to fetch her, even though she knew that the sea, despite being enormous and beautiful, was dangerous, too, and could have swallowed her up. She’s always wondered why she didn’t come for her. She’s tried to convince herself it was because she had so many children, but she doesn’t buy it: she could’ve had thirty or forty children, and still she’d have dropped everything to go after the one that was missing, even if she were lost in the jungle.

  From then on, to keep her from dillydallying, her mother sent her to a mill at the other end of the bay. At low tide, you could cross it with the water below your calves. After a certain point, you had to pay for a boat back. And she never gave her the money for that. The girl always came home at the same time, so her mother thought she was keeping her in check with the water-clock and her empty pockets. But in fact, it was her brother who saw to it that they made it home. He was the one who could read the water and the angle of the sun and who alerted her when it was time to stop playing and head home. His dad had taught him all this when he’d taken him to the fields to sow. Though her mother sent the boy with his sister so that she could help look after him, in the end he was the one who looked after her: he knew where to walk to avoid snakes and where to fetch the best fruit to eat while they waited at the mill.

  After a year of going to that mill, she trusted that her daughter had learned her lesson and sent her with one of her little sisters: she needed the boy to lend her a hand with something at home. She needed a man’s strength, even if the man was only a nine-year-old boy.

  The episode with the white-sand beach happened all over again because her little sister was as absentminded and playful as she was. This time it was two girls who were riveted by the water and the seashells, lost all sense of time, and found themselves having to cross the bay with the water rising and spilling over everything.

  They might have considered passing the time on the shore until the water allowed people to cross on foot again. But her memory of the licking she’d gotten was so strong that, faced with the blue expanse, she thought the only option left was to tell her sister they ought to steel themselves and cross while they still could, difficult as it might be. Their plan was simple: she’d hoist the girl onto her shoulders and hug her legs with all her might while, in exchange, her little sister held the bucket of tamale masa as high as possible and as firmly as she could, especially for the five meters during which she figured the water would cover them completely.

  She convinced her sister with a brief account of the beating she’d gotten the year before. There was no time to go into detail. She had to trust her. If they dawdled any longer, the water would carry on rising and turn that opportunity into an impassable stretch. Her little sister was young, but she understood about not having money for the trip back, and about guarding the tamale masa to avoid their mother’s fury. So she shut her eyes and her mouth, just as her older sister told her to, and guarded the bucket more closely than her own life.

  When they got out, her heart was beating very hard. She turned to face the enormous body of water and said, Thank you, Lord, even though she didn’t know who the Lord she was thanking was, or if there was any Lord to thank. It felt incredible to be on the other side. Her sister, meanwhile, had started crying, not because she’d choked on any water, but because she’d lost a little bit of masa as they crossed. She thought her mother would punish her for it. The girl convinced her sister that nothing would happen. She was certain her mother wouldn’t notice any masa was missing. And if she did, she’d take the blame for it. She swore to her little sister that their mother would believe her, even though she herself wasn’t convinced. She was sure her mother had keen instincts (although what she actually had was a watch) and that they’d be found out one way or another. So instead of telling her, she told her father, who’d come home early that day.

  Days later, they moved away. The official story was that her father didn’t want to keep living on her maternal grandpa’s land now they had their own parcel in a place named after a plant. But she suspected he was trying to protect her: there were no bodies of water to cross around there. She was his little girl, the first of the daughters who’d survived.

  In that region, where her dad’s sister also lived, she came across more people who hit her, such as the girls next door. They picked fights with her because she was new and because she was always the first to arrive to fill her earthen pitchers, and always clean and buttoned-up. They called her vain. Then they pulled on her skirt until it fell to her feet, knocked over her pitchers or stuck their muddied hands in them, spoiling all the work she’d done and making her task harder. She wanted to defend herself, but her mother had warned her never to hit anyone. She didn’t want any trouble. She didn’t want her to respond to their attacks, not even with words. If anyone said or did anything to her, she was to take it in silence. If she didn’t, she’d hit her even harder.

  One day when her parents were away at a wedding, she decided to confront her attackers. She gathered some very large, very hard guama fruits from the ground and lashed at the girls with them after they knocked her pitcher over so that her mother would scold her. She hit them on the face, the arms, behind the knees, and in all the places that hurt when her mother hit her. She hit them as hard as she had been hit, until they stopped laughing. Then she filled the vessel again and prepared to face the consequences of bringing the pitcher home with a broken lip. She knew she wouldn’t get away with it. She’d once brought home a cracked pitcher, which she’d dropped when a snake jumped out of it and smacked her in the face, and her mother, deaf to all excuses, hit her for not seeing the snake, for not bringing the water, and for breaking the pitcher. Three separate blows. So she’d learn.

  The neighbors’ mother also wanted to teach her a lesson, so she waited for her on the way back, knocked her to the ground with a punch to the eye, and kicked her in the belly till she cried. On top of that, she emptied her pitcher so that, once her pain had let up a little, she’d have to return to the river and refill it so as not to go home empty-handed.

  Her mother, had she been home, would have hit her even more. But her dad’s sister was there instead. After hearing her story, her aunt grabbed a machete and went after the woman who’d beaten her. She yelled at her to come out, to stop being a coward, and to pick on someone her own size instead of a little girl. Her aunt was so furious that neither the woman nor her husband dared confront her. They shut themselves up at home with their girls and didn’t come out, not even when she finally left, several days later. The image of her aunt circling the house, belting out threats and whacking her machete against the ground, also sent the other neighbors into hiding and ensured that, from then on, none of the kids bothered her niece when she went out to fetch water. Of course, they never told her mother, who couldn’t understand why, all of a sudden, people were going so far as to help her daughter with her task. She wouldn’t have understood.

  When she turned thirteen, her dad taught her how to put a gun together, take it apart, and shoot it. When she asked why, he said there were certain things a person ought to know. When she asked why again, he said it was because a time would come when they’d have to leave their house and go away, up the mountain, where they’d face hunger, cold, and sleepless nights. When she asked why again, he said that, for some, life was only a matter of whiling it away, but that they couldn’t afford such luxury. Her older brothers, who’d been in training before her, just told her to shut up and try to hit the bullseye. They were learning to protect themselves. It seemed a bit much to her. Maybe if they were still living on the other farm or if her neighbors had kept pestering her about the water, she’d have found it useful. But there, with her dad and his family watching over her, she didn’t see the need. She did it anyway, because he told her to. And she also went to Sunday school because he told her to, and agreed to run and
crawl belly-down on the ground and leap over obstacles and do all kinds of other exercises that the catechists told her to after teaching the gospels.

  Though she’d heard rumors of war, she didn’t see how it could have anything to do with what they were up to in buildings, or in fields when the sun was less punishing. She thought they did it because it was good for their health, as they claimed, and because it was fun. There wasn’t much to do for fun around there. If she refused, they’d surely make her do chores at home instead. Or send her off to pray, which she liked even less.

  She realizes now that while she only heard acronyms and saw paintings that she never liked or understood, they knew what was going to happen. Her dad was training her brothers for war, he’d moved his wife and littlest children there to keep them safe, and he was coaching her to watch over the house for when neither he nor her older brothers would be around. The catechists were preparing them to resist in the hills, be it to fight or to hide, which is what they did months later, when the army invaded the region.

  The day of the attack, neither her dad nor many of the other men in the area were home. The racket and the screaming came from a stampede of women and children, and from the helicopters that followed, spraying them with bullets. She’d been looking after her six younger siblings when it all began; she grabbed hold of them as best she could and ran off in the same direction as the rest of the village. Her mother, at home cooking lunch, didn’t make it out till later.

  When she finally did, and reached the place where the daughter, her siblings, and the rest of the villagers were, the girl said: Here, take your kids. I don’t understand what’s going on, so I’m leaving. And she went to the hills. To hide, which is what her guts told her to do. She left with the aunt who’d defended her from her neighbors’ mother, and with her aunt’s daughters, and they took shelter in a gorge. Before she went, her mother, who did understand what was going on, took the kids and said that neither she nor her little brothers and sisters could leave, that they might be killed if they did, but that she should try and save herself if she could. She didn’t wish her luck, didn’t hug her. All she had time to do was take her kids by the hand and give her daughter the only tortilla she’d managed to grab as she’d fled her house.

  A tortilla she ate in the gorge lit up by mortars, 60-mm and 105-mm field guns. And which she shared with her aunt and cousins on that endless night.

  3

  They left that place the next day and headed to a district where some friends lived who could take them in. On their way, they were captured by soldiers who made them stand in a bare field under the biting sun and said they’d kill them on the spot. Although all she felt was anger, she cried and cried as though she were afraid because that’s what her aunt had told her to do if something like what was happening right then were to happen. According to her, if they didn’t cry, the men might think they were defying them. It was a form of self-preservation. The aunt would be responsible for begging on all their behalf, for saying, Please don’t hurt us, we’re nobody. We don’t owe anyone anything and we don’t know what’s going on. Even though she did know. It was clear. In her movements, her aunt had not hesitated, nor trembled, and she had been walking in a very particular direction. The girl knew her well and understood that her pleading eyes weren’t real and that her aunt wasn’t one to beg. She begged because it was part of the plan, just as passing her off as her daughter—even though they looked nothing alike—was part of the plan to get her to a safe haven her father had told her about. Swallowing her pride was a small price to pay, and even though all she felt was rage and the urge to hit those men just as she had the girls by the river, she cried out of obligation.

  Her cousins, on the other hand, cried for real, especially when the soldiers’ commander, the fattest man they’d ever seen, said he’d take them and raise them as his own. The girls were very young. Their mother hadn’t prepared them for this. She’d taught them how to get by without food, how not to scream at the sound of gunfire, how to hide in the hills if anything happened, but she hadn’t taught them to face death or the possibility of spending the rest of their lives with a man who sweated heavily and hid his eyes behind dark glasses. To the girl, he said he’d rape her, ’cause she was already fine-looking, he added, as if she were a piece of fruit.

  She figured it must be a nasty and tense ordeal, because in the days of preparation her aunt had warned her they might threaten to do that to her to pry information from her. She taught her never to tell them a thing, neither the name nor the location of anything they asked about, even if in the end they did do the thing they were threatening to do. She should just cry harder than ever and ask them to please stop. Otherwise the men might think she liked what they were doing and enjoyed being with them. She’d never been with a man, and felt no desire or curiosity to be with one, unlike some of the other girls at school. She had to ask her aunt what rape was and then, when her aunt said it was sex by force, had to ask what sex was because she didn’t know that either. She had to imagine a good part of it because her aunt’s explanation was very terse. Still, it was more illuminating than anything her mother, who’d never discussed such matters, ever said about it. She’d never even warned her about menstruation, or given her any support when it arrived. She’d let her cry on seeing her stained panties, cry because she didn’t know what was going on, keep crying because she thought she’d hollow out and die from all the bleeding, then sort it out on her own.

  What stuck with her from that conversation with her aunt was the notion that she should always be careful, that she shouldn’t go to any old place or lose her virginity to someone she didn’t love, like the soldiers’ commander or any of that lot. Then, as she tried to summon up more tears to protect herself, some men came and told the commander they’d found the guerrillas at a farm not far away, which was where she and her aunt had been heading. The man turned to face the soldiers and told them to get moving straightaway. They set off like a pack of hounds. They leveled fences, they leveled rocks, and they forgot all about them.

  One of the last to leave came up to them and said, This is when you go. He insisted: Run. Go. They stood still, not because they were paralyzed by fear, but because they couldn’t believe that one of the soldiers might be willing to help. The aunt had warned the girls that they might try and pull this sort of trick, that they might try and get them to believe they were on their side, only to shoot them in the back. She didn’t know if that was more painful than taking a bullet head-on, but it was more humiliating, so she didn’t move. One of the daughters did. Then the other soldier who’d stayed behind told her to stop, drew a line in the dirt with his boot, and said, Step over this this line and your brains stay here.

  The first one who’d spoken said, Let them go, it’s your brains that’ll be sprayed here, and turned to them again and said, Come on. The aunt felt confident then and gestured to them to get moving. Without any thanks, without looking back. She led the girls to a different place from the one she’d initially intended, an impromptu shelter. Because the first one had fallen. Then the girl parted ways with her aunt. And it was good that she did. Not long after, the soldiers were on her aunt’s heels. Someone had tipped them off to the fact that she wasn’t her aunt’s daughter but the daughter of one of the men on their wanted list.

  She set off to look for him. Nobody had told her where he was, but she figured he might be in the village named after a flower, where he’d been born and often went to speak with other men. She walked to it and there he was, sitting beside the usual men, except now they had firearms slung over their shoulders. He was proud that she was alive. She told him what she’d been through the past few days. His face expressed no shock. She didn’t notice. Her own anguish was enough for the both of them. She said, Father, let’s go. The men eyed each other in silence. One nodded. Then her father said he couldn’t go because they might kill him, and her, too. She should return home and take care of her mother and her siblings. He would stay there to figh
t and protect them all. He’d joined up and would remain with the group while he had life and strength to. Her aunt’s husband as well. He didn’t ask after her or the girls, not because he didn’t care but because, if he were captured, he didn’t want to know anything that could prove dangerous or harmful to them. But his niece didn’t realize this, so she told him of the hill where they’d stayed and the district they were heading to, should he want to join them.

  Her father didn’t keep her any longer. He gave her his blessing and urged her to leave. So she set off to search for her mother and her little brothers and sisters at their house, which was now just a pile of ashes.

  First, her mother had gone with everyone else to the hills, to hide out for a few days. Then, like them, she’d returned home, but had been forced to leave again by order of the soldiers. While the girl and her aunt were being followed, the soldiers were herding all those people into one place and telling them, as they’d told her, that they were going to kill them. They wanted the names and whereabouts of their husbands and sons. They wanted to find them and kill them, to put an end to everything right away then go home and live peaceful lives. But they couldn’t give orders. To shoot, they had to wait for permission. They were authorized only to strike them one by one and as many times as they liked, regardless of age, for information. Which is what they did. They asked and they struck. They asked and they swore. They asked and then asked again, struck again, cursed again. No one breathed a word, except for one of her younger brothers, the one who looked most like his father, the one who knew how to read the water and the weather. He said, That’s enough. You’ve done enough damage. If you’re going to kill us, just kill us.