“So I’m back now, you see. I’m not going to run away again, no matter how afraid I get, because now at least I know that much about my ca’ah, that this place is part of me, over.”

“It’s part of me, too, For God’s Sake.”

A surge of cold air dropped down over us then, something I had never experienced in ten months in the jungle. It smelled of peat, of ever faster cycles of death and rebirth; it felt strange and foreign and foreboding.

The rainy season had begun.

EPILOGUE

Omar was nine when he really asked me about my scars, like he wanted to know the story and was ready to hear it. He’d taken them for granted before. Saw them as just part of his mom, instead of an actual piece of my history, our history, written on my skin.

I suggested we take a walk in the woods near our home in Western Massachusetts, something he loved to do. It was a beautiful fall day, the air dry, fresh and cool, the kind of day I had craved in the jungle. We stopped to sit at a wooden bench overlooking a pond where an orderly row of three painted turtles sunned themselves on a fallen log near the shore. He listened with rapt attention to my stories: meeting his father in Cochabamba, Ayachero and the villagers, Beya, Fat Carlos and Dutchie, our journey to the Tatinga, his birth in the boat, and the jaguar—probably an overwhelming first installment for him, but the floodgates had opened.

His first question was, “So, do you hear her anymore?”

“Beya?” I laughed. “Not for years.”

“Yeah, but have you tried?”

“Plenty of times.”

“Try now, with me.”

We sat cross-legged on the bench, facing each other. He closed his eyes. “Okay, Mom, concentrate.” He didn’t just look like his father, he shared his calmness, unflappability, a serene confidence. None of that had come from me.

“I’m not hearing anything, Mom.” He opened his eyes.

“Could be I’m a little rusty.” I caught a whiff of sage: faint, swift, passing. Was it the memory of the scent or the thing itself? Then—another jolt of it—stronger this time.

“Omar, do you smell that?”

“Smell what?”

“It’s okay, never mind.”

He turned back toward the lake, swinging his legs back and forth under the bench. “So, Mom, what did you do for the Tatinga? You made that promise, right?”

I draped my arm over his small shoulders. “When the tropical disease specialists in America examined me, back when you were still a baby, they asked about the plant. Where it grew. They’d never seen anyone so sick with the disease who’d lived to tell about it. It was a hard decision, Omar. Even though I knew I’d be helping a lot of sick people by telling the doctors where the plant grew, I also knew the Tatinga’s land would be destroyed if I told them the truth.”

“So you lied?”

“Yes.”

“What else have you done for them, the Tatinga?”