Contents ( 49)
- PROLOGUE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“It’s like a kill party,” he said. “Everything hunting everything, stalking each other. Or like a fucking party, you know? Everything looking for its lover or something to eat. It’s like a story, too. If you listen long enough, you know who’s talking.”
I reached out into the darkness and found his shoulder, then eased down next to him.
“All the animals are looking for food and trying not to be the food. But on a full moon, a bright moon, it’s so quiet and you think, Where is everything? The whole jungle shuts down because night creatures are made to see in the dark. A bright night is like day for them. We’ll walk in the jungle under a full moon together, I’ll show you.”
As I imagined a full moon shining down with its blue glow, showing everything as it was, I hugged myself and rocked a bit, a habit an old group-home friend had once said made me look crazy. I forced myself to stop. “I’m scared to death of this place.”
He laughed softly. “It’s just life, Lily. You can’t be afraid of life.”
“Sure I can.”
He pulled me to him. “Something you need to know. Whatever you’re most afraid of in the jungle comes to you, you understand? Spiders, snakes, tapir, jaguars, monkeys, poison ants. They sense that you’re afraid, so they come to scare you away, because you don’t belong in a place where you’re afraid. But if you don’t have that fear, then the jungle becomes a caretaker. It teaches you. It cares for you.”
“I’m having trouble with this jungle-is-magic stuff.”
“Fine, but you’re not in Cochabamba anymore. You’re not in America, land of Ronald McDonald.”
I pictured that horrific clown, the shit-food mascot of millions, and part of me was strangely ecstatic to be where I was.
“The jungle is something to learn,” Omar said. “The death of your birth mother, the death of your foster mother, your life in those homes, those were lessons. And lessons never stop. You can learn to be here, Lily.”
NINE
It was by chance I learned that the lepers bathed very early in the morning, before everyone else. Bladder bursting, I left Omar sleeping in the hut as I headed down to the far side of the beach where a rough-hewn shelter with three sides made of thatch covered a deep hole in the mud. In the bottom of the pit, dung beetles consumed all that came their way. Omar had laughingly assured me that in the jungle, nothing is wasted. Still, even with all the sketchy places I’d relieved myself in my life, I had to close my eyes as I squatted, blocking out the clicking sounds the insects made from deep inside the hole.
At the time, I didn’t know the word for what afflicted this family; but they were a part of Ayachero no one seemed to talk about. On the sandbar, a young mother lifted a girl of about seven, her stick legs bent under her like a deer, off her back and laid her down in a shallow area, scooping river water over her head with a calabash and washing her hair with a slab of yellow soap. The girl’s face, though terribly scarred, was joyous and open; she didn’t take her eyes from her mother’s. A teenage boy, legless, hand-walked into the water, his penis arcing against the muddy bank. He propelled himself into the water with his strong arms, flipping and landing on his back before wriggling his torso and backstroking himself deeper. A man with shriveled hands, the fingers mostly stubs, kicked off his leather sandals and strolled into the water, the mist rising around his waist as he lifted his face to the morning sun.