“You stay away from her, gringa. She’s no shaman. She’s a witch, and she wants you dead.”

SEVENTEEN

– JULY –

Though it had only been a couple of weeks, it felt like an eternity since Omar disappeared around the swooning curve of river in the longboat. Since then, the jungle had been seeping into me, changing me, mortifying me. The anti-malarial pills Omar got me in Cochabamba gave me vivid nightmares, each more bizarre, drawn out, and palpably real than the last.

My skin was changing, too, becoming not my own, never dry, always itching, bites infected. Since feeling crappy was familiar to me, I wasn’t alarmed. Me and the other fosters were always the ones who needed a bath, their hair combed, the ones with infected cuts or impetigo, but we all survived. I never dreamed something was really wrong with me.

Of all the many things to be afraid of in the jungle, boredom began to creep higher on the list. After all the work was done: the hauling, washing, harvesting, chopping, cooking, and so on, it all became about waiting. Waiting for the men to come back. Waiting for the rain to stop. Waiting to hang out with Anna, who seemed less and less inclined to spend time with me, though I know now I had underestimated her need to be alone in the depth of her grief.

Then there was the waiting laced with fear. Waiting for the poachers to cycle back around, as everyone acknowledged they would, once they’d sold their goods in San Solidad. Waiting to hear Beya’s bizarre voice in my head. Waiting for the jaguar to come back and take another hapless child or chicken or pig. The platform was manned sporadically; days went by when no one went up there. One evening I walked under it and heard loud snoring—Panchito was taking a turn. But with the hunters and their helpers gone, we were it: the skeleton crew, those too old or disabled to hunt, pregnant women, children, and me.

With only one set of clothes to wear, I was beginning to feel unbearably foul. No matter how many times I scrubbed myself with the yellow soap, I could smell my own body; this rank pungency; as if all my fat—the little I had—was burning off through my pores, producing a reek I couldn’t seem to lose. I wondered what Omar would think of his pretty, sweet-smelling American girl when he came back to her. Even my sneakers were starting to rot.

One morning, I convinced Doña Antonia to lend me a man’s shirt. I wore it like a dress as I washed and ironed my remaining T-shirt and shorts and lay them out on a rock. When I returned later with a hot iron to dry them, they were gone. I was floored. Where could the thief wear my stuff, on a night on the town? I thought of all the things I had stolen in my life without a thought. Always this great gaping hole in myself I stuffed with other people’s crap, most of it I didn’t even want.