“I’m sorry.”

“Panchito had to do it,” she continued. “And then I had to worry if he was just going to stay in the city and drink and chase women and never come back.” She dropped her head in her hands. “Sometimes I wish I could be Angelina. Just go crazy and run off naked into the forest—” She paused, wiping her reddened eyes. “I mean, why not, you know? Why not go crazy? What a relief it would be. Wouldn’t we all love to go crazy? But I couldn’t do that to Franz, or Claudia, or this baby.”

She looked at me, considered me, her face still lovely, even puffy and tearstained. “What’s it like, being the only white woman here?” Legs dangling over the side of the platform, she stroked her voluminous belly. “You must miss all your big cars and houses, your pretty clothes and diamonds.”

“I never had those things.”

She squinted at me like I was lying. “You’ve lost your gringa treasures. I’m sorry for you.”

I shrugged.

“We all thought you’d leave after the first week. But you didn’t. Doesn’t your family in America miss you?”

“Omar is my only family.”

“I wish you’d met Benicio. You would have loved him. He was such a funny kid. Always making everyone laugh, always a smile on his face. Always bringing me little presents. He must have been so terrified. I can’t sleep thinking about it. I can’t eat, nothing.”

All I could think was, What have I lost? At that moment my sorrows felt like nothing compared to Anna’s.

“I think Beya called down the jaguar.” She paused to wipe the tears from her face. “Or if she didn’t, she could have kept him away. She could do that for us, if she wanted to.”

“Doesn’t she help people here, cure them with plants?”

“She helped deliver Benicio and Claudia, with FrannyB. Lots of other babies, too. But we haven’t been very nice to her. So we always wonder. Maybe she cures people when she feels like it, you know?” She shrugged. “And besides, she’s Tatinga.”

“What do you mean?”

A sigh of frustration. “You’ve seen them. They think flashlights are captured moonbeams. That radios have little people inside of them. That the big airplanes flying high up are carrying the spirits of their ancestors to the land of the dead on invisible roads in the sky. And the small ones that drop supplies? They think they’re alive, that they’re big birds taking shits.”

“But if you’ve never seen a machine, how would you know it wasn’t alive?”

“Because I would just know such a thing,” she said dismissively.

“Do you want to go to America someday?”

“It would scare me too much to go to a place without a jungle. San Solidad is bad enough. I went there once. It’s filthy and full of factories that poison the air. I miss the days when more people lived here in Ayachero, you know? When we had enough men to scare off the poachers. Nobody got in each other’s way. Plenty of game for everyone. Hunts were one, two days. Now we’re alone too much, all of us. The men are, too, out there for days without a kill. Us back here, waiting, worrying.”