The Puma Years: A Memoir

by Laura Coleman

Morocha, who seems to find both faeces and Teanji irresistible, launches for his orange tail. The tejón spins and beeps furiously in her face. He’s surprisingly fast for his now above-average weight. He’s found a way to break into Agustino’s bedroom, a happy discovery for him. This is where our breakfast bread is kept. Morocha lunges away, only to start spinning furiously by her tail from a rope that’s been tied up outside the comedor. I can’t help but laugh at what is now just a blur of black fur. Teanji is clearly unsure what to do. When she stops, landing dizzily in the middle of the patio and holding out her arms for someone to hug, he springs at her. She manages to jump out of the way, but behind her are a crowd of flip-flop-wearing volunteers. Not half as agile as she is. They’ve been eagerly watching the drama unfold. Unfortunately, though, they’ve severely misjudged the situation and as a ball of tejón hurtles directly at them, they all scream.

  “Don’t run!” I yell, but they don’t hear me. Teanji is in a fit of exquisite rage now. One particularly slow boy, squealing in terror, trips over a loose brick and falls, spread-eagled over the mud. I leap for him but Osito, just coming out of the comedor, gets there just before Teanji takes a chunk out of the boy’s leg. He manages to scoop the tejón up into his arms and they walk away, Teanji nuzzled safely inside Osito’s shirt. I watch with a twinge of sadness as the volunteers all start muttering about “health hazards” and “crazy animals that should be in cages.” Morocha watches from the dorm roof, a fascinated expression on her face. The sheet metal shines in the sunshine. Faustino, from the opposite end of the roof, glares at Morocha with disgust, his tail wrapped protectively around himself as if he’s afraid she might try to hug him too. Coco would never, ever, have tried to hug him.

  “I know,” I say as he crawls down and drops morosely into my arms. “There’s no respect anymore.” He grunts in agreement, scratching his stubbly beard. I can feel the slow beat of his heart and there’s the faint stench of burnt hair, where he’s been burning his beard on the candles again. I lean my head back and look up at the sky, a dazzling blue. A flock of macaws, their tail feathers fanned scarlet, sail high overhead. I’m about to sit down on the bench when I hear from somewhere far away:

  “Wayra!”

  “She’s here!”

  Dolf and I grab each other’s hands. Time stops. Just for a heartbeat, and then I’m carefully shutting Faustino in Santa Cruz, trying to be calm, trying to breathe, and moving in the direction of what is now an uproar coming from the pìos’ enclosure.

  “She’s eating Matt Damon!”

  Dolf and I race around the comedor, past the animal kitchen and the aviary. My breath comes in ragged gasps. By the time we get to the pìos, it’s chaos. Matt Damon—Matt, or Damon, nobody really knows anymore—has not been eaten. He has, however, jumped over the fence and is now, somehow, in the pigs’ enclosure. The pigs Panapana and Panini are racing around his legs, squealing. Matt Damon is lifting his massive wings and hissing, his scraggly head feathers ruffled and upset. He’s my height, his neck as tall and skinny as a rake, his ample, shapely feathered bottom swinging from side to side. Panapana and Panini are no bigger than Alfredo’s terriers, but Matt is spinning in desperate circles. Get me out of here! his beady eyes implore. The birds in the aviary are screaming, their wings flapping in panic. The rest of the pìos, thankfully still enclosed, are running in frantic circles. Agustino is trying to herd them into their small wooden safe house, but the situation has obviously got the better of him. A clump of red-faced, uncertain volunteers are just standing by the fence. Agustino pants, his arms spread wide in an attempt to collect the birds into a manageable unit.

  “She run, go that way!” He waves in the direction of the comedor.

  “Help him,” I say to the other volunteers, their eyes wide. “But don’t shout! We don’t want to scare anyone.”

  The thousand different greens, sharp as glass, blur before my eyes. She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s here!

  Dolf grabs my hand. Just as we duck behind the animal kitchen, we hear from three different directions:

  “Wayra!”

  “¡Aquí!”

  “Cooee, cooee, cooee!”

  Dolf spins. Before I can stop him, he drops my hand and sprints back towards the birds. I stand there alone as the world reels. Leaves mist into a kaleidoscope of colours and I take a long, slow breath. A feather, silvery white, flutters to the ground. It settles amongst the mulch. Somewhere, clouds move across a blinding sky. Where are you, princess? My heart beats in time with the forest and its oceanic pulse. Wayra is out there somewhere. I turn and then I’m walking. My hands are very still as I take the path out behind the baños. The jungle noises, the common everyday speech, quietens until all that is left is the beating of my heart. And the beating of her heart, somewhere. I step carefully over a little bridge, its rotten planks sagging at the core, and round a corner. I’m at a junction, swathes of bamboo clouding out the sky. I know where I am. If I go left, I’ll get to the monkey park, where platforms and ropes in the trees teach the monkeys how to be monkeys. If I go right, I’ll get to the enclosure where Bambi and Rudolfo, two baby deer, live. Straight over will take me to quarantine. I take a moment, listening again to my heart, and I go straight.

  I’ve never been to quarantine before. The first rule that Mila drills into us is to never, ever visit areas of the parque that we aren’t assigned to work in. It’s for safety, ours and the animals’, and for their privacy. Quarantine most of all. It’s where our most recent arrivals live, animals that are sick, or traumatised, or both. And if Wayra gets there first—she’s looking for food. She must be. Quarantine is where our most vulnerable live.

  “Princesa?” I call tentatively, as I step out into a wide, open clearing. Quickly I glance around, taking it in. It’s about the size of a large tennis court, surrounded by a shaky waist-high fence. Inside I see lines of small temporary cages. Sammie works here in the mornings, and I’ve listened avidly to her stories about the residents. There’s Shakira, the tiny Amazonian parrot who’s completely enamoured by Alice, a baby sloth as small as two fists. There are three tortoises who escape every day. Shelly Minnelli, Shelly Raffaelli and Shelly Machiavelli. There’s a tapir who has a finger-sucking fetish. Herbert Ezekiel. He narrowly missed being eaten by a family in town. Then, finally, there are two baby pumas. Found in a cage in a market in the city. Sammie has told me Juan and Carlos are each no bigger than my forearm, covered in tawny spotty fuzz, and they play with each other, rocketing about their cage, mewling for hours. She feeds them milk from a bottle and they nuzzle up inside her shirt, thinking she is their mum.

  I stay outside the fence, and the rope that I always carry now, just in case Wayra appears, bangs at my side. A few clouds, coming out of nowhere, cover the sun. I shiver, a rush of cold running up my spine. I can hear the rustle of feathers, the soft mewling that might, I imagine, be Juan and Carlos. The dirt around my feet is damp, still wet from the morning dew. Suddenly I can no longer hear the pumas. There’s an implacable stillness. I can’t hear anything.

  Not more than twenty metres away is Wayra. Her fur is almost the same colour as the shadows. She’s stick-thin. She looks like she hasn’t eaten in months. Her ribs are harsh, her head shrunken. There’s blood on her haunch from a deep gash, blood on her ears, her nose. Jesus, could this be her? But then she turns her head and I see her eyes. Green, even from this distance.

  “Wayra,” I whisper, stepping forwards, not thinking anything other than that this is her, she’s here, it’s really Wayra, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen! I take another instinctive step. Her pupils swell, then contract. She remembers me. She must remember me. She must know I’ve thought about nothing but her for months! Her ears flatten. Then they disappear entirely. Does she not remember? There’s a sharp, slinking fear in her eyes. She’s so small. She flinches backwards, as I’ve seen her do so many times, but this time in my panic I step forwards again, holding out my hands in some insane, inarticulate act of supplicat
ion. The jungle falls deathly silent, the canopy sagging, its leathery leaves almost touching the back of my neck as if to say: You fucking idiot. I don’t even realise that the rope is still in my hands. I open my mouth to murmur her name again but it gets caught because the moment she sees the rope, I hear from outside of myself a deep, guttural hiss. She’s cornered, squashed like an alley cat in a trap. The fence is at her back and the cages are behind, the canopy on top and me in front of her. Her eyes go bright green, then black.

  I don’t see her launch, but I know she does. Her mouth clamps down and there’s the flash of teeth, the rush of a snarl. Pain, somewhere. Blood. Drops fall, staining my boots red. She shrinks, waifish and feral, her eyes horribly panicked. Wayra. It’s me. I don’t have time. There’s a shout from somewhere, over by the gate, the pounding of feet. She rises back, snarling at something over my shoulder. Then she’s running, her paws not quite touching the earth. Over the fence, through the mess of cages, over the fence on the other side and back into the forest. The trees close around her, a sheet of bamboo that she slides through, her long tail sweeping, and then she’s gone like she never was.

  Agustino holds the needle. Darwin, no bigger than a squirrel and the same burnt-red colour, is clinging to his neck. Faustino is here too, curled up in the rafters. The “clinic” is no more than a storeroom. The old clothes, blankets, mosquito nets and fancy-dress costumes—pulled out on special occasions—are separated from the medical supplies by little more than a threadbare curtain. The day has passed in a blur, setting out traps in the nearby jungle for Wayra, and now it’s starting to get dark. Agustino is wearing a head torch and there’s a candle flickering on the rickety table. Faustino is gazing longingly at the hot flame, stroking his beard in anticipation. Shadows dance across his fur, the dirt floor, my arm. I can’t not look at it. The skin is turning purple now. There are six holes, each of them deep, two on my thumb and four on my arm. I can see tiny globules of yellow fat where the skin has torn. The whole side of my hand has gone numb. I wonder if her teeth hit a nerve, or a tendon.

  “¿Lista?” Agustino asks me. The very long, sharp syringe glitters. I gulp. I think I might be sick.

  “Is this going to hurt?”

  Agustino just looks at me. “Sí.”

  Darwin’s liquid eyes are wide.

  I grip the side of the table with my good hand. “OK.”

  He leans forwards, the shadows guttering across his face showing deep worry lines that are so ingrained I’m not sure if they’ll ever go away. Then he inserts the syringe into the first hole. I jerk as stinging iodine squirts into my flesh, staining my ragged skin orange. I watch, every muscle in my body shaking, because I cannot close my eyes. I bite down on my tongue so hard I taste blood. I feel dizzy, nauseous, for a moment I can’t see. Fire spreads up my arm. I lean my head back. It’s a mistake. This makes me feel worse. From a distance, I hear Faustino grunt and I try to speak, to tell him I’m alright, but I can’t make my mouth work. It’s only when I hear the clatter of the syringe being placed back on the table that I manage to sit back up, holding tightly to my shirt, ripped and stiff now with brown blood, as if this will keep me stable. Then Agustino reaches for his sutures kit.

  “Mira,” he says gently, touching his right canine. “¿Su diente está roto, no? Her front tooth is broken. That’s why it tore like this. Es por eso.”

  I stare blankly at the gaping holes as Agustino begins to stitch. The colours are a grotesque combination of scarlet, dirty purple, white. As I watch, I feel disassociated, as if it’s not my body I’m looking at. I’ve never broken any bones or had a major operation, but when I was sixteen, I spilt a pan of boiling water over my lap. I ended up in hospital, struggled to walk and missed months off school. I still tense up when I think about it. I have scars on my thighs and belly. And I felt a bit like this then too. Blank. As if my body wasn’t my own.

  I wonder, as if from a distance, if this will get infected. I’m sure I’ve heard stories about people getting blood poisoning . . . of people dying from animal bites. Maybe I should be asking Agustino about antibiotics, about possible infections. But I can’t bring myself to. I wonder if I’m in shock.

  Agustino pats me on the back, giving me a sad smile. Darwin starts to cry. He wants his milk, his mother. He’s only a few months old. Agustino thinks, by the look of his teeth, someone fed him potato chips and chocolate. His bones are so weak, he woke up a few days ago with a broken arm. Agustino’s wrapped it in a tiny cast.

  I look at Agustino, biting back tears.

  “Do you think . . .” I stop. I don’t know what I want to say. The gash on her back, her weight, the tightness of absolute terror around her eyes. She deserves to be free. Wayra was always meant to be free. And she won’t survive it. I understand now, properly, for the first time. And I don’t care that I got injured. All I care about is that if we don’t find a way to bring her back, she’ll die. She’s going to die. Agustino puts down the sutures and inclines his head.

  “You have to trust her to come home.”

  “But will she?” My voice breaks.

  “I don’t know.” He reaches a hand up to Darwin, who is still crying.

  I hear the ticking of his watch as he reaches for the milk powder. Faustino swings down and goes straight for the candle-flame, thinking we’re distracted, but I grab him before he can get there and I blow it out, leaving just the light of Agustino’s torch. He places it face down on the table and a thin beam trickles out, falling across the wood and staining it yellow. Faustino settles in my lap. Darwin has finally gone quiet. Agustino has sat on the stool next to me and all three of us listen as the baby monkey suckles. He turns off his torch with a low click. It is so dark, I can barely make out their shapes. I feel Faustino reach out to take the milk bottle, but Agustino gives a grunt, which makes him pull his hand away miserably. My arm is really starting to throb now. I can just hear the low murmur of voices outside, the scratch of branches along the roof, the squeak of Darwin’s throat as he drinks. I try to imagine where Wayra is, but I can’t.

  We stay in the clinic for a long time. It seems none of us can find the energy to move. It’s only when the moon is high above the patio, casting trembling shadows across the floor, that we uncurl ourselves. When we hear the desperate shout of someone stuck in the showers without water and then the following clunk and whirr of the water generator being kicked into life, when I smell fried garlic and then compost as someone takes out the bucket for the pigs, when Iskra’s nightly roar begins, when the jaguars start in response, when the cicadas start to rattle and the frogs chirp on a higher frequency, when the toads and the bats slide in between them and the leaves move in tandem, the whole thing rising and falling like waves on a shore, gradually gaining momentum, when Teanji snuffles past, when one of the birds cries, when Faustino begins to snore, his lips pressed against my shoulder, when Darwin reaches the end of his bottle and drops it with a clatter, and when he snuggles under Agustino’s shirt, up against his heart.

  The next morning, Sammie spots her near the pigs. A day after that, Mila almost trips over her on her way to the monkey park and López sees her on the road just as the bus pulls up to take them to school. He tells us coolly that she fled across the tarmac, barely visible in the sunshine, before disappearing again, lost in the greens and golds of the forest.

  She is circling camp. A shark, desperate and hungry. Like I circled, when I was out there on my own, not sure if I was able to find the courage to come back.

  Two days later, I’m walking home from Sama, swinging his empty meat bucket at my side, the road wide and bright and baking after another long, hot day. I keep my eyes peeled, scanning the verges for anything that resembles her. It’s been a good day. For the first time, Sama has wanted to do something other than slide in and out of the dark jungle and watch me apprehensively from the shadows. I’ve stopped walking so many laps and just started sitting. There’s a log which I like, and I’ve been reading The Lord of the Rings aloud, just
in case Sama is a nerd like me. It turns out, he is. Four chapters into The Two Towers, I watched him—careful not to let him see me watching him—slink out of the trees and come to rest, mere metres from the fence, from my log. When I kept reading and he didn’t move, I took that as a good sign. His eyes closed after a while, his cheek resting lazily on his paws. Relaxed. And I gazed at him, my heart in my mouth, as his eyelids fluttered gently in his sleep.

  I squint, seeing a person now standing by the fumador. With a few more steps I see that it’s Harry and he’s waving, a grin on his face so broad it makes his beard look like it’s levitating.

  “Frodo,” he calls. His beard is short now, trimmed from his time in Australia working a “real” job.

  I walk towards him. “Hey.”

  “How was Sama?”

  I grin. “Great!” I put down my meat bucket and pull out a cigarette. “He let me read to him! And get this!” I exclaim, jiggling on my toes. “When I stopped reading, he gave me this look of total disgust and was going to get up, but when I started reading again, he stopped. He stayed. He sniffed my hand. He sniffed my hand! He likes reading. He likes me reading to him! He likes . . .” I trail off, staring at Harry. He is looking at me strangely, his mouth pulled into an uncharacteristically gleeful shape. He, also, is jiggling on his toes. “What?”

  Harry grins, punching me in the arm. “She’s back!”

  “What?” I whisper.

  “She’s back! Back in the cage!”

  When I say nothing, he opens his hands as if to say, Well, come on then. React.

  I just stare at him.

  “Wayra!” he finally exclaims. “She’s home!”

  Suddenly I’m kicking him so hard that he’s squealing, racing away from me, laughing. Then I’m laughing too, my hands shaking so much I drop my cigarette. When I try to pick it up, I can’t do it. He has to help me, and he hands it to me with a sheepish grin.

  “You’re such a dick,” I say.