The Puma Years: A Memoir

by Laura Coleman

  He nods, still grinning, and sits on the tarmac. I sit next to him and for a while, I just stare at my cigarette. It’s gone out, and I can’t quite remember what I’m meant to do with it. The sky is a searing blue. With a sigh, he takes the cigarette back and lights it for me. It’s only when I take a long drag that my head finally clears.

  I turn to him, shading my eyes. “How?”

  He pulls his knees to his chest and looks at me sidelong. He looks so much younger now somehow. Maybe it’s the beard. Or, I don’t know. Maybe I feel older. He taps the ash off his cigarette and puts it to his lips. He’s got coca stains around the edges of his mouth and a paunch, perhaps from losing so much weight and then regaining it so quickly when he went back to an office job. His blue eyes flicker, a little nervously, and he rubs one hand over his beard. Since he’s come back, Ru’s been giving him a hard time. Not as affectionate as before. Picking on him. Playing with him, but not like before. Playing hard. Jumping hard. Getting out his claws, when last year, Ru would never use his claws. Harry makes light of it, but I see him coming back into Santa Cruz some nights, his hands and legs shaking from exhaustion, frustration, self-recrimination. His mood seems unnaturally tied to Ru’s, but of course—who am I to talk? The certainty that I found so attractive last year—it’s a shock to realise that it’s not there anymore. Or maybe it wasn’t even there in the first place. Maybe it was just in my head.

  “She went into the trap by the pìos,” he tells me. “Around three I think.”

  That was when Sama and I had been fighting orcs at the battle of Helm’s Deep. The traps are just small transport cages really, about two metres square, with raw chicken inside. There’s a weighted board on the door that’s supposed to release the moment someone steps on it. We’ve already caught a few things, and a few others have escaped.

  “So it worked?” I say incredulously.

  “Yup. They’re just carrying her back now.”

  “Mila will make me wait till tomorrow, won’t she? To go see her.”

  He pulls a face. “You can guarantee it.” Then he laughs, leaning into me and nudging me gently in the side. “Can you wait?” I look at him for a moment, and then I laugh too, running my hands through my hair. It’s the first time we’ve laughed together since I’ve been back. It releases something I didn’t know had been tight inside me, and when I gaze up into the sky, I’m smiling. I also realise that my back no longer feels so stiff. There are a few clouds, soft tufts blowing along the road. My arm still throbs every time I lower it below the level of my heart. I haven’t told my parents what happened. I don’t want to hear what they’ll say. I hug it to my chest, the bandages that I change every lunchtime soaked with sweat, dirt and the oozing pus of infection. Maybe I should be more worried than I am. But Agustino says it’ll be OK.

  “I can’t believe it,” I finally whisper, nudging Harry back.

  He grins. “She’s home.” Then he shakes his head. “Fucking Wayra.”

  I nod, wiping the tears off my face with shaking fingers.

  The faint whirr of bugs’ wings, the rattle of cicadas, the high, sonorous whistle of a screaming piha bird. Insects boil across the jungle floor, making a sound like a long-range radio transmitter. I am standing on her path, just in front of her sign. HOLA WAYRA PRINCESA. The hoary strangler it was nailed to came down, months ago by the looks of it. The sign fell too, and has been propped against one of the vines that wrapped the tree like hair. The vine is now stretched taut, fading from ochre to silver, then a deep burnt brown. The path to her cage has had to move to avoid the dead tree. I trail my eyes along its trunk, smelling of decay. Tiny white and yellow fungi burst out of the rifts. A thousand insects, microscopic spiders, furry neon caterpillars, ants, beetles, strange things that belong in books, not real life, have found homes there.

  I take a deep breath, then I’m walking down the bank. It’s sweaty this morning. Although the mosquitoes are starting to ease, going to sleep or dying in preparation for the dry season, they still hurt. I come up in massive, itchy sores. I’m wearing two pairs of ripped second-hand leggings, knee-high neon-orange football socks under soft, pliable gumboots. An oversized plaid buttoned-up and collared shirt over a T-shirt with a picture of a house cat wearing a crown and eating cake. The dirt is sandy and it crumples under my feet. I walk, as I have done a hundred, a hundred thousand times before, over the little mound, past the other strangler, bark scarlet like maples. The rotten log has gone, stamped down in the mud, all that’s left of it is the same sweet, cloying smell and an indentation in the earth, a patch of darkness, where it lay.

  “Wayra,” I whisper, feeling an oh-so-familiar shiver of fear as I step towards her and grip the fence. My hand burns as my fingers curl around the metal. She lifts her head, opening her eyes into slits. She’s on her highest platform, her paws resting on the edge of the wood, her face angled away. The sky is cloudy, dark and speckled like snakeskin, preparing for rain. I think it might be one of the last rains of the season. The air seems to hang around the edges of her cage, weighty and expectant. Bursts of leaves are already wet, oozing with moisture, and dripping onto the floor. She’s curled up. She looks so small. Folded, almost nothing more than a lump of fur. But the dappled sunlight catches her eyelashes, betraying her. There’s dried blood on her nose, and that cut on her side has stained her fur dark brown. Her skin is stretched so tightly over her bones she looks skeletal, her ribs like sticks. She’s Wayra but not. She’s a parallel Wayra that has slipped in from another place. I cannot believe this is the same cat I left behind. She was happy. She was safe. Fuck, she wanted to be free. And now she’s this. I press my forehead hard against the fence.

  I was always scared of her. Even when she lay across my boots, licked my arms, I never got rid of the voice inside that whispered that this was a predator. And I was prey. Now though . . . I lay in bed last night, panicking that I might never be able to be close to her again. Panicking that the fear would be too much. I stare down at my ragged arm. At the bites that look ugly, and angry. Was it my fault? If I hadn’t been holding a rope, if I hadn’t stepped towards her, if I hadn’t cornered her . . . if she hadn’t stopped, if those people hadn’t come, if it had been worse?

  “Princess.”

  She turns her head, just an inch, to look at me.

  I shake my head. It was my fault. She didn’t want to hurt me. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone! She’s just . . . scared. I grit my teeth. Even so. I feel like I’ve stepped backwards, back to that place I was in at the very beginning, when she was nothing more than a puma and I was nothing but a massive stinking ball of fear.

  Her eyes stare blankly, big and dark as the bottoms of the canopy. Then she turns very slowly again so that she is facing back towards the jungle, her tail hanging listlessly, lifelessly, off the platform. I wait for the fluffy end to flicker, to jerk at the mosquitoes flying around her head, but there is nothing. No movement at all. She puts her head back on her paws, curls herself up even tighter, and closes her eyes. Her chest rises and falls, and I listen to the barely audible sound of her breathing. The clouds drop even more and the clearing is stained a dreary deep grey. The noise of her, slowing down until I think she falls asleep, is easily swallowed. The crickets’ wings, the creak of branches, the rustling thunder of overgrown patuju, the hum of insect life—it’s so loud. The colliding of palm trees, the cacophonous caws of the birds, the grating hoots of so many monkeys and the thundering, persistent beating of my own heart. She’s right there, and I’m so afraid that I’ve lost her entirely.

  “How’s Yuma?” I ask, sitting down on the step.

  Sammie grins. The light falls across her round face, painting her cheeks with a red flush. It’s a perfect crisp Saturday in May. She wraps her shirt gleefully around herself. Dry season is in full swing. The temperature has eased, hinting at the winter that’s on its way, and her eyes sparkle. I know what she’s thinking. I’m thinking it too. For once, isn’t it glorious not to be a sweaty mess?

>   She sits down next to me. Together we watch as Morocha helps Darwin up onto her back. Morocha waits patiently until his tail is wrapped securely around hers before setting off into the trees. His cast came off a few days ago and Morocha, surprising us with her gentleness, has started teaching him how to climb. They’re going up to her house now, a box Osito made for her high above the patio, where they like to sit, Darwin in Morocha’s lap. She runs her long fingers through his fuzzy ginger coat, clumsily showing him how to groom.

  I was right, the rain a few weeks ago seems to have been the last. Since then, the skies have been cloudless cotton blues and the stuffy heat has given way to a drier cool. The mozzies have pretty much gone. Ticks, yellow flies and brutal stinging bugs that look like miniature batmobiles have replaced them. I don’t mind too much. They’re going about their business, same as us.

  Most of the volunteers have gone into town. There are still so many, eighty-two at last count! So today, in a rare moment of stillness, camp feels like it’s finally able to take a breath. It is glorious. The kids are meandering about, doing their chores. Mila is in quarantine, Agustino is playing with Faustino. I don’t want to jinx it, but it feels that maybe . . . maybe . . . in the last few days, the old Agustino has started to re-emerge. Still exhausted, still overwhelmed, still grieving, but with Wayra back, and with so many volunteers to help with his workload, as Faustino chases him around the comedor, and as I hear his pealing childish laughter reverberate off the trees, I cannot help but smile.

  Doña Lucia is cooking lunch. The mouth-watering smell of fried onions is wafting through camp. I’ve been painting a portrait of Coco on the wall of the showers. His sad, anxious eyes have been staring at me all morning. Sammie is wearing a T-shirt that says “Retired Hooters Girl.” There’s a picture of an owl on the front and massive breasts on the back. When she sees me looking, she rolls her eyes and laughs.

  “I think it was Bobby’s. I found it on the floor. I’m wearing it ironically.” She stretches her muscular arms out in front of her, her freckles sun-darkened, her thick tangle of hair nearly gold. She’s been helping Paddy with Yuma’s new enclosure. He turned up a few days ago, full of gusto, even more tanned than usual, having just horse-trekked solo across the Bolivian plains to fundraise for the dream that he left here with: a new home for his crazy puma Yuma.

  “It’s going good,” Sammie says. “I reckon it’ll be a few days before Paddy’s boundless and entirely groundless enthusiasm sends Harry into a spiral of self-hatred and the two of them have some kind of bust-up.”

  I laugh, nodding. Then she smiles, picks up a small round pebble and holds it gently in the palm of her hand.

  “How’s Wayra?”

  I close my eyes.

  “Still doesn’t want to come out?”

  I shake my head. “She sleeps and she eats. She doesn’t growl. Doesn’t even hiss. Doesn’t do anything! She just ignores us, staring off into the middle distance.”

  Sammie shrugs. “If I got my ass handed to me in the jungle, it would take me a while to readjust. It was a big deal, what happened.”

  I grimace. “Eighteen days she was out.”

  “It’s a long time. Maybe she’s got some thinking to do.”

  I see Sammie’s shuttered expression and I know what she’s not wanting to say. Right now, Wayra might be coming to terms with that fact that she had a rare, possibly her only, chance to be who she’s always wanted to be. And she couldn’t do it. The thought of her even thinking that—it breaks my heart.

  “Do you think . . .” I hesitate, rubbing my arm. It’s finally started to heal, the holes closing over with satisfying crusty scabs. Sammie waits, throwing the stone carefully between her palms. It makes a soft thunk every time it lands. “Did Mila ever tell you,” I start again, “that thing about onions?”

  “Oh, of course. The layers theory? Many times.” She grins.

  “Do you think it’s true?”

  She thinks for a while, staring at the pebble in her hand. I watch as Faustino and Agustino play their version of hide-and-seek. Faustino races yet again around the comedor and launches up onto his favourite branch, poised for ambush. Agustino appears a moment later, panting desperately to keep up, and leans against the side of the comedor to catch his breath. I watch as Faustino sets himself to launch.

  Sammie yells: “¡Corre!” Run.

  Agustino leaps away from the comedor, his eyes alight.

  “¡Ayúdame!” He squeals, but he is giggling at the same time and it is impossible not to laugh as Faustino scrambles off the branch, grunting excitedly. Agustino feigns a run, his arms windmilling dramatically, but he is going slow enough to let Faustino catch him, which is of course what they both want. They set at each other in a flurry of grunting and teeth, and Faustino scampers up a nearby tree and hangs upside down, using his long arms to bat at Agustino’s head. Agustino continues to squeal, but his grin is as wide as his face.

  Finally Sammie looks away and shrugs, gazing behind her at the wall, where my seven-foot-high painting of Coco glistens in the sunlight.

  “It probably is true.”

  I stare at her for a moment, almost having forgotten what I asked. The layers.

  “So,” I say slowly, “do you think when the layers come off, we never get them back again?”

  “Fuck,” she says. “I hope not.”

  My nose itches and I rub it, smearing myself in paint. “So the Wayra I knew last year, she’ll never come back?”

  “I don’t think so. The jungle gets too deep.” Her lips tighten, then she laughs out loud, making me jump. “Come on, Frodo. That useless kid, that girl who was wound up tight as a spinning top, that Laura who was here last year, you reckon she’ll ever come back?”

  I stare at her, then I laugh a little nervously. “Fuck, I hope not.”

  “Well then.” Sammie looks back at my painting. At the oh-so-impressive reddish-brown beard, the downturned mouth, the scraggly black fingers and toes clinging for dear life to his branch, the tousled whiskers. It looks like him. I turn to Faustino. They have finished with their fight and are now curled up in a ball together, Faustino on Agustino’s lap. The man gently runs his fingers through Faustino’s fur. The monkey’s eyelids flicker with pleasure.

  But I sigh, suddenly angry. “This world’s so fucked!” I exclaim. “Wayra can’t be free. None of them can, not really. How do we ever know what layers come next, in the face of that? Mila says we don’t know what’s going to happen, like it’s a good thing. But how can we ever know what to do?” I crane my neck desperately upwards. My eyes land on Morocha. She and Darwin have fallen asleep together in the patch of sunlight that shines onto the front of her house. Their tiny hands are touching, Darwin a ginger patch across the black of her stomach. The trees all around, I stare at them too. No two are the same. Flat-topped, tall. Broad with squat, shiny leaves. Dumpy, bold, imposing. Needy, small, retiring. I feel Sammie looking at me, sardonically raising her eyebrows.

  I raise my own too.

  Sammie sighs. “Isn’t the good in this world worth fighting for, Mr. Frodo?”

  I nod, rolling my eyes. “Yeah, all right, Samwise Gamgee.”

  She grins. When she laughs, the sound reverberates off the canopy roof. A parrot, somewhere, squawks eagerly in reply. “What do you say we two hobbits go and help Doña Lucia?” Sammie holds out her hand and then pulls me up off the ground with a grunt. She rubs her stomach eagerly. “I think I’m just about ready for my second breakfast.”

  It takes me another week, but when the idea of going into the cage with Wayra comes into my mind, it bubbles up in a fizz that I can’t ignore. Heady and intoxicating. I’ve felt too helpless for too long. Jane was the one who taught me to go inside the cage. We’d do it only if Wayra went back in there early, or if she’d had a particularly bad day. She was never possessive of her cage, not like most of the other cats. It would just cheer her up, our being in there with her. Another way to prove that we trusted her. We’d stretch out unde
rneath her platforms. Wayra would wait a few minutes, just to show she didn’t care, before strutting over, swishing her tail. Then she’d rest her white chin on one of our boots and curl her limbs underneath herself into a tiny, perfect ball. She’d go from being the picture of cool to the most vulnerable thing, in one strange, precious moment. Outside, the jungle would be silent and loud, the greens would dapple. And Wayra would fall asleep with us, trusting us, as we trusted her.

  I loved being inside that cage. It felt like a secret, like hiding in a cupboard when you were a child and tapping the back to see if you could reach Narnia. It felt like the whole world had stopped. I think this as Dolf and I walk down, the morning bright and clear. Mila cornered me yesterday. I couldn’t believe the time had gone so fast. I’d completed a full month with Sama, a little bit more, and she gave me a choice. Wayra or Sama. I couldn’t have both, not with so many volunteers waiting to be assigned cats. I chose Wayra, it wasn’t really a choice. But it was hard to say goodbye, harder than I thought. I gave the next girl lucky enough to be assigned to Sama a stern talking-to about reading aloud, despite the strange looks she gave me, and forced my copy of The Lord of the Rings onto her. I wouldn’t need it. I’ve tried reading to Wayra. She can’t stand it. I’m pretty sure she thinks it’s beneath her.

  I take a deep, shaking breath. Around us, the clearing watches. It’s grown up since last year, the boundaries suddenly jumbled and uncertain. The mahogany and rubber trees are where they always were, the strangler figs, the huasaí and huicungo palms, but behind me there’s a lemony bush that used to come up to my knees. Now it reaches over my head, its shiny, fragrant leaves shaped like hands, and it almost cuts off the route to her door. It makes the clearing darker. The patuju, where it used to be semi-contained, has rewilded itself, sprouting up and elongating. Her garden doesn’t even exist anymore. I sigh, looking at it all. It’s going to take a lot of work to get her world back in order.