The Puma Years: A Memoir

by Laura Coleman

  The mushroom starts as just a tiny thread. I crouch, pressing my cheek through my head net into the wet earth. The mosquitoes make a high-pitched whine, and I desperately rub the tops of my ears to dislodge them. The scents of mould, damp and fungal spores draw into my lungs. By the time evening comes, Sama is next to me again, amiably cleaning his paws. The first stars are starting to pop, the clouds blown away, and the mushroom is half a foot high with streaks of pink across its cap. I cannot tell where it’s come from, but I imagine fibres spreading out, talking. Thinking together. Going far, far away. All the way through this enclosure, under the road and back to camp, even further—to the village, to Ru’s canoe at the river, to the mountain and the place where Alfredo lives with his dogs.

  I rub my nose and continue staring at the little mushroom long after the sky turns black and the moon rises. I know I should go back to camp, but I can’t bring myself to. Not yet. I’ve realised something while I’ve been out here. With my cheek pressed into the dirt and the spores.

  The knots that’ve been growing inside me, ever since Harold popped out and I started ridiculously and unfathomably to cry in front of everyone, have dropped away. Sammie said it to me a long time ago, but I think perhaps I didn’t believe it. Not till now. I’m not the same person who got off that bus almost two years ago. She’s there, and I can still be tender with her, while also being someone else as well. A person who’ll blissfully spend a whole day with her cheek in the dirt, watching a single mushroom grow, as a jaguar lies by her side. And here’s the thing. I like this new person! I trust her. It’s a strange feeling. I never trusted myself before.

  I watch the mushroom. The pink of its cap is turned towards the moon. I was so set on what I thought I had to do that I didn’t see what I was missing. Of course I don’t have to go into marketing and buy a glamourous fridge. I don’t have to marry a man who tosses back sambuca shots with the boys on weekends, I don’t have to marry a man at all. I don’t have to have kids. I can go back to England and I can hold on to this new person, this person I’m just starting to get to know, tentatively, carefully. I’m transformed, but I’m not a butterfly. I’m a botfly. A dirty, glorious, disgusting, complex botfly.

  This place and these people are my family, my kin. Mila, Agustino and the kids. Wayra, Sama, Faustino, Matt Damon, these mushrooms. Part of me is desperate to stay with them forever. But the other part knows I won’t. Can’t. Not blindly, not now that I know there are other animals—pumas just like Wayra—and communities of people, of trees, of rivers and lakes and mountains, who are dying inside and out. I watch new animals arriving in droves, watch our animals being taken, knowing that the zoo is less than eight hours away, while I run through trails, groom Wayra, swim with her, make my whole glorious purpose her. As the jungle is being taken to bits, the flooding and fires intensify, and more and more roads are built.

  Leaving isn’t a failure. Not if I choose to do something I’m proud of every day. And I’m so lucky to be able to choose. This is the gift of my privilege. Wayra has no choice at all. So, mushroom friend, I choose to question what I thought was unbreakable. Marriage, the meaning of success. Sexism, racism, capitalism, speciesism . . . the other isms. The things that have made this destruction possible. All the things that have made me into a person who was scared of herself and her desires. All the things that have hurt so many people, so many homes and so many creatures. I choose to question them and to help fight them.

  If I don’t, how can I ever look Wayra in the face again?

  She’s lying in her garden of patuju, halfway up the runner, front legs crossed daintily and resolutely under her chin. She opens one eye, assesses the situation, and squeezes them shut again until they’re just hooded lines, angled like the eyes of an Egyptian cat goddess.

  She yawns and irritably swats a particularly annoying mosquito away with the end of her tail, leaving a smear of blood across her nose. They’re sort of beautiful, the mosquitoes. There are a lot of common ones around us now, black with white underbellies and spots along their legs. Their whine is low and insistent. But there are others too. White ones. Big ones, with golden spun-sugar wings. Their sting is savage. Ones with sapphire-blue feet that hover shyly. Ones with emerald legs that drone louder than the rest, and lighter green ones too, limbs like gossamer lace.

  Wayra watches me out of the corner of her eye when I start to edge forwards. As I get close, her eyes soften. I come down onto my knees, reaching out my arm. She nudges it away, stretches her neck and tries to lick my face. Laughing, I push her away and offer her my arm again. With a sigh she looks once more at my face, covered in sweat and dirt, before settling down to my arm. I roll up my sleeves, pushing my many layered shirts up to my elbows, and let her have at it. She licks with abandon, competing with the mosquitoes for space. I press my nose into the fur along her spine. She smells of earth. Air whipped up by a heavy wind. Damp, and jungle leaves. I close my eyes. I feel her chest rising. Her heart is going thump, thump, thump. She nuzzles in and I whisper snatches of endearments, rubbing her ears, her eyes, her cheeks. She’s hot and velvety, and a low grumble rises out of her stomach.

  I pull away. I stare at her, almost blindsided. I’m not afraid of her anymore. The canopy hangs over us darkly, drawing in, the leaves thick, slick leather, but I know it so well it’s a comfort. It’s home. Being here with her, like this, is normal. Normal is not getting into my car and getting stuck in a traffic jam at eight every morning. Normal is not going to a club bursting at the seams, wearing high heels and too little clothing, and drinking my body weight in tequila. Normal is not sitting in my bedroom with no one but my anxious spiralling thoughts and Saturday-night TV for company. Normal is not having a force field around yourself so strong that you don’t let anyone in, ever. This is normal. This. I pull this into my chest, this feeling that I know I’m going to hold on to forever.

  I’m leaving on the night bus. I’ve got a flight in two days’ time, I’ll land in Heathrow, my mum will pick me up. Just in time for Christmas.

  Wayra’s grumble gets louder and I inch backwards until I’m leaning against the trunk of the sentinel tree. Its silver bark is warm. She watches me for a while, her eyes hooded, before starting to roll back and forth, rubbing her face in the clammy dirt. When she settles, I think she goes to sleep. I keep watching, memorising the lines of her as she lies so perfectly.

  I don’t know how long I keep vigil for. Dusk is beginning to deepen and she’s still stretched out. Suddenly she stands, and I ease myself to my knees. She’s wearing her silly face, the face that I love more than anything, that makes her look like she’s four months old and she could play with a football made out of vines for hours. Before I can stand, she ducks her head and springs, knocking me to the ground. But she’s gentle and when I push her off, she bounds away to hide, crouching down in a patch of patuju.

  “Wayra,” I say quickly, standing up. “I can see you!”

  She cocks her head. She looks up at the darkening sky, at the dark leaves rustling above her head. Then she looks back at me, relaxes her face, and plods over to our sentinel. I crouch back down and she leans her body against the tree, her ears swivelling. Both of us listen to the evening sounds, the eerie hoots of owls, the bullish rasps of frogs, the rise and fall of a wave, our heartbeats, and I reach out to give her a stroke. She shifts and plonks herself, heavy as a sack of potatoes, in my lap. When I ease her off with a laugh, she hangs on to my boots for a short, heart-stopping minute, before falling still. Then, very gently, she takes my hand in her mouth and starts to nibble the dirt out from underneath my fingernails. For a moment I think I should pull my hand away, but I let it be, lying easily in her mouth as she uses her teeth, gnawing at the dirt, making the same low num-num-num noise of concentration she makes when she’s grooming herself. Every day, I think, shaking my head with a barely muffled sob crawling up my throat. Every day. Another layer.

  When she finishes, satisfied, I assume, she rests her head gently against my chest.
With a gulping panicky sensation, I realise I’ve run out of time and I never want this to end. Despite the mozzies and the rotting of my feet, the crippling heat and endless physical pain, this can’t be over. All that stuff I said, about being too tired, about being ready to go? Bullshit! I run my palm along the curve of her neck. Over her ears, the slight tear in the right one, the raised scars on the left, the tiny white line of fur along the tips. I know her body better than I know my own. I rub the thick white fur under her chin, clean out the gunk from the sides of her eyes. I check for ticks. I find a few, big ones, swollen and brown with blood, and she snatches them from my hand before I can stop her. She eats them, rolling their bodies around on her tongue until they pop satisfyingly.

  “That’s disgusting,” I tell her, smoothing the grey fur along her spine that grows in the wrong direction, then I lean my cheek against hers. She turns her head. Her rough tongue scrapes my nose. Her whiskers tickle and I brush them away. As I do, she rolls off and I roll with her until we’re lying side by side. Her eyes, green as the tops of the fresh wet grass, are soft. She could rip open my throat. Instead, she lifts her front paws and places them on my arm, pulling me closer. A tear falls down my cheek. I trust this cat, this cat that could rip me to shreds, that has ripped me to shreds, with everything I’ve got.

  Somehow I have to get up. I have to say goodbye. I raise my head and we look at each other. And then she pushes me away and launches off, sprinting back to the other side of the runner and hiding in the patuju. Will I ever see you again? I don’t know.

  “I’m leaving, love.” Tears fall over my nose and make a little puddle in the mud. “I have to go.” I’m leaving.

  I love lying in the dirt with Wayra. I love it more than I’ve ever loved anything in my life. She’s changed the world for me, opened a window and pulled me through in such a way that I can never go back.

  It’s dark and I swipe angrily at the mosquitoes. I put on my head torch. Her eyes reflect back at me, two pale disks floating in a sea of black. She’s excited. Her tomorrow will be the same as today, just without me. I can’t even think about my tomorrow. She’s perched in her garden of leaves. She’s been happy for a really long time. I have made her happy. I don’t know if it will last. But it’ll be up to someone else. It won’t be up to me anymore.

  When I walk over to the door, she knows. After a moment’s hesitation, as if making it clear that this is her idea, not mine, she saunters past with a dignified shake of her head. A perfunctory hiss in my face and then she’s in. I sit down and unclip her. She stays next to me for a while, uninterested in the meat that I’ve already put out on her throne. My hands shake as I stroke her through the fence. Then she gives me a last hiss and is gone. All I can see are her eyes, gleaming like fairy lights, as she waits for me to go.

  Very slowly I turn, and then I’m walking away.

  “Bye, Wayra,” I choke, my hands over my mouth. I’m crying properly now, tears flowing unchecked down my cheeks. By the time I reach the bank, the strangler fig with its net of musty hair, I’m crying so hard, I can’t see. My hands are shaking, my legs giving way. There are stars somewhere above me, I know, and a rising full moon. But for a long time, I don’t see anything at all. Just Wayra, the scent of her, and her eyes. Gleaming so brightly, surrounded by a single rim of amber like the line on a heart monitor. It’s all I see for a very long time.

  PART THREE

  I stand behind the truck and gaze sadly at the four sacks lying on the blue flatbed. It is 2017. The heads inside are starting to bake, giving off a questionable odour. Dark runnels of blood are oozing through the hessian and down over the side, dripping onto the left back wheel. I move my foot to avoid the blood, looking up at the sky. It’s blue and heavy, grey clouds on the horizon full of rain. For the tenth time, I check my phone. Still no signal. I lean my cheek against the hot metal of the truck and watch motorbikes swerve over potholes and kick dust into the air. I’m parked just outside the mercado, the town’s covered market. Inside, people come together to share stews and meat on sticks. Around the food are stalls that sell anything from monkey wrenches to princess crowns to knock-off electronics to watermelons. Along one side of the market, next to the food tables, are the butchers, where flies congregate and blood and the smell of old meat drips off hanging carcasses. Doña Bernita, our meat lady, is second on the right. It’s from her that I picked up the cows’ heads, hanging from hooks above her white tiled table. We respectfully stuffed them into sacks before I lugged them, horns and all, into the truck.

  “¿Hay campo?”

  I raise my head. An old man, his face so lined I almost can’t see his eyes, is behind me, managing to look both hopeful and resigned. He’s looking for a lift back to the village. He has a sack of rice over one shoulder, as big as he is. He’s wearing jeans, sandals made from old tyres, and a Real Madrid shirt. I smile. Osito’s dad.

  “Hola, Don Antonio.”

  He grins and holds up his sack. I help him put it in the back, and as he gazes at the blood impassively, my phone rings. I jump, startled, despite the fact I’ve been waiting over an hour for this.

  “Lo siento,” I whisper, trying quickly to clear away some of the debris from the dashboard as I balance the phone in the crook of my shoulder.

  Don Antonio smiles. “Por nada,” he says while gingerly removing an empty packet of Doritos from the front passenger seat. Spread out among various crumbs is also an almost-empty family-sized bottle of Coke and a huge bag of coca. This is the sum of my breakfast and lunch, and my hands are starting to shake. I left camp at seven this morning, wanting to get into town early, pick up the shopping, collect the heads, make my call and leave. Impatience churns my stomach.

  “Hello?” Perse, the director of the arts charity I founded five years ago, crackles through. I put her on speaker and balance the phone against the wheel. It sounds as if she’s in an ocean. Or I am. I imagine her at her leafy desk, my cushion with the beaded puma on the front propping her up, a hot tea in her hands. Thinking about artists and exhibitions, funding applications about climate change, education, extinction, pollution . . . I wince, rubbing sweat off my forehead.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hello! How are you?”

  I think about this. “Fine, thank you.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yup.” I think a little harder. “I got another worm out of my arm yesterday. I found a triple-X tick in my vagina and I’ve shat nine times today, and it’s only . . .”—I check my watch—“one p.m.”

  “OK. So, you’re on speakerphone . . .”

  I close my eyes.

  “Hi, Laura!” A chorus of voices appears.

  “A tick in your—”

  “Hello, everybody.” I try to make my tone professional.

  “Can you tell us where you are?” Perse again, trying to steer the conversation somewhere less controversial. “Are you surrounded by toucans and jaguars?”

  “Sure . . .” I look over at Don Antonio, who is staring at me and grinning. I can smell the dead cows in the back. My thighs are sticking to the seat and I’m getting more concerned by the minute that I’m going to need the toilet yet again, very soon. I had to beg for six months’ leave when I made the decision to come out to Bolivia, again, leaving behind my job, again, in the care of Perse. Another six months, another stint, this time filling in for the role of parque director. We hadn’t been able to find anyone else to take it on more permanently. We’ve been looking for someone local—someone from Bolivia, but we haven’t found anyone. There are so many animals and plummeting volunteer numbers. Now the best we can hope for is twenty volunteers during dry season, maybe at a high, thirty. We used to top one hundred.

  “OK!” Perse says chirpily. “Let’s start the meeting, then, shall we?”

  “Great idea!”

  “You get me anything?”

  Charlie is standing on the road, his hands on his hips. Bruce, our camp dog, is at his side. I pull into the driveway, inexpertly negotiati
ng Osito’s sporadically and spectacularly stupidly placed wooden boards, which cover the permanent deep trench between road and garage. Bruce barks happily, wagging his tail.

  “Nope,” I say as I jump out, spitting an old wad of coca into the bushes. The garage, opposite the fumador, was built a few years ago. It’s a huge roofed shed where we keep the truck, gas, welding tools, old fencing, old wood, volleyball net, and construction materials. “Just these cow heads.”

  He gazes at the bloody sacks. “That’s no Frappuccino,” he mutters as Bruce leaps up with a sigh of relief and starts to make a little nest in the back of the truck. The truck belongs to him, really. He is a leggy dog, white with a brown spot. He is now stained red from all the blood. I wrinkle my nose. Charlie is in his work clothes, sodden up to his chest. He’s been walking cats since dawn. We went out together, with one of the ocelots, at five. Since then, while I’ve been in town, he’s been out to walk Rupi and feed at least four others. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He’s tall and pale, and his too-long hair—which hasn’t been cut since he arrived at the park a year ago and is wrapped into a man bun—coupled with a chest-length auburn beard, wouldn’t look out of place in a hipster coffee shop in Melbourne.

  “How was your meeting?”

  “Fine.” I nod. “Far away. Any dramas here?”

  He begins hauling the sacks out onto the ground, Bruce watching him with suspicion. Bruce turned up in the fumador a few months back, stick-thin with wounds and cancerous lumps. We treated him and now he’s on probation. In order to stay, he has to get over his unfortunate tendency of biting people. Charlie opens one of the sacks, swings back rapidly and holds his nose.