Some might guess that I live in blackness. Others that I see vague splashes of color. But in truth I see everything.
For I am the Seer. The Shaman. The Holy Man.
As I swam in the dark waters of my mother’s womb, my destiny was divined. When I emerged from the dank tunnel, holy men wrapped my eyes with thirteen layers of bandages, immersing me in sacred darkness. Thus I have been blinded for almost thirteen revolutions around the sun.
Two village dogs joined Rosalba as she walked through a forest full of birdsongs. The dark purple trills, bright red calls from one treetop to another, the golden squawks reminded her of the colors she wove into her loom.
Pine needles released their drowsy fragrance into the warm air.
Halfway to the highway the river turned, making a deep pool. In other parts of the forest men cut the trees, and even burned them, but not here. The thick trunks were covered with moss and white mushrooms. In the late afternoons, Rosalba loved to sit quietly in this spot, letting her thoughts wander loose from the tight lines she wove.
Sometimes when she was at the pool, she closed her eyes. She saw colored shapes and strange faces that she thought might be those of her ancestors. Sometimes when she was by herself, she heard soft, otherworldly flute music.
Other girls from the village wouldn’t have gone to the pool alone. Certainly not her cousin Sylvia, who said things like, “You might fall in and never get out,” or “Sometimes the boys from town go there.”
But Rosalba didn’t like to feel penned in by the village. She looked forward to being close to the water in this dusty time before the rains. She walked confidently to the deep pool, certain of the protection of the Earthlord.
Suddenly one of the white dogs barked.
“Shhh,” said Rosalba, and stood motionless. Underneath the music of the birds, she heard singing.
“Los de adelante corren mucho, y los de atrás se quedarán . . .” Rosalba looked down through the trees to see a girl, dressed plainly in a tan jacket and pants. Her light hair curled like the tendrils of chayote squash. She wasn’t a Mayan, but a ladina girl. She sat on the bank, tossing rocks into the water, singing: “Tras, tras, tras . . .”
Rosalba watched from behind a tree, her hands against the rough bark. Whenever she went with Mama to market, she saw ladinos and other foreigners. Ladinos were rich. They drove cars and watched televisions and enjoyed many different kinds of food, including ice cream. Ladina girls wore pretty clothes and hair ornaments.
Rosalba had always wondered about those tall, light-skinned people, but had never spoken to any. Never had she seen one so close to her village.
Just then, the girl turned and cried out, “¡Hola!” She raised her hand. “I see you behind the tree!”
Rosalba hesitated, then stepped out. “Hola,” she said.
“Sit here.” The girl’s voice rang over the sounds of the river. She touched the ground beside her.
As Rosalba moved forward on the soft pine needles, the dogs scampered into the trees. Reaching the edge of the pool, she settled herself near the girl. The girl looked at her with eyes as green as the moss growing on the trees.
The ladina’s curls were fastened with a butterfly clip covered with sparkles. Rosalba wanted to reach out and touch that shiny barrette, those light curls. The girl’s fingernails were painted bright pink. She’d been building a tiny house of twigs and pine needles.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “My name’s Alicia. What’s yours?”
“Rosalba.”
“I’m from Mexico City,” Alicia announced, throwing a stone into the pool. “I’m eight.”
The girl came from the far-off big city that Rosalba had heard about. In town she’d seen pictures of that place where buildings touched the clouds. There was a market where people floated on boats filled with sweet-smelling tuberoses. In Mexico City you could get on an airplane and lift off into the sky itself. Mexico City was an important place to come from. But that this Alicia was a year younger than she made Rosalba feel braver. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m on an expedition with Papi and other scientists. They’re studying frogs and I’m helping. Did you know that frogs are disappearing from the planet?” Alicia stretched her arms wide, the pink fingernails gleaming. “From everywhere. They’re dying off.”
Rosalba fiddled with the edge of her shawl. Sometimes her brothers caught frogs for the family cooking pot. They hadn’t mentioned there being any fewer. . . . “There’s a frog right there,” she said as a small brown one leaped from one mossy rock to another.
“I didn’t say they’d all disappeared. But a lot. They’re sick with a fungus. Frog die-off is so important that Papi said I could miss school if I do research with him and write a report.”
Rosalba, who had never written anything, changed the subject. “How do the men study frogs?”
“They catch them in traps. But not the kind that kill them!” She shook her head and gestured, accidentally knocking over the miniature house. The twigs and pine needles fell every which way, but the girl didn’t seem to mind.
“You’re a real Mayan, aren’t you?” she asked.
Rosalba nodded. “Of course I am.” What else?
“Papi said I’d meet some real Mayan people. He said you Mayans would know all about the prophesy of the year 2012.”
Rosalba wrinkled her forehead.
“You know — when the Mayan calendar ends. After thousands and thousands of years it stops just like that.” Alicia snapped her fingers, her bright fingernails flashing.
“I know about the Mayans from a long time ago. Foreigners come to see their pyramids. But I don’t know anything about a calendar.”
“You’re a Mayan, but you don’t know?” asked the ladina, tilting her head, the sparkles in the barrette twinkling. “The world might stop existing. In just a little over a year. All this”— she looked around —“the trees, the sky, you and me, poof! All gone.”
Rosalba shook her head. “I’ve never heard of that. Everything’s always been the same.”
“But everything’s not going to stay the same.”
“But the Earthlord makes sure —”
“The who?”
“The Earthlord, who lives up there.” Rosalba gestured toward the cone-shaped mountain behind the trees. “He takes care of us. He’d never let such a thing happen.”
Alicia peered. “Where is the Earthlord?”
“In his cave.” Again, Rosalba gestured.
“Have you ever seen him?”
Rosalba shook her head. “Of course not. No one has seen the Earthlord. But Mama says he keeps the heavens in motion, the crops growing, and the rain falling. Without the Earthlord, the world wouldn’t run right.” She reached for a twig from the fallen house and laid it straight.
“He sounds like Jesus.”
“A little.” In the church in town the priest talked about Jesus. But while Jesus was in heaven, the Earthlord lived close by.
Alicia set out three more twigs. Making a square, she said, “Let’s build it back. Let’s make it a real Mayan house this time.”
“Fine,” Rosalba agreed. She placed three pebbles in the middle, explaining, “This is the hearth.” She dropped in bits of dried moss for pretend fire. “This is fun. I haven’t played for a long time.”
“What do you do instead?”
“I help Mama with real work. Don’t you help your mama?”
Alicia shrugged. “I have my schoolwork.”
Together they built up the walls. Each time their hands touched, happiness sparkled in Rosalba. She hadn’t only met a ladina; she was making a house with her. It was like being offered a tray of sugary sweet-potato candy.
“This can be for the frogs who live here,” said Alicia.
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“A house for frogs?” Rosalba couldn’t help but giggle. “Frogs are food.”
“Papi told me people here eat them. But I didn’t believe him. I love frogs.”
Balancing pine needles for the thatched roof, Rosalba considered this. She’d never heard of anyone loving frogs except in a pot of soup. But if this Alicia loved frogs, so would she.
When the house was complete, the sun had slid behind the mountain of the Earthlord, dropping into the Underworld. In the dim light, the stream ran more quietly, the frogs sang more loudly.
“I should go home,” Rosalba said reluctantly. She didn’t want to part from her new friend, but neither did she want to run across the fruit bats or spooks that came out in the dusk.
“Me too. Papi will be worried.”
After they’d stood up and brushed off their clothes, Alicia undid the butterfly barrette from her hair. She handed it to Rosalba.
The pretty clip lay in her palm, winking up at the trees. Rosalba thought quickly. What did she have to give? Nothing but her silver stud earrings. But she’d had those since she was a baby. They matched her little sister’s. “I’ll bring you something next time,” she said.
“Something Mayan.” Alicia took the barrette from Rosalba and fastened it into Rosalba’s hair.
Rosalba patted the stiff outline of the butterfly. She’d have to take the barrette out before Mama saw it. Mama didn’t like her to talk to strangers. If she knew of the meeting, she might forbid her to see Alicia again.
“Meet me here tomorrow,” Alicia said, “and I’ll bring a book about the prophesy. I’ll bring proof.”
And then she was gone, walking quickly down the path.
I surrender to the will of my elders, the other shamans with whom I live.
I am cared for by the holy man, Mauruch. Every dark moon, he changes my bandages, his fingers rough as he unwinds the layers. Each time I count them: thirteen. When my face is bare, he washes my eyes with herb water, and I know not to open them.
Under pain of death, I never look at the world.
Rosalba had forgotten that the next day was market day, making a trip to the pool impossible. She and Mama left early, carrying nylon bags filled with eggs neatly wrapped in cloth.
On the way, they stopped to cut the calla lilies that grew at the edge of a small stream. The white lilies rolled up and curled back in on themselves, like soft leather. Mayans and ladinos alike used these flowers for their altars, but the ladinos paid money for them.
As Rosalba bent over the flowers, she felt the outline of Alicia’s butterfly barrette. It was fastened to the waistband of her skirt, underneath her blousy huipil. She imagined it glittering in the darkness.
She and Mama reached among the leaves, which were like long, skinny hearts. With sharp knives, they sliced the watery flower stems. In a pine tree overhead, two birds squawked noisily.
Rosalba glanced at Mama’s serious, lined face and thought of yesterday’s adventure. While she herself still found gathering calla lilies fun, for Mama it was just work. To make the time pass, Mama might enjoy hearing about Alicia, seeing the barrette, and yet . . .
Rosalba didn’t want to endanger her new friendship. Alicia was not a friend like her cousin Sylvia. She was someone unrelated to her, a friend she’d found herself in the forest. A ladina from Mexico City. Someone important.
Yet along with friendship, Alicia had brought troubling ideas. Ideas that had spun around in Rosalba’s head until late into the night. She’d never thought that anything would be different from the way it always had been. The idea of change — big change — made her slightly dizzy.
Mama was very wise. Perhaps she would know. Moving closer to Mama on the damp bank, in a hushed voice Rosalba asked, “Is the world going to end soon?”
Mama laughed. “Why would you ask such a thing? Just look at these flowers.” She gestured toward the lilies. “If the world were going to end, why would they be growing so beautifully?”
Rosalba nodded. Mama knew just what to say. Rosalba laughed, as if she’d been merely curious. She touched the bright yellow pistils of the flowers, saying, “These remind me of sunbeams.”
Mama smiled. Yet as Rosalba laid the cut flowers in two piles, the worried feeling seeped back. Alicia had spoken with such authority. Rosalba wondered if there were things that Mama didn’t know.
When the two piles were big enough, and after they’d been tied with lengths of rope, Rosalba knelt while Mama loaded an enormous bundle onto her head. Mama hoisted up her own mass of flowers, and they set off for market.
The path led through the forest, then over rolling hills marked by the cornfields, dry and brown, waiting for the rains. K’in, the sun, burned down with a ferocious brilliance.
When the path reached the highway, the world changed. It was no longer the realm of the Earthlord, where life was lived in graceful order. Here, on the edge of the highway, the day turned chaotic, the air loud with the sound of traffic. Dust swirled behind the cars and buses.
Here, with the sky light all the time, people paid no attention to the movement of the sun through the thirteen layers. They were out of touch with the Earthlord, who kept everything running in an orderly fashion. Rosalba didn’t like to think that this ugly place had once been peaceful forest.
“Careful!” Mama exclaimed as a dull green truck filled with soldiers drove so close that Rosalba’s flowers were almost knocked off her head.
Rosalba wanted to lift her shawl against the smelly black exhaust, but one hand held the nylon bag, the other the lilies. She called out, “I’m glad we live far away, Mama.”
They headed toward the high mountains that rose behind the town, along with a line of people and loaded donkeys. They walked with Mama’s sister, Tía Cristina, and Papa’s sisters, Tía Sonia and Tía Yolanda, with her little boy, Efrain.
Rosalba was joined by Sylvia, a cousin just her age. Whereas Rosalba had a wide, round face, Sylvia was delicate, with large eyes so dark brown they were almost black.
Sylvia mustn’t know about Alicia. She’d probably be jealous of a ladina friend.
Efrain ran back and forth along the road in between Tía Yolanda and one of the donkeys, his sandals slapping the dirt.
Finally, the white church came into view, with its steeples rising into the sky. Bougainvillea spilled over a wall, the pink flowers reminding Rosalba of Alicia’s pink fingernails.
Rosalba and Sylvia peeked into the shops selling auto parts, brooms, and plastic buckets.
“I wish we had those things in San Martín,” Sylvia said.
“There’s no way to get them there,” Rosalba retorted. There’d never been a road to San Martin, never would be.
The open-air market spread over the plaza next to the church. Huge tarps made everything and everyone underneath look blue: soldiers, tourists, ladinos who lived in the town, Mayan women with blue shawls, Mayan men wearing hats with waterfalls of colored ribbon. Even the wandering dogs looked blue.
Mama led the way past nopales with the spines cut off, pyramids of guavas, herbs hanging by the stems, red chilis, round green squash, and fragrant tamales.
Rosalba noticed two ladinos buying a bag of dried beans, joking and bargaining with the vendor. One wore a shirt with green frogs embroidered on it. Could these be the scientists?
Was Alicia here, too? Rosalba stood on tiptoe, looking through the crowd. But she saw nothing of that curly light hair.
Finding a bare patch, Mama and Rosalba’s aunts squatted to lay out their blankets. Rosalba helped Mama make a neat display of the lilies, eggs, and some napkins that Nana had woven. Today Rosalba hoped that all would sell quickly so that she could return to the pool in the forest and to Alicia. If she didn’t make it back in time, if she didn’t fulfill her promise, would Alicia think she didn’t want to be friends? Would she never again build a tiny house with her?
As Rosalba looked around the market, everyone was buying and selling as usual. No one acted as if the world was about to
end. Children ran along the rows, kicking up dust. A tourist bargained over a striped shawl. A man played a flute.
Rosalba decided that there could be no such thing as Alicia’s 2012 prophesy. Just as her new friend had built a pretend frog house, so she’d imagined the story of the end of the world.
As people bought eggs and lilies and even some of Nana’s napkins, Rosalba pushed the remaining items to the front of the blanket. She smiled extra hard at the customers. If everything was sold quickly, she and Mama could leave. She might make it to the pool in time.
When the sun paused at the top of the sky, beating down through the blue tarp, the church bells tolled the hour. Mama opened her coin purse and gave Rosalba money for shopping.
“Let’s go, Sylvia,” Rosalba said, getting up, smoothing her skirt.
“Why are you in such a hurry?” Sylvia asked. “You almost knocked into that man.”
“I . . . I want to make sure to get kerosene. Last time they ran out.”
Rosalba filled the nylon bags with a plastic bottle of kerosene for the lamp, sugarcane beer for Papa, and salt and sugar wrapped in bits of newspaper.
As Sylvia bought sandals for her big brother, Rosalba rocked from one foot to the other.
When Sylvia giggled over a donkey painted to look like a zebra for picture-taking tourists, Rosalba pulled on her arm.
Next, Sylvia stopped to examine the displays of bright yarn looped over the poles. Usually Rosalba loved to finger the yarn, imagining it glowing on her loom. But today she only glanced impatiently at the rainbows of color and sighed loudly.
With the few coins left, Rosalba bought two apple-flavored refrescos, one for herself and one for Sylvia.
As she was taking her first sip, Rosalba saw Catarina Sanate, surrounded by a group of American and ladino tourists.
“Don’t go over there, Rosalba,” said Sylvia. “My mama says to stay away from her.”
Rosalba’s mama had said the same thing. But Rosalba was fascinated by Catarina. She felt certain that Catarina, like her, wouldn’t be afraid to walk alone to the pool.
Catarina had been a bit older than Rosalba when she’d taken up folk painting. Everyone had disapproved. At the river, as the women did laundry, Rosalba had overheard the gossip. Weaving was the job of girls and women, they’d said. Painting on canvas was for men. Just as a woman was known as lord of the house, and a man was the lord of the cornfield.
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