The Path of the Jaguar

by Stephen Henighan

  On Mayan New Year, she woke up early, helped Sandra with her bath, braided her hair, then dressed her. She had let out the waist of Sandra’s black skirt and bought her a new huipil in the market. She slid the woven headband over the braids, then led her beautiful girl, groomed and glimmering, out into the compound to see her grandmother. Mama fell mute. Amparo felt mortified at her mother’s silence: if Mama wasn’t feeling shame for being an Indian, she was feeling shame for not being Indian enough.

  The minibus that went to the colegios in Antigua honked outside the compound. Amparo waved goodbye to Sandra, then prepared for her class with the gringo kaibil.

  In the afternoon, when Sandra came home, she said: “Señora Machojón is ignorant!” Señora Machojón was her teacher. “In class this morning, Señora Machojón said, ‘Oh, Sandra. Don’t tell me you’re a little indianita! I thought you were a civilized girl!’”

  Amparo caught her breath. “What did you say?”

  “Me puse tan brava, Mama . . . I got so furious . . . I said, ‘My Mama says that we were here first and we had a great civilization and your Spanish conquistadors didn’t even know how to read and write, and this isn’t your country!’”

  Amparo’s face felt hot. She hugged her daughter and felt as though Sandra were comforting her. “Two other girls in my class wore traje today. The other girls didn’t talk to us after what I said. They’re not my friends anymore.”

  “Keep your traje on,” she said. “We’ll get Pablito and go to the market and open the stall for an hour before supper.” She felt the need to surround Sandra with a circle of Mayan women.

  That week a Honduran soccer team played at El Pensativo football stadium. They visited the village before the game. Amparo sold three simple woven bags and a waistcoat streaming with artificial colours. She made no more sales that week. Every day there were fewer tourists; the gringos were staying at home as their country geared up for war. The market was silent for hours. On Thursday night Yolanda phoned to ask about Eusebio. Amparo, hearing in her question a demand to know when the forty thousand quetzales would be repaid, felt flustered that her little sister could make her feel guilty. During their Sunday night phone call, she had begged him to find a job.

  “You don’t understand how hard it is,” he said. “I don’t have documents, I don’t speak English . . . ”

  Before their ten minutes had elapsed, they had hung up.

  EIGHTEEN

  “OUR HOMES ARE LIKE BOWLS and . . . Chupam ri läq re’ niqatij qaq’utun!”

  Seeing the young women knit their brows, Amparo repeated in Spanish: “Within this bowl we eat our food! Our husbands must work so that the bowl is full for our children.”

  “Ja!” Doña Rosa said in agreement. The last village mother of her generation, since the death of Doña Juana two years earlier, she sat on the couch. Amparo had pushed the television into the corner and laid cushions on the floor for the younger women. She herself sat in a wicker chair. Sandra and Pablito, sitting at the kitchen table, watched the women over their homework.

  The Cakchiquel Women’s Savings Club had almost perished after the robbery. Many of the women had stopped attending, pulled their children out of school to work in the milpa, and bowed their heads before their husbands’ recriminations at the money they had lost. Led by Raquel, the Evangelicals had deserted. The gringo in the purple T-shirt had said that this would destroy them. Amparo could not stand the thought that he might be right. “We must start again,” she told the women. She held Pablito at her breast; she was weak and exhausted. They all trembled at each creak in the back room of the church. But, supported by the señora gringa and the joy that made life vivid as she and Eusebio began to live as husband and wife again, she went from house to house persuading women that they must go on.

  The señora gringa had suggested changes that would strengthen their association. No longer would their savings be withdrawn from the bank in Antigua before each meeting. A bank statement would replace cash; the women would learn to trust documents. This, the señora gringa said, would be a step in understanding civil society. Each meeting would take place in a different house. Three different women would be authorized to deposit money in the account; the responsibility of carrying the month’s savings down the mountain to Antigua and returning with a validated deposit slip would rotate among these women. The señora gringa ensured that the government matching funds were maintained. After President Arzú left office, the new FDR government of young Portillo and old Ríos Montt had intensified the scrutiny of their accounting procedures. The village’s FDR mayor demanded still more paperwork. In spite of the problems, they kept their matching funds. Six years later, their numbers hovered just below the membership at the time of the robbery. The presence of young women in their early twenties had changed the club. These women wished to discuss relations between husband and wife in ways that made Doña Rosa bow her head in shame, and sometimes brought a blush even to the cheeks of Amparo and Esperanza; they understood Cakchiquel but addressed the meeting in Spanish. A year after the robbery the señora gringa had left for another country, as gringos always left for other countries, and two years later Amparo had learned of Don Julio’s death from throat cancer. Under her guidance the smaller, more cautious Cakchiquel Women’s Savings Club had built up its assets to seven hundred American dollars, more than twice its holdings at the time of the robbery. They were beginning to make their first micro-credit grants. Amparo wished she could show the señora gringa or Don Julio or Sister Consuelo what she had achieved; but they had all vanished, and now Eusebio, her audience and counsel, was gone as well.

  “We can barely feed our daughter,” a girl in her early twenties said. “What will happen when I have more children?”

  “Have fewer children,” Amparo said, “and bring them up well — ”

  “We both work! If we didn’t live with my parents we’d starve.”

  “We live with my husband’s parents,” another girl said. “It’s terrible, six of us in two rooms. My husband and I are never alone — ”

  “If you’re never alone, you won’t have too many children!” the first girl replied.

  Doña Rosa looked at her gnarled feet. Amparo doubted that she had understood their swift Spanish. She hoped that Sandra would not understand either, although this was less likely.

  “My husband wants to go north,” the first girl said.

  “Our task is to remain here, strengthen our community and promote our culture.” Amparo couldn’t go on. She wasn’t afraid of having her husband’s absence pointed out; she no longer knew what to say.

  “I’d be terrified if my husband went north,” the second girl said. “Look at that poor muchacho — ”

  “What sadness for his mother,” Doña Soledad said. “She thinks her son is safe in the north, then he’s dead. Did you see that poor woman’s face?”

  For days television had been covering the life of the first American soldier killed in Iraq, a boy from Guatemala City. The boy had been told that he could stay in the United States if he signed on with the Army. Amparo saw Esperanza’s discreet look of concern. But she had no fear that Eusebio . . . he wasn’t a soldier.

  “It’s not just war,” the second girl said. “They find other women. You can’t be apart for that long — ”

  “Not my Juan — ”

  Not my Eusebio . . . May God spare him from the Army and other women. Esperanza glanced at her. She remained silent before the murmur of Doña Soledad summarizing the girls’ exchange for Doña Rosa in Cakchiquel.

  “The best way,” the second girl said, “would be to bring the gringos and their money here so that our men don’t have to go there.”

  “But it’s women who earn money from tourism,” Esperanza said. “We’re the ones who work in the markets, the hotels, the language schools. We have the opportunity to maintain our families and our culture. Our men get paid as manual workers, whether they stay here or go north.”

  “We need to have more
gringos give us money,” Doña Soledad said. “Look at Raquel. She’s going to have a baby from that gringo. He’ll give her money for sure.”

  “Raquel has ruined herself!” Amparo said. “She’s bound by her marriage vows before God. Now she’ll have to leave the village and live on the street in the capital until she dies in misery. That gringo won’t pay her a centavo!”

  Her face was drenched with heat. The girls looked terrified; she hoped she had frightened Sandra just as badly. She glared out over the room, enforcing a silence that stilled even Doña Rosa’s light breathing.

  Doña Soledad, meeting Amparo’s eyes, said in a soft voice: “I’d trust a gringo to support a child before I’d trust a lot of our men.”

  “Since we’re talking about money,” Amparo said, “has everyone got their six quetzales? Qonojel q’o waqi’ quetzal?”

  They counted the money. This week it was her turn to take the quetzales to the bank and return with a deposit slip. She put the money in a leather bag. Next morning, when she arrived at Escuela Tecún Umán, Don Teófilo told her that her kaibil had been reassigned by his government. Against her will, her mind filled with a vision of the huge white man stalking naked through the jungle, his tattoos illuminated by the light falling through the canopy. Relief outweighed her dismay at her lost income.

  “Of course, you still have your course with Ricardo this afternoon.”

  “But, Don Teófilo, I can’t come to Antigua for two hours. It’s too little money. And especially not in the afternoon, when my children are coming home from school!”

  Don Teófilo regarded her from behind his large, square glasses. “If you wish to cancel your course with Don Ricardo, you have my permission. But I have very little work to offer, Amparo. I had another contract cancelled yesterday because twenty gringo students decided to stay at home.”

  “I can’t come for two hours’ work. I’m better off selling my weaving in the market.”

  She went to the bank, deposited the money, then sat in the park. Antigua’s empty streets looked sad, in spite of the glare of bright sunlight on the white stucco buildings. In the afternoon she returned to the school, sat down opposite Ricardo, and explained that, having lost her morning class, she could no longer teach him in the afternoons. His pinched face, turned a pinkish shade of brown by its exposure to the sun, grew stiff for a moment. She imagined Eusebio quailing before gringo would-be employers. “Life here is hard, Ricardo. Unless I work for four hours, I can’t afford to come to Antigua.”

  She watched his head nod. Like all gringo men, he was used to getting his way. Tenderness filled her as she recalled Eusebio’s understanding of limitations. She felt discomfort that her greatest closeness was with a man who had become a ghost. The hectoring voice on the telephone on Sunday nights belonged to someone with gringo impatience and gringo expectations but no gringo dollars. She wasn’t certain that she would make more money in the market. She would simply spare herself the bus fare to Antigua and the difficulty of teaching Cakchiquel classes, which, unlike Spanish classes, required preparation. She would spend more time in her community which, in Eusebio’s absence, had become more important to her. “I hope you will come to visit me, Ricardo. Maybe next week?”

  For his last lesson, she taught him the verb to pay: nintoj, natoj, nutoj . . . “Now we’ll learn how to form this verb with direct and indirect objects. Reje’ yetijoj . . . They pay it. Reje’ yetojon . . . They pay him or her . . . ”

  “They do not pay you,” he said.

  She paused. The curl in the corner of his mouth was unexpected, as his humour was always unexpected. His joke woke her up to the closeness that had woven them together during their hours at this table. They laughed in the coarse, carefree way she might laugh with her brothers. He was a manager, a man of influence. She wanted to show him her stall in the market, to invite him to the compound and her house. But, in order for her to do this, he could not come alone. “Bring one or two of the students when you visit. We can eat lunch at my house.”

  She left Antigua aware that she would be spending less time there over the coming weeks. For the next few mornings she went to the village market and wove on the concrete floor in front of her stall. In the absence of tourists, the women turned to gossip. The mayor was going to raise licence fees for stalls; it was said he was going to deny licences to women who did not support the FDR party. Doña María’s daughter’s husband had gone north; Raquel’s pregnancy was starting to show, she had bought new furniture, imagine the dollars her gringo must be sending her!

  She waited for the condemnation of Raquel to reach a pitch. Yet, contrary to all that life in this village had taught her, no one seemed outraged by Raquel’s crime.

  On Saturday Ricardo phoned. “I can’t visit you. We have a problem in our program . . . But thank you very much for the invitation. I’ll call you as soon as I have more time . . . Xaj,” he said, adding the Cakchiquel salutation to the Spanish excuses which had flowed as if he had practised them.

  “Xaj,” she said, feeling a tug of sadness. Would he remember her, as Don Julio had remembered her, if a year from now she needed his help? She felt a shift inside her, emotion altering its expectations as she began to look forward to her Sunday night phone call from Eusebio.

  On Sunday, as his voice filled her ear, something had changed. “I got a job, Amparo!” He would be putting groceries in bags at a supermarket check-out. She asked how soon he would be able to send money. “I have to pay the money I owe your brother. Give me time to get on my feet!”

  “All right.” She felt her fierceness relent. During the rest of the conversation, each time she mentioned the children, she heard him receiving her words as a reproof. The next week a van containing German tourists arrived and she sold the jaguar bag with the awkward foreleg. She wove wall-hangings of quetzal birds with the word “Guatemala” running along the top because she could make them quickly and sell them quickly. She avoided starting another bag. One day she realized that more than a month had passed since she had stopped teaching at Escuela Tecún Umán. White clouds built up in the afternoon sky. The sharp-edged light had blurred. In a month the rains would come. That Sunday Eusebio told her that soon he would send her money to put Pablito in a colegio in Antigua. “And the debt?” she said. “My sister wants to know when we’re going to pay back the forty thousand quetzales.”

  He fell silent, then brought the call to a close.

  Two days later, Ricardo phoned and apologized for not having been in touch. “Would it be all right if I came to see your market this week?”

  “Is your wife visiting you?”

  “No.” In a soft voice, he said: “She may not come to visit me here.”

  Thinking fast, she said: “You’re welcome to visit, Ricardo. I’ll invite Nancy Robelo, you remember? I know she’d like to invite her student, the soldier . . . ”

  “Brett,” Ricardo said.

  “Yes, the three of you can take the bus together.” She had run into Nancy near Escuela Tecún Umán one day when she had gone to Antigua. Nancy was pining for her soldier. Knowing that the Canadians were still in Antigua made her loneliness worse. She had seen the soldier once in the park, she admitted. When she tried to call out to him, her voice had crumpled in her throat. Amparo felt touched by this beautiful girl’s confession of weakness. “I’ll talk to Nancy and call you back.”

  When she phoned the next day, he sounded guarded. “Thursday at one in the afternoon,” he repeated, after she’d told him that Nancy would meet him in front of Escuela Tecún Umán.

  “You must invite the soldier.”

  “Brett,” he said again, with a coolness that unsettled her.

  The plan felt uncertain. She was surprised when, a little before two o’clock on Thursday, Ricardo, Nancy, and Brett got down from the bus on the edge of the village square and walked towards the market.

  “Sakar, Amparo,” Ricardo said. “La utz a’wech?”

  “Utz matiox. Y ret?” His affable tone ca
ncelled out the curtness of their phone conversations, reminding her of the confidences they had shared. His face, at once round and narrow, had turned redder with more prolonged exposure to the sun; his brown hair glistened with a sun-stroked shade of blond that contained flickers of grey. As Nancy and Brett swept past them in a burst of giggles, he replied in Cakchiquel that he was well, then asked her in Spanish to show him the market. She led him towards her stall at the back. Offended by Nancy’s loud laughter — as her guest, Nancy’s behaviour would reflect on her — she whispered: “Maestras must be very careful not to fall in love with their students. But she admitted to me that she fell in love with him.”

  He stared at her, the blueness of his eyes harder than usual. “I hope it doesn’t become a problem. We have enough problems already.”

  “Nancy’s a very respectable girl,” she said, taken aback.

  Nancy’s laughter echoed from the next aisle. Amparo heard the rush of her feet. Breathless, her eyes brilliant, she came around the corner. The soldier followed her. Beneath the force of Ricardo’s stare, the young man dropped his hand from Nancy’s elbow. The couple came to a halt, breathing too hard. Ricardo asked the soldier in Spanish if he’d bought any handicrafts: “You should buy something while you’re here.” He continued in English. The soldier nodded.

  Nancy, sliding out of the tall young man’s reach, said: “Are we going to your house to meet your husband, Amparo?”

  “My husband’s away at work,” Amparo said in a murmur, hoping the women at the nearby stalls wouldn’t overhear her. “He’d been unemployed for a long time, so he got a job in a maquila. He starts work at seven in the morning and doesn’t come back until late at night.”

  Ricardo looked taken aback. Nancy was observing her with a sly expression. “What a shame,” she said. “Come on, Brett. Let’s look at the handicrafts. Are you going to buy me something?”