When We Were Ghouls

by Amy E. Wallen

  Three macaws sat on the banister of the veranda, each one nudging to see if I held anything in my hand, each one a new palette from an acrylic paint box of brilliant jewel tones. A scarlet, a hyacinth, and a blue-and-gold macaw. Pretty Bird was not a parakeet, nor was he a macaw, which can grow to three feet in length. None of these fowl were so green, so deep green as my bird at home.

  Marty broke off and handed me a piece of banana the Lodge Lady had given him. The Lodge Lady also handed me a big leather gauntlet to wear. In the same way Pretty Bird stepped onto my finger, the macaws situated their big claws on my forearm now protected by the stiff, heavy leather.

  I was a little bit skittish with the thick-taloned parrot on my arm, so when Marty tapped me on the shoulder I jumped. Then I turned to where Marty pointed.

  “It’s Toucan Sam.”

  Only it wasn’t Toucan Sam at all. In fact, it took me a few moments to even understand what he referred to. The Toucan Sam I knew, the bird on the front of the Froot Loops cereal box, had a bright, multistriped beak like a rainbow, a cartoon character with large, floppy orange feet. And Toucan Sam spoke with a slight British accent or the affected fowl version of Alistair Cooke. The bird Marty pointed toward was black with a clean white neck. His beak appeared awkward and too big for his head, as though someone had read the measurements wrong.

  He opened his sandy yellow, cumbersome nozzle wide, and his long sliver of silver tongue, like a thin piece of metal, flopped in and out of the side of his beak.

  “Did you see that?” No cartoon character had that kind of tongue. When he closed his mouth, his oversized beak clacked together. When he opened it again, as if showing off that dipstick tongue, and then closed it once more—clack, clack—the misplaced beak situated itself on his face.

  “He looks out of place,” Marty said, and I understood that he didn’t mean because the toucan wasn’t on a cereal box, but because he was like the geeky kid on the playground that didn’t know how to fit in, his feathers pristine and his beak plastic-esque.

  “Let me show you to the bunkhouse.” Lodge Lady gestured for us to follow her around the veranda.

  Two rows of small beds lined up against each long wall. Each bunk was draped in flowing, white mosquito netting, each cot like a miniature canopy bed. Each bunk, covered in its own shroud.

  I flounced the fabric surrounding my bed out and let it flutter down. “I want a bed with mosquito netting,” I announced. I had always wanted a canopy bed, but full-on down-to-the-ground mosquito netting would be better.

  “Why didn’t we have mosquito netting in Nigeria?” Mom asked.

  “The net doesn’t really keep the mosquitoes out,” Daddy replied. “There is no complete protection from anything.” Complete protection from what? I thought. Does he mean just mosquitos? He worked in the jungle most of the time we lived in South America. He’d slept under these mosquito nets most of his nights in the bush in Nigeria. “You can still get malaria with a mosquito net.”

  It might not keep out mosquitoes, but I couldn’t wait to sleep inside my elegant netting like a grown-up lady. Like Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen. I climbed onto my bunk, closed myself inside the web of thin gauze and watched everyone around me, pretending they couldn’t see me.

  “Mom?” She stood just a couple of feet away, changing from her airplane outfit of cropped Eisenhower jacket to a tank top for the jungle heat. The average humidity in the Amazon jungle was 115 percent. “Mom, is malaria like the mumps?”

  “The mumps?” She kept folding her blouse like she didn’t know where to put it. “Good gosh, no, why would you ever think that?”

  “Once you have it, is it gone, or does it come back?” I had closed the mosquito netting neatly all around me, leaving no visible openings for lurking mosquitoes. I was stretched out on my bunk, as though ready to go to bed now, in the middle of the day. I could see everyone around me but felt I was invisible to them.

  “Yes, malaria comes back,” Mom said. “But it’s not contagious, if that’s what you mean. It’s just between you and the mosquito and your blood. Now put on your shorts.” She stacked her blouse on top of the makeup bag at the foot of her bed. I watched her netting flow around her as she traveled the circumference of her bed. All around us the white, opaque sheets fluttered as other folks arranged their tiny territories. Like a family of eidolons.

  I worried about Mom, whether her malaria would come back again. I watched her thin net float up and down. Dad said there was no complete protection. What did that mean? Here I had all five family members together, so wasn’t that complete protection? But he said mosquitoes could still get in, and Mom said malaria can come back. No, she said it “comes back.” Like it would, we just don’t know when. When it came back, would I be all alone again? There was no Philip, Alice, Samson, James, or Pious. Would I be left with Juana? I got a chill in my bones even in the jungle heat.

  “Are you ready, Amy?” my mother asked. “Did you get the candy?”

  “You have it,” I said.

  In Lima, Juana had followed us around the house as we packed, instructing us on what to bring. I thought she was working on getting herself invited. If Mom could have, if my father hadn’t only bought five Aeroperu tickets, Juana would have been sleeping next to me under her own mosquito net. As we were leaving the house, suitcases in hand, Juana told us we’d be visiting a native tribe, and we would need candy to give out. She handed me a big bag of the cheapest candy you could buy in Peru.

  “You always know the little important things like that,” Mom had told her and motioned for me to take the bag from Juana.

  I was relieved Juana was left behind, and that it was just me and the grown-ups. That was when I remembered I had stuffed the candy in my carry-on that sat at the end of my bed.

  As I crawled out of my white, encased sanctuary, I heard the flapping of wings, big wings, much bigger than a mosquito. I jerked my head up, frightened.

  “Look, a swallow!” Suzanne said.

  I watched the blue-and-white, sleek-feathered flier flap from one end of the ceiling to the next and out the other end’s tented opening. Anything that wanted to get in our bunkhouse could. From mosquitoes on up. How big? I didn’t know yet. I dug out my duckling yellow stretch-knit shorts and matching Charlie Brown shirt with the unflattering black zigzag across my protruding stomach.

  The Lodge Lady announced to my family as well as a couple of other groups of tourists who gathered on the veranda again, “We’re going to visit the Yagua Tribe.”

  We took a harrowing jeep ride through the jungle. Hitting big chug holes, Marty and I bounced a few inches in the air. I peered over the side of our open-air jeep to see how far we’d fall, estimated the speed, and then calculated the brush burns and head trauma caused by such a fall. I had become expert at imagining the gore before it even happened. I also took in all the adults laughing and talking over one another. I calculated who would notice if I fell out.

  I could have been no more pleased to have the soil of the earth safely under my feet when we arrived at the Yagua Village. The tribe, who painted their faces red, surrounded the vehicle. My mother pushed me forward and told me to give the kids the candy. A trickle of young boys and girls the color of cacao beans gathered expectantly. Why would they want this cheap, cruddy candy? I thought. But, boy, did they.

  The moment I opened the plastic bag, the kids lined up in front of me. A sort of trick-or-treat handout, only I played the part of the lady at the door to the house, and they were the trick-or-treaters dressed in costumes. The little boys wore grass skirts like their fathers, and the little girls wore red cotton wraparound miniskirts.

  After I’d given out all the hard candy and caramels, the kids ran inside their beehive-shaped hut, then quickly returned. Three of them pulled along an old wooden chair and set it in the middle of the cleared area in front of the main hut. A few others grabbed me by the arms and tugged me over to the chair.

  “Go on,” Suzanne said, and I thought, t
raitor. I didn’t want to leave my family’s side. When I sat down, the remaining kids gathered in a circle around me, spoke in their own language, and with their little hands, raised a string of beads over my head. They christened me with a long necklace made of the flaming red huayruro beads and giant deer’s eye seedpods as big as, well, a deer’s eye. Then they stepped back. I guess they were waiting for my acceptance speech. As I had none, I scurried back to the safety of my gringo family.

  “They just made you a Yagua princess,” my mother said.

  That’s it? That’s all you get for being a princess—a seed necklace? I didn’t feel like a princess, and the whole thing felt like a setup. Candy for a title.

  “Say thank you,” Mom instructed.

  I was a fat girl dressed in yellow stretch knit, I was no princess. Did Mom really fall for this stuff? I was starting to see there were multiple sides to situations. Not everything was as it appeared. Or was exactly as it appeared. I just had to figure out which. I would have to learn to maneuver.

  Across the way, the Yagua chief lifted a long pole to his mouth to demonstrate to my father how to use the blowgun or pucuna. Long and thin, the eight-foot hollow pole seemed lightweight at a glance. It reminded me of the spear that Dubbie, my cousin in Texas, used for gigging bullfrogs. The Yaguas held the hollow pole up to their mouths and with a short, powerful puff, a thin, sharp dart propelled greater than a hundred meters, hitting birds or monkeys high in trees. A pucuna shot can go farther than any shotgun and in complete silence, unlike the loud blast of the gun.

  It was painful to watch my father try to lift the pole to his mouth. “It’s heavy,” he said, imitating a weakling who can’t lift a barbell. Everyone laughed. His John Wayne image was tarnished. An Indian who stood no higher than my father’s waist took the dart gun from Dad’s hands, lifted it with no effort and showed him again how it was done. The quiver had a piranha jaw hanging off the top where the darts could be sharpened between the razor teeth.

  Back at the lodge, the Lodge Lady made us dinner and served it family-style, which I preferred, because I could take seconds. As I reached for more fried yucca, my huayruro bead necklace clanked against the table edge. For dessert we had fried bananas with honey. What more could a pudgy princess in stretch knit desire?

  After dinner Mom said I needed to take a nap. A nap?! In ten days I’d be ten years old. A discussion about whether or not I could stay up for New Year’s with the adults had occurred without my input, and it had been decided I would need a nap first.

  I was shooed off to the bunkhouse.

  The rainforest floor at dusk was soft. The tapir still stood at the bottom of the veranda as though he hadn’t moved all day. Perhaps he knew his plight and chose boredom and regular feedings over being alligator lunch or becoming a rug for someone’s den. The parrots must have been off having their own dinner. Alone on the trail, I began to notice the jungle sounds for the first time. Frogs croaked, monkeys leapt across creaking branches overhead. I sensed I was being followed.

  At the bunkhouse, all the beds looked alike. Through cot after cot wrapped in white netting, I made my way down the center aisle. Finally I spied my tan Barbie carry-on where I left it at the foot of the cot.

  Napping was not going to happen. So, as at home with my stuffed animals in my room, I just played under the mosquito net. With a flourish, I flung back the opening to let in my pretend guests. I served them tea, as we (my imaginary visitors and I) all sat cross-legged on the cot. It tended to be a bit crowded, but no one minded, as we had a lovely conversation about the day and my coronation. Then they said they had to leave, so I flung back the fluttering mosquito net for them again. And bid them adios.

  “¡Ciao!” I said.

  Then I was alone again.

  I lay back on my bed to wait. The room had grown dim. The only light came from a buzzing, long fluorescent bulb speckled with dead insects. With just enough light from the fluorescent at the end, I pulled my book from my bag—The Velvet Room, about a girl who moves to a migrant camp with her parents to pick peaches. As she wanders the property alone, she finds an abandoned house with an upstairs room filled with fuchsia velvet furniture, where she can hide out and read all day. She relishes the idea no one knows where she is, that she can escape to her own world. I had read it two times before, but I couldn’t get enough of the story. It was like this girl and I were friends. Like we understood each other.

  But the light was too dim, so I tried readjusting myself on my tiny pillow. The buzzing night sounds carried through the open roof. In the distance, I could hear the grown-up chatter and a radio that had been turned on, music for the party. New Year’s Eve. I could probably go back over there, I figured. Surely my nap should be over by now. Surely someone would come to get me. They had said they would. They wouldn’t forget me. Although I knew they probably would.

  A breeze brushed open the bottom of the hut’s curtained entrance. Then it traveled along the floor whipping up the netting on the first few bunks. It stopped before it got to mine.

  I sat stark still.

  Then I heard a cry. Like a scared baby. I laid my body out as flat and inconspicuous as I could. My eyes didn’t blink as I scanned the dark room. I heard it again, a moan, a wail, long and sad. I regretted that I hadn’t gotten up and gone to the party before now. Now I was too scared to get out of my mosquito netting. The scream continued. It had to be a baby dying. I lay as still as possible. They, whoever they were, would get me next. I waited. It screamed again. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. The impending attack was agony. I pictured everyone coming back from the party, finding me in my bunk, the mosquito netting splattered with blood. I teared up when I thought about how sad my Mom would be, and maybe everyone else. I stifled my tears and my labored breathing not to alert the evil nearby. I listened harder to see how close it was. It sounded like the crying came from above me, high in the ceiling.

  How long would I have to wait?!

  Across the room footsteps headed my direction from the doorway. Voices rose as the room started to fill. I squinted my eyes open enough to see someone walking toward me. A small person. My mother!!

  “Why aren’t you sleeping?” she said as she approached my cot.

  “Because of all the screaming,” I whispered.

  “The party is just about over,” she said. “Then it will quiet down.”

  “No,” I said, “It’s screaming in the ceiling.”

  Other people started to straggle in. I became shy and embarrassed when my mom told them I heard screaming in the ceiling. Everyone looked up. Mr. Estes, who was also staying at the lodge, laughed.

  “Look, he said. He pointed up at the ceiling. “An owl.” He turned to Mrs. Estes. “And you said I was snoring last night.”

  The brown-and-white owl sat snug in the corner of the ceiling, no bigger than the beer mug Marty set on the floor by his bed.

  “Amy, put on your warmest clothes.” Everyone was putting on jackets and sweaters.

  “Why?” I sat up and threw open my mosquito netting again. I felt safe to be a princess in my head again.

  “We’re going crocodile hunting,” Marty said.

  Crocodiles would be much safer than sitting here in my bunk waiting for the owl to attack me. I always preferred to go when invited along with the adults. In this instance, it was simple logic: if I got eaten, it would be with another family member. Together we would be devoured.

  Crocodile hunting consisted of floating down the pitch black Amazon night in two canoes. Of course, my parents were in the other canoe. Silence was absolutely required. Only the sound of our rudders in the murky river could be heard, and the occasional zip-zip of a nylon jacket as we rearranged ourselves on the uncomfortable canoe seats and fidgeted. I worried about capsizing and strained to see my folks’ shadows in the canoe behind me.

  “Watch for two red dots in the darkness,” our canoe driver had instructed, “then shine your assigned flashlights in their direction.” The two red
dots were the eyes of the crocodile. The drifting boatload of silent gringos and the lulling whoosh of the water made me drowsy, but I tried to be alert in the silent darkness. Then a man behind me tapped me on the shoulder. I looked where he pointed. Two red dots! I listened for breathing, hot breathing like a dragon would expel. Suzanne, sitting next to me, lurched onto her knees and switched on her flashlight. A crocodile on the mossy riverbank stared directly at us, not moving. Murmurs came from everyone. I checked in all directions to make sure another caiman didn’t attack us from behind while everyone was distracted. Boas could drop from the black canopy of trees, anacondas could snap off a hand trailing in the water. No one was paying attention.

  The crocodile caught on to the flashlight trick, turned slowly and crept back into the jungle darkness.

  The canoe was turned around, and we headed back to camp. I was relieved. I preferred land.

  As we reminisce, I ask my mother on the phone, “Do you remember the jaguar?”

  “The jaguar?” She hesitates.

  She doesn’t remember, as she doesn’t remember the body in the grave. It will come to her.

  I remember it well.

  Other than our arrival with all the animals, all my Amazon memories are related to nighttime. Maybe it was when my imagination was most active, or maybe the nocturnal jungle rallied fears that sustained my most vivid images, or maybe it was when I felt least protected. It was, after all, when I was most alone.

  But the last night of the expedition I wasn’t alone.

  It was deep in the middle of the night. Frogs were having a party with throaty trills on their deep banjos. A few feet away someone, maybe my dad, maybe another gringo, let out a scratchy snore. The owl had returned and hooted, but it didn’t provoke the same anxiety now that I knew it was an owl. Now that others were in the bunkhouse with me.