When Manuel wasn’t watching, I snuck up behind him and threw the end of the net over him. “We caught a whale! We caught a whale!” I shouted.
Instantly everybody tackled Manuel, and soon he rolled back and forth on the shore like a beached whale, grunting and tickling the youngest children who climbed on top of him. Finally he sat up, breathing hard, and untangled himself from the net. “Does anybody want to know what’s in my pack?” he asked.
Instantly Victoria and Lisa grabbed his big hands and led him back upstream to the shade of a single cotton-wood tree beside the river. Slowly, as if feeling lazy, Manuel opened the pack and handed a bottle of orange drink to each of us. One at a time, he opened our bottles for us. The drinks had grown warm from the hot day, but we didn’t care. Last, he pulled out a small bag of tortillas. “Let’s have lunch,” he said.
We all grouped ourselves close to him as he lowered himself down to sit on a low rock. Manuel’s fear and concern seemed to have disappeared. His face relaxed, and his eyes danced with mischief as he pretended to take Pablo’s drink.
We were still laughing when we noticed soldiers, ten of them with their rifles slung over their shoulders, marching directly toward us. Our laughing and joking stopped, and we waited quietly, hoping they were only passing by.
The soldiers walked to where we sat. “Why are you here with these children?” the comandante shouted at Manuel.
At first, Manuel pretended not to understand Spanish, but the comandante walked up to Rubén, who sat with the rest of us on the ground. He kicked Rubén hard. “Do you know Spanish?” he shouted.
Manuel stood. “I speak Spanish,” he answered quietly. “Please don’t hurt the children. I’m their teacher.”
“And what do you teach them?”
“Many things,” Manuel said. “How to read and write, and how to think.”
The comandante who asked the questions was a very ugly man. His rough skin made his face look like a pineapple, and his eyes were small and black, like those of a snake. “To think how?” he shouted. “Like communists?”
“No. I teach the children to—”
Without warning, the comandante spun and struck Manuel in the stomach with the butt of his rifle before he could finish speaking. The soldier’s large mouth spread into a wicked smile, then quickly tightened to a thin line. “Lies!” he shouted. “All lies!”
I scrambled to my feet, and instantly several soldiers pointed their rifles at me. Manuel bent over, but he didn’t cry out or fight back.
“No!” I shouted in Spanish, ignoring the risk. “He never taught us to be communists.”
The comandante walked up to me with a curious, ugly stare. “You’re India,” he spit, saying the word as if it were dirty and vulgar. “Where did you learn Spanish so well?”
Before I could answer, he slapped my face so sharply it felt as if my head had exploded. I fell over, and the taste of sweet blood filled my mouth.
“Please don’t hurt the children,” Manuel begged once more, and again the comandante jabbed the butt of his rifle into Manuel’s stomach, knocking him to the ground. All of us scrambled to our feet. Victoria and Lisa screamed and started running away from the soldiers.
A soldier lifted his rifle to his shoulder.
For a moment I stood in disbelief as the man aimed his rifle.
“No! Don’t shoot!” I screamed, chasing after the girls.
“Bring them back or we’ll kill them!” shouted the comandante.
I caught up to both girls and held each of them firmly by the arm. They trembled like small bushes in a strong wind. I coaxed them back toward the group, whispering, “Don’t scream or run. Come back quietly.”
The soldiers had forced Manuel back to his feet and tied his hands behind his back. One by one they started taking turns hitting him in the stomach and face. One soldier kicked Manuel between the legs. Manuel’s face paled as the cowards in green uniforms hit him again and again. When he looked over at us, the tears in his eyes told me that he cared and worried more for us than himself. But we were only children. We couldn’t help him.
All of us stood whimpering and shaking, terrified. I tried to look away, but a soldier grabbed me and twisted my face forward to watch. All of us were forced to watch what happened that day. Lisa cried loudly, and Manuel had the strength to look at her and mouth the words Don’t be afraid. Then another fist smashed his face.
Taking turns, the soldiers struck Manuel again and again until their fists grew sore and their arms tired. I wanted to throw up from all the anger and fear inside of me. Manuel’s face swelled and became puffy. Blood leaked from his nose and from the sides of his mouth. His eyes bulged, and his skin changed from white to red and back again.
He grunted each time he was hit, but not once did he cry out or fight back. Manuel was the bravest man I had ever known. When he grew so weak that he could no longer stand, two soldiers held him up by his arms while others continued to strike him.
I noticed during the beating that two of the soldiers were Indios. They didn’t seem to delight in their actions the way the other soldiers did. They probably knew they would be beaten themselves if they refused to help torture Manuel.
I don’t know when Manuel died. The soldiers didn’t know either, but they suddenly grew angrier when they realized they were beating a dead man. I felt overwhelming relief when at last I realized that the freedom of death had lifted Manuel from his body and carried him up to a place where no soldier could ever reach him. Up to the place where we had danced the night of my quinceañera.
I peeked at the other students, Victoria, Lisa, Rubén, Federico, and Pablo. We had all stood bravely through the beating, but when Manuel’s body dropped to the ground, we all cried. The ugly comandante tucked his shirt back into his pants, then turned and walked up to us as if killing Manuel had made him more important. “If any of you speak of what happened here,” he said, “we’ll find you and kill you. Do you understand?”
We all nodded our heads obediently.
“Then go!” he screamed.
We ran.
As a group we scrambled across the rocky shore toward the forest a hundred yards away, but before we reached the trees, shots rang out. Beside me, young Pablo stumbled and went down, smearing blood on the rocks where he landed. I looked back and saw Victoria also collapse in a heap, shot dead.
I gasped for air and screamed in terror as Rubén fell next. He fell hard, and his head made a dull thud as it hit a rock. I looked back and saw young Lisa running frantically behind us, unable to keep up. I slowed to grab her hand, but as I reached for her, a shot rang out and she, too, crumpled to the earth.
I wanted desperately to stop and help each of them, but in that moment to stop was to die instantly. Only Federico and I remained. Federico was taller than I but couldn’t run as fast. “Run faster, Federico!” I screamed.
We had almost reached the trees when another shot echoed and Federico collapsed. The sound of each shot felt like a jolt of lightning hitting me, numbing me, making me feel as if everything was happening very slowly. I had never known such fear. My distance from the soldiers was all that saved me then, though I expected each step to be my last.
As I reached the trees, the soldiers shouted to each other and began chasing me. I knew if I kept running they would catch me. My only chance was to do what they least expected. When the trees hid me completely, I ran to the nearest machichi tree and climbed faster than I had ever climbed before. I crawled frantically from branch to branch, looking back over my shoulders. The loud shouting and the pounding of boots on the ground echoed through the forest and soon passed below me.
I sat in the tree, breathing hard and fast. Maybe the soldiers hadn’t aimed at me because I was an older girl and they had worse plans for me than bullets. That thought made me even more frightened as I waited in the tree. If even one soldier looked up, they would find me and kill me. But their minds still chased a young woman they thought ran ahead of them. They were wild me
n, waving their rifles like sticks and shouting as they ran deeper into the forest. Their wicked laughter rang wildly through the trees.
I remained in the machichi tree until the shouting faded a little more, then I climbed down the tree even faster than I had climbed up. When I reached the ground, I ran back out of the forest toward the river and to the fallen bodies of Pablo, Victoria, Ruben, Lisa, and Federico. I rolled each body over, but no life remained in any of them. I didn’t stop beside Manuel’s body. I knew for sure he had joined the clouds. Instead I ran hard downstream. The dull thud of bullets hitting small bodies echoed in my memory as I ran and ran.
CHAPTER SIX
Manuel had often asked his students what thoughts we had when we looked up at the sky. Always since that day beside the river, I have thought only of Manuel when I look up. I see his face in the clouds and I feel his gentleness in the breeze. I feel him dancing in my arms. Whenever raindrops fall, they come as tears from a better place.
After the deaths of Manuel and the schoolchildren, word of the massacre spread like wind through the cantóns, fields, and countryside. Men from each cantón were sent to return the bodies for burial.
Of course, the Army denied the killing and blamed everything on the guerrillas. They asked to talk to the student who would accuse them of such barbaric things. But we weren’t that stupid. Whenever the soldiers came to our cantón, Papí sent me to the forest to hide in the trees.
No longer able to attend school, and with Mamí and Jorge gone, my younger brothers and sisters became my full-time responsibility. Because Alicia was the youngest and the most helpless, I let her sleep with me. I hugged and comforted her whenever thunder rumbled across the sky. She kept calling me Mamí, and I didn’t correct her. All children need a mother.
Papí spent his days in the fields harvesting the corn and coffee; he had no time to leave the cantón to go to the pueblo for market. So, although I was only fifteen, it also became my job to go to market each week. The only market for selling our coffee was ten kilometers away, so each weekend during harvest, I arose two hours before sunrise and walked for three hours to market. Always I kept to the mountain paths, avoiding the military patrols on the roads.
When I arrived at market, I spread the coffee onto an old blanket on the ground and used a tin can for measuring. I didn’t have a weight scale like some vendors. This made it easier for the Latinos to accuse me of shorting them. When the coffee sold, I bought chili powder, soap, or spices to take back to the cantón. Sometimes enough change remained for me to buy hair ties for Julia, Lidia, and Alicia, and a piece of candy for Lester and Antonio.
But sometimes the coffee didn’t sell and I had to carry it back to our cantón along with a much heavier burden, the news for Papí that we couldn’t even buy salt until the following week when I would travel to market again.
In the market, the Indios whispered to each other in hushed tones. Some believed the guerrillas were trying to help the Indios, and they spoke of young men from different cantóns enlisting to join the fight. The military, unable to enlist many Indios, kept coming to the cantóns and taking away men and older boys at gunpoint to fight for them. Still, nobody from our cantón had joined the guerrillas.
By July, horrible stories were whispered in the marketplace of whole cantóns being burned and everybody killed. Rumors spread that hundreds of people were dying. Thousands of Indios were fleeing north into Mexico, the closest place for them to try and escape the madness.
Still the soldiers blamed the guerrillas, and the guerrillas blamed the soldiers. I wasn’t sure what to think. I heard of guerrillas who killed military men, but I also heard of guerrillas who spied for the military. Still, I believed that only the soldiers were hateful enough to massacre whole cantóns. I had seen their thirst for blood with my own eyes.
By August most cantóns had posted lookouts to give themselves enough warning to run when the soldiers approached. Angered when they discovered a cantón empty, the soldiers burned down homes.
With each passing day, the war changed around us. As the soldiers earned a reputation for being coldblooded killers, many Indios openly sided with the guerrillas.
Each week at market, I heard more and more stories of soldiers killing the Indios and the campesinos with no pretense. One week the old man selling fruit next to me in the market leaned over and whispered to me, “They’re sending out death squads now to kill us because we’re Indios. They want all of us dead.”
Manuel had told me of genocide in history, but I never dreamed that such a thing would come to Guatemala, and that we, the Maya, would be its victims. But the brutality I’d seen convinced me that the old man was right.
Returning from market one evening, I forced myself to walk along the river where the soldiers had massacred Manuel and the children. Standing there with the water flowing gently at my feet, I heard new sounds, the drumbeat of helicopters on patrol and the sounds of machine guns spitting death. These were new tools to be used against the Indios. As I stood there, a helicopter flew low downriver, forcing me to run and hide beneath some trees.
More than ever, I worried about leaving my family to go to market, but if I did not go we would not eat. Starvation would kill us as surely as any soldier’s bullet. Still, nothing could have prepared me for the Saturday afternoon when I returned home late and saw fires burning ahead of me in our cantón. A rotten scorched smell filled the air.
I broke into a run. At first I spotted only a single body lying in front of a burning home, but then I saw another and another. Scattered everywhere among the ashes of our cantón were corpses. Many who hadn’t been killed by soldiers in the cantón lay dead in the open fields, killed by rifles or maybe by machine guns aimed from the helicopters. In the late-afternoon light, the fallen bodies looked like scattered branches from a tree. But they weren’t branches. They were people I knew—aunts, uncles, grandparents, and neighbors.
I stared in shock, convulsing as tears burned my cheeks like hot water. Again and again I swallowed at the bitter taste building in my throat, trying to make me throw up. This was my worst nightmare.
I ran frantically from one fallen body to the next, searching for my family. I found Papí first. Crumpled in the grass, his body looked frail and weak. Not ten yards away lay my little sister, Lidia, facedown as if asleep. Two red stains on her huipil showed where she had been shot. I ran to Papí and then to Lidia, and fell beside their bodies, hugging them and sobbing. “No! No! No!” I cried.
Closer to our burned homes, I found Julia lying among several other children, faceup, a stick still in her hand as if she’d been trying to protect those around her in the only way she knew. I pulled a shawl from one of the dead bodies and laid it over Julia’s innocent face.
I walked now as if in a stupor, my mind drunk from shock. I wandered out away from our burned homes, searching. Not until I reached the trees did I find the next body. Lester lay dead behind two shrubs, as if he’d been trying to hide. I kept searching, but Antonio and Alicia were nowhere in sight.
As I stumbled around in horror, my eyes burned from smoke and tears. I had betrayed my promise to Papí that I would care for my brothers and sisters if he died. I hadn’t even been there for him.
Numbed by shame and despair, I dragged the cold bodies of those I loved back to what remained of our home. I would bury Papí, Lester, Lidia, and Julia in the same sacred place I had buried Mamí’s ashes. As I dug shallow graves with a stick and bleeding hands, terrible thoughts haunted me. I imagined the children’s terror in their last desperate moments before death, everybody screaming and running, the soldiers shouting, and the guns echoing like thunder.
I couldn’t stop weeping and hiccuping with grief. Even as I dug the simple graves, I looked up and saw two more bodies of neighbors I’d known. All the bodies in the cantón needed to be buried, but I was only one person, and even as I piled rocks on top of the four graves, I knew that by morning the rats, the armadillos and the foxes would dig up all that I had bur
ied. Even now, buzzards circled overhead and landed to pick at the bodies. I shouted at them but could do nothing more. I had no shovel to bury anyone decently.
As I looked around me I noticed a hairbrush in the ashes and picked it up. This was Mamí’s brush. Many times she had used it to brush my hair. Now it was the only physical object I had left from my family. I slipped it inside my huipil.
I feared that if I did not stay for three days to take flowers and candles to my family’s grave their spirits would not rise to the next world from where they lay buried.
If friends and family didn’t carry their deceased to the hills to be burned high above the ground, if spirits were not sent properly to the next world, what became of them? The question cut away at my heart and soul. I felt I was betraying my family, my ancestors, and the ancients. Still, I knew that I could not remain in the cantón for fear of the soldiers returning. I had to move on.
Not finding Antonio and Alicia also hurt me deeply. My little sister had placed all of her trust in me when she called me “Mamí.” I imagined her screaming “Mamí! Mamí! Mamí!” as the soldiers fired around her. Had she mistaken the sounds of gunfire for thunder?
I wept more tears, knowing I must leave with all of my questions unanswered. Other military foot patrols would pass soon, so I walked for the last time away from the place where I had been born and raised. I walked straight into the forest and headed north toward the border of Mexico, the direction I had been told that many Indios fled to escape from Guatemala. I took only memories with me, but they weighed heavier on my heart than any burden I’d ever carried to market. Behind me lay ashes of death, ahead lay clouds of uncertainty. I was a young girl alone in a dangerous country, with no home and no future.
I had walked only a few hundred meters into the forest when a whimpering sound like that of a hurt animal caught my attention. It came from beneath a clump of bushes just ahead of me. Fearing a trap set by the soldiers, I quietly lowered myself to my stomach to peek beneath the bush.