One afternoon our group walked past a large cereza tree filled with soft black cherries. The others who walked with me were old and couldn’t climb trees. I knew that I could easily climb and gather cherries for everyone, but I also knew I had promised myself I’d never again climb a tree. The memories from the pueblo were raw in my mind.
“Will you climb the tree and gather cherries for us?” the old people asked me.
My heart beat faster and I shook my head, angered by their accusing stares of disappointment. When they asked again, I ran from the group and walked alone the rest of the day. Climbing trees had brought me enough pain.
The passing of each day found the refugees farther from the danger of soldiers, but new enemies arrived, bringing death with them. Starvation, diarrhea, cholera, measles, fever, vomiting, amoebas, and malnutrition—they killed each day as surely as any bullet. It became harder to ignore the children I saw, their arms and legs growing thinner and their bellies bulging more each day from starvation. When I was growing up, my parents taught me the healing power of the herbs and plants of the forest. My brothers, my sisters, and I had known that we could always find food and medicine if the crops failed. This knowledge was a gift from my parents. But now I ignored that gift and told myself again and again that these children weren’t my responsibility.
As for me, I had lost much weight. I passed a pile of garbage one day and spotted a small piece of broken mirror. When I stared at my own reflection, my cheeks hollow, my eyes sunken, I looked like someone from the grave. My hair, which I normally kept brushed, had grown matted and tangled. Even though I still carried the brush in my huipil, brushing my hair wasn’t important anymore. Surviving was all I knew.
Because of the starvation and the diseases, every few kilometers refugees could be seen burying their friends or family members beside the trails. Sometimes the ground was too hard or rocky and stones were piled over a body. Sometimes a body lay abandoned and ignored, flies thick around the face. By the time I neared the Mexican border, I feared that many more people were close to dying, but I ignored the deaths. Anybody who depended on me would end up no better off than my brothers and sisters had.
One afternoon, some of the refugees near me spoke intensely. “Ahead thirty kilometers is the border,” one said. “We don’t know if the border officials will let us cross, but if they do, soon we’ll come to a refugee camp where we’ll be safe. We’ve been told that the Mexican officials at the camp won’t force us to return to Guatemala.”
I didn’t know if I could trust what the man said. Walking thirty kilometers seemed so far, but I had to keep going or starve. I pitied the old people. Many would never make it another thirty kilometers. They were simply living out the last hours of their lives with empty hope.
Five more days passed before I reached the Mexican border. The group I traveled with had slowed so much that I left them behind and traveled alone the last two days. I knew many in that small group needed help desperately, but I couldn’t help their suffering.
As I neared the border, I met refugees returning who said they had been turned back by border guards. Now I wasn’t sure what to do. The moon at that time was barely a sliver, making it treacherous walking in the blackness of the night, but near the border, trees were scarce. There was no choice but to try to cross at night with only darkness to hide my crossing.
I ate all I could find during the day, and then walked through a long night, skirting the border crossing by a full kilometer. I came to a large river and had no choice but to wade across. In the middle, the water reached my chest and the current pulled at my body. This terrified me because I couldn’t swim very well, but finally I reached the far side.
I waited until dawn to double back to the road, moving cautiously, testing each step. As the sun rose the next morning, I reached the road I thought might lead me to the refugee camp. I no longer saw other refugees and hoped it was because I had made it across the border into Mexico.
It frightened me to walk near the road where there was no protection, but all day I walked on, seeing only a few buses pass. Late that afternoon, I spotted the camp in the distance. I was weary and glad to have reached the end of a long journey. As I neared the camp, the dusty air carried the sounds of babies crying. Ahead, hundreds of refugees crowded the small encampment. Slabs of wood or plastic were their only shelter. They sat around in small groups, watching me, their stares indifferent.
Two Mexican officials met me as I approached. Their uniforms and rifles made me want to run. The officers shook their heads as they stopped me. They spoke in Spanish. “This camp is full. Keep going to the camp near San Miguel.”
“How far is that?” I asked, hesitantly replying in Spanish.
The official pointed. “Another thirty kilometers ahead.”
I nearly cried. “Please,” I said. “Someone said I could stay here.”
The official’s scowl left no room for argument. “We’re full,” he growled.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It took me only three days to reach the San Miguel refugee camp, because on the last afternoon a family in a pickup truck stopped and offered me a ride for the final ten kilometers. At first I shook my head at the driver, but he traveled with his wife and children. I was weary and hungry, and I reasoned that soldiers wouldn’t travel with their families. Still I worried. Maybe the driver would take me back to the border crossing and turn me in. I no longer trusted anyone. I sat in the open back of the truck, tense, ready to jump. Even from a moving pickup.
The man who drove did as he had offered and let me off beside the highway near San Miguel. He pointed to the refugee camp one kilometer away down a rutted dirt road. I walked the last kilometer, my apprehension building with each step. What if they turned me away from this place?
Nothing could have prepared me for the San Miguel refugee camp. Instead of a camp with tents or some other kind of shelter for maybe six or seven hundred people, I found thousands of refugees whose shelters and belongings looked like fields of garbage—rusted sheets of tin, ragged pieces of blankets, cardboard, old boards, plastic held up by sticks or anything else that might help to ward off the hot sun, the cold nights, or winds and rain. The camp stretched as far as I could see among the rocks and brush.
Hesitantly I ventured among the scattered people who wandered about, their clothes hanging from their thin bodies like rags on skeletons. Nobody spoke to me. A few people watched me idly, but to most I seemed not to exist. I was one of them, my body gaunt, my hair and my clothes matted and dirty, smelling of waste.
Ahead, a group of refugees massed. When I approached, I found a parked tanker truck with long lines of refugees waiting their turn to fill plastic containers with water. Most of the containers were bright red and blue, and they must have only recently been given to the refugees, because nothing else in their world was new.
Beyond the water truck, another crowd gathered. Two white, gringo aid workers shouted and pushed, handing out food from another truck, struggling to divide their load among the shoving crowds. One held up a small bag of rice and yelled in Spanish, “This must last your family for two weeks!”
I couldn’t believe how the refugees acted. They were like animals chasing scraps. With each new bag the aid worker lifted above his head, the group surged forward, yelling, pushing, and shoving. “Back up!” he screamed, but I doubted many of the refugees understood his Spanish. I watched several bags being torn open and spilled on the ground by those fighting over them.
I refused to be a part of such madness, so I kept wandering the camp. As I walked, I searched for Alicia. The journey to the camp had been long and hard, and it seemed unlikely that Alicia would have completed it before me. I knew that it was unlikely that she would complete such a journey in one week, one year, or even one lifetime. Still, I refused to accept that she had been killed. I refused to allow the thought that maybe Alicia and the baby had been found and taken to the schoolhouse in the pueblo. To avoid that thought alone, I would keep
looking for the rest of my life. Always I would search for a little girl with long black hair and a stubborn chin, a special little girl who would turn and answer when I called, “Alicia!”
As I walked deeper into the camp, I could find no place for people to wash or clean themselves. To go to the bathroom, I had to stand exposed beside everybody else along a public ditch. The more I explored, the more it seemed that the refugees had grouped themselves roughly by language. I found one section of camp where most spoke Quiché, but nobody offered me help. Finding shelter or food was up to me. Realizing this, I turned and headed back toward the trucks.
All afternoon and evening I crowded with others around the trucks, but only those who pushed or fought the hardest could get any of the supplies. By nightfall, I still had no food or shelter. At last I curled up on open ground under a tattered old piece of cardboard that did little to keep me warm. This camp, like our cantón back home, sat high in the mountains. Some nights the cold air formed thin ice on the mud puddles. That first night I shivered and clenched my teeth, hugging my knees and breathing inside my huipil. I slept little.
When dawn came, my stomach knotted with hunger and I needed water. The morning air hung heavy like a cloud, thick with dust and smoke and the smell of human waste. Hungry babies cried, and everywhere children coughed continuously. Yawning hard, I stood and went directly to the water truck. Already a long line had formed, but I noticed that the faucet splashed as people filled their jugs. Some of the water dripped down the side of the truck onto the ground.
I ignored loud swearing from those in line as I crawled under the truck. Carefully I positioned my head so that the water dripped into my mouth. When those in line realized I was not trying to take a place in line ahead of them, they ignored me. For a long time I lay there, letting water drip into my mouth. Finally I stood and went in search of food and something to use for shelter.
I found one big truck that handed out donated clothes. The aid workers rolled items into balls and threw them randomly. I needed to find something to protect myself from the cold, so I elbowed in among the others. After pushing and being pushed for most of the afternoon, I finally caught a sweater.
I retreated back from the shoving mass of people and tried it on. I think it could have fit a horse. The waist hung to the ground like a dress, and the sleeves had to be rolled up to free my hands. I couldn’t imagine any person big enough to need such a sweater, but I didn’t care. It was all I had to keep me warm that night.
Others also tried on the clothes they caught. One woman pulled on pants that were so thin and tight they made her skin look black. She looked around in embarrassment, greatly disappointed that this was her reward for a hot afternoon of shoving and pushing in the sun.
Some were lucky and found themselves with heavy blankets and jackets. Others caught only fancy shirts or blouses. These would have looked good at a dance, but there were no dances at the refugee camp. One old grandmother pulled on a big leather vest that looked like armor on her thin, bony frame. She examined it with a look of wonderment, and then flashed a big toothless grin at the rest of us and walked proudly in circles. We all laughed. I realized it was my first laughter in more than two months.
I rolled up the sweater and held it tightly in my arms as I went in search of food. I had grown weak from not eating. All of that afternoon and into the night I looked. Anywhere a truck stopped, crowds gathered instantly. Even late at night, refugees wandered around the camp hoping to find scraps of food.
It was late that night before I collected a small loaf of bread and some hot soup handed out by an American woman in a van. I also collected a handful of rice and enough corn flour to make a few tortillas if I could find a way to cook. I went again to the tanker truck and caught water with my mouth. Still I had no way of carrying anything, but tomorrow I would try to find a jug.
That night I slept better, but the camp woke early. By sunrise I was up trading some of my food to a woman who had a pan and made tortillas for me from the flour I had found. Then I again wandered the camp, putting every morsel of food I found into my mouth. There were no mealtimes, only constant scavenging, and I threw nothing away. I traded a pair of men’s pants I collected for a water jug that leaked. I also found a small piece of black plastic, which I wrapped around me during the next several nights. That, along with the big sweater, helped to ward off the night cold, but still I needed a shelter for the sun and rain.
Always while I scavenged, I looked for Alicia, turning at the sound of every child’s yell.
By the end of the first week, I had become like all of the rest who crowded the aid workers, my arms pushing and reaching, my voice pleading. I, too, behaved like an animal, kicking and shoving others to capture anything thrown to us. I hated living and behaving this way. This wasn’t how my parents had raised me, but starvation was the only alternative.
Ten days after I first arrived, I approached a truck handing out supplies. Because blankets and plastic tarps were being distributed, the crowd was frenzied and pushing hard. Fights broke out as a dozen people grabbed for each item pitched randomly into the desperate crowd. I watched for a few minutes, but then realized the truck would be empty soon. I still had nothing to serve as my shelter.
I had no choice. Pushing and shoving, I squirmed my way closer to the truck. If someone bigger pushed me, I stepped on their toes as if by accident. One man slapped me. I waited until a package with a blue plastic tarp landed near me, and I dove on it and fought like a cat against a swarm of other bodies, pulling and yanking and kicking. Once I got ahold of the package, I held to it tightly. Two old ladies and a young teenage boy also refused to let go of the package, so I shoved hard and all of them sprawled to the ground. I grabbed the tarp from them and gripped it as I turned and ran.
The refugees I pushed over gave up and turned back to the truck for their next opportunity. I retreated to an open stretch of ground to hide the tarp inside my huipil. This blue tarp was large enough to make a rough tent or lean-to. Finally I had a shelter. As I stood admiring the tarp, I glanced up and noticed the two old ladies I had pushed. Together they walked from the crowd, one limping badly and the other helping her. Both wept.
In that moment a sudden shame swept over me. Those grandmothers needed the tarp even more desperately than I did. Would they now have to sleep cold tonight? Would tomorrow find them dead in the hot sun without shade? All because of me. What had I become? Was my dignity only as deep as the dirt on my skin? Was my pride worth only as much as a plastic tarp? If so, then why should I even survive? Mamí and Papí would have been so ashamed of me at that moment.
I ran after the old women and called to them in Spanish, “Here, this is yours.” I held out the tarp.
The women turned, and for a moment fear clouded their faces.
“Please, don’t be afraid,” I said.
“That tarp is yours,” answered the woman who had been limping. “Don’t tease us.”
I shook my head. “I’m not teasing you.” I placed the tarp in the lady’s arms. “What I did was wrong. Please take it.”
Surprised, the woman held up the package and looked at it. “What will you use?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Maybe I can find another one.”
“Do you have a family here?” demanded the other woman loudly. Her body was as thin as a skeleton.
I shook my head.
The woman reached and took the package. She pulled the plastic and spread it out on the ground. I stood watching, not sure what she was doing as she twisted the tarp this way and that. Then, as if her mind was made up, she turned to me and announced, “It’s big enough for all three of us. Go find some pieces of wood to hold it up.”
“But I don’t want to bother—”
The woman placed her skinny hand across my mouth. “Don’t talk so much. Life is hard enough. Go get some wood before I give you a spanking.”
That was how I first met Rosa and Carmen, two Kakchikel women. They hadn’t known each oth
er before arriving at the camp. They should have been playing with grandchildren in a cantón somewhere, but life had decided differently.
“Do you know where you want to place the tarp?” I asked.
Rosa, the skinny one, laughed loudly. “It doesn’t matter. We can put it on the beach by the lake.” She spread her arm widely. “Or we can put it in the grass by the river. It doesn’t matter.”
Carmen shrugged. “We don’t have anyplace yet.”
“Come with me,” I said, taking Carmen’s arm to help her. “Did I hurt you?” I asked.
Carmen smiled. “Yes, you pushed hard.”
“I bite, too,” I said, which made them both laugh. Because I didn’t know any others who spoke Kakchikel, I took them to where I had slept among the Quiché. “You two stay here. I’ll bring some wood to put up the tarp.”
Rosa and Carmen looked at me like two old mothers. “You come back quickly or you won’t get hot tamales and enchiladas for supper,” Rosa threatened.
“What about ice cream?” I asked.
“No ice cream,” Rosa said, bursting into another fit of laughter. “That’s because you pushed Carmen.”
“I’ll be back,” I promised.
Around me were many shrubs, but none large enough to hold up the front and back of the tarp like a tent. I walked quickly to the edge of the camp, looking for bigger branches and pieces of wood. On a small rise a kilometer from camp, I spotted a large machichi tree with branches that stretched out over the ground. This was the same kind of tree I had climbed in the pueblo. The branches near the ground were too big to break, but I knew it would be easy to climb the tree to find thinner branches. I was even tempted to just crawl up and escape the camp for a moment, to feel the wind and solitude of a tree once again.