The Girl from Chimel Read online

  These were the stories grandfather told us while we sat outside the house, or by the fire, on those nights when sleep covered our eyelids, making them heavy as lead. This has been happening to children since the beginning of time. Grandfather knew these stories from the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of our Maya ancestors.

  The Wandering Piglet

  Chimel went through a real birth. Everything had to be set up — everything was new. The river where the people went to wash themselves in clear water was new. The glorious sun in the bluest sky of all was new. The white, round clouds, plump as the women in the marketplace, were new. New was the transparent and pure air that sometimes hurt to breathe. The houses, the lands, the seeded fields were all brand new.

  When my mother was a little girl, she took a piglet as her pet. Other kids chose puppies, kittens, birds or even turtles. But my mother chose a baby pig. She took him everywhere with her, pulling it by a string, not caring if people laughed their heads off when they saw a little girl dragging a baby pig down the dirt roads of our village.

  She took good care of him. Once a week she’d bathe him in the river. Though he kicked and screamed as if being tortured, she soaped him down, rubbing and scrubbing him with a loofah. Then she’d run a bristle brush over his skin until he was clean and pink, as if he had walked out of a book. She dried him with a shawl her mother had knit for her. But the piglet wiggled out of her hands and got filthy right away, for a pig is nothing but a pig. He wasn’t like a dog that comes out of its bath and begins to shake like an earthquake, wetting everyone around it.

  She would often take the piglet for walks in the mountains. Together they would climb the Chimel mountain which was covered with flowers, trees, plants and bushes. This is also where the nahuales, or spirits, sleep and rest, where Ajaw, our Maker and Creator, keeps watch over things and blesses the entire universe. My mother knew all the mountain paths, and she would pull the piglet along. Together they would go up the narrow little footpaths till they reached the very top, where the wind was cold and turned cheeks as red as apples.

  One night a strong wind began to blow. The whole family went to bed early and huddled under their blankets. The wind howled through the village, and the tree branches made a shushing sound. Every once in a while there was a banging noise when something fell. When something very big fell, down it went, kerplunk! You could also hear windows blowing open and closed. The loud wind scared everyone.

  The coyotes came down from the mountains. Coyotes are like very wild, mysterious dogs. Though they are friendly, they can also be fierce and dangerous. They like eating hens and other household animals. The good thing is that they usually stay in the mountains, hiding under rocks or in nicer places. And at night when the moon is shining, you can hear them howling in the distance like suffering souls. But they’re a nuisance when they come down to steal farm animals. And they can be a bit frightening, because sometimes they attack people as well.

  That night the coyotes took advantage of the gusty, noisy wind to sneak into the village. From far off you could hear the chickens fussing and cackling. The villagers thought that the wind was disturbing them. My mother tossed and turned on her straw mat, unable to sleep. Despite the clatter of the wind, she heard footsteps near the pigsty and a piglet’s cry splitting the darkness.

  “Coyotes,” my mother thought. She got up, ran to the door. When she opened it, she saw a pack of them escaping toward the mountains. In the darkness she could see one of them had a piglet in its snout. Without thinking, she grabbed a club from the floor and ran after the coyotes. Her parents ran after her, but it was too late. They only glimpsed her tiny shadow merging with the forest’s darkness.

  “The coyotes are going to end up eating her as well,” they thought.

  It was useless to look for her. The cold, dark wind of the night knocked off their hats, blew out their ocote torches and hurled leaves against their faces. They were unable to find her. My grandparents returned home miserable, convinced that they had lost their little girl.

  But the following morning, my mother came down from the mountains, carrying the baby pig in her arms. All by herself she had confronted the coyotes with her club and frightened them off. Then she had sought refuge under a big rock and spent the night drifting in and out of sleep, waking up every once in a while to make sure her pet was all right.

  The whole village was awed by her courage. Our elders said, “This is a good sign. She’ll grow up to be a brave woman who will survive many challenges. She should thank her nahuales and they in turn will give her strength and wisdom and will protect her memory forever. Her sons and daughters and grandchildren will all be courageous. When the day of Toj arrives, she will return the piglet to the mountains.”

  In time we would see that the elders were right.

  The Plants and the Forest

  From the time she was a child, my mother loved to sneak into the forest and talk to the plants. The flowers, the green leaves of the trees, the mosses and the lichens all have a language of their own. They listen and understand. They shrink and wither without anyone to love them. When they hear gentle words, they grow big and strong. And they also have secret powers.

  The forest was full of trees, vines, orchids and all kinds of other flowers and plants that block out sunlight. It was always dark, and for this reason a bit scary. My mother loved to pick orchids and hang them on the monkey tree bark, where they’d extend their roots and grow beautiful flowers. She would go deep into the forest and while gathering orchids, listen to the secrets of the plants. Amid all nature’s noises she’d hear heavy tree branches falling in the distance, as if in a dream; the songs of strange birds in the treetops grazing the sky; the tick tock, tick tock of the woodpecker, who was our best friend. That’s how she discovered that many plants can cure the illnesses of men, women, children and old people.

  Years later, when I was a little girl and if I were ill, my mother would force me to drink herbal teas made from the weirdest plants. If I couldn’t fall asleep, I’d be given a drink of chipilin, a sweet-tasting plant. If I had a stomachache, she’d make me a hot broth from the altenxa plant. Soon my stomach would stop hurting.

  But there were other plants with even stranger names that cured me better than the medicines from a pharmacy. There was xew xew, which got rid of headaches and eye strain. There was saq ixog, which was also good for the stomach, and chilacayote leaves, which helped heal foot injuries. K’a q’eyes was great for curing colds and flus, while sik’aj would force terrified worms out of my stomach.

  My mother inherited this plant knowledge from her grandparents. When she was quite young, she began to heal her Chimel neighbors.

  When she grew up she became a midwife — a woman who helps other women have children — since there were no doctors in Chimel. It’s a wonderful vocation. It’s all about welcoming newborn babies. A midwife helps mothers give birth by lifting their small, pink babies out of them. When a baby comes out of its mother’s womb, the midwife slaps the baby’s bottom and it bursts into tears. This means that the baby is healthy, its lungs are working, and it has what it needs to breathe well. Then she washes it in warm water and dries it, and puts it fresh and clean into the mother’s arms. Of course it’s a beautiful vocation! That’s why our neighbors in Chimel and the surrounding villages really loved my mother. She would help them, many of whom she had welcomed into life.

  Nowadays kids are born in hospitals, but in Chimel they are still born at home.

  Grandfather and the Cornfield

  When my grandfather became an old man, he was once more a child. Like the children, he had to watch over the cornfields so that the animals wouldn’t go in. Grandfather would hide against a rock with a stick in his hand. Little by little, he built a roof out of palm leaves, and by using a few sticks as support, he built himself a little hut by the side of the cornfield. If animals came near, he would yell or chase after them with a stick, fright
ening them away.

  We children would help him because he would tell us stories during his free time. For example, he told us the story of the little man who braided horses’ tails at night. He was a nahual, a source of power. Sometimes the little man would be a duende, a good spirit, and at other times he’d be a demon.

  Grandfather would tell us that this man was as tiny as a child, no bigger than two feet high. And he had a huge hat on his head, the kind that cowboys wear in Mexico. He had eyebrows as thick as whiskers and whiskers as huge as eyebrows turned inside out. He was as small as a frog, and the only nice part about him was his pair of big black eyes.

  He fell in love with all kinds of women, but because he was so small, none of them loved him back. This made him so angry that, at night, he’d slip through the stable walls. And he’d begin to braid the tails of the horses. (Grandfather talked like people from the olden days. He’d say old-fashioned words like “braid” or “knot” or “augur.”)

  So some mornings, the few horses in Chimel would end up having braided tails. The women would cross themselves and the men would make jokes. No one knew if someone had done it as a prank, or if the little man with the big hat had stopped by the night before.

  Grandfather also told us that each thing had its nahual, its shadow, its double. The earth, the tree and the mountain all have their own spirits. The earth has its nahual, the rocks have their nahuales, the mountains have theirs, our ancestors have theirs, all people have nahuales — the sun, the animals, the winds and the air have nahuales. That’s why you need to talk to the earth, the river and the flowers. That’s why you have to respect them. You have to ask their permission in the same way that you ask people for permission. When we cut down a tree, we ask for forgiveness. We have to do it. When we go into the mountains, we also have to ask for permission.

  We live together with nature — inside nature. We are part of its energy, its force, and we need to invoke its spirit. We can’t live fighting nature. That’s what Grandfather taught us under his palm-roofed hut while he rolled a cornhusk cigar and smoked it.

  “Thmoking,” Grandfather would say, with a strange accent.

  And all at once he’d rush off because he had seen a mouse, a snake, or some other wild animal go into the field to eat the corn. Screaming and shouting and waving his stick — that’s how Grandfather frightened them away. Then he would explain that animals, like people, are greedy. They like to eat more than they need. And that’s why they came to steal the corn.

  Grandfather’s face was full of wrinkles and resembled a furrowed cornfield about to be planted. His white eyebrows contrasted with his tobacco-colored skin. He also had huge birthmarks, especially on his hands, which resembled the soil. He’d wear a red kerchief on his head and a hat on top. My grandfather was an elegant man. He seemed timeless.

  The Story Behind My Name

  Now I’m going to tell you a secret. My name isn’t really Rigoberta. I know that some of you are going to laugh because I began this story with “my name is Rigoberta.” To be honest, my name is and isn’t Rigoberta. To clear up the mystery, I’ll start at the beginning.

  When I was born, my parents gave me my grandmother’s name. I was their sixth daughter, and they named me Laj Mi’n. My name changed as I grew up. It was Laj Mi’n when I was little, and Li Mi’n when I wasn’t grown up yet and didn’t have much understanding about the world. When I am respected and have some knowledge about life, I’ll be called Chuch Mi’n. But I am not there yet.

  I must admit that Mi’n is a pretty name. Mi’n is one way to say Domingo or Sunday in K’iche’ — a peaceful, relaxed day, the day of the week that is a holiday. That name means having the best in life — the sun, no work, blue sky, games all day, a big lunch in the center of town, no worries at all. Sunday is a sunny, happy and playful day. My true character is like that. I take great pleasure in living. I laugh a lot, tell jokes, kid people. I’m an optimist who believes that good will triumph over evil. That’s why my name is Li Mi’n.

  My father registered me late with the mayor’s office. When he got there, the clerk asked, “What are you going to call your daughter?”

  “Mi’n.”

  The clerk hadn’t heard that name before. He wrinkled his brow, pinched his moustache and adjusted his glasses.

  “That name doesn’t exist, don Vicente.” (My father’s name is Vicente.)

  They spent the whole morning arguing.

  “It exists,” my papá said.

  “It doesn’t,” the clerk countered.

  Finally my father gave up, just to comply with the law. “Fine. Mi’n doesn’t exist. So what name should I give her?”

  The clerk stood up and went over to look at a calendar. It wasn’t this year’s calendar, but it had pretty pictures. Most important, it had the names of the saints for each day.

  “Her name will be Rigoberta, because she was born on St. Rigoberto’s Day,” the clerk announced. And from that moment on, Rigoberta was my name.

  My father came home with the news that my name had changed.

  “What’s her name now?” they asked him.

  “From now on she will be Rigoberta.”

  Everyone was shocked. They tried to pronounce my new name, which is a bit long. “Ri-go-ber-ta” is as long as the road into town. That’s why they started calling me “Beta” here and there. Others called me “Tita.” When they got tired of that, they went back to my original name — Laj Mi’n. And at home they all call me Mi’n.

  The Story of My Birth

  Before birth, we all live in a delicious world. We are in our mother’s belly, attached to a little sac called the placenta. We are connected to our mother by an umbilical cord. When we are born, we cry because we are cold. The umbilical cord is cut and we face the world alone.

  My mother burned the cord and placenta, so the smoke would be carried up by the winds and form part of Mother Nature’s living energy. But she saved part of the cord, which she tied to a string and placed around my neck as if it were a necklace. Two months later it fell off, dried and withered, and was buried in the ground. We do this to give thanks to Mother Earth to whom we belong. It is something sacred. The earth is our mother because she gives us the food that we eat. The earth is our mother because we make our way over her. The earth is our mother because our shadow is always stuck to her. But at the same time, we have our freedom.

  We burn the cord and its little companion to be born again. This cord is the only thing that connects me to the life force. We burn the cord to thank nature. Its ashes will form part of the environment. We also save a piece of the cord to bury in the ground to bind us to it. In this way, Mother Earth will adopt us as her daughter or son. When we must leave the earth, we feel sadness, because part of us stays behind as part of the air, the water, the ground.

  When we are born, a little creature is born with us. This creature is just like us. If we sneeze, it sneezes as well, in the forest where it lives. If we sing, it also sings, in its animal language. If we hurt our finger, it will injure a foot, no matter where it is. What happens to us will happen to it. What happens to it happens to us. Sometimes that creature is wiser than we are. It’s aware of evil and knows the risks we take, and so it must protect us as it protects itself. That’s why we have to respect animals. In Chimel, we call this creature our nahual. Each time a child is born, the parents petition their spiritual leaders — Chuch qajaw — for the name of the baby’s nahual. I know mine, but I can’t reveal it.

  You can have a tiger, a lion, a coyote or a bear as a nahual. You can have a puma, a wild boar or a robin redbreast. It can be a swan, a stork or a gazelle. Or it can even be a pig, a mouse or a fox. This doesn’t mean that it will be ugly or bad, because there are no ugly or bad animals. All creatures are beautiful. All animals play their role. All animals are good because they help the earth to exist. Without them, we too would cease to exist.
/>   When I Was a Little Girl in Chimel…

  I remember perfectly our house in Chimel when I was a little girl. It was made out of wood and had a straw roof. I loved to look out between the house slats and see the green fields full of corn, and how the wind stirred them as if they were the long green hair of a woman bathing in the river. I could also see the rabbits in their hutch as they ate their greens — like doctors wearing round glasses and reading a book aloud.

  Far in the distance, I could see the river winding through the houses in my village as if it were smoke. On clear days, I could see the high mountains and the sky, the clouds and footpaths — the wide path to Chimel and the narrow path to Laj Chimel.

  My brother Patrocinio and I were always together. I must admit that we were a bit naughty.

  “Please don’t eat the blackberries,” our mother would tell us.

  And without anyone watching over us, we would go into the fields to pick blackberries. We’d bring with us a chunky, hard brown sugar which we call panela.

  We’d always eat a few pieces of panela with the blackberries. It was a real feast. We’d go on eating till our bellies hurt. Then we’d return home, with innocent expressions on our faces.

  Innocent faces, but our mouths smeared with red. After eating blackberries, our mouths would be red, red, red — like women wearing lipstick.

  “You two have been eating blackberries,” our mother would scold. And then she’d punish us. What she didn’t know was that we had also eaten chunks of brown sugar.