Erased Faces (11 page)

The driver got on the bus and sat at his seat, turned the key in the ignition and cranked the engine. Loud backfires erupted from the rusty muffler, and everyone instinctively held onto whatever they could, knowing that the trip would not be smooth. Juana braced herself for the trip from San Cristóbal to El Caribal, the village where she would now live. The village was distant, on the fringes of the Lacandona Jungle, and because the bus would stop at most of the towns and settlements along the way, the journey would take between seven and eight hours.

The bus rumbled onto Highway 190 southbound, then on to 186 eastbound, but just as the driver picked up speed and Juana felt that
some distance would be covered, the vehicle pulled over. Its first stop was Los Llanos, then after a short while they halted again at Huixtán, and onward, stopping almost every fifteen minutes. In the beginning, Juana was relieved when she saw that several passengers stepped down, but her mood changed when she realized that more people got on than got off. This happened at each stop, until she thought that the bus would explode if more passengers were taken on board.

Three hours later, the bus rolled into Oxchue. At the time, Juana was drowsing, almost asleep, but the bumpy stop awakened her with a jerk. She looked up to see that Cruz was once again looking back at her. She decided to ignore him, thinking that each time he craned his neck and face toward her, his eyes became smaller. His eyes frightened her; they were tiny slits, like those of a wooden mask that glinted at her, boring into her, cutting like a knife.

“¡Media hora, más o menos! ¡Todos abajo!”

The driver was grumpy as he shouted that everyone was to get off the bus; they would have at least a half-hour wait. Juana was grateful for the chance to stand; her legs were cramped and her buttocks ached from crouching. She gathered her box in her arms and followed the press of bodies off the bus. It was near dusk, the heat was diminishing and the passengers didn't mind walking down the dirt path that took them to food stalls and roaming vendors.

As Juana strolled, happy to exercise her legs, she passed butcher stalls where chunks of raw beef and pork were hung out on giant hooks. She looked at the pieces of meat, blackened with flies and dirt. The smell disgusted her, making her nauseous, forcing her to cross the highway to the other side, where grocers had erected their stands. In contrast to the putrid stench of rancid flesh, this side of the road brought the aroma of tortillas cooking on
comales
, blending with the fragrance of fresh popcorn.

“¿Quiere palomitas?”

Juana whirled around, startled by the outstretched hand offering her a bag of popcorn. She had forgotten about Cruz, but now his face, so close to hers that she felt his breath on her cheeks, reminded her of his presence in her life. Dejection again flooded over her. Yet his
offering struck her as thoughtful, unexpected, and she smiled stiffly as she put down her box so that she could take the small bag. He intercepted her move, taking hold of the parcel. She responded in Spanish,
“Gracias.”

She nibbled the fluffy corn without saying anymore while walking, aware that Cruz was by her side. They continued until the structures ended; beyond that point only tiny
palapas
could be seen in the thick of palm fronds and banana trees. Juana, with nowhere to go, turned around, intending to head back where the bus was parked, but she felt Cruz take her by the arm and edge her toward the rear of the last stand. There the grass grew taller than she and almost as tall as Cruz.

Juana resisted, but his grip on her arm only tightened. She knew what he was going to do. She knew that she did not want it to happen, but she also knew that there was nothing she could do to avoid it. It was inevitable, she had already told herself. It would come sooner or later. Cruz nudged Juana toward the thickest part of the growth, forced her down to the ground, onto her knees, out of sight.

“¡Quítese los calzones!”

Repugnance and nausea flooded Juana when Cruz ordered her to take off her pants, but she knew that if she did not do as he ordered, he would beat her until she obeyed him. It would be no use shouting for help; no one interfered when a husband demanded what was considered to be his due from a wife. Juana removed her pants as Cruz stood looking down at her. She saw that with one hand he was lifting the tunic that reached his knees. He shoved her onto her back with the other one.

“
¡Abra las piernas!
”

She let herself roll back on the grass and opened her legs as he had commanded. She clamped shut her eyes, not wanting to see him come down on her because she knew what he was going to do. She had seen it happen many times to girls and women of the tribe. She had seen a man take a girl as she planted maize, or as she wove a
huipil
, or as she put tortillas on the pan. She had seen her father do it to her mother. She had seen her sisters pinned down to earthen floors, straddled by men they called their husbands.

Pain coursed up from her vagina to her brain. She felt that she was suffocating. The weight of Cruz's body pressed the air out of her lungs, forcing her to gasp over and again. She clawed at the damp earth, hoping to diminish the pain that intensified each time he plunged in and out of her for what seemed an interminable time. Finally, he gasped, shuddered and sighed. Then he rolled off her, coiled and pressed in on himself.

Juana lay motionless, unable to move. It took time for the pain to diminish, allowing her to control her racing heart. She ran her hands up and down between her inner thighs, trying to wipe away the thick discharge that coated them. After a few minutes, she thought she heard Cruz snore softly, but when he sprang to his feet, she knew that she had been wrong. He looked at her with blank, squinty eyes.

“¡Vámonos!”

Juana stumbled to her feet as she struggled with her clothes and fumbled in the grass for her box. She followed Cruz to the bus, where she found that most of the passengers were already seated. She realized that they were staring at her because they knew what had happened. She realized that Cruz had asked the man seated next to him to watch his belongings while he was with his wife.

She made her way back to her place and sat staring through a dirty, cracked window, wondering, for the first time, why her father had given her to Cruz Ochoa for the price of a mule. She stretched out her hands on her lap, palms up, as she examined them, seeing that they were smeared with mud and blood. The thought crossed Juana's mind that although she might look the same, she was different because she had crossed over a bridge that took her to an unknown land, which she neither loved nor hated. Her feet were now planted on soil that was gray; it had no color.

In the darkness of her
palapa
, Juana brought her hands close to her face, fingers outstretched, palms in front of her eyes as she remembered how resentment and disgust for her father replaced her first childlike questionings. It happened during the grayness of the
first years of her life with Cruz Ochoa. She squinted her eyes in the gloom, then she closed them, trying to remember another color, but it was of no use, the murkiness of those months that had passed into years washed over her memories. She turned her head to one side as her thoughts once again leaped over the
ceiba
trees, scurried through palm fronds, hovered over rivers and ravines, until reaching those past years of her life in El Caribal.

El Caribal, a village on the fringe of the Lacandona Jungle, 1978.

Torrential rain had deluged El Caribal for three days and nights without letup. The narrow river that fringed the cluster of huts had swollen and flooded, dragging trees and chunks of mud downstream. Animals howled in protest as thunder and lightning caused the earth to shake, disturbing their hideaways. At night, when the jungle was at its blackest, streaks of light flashed on and off, sending terror through the dense growth of ferns and giant trees.

In her
palapa
, Juana was lying on a
petate
on the earthen floor. Except for a small fire, the place was dark. She was covered with sweat, slowly regaining consciousness, blinking her eyes as she tried to dislodge the coating that blurred them. In a few minutes, forms began to take shape as she looked over to the corner of the hut where she was able to make out the silhouettes of three women. They were the village midwives: toothless old women with wrinkled, parched skin, shoulders stooped from years spent toting loads to the marketplace, hands gnarled from a lifetime of toiling in the fields.

Juana concentrated on their heads and faces, trying to clear her brain. She took in more of the women's appearance, seeing how their hair was braided but disheveled and streaked with gray. After a few moments, she realized that from her place near the side of the hut she could make out only profiles: beaked noses, flabby jowls, hollow mouths, furrowed necks. For a time, Juana was vaguely aware that they were speaking in hushed tones. She concentrated. In a few minutes
her hearing became attuned, and she could make out their whispering. It sounded like dry fronds scraping on bark.

“El niño se murió.”

“Nomás no puede. Pobrecita mujer.”

Juana's hands moved to feel her abdomen. It was empty. The child had slipped out between her legs, and it had done so soundlessly because it was dead. She felt her heart shiver. She dragged her hands to her breast and rubbed, trying to stop the trembling. Then she clasped her hands on her ears because she did not want to hear the hags pitying her, repeating over and again how she could not keep a child in her womb long enough to deliver it alive.

More lightning flashed, filling the
palapa
with a light charged with violence, made more threatening by the explosion of thunder that followed almost immediately. Juana felt the earth under her shift; it too was filled with fear. Four years had passed since her father had sent her away with Cruz, and this was the third child she had lost. Remembering this pushed her into a pit of sadness, made intolerable to her because her grief was coated with dread.

“Pobre hombre.”

“Buen hombre.”

“Desafortunado hombre.”

Poor man. Good man. Unfortunate man. The toothless mutterings of the midwives reached her again, this time sympathizing with Cruz Ochoa, pitying him for having a useless woman as his wife. Juana filled with desperation, wondering why they pitied him and not her. Inside of her a voice asked why did they not understand that each child had been conceived in fear and repugnance, robbing it of a reason to live. She turned her head away from the silhouettes, hoping that she would again lose consciousness, making them disappear, wishing that a bolt of lightning would strike her, erase her from that hut, erase her existence.

In the village, Cruz Ochoa was considered a good man. He neither drank alcohol nor did he beat his wife. For these two reasons alone, the women of the tribe envied Juana, because in most
palapas
, drunkenness and battering were common. What no one knew, however, was that Cruz was a man filled with anger, with a rage that washed
over Juana every time he glanced at her, every time he commanded her to open her legs. No one knew that the intoxication that possessed him was caused not by alcohol, but by fathomless bitterness. No one knew that although he did not beat her with his fists, he attacked her with eyes filled with ire.

Days after the last miscarriage, Juana emerged to return to her tasks, grateful that Cruz had, at least for a while, disappeared into the jungle. In her heart she wished that he might be devoured by jaguars, poisoned by serpents, swallowed by a river, but her mind yanked her from these thoughts, reminding her that he would, in time, return. She braced herself, not knowing how he would vent his rage on her this time. During his absence, her mind filled with questions:
Why was Cruz so embittered? Why did he hate her, yet bury himself in her body with such abandonment? Why did he not speak to her as other men did to their wives?
The answers to these questions never came to her. She resigned herself to living with a man filled with shadows.

One day, Juana knelt by the river, washing clothes. She was lost in thought, oblivious to the other women who chattered, exchanging gossip. The rain had stopped, but the river was still swollen, dragging tree trunks and dead animals down its course. Some of the women had tied their skirts around their hips, wanting to keep dry, but Juana had not bothered; she was wet up to her waist. Her motions were listless, mechanical, as she rubbed soap onto a shirt, then scrubbed it against the flat rock at which she worked, then rinsed the garment in the rushing current. All the time, she was thinking about how much she wanted to vanish.

Suddenly, a fist from behind struck her neck, plunging her headlong into the muddy water. The force of the blow knocked her unconscious. She did not feel the pain of her face scraping against a rough surface, nor was she aware that Cruz had leaped into the current, grabbed her by the neck, and dragged her limp body from the river. Had she not been unconscious, Juana would have resisted him, hoping that her wish to be erased might have come true by drowning.