Erased Faces (17 page)

“¡Ahhhhhhhh!”

“But that is not why I've returned to Nahá. I've come looking for my father and my mother.”

The faces again snapped in the direction of the elder woman. After this they glanced furtively at one another, their expressions
betraying anxiety. Juana gazed at them in an effort to guess the meaning of those looks, but she decided that asking questions would be more effective.

“Where are they,
abuela?”

The old woman wiped soap from her gnarled fingers and dried her hands on a faded apron. She was obviously filling time while she thought of her response.

“Your mother is dead,
niña
. Drowned by the waters of this lake.”

Juana felt a strange pressure in the pit of her stomach, which quickly spread, becoming a profound sadness. She was also afraid, and she recognized the feeling; it was what she felt after a torrential downpour, when the jungle and its animals fell so silent that she filled with apprehension. Her mother's pained expression, when her father had finalized his bargain with Cruz Ochoa in the marketplace, became vividly clear.

“How did it happen?”

“A deluge of rain came, causing the lake to sweep away the
palapas
and sheds that fringed it. The torrent flooded us during the blackest hours of the night; few down here survived. Your mother disappeared into the deepest part of the water and her body was never found. Everything was gray and wrapped in mist that day.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Three years ago.”

Eager to know her father's whereabouts, Juana forced herself to put aside her grief. She would not, after having journeyed so far to see him, allow sadness to erase the reason for her coming.

“Where is my father?”

“Niña
, do you see that path? If you follow it through those trees, you will come to several
palapas
. The last one on the path is where your father lives.”

“Muchas gracias.”

Juana turned away from the group and headed for the trail pointed out by the elder woman. As she walked, she felt her heart race, knowing that with each step she was losing courage. Words she had rehearsed for this moment now, one by one, escaped her mind, making her fear that she would be struck dumb by the time she faced her
father. Nonetheless, she walked, following the path to its end, until she arrived at the last of the huts.

Juana paused at the entrance, long enough for her nose to pick up the smell of smoke and tortillas. She knew what was going on inside: the same as in her childhood days. Her father would be sitting cross-legged, silent and brooding, not because he was alone, but because he had always been turned in on himself. She remembered, and for the first time she saw that he and Cruz Ochoa shared an impenetrable isolation. These thoughts threatened Juana's resolve to face her father, even more because they opened the door to her girlhood dread, which returned vivid and strong. All women, she knew, shared this fear of the men in their family. She realized also that this condition resulted in isolation: the men from the women, and the women from the men.

Was that the reason why it was so easy, Tata?
Juana heard herself talking out loud. She hesitated for a moment, then instead of entering, she decided to call out.

“¡Tata!”

Juana waited, listening for a response, but all was silent in the hut. She called out again, but this time she thought she heard movement. She moved away from the low opening, expecting someone to emerge. When her father stepped out into the light of the early dusk, he seemed shrunken, much smaller than she recalled. He looked at her and responded as if she had been with him that morning, as if the years that had passed had been only hours. After a few moments, he gestured with his head for her to follow him into the
palapa
. Once inside, they both squatted facing each other across the small fire.

Juana was now used to speaking whenever she had something to say. She nonetheless observed the tradition of waiting for her father to speak first. A long time passed before he began to murmur, time during which her thoughts fell into place. As she waited, she felt relief that she no longer lived under the pall of deference to someone who did not return that same respect. Thoughts of other women filled her, people who, like her, had taken one step after the other, leading them to fight for their worth. Her father's voice brought Juana out of her musing.

“You have brought the family shame.”

“How?”

“You have abandoned your husband.”

“He was not my husband.”

“You married him!”

“You chose him!”

Although quiet, their voices were charged with recrimination, with unspoken anger. Juana fought off rising emotions by trying to focus on her reasons for this encounter. She realized that her father had no notion that a new wave was washing over the minds of other women like her. It was he who spoke again.

“It is the duty of a father to choose for the daughter.”

“What if Cruz Ochoa had not offered the price of his mule?”

This time his eyes snapped away from the fire to glare at her. She could not discern if what she saw was anger or confusion. What she did know was that she had crossed a forbidden line.

“If I had not found you a husband, you would have starved.”

“I left him many years ago and, look, I have not starved.”

Her father backed away from the sparring and returned his gaze to the fire, giving Juana an opportunity to observe his face and body. He had aged since she had last seen him, but his face had not lost its bony angles and she realized for the first time that she looked like him. An inexplicable sensation overcame her when she saw that her nose, her eyes, her ears, were repetitions of the same features of his face. She was amazed that she had not seen the resemblance before, and she inwardly asked how he could have so easily traded off his own reflection. Then she looked at his body, seeing that it was emaciated, and his hands were covered with scars, his fingers gnarled. He spoke again, and this time he looked at her, seemingly knowing her thoughts.

“A daughter should not question her father.”

“Tata
, why did you sell me?”

“I did not sell you! It was an exchange!”

“Were you exchanged for the price of a mule by your father?”

“I'm not a woman!”

Juana could not speak anymore. It was clear that her father, like the other men of her people, did not give the same value to a woman as to a man, and that from that conviction flowed their every action.

But knowing this did not help her find a way to contradict or to correct him; she did not know the words to reach him.

Juana rose, left the
palapa
and walked in the opposite direction, toward the jungle. She traveled until darkness forced her to take shelter in the nook of a giant
ceiba
tree. There, she spent the night thinking, straining to find words that would ease the pressure draining her mind. She reflected on the motive for which she had returned to face her father. Was it to change him? Was it to make him experience the same misery she had felt? Why had she come?

As night moved toward its end, Juana thought that she had at last found a way out of the labyrinth into which she had been cast after seeing her father. She understood that it was useless to expect him to change or to feel her bitterness or sadness. Yet, to live with anger was bound to destroy her. She also knew that if she was to find peace, another road was necessary; she needed to go in another direction.

How are fathers forgiven? How does it happen? Is it in their time, their world, their thinking?

These questions took shape in Juana's mind, but they remained unanswered. She saw that night had crept by and daylight was filtering through the overhead canopy of branches. Although she had not slept, she knew that she had gained some understanding with the notion of forgiveness. Juana decided that she would reflect more on it. She rose, brushed dried leaves from her rump, and turned toward Ocosingo, and from there, northbound to receive a new cargo of armaments and supplies.

Years passed during which her father's image began to fade as well as the bitterness, liberating her to follow the path of insurgency. Her feeling of freedom was not complete, however, because she remained apprehensive that one day Cruz Ochoa would track her, find her and again try to dominate her. This lingering feeling was realized one day when she was at the river bathing. She was stripped to the waist; soap dripped from her long hair down her neck, shoulders, and over her breasts. As she rinsed the suds out of her hair with a gourd, Juana suddenly sensed something: a presence nearby. Her body tensed, but without betraying her uneasiness, she inched toward the
riverbank and reached for the revolver that was always by her side. With her other hand she got a towel and slid it over the weapon. She remained still but poised to spring, if necessary.

“Juana!”

She recognized Cruz Ochoa's voice immediately. It was soft, as always, but still filled with anger. She was not surprised; she had been expecting his return for years.

“Juana!”

She slowly raised her face as the soap continued to drip from her hair to her shoulders and breasts. As she did this, Juana cautiously got onto her knees, gaining balance as she judged the distance between herself and Cruz. Beneath the towel, her thumb cocked the revolver's trigger.

“¿Qué quieres, Cruz Ochoa?”

“You! You're still my wife, Juana, and I've come for you!”

“I'm your wife, but I am not returning to your
palapa.”

“You
are
returning with me!”

As Cruz lifted his arm in hostility, Juana drew the weapon with both hands and pointed it at his face. The sight of the gun unnerved him as if he had been struck by an invisible fist. He reeled backward, eyes wide open, pupils dilated. When Juana spoke, her voice was steady, quiet, determined.

“Turn around, Cruz Ochoa, head for your village and never return. If you do, I'll kill you.
Te lo prometo.”

Cruz was stunned as he stared at Juana. He saw, for the first time, that she had changed, that her face was different and that her eyes were transformed. Her words cut into his brain, convincing him of her determination and ability to kill him. He turned in his tracks and vanished into the bushes.

Juana waited until her heartbeat normalized before she dressed. The sight of Cruz Ochoa's face had filled her mouth with bitter saliva, but knowing that he would probably never return calmed her. To steady herself even more, she reminded herself that she had an assignment to carry out that day. Focusing on this idea helped clear her mind. Word had reached the general command of a photographer, a
woman, who was living in Pichucalco. Juana had been given the task to recruit her into their ranks.

Dawn was breaking, and early light was seeping into Juana's
palapa
. She was thinking that now she knew the name and face of that photographer. She now realized that she had spent the night reliving important moments of her life while searching for an explanation for the feelings she was experiencing for that same woman, Adriana Mora. Without answers, Juana shrugged it off for the moment and left her
palapa
to prepare for the day.

Lacanjá, a village in the Lacandona Jungle, 1963.

Even before he knew it, Orlando Flores was to be among those who gave energy and life to
tzak' bail
, the armed movement against
los patrones
. In time, his followers would number in hundreds, even thousands, but in the beginning it was his hand alone that first wielded the machete, lifted not to clear the paths of undergrowth, but to bring down the long line of masters who had come to that land centuries before. Even as a boy, when he was known as Quintín Osuna, he would often smell the biting stench of
kap jol
, the anger of the people, as it seeped from
palapa
to
palapa
, as it snaked on its belly through rows of coffee plants in the highlands, as it coiled itself under the green gold of the giant mahogany trees in the heart of the Lacandona Jungle. Even then the boy wondered how long it would take before his people rose in defiance of the masters.

Orlando's first recollections really began when he was fourteen years old, in the village of Lacanjá, where he was born and named Quintín Osuna. The cluster of huts was planted on property owned by Don Absolón Mayorga, a mestizo who sprang from a line of
patrones
dating from the first days of colonization. The Mayorga family lived on a vast estate, a
finca
, known as Las Estrellas. There, the men and boys of Lacanjá toiled on the coffee plantations, or in the jungle as
boyeros
, those forced by the
patrones
to rob the forest of its precious mahogany known as green gold,
oro verde
.