Bringing the Boy Home (12 page)

13 Years
The Amazon

“T
irio…”

It is the familiar voice of my father, the man I have heard more from in the last two days than in the past thirteen years of my life.

“Son, wake up,” he says.

It is the same voice, yet different.

Someone shakes my shoulders, and the ground underneath me sways strangely. Where am I? I struggle to swim through my exhaustion to the surface of consciousness. Am I dead? Forcing my heavy eyelids open a slit, I see the bottom half of my body. It is covered with a large
turunu
tree leaf, and beyond that a thick vine reaches out and wraps around a tall vertical pole. I'm lying in a hammock in someone's hut. Whose hut? His? Without moving my head, I slowly scan both directions. To my right, a fire burns; small leaf-wrapped bundles circle it, the contents
inside slowly cooking on the warm coals. A pair of tree stumps sit side by side, their tops worn smooth by repeated use as stools. To my left hangs another hammock, and then behind it smaller ones, suspended between poles, filled with fruit, vegetables, and dried meat—the Takunami version of shelves.

“Tirio?” My father sounds scared.

I open my eyes a little more. On each side of my body, long brown arms cage me in.

I now realize why his voice sounds different. It's outside my head, not inside. My gaze follows a long blue vein snaking down the inside of his elbow to his clenched hand gripping the edge of my hammock.

“Tirio, can you see me?” Calloused fingers lift my chin, but I keep my eyes down. I'm not ready to look at him yet.

Outside, boys laugh and sticks strike each other with solid
whacks
. War cries are whooped and then suddenly stop. A man's angry whispers fill the silence, and tentative footsteps creep by. A little girl sings and claps her hands until an older woman shushes her and she quiets.
Umutinas
call out to each other, echoing and then adding on to their mate's caw. Then, even they fade off into the distance. Except for the occasional crack of the fire, total silence surrounds us. It is as though the universe is waiting
for this moment…this reunion between us.
Stop watching us!
I want to yell.
Go away.
I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. This is not how it was supposed to be!

I keep staring at the vein in my father's arm and imagine the blood pulsing through it. It's the same blood that's coursing through me right now. He leans down. “You made it. You are safe,” he says.

I allow myself to look up at his mouth, but no higher. He runs his tongue over his lips nervously and I see where they are cracked in several places.
I have dry lips too,
I think, and then scold myself.
A lot of people have chapped lips, stupid. That's not something dads genetically share with their sons.

Is it?

“Do you understand me, Son?” The muscles in his jaw tense. “Tirio, say something.”

I close my eyes and swallow.

“Tirio!”

“Whh…” It comes out as a croak. I clear my throat. “Why?”

He lets out a sigh of relief after hearing my voice and straightens up.

“Why?” I say again. “Why did you give up?”

“Give up?” He sounds confused. “I didn't give up. I
kept trying to communicate, but you wouldn't listen.”

I continue to keep my eyes down. If I just keep imagining him the way I have for the past thirteen years, I won't fall apart. “No, not yesterday. When I was six. Why did you give up on me?”

My father drags to the window like a prisoner with a ball and chain. His legs and feet are muddy, but his muscles move powerfully under his brown skin. His strength doesn't surprise me; I never expected him to share my disability. Yet something about seeing him walk without any problem revives the anger I've always felt for him.

When he doesn't answer, I snort. “Even now you won't admit the truth—that you were ashamed of me.”

“I wasn't ashamed,” he begins. “You were very young when you left, Tirio. It's not—”

“You wanted me dead,” I interrupt, accusing him with my words. “You didn't think I was strong enough to be a Takunami warrior. You didn't want me.”

In the long silence that follows, I let myself look up at his torso. His shoulders are slumped and he's buried his face in his hands. His fingers cover his eyes. Long fingers…just like mine.

Slowly he removes his hands and I freeze in shock. He looks just like me. Except older, but not by much—maybe fifteen years. He's got my nose and my eyes, my
lopsided frown. I shift to see the side of his face; he's even got my pinned-back ears. He's so young. He looks like my brother, not my father.

“Is that what you thought all these years?” he asks quietly. “My son, there are many things you do not understand.”

“Tell me.” I blink back tears. “What don't I understand?”

The sadness in his eyes scares me. They're the only part of his face that looks old. “Your maha thought she was doing the right thing that day. She…”

Maha!
I sit up and gasp as pain shoots through my leg.

“Tirio, do not move.” He rushes toward me. “You might open the wound.”

“Where's Maha?”

Why did he just look down? My mouth goes dry.

“I should start at the beginning,” he says.

“Where is she?” My calf is on fire, and the tears flow freely now.

There is a long silence before he finally speaks. “She's dead, Tirio.”

“You're lying.”

He shakes his head.

I don't respond. I can't. Her last words to me echo in my head:
I too will pay.

My father squats close to me. “The whole thing was a mistake…a misunderstanding.”

Numbly, I listen as he speaks about his childhood: his mother and Sulali, Karara and Tukkita, Kiwano and the Punhana and then finally Maroma.

“Since I never took the soche seche tente, I could not be considered a Takunami man, and the tribe was unsure what to do. Tukkita consulted the spirits, and they told him I would be given another chance. But the test would be more difficult—and this time, it would include my son. The visions said that at six years old you should be sent away to live with the Vanaalas.”

My eyes widen. A Takunami sent to live with another tribe?

“We are at peace with them. You would not have been harmed,” he assures me, reading my mind. “Two days before your thirteenth birthday, you were to be told the truth and taken into the jungle. Using the sixth sense, I was to bring you back to our village. Only then would we both be Takunami men.”

I sit there, unable to speak.

“I did not want to send you away.” His eyes plead with me to understand. “At first, I told Tukkita no. I would sacrifice my own life before giving you up to the
Vanaalas for so long. But I was thinking with my heart and not my head. If I was dead, you would be left without a guide for your soche seche tente. Tukkita did not think the spirits would look kindly on my selfishness and would punish you and Maroma. I had no choice but to pray for time to pass quickly and then bring you back on your birthday.”

A laugh of relief escapes through my tears. “So it didn't matter that I had a bad foot?”

“Never. In fact, I think the Good Gods wounded you to make things harder for me. But Maroma blamed herself. She knew your importance to our family, so she tried to hide your weakness until she could fix it.”

I nod. “She used to carry me everywhere when we were in the village, but then after we finished our work, she'd take me out to the jungle and make me walk until I collapsed.”

“Your body always gave out before your spirit did,” my father says. “You had the same determination the last few days as you did when you were a little boy many moons ago with Maroma.” He crosses his arms. “I'm glad to see you did not lose it. Even if it meant you refused to listen to anything I said.”

I look down, my face growing hot. “I didn't know….”

“It's fine,” he says. “Maroma was the same way…stubborn.”

There's a moment of silence, and I can see that my father is thinking of her too.

“She tried everything: ointments, chanting, even offering her foot to the evil spirits if they got out of yours,” he said. “And she got very frustrated when nothing worked, so she went to Tukkita. The shaman, knowing the Good Gods' plan, assured her of your safety. At first she believed him, but after seeing others stare and whisper, she became nervous. She heard Tukkita tell me it was time for you to go.”

His earlier words echo in my head.
The whole thing was a mistake…a misunderstanding.
I clutch my head. “She thought you were going to kill me?” I say in disbelief.

My father runs his fingers through his hair. “Yes.”

“Why didn't you tell her the truth?”

“I did not tell anyone. I was afraid you might find out. If I lost this second chance to pass the test, the spirits would not have given me another. After what happened with my paho, our family would have appeared cursed.”

I look away, knowing we would have been asked to leave the tribe. He had been protecting all of us.

His voice lowers as he continues explaining things to
me. “When a Takunami is killed by his tribe, his soul is poisoned, which makes it unable to enter any plants or animals. It floats around forever without a home. Maroma put you in a
suwata curara
, to let the spirit of the river decide what should happen to you. She hoped that if you were to die, at least your spirit would be saved.

“When she returned to the village, she told everyone that you had been playing in the water and were dragged under by an anaconda. People believed her story because she was so upset, but I remembered the vision I had of you in the suwata curara and confronted her. She admitted the truth.” He looks away. “Three days later we found her…”

No!
Like a newly released ball in a pinball machine, the word ricochets against every organ in my body.
Bang
—my stomach.
Bang
—my heart.
Bang
—my brain. By the time it gets to my tongue and I try to spit it out, he's already started speaking again.

“…floating in the wash area. She had tied her hands and feet and thrown herself from a canoe.”

“But it wasn't her fault!” I cry. “She didn't know.”

“She did not know because I did not tell her.” From his eyelids to his knees, my father wears his guilt like a heavy stone cloak.

His words swirl around me as the mystery of my life
unravels. Resentment built by my imagination wrestles with reality.

“So all this time, you've been waiting for me to turn thirteen so you could be considered a man?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No. All this time I've been waiting for you to turn thirteen so
you
could be considered a man.”

“Why?”

“Three people died because of me, Tirio. First Paho because he ingested all the male spirits so I could be born, and then Maroma killed herself because I didn't tell her the truth, and lastly Karara, after I lied about not finding her that day of my scent test.”

“Karara died?” I ask.

He nods. “For several moons after my father's funeral, she snuck into the village at night and secretly visited Tukkita. Then one time, after she left his hut, Tukkita heard her scream mixed with the scream of a jaguar. We ran out to help her, but all we found on the trail were her footsteps and then the tracks of the cat.” He shakes his head. “She never visited Tukkita again.”

“I'm sorry,” I say softly.

He leans his elbows on his knees and stares me straight in the eye. “That's why it's so important that you're here. You are the only one who lived, in spite of me. Yes, you
needed to pass your soche seche tente before I could become a warrior, but for the past thirteen years, I've wanted nothing more than this moment—for you to be sitting in front of me, alive and strong.” He grabs my hands. “And you are strong, Tirio, stronger in ways I will never be.”

For the past seven years, those words ruled my life. I wanted to hear them. I
needed
to hear them. Now as I look at my father, I realize they've ruled his life too.

27 Years, 72 Sunrises
The Amazon

T
he sun and the moon are the only company Tirio and I have as we catch up on forty years of living: thirteen years of his life, plus twenty-seven of mine.

He is a different boy from the one I carried out of the woods this morning. His eyes are clear and he barely stops for a breath as he tells me about soccer, Sara, and his friend Joey. He tears hungrily at the dried meat I give him and he laughs so loud that I jump when he speaks about an elder named Cal who cooks soup. I smile and nod, staring at the person Maroma and I created. My son.

He has stopped talking and I am about to ask how his leg feels when he suddenly asks me a question.

“When I was little, what did you think when you saw me, limping and hobbling around the village? Did you wish that another boy was your son?” He looks down at
the ground and whispers, “Were you ashamed?”

I offer him some dried papaya. He takes it.

“I felt a lot of things: sadness that you had to be kept from the other children, anger at the Good Gods for punishing my family again, and helplessness because I couldn't do anything. But no, Tirio,
never, ever
did I feel ashamed of you.”

Tirio finishes eating and I scoop some more water out of the barrel and pour it into his cup.

“I was worried at first,” I admit. “Like Maroma, I was nervous about what the tribe might want to do with you.”

“That they might want me dead?”

“Most sick babies are killed soon after they are born.”

“So why wasn't I?”

“You were born under a lucky moon, Tirio. She was full the night you came into this world. Maroma held on to you long enough to make it so, and I believe the two of them watched over you. Your two mothers—the moon and Maroma—protected you.”

At first Tirio doesn't say anything, but his face looks sad. I quickly continue.

“When Maroma could do nothing more for you, she passed you on to another female spirit—the river. You should have died, but the river took you in as her child
also. She rocked, cradled, and protected you from even the worst of herself. So, really, you have three mothers.”

So many emotions cross Tirio's face, and I pause to let him sort things through. When he finally speaks, it is almost a whisper: “And when the Amazon couldn't do anything more, she passed me on to Sara.”

Silently, I nod. “Yes…four mothers.” I think about my own maha living only a few huts away. We have not spoken in many sunrises. “As I said…you are lucky.”

“I used to think you could only have one,” my son says softly. “I didn't want to replace Maha.”

“She would have been happy to know someone was taking care of you,” I tell him.

He lifts his leg up carefully and leans back in my hammock. “When I was out in the jungle, I heard a woman singing. I was hoping it was her,” he admits.

I bow my head. “I'm sorry, Tirio. Only shaman spirits can be heard by the living.”

“Then who was it? It was the first afternoon, and she kept singing ‘Come this way. Do not be afraid. Open your eyes and come this way.'”

“I don't know,” I say, shaking my head.

“And then later the female jaguar seemed to be singing the same song.”

I freeze as the pieces click into place: the story I told
Sulali about Karara and the Punhana, my sister with her head thrown back wailing at Paho's funeral, the jaguar helping Tirio.

I put down my cup and rise to my feet. “I have to go.”

My son's eyes flicker nervously around the hut.

“You will be safe,” I assure him. “I won't be long.”

As I race to the garden, I know she will be there. Just as she was the night before I was supposed to take my soche seche tente. I go to the spot where Maha and I left her crying on the ground.

“Karara?” I speak in the darkness.

The night animals quiet and we wait for her response together.

She is here. I can feel her.

“I am sorry.” My words slice the night air.

She is behind me, but I do not face her. Not yet.

“It was my fault,” I add.

Hearing the rustling of leaves, I turn. She steps into the glow of the moonlight and, even though she is my sister, I dare not get closer. Her neck is bleeding and her eyes are tired.

“He made it,” I tell her.

I can almost see her smile.

“Thank you, Karara.”

She blinks.

“Thank you for bringing the boy home.”

Neither of us moves. We stare at each other in silence.

Finally she looks past me toward the village.
Go to him
, the look says.
Go
.

I nod and start toward the path. When I glance back, the moonlight illuminates an empty clearing.

The jaguar is gone.