On Sunday evenings, I walked to the stone
temazcal.
It was shaped like a small dome, just big enough to fit two people sitting or lying down. In the nook at one end of the dome I prepared the fire. Onto it I placed large rocks. For hours the rocks sat, growing hotter and hotter. Then, late at night, Aunt met me at the doorway of the
temazcal,
under a shelter of thatched palm. She came wrapped in wool blankets to keep off the chill. María stayed back in the hut with the baby.
The first four Sunday nights were peaceful. Pleasant, even. It was the beginning of the wet season, and the smell of rain filled the air. A sharp, clean smell. Soaked earth, damp leaves, new petals.
But the final night, oh, the final night was far from peaceful. As always, I prepared the
baño
alone, arranging the hot rocks, the
petates,
the blankets. Yet I felt myself jumping at every noise, flinching at every shadow. You see, Ta’nu had come to me in a dream the night before. He’d looked worried and warned me to be careful. But this was to be Aunt’s last
baño,
I told him. I wanted to be sure her treatment was complete. Just one more night.
When she came to the
temazcal,
I greeted her quickly, then crawled inside. In the darkness, I felt the heat, a dry heat at first. Then I dipped a gourd into the clay pot and sprinkled water onto the rocks.
Sssssss!
The rocks spit up clouds of hot steam.
“Come in now, Aunt,” I said, feeling the steam burn my throat and chest with every breath.
She crawled in and lay down on her stomach. I knelt beside her. I picked up my bundle of fresh
pirúl
and spiraled the herbs in the air above our heads. With little circles, I drew down the steam and swept her body with the leaves. As always, she tensed at first with the shock of the heat. Soon her body relaxed. Onto her back she turned, and I brushed over her stomach and chest and legs. Three times I brushed over her body, from head to toe. Then I told her to crawl out. Outside, she lay resting under her blankets beneath the palm shelter.
So far everything was going well. So far, no hint of danger. I lingered inside the
temazcal,
inside the wet heat, the ocean of steam. The heat surrounded me, pressed on me from all sides. Imagine the feeling: somewhere between a peaceful glow and burning suffocation. Oh, you could almost give in to the terror. The terror of feeling trapped in a small, dark place. For a moment I was back in that prison cell. Panic hit me. I crawled out as fast as I could.
Outside I breathed in the cool air. What relief. I stepped outside the shelter and saw the night sky stretched above me. Rain clouds held the light like pearls. I ducked back under the shelter and lay next to Aunt under a blanket. Our skin glistened with beads of sweat. Our chests rose and fell. Oh, how I dreaded going back in.
“Ready?” Aunt asked me.
Each night we went in and out of the bath three times, resting in between. Two more times left tonight. The second time I entered, the panic came back. A sharp, burning fear. I threw water onto the rocks and brushed Aunt with the herbs, just as I’d done so many times before, only faster now. Much faster.
“Turn over,” I told Aunt. I brushed her stomach quickly. The rocks and coals glowed red, like the hellfire that visiting priests always spoke of.
“You can go out now,” I said.
“Already?”
“Yes,” I said, nearly pushing her out.
We lay outside and rested. I thought of the story of the grandmother spirit of the
temazcal.
One day her evil sons put a stone over the entrance. They trapped her inside, in that terrible heat. She suffocated and died. What helplessness, what fear she must have felt! And that was what I felt, knowing I had to go back inside again. I took a deep breath and tried not to let Aunt see my trembling. But no matter how much I tried to ignore it, I knew. I knew that something bad was about to happen.
Back inside the
temazcal,
Aunt lay on her stomach, with me crouched next to her. I threw a gourdful of water onto the rocks.
Ssssssss!
The steam encircled us.
And when the hissing faded, I heard it. The
clip-clop
of horse hooves. I froze in the heat. My hand that held the herbs rested on Aunt’s back.
“What’s that?” whispered Aunt. Her back tensed under my hand.
The
clip-clop
stopped. We heard the sound of someone getting off the horse. Then squishy footsteps, coming through the mud, toward us. Should we try to hide? Squeeze ourselves against the back of the
temazcal
? But he must know we were inside because of the steam slipping around the blanket over the doorway.
Aunt reached her arm out and pulled in our blankets. She wrapped herself up, and handed a blanket to me. Then she crawled out.
“Helena!” she cried.
“Who is it?” I asked, already knowing. I felt about to faint in the heat.
“That man in the uniform. With the limp.”
She spoke to me in Mixteco, of course, and the man couldn’t understand her. I stayed in the
temazcal,
trying to decided what to do, remembering the spirit grandmother who died inside. Remembering the walls of the prison. Thinking
What to do, what to do
—when the blanket was raised. That man’s face loomed in front of me. There I knelt in the
temazcal,
my body limp and drained. Cornered.
“Come out, señorita Helena,” he ordered.
I crawled out with the blanket wrapped around me and stood up straight.
He held a lantern to my face. “You?” he said, surprised. “You are the famous healer?”
“I am Helena, and yes, I cure,” I said. “
Señor,
please let my aunt go home. I am the one who gave her the steambath. I take the blame.”
He nodded and flicked his wrist for Aunt to leave.
“Aunt, go back home now,” I said. “And cover up well. Wrap the shawl around your head so a cold air won’t strike you.”
“But what did he say? What did you say? What—”
“Aunt, please, before he changes his mind.”
Slowly, Aunt gathered her clothes and walked toward our house. Every few steps she looked back.
The man and I faced each other. I wrapped the blanket tightly around me. I breathed in the smoky scent of the wool, trying to steady myself.
“It is forbidden to do the
baños de temazcal,
as you know,” he said.
“Yes. But my aunt was in danger of death.”
“You’re under arrest, señorita Helena. Dress yourself and come with me.” He turned his back to let me dress.
Where was the jaguar now? If only he would leap from the shadows and pounce on this man. Or if only Ta’nu would appear. Oh, he would tell me what to do. I slowly picked up my
huipil
and pulled it over my head. Maybe I could run. The man might not be able to catch me, with his limp. But then what if he found Aunt and punished her instead?
I tucked my
huipil
into my skirt and took a deep breath. “I am ready,” I said.
We walked toward the tree where his horse was tied up. We had to climb a slight hill, muddy and slippery from the rain. The man’s limp threw off his balance, and he stumbled. His feet slid out from under him. He fell into the mud.
“Ayyy! My leg!” He clutched his leg, writhing in pain. His face tightened and the veins of his forehead stood out. His eyes were clenched and watering.
I picked up the fallen lantern and set it beside him. Then, without thinking, I began massaging his leg. This kind of injury happened to men in the fields sometimes, and they called on me for treatment. “Breathe,” I told him. “Breathe.” I whispered sounds we use to calm babies and animals. To calm any suffering creature.
“What’s your name,
señor
?”
“Valerio Cruz Velasquez.”
“Breathe, don Valerio, breathe.” With my hands I drew out his pain and flicked it away into the night.
After a while, his face relaxed. “I thank you,” he said. Mud covered his clothes, even his face.
I took his wrist and felt his pulse calming. “How did you hurt your leg the first time?” I asked.
He moved his gaze away, embarrassed. “I was getting on my horse a few weeks ago when I felt a pain. A terrible pain that shot down my leg like a bullet. For weeks, every step has been a knife stabbing into me.” He blinked back tears. “And just now, when I slipped, the pain came back, stronger.”
“You will rest here tonight,” I said firmly, in what María called my mother’s voice. The voice that no one could argue with. “Stay here, in the shelter of the
temazcal.
I have enough blankets.”
I helped him up and led him toward the shelter. He leaned heavily into my shoulder. Under the palm roof, I set his lantern down and spread out a
petate.
He lay down, wincing, and I covered him with blankets.
“I’m going to fetch some hay and water for your horse,” I said. Again, in my mother’s voice.
Don Valerio nodded. Oh, he could barely move; he had to trust me. “Again,
señorita,
I thank you.”
I walked to the house and fetched a bucket of water and an armful of hay from our burro’s pen. When I was on the way back to the
temazcal,
it started drizzling. The sudden coldness, the sudden wetness, made me stop in my tracks.
What am I doing? Healing a man so that he can arrest me tomorrow? Healing a man who will throw me in prison?
But I had no choice, you see. I am a healer. This was a decision I’d made years earlier, when I drank from the sweet cup of light. When I promised to use my powers for good. So you see, I had to help the man.
Back by the
temazcal,
I watered and fed the horse. Then I knelt in the circle of lantern light, beside don Valerio.
“You know,
señorita,
” he said. “My great-grandfather was a
huesero,
a bone doctor, in his village. I was remembering that once he cured me as a boy. I had forgotten it. He cured a shoulder strain I had. Your hands remind me of his.”
“Did he teach you to cure?”
“Oh, no. I was a city boy, through and through. My grandfather moved to the city years ago, and my father was born there. We didn’t want people to think we were backward country people. So no one learned my great-grandfather’s skills. His knowledge died with him.”
“It is sad, isn’t it,” I said, “that people move to the city and forget their customs? They deny the gifts of their ancestors.”
“My grandfather meant well. He only wanted a better life for his children. He worked hard and grew wealthy so that he could attract a fair-skinned wife. He made all his children take fair-skinned husbands and wives. In this way, our family gained wealth and respect. But you are right,
señorita,
we sacrificed a part of ourselves.”
We sat in silence and watched the flame of the lantern. I promised myself then that I would always keep my head high when I told people where I came from. And when I had nieces and nephews one day, I would teach them to be proud of our customs, our wisdom. And maybe one day, I would teach this to my own children, my grandchildren.
But as soon as the thought came to me, I pushed it out of my mind. I would never have children, because I would never marry.
Don Valerio groaned, and his face tightened. “The pain is coming again,” he said.
“Señor,”
I said. “I can cure your leg.”
“Could you?” he said, flustered. “How?”
I looked into his pale eyes, wet with tears. “The
temazcal.
”
He laughed for the first time. A nervous but warm laugh. “The
temazcal
?”
I nodded, and smiled.
“Oh, life is strange.” He chewed on his fingernail, looked at the
temazcal,
then at me, then back at the
temazcal.
“I would lose my job if anyone found out.”
“You have my word. No one will know.”
“Yes,” he said finally. “I accept.”
“Take off your clothes,
señor,
wrap yourself in the blanket, and crawl inside.” I crawled inside with my clothes still on. As he came through the doorway on all fours, I caught a glimpse of his white body, skinny like a plucked chicken, and spotted with red. His bony shoulders curved into a sunken chest. Poor man, he looked like a sickly dog.
“You know,” I told him in the darkness, “this steam bath will also help with your other problems. Your stomach cramps, your headaches, your troubles sleeping…”
“How do you know this about me?”
“I know many things,” I replied. “As did your great-grandfather the bone doctor.” And I couldn’t resist adding, “Even though neither he nor I could read the books on those doctors’ shelves in the city.”
“My apologies,
señorita,
” don Valerio said.
“Thank you,
señor.
Now lie on your stomach.”
I threw a gourdful of water onto the rocks and smiled at the sharp
sssssssssssss,
the sudden cloud of steam. I brushed him with the herbs, focusing on his left hip and leg. During the first rest, he lay under the blanket breathing like a baby.
“Señor,”
I asked. “How did you know I was giving
baños
?”
“Oh, you’re famous,” he said. His voice sounded looser now. “Today, at the bar in town, men were talking about you, about how you saved your aunt’s life with the
baños.
Your uncle boasted that the famed healer Helena was his niece, like a daughter to him.”
“Really?” Uncle José had said I was like a daughter?
“Yes, and he said that he told you who you could cure and who you couldn’t.” Don Valerio smiled. “But I’m beginning to think that no one tells you what to do, señorita Helena.”
I laughed, and along with my irritation at Uncle, I felt a bit of tenderness for him.
In and out we went two more times. Once we finished, don Valerio lay there under a blanket, all his muscles relaxed, his eyes closed. The wrinkles on his forehead had melted. He began breathing deeply.
When people are sleeping, they become as innocent as babies. Just look at the little pulse beating under their neck skin. You can’t help feeling kindness toward them.