Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

The children were getting restless and starting to fuss. They started to
get up to leave, when Josefina paused and timidly said, “Please tatito, I
have one more question.
“It seems I don’t have enough breast milk to satisfy the baby,” she said.
“Doña Juana, you know the wild Poinsettia plant,” he said. “Doesn’t it
grow right in front of your house?”
“Yes, yes. That one I know for sure, but my grandmother told me never
to use it, because it is poison.”
“True, very true—smart woman,” he said approvingly. “You were wise
to obey her counsel. But in this case, it is safe. I want you to pick nine of
the little plants and braid the branches into a necklace for her to wear all
day. For nine days you should make a fresh necklace every morning. Also
boil a pot of the herb and wash the breasts with the warm water before each
feeding. Dry the breasts before giving them to the baby. Then, ha, there will
be quarts of milk.”
Doña Juana looked at Josefina, who was now nursing the infant at her
breast, and said authoritatively, “The old man has very sore and weak eyes.
I think a little bit of mother’s milk dropped in them would be helpful. Are
you willing, child, to give him some?”
Josefina giggled and shifted uncomfortably, turning to the wall to blush.
She covered her mouth with her free hand and whispered, “Sí.”
Then there ensued a great debate on how best to squirt the milk into
Panti’s eyes.
I have to see this, I thought.
Finally it was decided that he would remain in his seat and she would
stand up and point her nipple at his eye. It was my job to hold his eyes open
to allow each milky projectile to find its target.
Amidst a great babble of giggles and shifting of feet, Don Elijio gladly
gave himself over to Doña Juana’s prescription. How easily and quickly
they switched roles, I thought, each helping the other with their own brand
of expertise. After fifteen children and eighty grandchildren, I guessed
Doña Juana knew everything there was to know about the health benefits of
mother’s milk.
He sat expectantly on his little wooden stool in the corner of his poorly
lit cement hut, beneath his calendar sporting a half-naked woman in a
bathing suit who was guzzling a bottle of Coca-Cola as an ocean wave
broke over her.