Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

“It is too damp and muddy for me to venture out for wood—not with
my rheumatism and these bad eyes—and the mother will not leave her
child,” he told me and shrugged.
I asked if there were any old logs and rotting fence posts around the
village. Panti said there was lots of “widow’s wood,” so called because it is
women without men who are forced to pick up scrap wood off the ground.
Maria awoke and sat up on her board bed. I was impressed by her
improved appearance. Juanita began to feed her, and I watched as she took
small gulps of warm corn cereal. The eyes that had been dull and vacant
were now clear and shining. She held her body erect; there was no sign of
listlessness. Even her hair, dull and brittle before, looked healthier.
“Ah, you look so much better, so pretty and much happier,” I said. Her
hand was frail and trusting in mine.
“There is no one like God and Don Elijio,” said Juanita, smiling over at
him while she rearranged her child’s bedclothes.
I volunteered to go out and find firewood. “I’m already muddy, so it
won’t matter much if I hit the ground a few more times,” I joked.
“That’s because you are young and have so much blood,” said Don
Elijio. “When one is young nothing seems too hard. I am strong and stiff as
a young man, and I would like to marry again—to a fifteen-year-old who
will keep me warm at night and whisper secrets in my ear, and kiss, kiss,
kiss,” he said cheerfully while kissing the air around his elbow as if holding
his invisible mate.
Juanita and I both giggled, which spurred him on.
“But these days I can’t tell if I’m kissing a tree or a woman.”
Juanita’s eyes teared up as she laughed out loud.
“I need a blanket to keep me warm at night, a blanket of guts that turns
when I turn and curls up around me.” He wrapped his arms around himself
in a symbolic hug. “A cloth blanket just falls off to the floor,” he said,
mimicking the unhappy sleeper.
Juanita finally threw up her hands and declared, “Don Elijio, you are
shameless!”
“Yes, mamasita. Shameless and womanless. What is a man without a
woman? Only half of nothing. It is much that a woman does for a man,” he
said, seriously enough to dampen our amusement.
“I need a woman to administer my house and to help with my patients,”
he said. “And my heart calls out for a woman, my body aches for a