Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

woman.”
I left them chatting and went out to scrounge for wood scraps and came
back loaded down with enough firewood to last the rest of the day. Then I
made two more trips to a stash I’d piled under a tree near the edge of the
village.
When I got back, Panti was tending to the child, who dangled her legs
over the bed. He carefully washed out her open sores with a hot, green
liquid, before taking out his tattered handkerchief and drying them. Then he
reached under the bed for a musty glass jar with a rusted lid, and, tipping it
on its side, he shook out a tiny bit of greenish black powder onto each sore.
I noticed that some sores had healed while others were beginning to heal.
The child winced as the powder fell, crying out to her mother, “Me quema.”
It burns me.
With gentle assurance and ample confidence in his herbs, Panti spoke
softly to the child. “Yes, yes, my heart. It burns, but it cures.”
Piling the firewood under the hearth, I pulled out my machete from its
leather scabbard and sharpened it with Panti’s file. “May I help you chop
medicine, Don Elijio?”
He peered over at me with his soft, weary eyes, asking, “Are you sick?
Tell me first, because soon there will be many people arriving on the
transport from town. It is better to tell me of your sickness now.”
It was painfully obvious once again that he didn’t remember me by
voice or face. I gently reminded him that we had met twice. “Yo soy
Rosita.” His eyes crinkled at the edges and a smile creased his leathery face.
He humbly apologized for his eyes. American doctors had visited the
village the week before and informed him he had cataracts, leaving behind
eye drops and sunglasses.
He pointed with his worn machete to the far corner toward another
chopping block. “Those sacks hanging from the rafters—spread them out,”
he instructed. I did and then sat down on the dirt floor across from him and
his hand-hewn wooden block. He pushed a pile of gnarled, brown vines in
my direction and motioned for me to watch how he chopped. “Not too big.
Not too small. Just so.”
We worked in silence with only the sounds of the machetes on wood
and the rustling of the vine tendrils. “What vine is this?” I asked, cutting
through the quiet as gently as I could.