Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

CHAPTER NINE
Anal
Psychotria acuminata
A common herb used primarily in the Nine Xiv formula for herbal baths, for treating skin disorders,
swellings, bruises, nervousness, and insomnia, and for all children’s diseases.
One day as we collected Anal Xiv, I noticed that Don Elijio seemed sad and
distressed. He hadn’t made a single joke all day long. We were on our way
back along the logging road when he cleared his throat and began to talk.
He told me about a woman he called La Cobanera.
She was a Latina woman named Claudia from Cobán, Guatemala, who
now lived in a village ten miles south of San Antonio. She had come to him
as a patient with a pain in her belly. After she was cured, they began a
courtship.
But things weren’t going well. La Cobanera had promised many times
to come and live with him: “Until you bury me or I bury you,” she would
say. But the last time he had seen her, she had broken this promise with yet
another transparent excuse.
“I told her she is like the flower called Amor de un Rato. Love for a
while. She says she still has much work to do before she can stay with me.
It is always ‘next week, next week.’ I guess next week never comes.”
He had spoken his heart to her, admitting to her he was lonely and in
dire need of a woman to administer his house. “I promised her she would
not suffer with me. I’ve eaten a few beans in my time and I know how to
make a woman happy. Before she could ask me, money would be in her
hand. I have no rushing river of money coming in, but I have a reliable
drip.”
He was getting visibly more upset with each disclosure, and soon the
story rushed forth like an emotional hurricane.
“Each time she comes to stay, she asks for money. The nights she
spends with me are very affectionate. But in the morning, it hurts me when
she packs up her bag and then holds out her hand. At first it was twenty,