Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

She arrived with no possessions, accompanied by one of her five sons,
who she insisted would be living with them.
“I agreed. That’s how stupid I am. I was so happy to see her, and we
kissed and hugged like two lovebirds,” he said, almost happily
remembering his hopefulness.
The next day she was already packing to leave, saying she had forgotten
something important at home. “‘Don’t go!’ I begged her. But she must have
had a good laugh at me, while my heart was breaking.”
Claudia had been gone for four days without a word before Panti
walked into his bedroom and noticed that the lock on the chest housing his
money and valuables had been picked. It had been rearranged to give the
impression it was intact, when actually it was broken.
“My heart began to pound because I knew what had happened. I opened
the chest and start hollering, ‘Gone, gone, my money’s gone!’” He said
Angel came running, and together they stared into the empty chest. Every
dollar and every piece of gold and silver had been stolen.
At first Panti thought it must have been a thief, a stranger, until Angel
told him he had caught Claudia and her son in the room when Don Elijio
had left for the bush to collect medicines. They were acting suspiciously,
but Angel hadn’t interfered, knowing she was to be his grandfather’s wife.
Claudia and her son had stayed in the sweltering room for nearly an hour
with the doors and windows closed for privacy, Angel said.
Don Elijio and Angel then went to the police, who followed them to
Claudia’s house. She greeted him with a sneer, saying, “So you would never
come to visit me when I invited you, but now you arrive with the police!”
He shouted back, “Traitor! Thief! Your flag is a sack!” meaning “You
have no home, no country, and no pride.”
He told me he later consulted the sastun about who had stolen the
money, asking if Claudia had been the culprit. It answered yes.
When the police questioned her, she gave herself away, said Panti.
“That rotten old box with its cheap lock. Anyone could open it with a
hairpin,” she snarled.
“You see, she admits to knowing how to open it,” Panti shouted to the
police.
Panti wanted her arrested, and the police obliged by taking her to jail,
where she spent four days before being released and freed of all charges.