Beyond the Ties of Blood (16 page)

Like many Mapuche communities, they'd been fighting in the courts for years, trying to get their land back. Papa had helped them find a lawyer, and they actually won their case. But the big landowner took it to the higher court and it got stuck there, gathering dust and cobwebs, because that judge was the landowner's friend. When the new president was elected and people said he would give the land back to the poor, Papa's friends were happy. But several years went by, and the president did nothing. So Papa agreed to help them; and one morning before the fog burned off, he put on his hat and jacket, hugged Mama, and left.

The next morning, Papa was in the newspaper. The reason Sara bought a copy from the boy in the market was that Papa's wide-brimmed hat and beard were unmistakable on the front page. “Police called in to protect farmer,” blared the headline. When the Indians had invaded a German farmer's land during the night, the newspaper story said, among the people arrested was a “known communist agitator” by the name of David Weisz. Sara wasn't sure what that meant, but she knew it was not a compliment.

That afternoon, three scraggly men came into the tailor shop. Sara had stayed home from school to help her mother. Besides, she knew that with her papa in the paper invading a German farmer's land, she would not be welcome in school for a while. She wondered, as she looked the men over, whether they were communists, too. “
Buenos días
,” she said. “Can I help you?”

The tallest one of the three, whose clothes looked a little cleaner, moved closer to the counter. “
Buenos días, niña
,” he answered. “We're looking for
señora
Weisz. Is she here?”

“What is this about?”

“Actually, we'd like to tell the
señora
ourselves if you don't mind.”

“If this is about David Weisz, I'm his daughter.”

“Is your mama here?”

“She's sleeping. She was up half the night when Papa didn't come home. I'd rather not wake her.”

The man's shoulders slumped slightly. “Well then,
niñita
, let me write a name down for you.” Sara handed him a piece of paper and a pencil, and after smoothing the paper on the counter's wooden surface next to the old cash register, the man began to write. “This is the lawyer who has agreed to defend your father in court,” he explained. “His case will be heard the day after tomorrow. Your mama should go to this man's office, at the address I'm writing here, later this afternoon if possible. Please give this paper to your mama when she gets up.”

For about a month Papa stayed in jail while the lawyer fought to get him out. There were stories in the newspaper and pictures of Papa being brought in handcuffs before the judge, looking thinner and thinner every day. Mama tried to get in to see him and take him some food, but the police refused. Sara did not go back to school, and at night the only way her mama could sleep was if Sara made her some chamomile tea and then rubbed her back for hours.

When she thought back to those days, what Sara remembered most was the fragrance of chamomile and how it combined with the smell of newsprint on her hands from reading the latest about her father. Only after workers and peasants held a large demonstration in the central plaza calling for Papa's release did the judge finally hear his case. The following day, as she was adding chamomile flowers to the boiling water for tea, Sara looked up to see her father standing in the doorway. He was so thin that his clothes hung on his body, and there were deep circles under his eyes. As she stepped forward into his open arms, the sweet chamomile wafted up and mixed with the sour jail smell coming off Papa's clothes. It was so much stronger than before, because he had been in jail for so long without washing. Never again would Sara be able to smell chamomile tea without feeling sick.

Yet if it hadn't been for Papa's jailhouse adventure, Sara had to admit, Antonia Painemal, the young Mapuche girl, would never have come to live with them. Tonia, as they called her, was not from the community fighting the German farmer. Her mother, who was, had followed Mapuche custom and gone to live in her husband's community. It was Tonia's grandparents, old friends and comrades of David Weisz, who had asked him to take Tonia in.

Although they were the same age, Tonia was a full head taller and much stronger than Sara. At first it was hard to communicate because Tonia didn't speak good Spanish, and the Weisz family could not speak the Mapuche language. When Sara mentioned this to Tonia years later, and said they had been like immigrants trying to communicate with each other, Tonia corrected her. “I was the only one there who wasn't an immigrant,” she said.

Sara wasn't sure she liked Tonia at first. The house was small, so she ended up having to share her bedroom with her. And she didn't even know how to use a knife and fork properly. Then, a few days after Tonia came to live with them, Sara found her coming into the shop from the garden in the back.

“What were you doing?” she asked, using her hands to try and mimic her question. Tonia looked puzzled for a moment, then made the motion of lifting her skirt and squatting down.

“Pee,” she said.

“Where?” Sara asked.

Instead of answering, Tonia took her hand and led her into the back garden, to a corner under the orange tree. She pointed to a wet spot, and laughed softly. “There,” she said.

In the unexpected intimacy of that moment, for the first time Sara saw things from Tonia's point of view. She knew the Mapuche were poor; her papa had told her that. But now she realized they must not have bathrooms. Torn from her family, stuck in a strange place, Tonia had never used a toilet before.

Sara brought Tonia back into the house and opened the door to the bathroom that was next to the kitchen. She walked in, made the motion of lifting her skirt and pulling down her underwear, and sat on the toilet seat. After making the motions of using toilet paper, she stood up, mimicked lifting up her underwear and smoothing down her skirt, and flushed. “There,” she said. “Bathroom.”

From then on they could talk about anything. As Tonia learned more Spanish and Sara a few words in the Mapuche language, they gradually stopped having to act things out. They understood each other so well that, as time went by and they grew older, sometimes they did not have to use words in either language.

When Sara finally returned to the German school, Tonia stayed at the tailor shop and helped out with the sweeping and cooking. At the end of her first week, when every day she came back to the shop to find her friend working, Sara decided to ask her papa about it. After changing out of her uniform, she went into his sewing room and stood near his pedal machine. He was concentrating so hard that at first he didn't notice her.

“Papa,” she said softly. Startled, he looked up at her over his half-moon glasses. His red hair was standing on end.

“Oh. Sarita. I didn't hear you come in.”

Sara moved closer, putting her hand on his shoulder. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, at the edge of where his beard began. “Papa,” she said, “I was wondering. Why doesn't Tonia go to school?”

Papa took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Well, Sarita,” he began, “you must know that Tonia can't go to your school. They don't accept Mapuches there.”

“I know, Papa, they hardly accept me because I'm Jewish. But there's lots of other schools in Temuco.”

“You're right, sweetness. But Tonia never went to school before, and I don't think her parents want her to.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it's hard to explain, and I don't understand it completely myself. You remember when we talked, before I went to help the community with the land invasion, about what had happened to the Mapuche? They're a proud people, Sarita, and they still remember when they were independent. Tonia's grandparents, their generation … well, they grew up before the Chileans conquered them. They have a different way of explaining the world, and they taught this to their children and their children's children. Especially to the girls, because when they grow up they teach the next generation. The Mapuche don't want their children learning foreign things.”

“But Papa, she's living here now. That's foreign.”

“You're right, Sarita. And to be honest, I'm teaching her things.”

“Like what?”

“Sewing. How to use my machine. But I'm also teaching her to read.”

“That's good, Papa. She should know how to read. But now I'm even more confused than before.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, if her parents don't want her to learn foreign things, why didn't they just keep her at home? Why did they send her to Temuco?”

“A very good question, Sarita. I'm not really sure, but I think it was because she got very sick.” He then turned back to his machine, signaling to Sara that the conversation was over.

As time passed, the reason behind Tonia's presence in their house remained a mystery. Sara tried to bring it up once or twice, but Tonia would always change the subject. And then there were the dreams. Some nights Tonia churned up the sheets and moaned, talking in gibberish, screaming or roaring once in a while and waking Sara up over and over. The mornings after were the hardest, and during the day at school Sara could barely keep her head up off her desk.

One night, Tonia seemed in great pain. She was not thrashing or screaming, just moaning and crying quietly. Sara went over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Tonia,” she whispered. “Are you all right? Please wake up.”

Tonia's dark brown eyes fluttered open. “Sara,” she breathed. Sara took her hand.

“Are you all right?” she asked, smoothing the other girl's sweat-drenched hair back from her forehead. “You don't seem to have a fever.”

Tonia closed her eyes and let out a sigh. “I'm not ill,” she said. “At least not that you can cure.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's a Mapuche thing. Sometimes, when a person has the gift, or the mark, a spirit comes to live inside her head.”

“How come? What does that mean?”

“Ay, Sarita, the mark … it never goes away. My mama tried everything, but nothing worked. That's why she sent me here, to get away from
Kuku
, but she still comes to me in dreams.”

“Who, your mama?”

“No,
Kuku
, my grandmother. She was a great
machi
and it's her spirit. Mama said that
Kuku
died of grief after the Chileans took away our land. Now
Kuku
comes to me at night and scolds me for running away.”

“What's a
machi?
^”

“It's someone who can hear the spirit world. My mama said
Kuku
wanted to give me her spirit and make me a
machi
, but it was too hard. An old man in our community with grizzly hair is a
machi
and offered to teach me, but he charged a lot of money my parents didn't have.”

“So that's why they sent you here?”

“Yes. But
Kuku
found me.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Please don't tell anyone, Sara. I don't want to go home.”

“But are you going to be all right?”

“As long as I don't get sick, I'll be all right. Sometimes, when the
machi
spirit gets really angry, it makes you sick. For now, though, it's all right. Just don't tell anyone, okay?”

The secret made them closer, because now they shared something no one else knew. They were like sisters, Tonia said, under the skin. The sister neither of them had.

When the war heated up in Europe, many Germans in Temuco went public with their support for Hitler. From one day to the next, the girls at school began to laugh at Sara, insult her, push her into walls. “Jew,” they whispered under their breath, and then crinkled up their noses as if she smelled bad. One day she tried fighting back, but the teacher sent her to the headmistress, saying it was her fault. The old, fat principal, the ruddy web of capillaries on her nose and cheeks clashing with the sky-blue color of her eyes, shook her three chins in disgust.

“Our school is built on tolerance,” she said in her heavy German accent, “but even reasonable people have limits. I know about your parents, their Jewish Communist ways; but you can't bring that in here. You will not talk back to the other girls, insulting their beliefs. You will do your work quietly and respectfully. Remember that you are in this school exclusively thanks to our generosity and good will.”

That was the same day she'd taken her special doll to school in her bookbag. At the end of the day, when she put on her coat, her doll's newly bald head peeked out from the top of her bag and she could see the star of David carved into her scalp. “Jew,” they spat at her. Somewhere deep inside she felt something break.

After she got home and closed the door to her room, she could not come back out. Her mama and papa knocked. What happened, they asked. Are you sick? But she couldn't answer them. Her mama finally opened the door and came in.