It all
began when the gods inscribed their great signs on
the stelae of time. It was on the day Thirteen Ajaw.
Jolomk'u,
according to the stories of the grandparents, was the
name of a village situated on a tall ridge among a
multitude of hills and mountains. It was a colorful
village, woven with the work of men and women, with
their lives, illusions and failures. Cold air rode
freely among the savage hills, coming face to face
with the people of Jolomk'u.
In the
shadow of the wings of Ajaw, the manifestation of the
great God, night fell. Soon the dark contours of the
high mountains appeared like giants in the night. It
was a night of a thousand centuries of history. It
didn't seem to be the same wind, the same night, the
same contours. It seemed that Ajaw was aging among
the pines and that his hands had lost the ability to
sculpt life on indecipherable stelae. The moon, like
a great eye in the night, came sailing over dark
waves of sleepy clouds. It shone its great gaze at
Jolomk'u. It tried to pull aside the storm clouds to
cast its light on the sleeping landscape. The
silhouetted mountain slopes were sprinkled with
gamboling lambs. The night closed the sheepfold and
then opened the door to stars flying toward the great
heights like thousands of fireflies.
In the
shifting lights of the evening, the men of Jolomk'u
found themselves alone. One by one they lit pitch
pine slivers in the huts, until the village was full
of the spattering of smoking firebrands that made the
crickets cry. A chorus of dogs barked, intoning their
protests against the unannounced strange rustling
noises of the nawales, the local evil spirits,
terrifying the living, coming out to prowl over their
realm. Along the roads some girls out late with their
clay water pots ran furtively toward the spring for a
fleeting encounter with their boyfriends hiding in
the thickets. A brook ran down quietly through the
village, spraying watercress, nightshade and water,
mint and water into the open mouths of the amorous
girls' water pots. There, right by the bend of the
brook, before it hastened over the precipice and ran
through a small plain on the highest part of
Jolomk'u, Mekel had built his little wattle-and-daub
house with a straw roof and oak posts, from which
hung armadillo shells.
In the
stillness of that night, Mekel's wife, Lotaxh,
struggled with birth pangs. She was alone in the
house, in a cold sweat, the drops of pain like an
approaching rainstorm. When Mekel arrived and put
down his load of firewood, he found his wife gripping
one of the posts. He didn't know if he felt
happiness, pity or sorrow coursing through his veins.
What he was sure of was that his son would arrive
this night, clinging to the fingers of Ajaw.
"Go
call Ewul. It's time," said Lotaxh. Mekel put on
his light sandals with their soles made of tire
treads, took his machete and set off with his capixay
jacket on his shoulder toward the nearby village
where Ewul lived. He ran like a deer, jumping over
the underbrush, taking shortcuts, racing over the
paths, climbing the slopes until he arrived at the
waterfall, beyond the great rocks, almost to the edge
of the pine groves where the virgin forest began.
"Hello
there," cried out Mekel in front of the little
straw-covered house. A dog barked lazily, accustomed
to the midwife's numerous daily visitors.
"Yes" answered a woman's voice from inside
the hut.
"It's
me, doña Ewul. I came to get you because my wife's
labor pains started around midday," he said.
"All
right, just a moment. You should have told me sooner.
Malku," called the woman, "Get me artemisia
and pericón herbs, chicken fat and the bottle of
liquor. Hurry, because we may get there too
late."
Mekel
wiped his sweaty forehead and neck with the sleeve of
his capixay. Meanwhile in Jolomk'u, Lotaxh, a young
woman accustomed to pain and work, with strong arms
like a grinding stone, grasped one of the pine stakes
attached to one corner of the pole bed. Her survival
instincts had led her to prepare an adequate place
for her child to be born in case she did not have the
midwife's help. She had stretched a straw mat over
the earth and some old clothes on the mat, forming a
nest. On one side the fire was like an eye slowly
shutting an ashen lid. Some chickens complained under
the pole bed because Lotaxh's moans kept them awake.
In the lulls between waves of pain, she pondered,
"My God, I hope that the fox's howl I heard this
morning isn't a bad omen." Unraveling like a
skein of thread in her mind were the advice and
instructions of the women she had spoken with
regarding childbirth.
Outside
the hut the cold was intense, but Lotaxh was still
sweating, sinking her fingernails into the trunk and
tearing off the bark. Three hours had passed and the
laboring woman's strength was waning, just like the
dying flames. A candle hanging from the sooty walls
flickered, begging for more fuel, before it was
swallowed up by the invading darkness.
It
seemed that everything was coming to an end. Her pale
face was like a tender avocado leaf, her breath
sometimes quickening and sometimes imperceptible. Her
eyes saw everything spinning around: the candle
dying, the hearth spinning, the barks always more
distant. She was about to lose consciousness, curled
up on her straw mat on the hard soil of black clay,
when Mekel came in all out of breath and sweaty. The
steam rose from his body through the holes in his
shirt like the vapors of the sweat bath. A little
while later, Ewul arrived accompanied by a boy about
ten years old, her helper in the preparation of
medicines and incense.
"Leave
me alone with her," she said to Mekel.
The boy
began to make a fire in a smaller hut outside. He
made some beverages from the herbs that he carried in
his bag, first using the chicken fat along with the
bottle of liquor.
Mekel
put on his capixay to calm his nerves, which he found
difficult to control. He blew on the fire with all
his might to get some light. He didn't want to think
in the dark, because specters with unpleasant faces
appeared out of the darkness. He spoke to the boy in
order to feel less alone, but he did not answer. He
hunkered down to listen to the night tiptoeing like
the brook that ran beside his house.
A long
time went by. The moon had changed position. The
morning frost had fallen. A cry shattered the great
silence, crashing against Mekel's pricked-up ears. It
shattered the chicken's sleep under the pole beds,
reverberated in the alert ears of the nodding dogs,
shook the thousand-year-old mountains, and ran
through the nerve centers of all of Jolomk'u.
A boy
had been born.
Ewul
was a woman about fifty years old, hair still black,
few signs of the passage of time on her face, large
flat feet with calluses caused by so much squatting
on the straw mats, firm hands used to holding the
naked first-fruit of the women of that region. She
took the infant in her hands, cut the umbilical cord,
cleaned it as a matter of professional routine and
wrapped the child in diapers made of Mekel's old
pants and Lotaxh's güipiles. Then she wrapped the
child in an old wool capixay whose stiff hairs made
the child cry when he felt them against his delicate
skin. He was a Maya, so he needed to become
accustomed to discomfort right from the start. The
midwife continued her work. She formed the head,
giving it a round shape like a lump of clay. She went
over the curve of the nose, the fingers, the arms,
the legs and the placement of the fontanel. Then she
put a round red cap on him and drawing him close to
her, she blew mouth to mouth, three breaths that came
from the roots of Ewul's lungs, of all of the Mayas
of all ages, drawn from the root of time like a
symbol of the life and the inheritance of the
ancestors. The child cried apprehensively, his body
shaking in the cold-filled night. The cry
reverberated across the valleys, and through the
canyon gorges. It went snaking among the huts, and
withdrew into distant time, searching out its origins
in his first ancestor's initial cry of pain.
Ewul
went out to spread the word that everything had gone
well. She asked for censing: coals and incense to
send smoke throughout the house. She smoked a
corn-husk cigarette to soothe her throat after work
well done. She spoke hardly at all. That same night
on the headboard of the mother and her son were hung
the tools appropriate for a successful adult life:
machete, ax, hoe, carrying strap, rope. Everything
that a man needed in Jolomk'u. Lotaxh feel into a
deep sleep. It was dawn and the others had settled
down to sleep where they could, warming the stretch
of cold earth under their ribs with the weight of
their tiredness, like a daily rehearsal for death and
intimate union with the earth. The bubbling of a clay
pot on the hearthstones was the only thing that could
be heard when dawn came to the house. Almost everyone
slept. Mekel was the only one still working. The
gnarled feet of a dark-fleshed rooster poked out of
the pot, which kept boiling on the hearthstones.
Next to
the fire he warmed his thoughts like swaddling
clothes to wrap his firstborn. With the first rays of
dawn some women arrived with small gifts of food.
Those that came empty-handed, because they found
nothing to bring from their empty bowls, washed
clothes, went to the spring for water, swept the
house, washed dishes, cooked food. The men brought
firewood. Some brought a few pounds of corn or beans
as a gesture of support.
A large
firecracker had announced the birth, spread by word
of mouth way beyond the edges of the village. Family
members and neighbors arrived in haste, shaking the
sleep off their feet. The grandfathers, grandmothers,
aunts and uncles, godparents and friends all arrived.
There was a party at Mekel's.
As the
symbolic source of life and breath of many children
of that region, the midwife drew on her authority to
announce in official tones before all those present
the news that hung like a question mark over the
people.
"We
give thanks to God Our Father because he has blessed
this family with the birth of a male son without
complications," she said.
Smiles
blossomed on those faces, teeth showing like white
corn, breaking out in the laughter of the collective
joy.
The
eldest man of the family, relieved of the numbness of
the cramps in his joints, wearing a red kerchief on
his head, and holding a cane made from a twisted
root, got up to approach the hearth. He dug a hole
under the ashes and without saying a word, wrapped up
something in kanac leaves, tied it up with a bit of
corn husk and then covered it by tossing the ashes
over it. It was the newborn's umbilical cord.
Thirteen Ajaw had left his realm. Now it was One
Imox, the sacred day for improving family life,
neighborly relations and work. It is also a good day
to pray to God for health, life and work. That day
there was a family council to plan the celebration of
the first festival in honor of the newborn: ox q'in,
which should take place the third day after birth. It
involved the selection of the child's godparents and
the selection of the logically predetermined name,
that of the paternal grandfather, as the parents well
knew. Another matter that would have to be taken care
of was registering the birth at the town hall.
