Into the Jungle

PROLOGUE

It was past midnight, some lonely, small hour of the morning. Naked, I dropped to my knees at the shore. Moonlight glowed on the mist that roamed and drifted just above the glistening black river. I lifted a gourd full of river water and poured it over my hugely pregnant body, not caring what—or who—was watching or crawling toward me from the steaming jungle that loomed behind me. I would have done anything—was doing anything—for relief from the heat that was driving me half out of my mind, crushing me like a giant hand. I took bites of hot, sharp air. Waited for any sort of breeze. Filled the gourd again and again, drenched myself, gasping.

But the moment the water flowed off my flesh, I stippled again with sweat. My breasts glowed golden in the starlight, my nipples like sprung plugs, belly swollen drum tight, unrecognizable as my own. I squeezed my eyes shut—even my eyelids were sweating—trying to picture the beloved face of this child’s father, Omar, out hunting for game so we could survive. All around me night creatures—insects, frogs, birds—hummed, croaked, and chattered, their calls breaking off now and then as they listened for their predators’ approach.

Throwing the calabash aside, I pushed myself to my feet, stumbling up the short walk on hardened dirt to our hut. It had been three weeks since Omar and the rest of the hunters had been gone, weeks in which my belly exploded with growth. I felt the jungle wanting life, life craving more life, and I felt just one more obscene part of it; like the strangler figs choking the trees, this baby was taking me over, tapping every ounce of my strength.

Back in the gloom of the hut, I lifted the mosquito netting that draped our thin mattress, making sure the metal cans the legs of the bed stood in were brimming with kerosene. On the one night I hadn’t filled them, I woke to a five-inch translucent-green scorpion on the back of my hand, its spiral tail quivering and stuttering. My screams brought the Ayacheran women in, rubbing their eyes and laughing at me as they batted it off with a broom. Afterward they wandered back to their huts, slurring in sleepy Spanish, their children scuffing back to their beds.

I crawled onto my back on the thin mat, inhaling the smell of burning cecropia wood that sifted through the grates of our clay oven, picturing the stone-gray scales of half a dozen armored catfish, their long whiskers sizzling in the embers.

Lying so very still, I thought about the delicacy of everything that lives, how this fine mesh suspended over me—so easily torn—was the only thing between me and every vicious flying insect, every creeping beast. I thought of the parts of America I missed: Dairy Queen, the movies, candy bars, Cheerios, malls, scented soap, libraries, fall leaves, snow; things Omar had never seen, had no interest in seeing.

To calm myself, I closed my eyes and conjured a blizzard. In my mind, snow swirled down a mountain pass, sugaring the pines until the winds picked up and piles drifted against houses and barns, painting everything with the same white brush. I cracked open my mouth to taste the cold flakes on my lips and tongue; I swear the thought cooled me. I fell off into this heaven until I felt a presence near my feet.

Something silky slid across my ankles, followed by a heavy, heated weight over my toes. Solid warmth oozed under my calves.

Still half-asleep, I got to my elbows and looked down my body at the wide, trapezoidal head of an anaconda, neon green with flecks of yellow around her cleft mouth. As if suspended by some mad puppet maker, she hovered at eye level, swaying hypnotically. My eyes followed hers back and forth, my head doing this little dip along with her. I didn’t scream because even as I watched, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.

I couldn’t tell if she was real.

She encircled my ankles. Pellet eyes locked on mine, her head made its way up the length of my body as she languidly wreathed herself around my legs and oh dear God—why, I don’t know—but I didn’t feel like struggling. She had me. I could feel her eggs, solid lumps just under the satin of her white belly. The meat of her was soft and blood warm; I couldn’t take my eyes off the grace of her as she coiled her ever thicker body around my knees now, wrapped herself around my thighs, pelvis, groin. Head swinging, unsupported, she opened her mouth. Her vermilion tongue snapped out, forked end flickering. She blew her sultry breath on me and said aahhhhhhhhh.

Each time I exhaled, she cinched tighter; she knew me. It was intimate, sensual; she melted into me, compressed me, made me smaller. I could feel her reading my muscles, mapping the suck and hush of blood in my veins; planning every bone she would snap and crush, the iridescent diamonds of her flesh whisper-dry, and I didn’t care if she kept going, it just felt so good, but one more turn and she would encase my belly.

I need to do something now, I thought. Now. This is my baby; if I can’t care about myself, I must care for this child. Omar’s child.

Her breath singed my face with all the sweetness of decay, as I thought, Come on, Lily, this is happening, do something. I remembered Omar telling me snakes smell their prey with their tongue; hers snapped in and out, ever faster, sniffing my fecundity. My ripeness seemed to enrage her. Quickly she looped herself once more around my belly, squeezing tight as if to pop me like a balloon, head raised in ecstasy.

I woke the next morning—the first day of the fourth week Omar had been gone—to the shrieks of macaws, their cries so heart-wrenching it felt like the end of the world every single day. Of course it had all been a dream; still, I couldn’t explain why my body ached, or the bruises that throbbed on my thighs. From the doorway of our hut I watched a vulture swing up and down over the river, a deathly black cutout against the pale blue sky.

I was beginning to give up.

And then I heard his voice.

The relief was chemical; his voice among the others down by the boats made something break and re-form in my chest. I was desperate to run to the shore, but dizziness overwhelmed me and I had to sit and wait for it to pass.

He crashed into the hut, arms and chest still streaked with mud and blood from the hunt. He threw his arms around me and pulled me to my feet, stroking my hair, crying. Why was he crying?

Lily, you’re alive. Thank God, thank God, he sobbed. Are you all right? Tell me you are, tell me the baby’s okay. His wide, strong hands read my belly.

Stunned with relief, I couldn’t speak as parts of myself glued back together with the knowledge he was alive.

I killed an anaconda last night, he said. I had to. He was hunting me.

His eyes searched my face like there was something I should know about this.

Lily, they mate for life. They come after your mate when you kill theirs. They hold grudges. It’s a spirit thing, they travel in other worlds.

I told him about her crushing weight, her breathtaking power, the bright green scales hissing across my flesh, the wonder and terror of her visit. He listened closely, nodding, serious, his handsome face a map of exhaustion and relief. As the words tumbled out of my mouth, I felt myself giving in; believing, finally, that everything in this place was magical and connected, that nothing here was happenstance. That my child’s life depended on opening my eyes and heart to this new world.

ONE

COCHABAMBA, BOLIVIA

– MARCH 2010 –

What do you mean, you don’t know how to steal? I asked my two new besties who sat next to me on the hard plastic seat of the ancient, shock-less bus.

For me, thieving was a life skill, like lying my way out of a jam, or taking off at the first sign of trouble. Most nineteen-year-olds bum around Europe a month or two, then scoot back home to college like good boys and girls. Well, fuck that. I was a half-starved, high-strung wild child who lived out of a backpack, homeless since I was thirteen, obsessed with Spanish-speaking countries, animals, and the jungle. I was also a desperately lonely, cocky-yet-petrified infant. In the space of a minute I could drown in self-pity for what I thought I’d missed—a real family—then toss that aside to satisfy a rabid curiosity for the world and everything in it. That second part may have been what saved me in the end.

On my right, seventeen-year-old Britta from Austria gazed out the open window, taciturn, dreamy, dark hair blowing back from her pale face. I stole something once, she said. Mints. From a restaurant.

Molly, a tall, talky American from Seattle, grinned and leaned in to her with a bony shoulder. News flash: those are free. A ghost of a pedicure clung to her dusty feet in beat-up sandals, just flecks of red polish on every other toenail.

Britta shrugged. I took more than one.

Molly and I howled with laughter. Mint stealer! They’re gonna lock you up, girl.

Below us, the narrow one-way street buzzed with lawless vitality and frenetic energy. Small European cars blew past stop signs with only a warning honk, pausing barely long enough for a withered Bolivian woman to yank a stubborn llama across the cobblestones. Young men on motorcycles cut between cars, even zoomed across sidewalks. These weren’t the downtown Boston streets I knew that zipped up at night with crusty Brahmin efficiency; this was raw, stinky chaos, life out loud with all its mess, sprawl, and noise, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

We three groaned each time we slammed into a pothole, tailbones bruised and aching. Laughing with fear and exhilaration, we clung to the windowsills, the seats in front of us, or each other as the cigar-chomping driver took every turn too hard and too fast. Pop music blared from the bus’s tinny speakers. Diesel gassed us through the open windows. Chickens squawked and scattered across the road as we blasted by.

We bulleted around one last corner, the bus practically coasting on its left side wheels as we turned onto a flagstone courtyard. I relished the feel of my switchblade cool against my thigh, nestled in the long pockets of my baggy shorts, my beloved backpack clutched under one bony arm. With a last belch of black smoke, the bus ground to a stop near a small farmacia tucked between rows of vegetable stands.

This is it, I said, jumping to my feet. Let’s go.

"Okay, chiquita, Molly said, tumbling out her side of the seat. We’re going, we’re going."

We squinted into the afternoon sun’s last rays as they sliced across the plaza, the towers of a looming seventeenth-century church casting cold black shadows across us. We wove our way past shopkeepers hawking jewelry, clothing, blankets, and cheap knickknacks, their stores squeezed into impossibly thin corridors between crumbling stone buildings. The usual stew of fear, pride, and excitement that preceded a heist—big or small—churned in my stomach. Everywhere the sweetish whiff of rotting vegetables mixed with a low note of sizzling meat, a smell that—those days—only ratcheted up the pain in my gut.

Britta pulled up short at a stall where a young girl was flipping fried corn cakes filled with melting cheese. She scouted around in her bag for some change.

Come on, Brit, I said. Later. Never rob a store on a full stomach: seriously, did I really need to explain this?

But I’m starving.

Not now.

"Oh, for God’s sake. Just because you never eat."

I tugged the straps of my backpack tighter across my shoulders. Pitiful as the contents were, I always had food, whether stolen or bought. Ziplock bags of dusty peanuts, half-melted candy bars, sad old apples, stale M&M’s, anything I could get my hands on. The truth was, I was always hungry; it was just a matter of degree. Growing up with seven other foster kids had me well acquainted with a chronic emptiness in my gut.

I glanced around nervously. We’ll get something after, okay? As used to copping things as I was, it had only just occurred to me that the punishment here might be a lot less lenient than in the States. Would it be actual jail time? Hard labor? And how in fuck would I get myself out with barely a boliviano to my name?

Grumbling, Britta zipped her sweatshirt to her chin with a shiver and joined Molly and me as we huddled outside the pharmacy. So, Molly, you’ve stolen things before? she asked.

Molly gave me a sly look. Of course.

What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever stolen?

A boyfriend.

Good to know. Britta laughed, then turned to me. Lily? Biggest thing?

As in size? Or worth?

Size.

A turkey. For Thanksgiving.

Did you get caught?

Nope.

Molly whistled, impressed, but back on task as she glanced apprehensively at the drugstore. So, how is this going to go—?

We go in, I said. "We’re super friendly. Smile and say hola. You know that much Spanish, right? I pulled out a beat-up map from my backpack and handed it to Molly. Just do what we talked about. We’ll be fine."

Molly’s head knocked into a little cowbell that hung over the door, announcing our entrance more than I would have liked. She giggled as she approached a solemn-faced woman who slouched behind a cash register staring out a narrow lead-paned window. Molly and Britta stood near her to block her view of me. I cased the aisles quickly: the place was dirty, everything looked old and beat. Pawed-over packets of Band-Aids, dusty bottles of American shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant. We honestly could have used all of it, but I had to concentrate on what we came for. Even before they had unfolded the map and began to ask the proprietor in stumbling Spanish the best way to get to La Paz by bus, I had lifted a roll of rubbers, three boxes of tampons, three small bags of rough-cut tobacco, and rolling papers.

Hey, Molly, I called out. This was the signal that I was done, and they could step apart. The woman peered down at me as I picked through some dry goods. You wanted cornmeal, right, Molls? The absolute cheapest thing in the store, at twenty-five centavos a half kilo.

Sure, yeah.

I grabbed a small package and took it to the counter. A glass bowl of wrapped mints sat near the old-fashioned crank register. I took three and laid them next to the cornmeal. How much? I asked in Spanish, counting out a few coins.

The mints? she said with a gap-toothed smile. Those are free.

Molly burst out laughing and couldn’t stop. Britta fought to contain herself and was unsuccessful, turning crimson as she folded the map. The woman’s smile soured as she watched us, folding her arms across her sparrow chest. She looked me dead in the eye and said, Show me what is in your backpack.

Why?

Her face grew stone-hard. My son is outside. He’s a big man. He’ll open it for me.

Feigning offense, I counted out twenty-five centavos and stuffed the cornmeal in my bag. "Buenos días, señora."

I took a big stride toward the door, but she cut me off and ran past us into the square, shouting, Diego! Diego! They robbed me, Diego! We sprinted past her toward the bus that had just fired up its engine, leaping aboard as it lurched into motion. In seconds, the square receded behind us and we were climbing the steep hills back to the city center.

Screaming and laughing, high from our theft, we burst into the Hostel Versailles Cochabamba—a hilariously named fleabag where we all worked for room and board—and raced down to the basement, our roach-infested staff apartment, which was just a moldy bunk room the size of a jail cell, complete with cold, always-damp cement walls. I dumped the contents of my backpack onto a broken-down couch squeezed between the cots.

All the stolen goodies tumbled out, along with a beat-up copy of a book I’d lifted from my last group home in Boston. Reddening, I reached for it, but Molly grabbed the book and turned it over, while Britta nabbed a pouch of tobacco and rolling papers and bolted up the stairs.

"Charlotte’s Web? Molly said, examining me. I remember this book from when I was a kid. Can’t remember reading much since, if you want to know the truth."

At the time, I had no explanation for why this little pig’s life saved by the efforts of the spider who really loved him tore my guts out. I only knew that the story had gotten to me, made me cry, but also gave me hope that I could—someday—overcome my wordless sorrow.

I keep some old photos in it.

As Molly flipped the pages, one fell out, all dog-eared and scratched. Is this your foster mom?

I took the photo from her. Yeah, that’s Tia. As I gazed at the picture, I was struck by the resemblance between the proprietor of the store I’d just robbed and Tia, my Bolivian foster mom who had died of cancer when I was twelve. Same age, same tight expression of defensiveness against great odds. Ashamed tears backed up behind my eyes, but I held them off.

She has a kind face.

She did the best she could with eight of us running around, I said, eyes downcast as I stuffed the book back in my bag, embarrassed to be seen reading anything other than the Jack Kerouac or Charles Bukowski from the ragtag hostel library, not that Molly or Britta would have been impressed by that sort of thing. Of course, I looked nothing like Tia; I don’t look like anyone. Well, I guess I did look like a miniature version of my real mom, who I’d never known. Same curly red hair, blue eyes, but I lacked her glamorous length of bone; she stood six feet in flats, while I was just five one. Small and small boned. A social worker once told me my mom—who overdosed when I was a baby—had been a poet; in my fantasies she was a brilliant one, too brilliant to live, like Sylvia Plath.

Molly sorted the condoms from the pile and stashed them in her pants pocket. Thanks for doing this. Mark’ll be here in a few days. He never has anything.

No problem, I said, slinging my bag over my shoulder. But I’ve got to go. Thirty-four beds needed a change of sheets.

Me too. Britta’s alone at check-in. Bad idea. We grinned at each other. Britta rarely stopped flirting long enough to write down reservations and keep the beds from being double-booked. A nightmare when dozens of exhausted international travelers flooded in nightly, all of them desperate for food and sleep, none with the cash for a real hotel.

Halfway up the stairs, I turned back to look at Molly, to find her gazing after me. A turkey, really? she said.

Yeah. I wore a big coat. Pretended I was pregnant. Worked like a dream.

None of us ever had enough cash. Evenings off, we made spare change washing dishes alongside laughing toothless grandmothers in local cantinas. On the best days, we nailed the occasional gig teaching English to the sons and daughters of rich families in parts of the city with dreamy names like Cala Cala or El Mirador. We were picked up in big, noiseless town cars to spend an hour or two with their precious babies in vast rooms with balconies featuring jaw-dropping views of the city and mountains beyond, then taken back to the Versailles, to our damp room with floors that glittered with silverfish. Otherwise, we worked constantly at the hostel—booking rooms, cleaning floors, washing linens, and cutting onions and potatoes for enormous pots of stew till our fingers bled.

All of us were running away from something. I’d been suckered down that January to teach English at a school that didn’t exist. Stole the money—over time at a shit job in an appliance store—for plane fare, got here, no one met my plane or answered my calls. I had maybe five dollars on me, which got me a cab to the Versailles. I begged my way in, then stayed, too broke to go home.

Molly had dough, even though she swore she didn’t. How could you travel the world to get over a guy, à la Eat Pray Love, sans cash? Still, there was something else wrong that kept her from going home, I could feel it. Britta had been traveling nonstop for a year with no idea what to do next. Anything but Vienna, she’d quip between deep inhales of her hash pipe—anything but that. Something about her father. She didn’t elaborate, but that was fine. I never did either. It didn’t matter.

I loved these girls with all the passionate intensity and conviction and delusion of my not-yet-twenty-year-old self. The damage in me honored the damage in them, and as far as I was concerned, that was the sum total of truth in the world. Ignoring the fact that we didn’t have much in common, that Britta had a mean side and Molly lied probably more than me—which was saying something—I told myself we’d be friends forever.

But my gut knew that we were all lost children pretending we were A-OK with our clove cigarettes and our fuck-everything, we’re-never-going-home attitudes. None of us had any idea what we were doing; all of us were devastated inside. There were reasons we’d ended up there, trying to sleep in noisy bunk rooms with doors that didn’t lock, a new boss every other week who leered and leched at each of us. But it was as if we were stuck there, like food caught in a drain. If anyone had asked us, What makes you tick? Where are you going? Why are you here? Why can’t you get through the day without crying? What do you want from your life? We would have been stumped for any answers at all.

As I whipped the thin sheets off rows of narrow cots, grimacing at the occasional period stain or worse, I tried to feel happy for Molly, but the truth was, this new fragile family of lost girls was falling apart, bit by bit. Did it matter who would be the first to leave? For all of us, it was just a matter of time. Soon, I would have to face life after the Versailles, a fate I dreaded—exhaustion, filth, and roaches be damned.

Nine years later, I wish I could wrap my arms around my younger, stupider self and tell her to hold on tight, because flying to Bolivia on a scam was the least of a series of bad decisions I was about to make.

TWO

With Molly leaving soon to travel with Mark, the three of us decided to blow out after our shifts one night. Just to smoke and drink and laugh, feel alive and be together. Arm in arm, we strolled along the Eastern Promenade, a bright string of nightlife packed with markets, where every imaginable fruit seemed blown up to two, three, five times its normal size: huge, creamy Brazil nuts; tart guavas; bittersweet maracujas, or passionfruit. Baby toucans sold as pets squawked in their bamboo cages under shelves groaning with wallets and purses made of anaconda hide. Two-foot-tall, stuffed baby black caiman—alligators that grew to over twenty feet long in the slow-moving waters of the Amazon, what I wouldn’t have given to see them in real life!—had been posed on their hind feet dressed in pink tutus and carrying matching parasols. A sign propped under them said in Spanish: PERFECT TO FIT IN YOUR LUGGAGE!

Under a hand-scrawled poster that read chamánicos, or shamanic, a wizened man in a vermilion poncho puffed on a fat cigarette. He sat at a low table; two stuffed and mounted jaguar heads snarling at each elbow. Across from him, a young woman held a baby whose top lip indented toward its little nose, exposing a wedge of pink gum. A thousand lines working in his face, yellowed eyes on the child, the man chanted as he waved his gnarled hands over its swaddled form.

We meandered through the cloud of tobacco smoke surrounding the woman and her baby, the droning incantations of the shaman low and constant. I stopped to watch, even as Britta nudged me away. Come on, Lily, what are you doing? Thirty-five centavos to cure a cleft palate? I don’t think so, she said with a sneer, trying to catch sight of Molly, who’d been whining about getting wasted since early that morning and was probably already at the bar.

I waved her on, but she put her hands on her hips and squared off with me. You’re really interested in this hocus-pocus bullshit? Like, abracadabra, your face is all better? Give me a break.

Look, Britta, I’ll catch up, okay?

She rolled her eyes and strolled away, shaking her head as she went.

Of course his sorcery wouldn’t work. I knew that, and maybe the mother did, too; still, I couldn’t take my eyes off her—she was rapt, spellbound, lit from within. I felt a stab of sadness, even jealousy; how comforting to believe in a magical world, one where things could actually change for the better. Nothing anchored me anywhere.

I joined my friends at a café under a broken neon sign on the Prado. Around us, couples sat nuzzling; at other tables, tight knots of men played cards in tense silence. Encircled by mountains that jutted up into the night, I had the comforting sensation of sitting at the base of a vast, jagged-edged bowl. Far from the city center, ours was the last bar on a dead-end street that dissolved into a copse of trees, their branches interlocking thickly above us. To be in the city yet at the jungle’s door; this element of Cochabamba never ceased to astound me.

Lily, Molly said, getting to her feet. Nice of you to show up. What’re you drinking?

Tequila.

She made the sign for loco before heading for the bar.

Britta swept up her gorgeous hair in a messy bun, fully conscious of the men’s turning heads. You crazy American bitch, she said with a smile. Did I tell you what I did the last time I drank tequila?

Fucked someone you shouldn’t have? Again?

Have you been reading my diary? Again?

We had a good laugh and I loved her anew. She took a swig of her beer and glanced around. A few men at a table not far away laughed with one another as they ogled us, as if daring each other to go first.

Ugh, here we go. Molly slid between us with two tequilas.

Easy for you to say, Little Miss I’m-Outta-Here, I said, checking out the men on the sly.

"Don’t tell me you like Bolivian guys."

What’s wrong with them?

They’re all macho, drug-dealing assholes.

Maybe she likes macho, drug-dealing assholes, Britta said. At least they have cash.

Working at the hostel afforded us our pick of single male travelers: the long-limbed Germans and Swedes; the gung-ho Americans; the big, brawling Australians. An international all-you-can-eat buffet walked through the doors of the Versailles every single evening. Still, in my three months at the hostel, only one backpacker had ever really appealed to me, this sweet French guy who read Camus and smoked continually, but after hanging out for a few weeks, he just took off one morning—bed perfectly made—and I never saw him again. In the end, most of the guys seemed sanitized and self-important, or privileged and full of shit, on their way to Machu Picchu in their high-end hiking gear, on the phone with their girlfriends back home in between lame pickup attempts.

Tonight, Molly said, setting her shot glass down with a thud, I’m celebrating being an expat. We’re the coolest, am I right, ladies?

Absolutely, I said. Fuck McDonald’s. Fuck Burger King.

Fuck all the Burger Kings in Austria, Britta said with a little beer burp. You know we have those, right?

"Fuck malls, I said. In fact, fuck America, that place is so screwed up, pulleeze!! I don’t care if I never go back!" I knocked back my drink with a wince and thought: I am not a child anymore. Friends will have to do. I slammed my glass down. Fuck everywhere we’ve lived before here, and everyone we ever knew before us. And fuck guys, too, right, Britta?

She winked and smiled and said, Anytime.

I glanced up at a nearby circle of men gathered around a card game. They stubbed out glowing cigarettes in overflowing ashtrays, countless empty beer bottles scattered around their table. One of them seemed utterly disinterested in the game. He sat tilted back in his cheap plastic chair, arms crossed behind his head, a smile playing at his mouth as he stared at me through a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. I squared my shoulders and looked away, kept talking shit about America and how we were going to be intellectuals and artists and save the world from its asinine self. All the while, hot embarrassment at being watched licked up my neck.

Something clammy and small groped my forearm: a little boy’s brown hand, fingernails ringed with dirt. I pulled away, but he stood his ground, staring up at me with thickly lashed eyes. With his other hand, he thrust at