Marta

Marta's abdomen swollen, she squats, holding herself up by her own arms, a testament of fortitude which somehow points out my lack of the same.

Me, hiding behind the curtain of trees, the pile of dried sugar cane stalks, more comfortable in the jungle of unknown noises than by the side of a friend as she gives birth onto the dirt, the dust, the earth.

Me, standing just far enough away, watching the midwife, the ritual, the work of bringing a life into the world.

Me, guided by my sister and friend Marta, to accompany her in the almost darkness to this bit of overgrown jungle shelved between rivers.

Me, watching Marta cry out as the baby emerges from her body.

~

I'd begged to be allowed to live in this remote enclave of Ngabe-Bugle indigenous people many months before. The small village, located near the top of a mountain range in Panama was an isolated outpost, one which had never seen outsiders or tourists. I had intended on spending only a week there before returning back to the capitol, but the first night I watched in awe as the night sky filled with pinpricks of stars, cast in a fabric of blue- black velvet. That night my hands had reached into the sky, touching it. I had an irresistible urge to rearrange the constellations, make new patterns, shift the planets.

Here, on this mountaintop, in this village: it was the closest I had ever felt to touching God.

That first week went by and I never left. My tent full of holes from persistent ivory colored scorpions, the village elders took pity on me and decided to give me a room in a hut.

A simple three walled structure, open to the night sky and wild animals. Divided in half with a few hastily tossed up planks, my pallet bed lay on one side; on the other, lay Marta and her family.

My side of the hut was filled with a small camp stove, my pack, and the sorts of gadgets travelers carry when they've no idea where they are going: Swiss army knives, instant clotheslines, med kits and mosquito nets. Marta's side of the hut was decorated by a makeshift table of tree trunks and planks, a few dresses hung on pegs and her babies of various ages suspended in hammocks or tied to the ceiling, to keep them from crawling away or being eaten by wandering wild animals or feral pigs and dogs while she worked in the sugar cane field.

When I left my hut each morning, I would often return to find Marta, cupping my possessions in her hands, turning the unknown treasures over and over, memorizing the design and lines of each. She was curious, an impromptu engineer. Occasionally my things would go missing, borrowed by Marta, returned later, shining, often in pieces. She carried my digital alarm clock in her pocket, taking pleasure in the sudden shock others got when the bell sounded from the folds of her dress. She took my digital camera apart, and put it back together without the memory card. She used my travel clotheslines to tie her toddlers to the roof and the bed.

~

Her dresses were beautiful, each one hand sewn by her own hands on a Victorian-style Flying Dove foot pedaled sewing machine. These were dresses (nauguas ) in the traditional Ngabe style: voluminous, with puffy sleeves and floppy sailor collars reminiscent of some Puritan influence not so long ago. Marta's nauguas were special, designed to shock the eye with their hothouse flower splendor, and her handiwork was coveted by every woman in the village. Violet and orange blossom. Avocado green and orchid pink. Grapefruit peach and acid yellow. Traditional patterns of lines, triangles and diamonds circled the collars, cuffs, and waist, each design based on an Ngabe folktale. The hems reached the ground, making each dress billow out, giving a gliding effect when Marta walked. Her bright skirts were so full that her body was secret, the rare glimpse of her feet an almost immodest gesture.

We shared the nights, Marta and I. We shared the nights through the plank wall, as I tried to sleep on the hard wooden board that served as my bed. We shared the nights as I tried to tune out the flying cockroaches that kept crawling on my skin. We shared the nights as I lay with one eye open, half vigilant with a shoe in hand, ready to crush any scorpions that wandered too far up the walls. All night long Marta worked to the single light of a candle, her feet steadily moving up and down on the pedals of her sewing machine. Up and down. Back and forth. A zigzag of noises soothing me into sleep. I needed her there, for I found her noisiness reassuring. She was a known thing in an unknown place.

In the morning, her children were always the first to wander into my lean-to doorway. They'd peek around the corner, holding a smaller version of themselves, sometimes another baby strapped to their backs, a puppy or a duckling cradled in their skirts. Marta's children were too numerous to keep track of, and sometimes it seemed she had at least a dozen. They were dirty children, the sort of dirt that comes not simply from a lack of bathing, but from the pleasantness that accompanies a young life lived almost entirely out-of-doors. The jungles held their forts, the embers from the village fires served as their pens and paper, the pigs and chickens that ran about freely everywhere their pets.

It was after I'd known her for several months that I noticed she was alone with her children. No man came to visit her, no husband or boyfriend. She seemed to manage all of her numerous children on her own. Ngabe women are quite independent, often having multiple relationships, which balances out the traditional family structure of multiple wives to one man. But no man ever came bringing the usual gifts of cassava or yucca, bags of rice or tinned sardines, penny candy or plastic flip flops. Marta was sewing all those nauguas each night to pay for her children, for shoes, for food.

It was at about this time that I discovered she was pregnant. She seemed to not notice, her back bent in the sugar cane field, her children climbing over her as they all piled onto the family pallet bed. Her naugua dress stretched to its limits, she no longer glided as she walked, instead waddling slowly, shifting from side to side. She flirted with the men in the village, inviting them to bathe with her down at the river, teasing them, for she couldn't walk downhill anymore.

One night things became serious: her sewing rattle stopped, and I could hear her heavy breathing on the other side of the partition. She came over to my pallet and rested her hands on my abdomen, and then motioned for me to follow her to the midwife's hut. We three walked out into the night jungle, the midwife and I pushing Marta up the mountain.

~

Marta's abdomen swollen, she squats, holding herself up by her own arms, a testament of fortitude which somehow points out my lack of the same.

Me, standing just far enough away, watching the midwife, the ritual, the work of bringing a life into the world.

Me, guided by my sister and friend Marta, to accompany her in the almost darkness to this bit of overgrown jungle shelved in between rivers.

Me, watching Marta cry out as the baby emerges from her body.

The baby cries out, too.

~

After.

It's raining. The soft rain that comes from high above the palms, and slides gently down through the canopy of leaves, droplets landing in chorus.

It's quiet, just the rustling of unknown creatures and my breath. In. Out. In. Out.

Marta. Slumped, shoved in a crevice between trees. Silent. Forever still.

Midwife. Gone. The baby, gone down the mountain with her, to the village.

Me. Droplets of rain aren't rain at all but my own tears.

Marta, gone.

The buzzing of an alarm startles me. My alarm clock is in Marta's pocket. I laugh out loud. She loved to surprise people. Even now.

I find it in her pocket and turn it off, and then carefully place it back in the folds of her dress.

She's resting, I tell myself.

How strange life is. How terrifying and good it is, all at the same time.

~

After.

The hut is quiet now. Marta's children are all elsewhere, taken by relatives. I'm a guest of Marta's, a sister-friend, and I have been given the job of collecting her things.

The Ngabe people bury the possessions of the dead with them, so that they will have everything they need in the afterlife. How different this feels than back at home. I recall when my grandmother died, my mother and sister quibbled over the smallest piece of bric-a-brac, things that had no meaning at all. Here, people own so little there is no fighting over possessions.

I've gathered everything. It all fits into a single plastic grocery bag. Then I look out the window. Our window. Marta's dresses still hang on the clothesline. It feels strange to pull them off the line. They seem like part of the landscape, equal in value to the trees, the river, the view.

Clothesline empty.

Her dresses were the only decoration of this sad place.

Now it's just a cluster of simple huts and trash spread out over the jungle floor.

How come I didn't see it this way before?

Remember this, I tell myself.

Remember these dresses, these jewels, these bangles against this earthiness.

I know I will forget about Marta, that time will change how I recall her.

Closing my eyes, I describe her dresses over and over again to myself, mumbling through orange zigzags and blue stripes. Gorging on the colors she mixed together, shifting like a Ferris wheel in motion.

I think of Marta and what she'd like. She enjoyed taking things apart, holding them in her hands, filling her pockets with pieces and gadgets. In our hut, I find my flashlight, my clothelines, my camera. With Marta-like precision, I take each object apart, down to its simplest form. A pile of pieces, nuts and bolts, the inner workings of me, of her, of us. They join the dresses and her meager possessions in bags and I walk down to the cemetery.

~

After.

She faces the moon. Her body wrapped in her dresses, the earth barely covering her. Someone takes the bag of bits and pieces, sprinkling parts of my camera and flashlight over the top of the mound. The travel clothesline is wrapped around the makeshift wooden cross marker in lieu of flowers.

"Won't people come and take these things? They aren't even buried under earth," I worry to my friend.

"No one will take them. She needs them to guide her to where she has to go," she replies.

People gather around the burial, men on one side, women on the other. Singing, conversations, gifts. Death is normal here, part of life.

Bright orange Kool-Aid is passed around in gourd cups, the men splashing chicha alcohol from sugar cane juice liberally into their cups. The Kool-Aid is sweet, squishing between my teeth, and then swallowed, gone.

~

After.

Marta's guiding me where I have to go, too. It's time to go home, time to leave this place, this hut, this mountain, this family. Her brother tells me he doesn't want me to go, I should stay forever, as a grandmother, sister, auntie. But Marta has taught me the importance of moving on, of getting on with it, of seeking the next place, the next self. I'm ready.

Sometimes we meet someone, and although we don't realize it, they are the person who is going to cause us to change. Marta was one of those people for me. Knowing her in life--and in death--transformed me and made me better. Everything about her and I seemed accidental, but really, it wasn't.

When I walk down the mountain a few weeks later, I'm not entirely alone.

Her brother has carved out a set of gourd bowls for me, just like the ones at Marta's funeral, except these have Marta's and my name carved onto them. They clatter in my pack, reassuring me in the same familiar way as the pedals of her sewing machine at night in our hut.

~

It's several years later now, and when I look at all the things I've brought back from my travels, the one thing I would never give up is this precious set of carved gourd bowls.

When I feel I cannot do something, I find myself drawn to them, their mushroom earthy taste, their realness.

Sometimes I drink my morning coffee from one of them, cupping the thin gourd in my hands, almost burning my palms.