Tree Girl by Ben Mikaelsen Chapter 12

1. Highlight 5 vocabulary words that you do not know and write the definition in the margin.  Label each with a (V).

2.  Ask 5 questions in the margins.  Label each with a (?)


3.  React to 5 events in the text.  Label each reaction with a (*). 


4.  Make 5 connections to the text, text-to-self · text-to-text · text-to-world.  Label each with a ©

When I finally returned to our camp, the old Kakchikel grandmothers were already under the tarp, asleep on the hard ground. They stirred restlessly in their sleep, but I didn't wake them. Sleep was their best escape from hunger and from the pain of memories. I had collected corn flour and rice along with some beans. I hoped that in the morning Carmen and Rosa would cook the beans and make tortillas on one of the small fires that sprang up around camp.

My own stomach was still knotted with hunger as I crawled under the tarp beside the old women to sleep. The day had left me exhausted, and quickly fell into my own restless sleep.

When l woke, Carmen and Rosa were already up. They had found the food I collected the night before, and somewhere they had also found a pan and some water to boil the beans and make tortillas. To start their fire, they had borrowed flames from someone else's fire. Rosa met me as I crawled from the tent and she handed me a couple of warm tortillas. "Thank you for the food," she said.

I nodded and gulped down the tortillas. These were the first warm tortillas I had eaten in more than two months. I thanked the grandmothers, and set out to find food for our next meal. "We'll look for food also," Carmen called after me.

I realized that without meaning to, I had accepted a new responsibility, and it troubled me. I didn't want anyone to depend on me, and I didn't want to depend on anyone. I left without answering Carmen, knowing that survival now consumed every waking minute of my life and forced me to wander constantly through the camp in search of food, clothes, and blankets.

I never knew when a truck might arrive. One deadly fact remained. There wasn't enough food for everyone. I found food for the old women, and myself then somewhere that night others would sleep hungry. If I survived one more day, someone else would die because I lived.

The San Miguel camp could have used ten times as much food and supplies, and the one thing we needed most of all, the trucks could not bring us: hope, Hope that the war might end soon, and hope that family would return. Many in the camp would have survived if they could have found hope, but with time, many gave up. I watched them sitting alone with vacant eyes, staring away from the camp to a place millions of miles away, a place where they would soon go. Sadly, seine escaped by killing themselves. I saw their bodies; wrists cut wide open by jagged broken bottles that lay beside them on the ground.

Most of us kept to ourselves, not trusting those around us and not wanting to develop friendships that might soon be lost. We built small isolated worlds of memories, anger, and bitterness. And each refugee in camp avoided reality in a different way.

To hide their grief and fear, some parents in camp showed anger toward their children. Other refugees simply gave up and quit looking for food. My way of escaping reality was to occupy myself every waking moment of each day, leaving little time for memories or reflection. I feared that if I allowed memories into my mind, I, too, would become one of those who quit eating.

Each night the kindness of-death found more of the refugees, and with the · coming of morning their lifeless bodies were discovered motionless on the ground, as if caught in sleep.

Like most, I tried to ignore the dead resting on the ground around the camp. They were simply shapes, sad curiosities with a bad odor. To acknowledge the dead was to acknowledge the possibility that tomorrow I might be among them. I feared that morning when I would be too weak to search for food. That day it would be my turn to die. So each evening, when the Mexican workers came through camp wearing masks, picking up the dead with a truck, I looked away.

Some refugees in our part of camp tried to manufacture hope by sitting around a small fire each night sharing what they knew of the United States of America. On days when I was lucky enough to have found food, I would sit and listen to them talk about the heaven they called the United States.

"I have a cousin who lives in Los Angeles," one refugee said, gazing wistfully up at the stars as if recalling a dream. "He tells me that in the United States of America even the poor have cars and live in buildings with windows and doors."

"They say that the poor keep their food cold in electric refrigerators," another refugee added, "Their water runs from faucets, clean and pure, and even the poorest Americans have toilets that flush away their dung."

The refugees would talk for hours about leaving the camp and trying to make it north through Mexico to America. "The United States border is much harder to cross than the border we crossed to enter Mexico," one old man explained. "You need men called coyotes to smuggle you across. The coyotes are very dangerous men who charge much money."

"Yes, but it's worth it," a woman added: "In the United States there are hospitals to care for the poor and hungry."

One night I noticed a young man with glasses sitting and listening quietly to everyone telling stories about America. As the fire died down, the young man seemed to grow impatient. He suddenly spoke. "If it weren't for the Americans," he said, "the soldiers would never have attacked our cantons."

Everybody sat in silence. It was as if the story, tellers' dreams had been doused with col water. "It's getting late,” one woman complained.

"Yes, it's late," said another, as she stood to leave. I continued sitting there in the darkness as most of the others wandered back.to their shelters. The young man with glasses remained sitting on the ground.

"Is it true what you said about the Americans?" I asked.

He nodded. "I was in the Guatemalan military. The United States made the guns that shot our families. They made the helicopters that destroy our peaceful skies. The comandantes that have led the massacres were trained in the United States of America."

"How many massacres have there been?'' I asked.

The man waved his hand in a circle at the camp. "Enough to cause this," he said. "And this is only one of many camps. There have been hundreds and hundreds of massacres. This war is nothing short of genocide. Whole generations of Indios are being destroyed. Even here, we're still not safe. Guatemalan soldiers, Kaibiles, have crossed the border to our east and massacred many in other refugee camps."

"Don't the Mexican officials stop them?" I asked.

The young man shook his head. "They just stand and watch the Kaibiles commit their murders.''

"So the Mexicans are as much to blame as the Americans?" questioned an older man.

"The Americans have armed and trained the Kaibiles."

"It can't be true what you · say about the United States," I argued. "Many Americans help us here in the camp. They send much of the supplies we receive.''

"You speak of American citizens," the young man · said. "Not the American government. Most Americans don't know what their government does. They don't want to know," he added.

The young man bit at his lip as I sat thinking about what he had said. I didn't know if the stories about the poor in the United States of America were exaggerated, but I had to admit that they sounded wonderful. Still, how was it possible for a country to be so great and yet allow for the massacres in our cantons and pueblos?

The young man reached out his hand to me. "I'm Mario Salvador," he said. "What's your name?"

"I'm Gabriela Flores," I replied. “What did you do after leaving the military?"

"I became a teacher."

I visited with Mario that night until the cold was too much to bear. When I finally slept, I dreamed of guns and helicopters. I dreamed of the new teacher I had met, and as always, I dreamed of a little girl who once cuddled by my side and called me Mami.

Because I went to bed late, I slept until after the sun came up. It surprised me to see Rosa still lying asleep beside me when I rose. I looked out and saw Carmen cooking, crouched over a small fire in front of our shelter. I stared again at Rosa and sensed a strange stillness. I reached and touched her back. Then I squeezed her shoulder. "Rosa, wake up," I said, realizing at that moment that she was dead. I drew in a slow, deliberate breath. "Rosa is dead," I called to Carmen.

Carmen came to my side, wiping her eyes and shaking her head. "I'll stay with her until the truck arrives," she said.

"We'll stay together," I said. "Was she sick,” Carmen shook her head.

"Then why did she die?" I asked. "Maybe I could have found her a little more food."

Carmen shook her head again. "You couldn't have stopped Rosa's death."

I said a quiet prayer as I waited beside Rosa, knowing even as I mouthed the words that prayers didn't work anymore, not in a refugee camp. I blamed Rosa's death on the soldiers, just as I blamed them for the deaths they caused with their bullets.

I wanted to bury Rosa, but I knew refugees weren't allowed to bury any of the dead. Rosa would have to wait for the Mexican workers who wore masks to come with the truck. Rosa's body would be stacked like fire wood with other bodies under a tarp on a truck, only to be burned and buried in a common grave far from camp. This was done to stop the spread of disease and epidemics.

In the past, I had been able to ignore the removal of bodies, but that day I could not. When the truck arrived, I insisted on helping carry Rosa's body. Her thin frame weighed less than a jug of water as we carried her to the truck. I bent and kissed her forehead gently before workers heaved her body on top of the rest. It was a kiss that should have come from her husband or her children.

Before Rosa's death, I had already worked hard to help care for the old women. Now I drove myself even harder, fighting to escape my thoughts. I obsessed over tasks, quitting only when my weary body collapsed in sleep. I was a terrified child, running from myself in the only way I knew, afraid that maybe tomorrow morning the Mexican workers would carry away the small, thin body of a homely girl named Gabriela.

"Don't work so hard," Carmen scolded me whenever she found me exhausted. "We have enough food to eat." I always nodded, but I ignored her words.

Each day more refugees straggled into the camp, looking as if they arrived from the grave, their gaunt faces only vague masks of what had once been happy children, proud parents, or dignified elders. Each step of the long trail had robbed them of another shard of their identity, their hopes, their culture, their dreams, and their pride. Now they wandered into the camp not as individuals, but simply as faceless refugees searching for food and shelter. Their ragged clothes and desperate stares blended with all the rest.

Perhaps that's why I failed to recognize the small girl when I first saw her two months after I arrived. It was late evening as I stood in the long water line, grasping two plastic jugs. The large tanker truck threatened to run out of water before my tum arrived. Already the pressure of the spigot had weakened into a thin stream. As I waited, a group of fifteen or twenty refugees wandered into camp. Everyone in line glanced at the new arrivals with idle curiosity. As I returned my gaze to the truck, something about the group caused me to glance back.

Several young girls had wandered in with the new refugees. One in particular, who stood turned away from me, had skinny legs that bowed slightly, shoulders that rounded, and long black hair that hung nearly to her waist. Her blue dress was unfamiliar and she kept looking away, but I watched her as the_ group passed, hoping she would turn or glance my way.

"Alicia!" I called out.

Still the girl failed to turn. "Alicia!" I yelled more loudly.

The girl turned and stared at me with large searching eyes. My breath stopped in my chest and the empty water jugs dropped from my hands. I took two hesitant steps forward and then broke into a fast run. "Alicia! Alicia! Alicia!" I screamed.