We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

by Nemonte Nenquimo

Later, Stephanie stood next to the plane as they were about to depart. “I will always remember you in my heart,” she said. “I’ll come back to visit.”

I walked into the yard and poured the chocolate milk onto the ground. The dogs lapped it up at my feet.

We were close now to the flame I had seen in the distance. It roared. It was a giant. A tower of black smoke. Vultures circled above. A metal fence cast strange shadows across the road. “What is it?” I asked, frightened. “That’s the oil well.”

“Oil,” he said, “is the blood of our ancestors.”

It was sucking up our past.

“Wengongi,” I prayed, “I don’t know if you understand Wao Tededo yet, but will you protect the uncontacted so that no one kills them? Aunt Nantoke said that they are in danger.”

This must be an old homestead, I thought to myself. My ancestors lived here. A feeling of safety and familiarity washed over me.

Who are you? an old woman’s voice whispered in my head. Who are you? Was the jaguar talking to me? I wanted to answer, but no words came.

“Would you like to hold my baby?” she asked kindly. I smiled, my eyes brightening. We walked together to the edge of the creek. I held her baby in my arms. It was like holding Loida, Emontay, Nengere, or Ana.

I thought about the jaguar on the trail, the old woman’s voice that had echoed in my head: Who are you? Who are you?

“You don’t listen to your grandfather. Nor your mother. But let me tell you, Nemonte. I’ve been dreaming of you. And this path is not good for you!”

“We come from this forest,” he said, gesturing all around him. “There is more for you to learn here too. Don’t forget about that, Nemonte.”

“Why does the Bible say that Eve was made from Adam’s ribs?” I asked Rosalina,

I said: “My mom bosses my dad around.”

Before we came, they really believed that their ancestors became jaguars!”

“I am going on a short trip soon to Shell and then to the city of Quito.”

I knew it was Alfredo, breathing very fast and hard. Where were the other girls? What if I screamed? But I could not move my body. I felt trapped inside myself. I tried to make a noise, gasping. Alfredo covered my mouth with his hand. It was moist and smelled of sweat.

My heart pounded within my chest. I still couldn’t move. What had just happened? I lay there, motionless, in the tense and throbbing dark of night, wondering if Wengongi had seen him touching me.

“Ayyy . . . his muscles are softer than a chicken’s!” The grandma spoke in Wao Tededo and snorted with laughter as she set the basket down on the trail. “He couldn’t carry this basket halfway across the village.”

“He didn’t touch my hair, Mom . . . I promise that he didn’t touch my hair.”

“I don’t want to,” I said, starting to cry. “Shhh.” He was closing a door behind us. “I will read you the Bible.”

I sat on my bed, staring blankly into the darkness. My clothes were sticky and my vagina burned and I wondered if I was still Wengongi’s daughter.

I was washing my clothes in the creek, frightened that the Lord’s punishment was upon me. My stomach was churning with nausea. I imagined a gray sludge inside my gut. My chest felt tense and heavy. My heart was turning into a black stone.

“You have brought shame to our family. You are not my daughter anymore!”

The scratches on my vagina burned.

“Did . . . did someone touch you?” she asked me. She did not look at me but far into the distance. She had an awful, empty expression.

I didn’t say anything. But I wanted my parents to see. To know that something had happened, something terrible. And then to hold me in their arms, to love me. To tell me that I had done nothing wrong. That they would protect me forever.

I did not know that from so great a height it could be possible to love the forest so much.

But soon the forest began to change. Slowly the trees thinned and turned into grass, spindly peach palms, clusters of scrawny white animals. I tapped the window.

Indian kids,

I wanted to go home. I wanted to be with my family in the forest.

I sat down on the chair next to him. I was hurting inside. Burning. Throbbing.

When we arrived, I knew that I was in trouble with the Lord because although the sun was burning bright white in the thin air, I was black and cold inside.

Not another pregnant jungle girl. You hear me, Inés?”

I felt a dark cobweb spreading across my chest. I didn’t want to hear his name.

I was hurting between my legs.

I felt ugly inside.

But I could only form a fleeting picture of my old life.

I knew now that God could not understand my people’s language.

“Jesus died so that all of you can receive gifts from the white people!”

The church filled with cackles. Even Rosalina, who didn’t know what my aunt had said, laughed. I too was laughing. But only on the outside.

“What God doesn’t like lice? Head lice bring families together!”

“What are sins? What does the forest care about sins?

“It’s okay to learn about the white people,” she continued, “but don’t you come back here to the village telling us who God is, you hear.”

The women were laughing happily. Their rubber boots squeaked. Their shiny black hair swung behind them until they disappeared. I ached to join them.

I flipped through the photographs of the children, silently. Their bodies were stiff. Hands clenched. Lips closed. They didn’t look at the camera; they looked through it. Even when they smiled, their eyes were like black stones.

I turned towards her. Fiercely. I was going to tell her everything. My heart was a black stone. It was beating and exploding in my chest. “Your . . .” I began, gasping for courage. She pressed her lips together tightly. “Your hus—” Before the word was finished, she had stopped me, her voice loud and insistent as she grabbed Alfredo’s hand. “Inés! That’s enough!” She fixed her eyes on mine and held them. I had been trying all this time to save her from the truth, but at that moment I understood that she already knew it.

Our forest is the most biodiverse on the entire planet!”

In the forest, a morpho is a sign of good luck. But in town, everything is different. Civilization jumbles the messages, distorts the signs. I had learned not to pay much attention anymore.

“They all want to help but they end up hurting.”