CHAPTER TWELVE
Afew days passed. I lost count. I woke up one morning with the realization I was dependent on busyness. My life at home kept me busy, buzzing like the cicadas outside my treehouse that had kept me up half the night.
At home, I never stopped. I didn’t have time, and when I did allow myself some down-time to recharge, I always had a screen in my face.
I used massages and facials for self-care.
And for distraction, catching a movie with Greg.
But life here in the jungle was next-level stillness and I felt like an addict detoxing from the drug that kept them upright.
I was irritable with nothing to do, with an almost irrational desire to claw myself out of my own skin because I had nothing I could apply my skills to fixing, or my brain to puzzling out.
I’d eaten breakfast alone, despondent, watching the few villagers flit in and out of the large open canopy where the celebrations took place a few nights before.
Sali wasn’t around, so I wandered the village like I had done the past few days, wishing shamefully for someone to injure themselves—if for nothing else than to find something for me to do.
I walked the path up the hill, aimless, noting the cracks in the dirt, the smell of cook fires and breakfast mixing with the pungent scent of earth that seemed to permeate everything around me.
A few women passed me, nodding their heads, but they kept a wide berth, obviously still unsure of the strange woman from another world who had come to their village.
Through the cracks in the huts, I saw movement in the clearing where I had played that god-forsaken game just days before. I approached the field, seeing the same line of children practicing with bows and arrow, their Chief walking slowly behind them, watching, teaching.
I had begun to learn their routine. Breakfast, chores, lessons, whether that be with their bows or with Jahnu to learn English.
Sali told me he taught it to anyone who wanted to learn, feeling it was his way to honor her late husband, Robert, who had brought English to the tribe over fifty years ago.
After their lessons I noticed the children helped the women in the gardens and then had the rest of the day to play until they gathered again for dinner in the communal hut.
I marveled how life in this remote village was not unlike life in America.
They woke, ate, worked, learned, and gathered with their loved ones.
The thought reminded me that none of us is that different from another.
No matter the color of our skin or the place of our birth, there was something undeniably similar about the human race.
I shook my head. Ok, I really needed to find something to do. I was becoming way too philosophical with all this quiet stillness.
I found the same tree I had leaned against, while watching them practice the first time, and slid down into the grass.
For some crazy reason I no longer felt the same anger toward the chief.
What I felt was a challenge. Finally, something to work my brain.
He was standing in the way of my goal. How was I going to convince this controlling chauvinist to let me go?
Ok, maybe I did still feel a little anger towards him—but understandably so.
I imaged a chess board. What was at my disposal to use in this game? What pieces could I move into place so I could maneuver it in a way that got me the outcome I wanted? To win, I had to make a move.
I looked down, biting my lip in concentration when my ample chest caught my eye.
I’d seen Jahnu steal a look at my cleavage a few times.
You couldn’t really miss it in this halter Sali had given me, but an idea began to form.
Before I had fully made up my mind, I rose from the grass and approached the group of children.
Jahnu noticed me as soon as I was close, his eyes flashed with something, what was it—discomfort? Nervousness?
“Halloo, Sid-de-nee,” he said with a dip of his head. He said something to the children in his native tongue, most of whom had turned their bright smiles to me, and then said it again in English, “Say good morning to Sid-de-nee, children.” A chorus of voices rang out in English with their greeting.
“May I try?” I asked as innocently as possible.
“Try?”
“May I shoot the bow?” I motioned to a bow held by a little boy of twelve or so.
“You want to shoot?”
“Why not? Don’t think I can do it?” I asked.
“Have you ever shot a bow before?”
“No, but isn’t that what you’re doing out here? Teaching them?”
One of Jahnu’s eyebrows raised to an impossible height and I felt a momentary reluctance on his part, but he said, “Very well,” and took the bow from the boy, but didn’t hand it to me yet.
“First, I show you.”
We turned toward the targets that sat at the other end of the field. They were just bamboo logs constructed in a square shape with a woven palm mat stretched across the frame. He instructed me by showing me the stance I should take—legs wide—to give myself a strong base from which to shoot.
“You must stand upright. Do not lean forward or back, to the left or right,” he showed me what not to do. “Stand straight and tall like the trunk of a tree.” I purposefully stood in a more narrow stance.
He raised his arms, elbows high, indicating I should mimic him.
“Arm, outstretched, strong, pull de string and find your anchor.” He pulled the bow taught, his fingers resting on the upper part of his giant top lip.
“When you have taken your aim, then, you let go, following your arm back.” He demonstrated, eliciting a twang of vibration off the empty bow. “Now, you try,” he gestured.
I went through the motions without the bow, sloppily, pretending ignorance. I was ignorant of shooting a bow, but my demonstrations were that of a child, purposefully trying to do a bad job. I stood awkwardly, my limbs like wet noodles, wondering if I’d pretended too far.
“Like this?” I said with a twang of cluelessness. I felt like a ridiculous Valley girl.
“No! Straight arms! Strong arms!” he demanded, showing me with his own. Some of the children began showing me with their own bows.
“Maybe you should show me?” I said sweetly, my heart hammering in my chest. What was I doing?
I was banking on his ignorance of social awareness and obvious flirtatious behavior, but was doubting my choice with every second that passed.
What did I have to play this game? Only this, and I silently berated myself for stooping this low. But I was desperate.
He took me in with a flash of his eyes, and a muscle feathered in his jaw.
“Very well,” he said again, and approached me from behind, stepping close so that he could use his body as a frame for my own. I felt his heat immediately. He stood only a foot taller than me and used his foot to nudge mine farther apart. He was not gentle.
“Wider stance,” he said, gruffly. His hands braced the trunk of my body around my ribs, and I sucked in a breath.
“Stand straight, like a tree,” he said firmly, his grip a little tighter than what I thought was necessary.
His hands lifted my arms, their calluses sending gooseflesh over my skin despite the heat between us.
He lifted my back elbow high, and ran his dark hand down the skin of my front arm, gripping my wrist and holding it firmly out in front of us. I marveled at the contrast our skin made next to each other.
“Straight arms. Strong arms.”
I was sure he could hear the beat of my heart being this close, but I obeyed, resuming the stance he desired.
He stepped back and retrieved the bow from the boy, docked it with an arrow, and handed it to me, wrapping my hand around the smooth wood and resuming his position behind me.
This time, however, he spoke softly into my ear.
“Wide stance,” and I felt his hips press into mine.
“Stand straight,” and his hand cupped my ribs.
“Strong arms.” His left hand guided mine to pull the string, the arrow resting on the pointer finger that held it.
“Pull the string and find your anchor.” Now his fingers brushed my upper lip, my skin tingling under his touch and the arrow making a straight line from my mouth down to the handle of the bow.
“Take your aim…and let…go,” his words tickled my ear and made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight.
I breathed out a huff and sent the arrow flying across the field. It hit the target high and to the right and the children cheered, but I was too distracted from the physical encounter to take much notice of what had happened once I’d let the arrow fly.
Jahnu still stood too close and I looked up at him from behind me, our eyes locked into one another. He gripped my upper arm, sharply.
“I know what you do Sid-de-nee,” he whispered fiercely into my hair so the children wouldn’t hear. “I may be a savage man to you, but I am a man, and that I am savage should frighten you,” he said through clenched teeth. “You play wit fire.”
“What are you talking about?” I whirled on him, angry he could see right through me, and I felt as if I’d been put in ‘check’ in our game of chess.
“You insult me by your behavior. You are angry that I keep you here, but did you think it mayhap be for your protection or the protection of my people?”
“How is it for my protection?”
“You are here, in my village. You fall under my authority and our tribe is in conflict.”
“Well, what if I don’t want your protection!? What if I don’t want to be under your authority!?”
“You think I am an evil man for keeping you here, fine! You want the choice to go, then go!” He growled, pointing toward the jungle.
“Well, maybe I will!”
“Do it!”
“Fine!”
I turned. My face flushed and verged on tears.
“You will not last one night in the jungle!” He yelled at my retreating back.