Tree Girl by Ben Mikaelsen Chapter 9

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 ©

5. Highlight 5 quotes that reveal characterization. Label each with a (0+<). Tell what each reveals.

Fear froze my muscles. With soldiers less than ten meters below me, it was as if a big fist punched my throat and squeezed the air from my chest. The soldiers could have seen me through the leaves of the machichi tree if they had looked straight up, but they were too busy shouting and waving their rifles at the scared people who churned frantically about the plaza.

I peeked out from between the leaves at the vendors across the plaza who tried to hide, crouching behind their stands. The soldiers spotted them and opened fire. From my tree I watched men and women falling dead across their stands, spilling fruit, coffee, and vegetables onto the dirt. Goats and sheep bawled and twisted frantically at the ends of their tethers.

Many people ran toward the church near the tree where I hid. Inside, a priest called loudly for everyone to be quiet and not to be afraid. "This is a place of God," he shouted. "God will care for us. If the soldiers hurt us here, we'll all go to Heaven together."

I don't think God heard our prayers that day. A small band of soldiers burst into the church. Muffled shots quieted the priest's voice, then people from the church spilled out through the large double doors, only to be met by other soldiers who herded them like cattle across the plaza, where all the other villagers waited. I spotted Mother Lopez among them.

The soldiers shoved everybody into the center of the plaza and separated them. They shouted loudly, "All men into the church! Leave your knives and machetes outside by the tree. All women go to the municipal building. Children, go to the schoolhouse."

"We're taking a census," shouted one soldier. “This is only for administrative purposes."

I wanted to scream down from the tree, "Don't (126) believe them! They lie!" But I dared not move or make a sound.

Most obeyed the soldiers quickly, fear glistening in their eyes, but a few of the men refused to leave their families. The soldiers approached those men, clubbed them down with the butts of their rifles, and dragged them unconscious or struggling into the church. After three men were clubbed down, the rest left their wives and children without argument.

Some children clung to their mothers and were forcefully pulled away and dragged screaming into the schoolhouse with the rest. One mother held desperately to her baby, but the swing of a rifle broke her arm and a soldier carried her crying baby away, upside down by a single leg.

When the plaza had been cleared of all campesinos and Indios, guards positioned themselves outside each building. Other soldiers brought wood from people's homes and built a big fire in the plaza. I didn't understand at first why they had started such a big fire on a warm day. They separated themselves into three groups. Some soldiers went to the schoolhouse, some (127) to the church, and some to the municipal building. These men joined guards who were already stationed outside each structure.

The goats and sheep kept bawling and twisting against their ropes, trying to escape. Dogs cowered in corners and against walls. The soldiers laughed and shot the animals one at a time, as if for practice. When that shooting ended and every creature lay dead, all was quiet for a few minutes. The only sounds I heard came from the church, where men pleaded to be released and returned to their families. But soon their begging turned to cries of fear, and before long, terrible screams of pain echoed from inside the church. I covered my ears, but nothing could mute the sounds of torture.

I imagined these same sounds echoing through my own canton when my family was killed. I thought also of Alicia and the baby. Could they hear this shooting?'

I had promised Papi that I would care for our family, but I had failed everyone, even Alicia. It hurt to imagine her totally alone under the bush, frightened, holding a sick baby and depending on my return. (128)

A new kind of scream made me look toward the municipal building, where all the women had been taken. The soldiers had dragged a young woman outside. They shoved her into the plaza, ripping off her Corte, her huipil, and then her undergarments. She fought and struggled, but the soldiers held her naked. She bit one of them, and he slapped her so hard that even from up in the tree I saw blood flow from her mouth. I will never forget how the soldiers laughed as they lined up and waited their turn to rape that woman.

It was terrifying to watch what that woman endured. She was so brave. Never once did she scream or cry out from the pain as each new soldier pummeled her on the ground. Some soldiers struck her as they raped her. Her only escape was to close her eyes and turn her head away from the animals who grunted and laughed as they violated her body and her dignity.

Louder than the soldiers' sadistic laughs were the screams of torture echoing from inside the church. The screams would grow louder and louder, then suddenly fall quiet. Then the door of the church opened again (129) and soldiers dragged another body out across the plaza and dumped it onto the flames. The corpses were bloody, with ears and noses and fingers missing.

I felt relief when the last soldier finished raping the woman. Maybe now she would be released or allowed to return to the other women Instead, a soldier' walked up to her as casually as if he were lighting his cigarette. He pulled out his pistol. I looked quickly away as a loud shot echoed up from the plaza. When l peeked again, two soldiers had dragged her body to the fire.

My body trembled as if the tree were shaking. Tears blurred my vision, and I swallowed back, desperate screams. I needed to throw up but didn't dare. For many long minutes I clung to the branches, gasping with anger and fear. At least the woman's suffering had ended. This was the same relief I had felt the day Manuel died from his beating.

Immediately another woman was led struggling from the building and the raping continued, as soldiers argued with each other to go first. For hours I watched from the machichi tree as bodies were thrown into the flames. Soldiers used their knives to pry gold-filled (130) teeth from the corpses before they were dumped into the hungry fire.

I wanted desperately to close my eyes, but I feared being spotted or falling. I tried instead to cover my ears, but I couldn't block out the desperate screams and cries of pain. Many different Mayan languages filled the air with screams and cries that day, but the laughter and joking of the soldiers knew only one language. Spanish.

Before dark, a small number of soldiers gathered under the machichi tree to eat and take short siestas in the shade. I froze like a shadow. If even one soldier glanced up he would spot me; I stared at the bark of the tree and at my skin and at the sky, trying desperately to stay still until the soldiers under the tree woke and returned to their evil.

For the first time I realized how hungry I had become. I had no choice but to ignore my grumbling stomach, but the atrocities that continued in the plaza could not be so easily ignored. Again and again my breath caught in my throat and a bitter taste built in my mouth. I kept swallowing to keep from throwing (131) up. Finally I closed my eyes.

When I opened my eyes again, the sun had set. I hoped that with the coming of night the soldiers would finally grow tired and stop their insanity. Instead, they began drinking and their actions only grew more violent. The darkness kept me from seeing across the plaza, but desperate bloody screams pierced the night and told me that the evil continued.

During the night, soldiers took turns sleeping under the tree, so close to me that I heard their vulgar talk and listened to their snoring. I had thought the soldiers were animals, but not even animals could have slept through such screams. I pinched my eyes closed again, pretending that the screaming was only monkeys and that the echo of gunfire was only thunder. I tried to imagine flowers and sunsets, but beauty was too far away at that moment to be imagined.

I grew nauseated from weariness, and when the killing continued; I feared growing so tired that I might fall from the tree. I had walked all of the previous night and had not slept all day. I also needed to urinate, but I didn't dare. (132)

The screaming kept me awake late into the night. Sometimes I stared up at the sky for long periods watching the clouds make ghostly images as they passed over the moon. The stars looked like bullet holes shot into Heaven. Soon my need to urinate became a desperate thing. Finally, with soldiers sleeping barely twenty feet below me; I silently relieved myself, letting my undergarments and corte absorb the fluid.

By now my legs had gone completely numb and I feared falling. Carefully I squirmed and twisted my body, trying to bring back circulation to my limbs I dared not swing my arms or kick my legs. All through the night I suffered my own silent torture until the sky finally grew light with the coming of dawn. At sunrise, not one rooster crowed.

The coming of morning brought new horrors. Children were brought out from the schoolhouse to watch their parents being tortured and raped. And throughout the atrocities, the sadistic evil laughter of the soldiers echoed among the buildings and up through the branches of the tree. (133)

A helicopter flew over and circled the pueblo, and soldiers looked up and waved, then returned to their killing. I pulled branches over my head, hoping the helicopter wouldn't spot me.

Later that morning, several soldiers took a group of children and marched them around the plaza with sticks on their shoulders like soldiers carrying guns. All of the children cried with fright. The soldiers shouted at them, "Turn right! Turn left! Stop!" When a child stopped too soon or turned wrong, that child was pulled from the formation and punished. I had to tum my eyes away. By the time they finished, every child had been pulled from the formation. None survived.

I actually wondered if maybe the cruel things I was seeing were only a part of a bad dream, part of my own imagination and insanity. Surly humans could not be so cruel. But this nightmare was not a dream from which I could awaken.

When at last the only females left were old and wrinkled grandmothers, the soldiers grew angry and led the remaining few out into the plaza and stripped them naked. Mother Lopez was among these women, but the

(134) soldiers treated her with no deference. At gunpoint the grandmothers were ordered to perform like circus animals.

Most of the old women, including Mother Lopez, had so much dignity that they refused to do what was commanded and instead kneeled quietly on the ground to accept their fate. Angry cursing and threats sounded from the soldiers. When the old women still remained kneeling, loud gunshots left their fragile and aged bodies crumpled on the ground.

My body pained me from sitting motionless on the branch, and at one point I nearly crawled from the tree and surrendered to the soldiers. I wanted to join those sparks from the fire that floated upward. After all I had seen, what reason was there to continue living? But my anger burned as hot as the flames in the plaza. My revenge would be to stay alive and someday speak of what I witnessed.

My body and mind had become so weary by this time that even with the madness below me, my head nodded and I jerked awake again and again to catch myself from falling. I ached so badly that I nearly cried (135) out. Once more I urinated into my clothes. My grip on the branches was so weak now. I couldn't have lifted a broom. I could barely even swallow.

The pile of burning bodies made a small hill in the plaza, and a wretched scorched smell filled the air. Those devils would have kept killing if there had been a thousand people; but by late afternoon every living human and creature had been murdered except me. The soldiers gathered in the center of the plaza, dirt and blood smearing their wrinkled and tom uniforms. Their unshaven faces made them look like beggars and bandits.

The men went to the pilas the big washing sinks near the church where women washed their clothes. They shaved their faces, and took turns washing the blood from their uniforms and skin so that they could return home clean to their own wives and children. I knew that their souls could not be so easily cleaned. After what had happened, I hoped they were all damned to hell.

Before leaving the pueblo, the soldiers spread out in different directions, carrying torches and setting fire (136) to every structure. Within an hour, all of the pueblo blazed with rumbling flames. Even in the tree, heat forced me to pull my huipil over my face. l feared that the branches and leaves might catch fire.

With flames surrounding me, the pueblo became a literal hell of raging fires as the soldiers returned to the plaza carrying their rifles. Their packs bulged with stolen money and jewelry. At last, late in the after, noon, the soldiers walked single file away from the burning pueblo as calmly as if they had just finished another ordinary day of work.

By this time, I had lost all hope. I feared climbing from the tree, but I had no choice. My body was so weak and my mind so numb. My muscles ached and felt frozen ad began working my way down. Inch by inch I crawled from a tree that had taken only seconds to climb the day before. I used my arms to hold on to the branches because my hands were too weak. My legs threatened to collapse with each movement.

Ten feet above the ground, my body simply gave out and. I slipped, crashing from the tree and landing hard on my side, knocking the air from my lungs. I lay (137) there dazed, gasping for breath, and trying to decide if anything was broken. I stared back up into the tree where I'd spent the last two days and was overcome with guilt for having survived. I deserved to die along with everyone else.

Climbing that tree had not been an act of bravery. It was the act of a desperate coward. Everyone else had faced the soldiers except me. I had hidden while others died. By being a Tree Girl, I had been a coward.

There was a time when trees brought me closer to Heaven, but climbing the tree in the plaza had brought me closer to Hell. I made a promise to myself that day. As I lay exhausted and nearly unconscious beneath the machichi tree in the middle of that burning pueblo, with smoke clouding the air and the wretched smell of burned bodies as thick as the haze around me, I made a solemn vow to the earth and to the sky and to every, thing left sacred in the world: Never again would I climb a tree. (138)