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Clothing the Body in Otherness
But in the midst of the incident I had a flash of vision—the image of
the dog on little Alyssa overlaid by images of the Conquest and the
use of the Spanish dogs as instruments of terror. The dense brocade
of little Alyssa’s huipil had functioned as an impenetrable shield for
her torso when the dog knocked her down, but her face had been de-
fenseless. I could not rid myself of the sensation that another layer of
reality had mapped onto the one we had walked.
I did not share this with the others; it seemed an excess of imag-
ination, with our senses wide open and the emotional atmosphere
so tightly strung. Little Alyssa’s wound was treated. Time stretched
out, one hour, two, as we calmed and tried to settle what should hap-
pen. Alyssa and I went outside the house while Vera rested with the
children. Alyssa tried to explain why she was so reluctant to engage
deeply in Vera’s life anymore; she told me the story I have called “A
Dark Illness.”
The second time that Vera was living in Guatemala, when her chil-
dren were young, she came to Alyssa one day, complaining and com-
plaining of deep pain. Alyssa offered to take Vera to the doctor, but
Vera said, no, no it was not that kind of illness. She could tell by the
duration and quality of the pain that active human ill will was behind
it. She explained that a jealous woman, suspecting that Vera was in-
volved with her husband (although it was not true) had consulted a
shaman (Alyssa’s term) to send this illness. Vera would need to go to
a diviner herself to try to counteract the pain that would otherwise
kill her. Alyssa agreed to pay for it. They went to a powerful healer
in the town of Santa Catarina, who did rituals and gave Vera medi-
cine to take.
That night Vera slept, and dreamed. She dreamt she was a bird, a
hawk soaring. She saw another hawk below and swooped down to
engage it in battle. They fought, rising and falling in circles, until the
other bird tumbled from the sky. Vera awoke in the night, and the
pain was gone. In the morning, agitated, she telephoned someone in
the part of town where the other woman lived. She was told that the
woman had tumbled down some stairs in the early morning, break-
ing her arm.
Alyssa now found this incident from their past to be evidence of
