We departed three hours later than planned, because whenever Octavio telephoned the bed and breakfast, the staff told him I was out. The delay benefited us. If we had set forth in the morning, the ending of the day would have been different.
We were not the only ones planning on visiting a curandero. On the outskirts of the City, there was a van in front of us packed with people. It turned left; we continued south. “They are going to a curandero,” Octavio said. “Someone is taking a group for treatment.”
We arrived at the town closest to where the curandera lived. I wanted to buy candles for her, and we both wanted sodas. We stopped at a store. “No time to loiter,” Octavio warned.
The main street was empty of traffic except for an occasional man on a bicycle or a driver slumped on the seat of a horse-drawn cart. The reins were slack, the horses’ heads bent. It was too hot for them to step smartly. Rows of limp purple triangles dangled over the street.At the edge of town, the paving ended, and the car jolted onto a dusty dirt road. Trees lined either side. Beyond the trees were fields under cultivation. A quick turn to the left, and the road ended.
“Las huertas,” Octavio announced. “The orchards. From here, we go on foot.” The heat was intense. We faced a long walk through the orchards and up a neighboring mountain. The prospect was daunting.
A family lived at the beginning of the orchards. We parked beside their house. Children, laughing and playing, raced back and forth among the fruit trees. The woman of the house asked us to join her in the yard where we sat on sagging chairs. Conversation was leisurely. We relaxed. It was refreshing to rest and have a woman with a beautiful smile and an easy manner talk with us. She knew where we wanted to go and whom we wanted to see.
A man emerged from the house. Sleep clung to his face and eyes. He rifled through a batch of papers and filed them in a satchel. “The assistant to the curandera is working in town. You know her? I will take you to her. I will show you the house.”
Octavio muttered, “She must be doing housework.”
The man mounted a motor scooter. We thanked our hostess and drove off behind him. We followed our escort, not so far behind that we would lose sight of him, but not so close as to choke him with dust. In Oaxaca, one extends good manners not only to those who offer hospitality but to travelers on the road.
Before entering town, our escort checked to make sure we were behind him. He turned down several side streets and turned right onto a street lined with brightly colored houses like toy blocks. Without warning, he braked in front of #36, a turquoise blue cube. He waved his right hand towards the house, accelerated the scooter and sped out of sight.
Octavio parked in front of the house and disappeared through its open door. He raced back. “Hide your camera. Come quickly. They are beginning.” I knew in a flash that the woman we sought was not doing housework. I checked my watch. It was 3 p.m. on a Tuesday. Would we ever find this place again? Do they heal at the same time every week?
Shading my eyes from the glare, I stepped through the door into a cool, windowless room furnished with a double bed, several chairs and a television on a table. Ahead of me, Octavio was stepping through a door in the opposite wall. Following him, I too went through the door and out into the blinding sun of the rear courtyard.
Octavio whispered, “Espiritualistas. Espiritualistas contact the dead. They go into a trance and bring the dead to visit you. They’ve just started healing. My friend is helping. Let me do the talking.”
The courtyard was hidden from the street. High walls concealed it from the prying eyes of neighbors. In the lower left corner was the treatment room; in the upper right corner, the pharmacy. Rustic wooden benches were placed along the walls.
A young man who carried himself with unmistakable authority greeted us at the entrance. He wore a spotless white jacket over street clothes. Admission was impossible without his approval. There was no mistaking his, “You are not eligible.” Tourists were not welcome.
“We are believers.” was Octavio’s simple, but effective response. His words were the magic formula.
The receptionist ushered us to an empty bench directly across from the door to the treatment room. Clusters of women stood or sat together on benches. They talked while their children darted in and out of the house or peeked around a corner to see if they could tempt us to play hide-and-seek.
In the lower half of the treatment room, a man with a black moustache sat side to us. His straight-backed chair was placed on a low platform. He wore a loose white cotton shirt and white cotton pants. His head tilted down, his hands were clasped in his lap, and his voice rose and fell in murmuring cadences. He was in a trance.
Above him on the wall was a picture of a hand severed at the wrist. A flaming candle sprouted from the tip of each finger. The healing hand.
A young woman, wearing a white lab coat, stood in front of him. She held a spiral ring notebook open in her left hand and a ball point pen in her right hand. She was recording his channeled messages,
Strange noises emanated from the room. Animal-like hissing sounds. We couldn't see who was making them, but the persistent, piercing sounds prepared our minds for the cleaning. Suddenly the receptionist conducted us to a bench beside the entrance to the treatment room. We were promoted to emergency cases thanks to Octavio’s vivid account of our hike.
A nod from the receptionist, and Octavio rose and entered. His muffled voice retold the details of our ordeal: the witches, the smoke coming out of the ground and my difficulties. “You both experienced negative energy.” I heard. “You were affected more than the American, because you were in a cave.”
While I waited for Octavio’s cleaning to finish, I concentrated on memorizing the Spanish phrases that were posted beside the door to the treatment room. Each patient repeated them before the limpia began. Even though Octavio would be with me and had promised to prompt me if I forgot them, I wanted to hear the words resound in my head and feel my lips form the syllables.
“Tu salud es
En nombre del padre espiritualizale
En hijo y espiritu santo.”(1)
Someone called my name. It was my turn. My heart beat faster. The receptionist and a short, slender woman in an ankle-length cotton dress with her long hair tied back waited in the open door. I stepped into the room. Nothing made sense until my eyes adjusted to the darkness. A woman stood in front of me, and another at my left. Both looked and dressed like the woman who had welcomed me at the door. For a moment, I wondered if they were triplets.
I heard myself speaking the Spanish phrases in a clear, firm voice. The cleaning began. The woman facing me reached up and signed crosses over my body, favoring my left side. Her fingers curled into claws. She dragged them downward through the air in front of the right and left sides of my body. Down they went from my shoulders to my feet. Down went my heavy energy.
Constantly hissing, she threw the heavy energy away from me into the air behind her. So loud, so penetrating and so realistic was the noise that it was difficult to believe it came from a human. The sounds filled the dusky room. The hissing, interspersed with Spanish invocations to the Trinity, Spanish prayers and indistinct chanting, reverberated throughout my body. Her fingers again signed me with the Cross, especially in front of the heart.
Gentle hands slowly turned me clockwise so that the curandera could clean my back. I faced a shrine banked with statues of saints and flickering candles. Tender hands turned me back.
An assistant handed me a small glass of water. “Take three sips.” Then, “Drink the rest. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” More invocations, more crossings and another cleaning of the area over the front of my body followed. One final time the Trinity was invoked; one final time the sign of the Cross was traced over me.
The curandera's right hand shot upwards to the space in front of my heart. She plucked something out and violently flung it behind her. Her hands swiftly moved in the air, raking the air up and down over my left and right sides. As her hands moved, a fountain of energy rushed up and cascaded down inside me. The cleaning was done. It was a success.
Octavio joined me as I drew near the altar. We bowed our heads and offered prayers of gratitude. As we exited through the rear door, we almost stepped on a woman who was resting on a mat on the floor. She was recuperating after an especially rigorous treatment. Her blanket-wrapped body was a formless shape; only her black eyes glittered with light.
We sat on benches in the rear of the courtyard across from the dispensary. A black cloth doll hung in its only window. After our prescriptions were delivered to the short, plump pharmacist, he busied himself preparing the medicines. He brought them to us, keeping them tightly clasped in his hand until he explained how to take them. He wanted us to be very clear about our regimens.
He handed both of us bottles of slightly salted water. We were to drink three small glasses of the water morning, noon and night for seven days. He gave me a second bottle. It was filled with thick, brown aromatic balsam.
I was to prepare a mixture of one red rose, two fingers of sugar, a squirt of the balsam mixture and a squirt of alcohol. He instructed me to take a cup-shaped gourd and pour nine cups of the preparation over me on Sunday at noon (2).
For each cup that I poured over me, I would recite in sequence the following nine phrases: “I love God the Father; I love God the Son; I love the Holy Spirit. I believe in God the Father; I believe in God the Son; I believe in the Holy Spirit. I await God the Father; I await God the Son; I await the Holy Spirit.”(2) At noon on Sunday, I would be in the airport in Mexico City.
Octavio listened intently while the pharmacist cautioned him to complete all of his treatment. Octavio had a more complicated routine, because he had been exposed to so much heavy energy. He needed to place three chrysanthemum flowers in the water tank on the roof of his house. In addition, he would have to purify the corners of the rooms in his house, especially his bedroom. A candle must burn in front of the entrance to his house for seven days and seven nights.
The local women showed no signs of impatience at our prescriptions being prepared first. When it was their turn, they focused their attention on the words of the pharmacist before reaching out to receive their bottles wrapped in newspapers and brown bags. Their work-worn hands gently rested the cures in commodious straw baskets.
Everyone left at the same time: women, children, Octavio and I. We observed the women's etiquette as we filed out of the courtyard. We imitated them as they bowed their heads in a short prayer when they passed the treatment room. Our cleanings had cost nine dollars each. Copying the women, we dropped a few extra coins into the donation box before we stepped into the house and out to the street.
It was a relief to feel in balance. Although the morning had held unexpected and unexplained obstacles, we had arrived at the right time, in the right place and on the right day to participate in a healing.
“It is often the way with things of the Spirit,” said Octavio.
“And don’t forget, we both are wearing white,” I reminded him.
Confident that our spiritual bodies had been taken care of, we attended to our physical bodies with soup and tacos from a local restaurant. We lingered over our meal, talking about family life, the rapid pace in America, the lyrics of rap songs and the skyscrapers in New York City. Learning that workers eat breakfast and drink coffee during their morning commute to work, Octavio shook his head. He called my attention to a man and a little boy sitting side-by-side on the curb at the edge of the park across the street. “It is too bad to be in such a rush,” he said. “Everyone needs time to listen to the wind and watch the birds.”
(1) Your health is in the name of the Father; he spiritualizes you in the Son and the Holy Spirit.
(2) ”Que sus oraciones no falter en su hogar
En crudo bano domingo e las 12 de medio dia
9 jicaradas
1 rosa roja
2 dedos de azucar
Un chorro balsamo preparado
Un chorro de alcohol
9 palabras
1. amo a dios padre
2. amo a dios hijo
3. amo a dios espiritu santo
4. creo en dios padre
5. creo en dios hijo
6. creo en dios espiritu santo
7. espero de dios padre
8. espero de dios hijo
9. espero de dios espiritu santo”
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