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leeches off my skin.
    When I was twelve I tried out my mother’s razor on my legs. The blade was loose and I managed to scrape a strip of skin off my shin before pain convinced me to jerk the razor away. By then it was too late, and blood seeped out of a two-inch wound. After firmly scolding me, my mother took the greatest care of my wound.
    Now I was at the mercy of a native jabbing at my beautiful legs to burn off engorged leeches. The thought of it nauseated me.
    My caretaker pulled the worms off one by one, and despite being burned they did not come off easily. I could feel their tenacious grip on my skin. Leeches do not squeal, but in my mind they put up a horrid fuss when forced to let go. I imagined that each took a chunk of my flesh with it. When the man dug into one on my inner thigh, a full foot above my knee, I felt I might pass out.
    Job completed, he coated my arms and legs with a cool mud and bound me up again. He was only protecting his possession, but to the extent that a Southern belle from Atlanta was able to appreciate such generosity, I suppose I did. Somehow I got it into my head that the mud’s awful odor might keep carnivores larger than leeches from taking a bite out of me.
    Hood still over my head, I was hauled back into the canoe and we pushed off the bank. Then we were sliding through the river once again.
    I could hear the steady breathing of the two men on the canoe that carried me, otherwise only an occasional cough or the sound of spitting betrayed our journey through the infested jungle. I guessed that they saw no need to advertise their passage along this river, perhaps because it was enemy territory.
    It’s interesting how the mind can dredge up the most hidden bits of knowledge when left to itself for long stretches. I knew next to nothing about Irian Jaya, because the missionary who’d first spoken of the island had come from New Guinea proper, the tamer, eastern half of an island the size of California.
    That night the bag was again removed from my head in a heavy downpour. Again a gourd of water was tilted to my lips, and again I sucked at the water in long, deep drafts. For the second time since my capture I was able to see the leader, who tended to me. It was he who first gave me food.
    I say food, but at the time I wondered if it was the mud scraped off the bottoms of his feet. The gray paste that he held in his fingers and pushed into my mouth tasted like a flour glue that had started to rot. Something squishy was mixed with the starchy compound. I know now that it was a sago grub—a thick white worm half the length of a finger that feeds on the pith of the sago palm.
    My mother had always claimed that I was the pickiest of eaters. I was the last of her daughters to try fish, the last to taste escargot—and then only once, after my uncle coaxed me into it with a bribe of twenty dollars. I liked my meat well done and my hamburgers plain. I could barely handle biscuits and gravy, and mashed potatoes were passable only as long as they weren’t too smooth. With these exceptions, no gooey thing ever went into my mouth.
    But I hadn’t eaten in nearly three days, and so I stared into the man’s brown eyes and swallowed his offering whole, desperate for any kind of nourishment.
    The leader returned my stare without interest before pushing another handful of the paste into my mouth. He then pulled the sack over my head and left me free to breathe without the gag.
    Despite the heavy rain, I slept that night.
    The next morning my caretaker repeated the procedure. Off with the leeches. On with the mud. He replaced the gag, this time over the hood. Back in the canoe. Up the river.
    No speaking, no chanting, no laughter, nothing but the steady breathing and gurgling of paddles as they were drawn through the water.
    I was only half-alive. Deadened by sorrow over my child’s fate. Suffocated by self-pity. Barely strong enough to lie still, knowing that any attempt to change my predicament