They call it the tooth. You can't see it unless you are standing at the edge of the cliff. It is a pointed rock that rises from the bottom of the valley. In a soft wind you can smell the decaying flesh of those who were not thrown far enough to fall beyond it. The smell makes the conquistadores angry and they often hit us.
But it was they who threw the bodies. How could we throw anything, our hands and feet tied as they are?
The ropes are just long enough that we can climb the ladders into and out of the mine. But not long enough to stand. The conquistadores said our backs should be bent like animals. That way we can carry heavier baskets of ore through the tunnels and up the ladders to the fire pits.
I don't remember when they first attached the ropes and the basket to me but I have seen them do it many times to the children they bring to the mines. One of the conquistadores is a master of knots and knows how to weave strings into themselves to make rope loops that no one can ever undo. When he first puts them on the children's wrists and ankles they cry because of the pain. And because of the pain they don't notice for days that they can no longer stand up or walk. In time the use of the hands comes back but not the feet. We walk on our knees.
I also don't remember exactly how it was when they came to our village. It was at night. I saw them killing the animals with their long spears, but maybe it wasn't only the animals. The pigs slept with us in the huts. Maybe the cries were those of my father and mother, maybe the pigs. One of the soldiers lifted me by the arm and took me with him. I remember nothing else.
Sometimes I try to think about what it was like before the conquistadores arrived. But very little comes. I cannot see my mother's face. What I do not forget is the way she rocked me in her arms. Sometimes I rock myself the same way but then I start to cry and stop the rocking.
It's not really true that we all walk on our knees. Some don't walk at all. They roll or slide or make little jumps. That's how we give each other names. Snake twists her body back and forth in a way that leaves a curving track in the dust. Rabbit bucks forward in crazy jerks. If you make little running movements on your wrists and knees you are called Pica or Mouse. Wiggle your feet and you are Rat. Puma moves without making noise. Then there are Armadillo, Llama, Parrot, and many others. Not everyone has a name.
But I have a name. Scorpion. It's not because I can sting. They call me Scorpion because of the way my feet curled back after that tied on the ropes. Sometimes they call me Little Scorpion for I am very small.
We speak the names only in our own language. But we speak them quietly to each other because we are not permitted to speak our language. The conquistadores do not understand us when we talk so they don't know our names.
They don't want us to know their names either. Again and again, they demand that we call them conquistadores.
But they don't need names for us. We all do the same work. They wake us before dawn and push us toward the mines, making a lot of noise because we are still full of sleep. And at first it is hard to move because our hands and feet, where the ropes are attached, still hurt from the day before.
It doesn't matter that it is before dawn. No light reaches the bottom of the shaft anyway. We know our way in the dark. Sometimes we fall asleep in the holes. The conquistadores know this and it makes them angry but the holes are often too small for them to come after us. Besides, they hate it in the mines because of the heat.
When we chip away enough stone to fill the baskets, we begin the climb back up the ladders. There are so many ladders that some of the children can't carry more than one basket to the fire pit before night comes. Most of us can come up twice, some three times or more—at least when we first come to the mines.
How many baskets we carry matters because of the food. Until we come up with a basket we can eat nothing. Then only a little. There is more with each basket. But some of the children cannot eat the food. The dry corn hurts their teeth and the water makes them sick and they get the shitting disease. These children are not long in the mines. Neither are those who have the coughing that doesn't stop.
The conquistadores are no happier if we bring up four baskets than if we bring up one. Even four are not enough. They want more, always more. They are afraid of a man who comes sometimes to visit them. This man wears a silver helmet so large you can hardly see his eyes. We call him the Tortoise. He is always followed by a troop of soldiers, armed, and dressed in leather, who crouch behind him saying nothing. The Toads.
Once it happened that I came to the top with a basket just behind Snake. She was smaller than the rest of us but also sick from the food. She could not have made it up the last set of ladders if I had not been pushing her with my shoulder.
At first Tortoise did not notice us. He sat in the middle of the camp and waited until all the silver and gold was carried from the fire pits and laid before him. Then he slowly measured it all on his weighing device. We don't see this often because we are usually in the mines. But this time it was the same as always. When he finished weighing the silver and gold he carefully tied it into separate leather pouches. When he looked up his face was fat with anger. He yelled at the conquistadores like they yelled at us, calling them sluggards and fools who, when they weren't sleeping, were trying to steal these treasures from the Queen.
Then the Toads would walk among them looking into the face of each without saying a word. Tortoise said he should throw them off the cliff like they do with the children.
Then Tortoise turned in our direction and watched as Snake slid toward the fire pit. Several times she fell on her side. I pushed her back up but she fell again.
"How may baskets can this one carry?" the Tortoise asked the conquistadores.
"Today, one. Sometimes none at all."
"And this one?" he asked, pointing at me.
"Today, four."
"But you still feed this sick one? And with the Queen's food?"
No one answered.
Tortoise turned to the Toads and made a gesture with his hand like he was brushing away an insect.
One of them lifted Snake by her ropes. She hung from his hand like a loose sack. Her whimpering annoyed Tortoise. He made the gesture again.
The Toad stepped to the edge of the cliff and looked down over it. He stepped back, swung Snake around twice, and threw her outward in a soaring arc. I watched her twisting in the air until she disappeared beyond the tooth.
Tortoise held up the small pockets of silver and gold then pointed at one of the conquistadores. "You're next. Then you. And you. All of you. Unless…" he tossed the pouches loosely from hand to hand.
It's not only Tortoise the conquistadores are afraid of. Because they don't understand our language, they are afraid when they hear us talk with each other. They say we make the noises of animals, or worse, of demons.
But we have learned some of their words. We whisper them to each other at night. We laugh because they make such ugly sounds in our mouths. Mas rapido. Oro. Comida. Mierda. We also have names for a few of them in their language.
Las Rocas is a short fat man who wears a long brown dress. He is las Rocas because he has no hair on the top of his head and it has so many bumps it looks like it is made of the rocks we dig out of the mines. He wears a chain around his neck that holds a little silver man nailed to crossed sticks. He talks to the little man more than to the conquistadores, and he speaks in a different language, one that most of the conquistadores do not seem to know. They don't listen to him anyway. They only laugh, and when they have been drinking from their earthen jugs they often push him back and forth to each other like he was one of the little rubber balls we played with in our village. But now and then he too drinks from the jugs and when the conquistadores are asleep he comes to the pens where they tie us at night and talks to us about someone called el Dios.
I don't know who el Dios is but he seems to be someone who speaks to las Rocas, but secretly, like we speak to each other so no one hears. I don't understand what el Dios says to las Rocas but when he repeats it to us it sounds like Tortoise speaking. Las Rocas also talks about a big conquistador named Jesús. This Jesús is so big that he could come into the mines and carry us out into the sunlight and even untie our ropes. But before he does this we must first love el Dios. If we don't the big conquistador will not throw us over the tooth but push us into a dark hole, darker and hotter than the mines.
When we first heard about such a big conquistador, it seemed funny to us. But when las Rocas saw us trembling with laughter, trying not to make any noise, he shook the little silver man at us and said he never forgets when people are bad and that we will all pay for our laughter. But this only made us laugh harder. Once las Rocas got so angry that he fell on one of the children and did on him like the animals do.
Las Rocas is not the only one who comes at night. Many of the others come too. But they never say anything and we try not to look at them.
There is only one other we laugh at. This is el Cerdo. We call him that because of the sounds he makes when he lies on the children. He is also different in another way. He likes only the boys.
Not long after I came to the mines, el Cerdo opened the pen and looked at us. From the way he was steadying himself on the gate I saw that he had been drinking from the large jug. He came to me and lifted my shirt. When he saw I was a girl he pushed me aside and fell on Parrot who was curled up next to me. He made his pig sounds for a long time, for such a long time I knew he was not going to make himself happy. He hit Parrot with his fists and made his sounds again. But he still was not happy. Parrot was not small but el Cerdo lifted him like was no heavier than the rags Parrot was wearing and dragged him across the pen to the edge of the cliff.
The next day we could see Parrot's body hanging from the tooth. The conquistadores were furious with el Cerdo because it would soon fill the camp with its smell. They told him that he could never again enter the pen. But they soon forgot they said this.
One day when we came up from the mines, we found that some of the conquistadores had left and new ones had come. As we crawled into the light and the new ones saw how we were tied and the way we moved, there was fear in their eyes. They stepped back as though to touch us would make them sick.
Soon, however, they got used to the way we are and they treated us no differently from the others. Except for one of them. This one had the face of a boy but he was the tallest conquistador any of us had seen. His long arms looked like they had been made by the master of knots.
That night several of the children whispered that this new conquistador must be las Rocas' Jesús. This made them all laugh. But I didn't laugh. Something had happened that day that made this conquistador different from all the others. It was nothing anyone else could have known about because I saw it in his eyes when he looked at me.
No one had ever looked at me like that. When any of the others look, it is because I am a girl and they want to be with me like el Cerdo is with the boys. Not this one. Not this Jesús.
This made me sad, sadder than anything else that ever happened in the mines. Whenever he came near me I had strange thoughts. For the first time I knew how much I wanted to be free of the ropes. More than anything I wanted Jesús to pull off the ropes with his big arms. I wanted him to take my hand and jump with me way beyond the tooth. Saddest of all, I knew when he looked at me that he wanted to do this too.
It was not long before the other conquistadores saw that Jesús treated me differently from the other children. They began to laugh at him and call him names in their language I could not understand. But he didn't seem to mind.
The day I first got the coughing that doesn't stop I came to the top of the mine with the only basket I could carry. Like Snake, I could not crawl with the rocks to the fire pit without repeatedly falling on my side.
When Jesús saw me he held up his hand and I stopped where I had fallen. He picked me up, the basket still full, and carried me to the fire pit. The conquistadores at the fire pit stopped in their work and watched as Jesús carefully picked the rocks out of my basket and threw them into the flames. This time the laughing grew into something more. They circled around him, seizing him by the breastplate and pulling his arms back. Jesús did nothing to resist them. The look of sadness in his face didn't change.
They pulled up my shirt and began yelling and pointing at me and at Jesús. Other conquistadores came. There was a crowd and much laughter. They were pushing Jesús, demanding that he do to me right there what they do to us in the pens at night. Still, he didn't move. When they threw him down on me and pushed his face toward mine I saw something new in his eyes. I thought of what las Rocas said the little man on the silver cross would do to us when he was angry. Jesús stood up, pushing the conquistadores back as easily as he had lifted me with the basket. Then they too saw what was in his eyes and backed away. The laughing ceased. No one spoke. Jesús took me up in his arms and carried me to the pen and made a sign that I should go to sleep even though there was still daylight.
The coughing came and went. Some days I could bring up two or even three baskets. Once I fell asleep in the mine and stayed there for a whole night. Coming up less often, I had less to eat. Then I got the shitting disease. To get up the ladders at all I would need the others to help me like I helped Snake.
The last day I was in the mines I brought up only one basket, almost riding on the shoulders of those beneath me. When I came to the top, I saw that Tortoise was there.
He was as angry as ever, scolding and threatening the new conquistadores as he had those who had been there before. Then he asked to see all the children. It was some time before we were gathered in one place. He walked among us, turning us over with his foot or grabbing us by the arm to test our strength. When he came to me he could see that I had the shitting disease.
"This one," he said. "She can do no more work. And you are still feeding her? Why? She will be dead in days."
No one answered. He made the sweeping sign with his hand. Still no one moved.
"What? Will no one get rid of this one?"
Finally, el Cerdo stepped forward. He looked down at me and smiled like he does when he falls on one of the boys.
There was a sudden movement in the crowd and loud voices. Several of the conquistadores were pushing Jesús forward.
"Make him do it," they called. Soon they were all chanting it together.
Tortoise shrugged his shoulders and made the brushing gesture.
Jesús knelt at my side. He had never spoken a word to me but his face was always full of words. When he lifted me I felt the silent movement in his chest. It was the way we are when we laugh at las Rocas without making sounds. But he wasn't laughing.
He took me to the edge. He rocked me for a moment like a mother. When he threw me I knew at once I would go far beyond the tooth.