“Señorita! Señorita!” came a voice.
Betty awoke from a deep sleep, grabbed her robe, and headed for the top of the stairs. “What is it?” she called down.
“It is señor Quiñones. Maruja is in trouble. I think she is dying. Come and help,” came the reply.
Knowing that señor Quiñones’s wife was pregnant, Betty frowned. This was not the job for a linguist! “Go and wake señorita Barbara,” she yelled back. “She can help you better than I.” Barbara Johnson had, in fact, been a midwife back in England.
“I have already spoken to her. She is coming, but she told me to come and get you to help her,” came the voice in the darkness.
“Wait one minute,” Betty said as she turned to hurry to her room and get dressed.
Soon Betty was downstairs, flashlight in hand, walking briskly to the Quiñoneses’ house on the other side of the clearing, ready to do whatever she could to assist Barbara. She prayed as she walked. Maruja Quiñones was having her tenth or twelfth baby; she had lost count. Betty knew that Barbara had delivered Maruja’s last baby, and things had gone very wrong. The baby had died, and Barbara had made it clear to Maruja and her husband that she would not deliver any more of their babies. Maruja needed to go to a hospital in Quito where they had doctors and equipment to help safely deliver another child. But it was evident that the Quiñoneses had not followed the missionary’s advice.
Betty braced herself for what she might find inside. She had helped Barbara out at two previous births, but they had both gone more or less smoothly. She hoped that this one would have a happy ending.
Betty and Barbara were led to a small upstairs room. An oil lamp cast a dull orange glow over the room so that Betty had to strain her eyes to see. Betty was not prepared for what she saw. On a split bamboo bed lay Maruja, crying and wailing. Betty heard a sickly wail behind her and turned to see a baby lying on a pile of rags on the other bed in the room. She walked over to the child, whose chest was barely rising and falling. It did not seem likely to Betty that the baby would survive. But would the mother? Maruja writhed on the bed in agony, making it hard for Barbara to examine her. Her husband tried to comfort her and then broke down in deep sobs and ran from the room. “She’s dying!” Betty heard him wail.
“He’s right about that,” Barbara said calmly and matter-of-factly to Betty in English. “She has a prolapsed uterus. She’s in terrible pain and very weak.”
“Help me! Please help me!” Maruja screamed. “I can’t stand the pain. Please help me!”
Barbara told Betty to warm some plantains in the ashes of the fogón. When Betty had done this, she placed them around Maruja’s neck to act as a sort of hot-water bottle, and then they elevated her feet.
“I warned them numerous times that something like this could happen and they should go to a hospital for the delivery. There is little I can do for her here. Her husband will have to take her to the small Catholic hospital in Santo Domingo. Perhaps she will hold onto life until they get there. The jungle women are strong and seem to have a way of holding onto life in the face of the most dire situations.”
Betty nodded. She had already noticed that about the women of the jungle.
“I will go and explain the situation to her husband. You stay here and comfort her,” Barbara said as she slipped out of the room.
By now Maruja’s wails had turned to whimpers. Betty stood close by the bed and tried to comfort her. Then she heard Maruja begin to mumble. Betty leaned in to hear what she was saying.
“Goodbye. Goodbye to all my friends. Goodbye to my family, whom I love. Goodbye to my newborn son, whom God gives and takes away his mother. I commend him to all of you to care for him. I am going now. I bid you all goodbye.”
At that moment Maruja’s husband entered the room to gather up his wife for the trip to the hospital. He took one look at her and began to wail. “She is already dead! She is already dead!” Tears poured down his cheeks, and he beat the wall with the sides of his fists.
Betty looked down at Maruja. The mouth that only moments before had uttered words was no longer moving. Maruja’s jaw was fixed and silent. This was the first dead person Betty had ever seen, and she turned her head away in sadness.
Betty and Barbara slipped out of the Quiñoneses house on the far side of the clearing and made their way to their respective houses. Weary and defeated, Betty paused outside by a bucket of water to wash her hands before going back to bed.
No matter how hard Betty tried, sleep would not come for her. In its place were the hideous scenes of dying mothers, screaming babies, and grown men beating on the walls. The question came to her over and over again: why had God allowed Maruja Quiñones to die? Wouldn’t it have been a much better witness if He had miraculously reached down and saved her life, leaving the little baby boy and the dozen or so other children in the house with their mother?
Betty turned over and tried to find a comfortable position. Tears rolled down her cheeks and onto her pillow. In the distance she could hear wailing coming from the direction of the Quiñoneses house as relatives and friends grieved Maruja’s death. She could also hear the sound of hammering. A coffin was being constructed for the dead woman.
“So this is missionary life, real missionary life,” Betty said to herself under her breath, “with all its frustrations and disappointments, all those feelings of not being able to do enough, to bring enough changes—to really communicate God’s love to the people who need it the most.
“Thank God I have my work with Don Macario. At least God answered my prayers and brought me one good person to help me with the task of translation,” Betty thought as she finally drifted off into a fitful sleep.
Chapter 12
Jungle Justice
January 25, 1953, was a day Betty Howard would never forget. Betty sat on the end of her bed reading her Daily Light devotional book. The verse for the day was from First Peter: “Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers in Christ’s suffering.” Betty closed the book and bowed in prayer.
Bang! Bang! Betty cocked her head to listen. She had heard the unmistakable sound of gunshots. The sound was a little closer to the house than usual but nothing too out of the ordinary, since the Colorados and the local men all hunted with guns.
Once again Betty closed her eyes to pray. Then she heard shouts and screams beginning to permeate the air. Next she heard the sound of the hooves of galloping horses and people running. Suddenly the hair on Betty’s neck stood up as she heard Doreen scream from downstairs, “They’ve killed Don Macario!”
Betty sprang from the bed and sprinted down the stairs. “Don’t let it be true, don’t let it be true,” she prayed.
Pulling open the front door, Betty heard a volley of excited voices. “They’ve murdered Don Macario. Don Macario has been shot!” She stopped, unsure what to do next, when Don Lorenzo, one of the members of the Brethren Assembly, came running up.
“Is it true?” Betty asked.
Don Lorenzo nodded, gasping for breath. It took him several attempts to tell what he knew of the story. Apparently Don Macario and the Quiñones family had quarreled over whether Don Macario or the Quiñoneses had the right to plant banana trees in a cleared patch of jungle close by. As they argued, someone—Don Lorenzo was not sure who—had stepped up and shot Don Macario point-blank. “He dropped down dead. His body still lies over there where he fell.” As he spoke, Don Lorenzo pointed to a spot at the edge of the jungle where a crowd had gathered.
“I’m going straight over there,” Doreen said.
“No, don’t do that,” Betty replied. “Wait until we get the authorities. It could be dangerous.”
Doreen took no notice and marched off in the direction of the crowd. Betty watched her from the porch of her house. Soon Doreen was back, leading four men, each carrying the corner of a blanket. On the blanket was Don Macario’s dead body. Betty let out an involuntary gasp. This was the first time she had ever seen a murder victim.
Before long, Don Macario’s body was laid out on Barbara’s porch. No one knew what to do with it. One of the women of the village had galloped off to Santo Domingo to get the authorities, and the body could not be buried until some kind of investigation had been undertaken.
In the meantime, the body acted like a magnet to everyone within a five-mile radius of San Miguel. Nursing mothers, small children, old men, and teenage girls all appeared on the porch, eager for a chance to examine the dead body and discuss the circumstances of the death.
The scene repulsed Betty, but she too stayed on Barbara’s porch in a personal vigil. She was aware that Don Macario’s death had a different implication for her than for anyone else standing around. In front of her lay her link to the Tsahfihki language—and the key to getting a Bible to the Colorado Indians. Don Macario was the only person she knew who was fluent in both Tsahfihki and Spanish. And now he was dead—killed in a senseless act of violence.
Betty thought back to her morning devotion: “Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers in Christ’s suffering.” She shook her head. Did Saint Peter really have this in mind when he wrote those words? It was one thing to read about rejoicing when a difficult thing occurred but quite another to rejoice in the midst of such a situation. How could she rejoice when someone had just brutally shot her only informant? How would such an act help to bring the gospel to an isolated people like the Colorados?
Hours passed. Arguments broke out between the mourners and the curious observers. Some said that Don Macario was murdered because he was helping Betty with her translation work; others said that he did not have the right to plant the bananas trees. Betty did not know what to think. She didn’t even care about the details of Don Macario’s death. All she knew was that a good Christian man who had been willing to help her in her linguistics work was now gone.
It was midafternoon by the time two police officers and another missionary named Bill rode into San Miguel. Betty had not met Bill before, but she had heard about him and how he had served as a missionary in the area for a long time and was familiar with the local customs. She felt relieved, assured that Don Macario’s body was now in good hands. However, as was often the case in the jungle, things did not go smoothly.
The taller of the two police officers announced that he could not begin his investigation until he knew what had happened. This made no sense whatsoever to Betty—an investigation was supposed to find out what had happened. But there was no reasoning with the officer. And even though he heard from many witnesses as to how the killing had occurred, the officer insisted that someone perform an autopsy and retrieve the bullets so that he could be sure that the man had been shot.
Betty’s stomach lurched at the thought, but Bill agreed to perform the autopsy. The scene that followed was one Betty knew she would never forget, even if she wanted to. Bill knelt beside the corpse and after some time was able to locate the bullets. This seemed to satisfy the police officer that Don Macario had been murdered, and now the officer could get on with the investigation.
Betty then turned her attention to the police officers. The officers walked over to the bushes where Don Macario had fallen after being shot, shined their flashlights into them, and then beat the bushes for a minute or so.
“No one is here now,” one of the officers declared.
“No one,” the other officer agreed. “We have a victim but no suspects,” he added, looking up at the sky.
“Too bad we can’t stay any longer, but it will be dark soon. We must be going,” the first officer commented.
By now Bill had washed himself up as best he could, and he and the two police officers mounted their horses and galloped off in the direction of Santo Domingo.
