Chikuatta Review

It was also the only thing eleven-year-old Sofía’s grandmother said before she died.

“Your grandmother didn’t find this word in a dream,” her mother whispered. “She buried it. Forty years ago. When the loggers came.” chikuatta

When Clara found out, she did not scream. She walked into the jungle alone for three days. When she returned, she carried this gourd. She said, “Chikuatta” —which, her mother now told Sofía, was not Yanesha or Spanish. It was also the only thing eleven-year-old Sofía’s

Her mother took the gourd with trembling hands. For the first time, Sofía saw that her mother was not just tired. She was afraid. Not of the jungle or the spirits. Of remembering. Forty years ago

The loggers. Sofía had heard the story as a fairy tale: men with chainsaws who arrived in the village when her mother was a girl. They had offered money for the oldest trees—the ceibas, the ironwoods, the ones the Yanesha called the standing elders . Abuela Clara had refused to show them. One night, the loggers came anyway. They didn’t find the trees. But they found Clara’s youngest son—Sofía’s uncle, a boy of seven—playing near the creek.

From the kitchen, her mother heard it. She stopped stirring the beans. She smiled a small, broken smile.