State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [121]
“You will,” Dr. Budi said.
Nancy Saturn shook her head. “It’s too soon to say.”
Dr. Saturn and Dr. Budi announced that they were talking too much and the window of time for work would not stay open indefinitely. They excused themselves and began going tree to tree asking the women questions that involved the use of four or five words of Lakashi. Nancy took a cuff out of her bag and was checking Mara’s blood pressure. Marina took the opportunity to look at the trees: a small plastic placard, numbered and dated, had been staked in front of each one. She ran her hands over the scarred bark, sniffed at the wood. Had she seen them by a lake in Minnesota she wouldn’t have given them a second look, or maybe one glance back, just because she had no memory of seeing such yellow bark. The Rapps she would have noticed, looking down at the small clump near her feet. They were like a cluster of exotic sea creatures that had washed up a thousand miles inland. How in the world had Dr. Rapp found this place? How had he known to look past the fire waving tribe on the shore and go a mile into the jungle? Marina cut a path between the trees. What a pleasure it was to walk! What a pleasure to take a large step and be able to see where her foot was landing. She raised her arms above her head and stretched. One by one the women stepped back from the trees and began scratching out whatever splinter of bark had lodged between their teeth with their fingernails. Budi picked a handful of women out of the crowd and wiped down their fingers with alcohol swabs and then pricked them to draw the small pipettes of blood. After making notes she carefully pressed the tubes into a small metal case. On the other side of the stand, Dr. Saturn went through a more challenging interaction as she handed three of the women long cotton swabs and waited while they reached beneath their dresses, made a quick flick with the wrist, and handed the swab back to her. Dr. Saturn then tapped the swab on a slide and on a piece of litmus paper.
“What in the world are you doing?” Marina asked.
“Checking the levels of estrogen in cervical mucus.” Dr. Saturn’s carrying case was a more complicated affair and she sat down on the ground to make her notations on the test tube where she deposited her swabs. “The slides are for ferning.”
“No one does ferning anymore,” Marina said. It was the slightly arcane process of watching estrogen grow into intricate fern patterns on slides. No ferns, no fertility.
Dr. Saturn shrugged. “It’s very effective for the Lakashi. Their estrogen levels are quite sensitive to the intake of bark.”
“How in the world did you convince them to—” She wasn’t sure of the appropriate word. Self-swab?
“That,” Dr. Saturn said, “is Dr. Swenson’s genius. The training was in place a long time before I arrived. I cannot imagine how terrified of her they must have been to have gone along with it. These days it doesn’t even seem to register as an invasion of privacy.” The third Lakashi woman handed over her Q-tip without fanfare and Nancy bowed her head as she accepted it.
When the Lakashi had finished what had been asked of them, they walked off in groups of two and three and four, not looking back at the trees or acknowledging the scientists. They picked up the children who were too small to walk reliably and let the others trail behind as best they could. They were done.
“Do they come every day?” Marina watched as the entire lot of them receded into the thickening woods as if a school bell had been rung. They left without so much as a glance back to the doctors or the trees. Their work was done.
“They chew the bark every five days, though the entire female sector of the tribe doesn’t come on the same day. Their visits are regular. How they figure the five days is beyond us