What I heard in this very moving book is that abused children will never forget those experiences, however hard they try. Told in a symbolic and magical way, we journey with Dominque from the Angel Falls’ Lost World through her early years in the centre of Paris and the demise of her parents. Despite the underlying pain and violence, more suggested than factual, this book is a very special and enriching reading experience.
The sword-billed hummingbird is a living needle, mending my wounds with moss and orchid fibres.
The black jaguar licks my face. He licks my teeth and tongue, removing all trace of Papa. When he’s finished, I’m clean. I can leave my childhood. Papa vanishes like morning mist wiped by sunrays.
The doctor closes the door after him. He wonders if I’m alive, this girl wrapped in gauze like a straitjacketed hummingbird, this girl with monkey tails she refuses to comb, whose caves are scarred. She’s pretending she’s dead now; it’s safe to leave her. The doctor packs his bag, says goodbye to her mother.
When I next see Papa, after thirty years have passed the way a waterfall pours from a plateau one kilometre high, he will see the jaguar hairs in my ears, the V cuts at the sides of my lips. And he will be frightened of the woman I have become, who burst into his room trailing air from virgin trees.
