Bless Me, Ultima

by Rudolfo Anaya

  For a moment I couldn’t answer. The questions Florence had posed were the same questions I wanted answered. Why was the murder of Narciso allowed? Why was evil allowed?

  “Maybe it’s like the priest said,” I finally stammered, “maybe God puts obstacles in front of us so that we will have to overcome them. And if we overcome all the hard and bad things, then we will be good Catholics, and earn the right to be with Him in heaven—”

  Florence shook his head. “I thought about that,” he said, “but the way I figured it, if God is really as smart as the priest says, then he wouldn’t have needed any of that testing us to see if we’re good Catholics. Look, how do you test a three-year-old kid who doesn’t know anything. God is supposed to know everything, all right, then why didn’t he make this earth without bad or evil things in it? Why didn’t he make us so that we would always be kind to each other? He could of made it so that it was always summer, and there’s always apples in the trees, and the water at the Blue Lake is always clean and warm for swimming—instead He made it so that some of us get polio when we go swimming and we’re crippled for life! Is that right?”

  “I don’t know,” I shook my head, and I didn’t. “Once everything was all right; in the Garden of Eden there was no sin and man was happy, but we sinned—”

  “Bullshit we sinned,” Florence disagreed, “old Eve sinned! But why should we have to suffer because she broke the rules, huh?”

  “But it wasn’t just breaking the rules,” I countered, I guess because I was still trying to hold on to God. I didn’t want to give Him up like Florence had. I did not think that I could live without God.

  “What was it?” he asked.

  “They wanted to be like Him! Don’t you remember the priest saying the apple contained the knowledge that would make them know more things, like God they would know about good and about evil. He punished them because they wanted knowledge—”

  Florence smiled. “That still doesn’t seem right, does it? Why should knowledge hurt anyone? We go to school to learn, we even go to catechism to learn—”

  “Yes,” I answered. There seemed to be so many pitfalls in the questions we asked. I wanted answers to the questions, but would the knowledge of the answers make me share in the original sin of Adam and Eve?

  “And if we didn’t have any knowledge?” I asked.

  “Then we would be like the dumb animals of the fields,” Florence replied.

  Animals, I thought. Were the fish of the golden carp happier than we were? Was the golden carp a better God?

  “—last year Maxie got polio,” Florence was going on, “and my cousin got dragged by that damned horse and got his skull busted. They found him two weeks later, along the river, half eaten away by the crows and buzzards. And his mom went crazy. Is that right?”

  “No,” I answered, “it’s not right—”

  We came out of the dusty alley and onto the wind-swept barren grounds that surrounded the church. The massive brown structure rose into the dusty sky and held the cross of Christ for all to see. I had listened to Florence’s heresy, but the God of the church had not hurled his thunder at me. I wanted to call out that I was not afraid.

  “My father says the weather comes in cycles,” I said instead, “there are years of good weather, and there are years of bad weather—”

  “I don’t understand,” Florence said.

  Perhaps I didn’t either, but my mind was seeking answers to Florence’s questions. “Maybe God comes in cycles, like the weather,” I answered. “Maybe there are times when God is with us, and times when he is not. Maybe it is like that now. God is hidden. He will be gone for many years, maybe centuries—” I talked rapidly, excited about the possibilities my mind seemed to be reaching.

  “But we cannot change the weather,” Florence said, “and we cannot ask God to return—”

  “No,” I nodded, “but what if there were different gods to rule in his absence?” Florence could not have been more surprised by what I said, then I grabbed him by the collar and shouted, “What if the Virgin Mary or the Golden Carp ruled instead of—!”

  In that moment of blasphemy the wind swirled around me and drowned my words, and the heavens trembled with thunder. I gasped and looked up at the bell tower.

  “DAH-NNNNNGGGGGgggggg…” The first clap of bell-thunder split the air. I turned and cringed at its sound. I crossed my forehead, and cried, “Forgive me, Lord!” Then the second loud ring sounded.

  “Come on, Tony,” Florence pulled me, “we’ll be late—”

  We ran up the steps past Horse and Bones who were swinging like monkeys on the bell ropes. We hurried to get in line, but Father Byrnes had seen us. He grabbed Florence and pulled him out of line, and he whispered to me, “I would not have expected you to be late, Tony. I will excuse you this time, but take care of your company, for the Devil has many ways to mislead.”

  I glanced back at Florence, but he nodded that I go on. The line moved past the water fonts where we wet our fingers and genuflected as we made the sign of the cross. The water was icy. The church was cold and musty. We marched down the aisle to the front pews. The girls’ line filed into the right pew and the boys’ went to the left.

  “Enough,” the father’s voice echoed in the lonely church, and the bells that called us were silent. Horse and Bones came running to join us. Then the father came. I took a chance and glanced back. Florence’s punishment for being late was to stand in the middle of the aisle with his arms outspread. He stood very straight and quiet, almost smiling. The afternoon sun poured in through one of the stained glass windows that lined the walls and the golden hue made Florence look like an angel. I felt sorry for him, and I felt bad that he had been punished while I had been excused.

  “Let us pray,” Father Byrnes said and knelt. We followed suit, kneeling on the rough, splintery knee boards of the pew. Only Florence remained standing, holding the weight of his arms which would become numb like lead before catechism was over.

  “Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos—” I prayed to myself, sharing my prayers with no one. Everyone else prayed in English.

  Down the row I heard Bones faking it. “Buzz, buzz, buzz,” his mouth moved to the words, but he didn’t know them. His head was bowed, his eyes closed, and he looked so devout that no one could doubt his sincerity.

  Then the priest quizzed us on some lessons we had already been through.

  “Who made you?” he asked.

  “God made me,” we answered in unison.

  “Why did God make you?” he asked, and I saw him look down the aisle at Florence.

  “God made us to love, honor, serve and obey Him.”

  “Where is God?”

  “God is everywhere.”

  “At Rosie’s,” Bones whispered and rolled his eyes.

  Father Byrnes didn’t hear him. “How many persons are there in one God?” he continued.

  “Three. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

  “They have to squeeze in tight,” Horse grinned with his ugly horse teeth, and he took the white stuff he had been picking from them and wiped it on his pants.

  “The ghost,” Bones said secretly, “the holy ghoooooo-st.”

  Father Byrnes went on to discuss the difference between mortal and venial sins. His explanation was very simple, and in a way frightful. Venial sins were small sins, like saying bad words or not going to the Stations of the Cross during Lent. If you died with a venial sin on your soul you could not enter heaven until the sin was absolved by prayers or rosaries or masses from your family on earth. But if you died with a mortal sin on your soul you could never enter heaven. Never. It was frightening to think of missing mass on Sunday, then dying, and for that one mortal sin to go to hell forever.

  “If you die with a venial sin on your soul, where do you go?” he asked.

  “To Purgatory,” Rita answered. The girls always knew the exact answers. I knew most of the answers but I never raised my hand, because I often wanted to ask
questions and I knew it would displease father if I did. Really, the only one who ever asked any questions was Florence, and today he was doing penance.

  “That’s right, Rita,” he smiled. “And what is Purgatory?”

  “Purga,” Abel whispered. The boys giggled.

  “I know! I know!” Agnes waved enthusiastically and father smiled. “It’s a place where souls are cleaned so they can go to heaven!”

  “And if you die with a mortal sin on your soul?” he asked, and his voice was cold. The church seemed to shudder from a blast of wind outside, and when it settled a side door opened and an old lady dressed in black hobbled up the side aisle to the altar of the Virgin. She lighted one of the candles in a red glass and then she knelt to pray.

  “Hell!” Ida gasped, sucking in her breath.

  The father nodded. “And is there any escape from hell?” he raised his finger. We nodded no in silence. “No!” he shouted and slapped his hands so we all jumped in our seats. “There is no hope in hell! Hell is the place of eternal damnation! The fires of hell burn forever and ever—”

  “Forever and ever,” Agnes said thoughtfully.

  “For eternity!” Father Byrnes said emphatically. He reached under his frock and pulled out a tattered, well-worn copy of the catechism book. He hardly ever used it because he knew it by heart, but now he fumbled through and pointed. “Look there on page seventeen. Eternity. What does the word eternity mean?”

  We turned to page seventeen. “Forever,” Agnes said.

  “Without end,” Rita shuddered.

  “About twenty years,” Bones growled. He hadn’t raised his hand and he made everyone laugh so he had to go up to Father Byrnes and hold out his hands, palms up. Father Byrnes took the flat board he kept for such occasions and laid into Bones. One swat of the board was enough to blister the palms, but Bones didn’t seem to feel it. He nodded happily and said, “Thank you father,” then came back to sit down. I saw the old woman at the Virgin’s altar turn and nod approvingly when she saw Father Byrnes strike Bones.

  “Now I’m going to tell you a story that will teach you how long eternity lasts. Now, keep in mind, this is how long your soul will be burning in hell if you die with the black spots of mortal sins on it. First, try to imagine our whole country is a mountain of sand. A mountain of sand so high that it reaches to the clouds, and so wide that it stretches from one ocean to the other—”

  “Gee whiz!” Abel’s eyes opened wide. Horse, sensing something he could not understand, began to get nervous. Bones rolled his eyes. We all waited patiently for father’s story to develop, because we knew he had a way of telling stories that very clearly illustrated the point he wanted to make. I thought of Florence holding his arms outstretched for eternity.

  “Now, suppose across the ocean there is a flat country. The ocean is very wide and it takes weeks to cross it, right. But you want to move this huge mountain of sand from here to there—”

  “Get a boat!” Horse nodded nervously.

  “No, no, Horse,” Father Byrnes groaned, “keep quiet! Listen! Now girls,” he turned to them, “how long do you think it would take to move this mountain of sand, all the way across the ocean, until you have the mountain over there and an empty place here?” Several hands went up, but he only smiled and relished his question. “Ah, ah, ah,” he grinned, “before you answer, let me tell you how you have to move that enormous mountain of sand. And it’s not with a boat like Horse says—” Everyone laughed. “A little bird, a sparrow, is going to move that mountain for you. And the sparrow can only hold one little grain of sand in its beak. It has to pick up only one grain of sand, fly all the way across the wide ocean, put down the grain of sand, then fly all the way back for another grain of sand. It takes the little bird weeks just to fly across the ocean, and each time it carries only one grain of sand—”

  “It would never finish,” June shook her head sadly. “Just in a bucket of sand there must be a million grains, and to move that would take thousands of years. But to move the whole mountain of sand—” She ended her sentence in despair. Horse whinnied and began to bolt in his pew, and Bones had latched his teeth to the back of the pew and was viciously tearing at it, his eyes rolling wildly all the time and the white froth came foaming from his mouth. Even Abel and Lloyd, and the girls, seemed nervous with the impending conclusion of the story.

  “Is that how long eternity is?” Agnes asked bravely. “Is that how long the souls have to burn?”

  “No,” Father Byrnes said softly, and we looked to him for help, but instead he finished by saying, “when the little bird has moved that mountain of sand across the ocean, that is only the first day of eternity!”

  We gasped and fell back in our seats, shuddering at the thought of spending eternity in hell. The story made a great impression on us. Nobody moved. The wind whistled around the church, and as the sun sank in the west one penetrating ray of light gathered the colors of the stained glass window and softly laid them, like flowers, around the Virgin’s altar. The old woman who had been praying there was gone. In the dark aisle of the church Florence stood, his numbed arms outstretched, unafraid of eternity.

  Dieciocho

  Ash Wednesday. There is no other day like Ash Wednesday. The proud and the meek, the arrogant and the humble are all made equal on Ash Wednesday. The healthy and the sick, the assured and the sick in spirit, all make their way to church in the gray morning or in the dusty afternoon. They line up silently, eyes downcast, bony fingers counting the beads of the rosary, lips mumbling prayers. All are repentant, all are preparing themselves for the shock of the laying of the ashes on the forehead and the priest’s agonizing words, “Thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.”

  The anointment is done, and the priest moves on, only the dull feeling of helplessness remains. The body is not important. It is made of dust; it is made of ashes. It is food for the worms. The winds and the waters dissolve it and scatter it to the four corners of the earth. In the end, what we care most for lasts only a brief lifetime, then there is eternity. Time forever. Millions of worlds are born, evolve, and pass away into nebulous, unmeasured skies; and there is still eternity. Time always. The body becomes dust and trees and exploding fire, it becomes gaseous and disappears, and still there is eternity. Silent, unopposed, brooding, forever…

  But the soul survives. The soul lives on forever. It is the soul that must be saved, because the soul endures. And so when the burden of being nothing lifts from one’s thoughts the idea of the immortality of the soul is like a light in a blinding storm. Dear God! the spirit cries out, my soul will live forever!

  And so we hurried to catechism! The trying forty days of Lent lay ahead of us, then the shining goal, Easter Sunday and first holy communion! Very little else mattered in my life. School work was dull and uninspiring compared to the mysteries of religion. Each new question, each new catechism chapter, each new story seemed to open up a thousand facets concerning the salvation of my soul. I saw very little of Ultima, or even of my mother and father. I was concerned with myself. I knew that eternity lasted forever, and a soul because of one mistake could spend that eternity in hell.

  The knowledge of this was frightful. I had many dreams in which I saw myself or different people burning in the fires of hell. One person especially continually haunted my nightmares. It was Florence. Inevitably it was he whom I saw burning in the roaring inferno of eternal damnation.

  But why? I questioned the hissing fires, Florence knows all the answers!

  But he does not accept, the flames lisped back.

  “Florence,” I begged him that afternoon, “try to answer.”

  He smiled. “And lie to myself,” he answered.

  “Don’t lie! Just answer!” I shouted with impatience.

  “You mean, when the priest asks where is God, I am to say God is everywhere: He is the worms that await the summer heat to eat Narciso. He shares the bed with Tenorio and his evil daughters—”

  “Oh, God!” I cried in
despair.

  Samuel came up and touched me on the shoulder. “Perhaps things would not be so difficult if he believed in the golden carp,” he said softly.

  “Does Florence know?” I asked.

  “This summer he shall know,” Samuel answered wisely.

  “What’s that all about?” Ernie asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Come on!” Abel shouted, “bell’s ringing—”

  It was Friday and we ran to attend the ritual of the Stations of the Cross. The weather was beginning to warm up but the winds still blew, and the whistling of the wind and the mournful coo-rooing of the pigeons and the burning incense made the agony of Christ’s journey very sad. Father Byrnes stood at the first station and prayed to the bulto on the wall that showed Christ being sentenced by Pilate. Two highschool altar boys accompanied the priest, one to hold the lighted candle and the other to hold the incense burner. The hushed journeyers with Christ answered the priest’s prayer. Then there was an interlude of silence while the priest and his attendants moved to the second station, Christ receiving the cross.

  Horse sat by me. He was carving his initials into the back of the seat in front of us. Horse never prayed all of the stations, he waited until the priest came near, then he prayed the one he happened to be sitting by. I looked at the wall and saw that today he had picked to sit by the third fall of Christ.

  The priest genuflected and prayed at the first fall of Christ. The incense was thick and sweet. Sometimes it made me sick inside and I felt faint. Next Friday would be Good Friday. Lent had gone by fast. There would be no stations on Good Friday, and maybe no catechism. By then we would be ready for confession Saturday and then the receiving of the sacrament on the most holy of days, Easter Sunday.

  “What’s Immmm-ack-que-let Con-sep-shion?” Abel asked. And Father Byrnes moved to the station where Christ meets his mother. I tried to concentrate. I felt sympathy for the Virgin.