by John Rechy
Amalia jerked back from it.
“Rain from God’s heaven. A few drops will further cleanse the air.”
Amalia still backed away.
“It was blessed by a priest from your church,” Doña Esmeralda informed.
Oh.
The woman spattered a few drops of liquid about them all.
Amalia smelled pepper.
Padre Rogelio was brushing her lightly with a branch with shiny leaves.
“What is that?”
“The branch of a pepper tree,” Doña Esmeralda instructed. “Our Lord’s crucifix was made of such wood.” She made a very slow sign of the cross.
Fine. But if the old man tried to touch her with the chicken claw—A hollow sound made Amalia jump. The old man had blown into her ear with a conch shell.
“The limpia is over,” Doña Esmeralda announced the end of the cleansing.
“The air is purified for God!” the old man proclaimed, breathing it deeply.
With his careful help, Doña Esmeralda managed to kneel. Then the old man, too, struggled to his knees. Cautiously, Amalia knelt also. After all, what was wrong with kneeling before an altar, Our Lord, and his Holy Mother?
“Dios te salve, Maria—” Doña Esmeralda chanted. Her clasped hands—suddenly—held a rosary.
Where had she been keeping it before?—Padre Rogelio, too, was now clutching reverential beads. Well—whatever—Amalia could certainly relax with a Hail Mary and two rosaries. “—El Señor es con tigo,” she prayed especially loudly, for God to hear and know she was not a supersticiosa. Who could be, and still honor the Blessed Mother?
Again they sat about the table. Amalia waited. Four cloudy eyes were on her again. Silence extended. Amalia brought one hand to her lips and leaned to one side, to emphasize that she would wait for them to speak first.
“A prayer for guidance out of the silence of distrust,” Padre Rogelio proffered.
They all knelt again. “Our Father, Who art in heaven—”
They sat. Silence stretched further, further—
“Your fee!” The thought occurred to Amalia only now, and with a start.
“Reasonable, very reasonable,” Doña Esmeralda’s voice was brisk.
Padre Rogelio clarified: “A generous donation to the sacred altar.”
“And to the Holy Mother,” the old woman added. The benign smile fluttered like a tic on her old lips.
“What is important is to tend to your needs, m’ija” Padre Rogelio said.
Fine. “I am here for a consulta” Amalia allowed herself only to say the obvious, and only so it would be up to them to speak or do something next.
The old woman went to a bowl near the altar. She lit some incense. A thin plume of smoke curled into the air. In the semidark-ened room, Amalia saw how much the man and woman looked like frail, disappearing birds.
Padre Rogelio held a white sheet of paper before Amalia, and Doña Esmeralda extended the smoking bowl to her. “Please, m’ija,” the man said, “extinguish the incense with the paper now.”
Amalia did. God would be sure to know she was merely tolerating all this.
Padre Rogelio took the sheet and studied the outline made by the smoke. He smiled triumphantly. He handed the paper to Doña Esmeralda, who mirrored his smile. “Extraordinary!” she announced. She brought the paper to Amalia.
An ashy smudge. Amalia preferred not to say that.
“A sign of something extraordinary!” Doña Esmeralda interpreted. Her eyes glistened even more.
“Something miraculous!” Padre Rogelio exulted.
The silver cross in the sky! Amalia looked excitedly down at the smudge on the paper. It had not changed, still just a smudge. Wait. It looked like—A gun? Smoke from a gun. Amalia shivered.
The man and the woman faced her intently, like two tiHtas. Both touched their foreheads for seconds, as if locating the point of greatest concern and concentration. After moments Padre Rogelio sighed, “Someone is missing.”
Manny. Amalia inhaled. “My son was murdered by jail guards.” She looked, tensely, at the old man and woman.
They gazed at her. Then they nodded, yes.
Amalia felt suddenly confident about her purpose for being here.
“Signs and messages are everywhere.” Doña Esmeralda seemed suddenly delighted.
“Messages abound.” Padre Rogelio seemed to be bombarded by them—he turned his head every which way, as if dodging some.
“Why are signs so mysterious?” Amalia asked.
“God’s ways.” Doña Esmeralda shrugged her thin shoulders at the obvious. The smile was untiring on her lips. Then her brow furrowed—but the smile survived, radiant. “There are conflicts to resolve.”
“Complications to unravel,” Padre Rogelio extended.
That’s why she was here, to talk about her problems. So why shouldn’t she be direct? She said, “My son Juan is in trouble, suddenly he has money, he’s keeping something from me, it may involve drugs, it may involve a boy who was hiding in the garage and someone who drove up to the house today.” She listened carefully to her own words. “My son’s afraid. It may all have to do with a new gang in the area, or perhaps—”
“A ganga? In our neighborhood!” The old woman snapped out of her trance.
“Dios nos guarde! Those savage gangs!” The old man, too, lost his concentration.
Amalia did not hear them. “And there’s a serious conflict between my daughter and my husband—he’s not really my husband and he’s not her father, but he loves her like a father.” She stopped. She felt a wave of nausea invade her. The nausea swept into violent anger.
“Cálmate, m‘ija,” Padre Rogelio was saying.
“Would you like some water?” Doña Esmeralda was asking her.
When she heard their words, Amalia realized she had stood up, was trembling with rage, at the same time that she felt very tired. She saw the old man and woman staring at her. Suddenly she had to wipe away all her previous thoughts about Gloria, Raynaldo—She said: “Last night—” Yes! She would spew all that out, like bad beer—that damned extra beer festering in her stomach like poison—vomit it all out before this old man and woman who would tell her she had had no choice. She would purge it all, finally.
The gray heads of Doña Esmeralda and Padre Rogelio resumed their bowed concentration.
“Last night I went with a man who turned out to be a coyote,” Amalia said.
Doña Esmeralda looked up. Her voice was touched with a new sadness: “We have consultas often with families trying to locate their members, lost somewhere along the borders. Ay, such sorrows—”
“We guide them with the stars.” Padre Rogelio steered firmly away from the harsh matter. “The stars see everywhere.”
“Even into the vehicles of the coyotes!” Doña Esmeralda added in her new voice.
“Esmeralda—!” Padre Rogelio started testily.
Doña Esmeralda slumped deeply into her former trance.
Amalia continued: “This coyote tricked me. He started doing all kinds of things.” Yes, thrust away the false fantasies she had attached to it all—and do it harshly, vomit it all out: “He put his mouth between my legs and—”
The old woman’s fingers collapsed from her forehead. Her eyes shot open. “Que dices, mujer?” she demanded in a harsh, loud voice. “He did what?” She stood up, almost upsetting the table. “Did you slap the pervert, push him away, show your disgust, kick him in the source of his perversion? Disgusting!” she screamed. A vile man. “Es un demonio!”
Yes! Amalia welcomed the tirade against Angel. “Then he told me to be grateful!” Grateful! The word still assaulted her.
“Filthy, evil, perverted!” Doña Esmeralda was extending her initial outrage.
Padre Rogelio tried to calm her down. She pushed him away. She bit a fingernail, spat it out fiercely. Then she looked at her hand as if in surprise. She seemed to be struggling to regain her composure. She grasped for her chair, sat down, ordered hersel
f.
Amalia felt triumphant at the woman’s harsh judgment of Angel. She remained standing. In a firm voice she said to the old man and woman: “Your sign on the window says you’ll tell me everything I need to hear. Well, then,” her voice was firmer, “I want you to tell me that there will be only happiness in my life now. For my children and for me.”
Doña Esmeralda peered up at her.
Padre Rogelio glanced questioningly at the old woman beside him.
Amalia crossed her arms. “I won’t pay you if you don’t tell me what you promise on your sign.”
“There will be only happiness!” the old woman snapped.
“Of course!” the old man agreed.
“I want you to tell me that everything in my life will be in order when I return home.”
“The smoke from the incense indicated that,” the old woman hissed.
“It formed the dove of harmony,” the man said testily.
Amalia placed some money on the table. But she kept her hand there. She inhaled. “And one thing more. I want you to tell me that—”
The old man and the woman gaped at her.
Amalia closed her eyes. “I want you to tell me that miracles exist.” And that I saw a silver cross this morning; she did not say the last.
“Who can doubt miracles!” Doña Esmeralda shouted at Amalia.
“No one!” Padre Rogelio’s voice was even louder.
“You’re liars.” Amalia said. “I don’t believe anything you’ve told me. I just needed to hear those words.”
Outside, she felt exhilarated. Well, there were some triumphs in life after all—and this was one of them! She walked briskly now. Whatever happened this day, there was that!
But very soon, the exhilaration drained into a new frustration as she walked toward her house. What had occurred? She had extorted words—just words—from the brujos. She had not even demanded to hear anything possible, only impossible things that couldn’t—
She stopped abruptly on the street. She listened, tensely. She looked up at the palm trees. Was a breeze stirring? She thought she had felt it, cooling the perspiration of this long afternoon. No. Yes!—a slight breeze? Enough to push a filmy cloud across the sky, twist it a little here and there?—and return the illusion that had allowed her a feeling of peace for the first moments of the morning? … Look! There was a smear of a cloud, a wisp abandoned in the blue of a rare clear day. Amalia squinted. The shred of a cloud had twisted into … a finger! Yes, a long finger! Well, not exactly a finger because where was the hand? Still, no one could deny the finger was pointing to—Directly at—!
The HOLLYWOOD sign in the hills.
Try to make something of that! Amalia’s ruminations about a second holy sign ended.
Impulsively, she stepped into a liquor store, finally to check the winning Lotto ticket against hers…. Not one single number matched! Now that deserved a prize, didn’t it? She laughed aloud.
Grateful!
The word returned to her from last night, insinuating itself into this day, like the residue of fierce pain, as she returned home.
Along the blocks in her neighborhood, some people were already gathering their mended clothes and old furniture, ending that afternoon’s attempts at a yard sale. From an old man—she did this very quickly, before she could decide not to—she bought some old-fashioned plastic flowers that still had some of their original waxy sheen.
In the yard of the junior high school that Gloria went to, just blocks away from her house, some young men were playing basketball. Amalia welcomed the sounds of young life. She paused on the sidewalk. Through the wire fence that enclosed the yard, she faced the concrete basketball court surrounded by grass that wasn’t green but wasn’t yellow either.
There were six young men playing, about Juan’s age. One had removed his shirt, the others wore their white undershirts. The boys arched their bodies as they played, bouncing the ball away from each other, tossing it.
Amalia imagined Juan among them, that he was that good-looking young man without a shirt, his body gleaming with healthy sweat. Look how expertly he dodged the others. Now he was bouncing the basketball—tap, tap, tap. Then, with a graceful twist, his brown body shot up into the air, reaching up to the net and—
Ping!
A gunshot!
Blood erupted from the boy’s chest.
The basketball, poised on the rim for seconds, dropped into the net.
The boy fell to the concrete.
On the court the others flung themselves to the ground.
Only later would Amalia realize that she had seen a car screech away, had seen, in a flash, swirls of colored fire painted on its side, had heard a young voice yell out the name of the gang that had fired: “From the Vatos of Seventh Street!”
Not able to move yet, clutching the plastic flowers she had just bought, now Amalia could only stare at the playground where the shirtless young man lay sprawled in a growing blossom of blood.
11
AMALIA WAS NOT sure how long she stood near the playground. But she knew she heard police sirens, and then those of an ambulance. She knew she saw the boy carried away on a stretcher, his face covered. She felt surrounded by waiting violence. There was a gang in the area and with it would come constant fear. Tonight on television she might hear the name of the dead young man, another death among those summed up daily now. What would the mother of the dead boy be doing right now, as somber officials approached to tell her her son was dead? Returning from work perhaps, and certainly tired.
And what of the mother of the boy who had murdered—?
That intruded sharply into Amalia’s thoughts. She remembered Chuco’s mother for the first time since she had seen her outside the courtroom where Manny was being tried. Had Chuco died? If so, then Manny—
She had to push all that away—and the vision of the bloodied boy. Even so, as she rushed away from where more people were gathering near the boy’s blood in the playground, her thoughts were saturated with sadness, on this day that seemed even stiller as she crossed the street toward her house. She would have welcomed even a breath of the terrible Sant’ Anas, just to stir something, push away this waiting stillness.
“‘Amá … ‘Amita!”
“M’ijo!” She answered, as always, the recurring impression that her dead son was calling out to her with the cherished endearment. But this time it was as if he were exhorting her to—She opened her purse. She held the sealed envelope from the public attorney. Then she pushed it back.
She had reached her stucco bungalow. Released from the filtering shadows of morning, it looked harsh. Yes, the units were crumbling, only vagrant flowers survived, dirt was smothering the dying grass. Even the sidewalk was cracking toward the back of the court. Her eyes followed the ominous split along the concrete, toward the plant from which she had plucked the poisoned flower she had put in her hair earlier. Was it really a weed? Had Mrs. Huerta lied?
She went to check, past her unit, to the back of the court. She was astonished. She did not even bother with the dubious plant because the rosebush nearby had produced—
A blossom!
Was it possible she had missed it this morning, perhaps because it had just begun to open? She stared at it. It was small, with only a few petals—but it was alive!
The second sign!
Hope sprang—strange, foreign to her—as powerful and assertive as, once, when—A memory had brushed her mind, a time when she had hoped—For what? The memory was gliding away. What had she ever really hoped? Of course she had sometimes wished the Texas dust storms would stop, things like that, but really hoped?—for something that would permit her some choice that would alter the dogged line of her life? No.… Still, the memory which had already fled had left some warmth inside her heart, a warmth quickly chilled.
By another memory? What memory? What memories? Why was she remembering the time she had dressed Manny as an angel to march in the Posadas, the same time she knew she would have made a m
uch more beautiful Sacred Mother than the woman chosen to play her? Certainly that chilly night had contained no hope. Amalia’s memories moved back: Was it this one? Christmas Eve, and Teresa placed the Holy Child in the manger, a beautiful doll-child, the Holy Mother impeccable beside him.… She searched through vagrant memories for one. Then all vanished.
Amalia touched the new rose, to restore her first reaction of joy. Hadn’t Bernadette, in that movie, been picking flowers when the Blessed Mother stepped forward? Amalia looked around. Everything was so hushed! She waited a few more seconds.
When she entered her house, everything looked shabbier than when she had left it. Especially the artificial flowers. She stared down at the ones she had just bought. How could they have lost their sheen so quickly? A feeble rose had managed to push its way into life on a dying bush outside—that was all that had changed. She abandoned the plastic flowers on the table where Teresa’s La Dolorosa had once stood.
With his back to her, and still shirtless, the way he had gone out, Juan sat watching a movie on television, a silly comedy in which people were falling all around. But he was not laughing. So sad, my handsome son is so sad, Amalia thought. Aware of her, he turned. He’s a man now, Amalia knew, again, in wonder. “Has—?” she started.
“Yeah, Raynaldo’s been back—twice.” Juan understood quickly. “Don’t worry, he said he’d be back in a while.”
Amalia was annoyed by a vaguely accusing tone. “I was going to ask if your sister’s back,” she revised.
“No.” Juan never liked to be questioned about his sister. “But a woman called—”
Milagros! She did know where Rosario was. No, it would just be one of the people she worked for, wanting her to work on a different day. “Did she speak in English or Spanish?” she asked anyway.
“Spanish.”
It had to be Milagros. But, then, two of her employers did speak Spanish, mangled Spanish—
Juan had turned off the television. Standing, he faced Amalia. “Have you opened that letter?”
His bluntness made her answer, “Yes,” because now she was sure he thought the letter from the public attorney was about him, or Gloria.
