Looking for Mary

by Beverly Donofrio

  When I linked arms with Jason back on the bench, he said, “Wow, Ma! You were strong.”

  A year later, Jason and I were in the elevator after seeing a movie with Nigel. Jason had loved the movie, and when Nigel said something witty, making fun of it, Jason said under his breath, “What do you know? Idiot.”

  Nigel reared up, raising his hand. I pulled Jason behind me and yelled, “Don’t you ever raise your hand to my son—ever! I’ll murder you!”

  When the elevator doors opened, I grabbed Jason’s hand and pulled him along with me and away from Nigel. There was a trippy lightness in Jason’s step. “We’re leaving him?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  We slept on my friend Tracy’s floor that night. In the dark Jason’s face turned toward mine on the pillow we shared. “You never would let him hit me, would you, Ma,” he stated instead of asked.

  “I will never let anyone touch you.”

  We stayed at Tracy’s a few nights while I looked for a job. Nigel called six times a day, apologizing, begging forgiveness, begging me to come home. This was before things went so wrong with us, and so I went back.

  Now, in the restaurant, Jason said, “You hid by my bed.”

  This night had been lurking, unspoken, between Jason and me. I’d known in my heart but did not want to remember that night or acknowledge what I’d done to my son.

  It was near the end of our nightmare with Nigel, and Nigel had found a letter addressed to “My Friends” that I’d written and hadn’t sent. I tried to explain why none of them had heard from me for so long: “Did you ever hide when you hear a knock on the door? Did you ever take a drink after breakfast because you can’t stand your own face in the mirror? Did you ever fantasize dropping a brick on your lover’s head? I do. . . .”

  Nigel flew into a rage. He stomped back and forth in front of me and pulled his hair. He hugged himself and trembled, sobbing. When I tried to make light of his rage by offering to buy cigarettes, he blocked the door and pushed me down. A short while later, when he left to get beers next door, I ran up the stairs and hid between Jason’s bed and the wall. “Don’t let Nigel know I’m here,” I’d whispered.

  I’d used the one person in the world it was my responsibility to protect—to protect me.

  “I’m so sorry, Jase.” I placed my hand on top of his and felt the pain of the little lost boy I didn’t love enough, the boy I didn’t take care of well, the pain of the grown man whose hand I was holding across the table—and it didn’t kill me.

  I knew Jason would have to forgive me before his anger would melt. I wished I could help him to get there, even as I knew in a visceral way, for the first time, that my guilt would do my son no good at all.

  I could feel sorry for the pain I inflicted, but I would also have compassion for myself. The mistakes I’d made, the bad relationships, the drunkenness were the growing pains of a confused young woman; I’d been a mother at the same time I was growing up. The only real tragedy was that my child had been hurt by it.

  I was not an evil person. I truly had done the best I could. And like Jason’s father, I’d been incapable.

  That Jason was born to a girl who did not want to be a mother was his cross to bear. I can love him, I can feel sorry for the past, I can regret the mother I was not till my dying breath, but Jason will have to find his own way.

  In bed that night I thanked Mary for giving me the courage I needed to be a mother.

  I decided I had to go back to San Miguel to witness its Easter celebration, which is renowned all over Mexico. On the Thursday night before Easter all the statues are taken down and decorations are put up in their place, like an art installation. One church had little girls with wings and halos holding wands up on the altar, which had been festooned with thousands of flowers. On Good Friday, I sat on a curb watching intently as the familiar statues that had been removed from the churches the night before were marched through the streets, their garments rippling in the breeze, their bodies swaying as if they were alive. The procession began with Christ in agony on his cross, followed by a truly scary, flesh-and-blood, ham-fisted Pilate leading his legion of Roman soldiers, all white men with whips and a bristle of brush on the top of their helmets. Their sandaled feet took a step after every third ominous beat of the drum. The army was followed by hundreds of beautiful Mexican girl angelitas, dressed in communion white. Then magnificent angel statues riding on flower-covered pallets held aloft by stately women dressed in black. Each angel held something significant: three nails, a crown, Christ’s clothes, a replica of the Shroud of Turin. The rooster that crowed three times had his own pallet. There were an orchestra, a men’s chorus, and a children’s chorus, and then there was Christ in his coffin, followed by Mary weeping, her black train stretching half a block, and lastly Mary Magdalene, whom the Bible says Christ “kissed on the mouth.” (Did this mean they were lovers? I hoped so.) By the time the procession was over I felt like I’d witnessed the real thing. I’d sat amid the Mexicans, all of us crowded onto the sidewalk and into the gutter. Children were passed around from mother to father to older siblings. They ate ice creams, they sucked on lollipop rings. They made friendly eyes at me. I made friendly eyes at them and was reminded of my visit to a day-care center with my friend Juliet a few weeks before. Juliet is Mexican and something of a “teacher.” She read my astrological chart and told me I needed to practice love. I said, “How do I do that?”

  She said, “By holding babies.”

  Funny she should say that, because I’d tried to volunteer to hold crack babies back in LA, but when I couldn’t find a hospital with such a program after two tries, I gave up.

  Life is more direct, and visceral, in Mexico. Juliet and I went to the clinic that helps teenage mothers. The woman at the desk said regretfully that we’d just missed two babies who were sent home, and right at this moment there was a baby being born, but that could take some time. A baby was being born behind the closed door in front of us right at this moment? A new baby would be handed to a teenage girl? A new baby would be put in her young arms? Their lives would begin together? Her life would forever be changed? A lump formed in my throat, and I insisted to Juliet that we sit on the bench and wait. And we did for a while; but Juliet had only an hour more, so she suggested we drive to the other side of town where the clinic also has a day-care center for the babies of the teenage mothers.

  There were six babies. A boy who crawled like a bat out of hell and was not interested in us. Another little boy in suspenders, skinny as a spider, a nose that needed to be wiped. But when I saw the little girl, I knew what Juliet meant about practicing love. She was so tiny standing in her crib, silently weeping. She held her arms out to me, but then when I came near, she shook her head no, still crying. “Donde está tu mamá?” Where is your mother? I asked her.

  The little girl held up her arm limply and pointed. “Alla,” she said with such loneliness, such longing. “Alla.” Somewhere.

  But not here. I knew the frightened, homesick feeling. We all felt it as kids; and as adults alone in the night, looking at our own reflections in the window of a moving train, we feel it still. It’s the feeling of being separated from God. I wanted badly to pull that child to my chest, let her feel my heartbeat, my warmth, to comfort her, but she wouldn’t have it. Only her mother could comfort her. As only I could comfort Jason. And as only Mary could have comforted me.

  I was scheduled to leave Mexico at the crack of dawn on Monday. It was Friday. The alarm went off. I opened my eyes and knew one thing: I did not want to leave. Life was softer in Mexico; it was a feminine country with a mother God. I would have liked to live in a place where “why” and “because” sound like the same word. But I had to leave, and I had a million things to attend to before I did. It was seven-thirty. I showered and dressed and put on my watch, which said it was ten-thirty. Impossible. It had stopped in the night, and now, in addition to everything else I had to do, I’d have to take it to the shop where I’d bought it the pr
evious week. It was just as well. I’d been meaning to get to La Salud and pay my respects to Niño Santo and Dolorosa before I left, and this was my chance—the clock shop was across the square from the church.

  I ran around doing errands, then began my daily rosary on my fingers as I walked the cobblestone streets to La Salud, where I sat in front of El Niño and Dolorosa and closed my eyes. “Show me your will,” I said, then, “Let me see with eyes of love,” and began my twenty-minute meditation. I tried to make time every day to think about God, to sit and to listen, as well as to say my rosary. Faith took work, but it was easier in Mexico, where they say, “Con fe se tiene todo.” With faith you have everything.

  Faith is beyond reason, and in Mexico logic is not at a premium; in fact, it’s sometimes hard to find. Mexicans believe every leaf has its own spirit; they give their dead a feast once a year, where they cook the dead persons’ favorite foods, buy their favorite cigarettes, pour glasses of booze. The worst thing you can do is ask in a store for something that has run out. If others have asked too, the shopkeeper may not reorder it, because the item had caused disappointment, and trouble.

  At La Salud I crossed myself, said goodbye to the Niño, and touched Dolorosa’s skirt, then gave five pesos to the beggar woman at the door. I walked across the road to the watch shop, and as the woman took my watch, then looked at her own, I noticed it was ten-thirty, and my watch began ticking. The woman removed the battery and tested it. It was fine.

  Surely, the stopped watch had been a sign from Mary, a way to get me to go to church and to pay attention. And so I spent my last days in Mexico with a heightened awareness of the divine, and on the lookout for signs.

  Later in the afternoon, I met my friend Karen, who’d moved to Mexico nine years ago, the same time Kip and I had moved away. Karen knew of a studio apartment for rent. It was only two hundred dollars, which meant I could afford to rent it and still keep my place in LA. I wanted to secure a foothold in Mexico to ensure that I’d always return and stay tapped into the divine. But after looking at the place, I decided it was too small to be comfortable and I didn’t want it. As Karen and I sat in her Volkswagen, she said, “What is your plan, anyway?”

  “Well,” I said. “I have to find out what my next gig is, and if I don’t have to be in the States to write it, I’ll move down here.”

  “That’s not how it works,” Karen said. “You have to move here on faith, then you’ll find a way.”

  I felt as though she’d thrown down the gauntlet.

  That night Juliet and I sat on a veranda on a hill overlooking the village, and she told me how she’d just taken her German nephew, a medical student, to the desert and picked him some peyote. In the summer while I was here, Juliet had a Huichol shaman sleeping in her backyard whose teacher was peyote. He ran a feather wand over me and sucked three little rocks from my body—black from my heart, clear from my throat, and white from my brain. The shaman held them in the palm of his hand and told me that someone had cast a spell on me. The spell might have been tossed at me on the street, but it also might have been cast long ago, which would be more serious. The shaman told me to pay attention to my dreams. If I dreamed of bananas on trees, tomato plants, corn in the fields, then I would know that my dreams could come true. But if I dreamed of darkness and death, I must come back and see him again. Juliet, who was translating, said that those images were the shaman’s images for abundance and that my images might be different. That night I dreamed of fields of gold with Frank Sinatra singing in the breeze.

  Now, on the veranda, sipping sangria, I told Juliet about my watch stopping and my being coerced into visiting church; then I told her what Karen had said.

  “I didn’t know how I would say this,” Juliet said, “but I was going to tell you the same thing. This is your life. When you feel a call to do something, you must do it.”

  Her words had the ring of truth; Mary might even be speaking through her. “I have to find a place before I leave!” I fairly shouted.

  That night I called Jason. “Would you mind if I moved to Mexico?”

  “You kidding? I love Mexico.”

  I could hardly sleep for the planning of my move. I’d have to return to LA to pack up, then visit my family and friends back east. It was April. I figured it was safe to plan on arriving in Mexico by July 1. Maybe I could rent a place in San Miguel immediately and leave it empty if I needed to. As I tossed in bed, I thought of an anecdote Karen had told me about her daughter, Ida, who is nine and precocious, and her husband, who is a painter. They’d just returned from Oaxaca, where they’d gone for Easter with another family. The boy of the other family was twelve and tortured Ida the whole drive there. In the motel room at night Ida said to her mother and father, “I wish Richard would just shut up. I know there’s no such thing as the Easter Bunny. But it’s good to use your imagination.”

  Karen’s husband said, “I believe in the Easter Bunny.”

  And I believed in God. I do not mean to make light of my hard-won new faith, but sometimes it just plain felt good, like being a kid and believing in the Easter Bunny; it felt right to accept mystery, and forces beyond our senses, and to believe in miracles.

  I got up for the third time to refill my glass with water, and after I drank half of it, I finally fell asleep.

  The next morning I was determined to go to every bulletin board and call every number advertising an apartment. My only criterion was that there be two bedrooms, so Jason would know he had a room of his own in my house. There were two or three possibilities at the first board, and the second place I stopped was Chelo’s pharmacy. Chelo had been widowed four times. When Juliet told me this about Chelo one night at dinner, she’d said, “What I want to know is how she got the fourth one to marry her. I bet she went to the Sonora market and got the herb that takes away the will of a man.” I was thinking I could go to the Sonora market, take peyote in the desert, visit the town I’d heard of where balls of light are seen bouncing around the mountain on Good Friday.

  And then my heart did a cha-cha as I remembered how I’d been invited to paint icons with a woman named Mary Jane the week before. Mary Jane paints icons as a form of prayer, a meditation in which you commune with the saint you are painting, and you must try to paint the icon you are copying exactly the same, but every icon turns out different. Mary Jane had told me she loved Jesus but had thrown out fifteen Bibles. When we looked in the index of her latest Bible for “Virgin Mary” and there was no listing, she threw that one away, too.

  If I lived here, I could continue my inspired yoga classes, at which the other morning I had done the impossible by actually placing my foot behind my head, and as we lay down at the end of the class, the teacher had read this quote from Dharma:The thought manifests as the word

  The word manifests as the deed

  The deed develops into habit

  And the habit hardens into character.

  So watch the thought

  And its ways with care

  And let it spring from love

  Born out of respect for all beings.

  Chelo the pharmacist, who is a slight, shy woman with dreamy skin and a easy smile, had just opened up. I’d heard that she was rich in real estate, which she’d inherited from her four dead husbands, and so I asked her if she had or knew of anything for rent.

  The house is on Loreto Street, named after Mary’s house, flown by the angels from Nazareth. It’s around the corner from the church of Niño Santo, whose dome I can almost touch from my rooftop. I am moving there in July.

  From Mexico I had sent Jason a card of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which Jason had assured me he’d stuck to his refrigerator with the Virgin of Guadalupe magnets I’d also sent him. I was afraid I might be guilty of overkill, until Jason e-mailed me in Mexico asking me to send him a silver chain so he could wear his Medjugorje medal. My greatest hope is that Our Lady has answered my prayers and is sneaking into my son’s heart, too, the way she sneaked into mine.

  Bac
k home in LA before I moved to Mexico, I went to church on Mother’s Day. But because I didn’t want to miss a special chanting session at my yoga studio, I couldn’t make it to Saint Augustine’s in time for their last morning mass and so had gone to Saint Monica’s, which was the church closest to my house. The congregation at Saint Monica’s is very white and upper-middle-class, which I like to avoid, and the priests have a smug, self-satisfied air, because, I assume, they have filled their pews, thanks mostly to their music ministry—a veritable orchestra with a conductor up at the altar. And I was particularly annoyed because it was Mother’s Day, and although the youngish, rosy-cheeked priest did manage to slip in a cute little anecdote about his own mother, Mother Mary was never mentioned—not once. I had been to only one mass in the United States where a Hail Mary was said at all. And last Christmas, I heard about how strong Joseph’s faith was for listening to the angel in his dream, yet Mary and her faith were not mentioned at all.

  But Mary’s statue was right up there next to the altar, everyone in the congregation prays the Hail Mary at home, and I was sick to death of the patriarchal American Church’s blatant dismissal of the Mother of God, while it was Mary who’d probably brought half of us to these pews and kept us here.

  I was so annoyed, I went through one of my little church fits, in which I have to exert superhuman will to keep my bottom in the seat. This time, though, it didn’t work, and as the priest turned from the lectern, I stood to leave. But then the beginning strains of “Ave Maria” filled the air, goose bumps tickled every inch of my skin, and I sat back down.

  Maybe it was good the Catholic Church didn’t often bring Mary up in church; it left her out of the trinity and kept her in mystery.

  After “Ave Maria,” the priest stood at the top of the aisle and invited all the mothers to come up for a blessing. I thought, I’m not going up, it’s too hokey. What about the women in the church who wanted to be mothers but couldn’t? This was discriminatory. What about my friends whose deepest grief in life is that they didn’t have a baby when they were young enough, and now it’s too late? Or my friends who never found a decent man? But then, as I watched a very old lady file out of her pew, humbly smiling, and wearing a pink carnation, I thought, But I’m a mother. I would like to be honored.