The Guardians (26 page)

REGINA

Mamá used to pray to Saint Anthony of Padua to help her recover items she'd misplaced around the house. Her knitting needles—in the basket next to her favorite chair with her yarns. Her prayerbook, just as she was running out the door to say a rosary at someone's house—already inside her purse. The crossword puzzle she was working on—stashed between the sofa cushions. She was always losing things: her reading glasses—on her head, the collected rent money—down her bosom without her realizing it. Things like that. No sooner was something missing, she'd cross herself and say a prayer to el santito. San Antonio, saint of the poor, kept busy by people like my mother—who was even capable of asking him to help her find a parking space—was a great man in his life. He made milagros happen even while he was still alive, appearing in two places at the same time in order to heal a very sick person.

I believe in the saints as people. I can't speak for them once they've passed. But Gabo talks to the santos all the time. He always lights candles to San Antonio. “Please help us,” he prays under his breath before a little card with the saint's image he placed on the altarcito in his room. The altar used to be a desk. I found it for him at la segunda, an oak table with a pencil drawer. He was supposed to use it for his homework. The altar-desk now always has a white vela burning. There is a small wooden crucifixion and three polished stones from the Río Grande. There is also a picture of his parents, Karla, and himself when he was a little boy. That was the only studio picture the family had ever taken.

Who San Antonio turned up was Padre Juan Bosco. And he was wearing his collar. “Next time make yourself clear when you talk to los santos,
will you?” I said to Gabo and walked away, leaving the priest standing outside just as he had once done to me.

But when my sobrino went to the door, el cura was still there. “May I come in,” he asked, and then, “por favor?”

Just as I expected, Gabo invited him in. While el padre was in Rome Pope John Paul II had died. Father Juan Bosco filled us in on what it had been like to be there. Our parish priest was just one of the little guys. He had witnessed everything from the Vatican plaza “among all the throngs that had flocked there waiting for the Holy See's final hour,” he told us.

“You didn't come to report to us about your trip, did you?” I asked.

“No, Regina,” Padre Juan Bosco said. “I came to tell you both that I've resumed my duties at the church. I hope I will see you both in Mass again.”

“You hardly ever saw me there to begin with,” I said. I knew I was upsetting my sobrino, but I couldn't help myself. He had disappointed Gabo. “But I'm sure you can still count on Herlinda Mora's attendance. She doesn't seem to be very discriminating.”

El padre blushed.

“Tía,” Gabo said. Then he went to his room and came out with a brown bundle. I knew what it was even though I'd never seen the robes the principal told me about. Gabo handed them to el padre. “Gracias, Gabriel,” was all he said. No reproaches. Humility was new for the priest. Father Juan Bosco took one of my nephew's bandaged hands.

I am the one who wraps them.

There are things you question. Then there are things you don't. But the priest did. “You didn't do this to yourself, did you?” el cura asked.

“Here we go,” I said.

Then Father Juan Bosco turned to me instead. “I know I've always been hard on you, Regina. But if I may say it now, I did a lot of reflecting while I was away. The Bible states, ‘Honor thy widows who are widows indeed … who do good works.’ All your life I have seen it in you. I had no cause to doubt you, but I did.”

I was so angry I had to take a deep breath before I could speak. “Padre, don't worry about me. But as for my nephew, shame on you.”

Juan Bosco nodded. To both of us he said, “If you cannot have me as your spiritual adviser, perhaps you will allow me to be a friend.”

Gabo looked like he didn't know whether to go toward me or the priest. But I felt it was mi'jo that needed the compassion. “Gabo came to you with his heart split open like an apple that you can't put back together,”
I said to el padre. “Just think of all he's been through. He lost his madre, his hermana … his papá …
my
brother. We may as well say it. We're never going to find him. You never knew each other, Padre. And Rafa probably wouldn't have had much use for you but I'm sure you would have liked him.” I counted to ten. Get hold of yourself, Regina, I told myself.

Father Juan Bosco just stood there with his eyes down. It didn't help.

“And then you got up and left when mi sobrino needed you most,” I said. The padre did not react, but Gabo did. My sobrino came and put his rail-thin arms around me so tight I could hardly breathe. I knew he was trying to shut me up. “Tía,” he whispered, “don't you know?”

I pulled away and looked at him. His eyes were so dark against his pale skin. I felt lost. My head started to pound. I'd been lost for so long in so many ways I wouldn't even know where to begin to pull myself together, I thought.

Mi sobrino gripped my hand. “The First Epistle of John told me, ‘Little children, keep yourself from idols.’ So don't worry, mi tía. You have been more mother to me than I could have ever asked for … more than I deserved. Our friend was wrong, Tía Regina”—Gabo put my hand against his cool cheek—“yet, you let him in your home, just as you made room here for me. Don't you know how many lessons you taught us both?”

GABO

Padre Santo. In the Name of the Crucified Jesus, Su Madre Santa, and the Holy Spirit.

Your most fervent disciple will not burden you with laments of his numerous weaknesses. Instead, permit me to remember a glorious experience with the Divine that happened when I was just a chavalito. Some kids at school remember TV programs they watched as children to console themselves when they are afraid about having to grow up. They think of Big Bird or Barney. They remember their favorite toys, their Legos and their plastic superheroes. The other day, I was afraid. Then I remembered what once delighted me. It cheered my heart, Santo apreciado, thinking of what we once witnessed, my tía Regina and I. She had said in my ear, like it was a secret, “Don't tell anyone, Gabito. Don't tell anyone what we saw.”

But Father Juan Bosco explained it to me when I relayed the secret in confession. “Are you very certain that you didn't read about this somewhere?” el padre asked. No, I had not. He came out of the confessional and opened my door. “Are you sure?” he asked again, scratching his calbo cabezahead.

He gave it a name, the “Dancing of the Sun.” It had happened before, he informed me. The Church had recorded it. When la Virgen María appeared to los niños in Fatima, thousands saw it, he said. That was in Portugal almost a hundred years ago. It happened in a place called Medjurgorje, too, more recently. “Where is that?” I asked the priest.

“Near Bosnia.”

Yes, I had heard of Bosnia because of the wars there, but not Medjur-gorje, where la Virgen María also appeared about twenty-five years ago to tell people to pray and do penance for their sins.

And it happened on my tía's ranchería to us.

We never talked about it. But one day, not long ago, I told her what el cura told me, that it was an official milagro of the Church. “But who would believe us?” she asked.

“Padre Juan Bosco believed me,” I told her.

“Yes, he believes
you,”
she laughed.

It happened when my mamá and papá left me there to go to school. I was eight years old. My tía Regina was showing me how to plant tomatoes. We took all the small plants from the greenhouse my papá had helped her build. It was made of netting and chicken wire held with postes. All she wanted was something to protect the seedlings and small vegetable plants until spring, when it was safe to put them into the ground. She does this every year; that is why I am able to remember so clearly what we were doing that afternoon.

Just then came great gusts of wind. The winds knocked down las plantitas we were carrying. They pushed me down, too. My tía laughed and helped me up. Then she fell. We were covered with the fresh fertilizer we had just spread out in the garden. It seemed as if suddenly it might rain. It happens that way in the desert. Suddenly there is a storm. Just as suddenly it stops. But there were no rain clouds in the sky; the sky had just darkened.

The sun was between two thirds up from the horizon and directly above one's head. It was about four or five in the afternoon. First, it was my tía who saw what was happening. (That is how I know she is so blessed.) My tía Regina gasped, not a gasp of fear but a gasp of joy. She was looking at the sun, shading her eyes with her hands. I looked, too. Although the winds had died down as quickly as they had started, the sky was still dark. Yet the sun was bright as ever. But it was different. It was flat like a disc and it was whirling. “¡Tía!” I said, pointing at it. We clasped hands. Then my tía took off her sunglasses and put them on me. “You must protect your eyes,” she said. “It's an eclipse.”

But it was not an eclipse, Su Reverencia. No eclipse was recorded that day. (I have looked it up on the Internet.)

Then suddenly the sun, whirling like a disc, unhinged itself from the sky and started soaring fast toward the earth. My tía and I stepped
back, as if we could avoid its crash. Then abruptly it stopped. Just as abruptly, the sun withdrew, ever-whirling, back to its place in the sky.

I took off los lentes oscuros and everywhere that my eyes rested upon was golden. I looked at my tía and her face, arms, and hands—they were gold, too. “¿Mira, Tía!” I said, pointing at her. She was pointing everywhere, too, marveling at how everything had turned gold, including me. My tía Regina picked me up and jumped up and down with me in her arms, both of us laughing. The sky cleared up almost instantly. The gold dust that seemed to have sprinkled the world faded, too.

Then we went back to our planting.

Su servidor, whose boundless faith in the All-Glory of the Lord
will soon end the darkness that has surrounded him, G C. y R.

REGINA

When I was a young widow, me, Mamá, and Rafa used to pick chiles all up and down this area. It was where Junior's people were from. I didn't have much to do with them after he died but we still settled here. We were in the chile capital of the world. We followed the harvest from La Union to Chamberino, la Mesilla to Caballo, then back down, through Arrey, Hatch, and Las Cruces. By September it would be time to settle down and work at one of the chile processing plants.

Once I got my widow's papers in order and my army widow's pension, I didn't work in the fields no more. Years later, Mamá got amnesty. Rafa was the only one who never got his documents fixed. Then he married a Mexican national, who insisted they have their children at home near her family in Chihuahua. They remained foreigners forever.

Funny, about the chile. I could make you any kind of mole you want. I use mulattos, anchos, guajillos, and pasillas but I don't use the chiles we picked all those years. They're not for the kind of mole my mother taught me to make. But that's not the funny thing about my making mole. The funny thing is I don't like chile. Even my famous chile colorado is too spicy for me. (It's now famous because after Miguel tasted it he told everyone at the school how delicious it was.) It might be the side of me that came with the red hair that can't take hot stuff. But Rafa was different altogether. He could practically eat the hottest chile all by itself, even while it made him do a jig. His son is not like him when it comes to food.